Tag: Faculty of Science

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Two new Organized Research Units in the process of being chartered

Scott Library
Scott Library

York University’s Scott Library hosted an Organized Research Unit (ORU) open house on Jan. 29, fittingly presented in the library’s Learning Commons Collaboratory. The event provided students, faculty, community members and researchers from the ORUs an opportunity to learn about the range of work being done at the University’s 25 ORUs.

“What’s unique about York?” asked Interim Vice-President Research & Innovation Rui Wang, who moderated the event’s formal program. “Just look at our ORU’s.”

Celia Haig-Brown
Celia Haig-Brown

Celia Haig-Brown, associate vice-president research, who also provided remarks at the open house, similarly praised York’s ORUs. “This is what universities are about,” Haig-Brown explained. “When there is a group of committed and excited researchers who want to come together with some common sense of identity and yet some very different ways of thinking about things, the research units are a wonderful place to be.”

In this light, Haig-Brown was excited to announce to attendees that York is in the process of chartering two new ORUs: the Bee Centre, and the Centre for Indigenous Knowledges and Languages.

The announcement sparked intrigue and excitement at the already engaging and interactive event. “It was such a pleasure to host the event in the Libraries for the Vice-President Research and Innovation where our community could easily meet and hear about the ORUs and the wealth of research they generate. The event was really successful in giving visibility to the ORU’s. I, myself, was really inspired by the cross section of interdisciplinary research I was seeing.” said Joy Kirchner, dean of libraries. “The ORU model has been tremendously successful in generating the kind of innovation and interdisciplinarity that is really a highlight at York.”

Faculty and researchers involved in developing the new ORUs were on hand with tables and exhibits at the open house, and they were eager to talk about the exciting developments.

Bees from York University's Collection
Bees from York University’s Collection

Folks swarmed to the Bee Centre’s table where Liam Graham, collections manager at York University’s Packer Lab for bees, spoke about the importance of deepening our understanding of bee populations through interdisciplinary research. “In our collection we have historical data and records of bees for 60 years,” Graham said. “You can keep track of populations and how they change over time. It’s important to know how many species we have and learn the plants they use.” York’s bee researchers hope to focus on preserving biodiversity, according to biologist Clement Kent. “If we don’t have many different species for the plants that rely on pollination for their genetic boosting, they start declining, and that’s happening in a few places.”

Packer Lab bee researcher Sheila Dumesh
Packer Lab bee researcher Sheila Dumesh

Haig-Brown, who highlighted the increasing public understanding of the critical roles that bees play in pollination, was enthusiastic about the different disciplines involved in bee research at York, ranging from biologists to social scientists and even including a mathematician. “Looking at the possibilities of the centre, they bring incredible strength to research at York, drawing on so many disciplines,” she stated.

Many students and faculty were eager to talk to the team at the Centre for Indigenous Knowledges and Languages table, where Assistant Professor Ruth Koleszar-Green, co-chair of York’s Indigenous Council and special advisor to the President on Indigenous Initiatives, was equally eager to discuss the importance of creating a space for Indigenous academics to come together. “There are now 20 Indigenous faculty members, and in our research, we need some specific supports, ” explained Koleszar-Green. She emphasized the diversity of Indigenous research happening at York, ranging from art and pedagogy to the studies of labour and infectious diseases. “We aren’t just looking at historical space. A lot of us have been doing research that brings people into spaces.”

ORU Open House Table for the Centre for Indigenous Knowledges and Languages
ORU Open House Table for the Centre for Indigenous Knowledges and Languages

Haig-Brown echoed the enthusiasm for bringing often-isolated Indigenous faculty together. “I think this is going to put York on the map in terms of commitment to Indigenous faculty, researcher and students,” she said, noting that it has been one of her goals to continually contribute to creating space for Indigenous faculty and researchers to shape what goes on at York. “The focus on language is particularly important,” Haig-Brown continued. “The restoration of languages which residential schools attempted to destroy is integral to bringing Indigenous knowledges into contact with university knowledges.”

Both new ORUs are awaiting Senate approval, and the community can expect more information in the coming weeks and months.

More information on York’s 25 existing Organized Research Units can be found on the University’s Research and Innovation website.

Two $900K grants will allow physicists to test for electron electric dipole moment

Eric Hessels
Eric Hessels

The reason why there is a lot of matter in the Universe, such as electrons and protons, but no anti-matter (anti-electrons and antiprotons) is a riddle many scientists worldwide are still trying to solve. York University Distinguished Research Professor Eric Hessels of the Faculty of Science recently received two grants of $900,000 each over three years from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to begin a program that he hopes will help bring clarity.

