Tag: UN SDG 14

Master’s research film looks at sharks as indicator of ocean health

Shark pictured underwater

By Lindsay MacAdam, communications officer, YFile

Recent York University graduate Vivian Guido (MES ’23) is screening her new documentary, Turning Tides: Sustainability Measures for Shark Conservation, on York University’s Keele Campus on Dec. 15, from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Nat Taylor Cinema. Part of her master’s program, the film aims to increase and promote ocean literacy and environmental education, informing viewers of the many ways climate change impacts the health of oceans and communities – and giving them a new perspective on sharks in the process.

Turning Tides film poster.

Selected to be shown at several events throughout the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), wrapping up early next week in Dubai, Turning Tides explores the progress of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14: Life Below Water. Following the 10 targets of SDG 14, it uses sharks as an indicator of ocean health and builds upon past work of marine biologist David McGuire to determine current areas of success and opportunities for improvement in marine conservation.

“We were really lucky that the United Nations wanted to show the film,” says Guido. “And I think if any legislation or policy change can come from that, that would be even more exciting.”

Interestingly, Guido began her post-secondary studies in fashion design – not science or environmental studies – with the hopes of focusing on sustainable apparel and tackling textile waste. To her surprise, she was met with roadblocks. “No one really wanted to talk about it,” she explains. “And in the fashion industry, it’s like this big, hidden secret. Everyone knows it’s bad, but no one cares, so I wanted to see if I could address sustainability in a different way.”

She worked in fashion for a couple of years before deciding to pivot – first, becoming a scuba diver, then taking a two-year diploma in environmental sustainability at York and finally enrolling in York’s master’s program in environmental studies. The graduate program provided Guido with many experiential learning opportunities that served as the basis of her research for Turning Tides, including a stint at a non-governmental organization called Shark Stewards, where her interest in marine biology, ocean conservation – and sharks, specifically – flourished.

It took Guido about six months to put the film together, with the help of a video editor and a supervisor, York Adjunct Professor Mark Terry. She credits Terry, a passionate filmmaker himself, for helping craft her documentary into a more professional style that could capture the attention of a global organization like the UN.

As for what’s next for Guido and her film, her short-term plan is to submit it to film festivals and pitch it to schools as an educational resource.

“If there’s an opportunity to make more films, if there’s an opportunity to conduct more research, I would be extremely interested in that,” she says, “but expanding the reach of the film and the knowledge it provides is our next priority.”

Pre-registration for the film screening is required. To RSVP, fill out this online form. For more information, see the full event listing.

Collaborative project on global climate modelling wins prestigious supercomputing award

concept of digital technology

Miles Couchman, a York University assistant professor in applied mathematics, Faculty of Science, is part of an international research collaboration featuring a multidisciplinary network of researchers – including applied mathematicians and mechanical, civil and environmental engineers – that has been been awarded a highly competitive 2024 Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) Supercomputing Award.

ork University Assistant Professor Miles Couchman (left) and collaborator Professor Steve de Bruyn Kops (right) in front of the Frontier Supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the largest supercomputer in the world
York University Assistant Professor Miles Couchman (left) and collaborator Professor Steve de Bruyn Kops (right) in front of the Frontier Supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the largest supercomputer in the world.

The winning collaborative project looks to better understand turbulence in stratified flows, notably scenarios where a fluid has variable density. One application of particular interest is developing more robust mathematical models for characterizing the turbulence-enhanced mixing of heat in the ocean, a leading area of uncertainty in global climate modelling and a topic of direct importance to global society.

The INCITE program, run by the Office of Science at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), grants 75 computational intensive science projects access to the world’s fastest supercomputers, located at the DOE’s Argonne and Oak Ridge national laboratories, to further innovation across the fields of science, engineering and computer science.

Couchman’s co-project was among 108 total proposals received by INCITE this year from international researchers or research organizations asking for supercomputer access. The evaluation process was highly competitive, with proposals evaluated over the course of four months based on computational readiness, the scalability of a project’s code and algorithms, and more.

