Q: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)

Biology Professor Elizabeth Clare and co-applicants received $223K from the New Frontiers in Research Fund (Exploration stream). Her project, titled “The ethical challenge to non-invasive environmental (e)DNA technology” attempts to adapt the novel discovery of airborne eDNA to diagnose animal health, with the potential for far-reaching impacts. The team is employing untested prototypes for eDNA collection while simultaneously assessing the ethical implications of the technology and potential for misuse.

Question 1

Biology

Accepted Answer

Robert Tsushima

The department welcomed Professors Gordon Fitch, Eryn McFarlane, Luz Puentes Jácome and Yuqing Feng. Over 300 Biology undergraduate students, 11 MSc students, and 28 PhD students convocated in 2023. At the June convocation ceremony, Biology undergraduate students Areeba Chaudhry and Sarah Pullano received the Faculty of Science Gold Medal; as well, PhD graduate Farwa Sajadi received the President’s University-Wide Teaching Award. Mustafa Abdulkadhim and Arman Sadr were awarded the Robert J. Tiffin Student Leadership Award. PhD graduate Kathleen Dogantzis was awarded the Doctoral Dissertation Prize for “Understanding the evolutionary origin and ancestral composition of honey bee (Apis mellifera) populations” and a Governor General’s Gold Medal for her scholastic achievements as a graduate student.

Two Biology faculty members received Faculty of Science awards: Professor Charlotte de Araujo received the Excellence in Teaching Award (Contract Faculty category) and Professor Elizabeth Clare received the Early Career Research Award. Professor Amro Zayed also received the Postdoctoral Supervisor Award from the Faculty of Graduate Studies. Professor Laurence Packer published “Bees of the World: A Guide to Every Family,” and Professor Beth Clare received the Gizmodo Science Fair award for her study “How Airborne DNA Could Revolutionize Conservation,” published in Current Biology. Professor Peter Backx was elected as a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in recognition of his research on cardiac arrhythmias, and Professor Sapna Sharma was named York Research Chair in Global Change Biology.

The Biology department received over $6 million in research funding, including $780,000 from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to Professor Chun Peng for her research on pre-eclampsia. Postdoctoral Fellow Hyekyong Sung was the first York community member to receive the CIHR Research Excellence, Diversity, and Independence Early Career Transition Award.

— Professor Robert Tsushima, Chair of the Department of Biology

Question 2

Physics & Astronomy

Accepted Answer

Patrick Hall

The department welcomed new Professors Rahul Kannan, Paul Scholz, Nikita Blinov, and Charles-Édouard Boukaré. Professors Patrick Hall, Deborah Harris and Marko Horbatsch, and Adjunct Professor Junwu Huang were NSERC Discovery Grant recipients.

Thanks to a generous donation from alumnus Itay Yavin, ten undergraduates in the department competed for prize money in a Fall Campus Day problem-solving competition organized by Professors Chris Bergevin, Sarah Rugheimer, and Patrick Hall.

Postdoctoral fellow Tejin Cai and Professor Deborah Harris spoke to Scientific American about their discovery of a new way to investigate the structure of protons using neutrinos. Professor Adam Muzzin, newly appointed as Graduate Program Director, was awarded a 44-hour program on the James Webb Space Telescope, the second-largest amount of time granted to a Canadian program. Professor Ozzy Mermut and collaborators, including Adjunct Professor Christopher Barrett, were awarded a grant to study algal blooms in Indigenous lakes of Tkaronto and Six Nations.

Undergraduate student Sarah Powell and Professor Randy Lewis were instructors at the Quantum Computing Boot Camp held at Jefferson Lab, Virginia. Research led by PhD student Nelson Nunes and supervised by Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar Norbert Bartel verified Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity and the Einstein equivalence principle by measuring Earth's gravitational redshift. PhD student Jordan Krywonos (supervised by Professor Matthew Johnson) received a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship. And, congratulations to biophysics graduate students Rohith Kaiyum and Coral Hillel, who received prizes for their presentations at the 2023 Canadian Association of Physicists Congress.

— Professor Patrick Hall, Chair of the Department of Physics & Astronomy

Question 3

Science, Technology & Society

Accepted Answer

Vera PavriRobin Metcalfe

Our department was thrilled to re-open the Science, Technology & Society program to major and minor students in fall 2023, with a new course titled Science, Technology and Racial Social Justice launching in winter 2024. We also welcomed a new faculty member, Jeremy Webb, as an assistant professor, teaching stream.

