Sharon Aschaiek

Animal populations living in North American cities are likely to undergo a significant shift as changes to the Earth’s climate intensify – and that, in turn, is likely to have an impact on us.

That is among the key findings of a ��ɫֱ�� study led by Alessandro Filazzola, who was recently a post-doctoral researcher in ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga’s Centre for Urban Environments (CUE), a transdisciplinary research centre focused on promoting healthy urban environments.

Alessandro Filazzola (supplied image)

Filazzola used computer modelling to project the impact of global warming on more than 2,000 terrestrial animal species in the 60 most populated cities in Canada and the United States. He made predictions according to three different scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions and urban land use.

Published recently in the journal PLOS One, the study shows that across all three scenarios each of the 60 cities will experience both substantial gains and losses of urban species by the end of this century. In Toronto, for example, 40 to 195 species that currently live in Canada’s largest city are predicted to disappear, while 159 to 360 new species could emerge.

“Most Canadians live in cities, and the nature we interact with every day is in our backyard or local park,” says Filazzola, who has a PhD in biology and works as a data scientist focused on conserving biodiversity.

“The whole sea change in the assemblage of animals that live in our cities will have a large impact on how we behave in our day-to-day activities and what we value.”

Filazzola conducted the research with Marc Johnson, a professor of biology at ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga and former director of CUE. His work was also supervised by Scott MacIvor, an associate professor of biological sciences.

To gather data on animal species, the researchers – who engaged leaders from Credit Valley Conservation, Conservation Halton and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority to understand their top concerns in managing biodiversity – turned to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, a free public resource featuring data about all types of life on Earth.

They modelled the historic and future distributions of 2,019 land-based animals in highly developed cities – 13 in Canada and 47 in the U.S. – with more than 400,000 residents. The computer modelling projections were shaped in part by bioclimactically relevant historical variables for each city, including average monthly minimum and maximum temperatures, and monthly precipitation.

The results predicted the highest introduction of new species in temperate cities – Quebec City and Ottawa in Canada, and Omaha and Kansas City in the U.S. Midwest. The largest declines in species are projected to take place in the subtropical parts of the U.S. and coastal California. Cities in arid parts of the U.S. – including Las Vegas, and Mesa and Tucson in Arizona – are expected to experience the fewest changes in species richness.

Meanwhile, cities that have historically experienced colder temperatures are predicted to have significantly higher gains in novel species and fewer losses in resident species. Urban areas with historically high precipitation were projected to have the highest species turnover – both the greatest gains and the largest losses. In the scenario with more intense development and greenhouse gas emissions, cities would experience significantly more species lost and gained.

The urban animals expected to be most negatively affected by climate change are amphibians, canines and loons.

“When the modelling predicts a big spike in temperature or a big drop in precipitation, you get a unique climate, and some species can endure it and some cannot – these are the ones that are probably going to be the most impacted and most likely to be lost,” Filazzola says.

The study notes that as urban ecosystems continue to transform due to global warming, shifts in our urban wildlife will have implications for our cultural identity and heritage – given how much animals figure into our national symbols and sports teams, the researchers say – and even our mental health.

“We know that having more green space and natural areas around us is very important for our well-being,” Johnson says. “If we lose nature, and the animals associated with it, it can negatively affect our psychological health.”

Infants worse at telling apart unfamiliar male voices versus female voices: Study

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 14:22:29 +0000

Infants worse at telling apart unfamiliar male voices versus female voices: Study

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 02/14/2024 - 09:22

Cutline

PhD candidate Madeleine Yu and collaborators from the Child Language and Speech Studies Lab studied how infants respond to unfamiliar male voices (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Sharon Aschaiek

Topic

Breaking Research

��ɫֱ�� Mississauga

Subheadline

Research by a ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga psychology student identified an intriguing difference in how babies relate to male and female voices

Babies are worse at distinguishing between the voices of unfamiliar male adults compared to unfamiliar females, according to a new study by Madeleine Yu, a doctoral candidate at the ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga.

“This was not what we were expecting,” says Yu, a researcher in ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga’s Child Language and Speech Studies (CLASS) lab, whose study was published in the journal JASA Express Letters. “It seems like there’s something going on with this difference in how infants respond to unfamiliar male voices.”

Elizabeth Johnson (photo by Drew Lesiuczok)

Yu collaborated on the study with CLASS lab director Elizabeth Johnson, a professor in ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga’s department of psychology, and former lab research associate Natalie Fecher who, in 2019, completed a study on how well 4.5-month-old infants can tell apart unfamiliar female voices. Yu replicated the procedures of this earlier study but changed the talkers to males to determine how gender might impact the findings.

The participants were 48 infants from the Greater Toronto Area who were all ages four to five months and monolingual English learners. Mothers were primary caregivers for at least 46 of the babies.

Seated on their caregiver’s lap in a special booth that minimized external sounds, each infant was exposed to audio recordings of 40 unrelated simple sentences spoken by pairs of adult males. The male talkers were all native English speakers born and raised in Canada with acoustically similar voices, and spoke their sentences in a neutral tone of voice.

