Photo: Contributed
Okanagan Edge and Kelowna Chamber of Commerce are partnering to showcase some of the region’s most exciting entrepreneurs through the “Top 40 Under 40” program.
Sponsored by BDO, the “Top 40 Under 40” recognizes high-achieving professionals in our community and showcases their accomplishments. This marks the eighth year the chamber has conducted a “Top 40” showcase. Honourees will be featured throughout the year on Okanagan Edge.
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Julien Gibon describes himself as an immigrant who moved from France in 2011 with his wife and four-month-old son.
In Montreal he spent four years working at the best neurological centre in Canada, the Montreal Neurological Institute. He moved with his family to the Okanagan in January 2016 to work at UBCO as a lab manager in a laboratory of neuroscience. In 2019 he was promoted to assistant professor without review and started his research lab studying the neurobiology of memory.
Gibon has been teaching courses in neurobiology, clinical neuroscience and psychology to more than 850 students over the last four years. His lab is very active with undergraduate and graduate students. He received funding from The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to study the impact of a genetic mutation on memory.
Gibon has been in a leadership position at UBCO since January 2016. First, as a lab manager, he was in charge of training all the students in the lab and making essential decisions about as many as 10 projects that were simultaneously on the go. He maintains an exceptional work environment in which students thrive and feel respected. Many students from his class want to volunteer in the lab and pursue further work because they know about his leadership style. He is open to discussion, cares about their success, and provides clear goals and expectations. From strength-based leadership, his top one is harmony, which he believes defines his leadership very well. He creates an exceptional environment for people to succeed. He is now leading his research lab with the same idea and still managing the previous lab. He mentors one undergraduate and six graduate students as well as a technician. He is recognized as a leader in neuroscience research at UBCO.
He volunteers in two main domains: At his kids’ school, L’anse-au-sable, with 310 students, and UBCO, with 12,000 persons working or studying. He was elected president of the parent advisory council in 2019, serving as a liaison between the parents and the school director. His role is also to promote the school, supervise and organize fundraising, and discuss and propose a plan for the school’s future. It collected, via grants and fundraising, more than $60,000 over the last four years and redistributed everything to the students via the purchase of books, time at the CNC Kelowna for skating, graduation ceremony and many other activities. L’Anse-au-sable is critical to the francophone community in Kelowna, and he is proud to serve the community as much as possible.
At UBCO, Gibon volunteers to organize events promoting knowledge translation. He organizes conferences for students to present their research. He firmly believes that we need to better connect research to the public, and those events are crucial to achieving this goal.
Gibon earned a PhD in neurobiology and neuroscience from the University of Grenoble in France, and a certificate in management from UBCO. He received in 2021 five years of funding from The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
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