Eric Hessels

He will work with the EDM3 (pronounced EDM cubed) collaboration at York on the project, titled “EDMcubed: an electron Electric Dipole Measurement using Molecules in a Matrix,” to measure the electric dipole moment of the electron.

“This is one of the great unsolved mysteries of physics, since the laws of physics, as we understand them today, would not allow for any significant imbalance between matter and antimatter,” said Hessels. “As a result, the laws of physics need to be modified. Modifications that solve the matter-antimatter mystery also predict that the electron will have an electric dipole moment.”

The electron is expected to have a non-zero electric dipole moment – a very slight a non-spherical charge distribution. However, the mechanism that causes this dipole is unknown.

“The EDM3 collaboration has devised a clever way to measure the electron electric dipole moment that involves embedding a large number of polar molecules into solid cryogenic argon,” says Hessels, who also received about $800,000 total from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Templeton Foundation last year.

Precise electron electric dipole moment measurements will guide extensions to the Standard Model, while the EDM3 method has the potential to reduce the electron electric dipole moment uncertainty by up to five orders of magnitude.

The EDM3 method uses a large sample of polar molecules embedded within a rare-gas matrix. As the molecules are stationary in the matrix, it allows for long measurement times. This could allow the researchers to reach statistical sensitivities that are many orders of magnitude beyond the current electron electric dipole moment limit.

It could also help answer the question – what happened to all the anti-matter after the Universe was formed.

Aquatic Research Group Seminar looks at the impacts of road salt inputs on GTA streams

Road salt
Claire Oswald
Claire Oswald

The next event in the 2019-20 Aquatic Research Group (ARG) Seminar Series features Ryerson University Professor Claire Oswald presenting a talk titled “Impacts of road salt inputs on GTA streams.” It takes place on Wednesday, Feb. 12, at 12:30 p.m. in 140 Health, Nursing & Environmental Studies Building (HNES). The seminar will be followed by a free lunch at 1:30 p.m. All members of the York community are welcome to attend.

The pan-Faculty ARG Seminar Series, organized by biology Professor Sapna Sharma in York University’s Faculty of Science, brings top ecologists from across the province to York to talk about their research in aquatic ecology and what’s causing stress in our waterways.

Professor Oswald, of Ryerson’s Department of Geography & Environmental Studies, is a broadly-trained physical geographer with research interests in catchment hydrology, biogeochemistry, pollutant fate and transport, and dissolved organic matter quantity and quality. These interests span both natural and human-dominated landscapes, from the boreal forests of northwestern Ontario to constructed wetlands in the Alberta oil sands region to urban and urbanizing watersheds in south-central Ontario.

She holds a PhD (2011) in physical geography from the University of Toronto, an MSc (2002) in physical geography from McMaster University and a BSc (1999) in physics from McMaster University.

Here’s a look at the rest of the ARG Seminar Series lineup:

Feb. 24: Assistant Professor Carly Ziter (Concordia University), “Thinking beyond the park: landscape structure, land-use history and biodiversity shape urban ecosystem services”

March 11: Professor Karen Kidd (McMaster University), “Local through global influences of human activities on mercury in aquatic ecosystems”

Each seminar will start at 12:30 p.m., followed by a free lunch at 1:30 p.m. The seminars will all take place in HNES 140 except for the talk on Feb. 24, which will be in 306 Lumbers Building.

The ARG includes researchers who focus on aquatic science from the Faculties of Science, Engineering, Environmental Studies, and Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. The seminar series is designed to engage this multidisciplinary scientific community at all levels, including graduate and undergraduate students, both at York University and in the wider aquatic science community.

A prescription for change? International research collaboration to explore social innovation in pharmaceuticals

Pharmaceutical Industry
Pharmaceutical Industry

Conor Douglas, an assistant professor of Science and Technology Studies at York University, believes there are plenty of inequalities in the ways we produce and access pharmaceuticals. From his PhD research on patient participation in medical research to his post-doctoral studies on expensive drugs and coverage decision making for rare diseases, Douglas has devoted much of his career to interrogating the significant established power interests and issues of access and inequality at play in one of the major tools through which Western medicine is practiced.

Today, his research is focused on change. “In an industry this size, with a shifting landscape like this, there’s room for other ways of doing things,” explains Douglas. Joined by an international team of researches and supported by new funding from The Trans-Atlantic Platform for the Social Sciences and Humanities (T-AP), Douglas is looking for examples of how social innovation models that challenge existing modes of for-profit research and development can inform changes in the pharmaceutical industry.