When an audio recording played, a multi-coloured flickering checkerboard with a blinking red star in the centre would activate on a computer monitor in front of them. When the infants responded to the audio by turning their attention to the monitor, the researchers tracked how long they looked at it.

The first phase involved familiarizing the infants with one male talker by playing his recordings repeatedly.

Then, the researchers conducted four trials: two same-voice trials (with recordings by the same familiar male), and two different-voice trials (with recordings from a new, unfamiliar male).

The study results suggest that the infants were less able to detect a talker change with male voices than with female voices (photo by Anna Schvets via Pexels)

The researchers found that the lengths of time the infants looked at the monitor were the same during both trials. This result differs from that of Johnson and Fecher’s 2019 study, where the infants looked significantly longer during the same-voice trial than during the different-voice trial.

This suggested to the researchers that the infants were less able to detect a talker change with the male voices than with the female voices.

“It's possible that the infants’ greater exposure to females [as their primary caregivers] shaped their perception to better tell apart female versus male voices,” Yu says.

Johnson adds another explanation is that it could be evolutionary. “We know the auditory system develops before the visual system, and we also know that identifying your caregiver is really important [for survival]. Historically, females have tended to be the primary caregiver,” says Johnson. “So, there could be some evolutionary argument for being more tuned into female voices early on than male voices.”

Yu and Johnson say studying such young subjects presented its challenges, forcing researchers to organize trials around the unpredictable nap times, feeding schedules and temperaments of the infants. But Yu says the effort was worth it, as the study fills a glaring gap in infant voice recognition literature — which features almost exclusively female talkers — and so provides a rare look at how infants perceive the world.

“I think it’s really fascinating that by testing differences in looking behaviour, we can make inferences about the differences in the perception of a four-month-old,” Yu says.

The study builds on a body of speech processing and talker recognition research that Yu has completed throughout her higher education journey, which includes a bachelor of science in cognitive and behavioural science at the University of California, San Diego and a master’s degree in psychology at ��ɫֱ��.

She is also examining differences in how we recognize the voices of individuals with familiar and unfamiliar accents, a topic that is the focus of her doctoral dissertation.

��ɫֱ�� prof uses the ubiquitous banana to explore capitalism's history in the Americas

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 15:03:40 +0000

��ɫֱ�� prof uses the ubiquitous banana to explore capitalism's history in the Americas

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 11/27/2023 - 10:03

Cutline

A scene from a banana town in Honduras run by the United Fruit Company (photo by Rafael Platero Paz)

Topic

Subheadline

Visualizing the Americas project shines a light on the banana industry and its legacy of discrimination, exploitation and political struggle

On the surface, bananas seem an uncontroversial fruit – delicious, nutritious and widely consumed all over the world.

But peel back the layers and you’ll find that the banana has much to teach us about capitalism, exploitation and political struggle, according to Kevin P. Coleman, an associate professor of historical studies at the ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga.

Coleman’s new research project demonstrates how the historical journey of this tropical fruit from Latin American farms to North American homes has been anything but straightforward.

“This is a story of the power dynamics these farmers experienced as a result of a foreign company working in their country, of the power dynamics in their societies and also of how they organized and succeeded,” says Coleman, whose project was supported by an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Kevin P. Coleman (supplied image)

In Visualizing the Americas, Coleman documents the economic, social and political dynamics of the banana industry in countries such as Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama. Working in collaboration with the UTM Library, he has created a comprehensive resource that reveals how worker exploitation, racial discrimination and ecological destruction have shaped the production and consumption of this popular commodity.

The resource can be used to inform current and future political struggles in Latin America and the Caribbean since it shows how poor and marginalized banana workers resisted unfair treatment by foreign employers.

“Visualizing the Americas is about insight, motivation, empowerment,” Coleman says.

Through historical records, photographs and interviews with scholars, Visualizing the Americas details the practices of the United Fruit Company, a multinational corporation based in Boston, Mass., that owned extensive land and employed tens of thousands of people in the Eastern Caribbean and Central and South America. The company created a workforce with a racial hierarchy that placed white Americans in upper-level positions and members of the local population – Black residents, mestizo and other mixed-race groups, Indigenous Peoples, Garifuna communities and immigrants – in low-wage, unskilled jobs. For the middle roles, including overseers, managers, timekeepers and engineers, the company recruited West Indian migrant workers from the British Caribbean.

Photographer Rafael Platero Paz in a 1954 self-portrait.

To explain the ramifications of this racially stratified labour force, Coleman interviews Michigan State University history professor and author Glenn Chambers, who notes that the West Indian workers served as a “buffer” between management and manual labourers.

“West Indians were of African descent, but saw themselves as British, Christian, and ‘civilized’” and “viewed non-West Indians as outsiders and their culture inferior,” said Chambers, which “made organizing around Blackness difficult.”

