Carla DeMarco

Through entrepreneurship and mentorship, U of T grad leaves a mark on his community

rahul.kalvapalle — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 17:17:48 +0000

Through entrepreneurship and mentorship, U of T grad leaves a mark on his community

rahul.kalvapalle Mon, 03/04/2024 - 12:17

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Michael Owusu, who graduated from U of T Mississauga's Digital Enterprise Management program, is creating an app that can streamline the process of drafting wills (supplied photo)

Topic

Entrepreneurship

U of T Mississauga

Subheadline

'It's about finding the opportunities and support'

Michael Owusu was years into a career with the Bank of Montreal when a chance conversation with a client prompted him to reconsider his future.

“I thought to myself, ‘If I’m not really enjoying my job or if I’m not really seeing opportunities, if I go back to school for four or five years – in reality, what are four or five years in the grand scheme of my life?’” says Owusu, who earned an associate degree in broadcast journalism from Sheridan College. “That realization put me on the trajectory of enrolling back in school.”

In 2018, Owusu enrolled at the ��Ƶ Mississauga as a mature student in the Digital Enterprise Management (DEM) program. It was during the program's fourth-year technological entrepreneurship class that he came up with the idea for Willify – an app that can streamline the process of drafting a will.

Owusu says there are significant barriers to drafting a will, particularly for young people and members of marginalized communities. “There’s a huge unmet need for will-drafting. Given my previous work in banking and government, I’ve seen how not having a will can be so detrimental to people’s lives, no matter their age.”

In January 2023, Willify was accepted into the early-stage program at ICUBE, U of T Mississauga’s social entrepreneurship accelerator and incubator. The following month, the company placed among the top five finalists out of 40 competing startups at the Sauga Start-up Pitch Competition.

Owusu, who graduated from the DEM program in spring 2023, now works at the Canada Revenue Agency as a coaching specialist in learning and development. Meanwhile, he continues to work on Willify, with an ambitious goal in mind – helping one million users in Canada draft a will using the application.

Owusu credits ICUBE with helping him expand his knowledge of design and prototyping, which helped him realize his ideas for Willify. The experience also reinforced his entrepreneurial aspirations. “If you have an idea, if you want to do something, you can make it happen. It's about finding the opportunities and support,” he says.

Owusu is also keen to provide support to others, particularly those who are at the beginning of their academic and career journeys. While at U of T Mississauga, he got involved with the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology (ICCIT) Student Mentorship Program. “I wanted to get involved in ICCIT because I had real-world professional experience, and I wanted to share that with other students in DEM,” says Owusu, adding that witnessing their development first-hand was very rewarding.

For Owusu, the human aspect of connecting with people and aiding their progress is hugely satisfying, and something he enjoys in his job with the CRA. “Whether it’s training someone new to the learning development community and seeing them experience that ‘aha’ moment or coaching someone and having them significantly improve throughout the session – it’s a great thing to see and a great place to be.”

With a focus on the connectedness of cultures, researchers aim to revitalize the global humanities

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 23 Nov 2022 14:08:07 +0000

With a focus on the connectedness of cultures, researchers aim to revitalize the global humanities

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 11/23/2022 - 09:08

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Scenes from the Buddha's Life, Buddhas with a Bodhisattva, India, Bihar, 1075-1100. Manuscripts. Opaque watercolor on wood (From the Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art)

Carla DeMarco

Topic

Our Community

Connaught Global Challenge Award

Humanities

Research & Innovation

U of T Mississauga

Two ��Ƶ Mississauga professors are uniting scholars across the globe in an effort to answer the question: What should humanistic research look like in a post-pandemic world?

Ajay Rao, an associate professor in the department of historical studies, and Jill Caskey, a professor in the department of visual studies, are leading a research initiative called The Global Past that aims to break free of traditional boundaries in the humanities.

“The Global Past is a call-to-action for scholars of the pre-modern world, studying material or histories before circa 1500, to begin building a productive framework for research, teaching, and graduate training that is focused on the connectedness of cultures and archives,” says Caskey, the chair of visual studies at U of T Mississauga.

Jill Caskey

“Our objective with the project is to revitalize the global humanities. By providing a more expansive understanding of the core questions of the humanities and a focus on what it means to be human, we are aiming to break free of traditional disciplinary boundaries and embrace non-Western and Indigenous ways of knowing, producing transformative knowledge in order to be a truly global university.”

The project recently received a Connaught Global Challenge Award, with funding from U of T’s Connaught Fund, Canada’s largest internal university research funding program. Established 50 years ago through the sale of Connaught Medical Research Laboratories, the fund has since given out more than $178.7 million to U of T researchers, supporting a wide array of scholars and projects across a diverse range of fields.

“This is exactly the kind of important and impactful research the Connaught Global Challenge Award was created to support,” said Professor Leah Cowen, U of T’s vice-president of research and innovation, and strategic initiatives. “I’m looking forward to seeing the results of this innovative collaboration.”

