Dahdaleh Institute accepting global health research grant applications
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Now in its fifth year, the Critical Social Science Perspectives in Global Health (CPGH) research program looks to continue to provide seed grants to support research that meets the three themes of the Dahdaleh Institute: planetary health; global health and humanitarianism; and global health foresighting.
Every year, the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research website provides four seed grants, each valued at up to C$7,000, to initiate novel and innovative ideas that take a critical social science approach to global health research.
In past years, funded projects have advanced research to improve safe water optimization in the Canadian North, study Black anxiety among families with children in and out of the criminal justice system, harness social media data to aid infectious disease outbreak surveillance and more.
The grant is tied to the annual CPGH Workshop, which will take place this year on Tuesday, April 30 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET. All are welcome to attend this hybrid workshop.
The grant application deadline is Tuesday, May 14 at 11:59 p.m. ET. For full application details and eligibility requirements, visit the call for applications website.
President’s ambassadors combat food insecurity
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Each year members of the President’s Ambassador Program are tasked with completing a legacy project that aligns with the President’s Pillars and/or University priorities. This year’s focus was on food insecurity faced by students and the community.
The president’s Ambassador Program is for current York University undergraduate and graduate students with unique perspectives who seeking opportunities to represent the University and share their experiences with fellow students, staff, faculty and alumni.
Every year, they have the opportunity to pursue a project that will positively impact the University beyond their tenure. “The Ambassador Program provides an excellent platform for ambassadors to disseminate, exhibit, and implement ideas inspired by their peers,” says Ijade Maxwell Rodrigues, chief of Government and Community Relations & Protocol, who oversees the program. “This initiative frequently catalyzes sustained efforts from campus partners, yielding tangible benefits for the York community.”
President and Vice-Chancellor Rhonda Lenton with the current cohort of president’s ambassador
The current cohort decided to combat food insecurity among the student population on York U’s campuses and beyond by promoting access to existing services, resources, and other initiatives. After meeting with the Food Services department to pitch and brainstorm ideas, they settled on a plan that mimics the department’s Teaching Kitchen model.
Teaching Kitchen is a cooking class for students that combines nutrition education, mindfulness, culinary instruction using healthful whole ingredients while also addressing food insecurity. A certified chef leads students on the method and technical skills of cooking while a registered dietitian enriches the experience by teaching students students about the nutritional facts of the recipe and offering ingredient alternatives for those with restrictions and intolerances with the aim of improving wellness through food.
The ambassadors sought to develop a food workshop that would allow students with limited funds to create a nutrient-dense, healthy, budget-conscious yet delicious dish. Working with Executive Chef Frederic Pouch and registered dietitian Dahlia Abou El Hassan, the ambassadors were able to create a French-style salad with ingredients commonly found at York Federation of Students’ food support centre, which is available to all students at York University. Abou El Hassan believes this initiative helps address the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 3: Good Health and Well-being. “It helps increase food literacy and empower students to make nutritious and affordable recipes in a hands-on environment,” she says.
The ambassadors hosted two successful workshops on April 3, where students engaged in hands-on activities such as chopping, mixing, and tasting their own culinary creations. Those unable to secure a workshop seat were provided with valuable tips, tricks, and resources. Additionally, curious bystanders had the opportunity to enjoy complimentary samples.
Tom Watt, director of Food & Vending Services, expressed gratitude for the collaboration: “We are truly honored that the President’s Ambassadors Program chose to partner with us, recognizing the many excellent campus initiatives available. This partnership underscores the significant work Dahlia and our team are doing, and we are thrilled by the community’s positive response and the ongoing value of the Teaching Kitchen program.”
Eco Arts Festival to showcase students’ environmental art
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A banana fish is set to be one of the hits of the 2024 Eco Arts Festival, an annual explosion of artistic talent organized by the students in the Environmental Arts and Justice (EAJ) program in York University’s Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change (EUC), which marks its 30th anniversary this year.
The Eco Arts Festival is an environmental initiative where art is a catalyst for ecological change and a way to highlight the intersection of art and the environment in the EAJ program. It takes over the lobby and two exhibit spaces – Zig-Zag and Crossroads – in the Health, Nursing & Environmental Studies Building, displaying visual arts and offering performances and readings.