A number of our faculty members led national and international efforts that are worth noting. Professor Hélène Mialet proposed a new program named “Future Flourishing” that won the international “Future of Being Human” competition held by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. Professor James Elwick was Program Chair for the meeting of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Science, which included a discussion by Frédéric Bouchard (Université de Montréal) on his “Bouchard Report,” which called for changes to how science is funded in Canada. Professor Conor Douglas was centrally involved in the organization and delivery of a number of events at the intersection of drugs, rare diseases and society; for instance, he developed and launched the international Global Pharmaceutical & Society Studies Network and its associated webinar series, and co-organized and led the Global Conference on Advancing Social Pharmaceutical Innovation in Utrecht, Netherlands.

The Division of Natural Science (NATS) continued to work to expand its course offerings with fascinating and topical curricula. Professors Ian Lumb, Jeremy Webb and Stephanie Domenikos successfully proposed and are developing new courses entitled Understanding AI, Introduction to Astrobiology, and Natural Hazards. NATS faculty also continued to be active in public outreach. Professors Robin Metcalfe and Mary-Helen Armour participated in the 2023 Astronomers in Residence program hosted by the Allan I. Carswell Observatory and Killarney Park. Professor Jesse Rogerson had numerous media appearances pertaining to a variety of astronomical events. And, Professor Robin Kingsburgh was an active contributor to innovations in colour education as a means for removing educational barriers between science and art.

— Professor Vera Pavri, Chair of the Department of Science, Technology & Society
— Professor Robin Metcalfe, Director of the Division of Natural Science

Question 4

Mathematics & Statistics

Accepted Answer

Michael Haslam

In 2023, the Department of Mathematics & Statistics welcomed four new full-time faculty members: Professors Miles Couchman (PhD MIT), Mohamed Omar (PhD UC Davis), Dongchen Li (PhD Waterloo) and Kaiqiong Zhao (PhD McGill). The department now has 52 full-time professors, 26 part-time faculty, 24 postdoctoral fellows and many visiting graduate students and professors. It is the fifth largest department at York University.

The department launched a new undergraduate degree program in Data Science that in its first year achieved enrollments of approximately one hundred students, making it the second largest undergraduate program in the Faculty of Science.

Last year, our faculty members contributed to internationally recognized and NSERC-funded research in industrial mathematics, mathematical finance, scientific computing, mathematical biology, disease modeling, vaccine mathematics, actuarial science, data science, biostatistics, statistical machine learning, statistical methodology and theory, algebraic combinatorics, analysis, number theory, probability theory, set theory, and the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Amongst many excellent honours and awards given to our faculty members, Professor Jane Heffernan was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada as a member of the College in a ceremony in 2023. She also began her term as President of the Society for Mathematical Biology and was appointed co-lead of the Canadian Immunization Research Network.

— Professor Michael Haslam, Chair of the Department of Mathematics & Statistics

Question 5

Chemistry

Accepted Answer

Jennifer van Wijngaarden

We welcomed two new faculty members, Professors Lana Hébert and Y. Bill Kim, and celebrated the tremendous achievements of our faculty, staff and students.

Undergraduate students Pariya Rastegar and Nhu (Angela) Nguyen received national recognition with silver medals from the Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC) for high academic standing in the biochemistry and chemistry programs, respectively. Graduate students Na-Yung Seoh and Dusty Cadwallader received NSERC Alexander Graham Bell scholarships, and our inaugural teaching assistant awards celebrated the exceptional contributions of Victor Flores, Charley Garrard and Andrea Angelucci.

Professor Christine Le and her students were recognized globally with the 2023 Journal of Organic Chemistry Outstanding Publication of the Year Award for their innovative approach to the synthesis of fluorinated intermediates that will be widely useful in medicinal chemistry. Professor Ryan Hili was honoured with the Melanie O’Neil award from the CSC for distinguished contributions to biological chemistry, while Professor Y. Bill Kim received the 2023 Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award that will allow him to develop new methods of creating genetic mutations in cells to better understand and treat diseases.

Professors Kyle Belozerov and Derek Jackson were recognized by the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities with an award of excellence for their design of virtual reality classroom activities to help chemistry students build “3D literacy” to mentally manipulate complex molecules. Professors Trevor VandenBoer and Cora Young hosted a team of international researchers for a four-week intensive air quality measurement campaign called THE CIX, while Professor Christopher Caputo was invited to join the “Science Meets Parliament” organizing committee to strengthen the connection between the science and policy communities in Canada.