The two principal investigators are currently leading a team of 21 multidisciplinary scholars – 15 based at U of T and six international partners from institutions in Singapore, Egypt, and India – with a focus on research collaboration. Participating researchers based at U of T Mississauga include Alexandra Gillespie (English and drama), Maria Hupfield (visual studies and English and drama), Ruba Kana’an (visual studies) and Karen Ruffle (historical studies).

Over the duration of the two-year project, the team will organize three thematic, hands-on workshops in Toronto, Egypt and Singapore to establish the network and deepen the collaborations among participating scholars and graduate students.

Ajay Rao

“Graduate student research exchange is also an integral part of the Global Past project,” says Rao, U of T Mississauga’s vice-dean, graduate and postdoctoral affairs.

“The workshops we have planned with our research partners around the globe will help to build the foundations for graduate student mobility between Global South universities and the ��Ƶ. We are also aiming to establish a new talent pipeline to attract students to grad programs at U of T, as well as create diverse training opportunities for doctoral students to gain expertise from supervisors here and abroad.”

The research outputs for the project are also varied: from blogs, podcasts and vlogs to collaborative reflections that chronicle participants’ experiences and document the research activities. The project will also culminate in a “Global Past Manifesto” that will be collaboratively written and published in an open-access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal.

“Instead of preparing an edited volume of specialized, discipline-specific research, this shared manifesto will bring together the range of expertise of participants in the project,” says Caskey.

“The Global Past Manifesto will integrate theoretical frameworks and methodologies to propose concrete changes in humanities scholarship, and this will also provide the opportunity for mentorship of junior faculty and graduate students. We will also propose new ways to conduct research, moving beyond accepted limits of knowledge.”

'Confident and resilient,' U of T researcher Mulu Geletu Heye builds community in the lab and beyond

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 16:07:36 +0000

'Confident and resilient,' U of T researcher Mulu Geletu Heye builds community in the lab and beyond

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 04/08/2022 - 12:07

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A senior research associate at U of T Mississauga, Mulu Geletu Heye, right, brings cell biology expertise to the Gunning Lab, engages in outreach work with high schools and teaches children how to speak Amharic (photos courtesy of Mulu Geletu Heye)

Topic

Research & Innovation

U of T Mississauga

Mulu Geletu Heye once had to travel for five hours, on short notice, for her PhD thesis defence at Germany’s Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. Her lab had just moved to Halle, Germany – and she was seven months into her second pregnancy.

“People asked me ‘Are you crazy? Just drop out and do the defense afterwards,’” recalls Geletu Heye, who has been a senior research associate in the lab of Professor Patrick Gunning at ��Ƶ Mississauga since 2013. “But I said, ‘No, I want to do this.’ I didn’t want to lose one year or more. So, I traveled the 500 kilometres to do my thesis defense.

“I just knew I could do it, and I did it.”

It’s just one example of Geletu Heye’s resilience and confidence – traits she aims to impart to the young people she now mentors.

At the Gunning lab, Geletu Heye oversees the cellular biology experiments that investigate the lead components against several cancer cell lines, testing the efficacy of drugs that the chemists design and develop. While most of the students in the Gunning Lab have a chemistry background, Geletu Heye’s cell biology expertise provides guidance on the biology experiments that they do as part of their investigations.

Mulu Geletu Heye

She also brought a project from her previous lab that focuses on the caveolin protein, which is involved in many biological processes.

Geletu Heye, who was born and grew up in Ethiopia, says she has loved science since she was a child.

“I was always thinking about animals and plants, wanting to figure out how systems work – and I was especially interested in biological science, so because of that I stayed with the life sciences field, specifically biology,” she says.

After high school, she was awarded a scholarship at St. Petersburg State University in Russia.

Geletu Heye says the drive to pursue her scholarly dreams was bigger than the obstacles she needed to overcome, including adjusting to a new culture and learning Russian. Her perseverance paid off, and she mastered the language and completed her bachelor’s degree in biological science and a master’s degree in biochemistry.

With these degrees, Geletu Heye returned to Ethiopia to work as a research assistant, but she could not stifle her academic ambitions.

Once she found the right supervisor to oversee her project investigating a protein associated with leukemia, she was accepted to do a PhD at Germany’s Ludwig Maximilian University, with a scholarship. She ended up learning yet another language and graduating magna cum laude, the second-highest honour given to PhD graduates.

She came to Canada to work as a post-doctoral researcher in the lab of microbiologist Leda Raptis at Queen’s University. A cancer survivor and brilliant academic, Geletu Heye says Raptis embodies resilience.

“Professor Raptis has played a huge role in my career and work ethics,” says Geletu Heye, noting that Raptis held a spot for Geletu Heye until after her second child was born and she was ready to join the lab.

“I learned a lot from her and definitely intend to support other scholars in whatever way I can in the ways I have been supported.”

Mulu Geletu Heye organizes tours of the Gunning lab for high school students (photo courtesy of Mulu Geletu Heye)

Geletu Heye’s interests extend beyond the lab.

