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York professors highlight satellites, sustainability in space

Satellite in space

An interdisciplinary project between professors in the Department of Earth & Space Science Engineering and the Department of Computational Arts at York University is promoting sustainability in space.

Resident Space Objects (RSOs), such as satellites and rockets, are frequently launched into space for different missions but are not removed after they serve their purpose or become non-functional. This creates an overcrowded and unsustainable environment which can interfere with space assets and activities.

To tackle this complex issue, Professor Regina Lee from the Lassonde School of Engineering has focused her research on developing satellite technologies for space situational awareness missions. These technologies enable the identification of inactive satellites that should be removed from space and track active satellites that are at risk of collision with other objects. The collected information can then be communicated and used to notify scientists about the status of their satellites, encouraging their removal or other required action.

Regina Lee
Regina Lee

“We talk about sustainability all the time, but what about sustainability in space?” says Lee. “We need to start bringing this idea to the public domain, we need to reach larger audiences.” This complex task required an interdisciplinary approach, one which is central to Lassonde and is part of what differentiates the School.

To spread awareness of this issue and make her research more accessible, Lee collaborated with a fellow professor from York on an interdisciplinary creative project that combines art with science, titled “Space Situational Awareness and Us,” and aims to bridge knowledge gaps and address the world’s greatest challenges.

The project was created by Principal Investigator Professor Joel Ong from the Department of Computational Arts in the School of the Arts, Performance, Media & Design (AMPD) at York University, through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) New Frontiers in Research Fund grant.

The project was proposed in 2019 during a speculative conversation between Lee, Ong and their students, as well as data visualization artist Scott Hessels at Sensorium: Centre for Digital Art and Technology, an organized research unit out of AMPD where they discussed different perspectives on the visualization of satellites and space junk. “We realized that there were significant overlaps in our strategies, particularly in the way we were all finding creative solutions to read images, infer data and compose photographs. It made sense for us to take this further and build our skill sets through interdisciplinary experimentation,” says Ong.

Professor Lee and her students posing at the Ontario Science Centre
Professor Lee and her students posing at the Ontario Science Centre

“Space Situational Awareness and Us” includes several artistic presentations and exhibitions about Lee’s research regarding the environment in space, objects that orbit our planet and space surveillance using small satellites. During March Break (March 13 to 19), one of the artistic presentations, titled “Satellites & You” was demonstrated at the Ontario Science Centre to youth and their families. This presentation was co-written and directed by Lee’s students: Akash Chauhan, PhD candidate, and Vithurshan Suthakar, MSc candidate.

Presentations about Lee’s research were led by her graduate students who engaged with the audience using creative props, interactive demonstrations and informative videos. Youth in the audience were invited to write messages that will travel to near-space and back to earth with one of Lee’s nanosatellites in an upcoming mission.

In addition to presenting her research, Lee used the project to encourage youth to consider pursuing career paths in STEM. “Science is usually introduced to students when they’re older, but I think we should show younger generations what opportunities exist as early as possible,” says Lee. Along with her students, Lee will continue showcasing space research to k-12 classrooms, summer camps and community-based programs over the coming months.

Professor Lee’s graduate students presenting at the Ontario Science Centre.
Professor Lee’s graduate students presenting at the Ontario Science Centre.

Another goal for this project was to promote diversity in space sciences and engineering, especially among young girls. “Women are already underrepresented in engineering, but there are even fewer women in space programs,” says Lee. To help inspire girls, Lee ensured that most presentations of her project included at least one of her female students in a major role. “I want to promote women in space in a subtle way, it’s important for young girls to see what is possible.”

Lee will be continuing her work with Ong, developing creative installations that will be displayed at various exhibits, including the Macintosh Gallery at Western University in London, Ont. Ultimately, Lee hopes art can help reignite conversations about satellites. “There was a time when everyone was excited about satellites being launched into space,” says Lee. “I want to bring that passion back.”