The site also explains how the United Fruit Company exerted its influence on governments in the region to suppress the rights of workers. A key example was the Oct. 6, 1928 strike by Colombia’s banana labourers over long hours and low pay. Records show how the company was complicit in the military’s violent quashing of the strike, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,000 workers. The Visualizing the Americas website features an archive of nearly 2,000 pages of letters, photos and other documents generated by the company from 1912-1982 that reflect unjust employment practices.

Visualizing the Americas also explores how exploitative labour practices make bananas so cheap, the environmental impacts of monoculture cultivation practices and the gains made by worker unions to create better working conditions in banana-growing regions.

There is a rich visual history of the life, culture and struggles of members of a banana company town in Honduras as captured by photographer Rafael Platero Paz, who sought to document the community’s social transformations over 57 years.

“I think it’s easy for many of us to forget that history is made by people,” Coleman says. “Many may not realize what an important role ordinary banana plantation workers played in the history of their countries.”

New research underscores need to protect 'oasis of the Arctic'

siddiq22 — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 13:59:46 +0000

New research underscores need to protect 'oasis of the Arctic'

siddiq22 Fri, 07/07/2023 - 09:59

Cutline

A beached iceberg on the Nares Strait, which is surrounded by the oldest and thickest sea ice in the world (photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

Topic

Research & Innovation

Sustainability

��ɫֱ�� Mississauga

Subheadline

Kent Moore, a professor of atmospheric physics at ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga, collaborated with scientists from Environment and Climate Change Canada to study the North Water polynya

A new study by scientist Kent Moore shows that the unique marine ecosystem supporting a web of diverse natural life in the frozen Arctic is managing to sustain itself against the impacts of climate change – so far.

His findings, in partnership with researchers from Environment and Climate Change Canada, were recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Kent Moore (supplied image)

A professor of atmospheric physics in the department of chemical and physical sciences at the ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga, Moore is studying an 85-000-square-foot expanse known as a polynya – the name for a year-round open-water area surrounded by sea ice.

Located in north Baffin Bay between Canada and Greenland, it creates a relatively warmer microclimate with melted freshwater, which triggers an abundant bloom of phytoplankton each spring.

The site attracts diverse species of fish, birds, walruses, narwhals, whales, seals and polar bears who come to feed, mate and rest. For several millennia, the polynya has also been a source of traditional food for local Indigenous peoples.

Scientists refer to this site as the North Water (NOW) polynya, while it is known among some Inuit in Canada and Greenland as Pikialasorsuaq. Whatever name is used, Moore wants to underscore its ecological importance.

“The Arctic is mostly like a desert – it's difficult for a lot of wildlife to survive," Moore said. “But the North Water is quite amazing, because it’s the most biologically productive ecosystem in the region … You can think of it as an oasis in the Arctic."

The Nares Strait region, including northern Baffin Bay (NBB); Smith Bay (SB); Inglefield Fjord (IF); Smith Sound (SS); Kane Basin (KB); Humboldt Glacier (HG); Kennedy Channel (KC); Hall Basin (HB): Robeson Channel (RC); and Lincoln Sea (LS). Blue lines show the approximate location of the North Water polynya. (Map: Scientific Reports)

The NOW is below the Nares Strait, a waterway separating northwest Greenland from Ellesmere Island, surrounded by the oldest and thickest sea ice in the world.

Each winter, ice arches up to 100 kilometres in length from along the northern and southern ends of the strait. They stabilize the ice for seven or eight months, preventing any breaking ice floes from traveling down into the NOW.

To understand how the warming Earth is affecting the region, Moore collaborated with two scientists from Environment and Climate Change Canada to study the ice arches. Their 2021 study found that thinning ice is causing these arches to collapse earlier each year.

“There’s been a lot of work suggesting that without the arches, the NOW will dramatically change,” Moore said. “That change would mean a reduction in productivity, fewer species in the region and just a general decline in the richness of the ecosystem.”

Recently, Moore partnered again with the same scientists to examine satellite data showing patterns of ice arch formation and disintegration each winter since 2007. They also developed weather prediction models to estimate how, in the absence of ice arches, winds will blow ice downstream into the NOW.

They found that when arches do not form, the presence of sea ice tends to be about 10 per cent higher than usual. However, despite variations in ice arch activity, biological productivity in the NOW has held steady.

Moore said this may be because the region’s strong winds push the ice into – and then out of – the polynya, leaving them no time to disturb the ecosystem.

“It’s kind of a good news story that the polynya appears to be more stable than people thought,” Moore said. “We can breathe a bit easier about the NOW for the next few years.”

But as climate change intensifies, the NOW could be at risk. As a critical habitat for so many diverse species, and a key contributor to the food security of nearby Indigenous communities, it needs to continue to be monitored, Moore noted.

“The underlying issue is that we’re still warming the planet up. And there are many other stresses on the environment and the animals in that region,” he said.

“If you go to a scenario where we lose all the ice in the Arctic, then the NOW won’t be there anymore.”