Conor Douglas
Conor Douglas

According to Douglas, the shifting landscape in the pharmaceutical industry, driven by increased costs, the rise of genetic testing and personalized medicine, and challenges gathering traditional evidence for regulators, are creating challenges for public health care systems here in Canada and around the world.

“New drugs aren’t picked off trees,” says Douglas, “and they don’t fall out of the sky. Which ones succeed and which fail is a complicated dance between regulators, innovators, a pharmaceutical industry looking for profit, markets, patients, and social desirability.”

The pharmaceutical industry’s familiar refrain is one of an “innovation crisis” driven by the high costs of bringing drugs to market. Historically, as drug developers sought to re-coup the costs not only for their successful products but also for those that failed in research and development, smaller vulnerable populations such as rare disease patients were given a bitter pill to swallow. Seen as an unattractive market for the industry, many rare disease patients went for a long time without treatment, and when policy incentives were employed to encourage development of more niche drugs, these patients saw huge price tags. Compounding this issue for patients, industry and policy makers, the nature of drugs for rare diseases meant a smaller sample size for trials, leading to less evidence for research and development, as well as for drug regulators.

Today’s pharmaceutical industry, increasingly influenced by new understandings of genetics and a shift toward behavioural treatments, is challenging patients in a new way, as common conditions are being subdivided into smaller and smaller subsets based on genetic makeup. “The nature of pharmaceutical research and development is shifting – now,” explains Douglas. “The era of blockbuster drugs is over.” As old products coming off patents and traditional revenues drying up, companies are moving toward a niche development model. With more specialized products coming to market, the industry is viewing rare diseases as a business opportunity.

Pharmaceutical Products
Pharmaceutical Products

“This is a good outcome,” says Douglas. “We are increasing our understanding of rare diseases. We want more treatments, more options.” According to Douglas, however, more progress is still needed. That’s where social innovation comes in.

Social innovation, which typically refers to non-market forms of innovation that address vulnerabilities rather than profit motives and usually involve users in the innovation process, is the basis of Douglas’ current project.

T-AP recently announced that Douglas and a team of researchers including Larry Lynd from British Columbia, Fernando Aith from Brazil,  Vololona Rabeharisoa from France and Ellen Moors from the Netherlands are awardees of their social innovation call for their project, Social Pharmaceutical Innovation (For Unmet Medical Needs), or “SPIN.”

The SPIN researchers will be digging into the social, political, legal, regulatory, financial and biological factors influencing the pharmaceutical landscape in their partner countries, as well as variations between the countries, hoping to identify examples of social innovation and understand the barriers to their success as well as how to support them with policy interventions.

Douglas also hopes the project will lead to “a cross-fertilization of ideas between the countries,” he explains. “Bringing the actors together, the people who are actually doing it.” Beyond producing a white paper summarizing their findings, Douglas intends to bring together patients, practitioners, regulators and other actors in the pharmaceutical landscape for practical workshops where they can react to the research, give input and hopefully co-produce some of the findings themselves.

By Aaron Manton, communications officer, YFile

Faculty of Science to offer dozen Dean’s Undergraduate Research Awards for summer 2020

Ellahe Fatehi recipient of 2019 DURA award
Ellahe Fatehi recipient of 2019 DURA award

Science students interested in gaining hands-on, paid research experience during summer 2020 are invited to apply the Faculty of Science Dean’s Undergraduate Research Awards (DURA) program and the NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA) program.

Ellahe Fatehi recipient of 2019 DURA award

The Faculty of Science will be offering 12 DURAs, which are complementary and run parallel to the NSERC USRA program.

“By continuing the DURA program, we are making it possible for more of our top undergraduate students, including international students, to contribute to research in the Faculty of Science and to learn more about what frontline research really involves,” said Jennifer Steeves, associate dean of research and graduate education in the Faculty of Science.

The value, structure and eligibility requirements of the DURAs are similar to those of the NSERC USRA program; however, only undergraduates in York’s Faculty of Science are eligible for the DURAs, and international undergraduates are also eligible to apply to the DURA program.

DURAs and USRAs are held over 16 consecutive weeks through the summer, and all award recipients in the Faculty of Science will have an opportunity to participate in the 2020 Summer Undergraduate Research Conference hosted by the Faculty at the end of the summer. See highlights from last year’s conference.

“The conference is an amazing opportunity for students to present their summer research projects, practice science communications, and meet and learn from other students,” said Steeves.

Applications are due Friday, Feb. 21. Application instructions can be viewed here.