Since 2018, she has been teaching the Amharic language every Saturday to elementary school children in the Peel region. The group has a chance to showcase traditional Ethiopian food, dress and music.

“This experience has also enhanced my teaching skills, but I think it is important to expand the younger generation’s knowledge of culture and identity, for them to know their ancestors’ language and land, their history and geography.”

Along with bridging cultures, Geletu Heye also aims to be a conduit for youth to connect with research.

For the past seven years during the March and summer breaks from school, Geletu Heye brings 10 to 15 local high school students to the Gunning Lab. She shows them how research is done and gives them the opportunity to meet U of T Mississauga graduate and undergraduate students, who share their experiences. It’s a way to motivate and inspire young students, she says.

Some of the recent visitors ended up studying science at U of T, with some enrolling directly in U of T Mississauga after high school.

Geletu Heye hopes to convey to high school students that research can be challenging, but the results can be extremely rewarding.

“I always tell young people they have to be confident and resilient,” says Geletu Heye.

“If you keep these two words in mind, nobody will stop you from doing what you want to do. Don’t give up – ask for help, and get advice,” she says, adding that family support is often important to a student’s success.

Still tied to her Ethiopian community, Geletu Heye was moved to lend aid to those affected by an ongoing civil war in northern Ethiopia. The United Nations Refugee Agency estimates more than 3.5 million people have been displaced with an estimated nine million who need food aid.

In her role with the Ethio-Canadian Network for Advocacy and Support (ECNAS) for Toronto and the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area, Geletu Heye visited Ethiopia earlier this year and saw first-hand the suffering on the ground.

“It was so devastating, so painful,” she recalls. “I just cried a lot there when I see people – women and kids especially – are really affected.”

She says she’s grateful to the U of T Mississauga community, including members from the Recreation, Athletics & Wellness Centre and the Institute for Management & Innovation who have donated to ECNAS’ appeal so far.

“We gave the donations of food and clothing, all these things we collected, including books for the kids, who are unable to go to school.”

Reading the beads: U of T Mississauga researcher examines Indigenous visual storytelling

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 19:05:46 +0000

Reading the beads: U of T Mississauga researcher examines Indigenous visual storytelling

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 11/09/2021 - 14:05

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A beaded bag by a Cree artist from James Bay circa 1865 (photo courtesy of Professor Kristen Bos)

Topic

Women and Gender Studies

Kristen Bos initially resisted going into the field of Indigenous studies.

“I started out in archaeology and wondered why it was that I and so many other native friends and scholars were doing work in either anthropology or archaeology,” says Bos, an assistant professor in the department of historical studies at the ��Ƶ Mississauga.

Kristen Bos

At the time, Bos, who is Métis from Treaty 8 territory in Northern Alberta, was studying medieval sexuality for her master’s degree at the University of Oxford.

“There is an enduring focus on us and our histories, and I just got really frustrated because it turned out there were a lot of people at Oxford studying Indigenous folks, but there were no Indigenous people doing that work there,” she says. “I decided I should do that work – and do it in a better way.”

Bos’s first research undertaking in the field of Indigenous studies was at the Pitt Rivers Museum. Based at Oxford, the museum houses over 500,000 photographs, manuscripts and objects from around the world. Bos was examining beaded panel bags. It was her first serious initiation into material culture.

Tiny glass seed beads have since become a central part of her research focus. Seed beads have been used by Indigenous communities for thousands of years. They vary in size, but usually measure no more than five millimetres – a bit smaller than a sesame seed. Bos says that seed beads tell stories, govern lands and they have been used as currency in many transactions in the past.

Though Bos’s main focus is on Indigenous feminisms and seed beads, science, technology and toxicity also factor prominently into her work. For example, she looks at how beads have often been preserved using harmful chemicals since the 1700s – and how that toxicity pervades today.

“The main work I'm doing with beads is thinking about them also as earth works,” says Bos, who is co-director of the Indigenous-led Technoscience Research Unit and holds a graduate appointment at U of T’s Women & Gender Studies Institute. “So, beads as glass, and glass as silica or sand, glass as potash or the ashes of plants, glass as limestone or the calcified remains of flora and fauna.”

She explains this ties into other Indigenous feminist scholarships, such as Métis anthropologist Zoe Todd’s work on thinking of oil petrochemicals as a kind of fossilized kin and thinking about the kind of relationships we can build, noting these substances weren't toxic before, but under settler colonialism and with certain technologies they become toxic.

Throughout her work, Bos has encountered curators and archivists who now either refuse to go into collections because of this chemical contamination or who have donned personal protective equipment while working with these materials. This is another area she is zeroing in on in her research.

Bos, who has beaded since she was young, says that seed beads and Indigenous art more generally are having a bit of a moment right now.

“I think about beads as method, beads as a research subject, beads as witnesses, and beads figure in some of the most famous and really pervasive settler colonial narratives,” says Bos, who adds that the founding of the League of Five Nations treaty, the land on which U of T Mississauga currently stands, was made from wampum, which are small cylindrical beads made of various kinds of shell.