English scholars develop unique resource for asexuality and aromanticism research

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 15:59:22 +0000

English scholars develop unique resource for asexuality and aromanticism research

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 04/11/2023 - 11:59

Cutline

��ɫֱ�� Mississauga's Jenna McKellips, left, and Liza Blake, right, co-created the Asexuality and Aromanticism Bibliography, which currently contains more than 500 references (photos supplied)

Sharon Aschaiek

Topic

Our Community

Critical Digital Humanities Network

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Faculty of Information

Graduate Students

Humanities

��ɫֱ�� Mississauga

It is now easier for researchers to study asexuality and aromanticism thanks to a new resource created by two ��ɫֱ�� English scholars.

Liza Blake, an associate professor of medieval and Renaissance literature at ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga, and Jenna McKellips, a graduate student in English language and literature, have co-created the Asexuality and Aromanticism Bibliography.

The bibliography is unique in that it combines references to literature on asexuality, which is defined as having little to no sexual attraction to others, with those on aromanticism, which is defined as not being romantically attracted to others.

While other collections of citations and references on these orientations exist, Blake and McKellips say much writing in this area is scattered across the web, which can make research difficult.

“One of the best ways we thought to advance this field of study was to let people save themselves that extra step and just dive right in and find the relevant writing for them,” says Blake, who has taught classes on early modern asexualities and is co-editing a scholarly collection on this topic.

The project arose through the two scholars’ research process while the bibliography was launched last September.

“A lot of the work academic work on aromanticism is kind of buried within asexuality resources. So we wanted to make those writings visible without conflating them,” says McKellips, whose research focuses mainly on queer virginities – and more narrowly on asexualities – in the context of medieval drama.

The bibliography currently contains more than 500 references to asexuality and aromanticism writings that are primarily humanities- and theory-based resources, although there are plans to add psychological and sociological sources touching on scientific discourses on asexuality that influence theoretical formulations. There are also reading and teaching collections that instructors can use in their courses on asexual or aromantic studies.

In addition to writings by academics, the resource includes work by members of the asexuality, or “ace,” community. The researchers say providing scholars with access to materials beyond peer-reviewed journal articles increases opportunities for truly inclusive research.

“The ace community publishes a lot of reflective and theoretical blog posts and Tumblr posts and videos on asexuality as an identity,” Blake says. “We wanted to include these as part of the archive because they are so thoughtful and meaningful.”

The bibliography was developed with the support of ��ɫֱ��’s Critical Digital Humanities Initiative (CDHI), an institutional strategic initiative that enables transdisciplinary collaborations that deal with questions of power, social justice and critical theory. The initiative provided McKellips with a graduate partner grant to start building the resource.

The project is an example of the type of projects that CDHI’s UX Design for DH Accelerator Program was made for, says CDHI Managing Director Danielle Taschereau Mamers, adding that the accelerator program supports researchers in creating websites, digital exhibitions, databases and other digital projects.

The CDHI Accelerator team, which included Peter Luo, a user-experience design co-op student from the Faculty of Information, and CDHI developer Matt Lefaive, worked with McKellips and Blake to identify accessibility issues on their existing site and to make it a more usable resource for both academic and wider audiences.

“In addition to implementing new design elements and improving the bibliography’s search functions, Peter tested the new design with an array of users to ensure we were meeting the research team’s goals around accessibility and usability,” Taschereau Mamers says.

To make it easy for researchers to find relevant resources, all of the bibliography’s content is tagged from a list of several dozen relevant topics. They can also filter their searches by publication type – for example, article, book chapter or dissertation, and by academic or community writing.

“One of our big goals has been to make sure that we are not thinking about categories like race and disability as secondary to asexuality. A lot of the best writing on asexuality is precisely asexuality as an intersectional category,” Blake says. “Thinking about asexuality as a critical category is something that helps us challenge what makes it difficult for asexual people to exist in the world, and how that is impacted by things like race, disability and gender.”

Dismantling barriers: High school students experience ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga via program for Black youth

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 18:12:06 +0000

Dismantling barriers: High school students experience ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga via program for Black youth

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 01/24/2023 - 13:12

Cutline

SEE UTM graduate Onyinyechi Oluikpe shows off her certificate during the Support, Engage, Experience ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga program's celebration and graduation event (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Sharon Aschaiek

Topic

Our Community

Diversity and Inclusion

Abby-Gayle Isadora Allen and Trevon Nwaozor share the opinions of many first-year students when asked what it feels like to attend ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga:

“Eye-opening.”

“We can do anything we put our mind to.”

“We’re not alone…we have support.”

“I can do this.”

But Allen and Nwaozor aren’t typical T Mississauga students – at least not yet. They’re seniors in high school who recently took part in Support, Engage, Experience ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga, an innovative program that makes university education more accessible to Black youth who are underrepresented at Canada’s post-secondary schools.