Scholars’ Hub Speakers Series examines the chemistry of air, Jan. 30

cora young
cora young

A partnership between the Markham Public Library and York University, the Scholars’ Hub Speakers Series brings some of York’s top academic minds to York Region to share their amazing research and provide an opportunity for the community to learn something new.

Cora Young

This month features “Every Breath you Take: The Chemistry of Air” on Jan. 30 with Cora Young, assistant professor and the Rogers Chair in Chemistry at York University.

Air is usually invisible, so it’s easy to assume it’s simple. Yet it’s composed of a wide diversity of tiny molecules – not merely oxygen – some of which could be harmful and travel great distances. How do we know what’s in our air? Young will tell us this and how it influences air quality, climate, and our health.

Young completed her training at the University of Toronto and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Her research focuses on methods to increase our understanding of issues in air quality, climate change, and pollutant transport.

The event runs from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the Markham Village Library, 6031 Highway 7, Markham. To register, visit the EventBrite listing.

York launches a virtual assistant for undergraduate students

Student Virtual Assistant
Student Virtual Assistant

The following is a message to the York University community from Lisa Philipps, provost and vice-president academic, and Carol McAulay, vice-president finance and administration:

We are thrilled to announce that York has launched a virtual assistant as part of its commitment to enhancing student experience and developing a more student-centred approach.

What is it? The virtual assistant is an online tool accessed through Moodle (eClass for Glendon). It enables students to receive immediate answers to many of the most commonly asked questions related to campus services, course and program changes and extra-curricular activities. Students can pose questions in their own words and receive information that is tailored to their Faculty and program.

More than 100 students were involved in developing the new tool – a 24/7 virtual assistant that will be rolled out in stages. By March 2020, it will be available to undergraduate students in eight Faculties (School of Arts, Media, Performance & Design, Education, Environmental Studies, Glendon, Health, Lassonde School of Engineering, Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, Science). Plans are being made to incorporate students in the Schulich School of Business and Osgoode Hall Law School.

The virtual assistant will provide students with uninterrupted advising support that complements in-person advice by our staff. It will allow students to connect with a range of readily available information and resources, often specific to their studies, whenever they need it. It will also direct students to the right on-campus, in-person services for more sensitive or complex matters.

Some topics covered by the virtual assistant include:

  • academic advising referrals,
  • Registrarial & financial services,
  • campus life & events,
  • career advising information, and
  • mental health & well-being resources.

What’s next?

The virtual assistant is being launched Jan. 28 to students in AMPD, Glendon and Lassonde. Students in those Faculties will receive an email inviting them to log into the virtual assistant via Moodle (eClass for Glendon students). Detailed instructions and FAQs will help students become familiar with this new tool and a feedback form will allow students to engage with us. A contest to name the virtual assistant will also be launched, giving students an opportunity to be part of this exciting program and develop a sense of pride and ownership.

Student interaction with the virtual assistant is key to helping the tool continually evolve. The more questions students ask, the more the data is refined to deliver the best possible answers on a growing range of topics. Content experts and program staff will ensure that the virtual assistant provides increasingly detailed responses as time progresses.

York is proud to collaborate with IBM, an industry leader, to connect our students to the right people, resources and support to help them meet their goals.

Learn more about the virtual assistant and other transformational projects underway at the University on the Transformation York website. If you would like to see how the tool works, click here for a demonstration.

Look for another email close to the launch of the five other undergraduate Faculties in March.

STS Seminar Series explores Sidewalk Labs’ smart city, data governance and tech monopolies, Jan. 28

The next instalment of the 2019-20 Research Seminar Series in Science & Technology Studies (STS) takes place on Jan. 28 and features Anna Artyushina, a PhD candidate in Science and Technology Studies at York University.

York University PhD candidate Anna Artyushina
York University PhD candidate Anna Artyushina

Now in its 26th year, the series has hosted hundreds of experts from across Canada and around the world presenting on a wide range of STS-related topics. The talks are free and open to the public, and STS majors are encouraged to attend. Refreshments are provided.

The Jan. 28 seminar, titled “Is civic data governance the key to democratic smart cities? The role of the Urban Data Trust in Sidewalk Toronto,” will run from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Room 203, Bethune College, Keele Campus.

Unless otherwise specified, all seminars in this series will take place on Tuesdays from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in 203 Bethune College (Norman’s).