AGYU online event to consider role of public art

Schulich will soon be launching its Business Excellence Academy, a business education and mentorship program supporting 60 Black and Indigenous Ontario high school students this summer.

The Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) will present “Permanence/Impermanence: The Life of Public Art” on May 4 at 1 p.m, an online conversation featuring prominent global artists discussing the challenges and importance of public art.

The conversation is part of The Uncontainable Collections Research Project presented by AGYU, an annual workshop series initiated in 2022 to make York University’s art collection more accessible to the public and for research purposes.

In the spirit of accessibility, this iteration of the workshop was produced collaboratively by AGYU staff Allyson Adley, Liz Ikiriko and Jenifer Papararo, as well as faculty and students in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design.

The preliminary interview questions were developed with York University graduate class, ARTH 6000, led by Professor Anna Hudson, and will be addressed to the participants who are prominent artists and curators whose work critically engages with notions of “publicness” as it relates to “public art,” “the public sphere,” “public space” and “publics.” They include: Allison Glenn (United States), Vanessa Kwan (Canada), Mohammed Laouli (France, Germany, and Morocco) and Raqs Media Collective (India).

During the online conversation, each participant will give a 10-minute overview of their research and practice before joining a collective conversation that uses public art to counter codified notions of public space. In preparation for this live discussion, pre-interviews with each of the participants will be conducted, addressing the principles and ideals of democracy in how public space is inhabited; how decolonial acts of resistance de-centre monuments that glorify settler-colonial histories; what role communities can play in the commissioning of public art; and the limitations and risks of working in public spaces. Transcripts of these interviews will be available on the AGYU website on April 28.

This iteration of the workshop intends to activate, question and learn from involved arts practitioners discussing public art as a form of inspiration, as community engagement, and as a marker of time and place.

Those who wish to find more information or register, can do so here.

York community digs in at Keele, Glendon to create greener campus

Tree planting on campus

York University community members converged at both Glendon (April 12) and Keele (April 13) campuses to plant trees in celebration of Earth Month. The event was organized to help drive positive change by creating a greener campus with restored ecosystems to help mitigate climate change.

The event, sponsored by the UNFCCC’s Youth Climate Report, was held in partnership with Regenesis and York’s Property Management Grounds, Facilities Services with grant funding provided by the City of Toronto.

“In this time of climate change and the biodiversity crisis, we are engaging the York community in Earth Month activities to raise environmental awareness and work on minimizing our footprint,” says Mike Layton, York’s chief sustainability officer. “It’s the perfect opportunity to come together to take action on campus and in our everyday lives, as we continue to work on system level change.”

A total of 214 trees were planted across both campuses, with the addition of a variety of native species such as sugar maples, red maples, black cherry, red oak, dogwood, hackberry, serviceberry, white spruce, white cedar, winterberry and more.

Another opportunity to celebrate Earth Month will take place on April 19 at the Keele Campus when the York community is invited to participate in a 20-minute campus clean-up.

View a photo gallery of the tree planting events below.

Keele Campus Tree Planting April 2023

Watch the video below to see how York community members are committing to sustainability.

York’s Ecological Footprint Initiative to host national footprint, biocapacity data launch

Glass planet in the sunshine

Canada’s ecological footprint declined during COVID-19, but is it back to pre-pandemic levels? York University’s Ecological Footprint Initiative (EFI) will release data showing changes up to 2022.

What is the size of Canada’s ecological footprint, and that of the rest of the world, and how did that change during the global pandemic?

Viewers from across the University community and beyond are invited to join the online launch Thursday, April 20, from 1 to 2 p.m, when researchers at York will release the Ecological Footprint of Canada, and 200 other countries, from 1961 to 2022.

Popularized roughly 30 years ago, the term “ecological footprint” was a way of measuring humanity’s appropriation of Earth’s carrying capacity. Since then, it has evolved to include a comprehensive system of national and international accounts. These accounts provide valuable insights about humanity’s use of lands and waters. The accounts help countries and communities to engage with sustainability and to make informed decisions about the future.