Developed with the Peel District School Board and piloted this past fall, it allowed students in Grade 11 and 12 to earn a university half credit and two Ontario Secondary School Diploma credits, have a co-op experience and be mentored by a senior ��ɫֱ�� undergraduate student while simultaneously completing their high school semester.

“The goal is for these students to not only experience the institution, but to see that they are capable of learning here,” says program co-facilitator Jessica Silver, director of student engagement in the Centre for Student Engagement. “When we talk about access, we’re actually talking about the ability to change someone’s ability to attend post-secondary … changing the trajectory of their life.”

Such programs are critical to advancing equity in a society where persistent racial discrimination and systemic socioeconomic barriers continue to adversely affect the participation of Black Canadians in higher education. Statistics Canada data shows that Black youth are less likely than their counterparts to have a post-secondary certificate, diploma or degree.

Abby-Gayle Isadora Allen dances beside Juno Award-winning singer Liberty Silver during the SEE UTM celebration and graduation (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

To help address this disparity, ��ɫֱ�� introduced SEE ��ɫֱ��, the inaugural version of this access program, four years ago in collaboration with the Toronto District School Board. Operating in Woodsworth College on the St. George campus, the program has served multiple cohorts of senior students from two high schools in the city. A similar program is in place at ��ɫֱ�� Scarborough.

Keen to apply the program at ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga and build on the campus’s existing efforts to smooth the pathway to university for Black high school students, Silver partnered with Emily Mancuso in Student Recruitment & Admissions to create a customized version for ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga that includes a dedicated academic adviser and the co-operation of numerous campus units.

“UTM is committed to inclusion and ensuring we’re providing access to Black students in their pursuit of post-secondary education,” says Mancuso, associate registrar and director of student recruitment and admissions. “We’re dedicated to dismantling barriers that hold anyone from reaching their full potential.”

Trevon Nwaozor gives a presentation during the SEE UTM celebration and graduation held on Jan. 18 (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Allen and Nwaozor were among 22 participants from Fletcher’s Meadow Secondary School and Meadowvale Secondary School who participated in the pilot program. The Peel school board provided them with public transit fare or a chartered bus and money to buy lunch on campus. ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga, meanwhile, offered students the opportunity to experience academic and campus life, along with supports.

The students took part in the interdisciplinary foundations course called “Critical Thinking for STEM Learning” through the Institute for the Study of University Pedagogy, with ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga covering tuition and book fees. There, they learned how STEM subjects intersect with society, history, politics, equity, environment and culture. To help them with their studies, they could turn to their mentor, their teaching assistant or a facilitated study group.

“You learn how to manage your workload…and how to communicate if you’re falling behind,” Allen says.

For her co-op placement, Allen served as a program assistant in the Centre for Student Engagement, where she was involved in analyzing the SEE UTM program, conducting research and identifying ways to improve future iterations. Meanwhile, Nwaozor’s placement aligned with his interests in social justice and political science. As a programming assistant in the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Office, he helped identify gaps in inclusion on campus and contributed a post to the office’s Twitter account on Martin Luther King Day.

“It gave me a glimpse of what it could look like to work on campus while being at school,” Nwaozor says.

Workshops focused on areas such as discovering your strengths, managing personal finances and adapting to the post-secondary environment. The students were also exposed to ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga’s wide range of services and facilities, and were provided with a student card to use across campus.

Allen and Nwaozor say the one-on-one mentoring they each received from a third- or fourth-year student was a highlight. Over 20 hours spread across bi-weekly half-hour sessions, the pair were able to learn first-hand about the highlights and challenges of being a university student.

“It’s almost like having an older sibling…they support you and give you ideas and tips,” Allen says.

SEE UTM graduates Giovanni Williams and Josephine Tzogas take a photo with their certificates during the program's celebration (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Tobi Mohammed was a mentor in the SEE UTM program as well as the teaching assistant for their course. The fourth-year biology for health sciences student helped participants tackle skills such as time management, learning how to apply to university and creating LinkedIn profiles.

Mohammed says that she wishes she could have been part of a similar program for Black students upon entering university. Helping other Black youth navigate university is inherently rewarding, she adds, and her way of helping to make higher education more inclusive.

“We talked about their ambitions and goals, their personal struggles. We talked about everything. We cried together,” Mohammed says. “I get to help set these students up for success, while helping to diversify post-secondary education.”

‘It’s going to be special’: ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga alumna returns for in-person celebrations

lanthierj — Fri, 09 Dec 2022 16:36:03 +0000

‘It’s going to be special’: ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga alumna returns for in-person celebrations

lanthierj Fri, 12/09/2022 - 11:36

Cutline

Carisse Samuel, who graduated in 2020 during a virtual ceremony due to the pandemic, is returning to the ��ɫֱ�� with family and friends for an in-person celebration (photo courtesy of Carisse Samuel)

Sharon Aschaiek

Topic

Our Community

2020 & 2021 Graduation Celebrations

Alumni

��ɫֱ�� Mississauga

Members of the ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga’s classes of 2020 and 2021 are reuniting at Convocation Hall this weekend – and for Carisse Samuel, the long-anticipated, in-person celebration “means everything.”

