Resources for Current Staff & Trainees

Dr Armstrong was awarded 2026 Top 40 Under 40!

Recruitment to our Precision Carbohydrate Diet RCT "Arm2" has successfully ended and efforts are focused on the launch of our third and final phase RCT prior to public launch. 

Our manuscript "Serological Heavy Metal Assessment in Persons with IBD" was accepted for publication in Clinical and Translational Gastroenterology.

Our team celebrated our quarterly progress and success at Dark Edmonton! 

Dr Armstrong, Jon and Andrew were invited to attend the Building Bridges National Police Meeting where they hosted an EMMrGNSi program booth and a workshop on First Responders as Tactical Athletes. 

Dr Armstrong attended the TRIANGLE ECR retreat in Toronto with other early career faculty to work to launch a pan-Canadian community education and research initiative in support of gastrointestinal and liver disease.

The Armstrong Lab turned 5 years old on September 1! 

Celebrating all we've accomplished together! $29M in funding, 5 grad students, 3 PDFs. 5 summer students, 29 publications (26 more under review) and many awards across the team for academics/community work. 

Dr Armstrong attended the SAGES and ENDO 2026 meetings in South Africa with other members of the AIRE team: focused on the study of, and clinical support of IBD across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Work in collaboration with Dr McGregor was published in two journals: "A Bayesian factor analysis model for high-dimensional microbiome count data", and "Proportionality-based association measures in count compositional data".

Our Precision Carbohydrate Diet program has been formally approved to progress to Phase 3 and final validation at all subsites! 

Our team is expanding with quarterly team activities and onboarding many members including technician Sudip Subedi and Erin Strachan, along with PDF Jessy Barrera.  

Armstrong lab hosted their quarterly state of the lab meeting, project and program updates, and team breakfast icebreaker. Our quarterly state of the lab meetings are always followed by a lab outing and this month we went on a fun food tour of Edmonton's China Town district.

Our team hosted the UAlberta booth with both our academic and clinical team members at the Edmonton Crohn's Colitis Canada Gutsy Walk this year. We came equipped with microscope and slides, educational materials, poop emoji gifts, scavenger hunts, and live study recruitment station for our many studies underway. A huge thanks to our patients and community partners for another fantastic year!   

Work in collaboration with the GEM study team was published in Gastroenterology "β-Glucan and Inulin Estimated Intake Are Associated With Reduced Risk of Crohn's Disease, Improved Gut Barrier and Systemic Inflammation Markers, and Multi-Omic Signatures in a High-Risk Cohort"

Dr Armstrong attended the inaugural CIDsCaNN (CCIBDN) Vancouver SUMMIT with faculty from across Canada to share in joint discussions about the future of pediatric IBD research and clinical work nationally. 

This marks month 12 of the Armstrong lab at the University of Alberta which was full of team celebrations for the work underway by the team and began the process of closing out our labs in Winnipeg and Calgary. 

Dr Armstrong visited our close collaborators at the Dr Benoit Chassaing lab at Pasteur Institute, Paris, France to discuss upcoming collaborations and give a talk about our Precision Carbohydrate Diet program. 

Dr Armstrong also attended the Gut Microbes For Health meeting in Porto, Portugal with many close collaborators including prior UAlberta faculty member Dr Jens Walter. 

Dr Armstrong, Dr Ghia, Dr Reynolds, Dr Dufour, Dr Lunken, and Dr Hirota organized and ran the first Canadian Association of Gastroenterology 3S (Sh*t Show Session) building resilience and connection in research at the annual Canadian Digestive Disease Week in Toronto.  

Dr Armstrong also engaged in her final year of the TRIANGLE Canada ECR program in Toronto in advance of CDDW.

Welcome to our newest graduate student, Cameron! Cameron begins his grad school journey with a great deal of experience in food and human nutrition research from undergraduate research programs and technician work with the University of Winnipeg and University of Manitoba. 

The team is excited to be finishing several clinical trials supporting our Precision Carbohydrate Diet (PCD) intervention and launching several new studies this year. Exciting year ahead. 