The banana fish, an organically shaped yellow creature, is the star of visual artist and an EUC master’s degree student Michael Bradley’s illustrated book, The Great Banana Fish Migration, a tale that he’ll be reading aloud at the festival later this year.
This mythical creature fits well with this year’s theme, Beast Friends Forever, a title conceived by festival co-ordinator and EUC doctoral student Giuliana Racco and inspired by Professor Andil Gosine’s research into animal-human interactions and species loss. Gosine is an artist and curator who is the EAJ program co-ordinator.
“Arts are a place for the students to contend with their anxiety about what is happening in the world, and to think about how we might respond to the crisis we face,” Gosine says.
Many of the student-artists displaying their work in the festival were enrolled in one or both of Gosine’s two EUC summer courses: Environmental Arts Workshop (for undergraduates) and Cultural Production: Image (for graduate students). These three-week intensive courses are akin to “an arts residency,” says Gosine, who brings artists to class and encourages the students to take their research and passion for environmental issues and translate them in a way that challenges them to explore their creative instincts.
A similar fourth-year course in the undergraduate EAJ program, Arts in Action, brings together both undergraduate and graduate students to realize the project they have been dreaming up.
“Fourth-year undergrads and first-year master’s students use the course to deeply explore their interests, with dedicated attention to each of their projects,” Gosine explains. “It’s a rare opportunity to move from research on an environmental concern to exhibition of an artwork that might stimulate conversation and action.”
As for the undergraduate EAJ program, Gosine considers it unique; he accepted a teaching position at York to be part of it.
“It’s rare to have such a confluence of learning styles,” he says. “We are allowed to have an interdisciplinary approach. Here, you can be both an artist and a social scientist.”
Among the art that festival attendees will see are Tess Thompson-van Dam’s crocheted chicken sculptures harking back to Victorian times when the elites brought chickens to tea parties; drawings by Andrew Carenza that reinterpret horses pictured in historical European paintings through a contemporary, Queer lens; work on historical and contemporary ideas of Eden; and the travelling banana fish. Bradley’s reading of The Great Banana Fish Migration and an Eco Arts collaborative workshop offer participatory opportunities.
Bradley, an Ottawa Valley native, had a thriving art practice in Taiwan but returned to Canada for master’s studies. He has been drawing banana fish daily since 2018 and creating stories about them. The current book talks about the fish’s journey to find its place in the world and how that might always be changing.
“I’m not commenting on the politics of migration in a direct way, but when people migrate they have a confused sense of place. I hope people can relate,” he says. “There are a lot of ways that art and environmental science can intersect,” Bradley adds. “I’m not a politician or a policymaker, but artists, creators and curators are part of the cultural community, so if the environment requires a cultural shift, artists are the best people to usher in this change.”
Bradley’s work, and the Eco Arts Festival, will have that on full display.
York research examines complexities of sight
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Andrew Eckford and Gene Cheung, associate professors in the Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Department at the Lassonde School of Engineering, are developing a tool that can interpret the activity of cells involved in visual processes, enhancing our understanding of this complex biological system.
Whether we are admiring a beautiful landscape or watching an action-packed movie, our visual system is hard at work performing intricate biological functions that allow us to process and respond to visual information.
Andrew Eckford
Understanding the intricacies of the visual system is key to advancing research in biology, biomedicine and computer vision. Moreover, this understanding can aid in developing strategies to address visual impairments in humans.
Eckford and Cheung’s research is focused on nerve tissue behind the eye known as the retina. The retina is responsible for receiving images and sending them to the brain for processing using ganglion cells.
Many researchers have hypothesized that each ganglion cell type is responsible for computing specific features in a visual scene. For example, some cells may focus on information about the texture of an object, while others may process movement in a particular direction.
“From a big-picture perspective, we are trying to gain a better understanding of the visual system and how the eye processes information,” says Eckford. “We developed a tool that can analyze a data set of ganglion cell activity and identify relationships and patterns to predict exactly what they are looking at.”