Samuel, who completed the digital enterprise management program and graduated in a virtual convocation in 2020, missed the joy of marking this major life milestone in-person with her school peers, family and friends due to the pandemic. But as she proudly crosses the stage on Dec. 10, she says she will be feting not only an academic accomplishment, but overcoming a life-threatening illness that almost scuttled her education.

“This means everything, because of what I went through to get my degree, from being sick and then coming back to school. It kind of left a little hole in me, not being able to celebrate with my family and friends, so it’s going to be special,” Samuel says.

Carisse Samuel (photo courtesy of Carisse Samuel)

In her second year at ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga, Samuel suddenly contracted anti-NMDAR encephalitis, an autoimmune disease that causes brain dysfunction. Known colloquially as “brain on fire,” the condition put her in a coma for five months. Afterwards, she underwent intensive rehabilitation to relearn how to speak, eat, walk, socialize and manage her emotions. She also had to have surgery to remove her ovaries.

Samuel’s path to recovery was eased by her participation in a support group for individuals with acquired brain injuries, where she learned the craft of creative writing and began expressing her feelings about her illness in poetry. Finding solace in writing, she has decided to write a book about her entire medical journey. She is currently working with an editor and is aiming to publish in November 2023.

“It’s going to be a personal account from when I first started at UTM, to everything I went through and all the processing that happened to get to where I am today, and how it ultimately made me a stronger person,” she says.

Since completing her degree, Samuel has put her digital business expertise to good use, first as a content creator and account coordinator at a marketing agency, and since 2020 as a self-employed digital marketer. She helps non-profit organizations and purpose-driven brands with projects such as social marketing and web design.

“Working in the field put my knowledge to the test, and ��ɫֱ�� really equipped me to handle everything that came my way,” she says.

On the side, Samuel works as a freelance photographer and, as a hobby, paints portraits. She recently took a course in cybersecurity, and became deeply interested in the systems, challenges and opportunities related to the protection of sensitive data. That training has compelled her to build on her education by applying to ��ɫֱ��’s master of information degree, where she wants to specialize in knowledge management and information management.

For now, though, she’s mainly focused on finally getting to complete her convocation experience at ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga, where two good friends will join her for the celebration.

“I’m just looking forward to catching up with everyone I haven’t seen in two years, and walking across that stage and feeling like, I did it!”

Listen to Samuel on CBC Radio's Here and Now

��ɫֱ�� chemist aims to improve diagnosis of disease one protein molecule at a time

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 20:12:05 +0000

��ɫֱ�� chemist aims to improve diagnosis of disease one protein molecule at a time

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 08/10/2022 - 16:12

Cutline

Alana Ogata, a professor of chemistry at ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga, is is aiming to develop bioanalytical technologies that can diagnose illnesses ranging from Parkinson's to cataracts sooner (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Sharon Aschaiek

Topic

Our Community

Research & Innovation

��ɫֱ�� Mississauga

Scientists understand that proteins cause various diseases, from Alzheimer’s to cystic fibrosis to Parkinson’s to cataracts. But detecting them before they trigger illness is still a work in progress.

For ��ɫֱ�� analytical chemist Alana Ogata, the answer is to find better ways to identify single protein molecules in our bodily fluids, such as blood, urine, saliva and sweat.

The assistant professor in the department of chemical and physical sciences at ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga is aiming to develop bioanalytical technologies that can sense the smallest amounts of such proteins, so that diagnosis can happen sooner – which, critically, can lead to better treatment results.

“It’s about determining how the amount of these biomolecules that are present correlates with the stage of a disease,” Ogata says. “We need tools that are extremely sensitive to very low concentrations of proteins so that we can improve our diagnostic capabilities.”

In her lab, Ogata and her team of eight graduate and undergraduate students are exploring how to create biosensors that can quickly reveal the presence of proteins in relatively small sample sizes. Their findings could lead to tests that clinicians can use in hospitals or laboratories. They may also spark more at-home diagnostic tools, such as a pap smear-on-a-stick that would be akin to a pregnancy or rapid antigen COVID-19 test.

“Both of these tests give you a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer,” Ogata says. “We want to be able to make tests that are more quantitative, so that you know exactly how much of a protein is present – tests that are really simple that anyone can use at home.”

Ogata never imagined she would be tackling these sorts of problem when she first studied chemistry at her high school in Washington, D.C.. The concepts were too abstract, she says, and “I didn’t like it from the get-go.” But she gave the subject another chance in her first year at the public research university William & Mary and, with the guidance of a mentor, became captivated by opportunities to do research and lab work that could have real-world benefits.

Ogata built on her chemistry degree with a PhD in physical chemistry at the University of California, Irvine. That was followed by two post-doctoral research positions in Boston at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where she examined COVID-19 antigens in patients and vaccinated health-care workers. Published earlier this year in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, the study presented the first evidence of SARS-CoV-2 protein production from the mRNA vaccination, which validated the process of this then-novel approach to inoculation.