Wow, what a year! We are thrilled to have seen our students, past and present, continue to excel in their training and careers with Samuel officially completing his MSc after moving to a team more relevant to Samuel's subject interests (never be afraid of change when it's best for your career!). We continued progressing our team's research and worked with local and national advocacy groups to expand our work in several settings including Canadian first responders. We closed out the year with an A+ effort from the most amazing team for making the move and not missing a beat, with 4 new grants, 11 publications [31 in prep], new staff & collaborations, and much more to come! As we close out 2025 our team is excited for everything ahead of us! 

As our team wraps up an incredible 2024 season, saying congratulations to several garduate students, and thank you to such a productive year from the full team, we officially announce that our team will be moving to the University of Alberta, Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology with Dr Armstrong accepting a position as Tenured Associate Professor of Gastrolenterology! Our team is extremely excited for our new adventures and thankful for the support of our colleagues and friends in Winnipeg! 

Reihane successfully defended her MSc in Food and Human Nutritional Sciences! 

Dr Armstrong attended the CIDsCaNN national meeting along with the Crohn's Colitis Canada Meeting of the Minds. Drs Armstrong and Ghia are the co-organizers of the CCC BIBD annual meeting held in Toronto. 

Dr Armstrong travelled to Adelaide, Australia for the Adelaide IBD Summit and further discussions with members of the Adelaide GI, SAHMRI, and CSIRO teams about collaboration opportunities. 

Dr Armstrong attended the RiMED Foundation meeting in Palermo, Italy along with the Hsp90 Chaperone Machine meeting in Seeon, Germany. Many new collaborations and several new studies on the way!

Dr Armstrong was awarded a Weston Family Foundation Big Bet grant for $10M to fund translation of her team's precision nutrition work to clinical outcomes. 

Very proud of sister labs co-op student Robin who presented her work at the UM Undergrad Research Showcase. She has spearheaded a new project since the summer & it's amazing how much data she gets every week!

Dr Armstrong attended the Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Meeting 2024 in Winnipeg with Dr Santer with both teams supporting work by Dr Versha Banerji 

Hana successfully defended her MSc Immunology, becoming the second Armstrong lab grad student to graduate! She will be staying on as a technician with our team! 

Several manuscripts were submitted as we head into the fall semester

A very exciting start welcome to our second twin as lab technician, Sasha's twin sister joins our sister labs team between the Armstrong and Santer labs! 

What a fantastic summer ter. For our UM co-op trainees! Delighted that Robin will be continuing her project joint with our team and the Santer team for the fall term! 

A quite August with focus on grant and manuscript writing and multiple students preparing for their thesis defenses! 

A very exciting start for our co-op trainee, Robin, as she heads into anaerobic chamber training and culturing complex whole microbiome samples.

Reihane completed her final experiment for her MSc degree as she heads into thesis writing and final data analysis! 

Athalia successfully defended her MSc MMID, becoming the first Armstrong lab grad student to graduate! She will be staying on as a technician with our team! 

Our team was also profoundly saddened to hear of the passing of Dr Robin Warren. His reach in the scientific and medical community was a testament to the amazing man, mentor, role model, and colleague that he was to so many people.

The team attended IMPACTT Microbiome meeting in Canmore Alberta where Athalia and Hana gave presentations about their MSc work. 

The Armstrong, Santer and Ghia labs joined forces for the Winnipeg Crohn's Colitis Canada Get Gutsy Canada Walk in support of patients with IBD.

The Manitoba Centre for Proteomics and Systems Biology celebrate 20 years with an exciting research day and presentations from several of our technicians.

The Santer and Armstrong labs had their sister lab welcome lunch to kick off the summer semester and celebrate all the team's accomplishments!

May 19th is World IBD day - a reminder why we do what we do.

A huge welcome to Robin who joins the team as a co-op summer trainee at UM! She has received a TRIANGLE Canada award for her summer research project which will focus on microbiome and fibre fermentation processes along with the impact these diet/microbita interactions have on the gut in IBD

Dr Armstrong attended the UM agfoodsci Manitoba Nutrition & Dietetics research day with Dr Dylan MacKay, Dr Taylor Wilson, Dr Ruchen Yue and Dr Meghan Azad

Samuel competed in the 3MT, winning the "People's Choice Award"!

Dr Armstrong participated in the UAlberta, Department of Pediatrics research day presenting work from our team led by Reihane as a part of her MSc.