— Professor Jennifer van Wijngaarden, Chair of the Department of Chemistry

Question 6

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)

Accepted Answer

Our researchers received more than $8.4M in grants from NSERC through the Discovery Grants, Discovery Launch Supplements, Research Tools and Instruments, Alliance, and Collaborative Research and Training Experience programs. These grants enable them to pursue discovery-driven research programs, conduct innovative research activities, train highly qualified personnel, and establish and strengthen diverse partnerships and interdisciplinary collaborations.

Our Discovery Grants recipients included Jingyi Cao, Patrick Hall, Deborah Harris, Ryan Hili, Marko Horbatsch, Huaxiong Huang, Junwu Huang, Patrick Ingram, Dongchen Li, Seyed Moghadas, Kelly Ramsay, Emanuel Rosonina, Thomas Salisbury, Rui Wang, Woldegebriel Assefa Woldegerima, Yuehua Wu and Mike Zabrocki. The Discovery Launch Supplements recipients included Jingyi Cao, Dongchen Li, Kelly Ramsay, and Woldegebriel Assefa Woldegerima. And, the Research Tools and Instruments recipients included Mark Bayfield, Jennifer Chen, Sergey Krylov and Raymond Kwong.

Deborah Harris

Professors Ryan Hili, Department of Chemistry, and Deborah Harris, Department of Physics & Astronomy, received the largest NSERC Discovery Grants in the Faculty with more than $570K for the project “Exploring the Chemical Diversity of Nucleic Acids” and $480K for the sub-atomic physics project, “Neutrino Oscillations at T2K: New Avenues to Explore,” respectively.

Edward Furman

Five researchers received NSERC Alliance grants totaling $2.6M, including Professors Thomas Baumgartner, Elizabeth Clare, Edward Furman, John McDermott, and Cora Young. Professor Edward Furman, Department of Mathematics & Statistics, received more than $11M through the NSERC Alliance-Mitacs Accelerate program and from industrial partners for a project called “New Order of Risk Management (NORM): Theory and Applications in the Era of Systemic Risk.” The project is focused on developing better ways to manage risk and protect Canadians from increasing threats, including financial and geopolitical crises, pandemics and natural disasters.

Sergey Krylov

Professor Sergey Krylov, Department of Chemistry, received an NSERC Collaborative Research and Training Experience (CREATE) grant. This initiative will provide approximately $8.6M ($1.65M from NSERC) to lead a team of researchers and industrial leaders in training the next generation of technologically advanced graduates. The “Technology-Enhanced Pharmaceutical Discovery” program will train master’s and PhD students with the technical and managerial skills to capitalize on disruptive technologies that aim to impact Canada’s research and development in the pharmaceutical industry.

Question 7

Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)

Accepted Answer

Our researchers received a total of $1.9M from CIHR. A few projects are highlighted below and include co-applicants.

Chun Peng

Professor Chun Peng, Department of Biology, received $780K from CIHR to fund a new project associated with her ongoing research into pre-eclampsia, a serious pregnancy disorder characterized by high blood pressure. Peng’s project, titled “NLRC5 isoforms in placental development and pathogenesis of pre-eclampsia,” builds on findings from a previous project where her team identified two truncated isoforms of a protein called NLRC5 in human placenta. Preliminary results suggest that these NLRC5 isoforms play important roles in regulating placental development and may also contribute to the development of pre-eclampsia.

Woldegebriel Assefa Woldegerima

Professor Woldegebriel Assefa Woldegerima, Department of Mathematics & Statistics, received $480K from CIHR for his project entitled “Modelling, predicting and risk assessment of mpox and other (re)emerging zoonotic threats to inform decision-making and public health actions.” Woldegerima is using epidemiological and geospatial models including mathematical and artificial intelligence-based models to study epidemiology, transmission dynamics, and immunology and intervention strategies to forecast the effectiveness of prevention and control strategies for mpox and other zoonotic diseases in Canada and around the world.

Question 8

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)

Accepted Answer

Biology Professor Elizabeth Clare and co-applicants received $223K from the New Frontiers in Research Fund (Exploration stream). Her project, titled “The ethical challenge to non-invasive environmental (e)DNA technology” attempts to adapt the novel discovery of airborne eDNA to diagnose animal health, with the potential for far-reaching impacts. The team is employing untested prototypes for eDNA collection while simultaneously assessing the ethical implications of the technology and potential for misuse.