One year into her tenure at ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga, Ogata continues to build her research program, which also includes investigating bioinspired nanomaterials – synthetic substances that can mimic the structure, properties or functions of living matter – for medical purposes, and developing more effective diagnostics for gynecological diseases such as breast cancer, ovarian cancer and endometriosis. She would like to see more effort made to examine proteins in a historically understudied bodily fluid: menstrual blood.

“We know very well how to detect the biomarker for prostate cancer, but if I were to Google ‘menstrual blood-based markers,’ there’s not a lot in the literature,” she says. “There’s a stigma around it …and it may be more difficult to do. But there are a lot of things that are difficult in science, and we still figure out a way.”

Ogata’s research recently received two Discovery grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. And, earlier this month, she received the New Researcher Award from the Connaught Fund, an internal program for ��ɫֱ�� researchers.

While support for her work is on a roll, Ogata also prioritizes educating and mentoring students to nurture future scientists, and is looking forward to teaching the third-year course Analytical and Physical Chemistry Instrumentation Laboratory this fall, as well as the fourth-year Advanced Analytical Chemistry course in the winter term.

To strike a balance with her responsibilities in the lab and classroom, Ogata teaches fitness. A certified instructor, she has led classes for her students as a way to build community, which she says feels particularly important during the pandemic.

“The fitness classes are a really nice way for people to get together and it’s good for mental health,” Ogata says. “I feel in my department that people are working hard and they care about what they do, but they’re also taking time for themselves, and that’s rubbing off on me. It’s been very healthy for my personal life.”

Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation opens office on ��ɫֱ�� campus

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 05 Jul 2022 15:40:40 +0000

Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation opens office on ��ɫֱ�� campus

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 07/05/2022 - 11:40

Cutline

A mural by Indigenous artists Philip Cote and Tracey Anthony is painted on the window of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation office at ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Sharon Aschaiek

Topic

Our Community

Alexandra Gillespie

Indigenous Initiatives

Indigenous

Truth and Reconciliation

��ɫֱ�� Mississauga

The Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and the ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga (MCFN) have reached a new milestone on the path to reconciliation: an MCFN office on campus.

The office, which opened last month, is located on the second floor of Maanjiwe nendamowinan, a building housing multiple social science and humanities departments that was named by the MCFN and means “gathering of minds.”

��ɫֱ�� Mississauga is situated on land that falls under the provisions expressed in Treaty 13-A and is the traditional land of MCFN as well as the Huron-Wendat and the Seneca.

“I give special recognition to UTM for constructing a physical office space for the Mississaugas of Credit,” says MCFN Councillor Veronica King-Jamieson, who is the community’s pillar lead for education and awareness.

She says this development helps with “recognizing the urgent need to respect and promote the inherent rights of Indigenous Peoples, which derive from their political, economic and social structures and from their cultures, spiritual traditions, histories and philosophies, especially their rights to their lands, territories and resources.”

The office will provide MCFN council members with a space to conduct their business, which includes planning and executing research, teaching and collaboration work at ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga. The activities include sharing Indigenous Knowledge through the second-year undergraduate course called “Anthropology and the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island” (ANT241H). The community-engaged earning course features Anishinaabe scholars and Elders delivering land-based workshops and field trips that illuminate the history of the local Indigenous presence and ways of life in the region.

The office opening is the latest in a series of steps taken by ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga in recent years to strengthen its relationship with the MCFN. Other steps have included opening the Indigenous Centre in 2017, hiring more Indigenous faculty members, supporting more Indigenous-focused research and Indigenizing curricula.

From left to right: Sadie May, ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga Vice-President and Principal Alexandra Gillespie, Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie, MCFN Councillor Veronica King-Jamieson and MCFN Elder Garry Sault (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Collectively, the efforts are part of the ��ɫֱ��’s broader action plan outlined in its 2017 document “Answering the Call Wecheehetowin: Final Report of the Steering Committee for the ��ɫֱ�� Response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.”

“I’m grateful to the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation for their continued friendship – and I’m excited about all we can do together here, at UTM,” says Alexandra Gillespie, vice-president and principal of ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga. “We’ve placed truth, openness, and reciprocity at the core of our Strategic Framework. Our commitment to these values will guide everything we do as a campus. As part of our Strategic Framework accountabilities, we’ll continue to seek new opportunities to embed anti-colonial and Indigenizing initiatives across campus life.

“This office is a tangible step in our ongoing commitment to deepening reciprocal relationships with Indigenous communities.”

��ɫֱ�� Mississauga’s recognition and inclusion of the MCFN is also a priority for Sherry Fukuzawa, an assistant professor, teaching stream, of anthropology at ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga, who is a founding member of the Indigenous Action Group, an alliance between ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga faculty, staff and MCFN members. The group aims to honour the MCFN’s educational goals of truth through public knowledge, recognition of history and reconciliation by adapting Indigenous knowledge systems to the university space. Fukuzawa was among the group’s members who advocated for ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga to create an on-campus office space for the MCFN.