Our manuscript led by PhD student Amin Ariaee from Dr Paul Joyce lab at the University of South Australia was featured on the cover of eGastroenterology! The study highlighted current evidence for prebiotics in IBD. 

Dr Armstrong was awarded the Liam J. Murphy Young Investigator Award that recognizes annually a promising young investigator in internal medicine at UM

Dr Armstrong joined the IBD Africa team in Lusaka, Zambia, where the team established the new African IBD Research Endeavor (AIRE)

Dr Armstrong gave 4 talks at Canadian Digestive Disease Week in Toronto, chairing the diet in GI session hosting Dr. Benoit Chassaing, and presenting lectures on the team's research, the ex vivo biopsy method, preparing for interview processes, and how to effectively network. The GI Women Can program was launched by Dr Laura Targownik.

Dr Armstrong participated in the UM Knowledge Exchange event hosted by Dr. Jean Eric Ghia: Brain and Gut: working together in health and disease.

Our team were awarded the UM Ignite Grant under PI Dr. Versha Banerji

Samuel presented his 3MT, successfully moving on to the next round! 

We hosted another SisterLabs celebration and joint JC exploring two recent manuscripts together as a team with trainees each assigned one figure and shared discussion of strength and weaknesses #IBD #IFN 

February 11th we celebrate International Day of Women and Girls in Science along with Dr Santer's birthday! 

Dr Armstrong participated in the second TRIANGLE Canada meeting having received an ECR award. She also presented to trainees participating in CDDW Research Topics.

What a fun start to 2024 already! With an exciting year ahead for many of our trainees who aim to defend their MScs this year, we started the year with another manuscript accepted! Dept. Immunology also hosted a fun Grad Program Retreat!

Hana received a Rady Faculty of Health Sciences Studentship award this month for her MSc! 

Dr Armstrong was awarded a CIHR Project Grant from NUT panel for our ongoing work on diet, microbiome and IBD.

Dr Armstrong presented a keynote lecture at the New Zealand gastroenterology annual meeting in Rotorua. 

Our team ended the year with 6 manuscripts under review and in submission! Hoping for a great start to 2024 with several grants and studentships also under review. 

Wishing all of our team members, collaborator, patients, friends and colleagues a very Merry Christmas, happy New Years, and bright holiday season!

Dr Armstrong was awarded both the Pfizer Women in IBD Emerging Research award, along with the Crohn's Colitis Canada Rising Star award at the annual national meeting of the minds in Toronto! 

Dr Armstrong attended the international immunology meeting (IUIS) in Cape Town presenting some of our work on MS, diet and microbiome. She was supported by a Candian Society for Immunology ECR travel award. 

Our team received new funding from the IOIBD to support our work on IBD, diet, microbiome and cancer.

Dr Armstrong presented at ECTRIMS in Milan along with attending World of Microbiome in Sophia, presenting our work on MS, microbiome and diet. 

Our Translational Medicine Core facility at UManitoba has officially begun supporting other research teams at UManitoba with all clinical and animal processing on board. 

Our team received new grant funding from the Weston Family Foundation to support our ongoing clinical study of personalized diet advice for IBD based on microbiome biomarkers.

Another academic year has begun and our trainees are back to classes!

Our Translational Medicine Core facility at UManitoba has officially opened as a part of the Manitoba Centre for Proteomics and Systems Biology. 

Dr Armstrong, Athalia and Reihane attended PIIN 2023 in Hecla, Manitoba.

Dr Armstrong and Ramsha attended Neuroimmuno-physiology of the Gastrointestinal Tract 2023 in Banff, Alberta.

Samuel's manuscript was accepted this month with co-authors Athalia, Hana, and Michael Bording-Jorgensen: "Diversity of the microbiota communities found in the various regions of the intestinal tract in healthy individuals and inflammatory bowel diseases"

The sister labs attended the Winnipeg Goldeyes baseball game as a group, following our 4th trainee workshop on "career options". Samuel won the seat prize!

Japji presented her final talk at the Rady Faculty summer student symposium!

Our team published a second manuscript with Drs El-Matary, Wine, and Bording-Jorgensen: "Gut microbiome composition and metabolic changes are correlated with sleep efficiency and disease phenotype in pediatric IBD"

Members of our team traveled to Canmore, Alberta for the IMPACTT Microbiome conference where Samuel, Hana, and Reihane presented work from their projects and Dr Armstrong present a lecture in a session with Dr Jens Walter regarding the pros and cons of dietary fibres in the setting of multiple sclerosis. 