“Beads are storytelling devices and a visual reference to colonization that help to frame our history, while also representing Indigenous futures.”

Elementary school children can learn concepts that stump adults: U of T study

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 16:57:57 +0000

Elementary school children can learn concepts that stump adults: U of T study

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 04/14/2021 - 12:57

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A study by researchers at U of T Mississauga and Boston University used storybooks to teach elementary school children how new species evolve and then examined whether children could learn, apply and retain that understanding (photo by Marta Wave/Pexels)

Carla DeMarco

Topic

Breaking Research

Psychology

Research & Innovation

U of T Mississauga

Story time took on a new twist in a recent study by Samuel Ronfard, a researcher at ��Ƶ Mississauga.

Ronfard and his collaborators at Boston University – Sarah Brown, Erin Doncaster and Deborah Kelemen – used storybooks to teach elementary school children how new species evolve and then examined whether children could learn, apply and retain that understanding over time.

The study, “Inhibiting intuition: Scaffolding children’s theory construction about species evolution in the face of competing explanations,” was published in the journal Cognition and is part of Boston University’s Evolving Minds Project, which is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

“Our research project examined children’s ability to construct an accurate account of natural selection at the between-species level – that is, in relation to the evolution of new species,” says Ronfard, an assistant professor of psychology who is the lab director at U of T Mississauga’s Childhood Learning and Development Lab.

“This is a really hard concept to learn. Even adults struggle with learning it because it goes against our intuitions about species – the idea that species members possess a special unchanging essence that makes them what they are.”

Although concepts like natural selection aren’t introduced until high school, Ronfard and his colleagues showed that elementary school children – the study participants were seven- and eight-year-old children – can overcome their intuitions about species and learn an accurate explanation for the process of speciation that focusses on variability within a species over time.

“When we embarked on this study, we could not find trade books that provided an accurate description of the process of adaptation and speciation at the elementary school level,” says Ronfard. “By designing our own books about novel animals, we could create storybooks that built on one another and continued the evolutionary story of one species.

“We were also able to keep the illustrations simple to support the explanations described in the narrative text and control children’s knowledge about the animals.”

The findings demonstrated that even young children can engage in challenging and complex conceptual change when it is presented in this format.

“Our work suggests that instruction on certain hard-to-learn concepts like the evolution of new species should start earlier than it currently does because earlier instruction allows children to construct a scientifically accurate understanding of complex scientific processes before intuitive but incorrect explanations take root and entrench themselves,” Ronfard says.

With U of T as a partner, advanced materials research facility in Mississauga to focus on clean energy

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 20:58:12 +0000

With U of T as a partner, advanced materials research facility in Mississauga to focus on clean energy

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 11/17/2020 - 15:58

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The 21,500-square-foot facility in Mississauga’s Sheridan Park will support the development of clean energy technologies and will be home to the Collaboration Centre for Green Energy Materials, a partnership between U of T and NRC (photo courtesy of NRC)

Topic

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Arts & Science

Research & Innovation

Sustainability

Ted Sargent

U of T Mississauga

The ��Ƶ will play a key role in a new National Research Council of Canada (NRC) advanced research materials facility focused on clean energy.

The new research facility, the NRC’s first in Greater Toronto, will serve as a Canadian clean energy hub that supports research into advanced materials and transitions them to industrial use. It will bring together companies, governments and universities to work on clean tech projects.

The NRC Mississauga facility will also be home to the new Collaboration Centre for Green Energy Materials (CC-GEM) – a partnership between U of T and NRC.

“Tackling the reduction of the environmental footprint of Canadians is a grand challenge that requires bold ideas and collaboration across disciplinary boundaries to solve,” Derek Newton, U of T’s assistant vice-president, innovation, partnerships and entrepreneurship, said during a virtual ribbon-cutting ceremony that took place Monday on Zoom.

“The ��Ƶ looks forward to collaborating with the NRC to accelerate the work of U of T’s researchers and training students to achieve new discoveries and apply them to further reduce the environmental impact of the electricity that powers the businesses, homes and vehicles of Canadians and people around the world.”

The CC-GEM joint initiative will be co-led by: U of T Professor Dwight Seferos in the department of chemistry in the Faculty of Arts & Science; U of T Professor Timothy Bender in the Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering; and Michel Dumoulin, the NRC’s vice-president of engineering.

It will contribute to the green economy and address a range of research areas including more sustainable energy solutions and renewable fuels.

“Sustainably meeting our growing energy needs is one of the most critical challenges we face,” said Christopher Yip, dean of U of T’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “Professor Bender and his multidisciplinary team have a strong track record of success in transforming fundamental insights in chemistry, engineering and materials science into innovative technologies.

“This partnership will catalyze the transformation of these discoveries into innovative products and new business ventures that will power a greener Canadian economy.”