“It's a step in the right direction that goes beyond tokenism,” Fukuzawa says. “I hope that the space has autonomy for the community … to create and promote their educational initiatives.”

A mural titled Kiinwin Dabaadjmowin, or “Our Story,” depicts the creation story of the Anishinaabe people (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

The first thing anyone passing by the office will notice is a window mural called Kiinwin Dabaadjmowin, or “Our Story.” It depicts the creation story of the Anishinaabe people. Commissioned by the MCFN and created by Indigenous artists Philip Cote and Tracey Anthony, the acrylic artwork also reflects the life of Indigenous Peoples before, during and after colonization. It’s a reminder of a fraught historical journey faced by Indigenous Peoples in Canada, but also signals a promising new chapter of Indigenous inclusion at the university.

“I hope the MCFN office is the beginning of how UTM, and ��ɫֱ�� at large, will establish more opportunities for Indigenous place-making and creating a stronger Indigenous presence at the institution,” says Tee Duke, assistant director, Indigenous Initiatives at ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga.

For MCFN Elder Garry Sault, ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga’s welcoming of the MCFN to campus helps to build a bridge between the vast cultural knowledge of its community and learners who have yet to discover an important and almost-extinguished part of history in Canada.

“It is a wonderful opportunity for higher education to recognize our First Nation and to be able to share in our ongoing story of truth and reconciliation,” Sault says. “It is important to have actual people at the university who will be utilizing the information that we provide so that future generations of colonial entities will be able to glean a clear picture of how the First Nations lived in the past and are moving forward in the future."

��ɫֱ�� researcher reveals new insights on link between genetic mutations and biological evolution

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 18 May 2022 19:33:46 +0000

��ɫֱ�� researcher reveals new insights on link between genetic mutations and biological evolution

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 05/18/2022 - 15:33

Cutline

An abstract illustration of experiments carried out at ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga that show how different combinations of genetic mutations can have an impact on the evolutionary process (illustration by Alex N. Nguyen Ba)

Topic

Research & Innovation

��ɫֱ�� Mississauga

From the longer-beaked Galapagos Island finches studied by biologist Charles Darwin – which enabled them to more effectively snatch insects – to the ability of some humans over others to digest milk, genetic differences that give organisms a competitive edge drive the process of natural selection.

Now, research by Alex N. Nguyen Ba, an assistant professor of biology at the ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga, adds an important dimension to our understanding of how genes interact in the evolutionary process.

Alex N. Nguyen Ba

He is the co-principal investigator of a first-of-its-kind study, published this month in the journal Science, that shows different combinations of genetic mutations can have an impact on the evolutionary process – a finding that could benefit areas such as personalized medicine and vaccine design.

“Evolution is a force that drives all of life on this planet,” Nguyen Ba says. “Understanding how much we can predict about adaptation has been of strong interest to many people in the field.”

He compares adaptation to climbing a mountain. There are several possible routes to the peak – each with its own specific terrain to negotiate. So, how can scientists predict the route to the mountain top?

“There are huge implications if we can figure out what’s going to happen in the future for living organisms,” he says.

At ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga’s annb lab, Nguyen Ba and his team of researchers explore genetic mutations in cells and their impact on evolution using next-generation technologies. These include high-throughput synthetic biology – designing new biological systems or changing existing ones for research purposes – and a desk-sized robot that can process numerous biological samples.

He began the study five years ago when he was a post-doctoral researcher at Harvard University’s Desai Lab. There, he collaborated with Christopher Bakerlee, who is the study’s co-principal investigator.

Together, Nguyen Ba and Bakerlee used CRISPR gene-editing technology to alter genes in the cells of yeast, which is commonly used in genetic engineering research because it shares some genes with humans.

They worked with 10 missense mutations, which are aberrations in DNA code that change the production of amino acids. Considered the building blocks of life, amino acids are molecules that combine to form proteins, which help with everything from healing wounds to providing energy and making antibodies.

The experimentation process involved testing out all possible combinations of these mutations – 1,024 in total. The scientists wanted to determine how interactions between genes affect the expression of certain genetic traits.

Nguyen Ba completed the final year of the study at ��ɫֱ�� Mississauga, where he analyzed and interpreted the data. The study revealed that evolution frequently samples combinations of gene mutations with negative synergy between them. This acts on the yeast’s evolutionary potential in negative ways, for example, by slowing their rate of adaptation.

The findings run counter to the commonly held belief that all biological adaptation unfolds in a predictable way due to some unknown biological law.

Instead, combinations of mutations that have accumulated through time dictate the future evolutionary potential of an organism.

Moreover, he says, it challenges the dominant view in genetic research that we should study one gene mutation at a time. Instead, examining mutations in combination could help us understand diseases and lead to more precise medicine.

“We're showing that in order for us to have a full understanding of how genes actually behave, the combinations of mutations are likely to be very important.”