Our team also kicked off several new clinical studies examining the interactions between diet and microbiome in health and diseases

Dr Armstrong's CFI-JELF was officially approved with all equipment on the way now!

Our teams participated in the Gutsy Walk for Crohn's and Colitis in Winnipeg this month, raising several thousand dollars for research, education, and patient support.

Dr Armstrong was inducted as a Global Young Academic in Rwanda this month for her work in global science and support for inclusivity in academia an medicine! 

We had a fantastic third trainee workshop piloted with the Armstrong:Santer lab members, also celebrating many accomplishments in both teams! 

Hana was awarded a Mitacs Studentship! And many of our trainees have been traveling this month with Hana presenting at Canadian Society for Immunology, Athalia presenting at Canadian Society for Microbiology, and Samuel, Reihane and Athalia presenting at the Manitoba Neuroscience Network Meeting!

May 19th is world IBD day; a day to reflect and raise awareness for those patients suffering in silence with limited therapies available that work long-term. This is why we do what we do!

A six manuscript accepted for our team in 2023! An extraodinary effort from all team members with many more under review! A short invited editorial "A controversial topic: the double edge sword of dietary β-fructans in IBD"

UManitoba beautification day had our teams out working together to clean up the gardens in preparation for spring! 

Reihane's paper in Food Hydrocolloids was featured as a top 3 article in Food Science and Technology! And Ramsha officially transitioned from tech to PhD student!

A fifth manuscript accepted for our team in 2023! Letter to the Editor for Gastroenterology!

We had a fantastic second trainee workshop piloted with the Armstrong:Santer lab members, also celebrating many accomplishments in both teams! 

Athalia was awarded a CIHR CGS-M studentship award along with a Research Manitoba studentship! 

Be sure to register for the upcoming IMPACTT Microbiome meeting in Canmore (July 2023) where the Dayhoff Technologies team have sponsored 2 travel awards!

A fourth manuscript accepted for our team in 2023! Dr Armstrong's work with Dr Baksh was accepted with IJMS: "Novel Biomarkers for Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Colorectal Cancer: An interplay Between Metabolic Dysregulation and Excessive Inflammation"

Dr Armstrong was awarded a Global Young Academic 2023 and also presented a lecture at the Eurpean Crohn's and Colitis Organization meeting in Copenhagen!

We had a fantastic first trainee workshop piloted with the Armstrong:Santer lab members, celebrating many accomplishments in both teams! 

Reihane received 2 awards: Canadian Nutrition Society Award along with the James Gordon Fletcher PhD Fellowship for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals Research! 

Samuel and Athalia presented their first 3MTs! 

And we received a new grant from MS Society Canada! 

The Manitoba Centre for Proteomics and Systems Biology also had it's inaurgral symposium at UManitoba which we all attended! What a fantastic display of all the progress being made by many teams here at Bannatyne Campus and beyond! 

Be sure to register for the upcoming IMPACTT Microbiome meeting in Canmore (July 2023) where the Dayhoff Technologies team have sponsored 2 travel awards!

A third manuscript accepted for our team in 2023! Dr Armstrong's work with Dr Andrew Mason (UAlberta) was accepted with Microbiome: "Mouse mammary tumor virus is implicated in severity of colitis and dysbiosis in the IL-10-/- mouse model of inflammatory bowel disease "

We had a fantastic state of the lab meeting with our sister lab, the Santer Lab, where we welcomed many new lab members and discussed progress of both teams and goals for the coming year ahead. We take up the whole conference room now!

Happy New Year and welcome to 2023! Our recent manuscript (published in September) was selected to be featured on the cover of Gastroenterology! Our team had two other manuscripts accepted this month led by Ramsha and Reihane, and supported by several of our team's trainees! 

Dr Armstrong also spoke at the University of Toronto/Mt Sinai along with University of Pennsylvania/Children's Hospital of Philadelphia this month! And Reihane gave her first international conference lecture at the CCARM Rapid Fire event; she gave an exceptional presentation on her work with the Living With IBD cohort!

What an incredible month with lots of exciting results and a very strong finish to 2022! I could not be more proud of our team for all they accomplished this year!