Gene Cheung
Eckford and Cheung, and their graduate student Yasaman Parhizkar, proposed a graph-based tool that uses mathematical operations to discover patterns within a data set and make useful predictions about trends among the data points.
The proposed tool was tested using visual data gathered from a novel experiment led by University of Chicago Professor Stephanie Palmer. During the experiment, a film about an aquatic environment was projected onto the retinas of salamanders. The scenes resembled their natural habitat – imagine cool waters, sea plants and the occasional swimming fish.
As the film played, data concerning the salamanders’ ganglion cell activity was collected. The graph-based tool was used to identify and interpret trends within the data set and link these patterns to specific visual features in the film.
“It’s really cool to be able to take a data set of cell activity and see if we can predict exactly what the eye is looking at,” says Eckford.
Not only did the tool exhibit the capacity to interpret patterns within the data set and make useful predictions, but it also surpassed the abilities of comparable algorithms.
“Our tool addressed many of the problems that other algorithms have,” says Parhizkar. “Ours is much more interpretable and less data hungry.”
The applications of this unique tool can also be extended far beyond the field of biology, to industries such as agriculture, for making predictions about crop yield.
Learn more about this work in Eckford, Cheung (who is also a member of Conencted Minds) and Parhizkar’s recent publication.
Professor’s book explores health inequality in Canada
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A new third edition of the book About Canada: Health and Illness, written by York University health policy and management Professor Dennis Raphael, explores social determinants of well-being in Canada and provides updated information connecting health and illness to the worsening levels of inequality throughout the country.
Dennis Raphael
In About Canada, Raphael – an expert in covering health inequality – argues that the inequitable distribution of the social determinants of health is structured by Canada’s political economy, including public policy decisions.
According to Raphael, and his book, while some common wisdom might dictate that our lifestyles – exercise, food choices and more – affect our health, the truth is altogether different. Instead, he says, it is how income and wealth, housing, education and adequate food are distributed, as well as employment status and working conditions, that determine whether we stay healthy or become ill. Furthermore, who gets to be healthy is too often a reflection of social inequalities that are associated with class, gender and race in Canadian society.
The new edition of About Canada points toward how – based on tent cities becoming more common, food bank use hitting record high levels and more – ongoing health inequalities have only escalated since the first edition of his book was released in 2010.
“The social determinants of health situation in Canada has become so problematic as to constitute a polycrisis whereby growing food and housing insecurity, income and wealth inequality, precarious and low-paid work, social exclusion and declining quality of public policy threaten Canadians’ futures,” says Raphael. “The declining Canadian scene not only compelled a documentation of this situation but also formulating a vision of dramatic reform or even transformation of our profit-driven economic system.”
In addition to updated information throughout the book that better reflects the current moment, a new chapter also considers the social determinants of who got sick and died from COVID-19, and how the pandemic makes a clear case for restructuring work and living conditions through public policy that more equitably distributes economic resources.
Raphael’s goal is for the latest edition of the book is to provide important context for readers. “Hopefully, the new edition will provide Canadians with a means of understanding the Canadian polycrisis and means of moving beyond it,” he says.
The third edition of the book will be published on May 2 and is available to purchase through Fernwood Publishing.
Prof receives funding recognizing emerging research leadership
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Hossein Kassiri, an associate professor in the Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Department at York University’s Lassonde School of Engineering, was recently honoured with a prestigious Early Researcher Award (ERA) from the government of Ontario. He is the only researcher at York University to receive the award this year.
Hossein Kassiri
The ERA recognizes rising stars in the initial stages of their research journeys who are leading impactful work. It looks to fuel innovation across Ontario by providing recipients with funding to help build teams of researchers supporting the future of innovation.
“This award is one of the most prestigious recognitions an academic can receive early in their career – it’s a great feeling to be acknowledged,” says Kassiri. “Receiving an ERA indicates that I’m headed in the right direction with my research.”
Kassiri plans to use his ERA funding to recruit talented graduate students who will help support his interdisciplinary research project spanning across disciplines from electrical engineering to neuroscience. His research focuses on the design and development of miniature brain implants that can help monitor, diagnose, and treat neurological disorders such as epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease.