In practice, ecological footprints track the area of land and water used to grow food and renewable materials, plus the area occupied by settlements and infrastructure, as well as the area of forests needed to soak up carbon emissions.

In the last few years, York has become a global hub for producing ecological footprint accounts, and for researching ways to make them even more comprehensive.

Eric Miller
Eric Miller

“Canada reports on GDP with a lag of just a few months, yet its environmental data lags by years. We filled in gaps and lags to make it easier to assess environmental performance in Canada and around the world,” says EFI Director Eric Miller, from the Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change. “Time is ticking. Each year of action or inaction matters for the future of humanity. For this reason, our data reports on Ecological Footprint up to the end of 2022.”

Since the first Earth Day in 1970, humanity’s ecological footprint has been in overshoot of the planet’s capacity to sustain it. Since 1961 humanity’s footprint has tripled.

“For each country we calculate the footprint of what was produced and what was consumed. The difference comes from the footprint embodied within the goods imported to the country, and the footprint of the goods exported by the country,” says Miller.

“Canada, for example, produces more wood products than it consumes, with the difference as exports,” he adds. “We generate this data for all countries, to reveal the ecological dimensions of global supply chains and the extent to which countries effectively offload their ecological requirements onto others.”

Miller says that to continue advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals, University researchers depend on data that can be scaled nationally, as well as locally and globally – EFI provides this crucial data so that it remains timely, scalable and accessible.

This is the fifth anniversary of York producing data about ecological footprint and biocapacity, and supplying that data on an open-source basis to researchers around the world.

This year’s data will also include a more robust look at the footprint of fish harvests, including unreported catch. “In Canada, fish harvests were significantly underreported up to the point of the cod collapse. By including underreports, we can help researchers see these trends much more easily,” says Katie Kish, EFI research associate.

Mike Layton
Mike Layton

York’s new Chief Sustainability Officer Mike Layton will kick off the event, followed by updates to the 2023 accounts from Miller, along with EFI data analysts Sila Basturk Agiroglu and Peri Dworatzek.

Kish will talk about research futures and the growing international research network for the global footprint family, with a direct focus on better public-facing data and data for communities.

Mathis Wackernagel, co-founder and president of the Global Footprint Network, will discuss the state of the footprint and a look towards the future. One example he will draw on is the Kunming/Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework with 23 targets agreed upon at the 15th meeting of the Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. These targets include the ecological footprint as a measurement tool.

Learn more at News @ York.

York professors lead Queer Comics Symposium

coloured pencils sketch cartoon

Building upon the work of the just-published and Lambda Literary Award nominated publication, The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader: Critical Openings, Future Directions (University Press of Mississippi, 2022), York University Professors Alison Halsall and Jonathan Warren will host a Queer Comics Symposium on Friday, April 28.

This event, presented by York University’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies and the Departments of English and Humanities, will focus on transdisciplinary and international LGBTQ+ comics scholarship and creativity. Taking advantage of the appearance of the Reader as a field-defining publication, organizers say the symposium will mobilize the specific kinds of knowledge that it showcases: putting scholars in conversation with creators, providing a forum for the work of thinkers at different stages of their careers, and featuring a diversity of analytical approaches with the aim of generating further contributions to the field.

The day begins at noon, in Accolade Building East (room 005), with a plenary lecture given by Professor Michelle Ann Abate (Ohio State University), author of Tomboys: A Literary and Cultural History (Temple University Press). She will discuss “Queering Conformity in Postwar America: The Li’l Tomboy Comic Book Series and Gender Rebellion in the 1950s.” Following this lecture will be a panel that features papers by Professor Lin Young (University of Calgary), Joti Bilkhu (York University), as well as Halsall and Warren.

The second session takes place at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (12 Alexander St., Toronto) at 6 p.m. It will feature a public address given by Professor Justin Hall (California College of the Arts), cartoonist and editor of No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics (Fantagraphics). This lecture will be followed by the first Canadian screening of the award-winning documentary, No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics (Compadre Media, 2021), directed by Vivian Kleiman.

