UBC Forestry wishes to congratulate Brian Duarte on being awarded the Canadian Phytopathological Society (CPS) Best Student Presentation Award for 2025.
About Brian
Brian Duarte is an evolutionary biologist and plant pathologist. He completed his Bachelor of Science at the University of Toronto and he is currently working on his PhD in forest pathology at the University of British Columbia. He studies a deadly invasive tree pathogen, white pine blister rust, and works to unravel the evolution and host specificity of this pathogen. Brian was the recipient of several awards, including an NSERC-EvoFunPath graduate scholarship (2024), the President’s Academic Excellence Initiative PhD Award #6817 (2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024), the Imre S. and Irena Otvos Graduate Scholarship in Forestry (2020) and the Faculty of Forestry Graduate Award (2019 and 2020).
About the CPS Best Student Presentation Award
The Canadian Phytopathological Society Best Student Presentation Award recognizes outstanding oral and poster presentations in plant pathology at the annual CPS meeting. Eligible candidates must be CPS members who are current students or recent graduates (within six months), and the work must not have been previously presented in another professional competition.