These small, powerful implants work wirelessly and do not require batteries. They can sense neuronal activities in different areas of the brain, process them using machine learning algorithms that are specifically tailored for each patient, and provide responsive feedback to the brain through electric or optical pulses.
“This award will provide the financial support necessary to hire more excellent researchers and advance the development of medical device technologies,” says Kassiri.
New CIHR Chair to advance Indigenous health research
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Professor Michael Rotondi of the School of Kinesiology & Health Science at York University was named an Applied Public Health Research Chair by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Public Health Agency of Canada to further advance a career dedicated to supporting the priorities of local Indigenous communities.
Michael Rotondi
Rotondi’s appointment on March 26 to the 2024 cohort of Applied Public Health Research Chairs means he will receive $1.15 million in funding over six years to build on over a decade of working in partnership with Indigenous community health service providers to develop and apply advanced statistical techniques to improve the health of First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples living in urban areas. Only 45 of these prestigious Chairs have been awarded since 2008, and Rotondi is the first professor at York to receive one and join the distinguished cohort.
“I am honoured to receive the award and humbled and grateful for the trust that the local Indigenous community partners and Elders have placed in me to help support their research and policy goals,” says Rotondi.
The Chair – titled Indigenous Health Counts: Combining Respondent-Driven Sampling, Partnerships and Training to Empower Urban Indigenous Communities – will advance several of Rotondi’s existing initiatives, including partnering with Statistics Canada to develop more accurate population counts of Indigenous Peoples living in cities and measuring the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on chronic health and mental health outcomes like diabetes, kidney disease, depression and anxiety in local, urban Indigenous populations. He will also look to co-create a health data training program to train the next generation of Indigenous researchers in data analysis techniques.
“Due to long-standing systemic barriers, there is a lack of quantitative health researchers who identify as Indigenous,” says Rotondi. “With the support of this program, we look forward to the near future when there is a substantial number of Indigenous peoples who have developed their expertise in data analysis and statistical methods and are able to share their own ‘data stories.’”
Building on Rotondi’s statistical expertise in respondent-driven sampling, his goal is to help address the lack of reliable health information for First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples in Canadian cities in order to identify and address large services gaps, and to advance the health and well-being of the local Indigenous community.
“I always see statistics as a tool to help, whether it is helping individuals, or entire communities. As an ally, my goal is to support the local Indigenous community to tell their own stories and help ensure they have the tools and information available to advocate for their needs,” says Rotondi.
In previous research, Rotondi and collaborators have determined that official census data vastly undercounts the local Indigenous population in Toronto, which leads to a critical inability to ensure the local Indigenous community receives appropriate health and social services. Rotondi and collaborators have also produced important data throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, providing one of the only sources of reliable data examining the rates of COVID-19 transmission and vaccination for Indigenous Peoples living in cities.
These studies have fallen under the Our Health Counts projects, which aim to create comprehensive health and wellness information for Indigenous Peoples living in urban areas, and have been developed in partnership with Well Living House and urban Indigenous service providers in six Ontario cities over 15 years.
His Chair program will continue to build on these community priorities. “I am excited to continue this work with the Indigenous community partners and local municipal, provincial and federal government agencies,” says Rotondi. “The results of this program will have substantial impact at the individual, community and policy levels.”
In an era where artificial intelligence (AI) and technology profoundly shape society, guiding these advancements towards a healthier, more equitable future is crucial.
In that spirit, Connected Minds has now funded six projects spanning diverse research areas, goals and themes, to foster innovative research for societal good.
The seed funding is part of the $105.7 million York University, in partnership with Queen’s University, received from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund, and it looks to further collaborative, transdisciplinary and exploratory research.
Connected Minds is especially committed to inclusivity, equity and community-centred research, reserving at least 20 per cent of its funding awards for Indigenous-led or community-guided projects – something that is reflected in its inaugural round of seed funding.