Couchman’s team was awarded use of Frontier, the largest supercomputer in the world, in 2024 to perform numerical research simulations, allowing the researchers to simulate turbulent processes with unprecedented resolution, leading to more accurate and universal turbulent models. They hope what they learn won’t just apply to the mixing of heat in water, but how pollutants mix in the atmosphere and more.

The research team is made up of individuals from Duke University, the University of Washington and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in the U.S., as well as the University of Cambridge in the U.K.

Dahdaleh Institute summer interns to showcase global health research

Global health

The Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research (DIGHR) invites York University community members to its fifth Summer Global Health Intern Symposium on Aug. 30.

DIGHR poster

Throughout the summer term, Dahdaleh global health interns have been undertaking exciting research projects that address critical global health challenges.

On Aug. 30, eight interns will reflect on their internship and deliver a short presentation about the experience, knowledge and skills they have gained, and will share progress on their research projects, including:

DIGHR research
Global health interns
  • experiential-based simulation learning;
  • effects of resource insecurity on health outcomes;
  • mental and emotional health and wellness;
  • post-pandemic public health reforms; and
  • impact of human behaviour on antimicrobial resistance.

To learn more about this event, or to register to attend, visit yorku.ca/dighr/events/5th-summer-global-health-intern-symposium.

Lunch will be provided. All are welcome to attend.

The Dahdaleh Institute is currently hiring the next cohort of global health interns for the upcoming Fall/Winter 2023-24 academic year. All interested applicants are encouraged to visit the DIGHR website to learn more.

Research discovers air quality monitoring stations collect critical biodiversity data

Flock of birds

An international team of researchers – including York University Assistant Professor Elizabeth Clare – has found that data in the form of environmental DNA (eDNA) is being collected globally by ambient air quality monitoring stations. The discovery is a gamechanger for global efforts to protect and promote biodiversity.

“One of the single biggest issues facing the planet today is the accelerating loss of biodiversity,” says Clare, who was a corresponding author on the paper published in the journal Current Biology under the title “Air-quality networks collect environmental DNA with the potential to measure biodiversity at continental scales.”

“This could be a treasure trove of biodiversity data. What we found by analyzing filters from these monitoring stations is astonishing. In just two locations, we found eDNA evidence for more than 180 different plants and animals.” 

“The potential of this cannot be overstated. It could be an absolute gamechanger for tracking and monitoring biodiversity,” says Joanne Littlefair of Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom, and first author of the published paper. “Almost every country has some kind of air pollution monitoring system or network, either government owned or private, and in many cases both. This could solve a global problem of how to measure biodiversity at a massive scale.”

Elizabeth Clare

Until now, it was thought that the infrastructure for monitoring biodiversity at national and global scales did not exist. Previously, no one had considered that these air quality monitoring stations could be collecting and storing eDNA data on birds, bees, ticks, fungi, insects, plants and mammals across the globe as a byproduct of their regular function monitoring atmosphere pollutants and dust. But it is exactly what’s needed to monitor biodiversity at a scale that’s never been possible before. 

According to the World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report, there has been a 69 per cent decline in wildlife populations since 1970. These air quality stations could potentially tap into the decades of historic eDNA biodiversity data on filters squirrelled away for years. 

Governments, scientists and environmental agencies around the world have called for large-scale, standard methods of tracking biodiversity in real time. It has, however, been an impossible task, with no standardized approach and no deployed infrastructure proposed – until now.  

The discovery that these air monitoring stations could be collecting eDNA is even more surprising because they may have been quietly doing this all along.  

It wasn’t until researchers, including Clare and Littlefair, proved it’s possible to determine which species are present using eDNA sampled from air, that scientists at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL), who operate the national air quality sampling grids, realized the potential of what they already had. James Allerton and Andrew Brown at NPL contacted Littlefair and Clare wondering if the national air quality monitoring network in the U.K. was collecting eDNA during normal operation. Together, the unlikely new collaborators have their first answer: a resounding yes. 