The NRC Mississauga research facility, home to the new Collaboration Centre for Green Energy Materials (CC-GEM), was officially opened during a virtual ribbon cutting ceremony this week (image via Zoom)

“This centre combines the world-class materials science and research capabilities of the ��Ƶ and the National Research Council to accelerate the discovery of new materials that will be critical to the next generation of energy technologies,” said Melanie Woodin, dean of U of T’s Faculty of Arts & Science. “This initiative will also help train the scientists and engineers needed for Canada’s clean-tech sector. ”

CC-GEM is the second collaboration between NRC and U of T and is expected to lead to discoveries and advances that will yield publications, patents, and the commercialization of technology, as well as the creation of jobs and new industries.

Newton was one of several participants on Monday’s Zoom call. Others included: Roger Scott-Douglas, acting president of the NRC, Navdeep Bains, the federal minister of innovation, science and industry and Bonnie Crombie, mayor of Mississauga.

“The opening of our new facility in Mississauga represents a major stepping-stone for the National Research Council of Canada in advancing Canada’s clean-energy agenda,” Scott-Douglas said.

“Our vision is for this collaborative hub to become the home to new technologies that will enable industry to be more sustainable, and we look forward to working with all our partners in accelerating the development of innovations in advanced materials to support industry.”

The 21,500-square-foot facility in Mississauga’s Sheridan Park will support the development of cutting-edge technologies, including artificial intelligence-driven robotics platforms dubbed “material acceleration platforms,” otherwise known as self-driving labs. The initial focus will be developing materials that allow the conversion of carbon dioxide into fuels and other high-value industrial products, including multi-functional powder and nanomaterials, and “advanced metamaterials and devices for consumer, automotive, aerospace and biomedical applications.”

The facility will see government, companies and post-secondary institutions like U of T and the University of Waterloo working together on clean-tech projects, with the space accommodating university equipment as well as researchers and students. The facility is part of the Canadian Campus for Advanced Materials Manufacturing (CCAMM), a joint initiative between the NRC and the Xerox Research Centre of Canada, which is adjacent to NRC Mississauga.

At the launch, Bains said the government is “committed to supporting innovative partnerships that will cement Canada as a world innovation leader.”

He also announced the addition of the Materials for Clean Fuels Challenge program, a seven-year, $57-million collaborative research program that will be housed at the new facility. It will focus on the development of new materials to be used in the production of clean energy, with the aim of decarbonizing Canada's oil and gas and petrochemical sectors.

From exploring immigrant identities to treating cancer: U of T awarded 31 Canada Research Chairs

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 10 Aug 2020 16:02:28 +0000

From exploring immigrant identities to treating cancer: U of T awarded 31 Canada Research Chairs

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 08/10/2020 - 12:02

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Neda Maghbouleh, an associate professor at U of T Mississauga, is one of 31 new and renewed Canada Research Chairs at U of T. She is studying how borders, wars and other geopolitical forces influence immigrants' identities (photo by Romi Levine)

Carla DeMarco

Topic

Our Community

Astronomy & Astrophysics

Canada Research Chairs

Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

Chemistry

Computer Science

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Law

Faculty of Medicine

History

Hospital for Sick Children

Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

Management

Molecular Genetics

Psychology

Research & Innovation

Sociology

St. Michael's Hospital

Ted Sargent

U of T Mississauga

U of T Scarborough

University Health Network

The ��Ƶ’s Neda Maghbouleh seeks to better understand how borders, wars and other geopolitical forces influence the formation of immigrants’ identities.

“My work is fundamentally motivated by unresolved questions about integration, assimilation, and racialization,” says Maghbouleh, an associate professor in U of T Mississauga’s department of sociology.

“Through a strategic focus on Syrian refugees and others from the Middle Eastern/North African region, I am building a multilevel analysis of the evolving identities of newcomers to Canada and the U.S. today.

“The goal is to advance new theories that explain the influence of geopolitics, borders, war, sanctions and surveillance on everyday people’s racial identifications and attachments.”

An international expert on the formation of racial identity, Maghbouleh is one of 31 new or renewed Canada Research Chairs at U of T. Her tier two chair in migration, race and identity will allow her to further expand her scholarship on how racial identities traffic across borders and categories.

The Canada Research Chair Program was established in 2000 to fund outstanding researchers in this country. It provides approximately $295 million annually to universities to help retain and attract top minds, spur innovation and foster training excellence in Canadian post-secondary institutions.

“Congratulations to the ��Ƶ’s new and renewed Canada Research Chairs,” says University Professor Ted Sargent, U of T’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives. “This investment will further strengthen and build on the exceptional research environment at U of T.

“The Canada Research Chairs Program enables our nation’s researchers to make ground-breaking discoveries, create new knowledge and attract talent that ultimately benefits all Canadians.”

Maghbouleh is among those emerging researchers who are making their mark. Her 2017 award-winning book The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race explored the culture and identity of Iranian Americans as well as the discrimination they face. It has been adopted in courses at over 30 universities in North America and the U.K.

