2025 Faculty of Science Excellence Award winners announced

Danielle Vlaho (Academic Associate), Joe Iantomasi (Clerical), Luisa Sabaz (Management), and Badawy Sha’ath (Technical) have been named recipients of the Faculty of Science Excellence Awards.  

These awards, announced at the Faculty of Science Council meeting on May 20th, recognize the outstanding contributions made by members of the Faculty’s administrative and support staff during the 2024-2025 academic year.  

Read below the citations prepared by the Faculty of Science Excellence Awards Committee. 

Danielle Vlaho, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science Excellence Award for Academic Associates 

Danielle Vlaho has been an academic associate and Director of the Chemistry undergraduate teaching laboratories in the Department of Chemistry since 2017. She has been instrumental in the redesign, redevelopment, and execution of new online lab components as well as developing completely new labs. In both cases, her approaches are pedagogically innovative and aim to improve the lab experience and student engagement. For example, she has created course content and concept videos to enable a flipped classroom in large enrollment courses. In hand with these changes to course structure and content, she has also developed TA workshops and a Chemistry TA-training program to improve course delivery. Overall, she is dedicated to student success and engaged in the department, positively impact student and faculty experience and make her an invaluable member of the department.

Joe Iantomasi, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science Excellence Award for Clerical Staff 

Joe Iantomasi has worked at McGill since 1990. He currently works in receiving, ensuring that time-sensitive and perishable packages reach recipients quickly, monitoring the safe use of shared departmental equipment, and verifying proper packaging and disposal of hazardous and other materials. He cares deeply about his work community. For example, he can often be found in the building even on holidays because he knows that faculty and students will be there for research and he wants to ensure that everything is running smoothly. This care and attention is something that is greatly appreciated by both students and faculty.

Luisa Sabaz, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science Excellence Award for Management Staff  

Luisa has been part of McGill University for nearly 39 years, with 28 years in the Department of Biology. She is currently an Administrative Assistant where she works with people at every level of the department as well as external stakeholders including vendors, funding agencies, and accounts receivable to manage financial and HR tasks. Luisa aims to make McGill a better place for her colleagues. She often goes beyond her core responsibilities, for example, she served as the Administrative Officer while also fulfilling her regular tasks. In addition, she has been critical in improving departmental operations, inter-departmental communication, and sustainability. Finally, her tireless work providing administrative support and helping people to navigate the often opaque financial systems is widely seen as essential to the smooth operation of the Department and the labs of the individual faculty.

Badawy Sha’ath, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science Excellence Award for Technical Staff  

Badawy has served as Course Coordinator for the General Chemistry laboratory courses for over thirty years. Coordinating these courses, which serve up to 1200 undergraduate students in a semester, and the teaching assistants that oversee them, is logistically complex and even small hiccups have the potential to become major disruptions. Badawy has been described as a masterful organizer and manager, meticulous in his preparation of lab materials. His sense of humor and positive demeanor enable him to create a calm and focused learning environment and ensure that the labs run smoothly and his first aid training has been critical on a number of occasions.