“We were routinely collecting particulate matter looking to measure pollutants in air but when we saw the work of Clare and Littlefair, we realized maybe we were sitting on something much more valuable,” says Allerton. 

The team set up a test at an air quality station in London outside a large urban park, collecting samples for an hour, a day and a week, and compared them to eight-month-old samples from a public station in Scotland. 

At Queen Mary University of London, Littlefair handled the samples, while Clare and graduate student Nina Garrett analyzed the data at York University.  

“We were surprised by the diversity of life we were able to survey with one approach, almost unheard in this field of science. In these two locations, we simultaneously detected the eDNA of 34 bird and 24 mammal species, a wide variety of insects, crops, pathogenic fungus, lovely wildflowers, ornamental garden plants and grasses,” says Clare.  

“We found species of interest, such as hedgehogs, along with badgers, deer, dormice, little owls, smooth newts, songbirds and 80 different kinds of woodland trees and plants – oak, linden, ash, pine – it was all there collected on these tiny filters. It’s unbelievably exciting.” 

It represents a mechanism to measure biodiversity on land in a standardized repeatable way across entire countries, continually, every day, every week at thousands of locations.  

“The beauty of the idea is we are making use of something that already exists,” says Brown, who operates the network at NPL. “If networks of air samplers around the world are all collecting similar material – just as a part of their regular functioning – it’s an incredible resource.”  

The team is now trying to preserve as many samples as possible with eDNA in mind. “We do not yet know the true value of these samples, but as they are collected, they could provide an unprecedented view of our natural world. The scale of repeated samples could give us the elusive biodiversity time series data and the ability to measure terrestrial species dynamics in a high-resolution form never considered for biodiversity monitoring before,” says Clare.  

As Littlefair says: “It will require a global effort to collect and evaluate these samples, but this is an extraordinary opportunity to take advantage of a pre-existing, global infrastructure that has been collecting standardized eDNA data for decades and until now, we simply haven’t realized the resource existed.” 

See more ways York University is making headlines at News @ York.

Schulich professor’s web tool detects corporate ‘greenwashing’

social media smart phone

Divinus Oppong-Tawiah, a researcher from York University’s Schulich School of Business, has developed a linguistic-based tool to detect “greenwashing” – the growing practice of companies using social media to communicate exaggerated, misleading or outright false claims about their environmental performance.

Divinus Oppong-Tawiah close-up portrait
Divinus Oppong-Tawiah

The findings are contained in an article published recently in the journal Sustainability. The article, titled “Corporate Communication as ‘Fake News’: Firms’ Greenwashing on Twitter,” was co-authored by Oppong-Tawiah, who is an assistant professor of operations management and information systems at the Schulich School of Business, together with Jane Webster, professor emeritus and E. Marie Shantz Chair of Digital Technology at the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University.

The researchers examined Twitter messages posted by companies in two industries with significant environmental footprints, namely, the oil and gas and automotive industries. Based on their findings, the researchers developed a new automatic deviation-based linguistic tool that is able to detect organizational greenwashing.

Researchers also showed that greenwashing is significantly associated with financial market performance because of its potential to erode shareholder value and damage the firm’s long-term financial health.

Firms are increasingly adopting social media for broadcasting their corporate social responsibility and green initiatives, the study notes. For stakeholders, this can be a positive development in that it exposes firms to greater scrutiny. However, firms suffer significant reputational damage and adverse market reaction in the event they are wrongly accused of faking green claims. Thus, until stakeholders can reliably detect greenwashing, firms remain hesitant to disclose all or part of their environmental performance on social media for fear of wrong accusation, notes Oppong-Tawiah.

“Fake news on social media has engulfed the world of politics in recent years and is now posing the same threat in other areas, such as corporate social responsibility communications,” says Oppong-Tawiah. “Our research work addresses an urgent need to identify greenwashing and measure its effects.”

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.