Since she became a faculty member at U of T Mississauga in 2015, Maghbouleh’s research has received consistent funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), including a major Insight Grant for the project “Settlement, Integration, & Stress: A 5-Year Longitudinal Study of Syrian Newcomer Mothers & Teens in the GTA.” She recently presented early findings from the project to the research and evaluation branch of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

Maghbouleh says the research chair will help fuel her ambitious research program and further communicate her findings.

“The CRC will turbo-charge my work,” she says. “And most excitingly, it solidifies the status of UTM, U of T and the Greater Toronto Area as a premier North American hub for research on migration and race.”

Kent Moore, U of T Mississauga’s vice-principal, research, said he was thrilled with the campus’s success in securing three Canada Research Chair designations. In addition to Maghbouleh, they include Sonia Kang in the department of management, who is a newly named tier two chair in identity, diversity, and inclusion, and Iva Zovkic in the department of psychology, who is a tier two chair in behavioural epigenetics.

“This recognition exemplifies the innovative work being undertaken by our researchers,” says Moore.

“With the impressive and exceptional breadth of work Professors Kang, Maghbouleh and Zovkic are doing, they continue to forge new ground in many areas of research and elevate UTM to a higher level of excellence. This support and validation of their work by the Canada Research Chair program demonstrates the outstanding caliber of their scholarly leadership.”

Here are the new and renewed Canada Research Chairs at U of T:

New Canada Research Chairs

Jeffrey Ansloos, in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, tier two in critical studies in Indigenous health and social action on suicide
Isabelle Aubert, in the department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology in the Faculty of Medicine and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, tier one in brain repair and regeneration
Gisele Azimi, in the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, tier two in urban mining innovations
Hilary Brown, in the Interdisciplinary Centre for Health & Society at U of T Scarborough, tier two in disability and reproductive health
Ann Burchell, in the department of family and community medicine in the Faculty of Medicine and Unity Health Toronto, tier two in sexually transmitted infection prevention
Arthur Chan, in the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, tier two in atmospheric chemistry and health
Maria Drout, in the David A. Dunlap department of astronomy and astrophysics in the Faculty of Arts & Science, tier two in time-domain and multi-messenger astrophysics
Katherine Duncan, in the department of psychology in the Faculty of Arts & Science, tier two memory modulation
Benjamin Haibe-Kains, in the department of medical biophysics in the Faculty of Medicine and University Health Network, tier two in computational pharmacogenomics
Björn Herrmann, in the department of psychology in the Faculty of Arts & Science and Baycrest Centre, tier two in auditory aging
Sonia Kang, in the department of management at U of T Mississauga, tier two in identity, diversity, and inclusion
Neda Maghbouleh, in the department of sociology at U of T Mississauga, tier two in migration, race, and identity
Maryam Mehri Dehnavi, in the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science, tier two in parallel and distributed computing
Sharmistha Mishra, in the department of medicine in the Faculty of Medicine and Unity Health Toronto, tier two in mathematical modeling and program science
Michelle Murphy, in the department of history in the Faculty of Arts & Science, tier one in science and technology studies and environmental data justice
Catherine O'Brien, in the department of surgery in the Faculty of Medicine and University Health Network, tier two in translational research in colorectal cancer
Myrna Simpson, in the department of physical and environmental sciences at U of T Scarborough, tier one in integrative molecular biogeochemistry
Janet Smylie, at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and Unity Health Toronto, tier one in advancing generative health services for Indigenous populations in Canada
Darrell Tan, in the department of medicine in the Faculty of Medicine and Unity Health Toronto, tier two in HIV prevention and STI research
Paaladinesh Thavendiranathan, in the department of medicine in the Faculty of Medicine and University Health Network, tier two in cardiooncology
Teresa To, at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Hospital for Sick Children, tier one in asthma
Kimberley Widger, in the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, tier two in pediatric palliative care
Andrei Yudin, in the department of chemistry in the Faculty of Arts & Science, tier one in medicine by design
Iva Zovkic, in the department of psychology at U of T Mississauga, tier two behavioural epigenetics

Renewals of Canada Research Chairs

Morgan Barense, in the department of psychology in the Faculty of Arts & Science, tier two in cognitive neuroscience
Anver Emon, in the Faculty of Law, tier two in Islamic law and history
Larissa Katz, in the Faculty of Law, tier two in private law theory
Julie Lefebvre, in the department of molecular genetics in the Faculty of Medicine and the Hospital for Sick Children, tier two in developmental neural circuity
Matthew Roorda, in the department of civil and mineral engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, tier two in freight transportation and logistics
Leonardo Salmena, in the department of pharmacology and toxicology in the Faculty of Medicine, tier two in signal transduction and gene regulation in cancer
Aristotle Voineskos, in the department of psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, tier two in neuroimaging of schizophrenia

Our cultural backgrounds influence how we interpret emojis, U of T study finds

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 22 Jul 2020 19:58:46 +0000

Our cultural backgrounds influence how we interpret emojis, U of T study finds

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 07/22/2020 - 15:58

Cutline

The study by U of T Mississauga undegraduate student Boting Gao sheds light on the complexities associated with digital interactions, particularly among people communicating from different parts of the world (photo by Dimitri Otis via Getty Images)

Carla DeMarco

Topic

Our Community

Psychology

Research & Innovation

U of T Mississauga

Undergraduate Students

For ��Ƶ Mississauga undergraduate student Boting Gao, emojis are more than just a way to convey a sentiment.