The Queer Comics Symposium will feature contributions from established and upcoming scholars in the field, as well as comics creators and students, at an event that is committed to inspiring and diversifying conversations about LGBTQ+ sequential art and its production around the world.

Via slideshow presentations and a book display, there will also be a presentation of a creative curation of queer comics art.

All are welcome to attend.

Students from Jane-Finch community engage with Congress 2023

Students in front of Vari Hall 2021

When York University Professor Andrea Davis became the academic convenor for Congress 2023, she listened closely to York members who wanted to engage the University’s surrounding community. Davis, the Congress scholarly planning committee and Research Assistant Jellisa Ricketts have prioritized making space for local high school and undergraduate students at the event.

“The scholarly planning committee wanted to do this engagement well and we decided to focus on four high schools in the nearby Jane-Finch community,” said Davis.

Davis contacted administrators at each of the schools – C.W. Jefferys Collegiate Institute, Downsview Secondary School, Emery Collegiate Institute and Westview Centennial Secondary School – to arrange two pathways for participation.

Each school recommended five senior students who identify as Black or Indigenous to attend two of Congress 2023’s Big Thinking lectures: former Governor General Michaëlle Jean’s lecture about ”Re-Imagining Black Futures” and Indigenous filmmaker Alanis Obamsawin’s talk, “Seeds of the Future: Climate Justice, Racial Justice, and Indigenous Resurgence.” Afterward, each speaker will meet the students for a private lunch and conversation.

High school students participate in a poetry competition
High school students participate in a poetry competition (credit: Sissi Song, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies)

These senior students will be paired with undergraduate students who attended high school in the Jane-Finch community, meeting twice before Congress 2023 to build connections. To identify appropriate York undergraduate ambassadors, Davis reached out to Associate Professor Sylvia Bawa, director of the Resource Center for Public Sociology and the Jane-Finch Social Innovation Hub, and Mohamed Ahmed and Tesfai Mengesha, co-directors of the community-based program, Success Beyond Limits.

A poetry competition has also been running in these schools to engage students with Congress. The author of the best entry from each school will receive a $500 honorarium and the opportunity to read their poem at a Congress 2023 event.

“This is the best kind of outreach,” Davis said. “We want to show students they have a voice and a future, while breaking down walls between academia and our wider communities.

“It’s part of our larger commitment to demonstrate what it means to be a place-based university adjacent to the Jane-Finch community. York University and the Jane-Finch community both emerged in the mid-20th century and our location makes us both unique and co-dependent. As a university, we have a commitment to serve the communities adjacent to our campus and to deal with them ethically and honestly.”

Ricketts added, “This work is very intentional. We’re backing up our talk with action and hoping some of these York connections flourish beyond Congress 2023, because I can feel how grateful the high school students are.”

York University and the Federation for Humanities and Social Sciences will host Congress 2023 from May 27 to June 2. Register here to attend. Term dates have been adjusted to align with timelines for this year’s event.

New project to explore anxiety among Black youth, families

Black woman and child

The recently launched “Retooling Black Anxiety” project at York University looks to examine increased anxiety among Black youth and families who have had encounters with the criminal justice system (CJS).

With $35,000 from the Faculty of Health’s Anxiety Research Fund, powered by Beneva – a Quebec-based insurance and financial services firm – the project is led by two York professors: serving as principal investigator is Professor Godfred Boateng, director, Global & Environmental Health Lab and Faculty Fellow, Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research; co-investigator is Dlamini Nombuso, a professor in the Faculty of Education whose work focuses on youth, especially racialized youth within leadership and political systems. Partnerships with the Ghana Union of Canada (GUC) and Gashanti Unity (GU) is also a critical component of the project in order to help lead community-based research activities and intervention.

Godfred Boateng
Godfred Boateng

The collective goal is to work and mentor youth and their families towards better experiences of addressing anxiety and mental health issues mainly induced by encounters with the criminal justice systems (CJS) and the child welfare systems (CWS).