Film on York research looks at past to chart future of climate change

lake ice climate change

As contemporary climate change literature continues to develop, Sapna Sharma, an associate professor of biology at York University, glimpses 700 years into the past to better predict the future.

On March 20, as a part of Climate Change Research Month, the 58th CENTRAL Canadian Symposium on Water Quality Research and the One WATER World Water Day Conference, York University will host a screening of Omiwatari – a documentary on Sharma’s study of ice coverage of Japanese lakes throughout history to reveal pre- and post-industrial climate trends.

Sapna Sharma
Sapna Sharma

Historically, when Lake Suwa – the largest lake in Nagano, Japan – froze over in the winter, a rare phenomenon called omiwatari, or God’s crossing, took place. Sharp changes in temperature throughout balmy days and frigid nights caused the lake’s frozen surface to expand and contract, carving out cracks of ice that spanned the entire lake. Local legend stated that the cracks formed when unseeable gods, living on opposite ends of Lake Suwa, ran to meet each other on the ice each winter – an auspicious event that brought good fortune to Nagano. Centuries ago, omiwatari was observed in regular intervals, today it is an increasingly rare occurrence.

Sharma’s research focuses on the impacts of climate change on freshwater lakes, she has been documenting the ice coverage of Lake Suwa with the help of Kiyoshi Miyasaka, chief priest of the Tenaga Jinga shrine since 2012.

Miyasaka’s shrine has kept continuous records of Nagano’s lakes since 1443, with some observations recorded millenia earlier. Maintained by 15 generations of Shinto priests, the shrine’s lake records are amongst the longest record of meteorological observations anywhere on Earth. These ice records began well before the Industrial Revolution and have helped Sharma and her team understand how the climate is changing, even since before the advent of weather stations.

Filmmaker and multimedia artist Zeesy Powers was attending a Royal Canadian Institute for Science lecture when she first heard about Sharma’s research on omiwatari. Three years later, Sharma agreed to take part in a documentary on her work. Sharma provided the initial funding to get to Nagano. One year later, Powers was able to secure funding from the Canada Council for the Arts to complete it.

Powers travelled to Nagano at the end of Winter 2020 to capture Lake Suwa in a year without omiwatari – in fact, the lake remained absent of ice coverage entirely.

“We hope by sharing this story and our scientific understanding from this almost 700-year long ice record, we are able to convey how fast climate is changing and the urgency in which action is required to collectively begin reducing our greenhouse gas emissions,” Sharma said.

Powers remarked that in making the film, she had unwittingly travelled across the world mere days before the first widespread lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic to document a less apparent, but potentially more destructive, global catastrophe.

“I was only in Japan for a month, and there was a slowly dawning sense that things were really going sideways,” Powers said. “We were so focused on this story that the pandemic was just an ominous background. It’s hard to feel like the present is of any significance when you’re holding [centuries-old artifacts] in your hands while talking about the permanent end to winter…

“The climate catastrophe is overwhelming and it’s easy to feel powerless in the face of it,” she added. “Presenting this tragedy highlights the immediacy of these losses, but also the hope that we are capable of adapting.”

The Omiwatari screening begins at 4 p.m. in the Second Student Centre and is followed by a Q-and-A with Sharma and Powers. All York community members are welcome, registration is not required. To learn more about Omiwatari, click here.

My Secret Life: York environmental researcher, arctic explorer, polar plunge enthusiast

My Secret Life FEATURED

By Joseph Burrell, communications officer, YFile

For York Research Fellow and Environmental & Urban Change Adjunct Professor Mark Terry – whether he’s raising awareness about the health of far-flung ecosystems, or raising funds for environmentalist groups – there’s no such thing as too cold.

With two near-zero degree dives on his record, and a third pencilled into his calendar, Terry doesn’t see himself as a career cold-water swimmer – but considering that his first attempts took place in Antarctica and the Arctic Ocean, respectively, he has more expertise in that field than most.