Our lab now has 4 manuscripts under revision! Our trainees and staff are simply incredible! Samuel also received a UM Rady Faculty Graduate Studentship and Reihane was accepted to present at her first conference with our team this month!

Dr Armstrong also spoke at the St Joe's/McMaster rounds this month, sponsored by Ferring and we ended the year with some exciting new discussions of collaborations!

Significant progress in the lab as our staff and trainees continue to expand our lab's research focus and collaborations in support of their projects this month.

Our labs first manuscript is under revision! Keep an eye out for first author Reihane Khorasaniha's article out soon! Hana also received a Mindel and Tom Olenick award!

Dr Armstrong spoke at BC Children's Hospital PITCH and University of Toronto Division of GI/Hep City Wide Rounds this month. Our recent study published in Gastroenterology was also featured on the SuperHumanRadio podcast series.  

Our team continues to grow as we welcome Richard and Vi this month!  With their shared expertise we are all very excited for new opportunities to continue to expand our work in 2023!

Dr Armstrong spoke at several conferences this month including International Hydrocolloids Conference. Our recent study published in Gastroenterology was also featured by several news, radio, and media outlets this month! We're very excited to continue to work toward personalized diet interventions for our patients.  

Hana was also awarded a Mitacs studentship this month with Lab2Market West and Olamide was awarded first place for her presentation at CHRIM research days!

September 1 we celebrated 1 year for the Armstrong lab! What a year it has been. Athalia and Hana have now joined our team in Winnipeg and are off to the races!  

Dr Armstrong spoke at several conferences this month including PIBD in Scotland and Cytokines in Hawaii. 

Most excitingly, our manuscript has been officially accepted with Gastroenterology, highlighting for the first time, the detrimental effects of specific dietary fibres in IBD patients, if not fermented by gut microbes: https://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(22)01150-7/fulltext 

Our graduate student, Samuel (MSc, MMID) flew to Toronto this month to attend the ComSciConCAN workshop! He was one of only 3 selected to attend from Manitoba, and only 40 nation-wide! What a fantastic opportunity to engage with experts in science communication and network with other research trainees.  

Our team joined in the our first annual Manitoba Centre for Proteomics and Systems Biology picnic event! Not all work all the time here in Winnipeg. Great to see so many smiles on the way into our team's 1-year anniversary.

With support from members of the Manitoba IBD Clinical and Research Centre (pictured left) our team has been progressing on a number of studies we can't wait to share with everyone! 

Our team was further awarded grants from Crohn's and Colitis Canada (CCC), along with Children's Hospital Research Institute Manitoba (CHRIM) this month! 

Our newest graduate student's completed their first committee meetings this month and have successfully been introduced to the laboratory where they will assist in clinic sample processing and uncovering the mechanistic links between fibres and disease 

Dr Armstrong attended the IMPACTT Microbiome Symposium where she gave a guest lecture on our team's research. Our graduate students David Coker and Samuel Lawal also flew to Calgary this month to attend the IMPACTT bioinformatics workshop.   

All of our graduate students were also accepted to participate in this year's Graduate Professional Development program through CHRIM. Samuel was further accepted to participate in the highly competitive ComSciConCAN communication workshop! 

Our team was further awarded grants from NSERC and HSC this month to begin our studies of rheumatoid arthritis in collaboration with Drs O'Neil and Hitchon! 

A very HUGE welcome to our first graduate students! Left to right: Reihane Khorasaniha (PhD, Food and Human Nutrition), David Coker (MSc, Immunology), Dr Armstrong, and Samuel Lawal (MSc, Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases).  

Our team also welcomed another publication accepted in the Journal of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases, "Appendix and Ulcerative Colitis: a Key to Explaining the Pathogenesis and Directing Novel Therapies?"

Many more exciting studies on the way! Keep an eye out for more. 

Some very exciting news this month as Dr Armstrong received her NSERC Discovery Grant to help our team push forward to uncover the agricultural chemistry aspects of fibre fermentation and the interactions between different fibre constructs with host and microbial cells! 

Our team also acquired essential access to the CHRIM pathology facilities this month and we have finally begun clinical sample processing and collaborations again at UM! Full steam ahead! 