She sees them as a tool to examine differences in how emotions are perceived depending on a person’s cultural background, which could have implications for how we interact online.

Working under the supervision of Doug VanderLaan, an assistant professor in the department of psychology, Gao recently published a study in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking that looked at how different cultures interpret emojis – “paralinguistic cues” used to express thoughts and emotions in communication platforms such as email, texts, and social media.

The study built on previous research that shows people from Western cultures pay more attention to in-person cues from the mouth when gauging emotion compared to those from Eastern cultures, who focus more on the eyes.

“Communication using emojis or emoticons may be considered more effective than using words alone because they deliver emotions in a more visually direct manner,” says Gao. “However, emojis are not usually labelled with a fixed meaning and are subject to interpretation, which can vary depending on a person’s cultural background.”

For VanderLaan, the research was a departure from his usual line of inquiry at his Biopsychosocial Investigations of Gender (BIG) Laboratory, which seeks to better understand gender expression and related psychological traits.

“Boting was a student in my cross-cultural psychology class, and a couple of years ago had the idea for this study,” says VanderLaan. “I was so impressed that I decided to supervise her for an independent research project.”

Gao was able to recruit participants for her online study from around the world and, based on geographic location, categorized them as being from a Western or Eastern culture. Participants were asked to rate their perceptions of nine different emojis that presented a range of emotions through the eyes and mouth. The results supported the team’s predictions of significant cultural differences in perceived emotions. With at least six of the emojis, Westerners relied mostly on the mouth for rating emotion while Easterners based their assessment on the eyes.

Future studies might factor in other emotions, such as anger or worry, and examine any differences in perception that emerge.

“This study suggests that when using technologies and employing emojis in things like instant messaging and social media, people might perceive the intent of the communication differently during exchanges with others of the same culture compared with people from a different cultural background,” says Gao.

“As interactions among individuals of varying cultural backgrounds increases and people continue to use technologies that afford opportunities for these kinds of paralinguistic communication, it is valuable to better understand how such communication is likely to be perceived or in some cases misperceived.”

With a focus on women, U of T researcher aims to raise awareness of Métis issues in Canada

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 09 Jul 2020 15:31:02 +0000

With a focus on women, U of T researcher aims to raise awareness of Métis issues in Canada

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 07/09/2020 - 11:31

Cutline

Jennifer Adese, an associate professor at U of T Mississauga, says existing research has tended to be published by non-Métis and doesn't reflect how "we understand ourselves and our existence as a distinct Indigenous people" (photo by Drew Lesiuczok)

Topic

Research and Innovation

Sociology

U of T Mississauga

An Indigenous scholar’s long-standing research related to Métis women comes at a pivotal moment when understanding and standing in solidarity with people who are oppressed is crucial.

Jennifer Adese, an associate professor in the department of sociology at the ��Ƶ Mississauga, has dedicated her efforts to Indigenous research throughout her academic career. However, it was attending the National Aboriginal Women’s Summit (NAWS) in 2012 that cemented her focus on the experiences of Métis women.

“It was at these proceedings in Ottawa that Indigenous women collectively came together to call on the provincial premiers in attendance to use their power to push the federal government to commit to a national inquiry on the high rates of Indigenous women who have gone missing and/or been murdered,” said Adese during a recent interview for the VIEW to the U podcast.

“I had the privilege to sit alongside these women as they met with different members of government, other Indigenous organizations and even with United Nations representatives, and it gave me a pretty life-changing insight (into) the complex public strategies of resilience practised by Métis women.”

Adese, who joined the department as a faculty member in 2018, says the experience was not a new encounter with the high rates of murdered Indigenous women, nor was it her first time countering Canada’s reluctance to reckon with its history of oppression and colonization. But the event reinvigorated her commitment to be an informed advocate and to lobby for the rights of Métis and all Indigenous communities. Through her work, she continues to examine the history of violence against Métis girls and women, looking into why Métis were largely ignored in the federal government inquiry.

In 2019, Adese received Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) funding to pursue a project that explores Métis women’s mobilization and activism over the last 50 years.

When the two-year project wraps up, Adese has her sights set on strengthening existing collaborations with the academic community and Métis organizations to raise awareness about Métis issues through community engagement and dissemination of their findings.

It is this mobilizing of knowledge that Adese says is key to reaching a better understanding about the ongoing impacts of colonization, dispossession and racism.

She says a central part of being involved in current activism confronting anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism is being informed. In her capacity as an educator, she feels that reading and educating oneself serves as a foundation for further action. So, too, is listening to and centering the voices of Black, Indigenous and other racialized groups.