Since the deal between Alphabet and the Government of Canada to create the Sidewalk Labs’ smart city in Toronto was announced in 2017, the case study has been at the center of controversies relating to its proprietary approach to personal data, with increasingly powerful criticisms of the project’s potential effects on privacy. In this talk, Artyushina will analyze the urban data trust, the entity that was proposed to manage residents’ data in the smart city. The trust was expected to take on an unprecedented role as the first public institution informing corporate data governance through the establishment of data standards. Artyushina will explore how Sidewalk’s trust appeals to and sustains a certain political-economic regime governed by the logic of rent seeking, which aims to entrench the economic dominance of tech monopolies.

This research draws insights into experimental practices of data governance, new definitions of data, and the role of civic governance as they were envisioned by Alphabet and its critics.

The series is sponsored by York University’s Department of Science & Technology Studies, Faculty of Science, and coordinated by members of the department. For more information about the Research Seminar Series in Science & Technology Studies, contact Professor Conor Douglas at cd512@yorku.ca or visit sts.info.yorku.ca/seminar-series.

York Science Communicator in Residence B.D. Colen to teach free photography workshop series

B. D. Colen
B. D. Colen

The York University community is invited to attend an information session on Jan. 29 for a free photography workshop series hosted by B.D. Colen, 2019-2020 York Science Communicator in Residence. The information session will provide an overview of what to expect in the workshop series and an opportunity for attendees to ask questions.

The workshop is geared towards science researchers – students and faculty members alike – but everyone is welcome to register.

Colen is an experienced photographer, science communicator, and instructor. Between his years as a reporter, editor and columnist for the Washington Post and Newsday, and his years in academic and corporate public affairs, Colen has 40 years of experience in science and medical communications. He taught science feature writing, news writing and documentary photography for 19 years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Colen’s portfolio can be viewed at https://www.bdcolenphoto.com/ and on his Instagram account. Some of his medical and research-related photography can be found at https://www.bdcolenphoto.com/Corporate-and-Editorial .

The information session will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 29, from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m., in 306 Lumbers Building.

Those interested in attending are asked to RSVP to fscomms@yorku.ca .

One student’s collaboration with Microsoft could impact wildlife biology research worldwide

Image caught on a camera trap of a rabbit

A graduate student in the Department of Biology is collaborating with scientists at Microsoft to advance the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) in the study of wildlife biology and ecology.

Nargol Ghazian
Nargol Ghazian

Nargol Ghazian, an MSc candidate working in Professor Christopher Lortie’s lab, is contributing to the Microsoft AI for Earth Project – Microsoft’s AI initiative for environmental innovation – by sharing the data collected from camera traps in the Carrizo National Monument in California.

Camera traps are a useful tool that allow researchers to observe wildlife in their natural habitat without physically disturbing the photographed animal, explained Ghazian. Over several years of research, current and former students at the Lortie Lab have gathered and processed thousands of camera trap imagery datasets, many of which have been shared with Microsoft scientists as part of an ongoing collaboration that began last year after the company expressed interest in this type of imagery data.

Ghazian has camera trapped in the Carrizo National Monument in California for two consecutive summers and has processed many imagery datasets belonging to other locations with the help of other graduate and undergraduate students. Scientists at Microsoft are striving to stimulate work around machine learning by making wildlife datasets available to computer scientists.

Image of a chipmunk taken by a camera trap
Image of a rabbit taken by a camera trap

Working in collaboration with Ghazian, Microsoft aims to make camera trap repositories public for open science by making the metadata uniform across all datasets, thereby making data more accessible to machine learning scientists.

The new system would be able to automatically identify species, which would drastically decrease the amount of processing time required between when the data are collected and when a study is published, said Ghazian.

The result would be a system that can be used by everyone worldwide and would be a huge advancement in the field of wildlife biology and ecology.

“We hope our processed images can help set up an AI system where species can be automatically recognized without manual Identification. This would tremendously increase the efficiency of how we process wildlife imagery data, thus, helping us become one step closer to solving global challenges such as climate change and micro-plastics in the ocean,” said Ghazian.

AI enables scientists to detect species’ presence in a given location faster than ever, allowing for the better monitoring of distribution and home range shifts that result from global change, Ghazian explained. This information can then be used to implement policies and practices that provide the most benefits to species facing habitat loss and fragmentation.

In recent years, machine learning and AI have come to the forefront of important research topics and are being used to solve complex global challenges in many fields of study.

“Leadership by the next generation of ecologists like Ghazian, in putting together technology with changes in natural systems, is an important step forward in rethinking research, data and how we measure processes in the field better through work in the lab and with partners in big data and computing,” said Lortie.

Ghazian also said the collaboration is a testament to the significant research contributions coming out of York University.

“This is a great example of taking research and putting it to work beyond the walls of the lab,” she said.