Where is the time going?! One of our students received exciting news this month; Samuel Lawal was awarded a scholarship for his MSc work!!

March is also one of our favourite months as we get to catch up with colleagues, collaborators and friends at Canadian Digestive Disease Week! Dr Armstrong chaired this years session on "Microbial Metabolism in Gastrointestinal Diseases: Are gut microbes welcome guests to dinner?" with Dr Alberto Caminero. Speakers included Dr Karen Madsen, Dr Harry Sokol, Dr Giada De Palma, Dr Heather Armstrong, and trainee presentation by Narjis Kraimi. As always, thank you to our whole team!

Our team is growing! We have a new technician starting with us, coming from the fantastic gastroenterology teams at the University of Calgary. Very excited for Ramsha to be joining our team in the next few weeks! Offers have also been sent out for our new MSc student and postdoctoral fellow positions, set to begin later this summer! 

Our brand new Bactron600 Anaerobic chamber has also arrived from GeneQ and we can't wait to finally get our microbiome research up and running at UM!

Kicking off 2022 with a pre-print of our Double blind placebo-controlled trial for the prevention of ulcerative colitis relapses by β-fructan prebiotics: efficacy and metabolomic analysis! 

Having worked through the holidays it was good to take a "week off" to go skiing in the mountains! So important to work hard but also take breaks (pictured: HWY 93 outside of Jasper).

Several more papers and grants submitted. Crossing all of our fingers for a great 2022!   

Wrapping up 2021 celebrating our achievements with our close collaborators and my past mentor, Dr Wine and his team! Dr Armstrong also received grants from Weston Foundation ($1,000,000) and MMSF (best grant award; $35,000) to end off 2021! 

Another publication released just in time for the Christmas break! Congratulations to Dr Bording-Jorgensen and all team members, including Dr LaPointe, and Dr Wine! Team work makes the dream work!

Wonderful to be back in Edmonton for the holiday season, looking forward to 2022! 

Continuing to explore Winnipeg (pictured - Winnipeg Beach) with winter and snow soon on the way. Will most definitely be a regular visitor at Thermea Nordik Spa!

Can you believe we've already submitted 3 more publications this month?? Can't wait for a few to be accepted so we can share the findings with everyone!

What an exciting month with two successful grants totally $1.6million and a HUGE welcome to our new graduate student candidates who have begun their visa applications and are set to officially join us starting May 2022!  

A VERY busy month with more publications submitted, revisions underway, 4 more grants submitted, and meetings galore! We are very excited for all of the collaborative opportunities at UM! 

Interviews for eligible HQP continue with 3 graduate student offers made! Keep an eye out for our growing team! 

A quick thank you for your patience and apology to our student applicants as the University of Manitoba faculty head into a strike.

September 1 - Dr Armstrong's first day at the University of Manitoba and HSC!

Interviews for eligible HQP have begun and multiple offers have been made! Watch as our team begins to grow! 

We had 2 more LOI's accepted for fantastic grant opportunities where we aim to expand our program even further!

August - Dr Armstrong's final month with University of Alberta! We submitted 2 grants (fingers crossed!) along with 2 more LOI's, 1 publication revision and one publication submission! For anyone interested in pursuing a PhD - here's an ode to how much time you will eventually spend writing/reading. Again much writing can be done at a distance, especially during a global pandemic (pictured: Sarrail Ridge on a smoky day)

August 28th - Dr Armstrong's last day with the University of Alberta before starting the drive to Winnipeg.

July - Much of July was spent working from home on grants and finishing up writing our 9 publications all currently in the submission or revision phase! The nice thing about writing is you can do it from anywhere - i.e. the mountains! (pictured: Tent Ridge horse shoe morning hike to the Fist)

July 28 - We started interviewing interested candidates for our graduate student positions! Still many student and staff opportunities available for any interested individuals - click here!

June 6 - Dr. Armstrong participated in the Gutsy Walk to raise essential funds in support of IBD patients with her team by summiting 2 mountains in one day (pictured: Mount Baldy and Midnight Peak) 

June 2 - Dr. Armstrong's faculty position funding was officially approved by the Office of the Vice-President at the University of Manitoba

May 31-June 2 - Canadian Society for Immunology Annual Meeting! Dr. Armstrong was a session judge for trainees presenting from across Canada (virtually)