Research conducted in 2021 by the Department of Justice Canada, and the Federal Anti-Racism Secretariat at the Department of Canadian Heritage, identified how over-policing in schools and in Black communities – particularly in economically marginalized neighbourhoods – as well as police reliance on child welfare agencies, has increased the encounters Black youth have with the criminal justice system. According to the Department of Justice Canada, in 2020-21, Black males made up 19 per cent of all male youth admissions to custody, and Black females made up 11 per cent of all female youth admissions to custody.

According to Boateng, these realities have a profound effect on the mental health of Black youth and their families. The professor shares that he has observed how this has led to a significant increase in stories of anxiety, youth entrapment and disillusionment among Black youth and their families. Given how anxiety and mental health can limit individual potentials and capabilities, and injustices that put Black youth in jeopardy can affect their long-term possibilities, Boateng and his partners have prioritized exploring ways to address these ongoing challenges.

The GUC and GU will play a crucial role in implementing the project in their communities. “An important part of project is to dialogue with community partners to ensure that they feel fully and respectfully engaged and involved as driving forces for this project,” says Boateng. Each organization will leverage their membership, network and cultural community advocates to recruit young adults who have had encounters with the criminal justice system or the child welfare system to be part of the program.

Boateng with members from community partners Ghana Union of Canada and Gashanti Unity
Boateng with members from community partners Ghana Union of Canada and Gashanti Unity

During the project’s early exploratory phase, all partners will work to interview and focus group discussions. Subjects will receive a one-pager that articulate project intent, target cohort, duration and expectation. During the subsequent implementation phase they will recruit participants, identify key needs and work with clinical professionals to provide interventions, as well as work with participants on outcomes.

The interventions will be tailored specifically to subjects’ anxiety. After an initial assessment, referrals will be provided to appropriate support systems for those found to have higher levels of anxiety, stress and/or depression symptomatology. Among the choices of intervention for Black youth will be either a restorative justice program aimed at healing and consciousness raising, as well as helping keep youth away from CJS; or enrollment in Unstuck & On Target, an eight-week program aimed at improving self-regulation and good directed behaviors in Youth with offences in CJS/CWS. Family and caregivers will be offered an eight-week program aimed at educating them on how to identify or flag risky behaviors in children, as well as providing crisis support, counseling and therapeutic services referrals to parents or caregivers.

The “Retooling Black Anxiety” team has further ambitions for the future. “We are hoping to scale up this study and apply for larger research and community funding that will advance the mental health of Blacks in the Greater Toronto Area and reduce anxieties experienced by Blacks and Black families,” says Nombuso. The team expects to apply in the future to the SSHRC Collaborative grant to further scale-up the study.

A website is still in development, but those wishing for further information can reach out to the project team directly by email. Boateng can be reached at gboaten@yorku.ca; Dlamini can be reached at ndlamini@yorku.ca, and project coordinator Salwa Regragui can be reached at sreg97@my.yorku.ca.

Athletics awards return in-person at annual banquet

York University Athletics & Recreation hosted its 54th annual Varsity Athletics Banquet on April 6. The event marked the return of the in-person banquet following the live-streamed iteration of the 53rd award ceremony in 2021.

Jotam Chouhan portrait being presented with her Female Athlete of the Year Award.
Jotam Chouhan

Women’s soccer player Jotam Chouhan and men’s soccer player Soji Olatoye were named the Lions female and male athletes of the year, respectively. Chouhan also earned the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) West MVP award in 2022 and was named an OUA first-team. Olatoye likewise won the OUA West MVP and was an OUA first-team all-star along with being named a U SPORTS first-team all-Canadian.

A full list of award winners and MVPs named at the ceremony is included below.

Female Athlete of the Year

Awarded to one female who has exhibited outstanding athletic skill, character and fair play in their sport, and, as a result, contributed to the success of their team. Chouhan was named the female athlete of the year.