The York University recipients, and their projects, are:
Rebecca Caines, professor, School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design
Rebecca Caines
Caines’ project – titled “Towards Socially-Responsible ‘Transfer Learning’: Connecting Artists, Engineers, Neuroscientists and their Partners through Interdisciplinary Knowledge Mobilization” – will look at interdisciplinary collaboration. The project will build on Caines’ existing work, which often investigates the role of art and technology in social justice. It will consider how diverse knowledge bases – across disciplines – can help address societal changes through an emphasis on co-creation, ethical learning transfer and global collaboration. The research aims especially to foster inclusivity and collaboration with equity-deserving groups, particularly Indigenous communities.
Joseph DeSouza, professor, Faculty of Health
Joseph DeSouza
DeSouza’s funded project, “The Intergenerational Healing Power of nêhiyawêwin (the Cree language),” will integrate Indigenous knowledge with neuroscience. Partnering with the organization the nêhiyawak language experience, it will explore what positive impact on holistic health can be observed in individuals who re/learn the Cree language on holistic health. In the process, the research aims to revitalize nêhiyawêwin, restore treaty obligations and foster healing within the nêhiyawak nation.
Michael Kalu, professor, Faculty of Health
Michael Kalu
Titled “Bridging Mobility Gaps: Co-designing Culturally Appropriate Mobility AI-Powered Wearable (CAMAiW) Tool for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) Older Adults,” Kalu’s initiative aims to advance inclusive wearable devices. The project’s goal is to integrate speed, distance, location tracking and other health/social monitoring features within a single tool. With a commitment to inclusivity and socially ethical technologies, the project will iteratively work with BIPOC communities to co-create and test the device.
Terry Sachlos, professor, Lassonde School of Engineering
Terry Sachlos
Sachlos’s inclusive initiative is titled “Increasing African, Caribbean, and Black Donor Representation in the Canadian Bone Marrow Stem Cell Registry through Community Engagement and Co-creation of Tissue Engineered Bone Marrow to Mitigate Critical Stem Cell Transplant Shortages.” It aims to engage with relevant community organizations and implement innovative biotechnology strategies to help dismantle barriers to health-care access and foster inclusivity towards a more equitable health-care system with a more representative bone marrow stem cell registry.
The Queen’s University recipients, and their projects, are:
Matthew Pan, professor, Faculty of Engineering & Applied Science at Queen’s University
Matthew Pan
Pan’s project, “Meta-Physical Theatre: Designing ‘Physical’ Interactions in ‘Virtual’ Reality Live Performances,” looks to enhance virtual reality experiences by integrating physical touch interactions through robotics and smart textiles, aiming to amplify immersivity.
Committed to equity and diversity, the team collaborates with arts organizations focused on racialization to foster inclusivity and develop best practices for cross-cultural sensitivity in virtual interactions.
Qingguo Li, professor, Faculty of Engineering & Applied Science at Queen’s University
Qingguo Li
Targeting health-care staff, Li’s project – “Exo-Sensory Augmentation to Reduce Musculoskeletal Injury Risk in Clinical Settings” – aims to mitigate injury risks, enhancing sensory awareness to improve task performance and prevent injuries. With inclusivity as a priority, the project endeavours to develop accessible wearable technology for clinicians of all backgrounds.
The announcement of Connected Minds’ inaugural seed funding marks the latest instance of the project’s ongoing progress throughout its first year – and beyond – which has included onboarding 14 research-enhanced hires, conferences and events, and new leadership with Pina D’Agostino.
Grant funds York-led household energy insecurity study
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Godfred Boateng, an assistant professor in York University’s School of Global Health and Canada Research Chair in Global Health and Humanitarianism, has been awarded a grant by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development for a two-year project on household energy insecurity in Colombia.
The HEINS study is a continuation of Boateng’s leading work in comprehensively measuring and understanding resource insecurity across the Global South, undertaken at the Global & Environmental Health Lab at York’s Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research as part of his mandate as a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair.
In deciding to study this topic, the York professor observed that measurement of energy insecurity has historically been limited to the macro level – representing a country or region – and has not been widely extended to the household level, particularly outside the Global North. He also noticed there has been little assessment of the relationship between household energy insecurity and health outcomes among women and children in the Global South. As a result, it is difficult to determine how inadequate access to clean and safe energy sources impacts women and children differently in the household. It also becomes difficult to propose strategies to ensure clean energy transitions that effectively target the needs of that demographic.