Adese is currently wrapping up a book that is being published by UBC Press, titled Aboriginal™, which is an analysis of the term “aboriginal” and its more frequent usage after the Constitution Act of 1982 was passed.

In addition, Adese is a co-editor of two forthcoming anthologies: A People and a Nation: New Directions in Contemporary Métis Studies that she has worked on with colleagues from University of Alberta; and Indigenous Celebrity: Entanglements with Fame, the first dedicated volume to explore Indigenous People's experiences with celebrity culture.

Adese has a personal interest in this area: She is Métis and draws on her culture via a large family unit that is primarily based in Alberta. She says that her relationships with other Métis people and communities provide her with a unique perspective for her work, writing and teaching.

“A lot of previous research has been undertaken and published by non-Métis, and the tendency through that work has been to analyze and discuss Métis people as simply a byproduct of the intermarriage of two other populations, broadly First Nations and European,” says Adese.

“That is not how we understand ourselves and our existence as a distinct Indigenous people, and quite often how Indigenous Peoples represent ourselves through art, through literature, through political engagement is very different. So, for us it's very exciting work to push the conversation even further, and for the first time strive for this level of representation within Métis studies research, but also within Indigenous studies research.”

Art in the time of COVID-19: Finding ways to 'render the invisible visible'

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 04 May 2020 16:44:05 +0000

Art in the time of COVID-19: Finding ways to 'render the invisible visible'

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 05/04/2020 - 12:44

Cutline

John Paul Ricco, a professor at U of T Mississauga's department of visual studies, says COVID-19 has led 'a whole new awareness of ourselves in the world, and with others' (photo courtesy of John Ricco)

Topic

With much of the world locked down due to COVID-19, art and creativity has burst into living spaces through platforms like Zoom, livestreams and over social media – a development that does not surprise the ��Ƶ’s John Paul Ricco, who says social upheavals and health crises has historically inspired artists.

“I do think this speaks generally to the value of art in all of its various forms, and that it is probably our principal and most developed way of being attuned to the world,” says Ricco, a professor in the department of visual studies at U of T Mississauga.

“It is a way to try to register, record and re-shape our perceptions and to really take stock. But also, I think art plays an incredibly important role in a moment when people are looking around and are really interested in art and humanities – and writing again – because when the world feels like it's imploding, art and aesthetics are there to save you.”

Ricco, who has been on faculty at U of T Mississauga since 2006, is an art historian and queer theorist whose research closely examines the relationship between art and ethics.

Ricco’s 2014 book The Decision Between Us: Art and Ethics in the Time of Scenes argues that scenes of intimacy are spaces of sharing, but that they are also spaces of separation, which has a particular resonance in the current climate.

He says the present situation is a time to ask how we can find ways of connecting while in solitude – space that allows the social to happen, but also the capacity for people to figure out how to deal with being physically separated from others.

Read John Paul Ricco’s contribution in Tilting, a publication by the Blackwood Gallery at U of T Mississauga

Ricco points to past health crises that have led to exploring similar concepts in art, particularly the AIDS outbreak when he was an undergraduate student at New York University. That health epidemic in the 1990s influenced his path throughout his graduate studies and he became involved in AIDS activism, exploring ways in which contemporary artists were contending with the situation.

For example, Ricco curated a contemporary art exhibition in Chicago in 1996 titled Disappeared that brought together artists contemplating the question of representation in relationship to AIDS. There was the “disappearance” of the people who died from the disease, as well as the loss of aesthetics that resulted from not being able to fully represent AIDS in a visual form.

He also points to a past exhibit by artist Félix González-Torres that challenged the prohibitions on physical contact to avoid the spread of the disease.

When it comes to the current COVID-19 crisis, there is once again a warning to avoid physical proximity and it is also difficult to put a shape to the invisible virus. However, Ricco feels this is part of the challenge for visual artists: rendering the invisible visible.

He suggests we are all taking part in the process by our inadvertent choreography of physical distancing in our homes and out on errands or on walks.

“I think one of the most interesting things that art can help us contend with is exactly those things that cannot be seen and what we do with that difficulty or that problem,” says Ricco.

“We can imagine art being made in the midst and in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis that takes up this prohibition of physical proximity – touching and contact – and uses that as the way to explore what it means to be in physical proximity, to have contact and how art can be a kind of stage that enables people to engage with that. I think one of the things that has happened in the midst of this is that there is a whole new awareness of ourselves in the world and with others.”

Carla DeMarco

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Our cultural backgrounds influence how we interpret emojis, U of T study finds

With a focus on women, U of T researcher aims to raise awareness of Métis issues in Canada

Art in the time of COVID-19: Finding ways to 'render the invisible visible'

Read John Paul Ricco’s contribution in Tilting, a publication by the Blackwood Gallery at U of T Mississauga

Listen to an interview with John Paul Ricco on the View to the U podcast