Male Athlete of the Year

Awarded to one male who has exhibited outstanding athletic skill, character and fair play in their sport, and, as a result, contributed to the success of their team. Olatoye was named the male athlete of the year.

Soji Olatoye, Male Athlete of the Year

Female Rookie of the Year

The recipient of this award must be compliant with U SPORTS and OUA rookie of the year sport-specific regulations, and be in their first year of eligibility in university competition. The award is presented to a female member of a York varsity team who exhibited outstanding athletic skill in their rookie season. Women’s soccer player Nia Fleming-Thompson was the female rookie of the year.

Male Rookie of the Year

The recipient of this award must be compliant with U SPORTS and OUA rookie of the year sport-specific regulations, and be in their first year of eligibility in university competition. The award is presented to a male member of a York varsity team who exhibited outstanding athletic skill in their rookie season. Badminton player Victor Lai was the male rookie of the year.

Bryce M. Taylor Award [Outstanding Female Graduate]:

Presented to a graduating female athlete, who has, throughout their undergraduate years, made outstanding contributions to Varsity Athletics at York University. Leadership, dedication, enthusiasm and participation in all aspects of Varsity Athletics will be considered qualifications for this award. Field hockey player Frankie St. Louis won this year’s Bryce M. Taylor Award.

Outstanding Male Graduate Award

Presented to a graduating male athlete, who has, throughout their undergraduate years, made outstanding contributions to Varsity Athletics at York University. Leadership, dedication, enthusiasm and participation in all aspects of Varsity Athletics will be considered qualifications for this award. Men’s hockey player Xavier Pouliot was this year’s outstanding male graduate.

Coach of the Year

Presented to a coach who has demonstrated leadership and earned the respect of both athletes and coaches in setting high expectations which have led to significant improvements and/or accomplishments over the past season for their program. Coach of the Year was presented to field hockey Coach Zeeshan Minhas.

Charles Saundercook Memorial Trophy

Presented to a student-athlete who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship, enthusiasm for life and consideration of others. This trophy is open to male and female student-athletes. The Charles Saundercook Memorial Trophy was awarded to basketball player Prince Kamunga.

Most Valuable Players

Group photo of 54th varsity banquet MVPs
Group photo of 54th Varsity Athletics Banquet MVPs

Women’s Basketball: Lauren Golding

Men’s Basketball: Somto Dimanochie

Women’s Cross Country: Laura Peters

Men’s Cross Country: Abdullahi Abdullahi

Field Hockey: Frankie St. Louis

Football: Matt Dean

Women’s Hockey: Brooke Anderson

Men’s Hockey: Xavier Pouliot

Women’s Rugby: Erin Preston

Women’s Soccer: Jotam Chouhan

Men’s Soccer: Joe Mac

Women’s Tennis: Tamara Janev

Men’s Tennis: Max Tokarev

Women’s Track & Field: Ella Foster

Men’s Track & Field: Jeremy Elliott

Women’s Volleyball: Christina Piccinin

Men’s Volleyball: Andrew Tauhid

Women’s Wrestling: Willow Morton

Men’s Wrestling: Sabit Bin Mahir

Osgoode launches app to aid in immigration, refugee hearings

Close-up photo of judge's gavel on a desk with unseen figure writing on paper in the background

A new online application from a team led by Sean Rehaag, associate professor at Osgoode Hall Law School and director of its Refugee Law Lab, is designed to equip lawyers with critical legal data needed to improve their odds of winning refugee protections for migrants at risk.

The Refugee Law Lab Portal (RLLP), which launched March 27, provides readily available legal analytics derived from all Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) decisions and judicial reviews of IRB judgments by the Federal Court.

According to Rehaag, the aim of the project – funded by the Law Foundation of Ontario – is to maintain the portal’s legal data so that lawyers can create “targeted” legal arguments, just as a doctor would use targeted medications to treat a patient’s unique symptom profile.