Mark Terry swimming in Antarctica
Mark Terry during his swim in Antarctica

Indeed, his commitment to studying the world’s most remote polar and oceanic biomes is rivalled only by his dedication to the University community. Terry’s history with York spans many decades, beginning with his BA in English and media studies earned from Glendon Campus in 1980. With his career in writing, directing, acting and even stunt driving in films well under way, he eventually returned to York to receive his master’s degree in 2015 and his PhD in 2019. For each, he wrote theses that considered documentary films as catalysts for change.

Between those academic pursuits, Terry found his passion as an environmental documentarian. Never shying away from the hands-on approach, Terry underscored critical points in his films about the rapid warming of the polar ice caps, and the precarious existence of wildlife there, by jumping into the frigid depths himself.

“The first [time] was actually sub-zero temperatures in Antarctica for the film The Antarctica Challenge: A Global Warning. That polar plunge was used as a post-credit scene – ­long before Marvel started doing it, by the way – to illustrate how warm the water surrounding the world’s coldest continent was becoming,” Terry said. “The Arctic swim was for my most recent documentary, The Changing Face of Iceland. That polar plunge, and the film itself, can be seen on campus at the Nat Taylor Cinema on March 9 at 12:30 p.m.”

As for his preferred swimming spot, Terry would choose Antarctica over the Arctic because the latter requires jumping from a ship into deep, cold water – a dangerous feat even for experienced professionals. Antarctica, on the other hand, allows for easy wading across its icy shoals, plus “there’s the added bonus of swimming with playful penguins.”

For his next bone-chilling stunt, Terry will join the Royal Canadian Geographical Society’s (RCGS) Polar Plunge fundraiser for the “Canadian Geographic Explore” podcast.

Terry, an RGCS Fellow, takes his plunge from Sunnyside Beach on March 6 at noon. Although the approaching end of winter means warming air temperatures, Terry explained that early March is when Lake Ontario’s historical average water temperature is actually at its coldest. Even with his prior experience, he admitted that taking the plunge is “always a little bit stressful.”

The annual event is sponsored by Canadian Geographic Magazine and features a cast of high-profile environmental researchers, reporters and politicians diving into icy waters across Canada to raise money for polar research and knowledge dissemination.

Mark Terry's Royal Canadian Geographical Society Polar Plunge fundraiser banner, featuring slogan: BE BOLD. GO COLD.
The Royal Canadian Geographical Society and Canadian Geographic present: #RCGS Polar Plunge: Be Bold. Go Cold. With Mark Terry

Some of Terry’s fellow plunge participants are already well known to him from having collaborated on projects in the past. Others participating include: Catherine McKenna, former federal minister of the environment and climate change; Perry Bellegarde, former chief of the Assembly of First Nations; David McGuffin, CBC foreign correspondent; among others.

“When Catherine McKenna was [a federal minister,] we met with youth groups at COP24 to listen to their demands for policy participation and to showcase their films in my ongoing research project, the Youth Climate Report – now a digital database of more than 700 films on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),” Terry said. “She was, and still is, a true environmental champion.”

In light of the continued success of the Youth Climate Report, in which Terry played a pivotal role, the United Nations recognized the “Geo-Doc” film format with a Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Action Award in 2021. Around that time, York also formally acknowledged the importance of the SDGs by integrating them into its University Academic Plan 2020 – 2025.

Terry identified the enthusiasm for filmmaking and environmental research, fostered in him throughout his time at York, as the primary motivator driving his work with the RCGS College of Fellows. “There are many exceptional members of the College of Fellows,” he said. “I am proud to be among their ranks.”

“I’ve crossed the Northwest Passage with them and their work was presented in a film I made called The Polar Explorer. Its premiere at COP16 in Cancun led to a new resolution addressing rising sea levels,” Terry added. “It’s a mutually beneficial relationship.”

Click here to support Terry’s plunge.

Do you have a “secret life” or know someone else at York who does? Visit the My Secret Life questionnaire and tell us what makes you shine, or nominate someone you know at York.