Boateng’s HEINS project, which will be conducted in three municipalities in the Choco province of Colombia, will address these issues. It will use a mixed-methods approach to find out whether or not household energy insecurity uniquely impacts disease, socioeconomic and psychosocial outcomes. The project will also produce and validate a scale – one of the first of its kind in Latin America – that can be used to comprehensively assess the impact of household energy insecurity on women, infants and children.
“With this grant, my team and I will advance current scholarship on the adverse effects of household energy insecurity in Latin America,” said Boateng. “It will produce a novel instrument for identifying energy insecurity hotspots, which will serve as recruiting points for a longitudinal study that examines the effect of energy insecurity and indoor air pollution from conception through the first two years of life.”
Ultimately, the goal of the project is to generate scientific evidence to develop sound, scalable technologies and strategies to ensure equitable clean energy transitions across the Global South. Through this study, Boateng and the Global & Environmental Health Lab, in partnership with Lucumí Cuesta, will advance research that promotes equitable access, good health, human development and environmental sustainability.
The future of disease diagnostics explored at Lassonde
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A modern research hub at York University’s Lassonde School of Engineering is focusing on scientific innovation to transform the future of disease diagnostics.
Picture state-of-the-art technologies, busy researchers wearing white lab coats and futuristic, artificial intelligence-powered tools with capabilities beyond imagination. That is the Laboratory of Advanced Biotechnologies for Health Assessment (LAB-HA).
“LAB-HA’s mission is to develop wearable biomedical devices for early detection of burdensome diseases,” says Razieh (Neda) Salahandish, director of LAB-HA and assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science.
Early detection of diseases plays a key role in improving patient outcomes and care. Unfortunately, many diseases are diagnosed through complex and invasive processes requiring expensive equipment and facilities. LAB-HA is committed to changing this reality by creating cost-effective, non-invasive and convenient solutions.
It does so through a wide-ranging approach. “Our work applies all kinds of scientific methods in a multidisciplinary approach to disease diagnostics,” says Salahandish. “There are many different scientific disciplines required to support our research. We have chemists and computer scientists working alongside electrical, software, computer and mechanical engineers.”
Professor Neda Salahandish and student researchers working in LAB-HA
Researchers at LAB-HA include both undergraduate and graduate students who help lead and support complex research projects and activities, enhancing their academic experiences and technical skills.
Many of LAB-HA’s projects are also conducted in collaboration with leaders in the health science industry, including the University Health Network and St. Michael’s Hospital, as well as startup companies, elevating research impact and capabilities.
Among LAB-HA’s initiatives is a smart contact lenses project. With support by the Lassonde Innovation Fund, the lab is working with the Department of Mechanical Engineering to fabricate smart contact lenses – wearable devices that can non-invasively collect patients’ tears and examine the presence of biomarkers – to support the early detection of various eye diseases and improve patient outcomes.
In another project under review by the Alzheimer Society of Canada, LAB-HA is developing smart goggles that can help diagnose and monitor the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.
Though there is currently no gold-standard technique for clinical and non-invasive detection and monitoring of Alzheimer’s disease, electrical activity in the brain, which can be measured using an electroencephalogram (EEG) test, has been associated with the presence of the disease. Less-explored indicators of the disease include various representations of eye and iris movements, which can be examined using eye movement tracker cameras.
The clinical relevance of these eye movements, EEG signals and iris responses in Alzheimer’s disease will be determined in a first-of-its-kind biomarker discovery initiative establishing a correlation between Alzheimer’s disease and these features.
LAB-HA will use this knowledge to develop smart goggles with embedded cameras for eye tracking and iris response measurements as well as extended electrodes for scalp EEG acquisition. Results will be analyzed using machine learning methods and retrieved on a portable device like a mobile phone.
Another research initiative at LAB-HA, currently in its early stages, focuses on the development of wearable devices that detect inflammatory biomarkers associated with cancers and chronic inflammatory conditions. This work, funded by a Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant, has the potential to expedite chronic inflammation diagnoses, which are the root cause of many diseases. These research efforts can also help reduce the need for time-consuming investigational procedures.