The Refugee Law Lab additionally receives grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Considering the support that public funding provides for both the RLLP, and the lab in general, a crucial goal of the project is to increase the accessibility and equitability of public services like immigration hearings.

“When lawyers appear before decision-makers, they often don’t know who the decision-maker is until they walk into the room, so this can give them a quick way to understand some information about the decision-maker,” Rehaag said.

“If you know you have someone who is never going to grant refugee protection, then your job as a lawyer is to get a review,” he added. “By contrast, if you have someone who’s very sympathetic, you might just want to let the process roll through without interruption to keep the decision-maker on board.”

Rehaag said that subjective decision-making by refugee adjudicators is a reality, but he hopes data provided by the portal will help level the playing field for lawyers.

“From my perspective,” he said, “the key takeaway is that we need to have safeguards for this kind of decision-making to prevent the worst outcomes for refugees.”

Those worst outcomes would include the recent drowning deaths of eight migrants as they attempted to cross the St. Lawrence River into the United States.

“This [portal] can contribute to efforts to create those safeguards,” he added, “and help lawyers develop strategies to deal with the subjectivity of decision-making.”

The Refugee Law Lab plans to continue expanding the portal to provide additional information, including cases that decision-makers most often cite in their decisions. Rehaag said he also hopes that the legal data will help stimulate additional research into Canadian refugee law by other organizations.

Unlike high-priced legal databases, Rehaag said, the Refugee Law Lab Portal is committed to keeping the information accessible, offering it for free and in easy-to-understand formats while at the same time protecting privacy.

Rehaag explained that most of the work in creating the Refugee Law Lab Portal has gone into compiling the data, including developing a sophisticated, cloud-based internet scraping tool to continuously extract data from Federal Court dockets.

“I think it’s a good example of taking academic funding for research and transforming that research so it’s more accessible and useful for practitioners,” he said. “Lawyers are not always comfortable engaging with data.”

York alumn Mark Miller talks legacy brands

Microphone

York alum Mark Miller (BBA ’95), best-selling author and chief strategy officer at the Los Angeles-based advertising agency Team One, joins Zeynep Güler Tuck, host of Mid-Career Conversations, via Zoom to discuss why more legacy brands are flickering out faster than ever on April 13 at noon.

Mid-Career Conversation, organized and hosted by the Division of Advancement, is a live webinar series designed with the intent of connecting York University alumni to each other for the sake of networking, sharing experiences and learning together.

Mark Miller portrait
Mark Miller

Each Mid-Career Conversation event features an alumni in the middle of their career who describes their professional and academic journeys since having graduated from York and highlights noteworthy moments in their careers.

Aside from his authorial accomplishments, Miller is also a frequent keynote speaker at industry conferences on cutting-edge innovation. With his broad influence and keen leadership sensibility, Miller has garnered many of North America’s most prestigious marketing and advertising awards, such as the ARF David Ogilvy Awards for research excellence, the Jay Chiat Awards for strategic excellence, and the Effie Awards for marketing effectiveness. Miller’s book, Legacy in the Making: Building a Long-Term Brand to Stand Out in a Short-Term World, is a Berry-AMA Book Prize winner for significant contributions to the field of marketing. For his upcoming Mid-Career Conversation visit, Miller will consider why the average lifespan of a company on the S&P 500 has shrunk from 67 to 15 years and share how he built his own successful personal brand.

Zeynep Güler Tuck close-up portrait
Zeynep Güler Tuck

Alumna Güler Tuck (BA ’02), a storyteller with 20 years of dedicated experience in public relations, telecommunications and travel sectors, leads the discussions. She has produced and written for an array of broadcast programs, authored editorial columns and contributed to web series for Microsoft News, Business Insider, Time Out, Lonely Planet, Corus Entertainment and Elevate, a non-profit in the innovation space. Her work is primarily concerned with building more reliable pathways for women in STEM fields and increasing and diversifying the representation of women and girls in contemporary media.

Click here to attend and register for this free event.