York researchers invited to share, collaborate at global health workshop

FEATURED Global Health

Call for presenters: The Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research invites the York University community to join the ongoing discussion on critical social science perspectives in global health research.

Critical research often involves the use of critical theory with social justice aims. Critical social science perspectives in global health (CPGH) are transdisciplinary, participatory, experimental or experiential analyses that seek greater effectiveness, equity and excellence in global health. This means engaging directly with global public health actors, structures and systems to transform global public health while remaining committed to social science theory and methodology. For more information, visit the CPGH project page.

There is an open call to York researchers to consider presenting at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research’s fourth annual, Workshop on Critical Social Science Perspectives in Global Health Research on March 29. The registration deadline for new research ideas presentations is March 20. Participants will engage with the research community at York University from a variety of disciplines to create new insights, foster collaboration and discuss research opportunities. The workshop will be an in-person event at the Dahdaleh Institute with continental breakfast and lunch. All are welcome to attend.

Critical Perspectives in Global Health Research Workshop Wednesday, March 29

Who can present?
York faculty and researchers (with the support of a York faculty member) are invited to deliver presentations.

What is the format of the presentations?
Interested participants are asked to prepare a brief five-minute, two-slide presentation on any research project, current or planned, which takes a critical social science approach to global health.

Seed grants
Following the workshop, the Dahdaleh Institute will launch the 2023 Critical Perspectives in Global Health Seed Grant program and award five research seed grants of up to $5,000 each. The seed grants will support critical global health research that contributes to the themes of the Dahdaleh Institute, which are planetary health, global health and humanitarianism, as well as global health foresighting.

For more information on these research themes, visit the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research website. For the event’s full agenda, visit the event page.

New and renewed Canada Research Chairs at forefront of important, future-defining research

Hand holding light bulb with illustration on blurred background

York University has gained four new and three renewed Canada Research Chairs (CRC). Professors Antony Chum, Arash Habibi Lashkari, Kohitij Kar and Liya Ma received new CRC appointments and Professors Christopher Caputo, Raymond W.M. Kwong and Regina Rini had their CRCs renewed.

Antony Chum is assistant professor in the School of Kinesiology in the Faculty of Health and CRC Tier II in Population Health Data Science. Deaths and diseases of despair are those that are preventable, and they include substance-use disorders, suicides and overdose deaths. In 2019, they accounted for approximately 30 per cent of deaths for Canadians aged 15 to 49 years. Research into the causes of despair and strategies to reduce it may lead to substantial improvements in quality of life and life expectancy.

Chum is establishing a national hub that will use population health data science to study the causes of – and solutions for – deaths and diseases of despair. He and his research team are investigating the epidemiology of deaths and diseases of despair as a unified phenomenon. They are also examining the role of follow-up care in preventing suicides, overdoses and substance-use disorders as well as evaluating how public policies can reduce these self-inflicted deaths and diseases.

Arash Habibi Lashkari is CRC Tier II in Cybersecurity and an associate professor in the School of Information Studies in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS). Cybersecurity threats are constantly evolving and hackers are discovering new ways to disguise themselves. Detecting these threats requires new tools that can capture behavioural patterns and alert developers. Lashkari, aims to develop the tools that can do this.

Working with his research team, they are creating an anomaly detection model for cybersecurity. The model is based on the analysis of benign users’ common behavioural patterns, which are then contrasted with those of known threats. The team is also developing a platform to increase awareness and general knowledge of cybersecurity. Ultimately, by providing the technical solutions needed to detect anomalous behaviours and encourage better cybersecurity practices, their research will improve the security of our computer systems.

Kohitij Kar is an assistant professor in the Department of Biology in the Faculty of Science and CRC Tier II in Visual Neuroscience. His research lab is a core part of the Vision: Science to Technology Application (VISTA) Program and the Centre for Vision Research at York University. As humans, we can seamlessly interact with the world around us thanks to our remarkably sophisticated visual system. These interactions depend on our brain’s ability to translate the images we see. But understanding the brain’s sophisticated computations has been a challenge. As Canada Research Chair in Visual Neuroscience, Kar is uncovering the inner workings of the primate visual system.

Kar and his research team are performing detailed circuit-level neural measurements in non-human primates and relating them to specific visual behaviours. They are using their findings to develop artificial intelligence (AI) systems that mimic the primate brain in hopes of coming up with treatment strategies for mental health disorders that could improve cognitive behavioral therapies. Ultimately, Kar’s research could help millions of individuals suffering from neurological disorders by providing new knowledge about brain function.

Liya Ma is CRC Tier II in Cognitive Neurophysiology and an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Health. Human brains are generally flexible enough to adapt to changes in the world around us. But, reduced flexibility in thinking and behaviour is common among patients who suffer from certain neuropsychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia or autism.

Ma and her research team are investigating how neurons in the brain enable flexibility in decision-making. The research team is exploring how neural communications can support cognitive flexibility in non-human primates. To do this, they are monitoring primates’ neuronal activities during tasks and manipulating the neurons’ activities to identify the roles that specific brain regions play in terms of cognitive and behavioural flexibility. Ma and her team are also using experimental data to design mathematical models for cognitive flexibility and identifying the pathological changes that lead to brain damage. Their research could shed light on new ways to treat neuropsychiatric disorders.

Renewed Canada Research Chairs

Christopher Caputo is CRC Tier II (renewed) in Main-Group Catalysis and Sustainable Chemistry and an assistant professor of chemistry in the Faculty of Science. Chemicals provide the building blocks of many of the products we rely on every day, from pharmaceuticals to agrochemicals for growing food to dyes for cosmetics. But producing chemicals is an energy-intensive and polluting process, so it is critical that we discover far more sustainable approaches. Caputo is tackling this problem using a two-pronged approach.

First, he and his research team are developing greener catalysts to create chemicals (a catalyst lowers the barriers to a chemical reaction). These catalysts are produced using less energy and without the need for precious metals, which are rare, expensive and unsustainable. Secondly, the team is working on an innovative platform technology from renewable feedstocks with the goal of revolutionizing personal care by producing ultra-long lasting sun protection.

Raymond (Wai Man) Kwong is CRC Tier II (renewed) in Environmental Toxicology and an associate professor in the Department of Biology in the Faculty of Science. Human activities such as overfishing, plastic dumping, oils and gas spills, and the production of agricultural and industrial waste, lead to the deaths of trillions of aquatic animals every year. Kwong is advancing our understanding of how these environmental stressors affect the function of aquatic animals’ nervous systems.

Kwong and his research team are using molecular neurophysiology and functional genetics tools to study the toxicity of metals and bisphenol compounds in the early stages of aquatic animals’ lives. Their aim is to identify the mechanisms behind their toxic response or tolerance and to shed light on the relationship between environmental toxins and geno- and phenotypes. Ultimately, their findings will support the development of better strategies to regulate water quality and protect aquatic life and biodiversity.

Regina Rini is assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy, LA&PS and CRC Tier II (renewed) in Social Reasoning. In today’s political climate, social media is intensifying divisions and artificial intelligence is being used to target political messaging in new and effective ways. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter have undermined our existing social norms around sharing information. (A social norm is a widely shared expectation about how members of a society should conduct themselves.) Rini’s research seeks to understand how best to manage the social disruptions caused by rapid technological changes while also protecting the ability of individuals to make moral decisions.

Rini and her research team are using moral philosophy and social science tools to examine how modern, diverse societies, like Canada’s, can manage disagreement and create shared social space. They are focusing on the social norms that are affected by shifts in technology and determining how new norms around truth and sincerity might protect democracies from the harms caused by these shifts.

The announcement of the Canada Research Chair appointments was made by the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, François-Philippe Champagne, during his announcement Nov. 22 of an investment of more than $139 million to support 176 new and renewed Canada Research Chairs across 46 institutions in Canada.