Connaught Global Challenge Award

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Indigenous

U of T Scarborough

A new partnership will bring several First Nations in Saskatchewan together with a team of researchers from the �ؿ�ζSM and Toronto Metropolitan University to develop new pathways toward housing self-sufficiency.

“A key issue in these communities is the availability of building materials, specifically the reliance on outside sources for materials,” says Sarah Haines, an assistant professor in the department of civil and mineral engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, who is a member of the project team.

“Transporting materials to these remote communities is a significant challenge and creates a very limited supply to meet demand. Making use of locally available materials could enable the building of more houses, as well as address issues with the current housing stock.”

The idea for the project – which is supported by a Connaught Global Challenge Award – was seeded while Haines was preparing to study indoor air quality in First Nations communities in Ontario. She connected with Toronto Metropolitan University architectural science professor and U of T Engineering alumnus Helen Stopps, who was also interested in studying housing in First Nations communities, albeit from a different perspective.

“Researchers in my field have traditionally tended to focus on individual buildings,” says Stopps. “I’m much more interested in how things work at a regional level, especially in terms of how policies, politics and social structures impact what gets built. This applies to all communities, from big cities to remote First Nations communities.”

Haines and Stopps were connected to experts, including Becky Big Canoe of Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation. In those conversations, they saw an opportunity for a project to help address the broader set of issues that affect housing availability on many First Nations across Canada.

Through involvement in the Housing Supply Challenge offered by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), Haines and Stopps connected with Natalie Clyke, who works as a pandemic co-ordinator with the Prince Albert Grand Council (PAGC). The organization represents 12 First Nations that together comprise about 48 per cent of the land area of Saskatchewan.

Clyke has long been a proponent of the use of innovative and sustainable materials in housing on First Nations communities.

“One thing I’ve been advocating for here in Saskatchewan is the use of magnesium oxide board,” says Clyke. “This material can be used in the same ways as plywood, gypsum or cement, but it has natural anti-microbial properties that can prevent some of the issues we see – for example around mold and mildew.”

In the past, Clyke has developed proposals for a community-operated magnesium oxide board manufacturing facility that would produce the material where it’s needed – one example of the types of potential solutions the new partnership aims to explore.

In addition to Haines and Stopps, researchers on the project include U of T researchers Tracey Galloway (anthropology, U of T Mississauga) and Nicholas Spence (health and society, U of T Scarborough). It also includes Penny Kinnear, a lecturer with the Troost Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering, and Roxanna Dehghan, a research associate at the Centre for Global Engineering.

Through Clyke, the researchers connected with several of the Saskatchewan First Nations that are members of PAGC. These include Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation, James Smith Cree Nation, Wahpeton Dakota Nation and Montreal Lake Cree Nation. Conversations with the remaining PAGC First Nations and communities are ongoing.

The project is titled “From Harvest to House: Developing a Pathway to Housing Self-sufficiency in Remote First Nations Communities.” The Connaught Global Challenge Award provides 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.”

Over the course of the next several months, this group aims to convene a series of individualized workshops that enable the project’s members to discuss both the challenges and the potential for new approaches.

“Our initial goal is to listen to community representatives and determine the most critical housing issues in their community,” says Haines. “From there, we can start to talk about what materials are available, how they could be repurposed or what innovative strategies might help address these issues.”

“These workshops will be an opportunity for our communities to develop relationships with builders, engineers and researchers,” says Clyke.

“Together, they can create new and improved building methods that will incorporate what the communities themselves have available and want to use, while reducing the need to rely on outside materials and expertise.”

Clyke says that what she’d ultimately like to see come out of the project is a publicly available resource that outlines a set of solutions that any community can adapt to its own situation and needs.

“As we embark on this, we’re walking with our culture, our trauma and our reconciliation,” she says. “Everything requires an unfolding for it to heal, and that’s true of our housing practices as well.”

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

Cutline

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

Humanities

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Two �ؿ�ζSM 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.

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 �ؿ�ζSM. 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.”

Making a global impact: Four U of T projects receive Connaught Global Challenge Award

perry.king — Tue, 14 May 2019 21:03:24 +0000

Making a global impact: Four U of T projects receive Connaught Global Challenge Award

perry.king Tue, 05/14/2019 - 17:03

Cutline

Associate Professor Ana Cristina Andreazza's team was one of four recipients of the Connaught Global Challenge Award (photo by Perry King)

Perry King

Topic

Global Lens

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Faculty of Medicine

Global

Translational Research Program

Vaccines

Four projects at the �ؿ�ζSM – in areas that range from seniors’ vaccinations and mitochondrial health to synthetic biology and research translation – will receive a total of $1 million through the impact-focused Connaught Global Challenge Award.

The award, funded by the U of T Connaught Fund, aims to heighten the university’s impact by advancing knowledge and finding solutions to problems around the world. Founded in 1972 when U of T sold the Connaught Medical Research Laboratories, the Connaught Fund is the largest internal university research-funding program in Canada and supports the university’s top researchers at every career stage.

The teams will use the award money to get their projects off the ground, access external funding and further develop solutions to global challenges and create new research-oriented academic programs.

“The �ؿ�ζSM, through the Connaught Global Challenge Award, wants to encourage and grow projects that have potential to bring positive global change,” said Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president of research and innovation. “The winners named this year reflect U of T’s broad leadership and expertise in multiple disciplines. Their projects could lead to solutions for some of world’s most challenging and complicated problems.

“U of T congratulates these four research teams on the thoughtful and creative approaches described in their applications.”

In keeping with U of T’s commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion, review panel members completed an unconscious bias online module and accessed equity resources from the Division of the Vice-President Research and Innovation in the course of determining the winning projects, including aggregated equity data on the applicant pool to ensure diversity.

Here are the four projects being funded:

Ana Cristina Andreazza, an associate professor in the department of pharmacology and toxicology, is receiving $244,100 to enhance mitoNET, a network of academic and non-academic experts who focus on mitochondrial research – specifically, the links between mitochondria in cells and diseases like cancer and heart disease.

The network spans several fields, including science and medicine, ethics, public health, and data management.

“We had a simple goal: bring the community together,” said Andreazza, who co-founded mitoNET with the MitoCanada Foundation in 2017.

“What we were all interested in was trying to understand how mitochondria played a role in many different diseases.”

MitoNET’s 10-year vision is to provide clinicians with the tools and knowledge to assess mitochondrial health as part of routine care. With support from the award, Andreazza’s group will provide channels for global researchers to collaborate, pool resources and minimize the duplication of research efforts in a supportive environment. MitoNET will also provide a platform to turn its innovations into public policy and public health applications.

MitoNET will actively seek patient feedback as part of its work, said Andreazza, because patients deserve a say in their care. The group’s focus continues to be to “improve the lives of those carrying mitochondrial dysfunction,” she said.

“If you lose focus on that, we can’t move forward.”

Andreazza, in collaboration with the MitoCanada Foundation, is currently planning a mitochondrial disease conference this November in Toronto to potentially accelerate collaborations with other groups, including global cancer and heart disease foundations.

(photo by Perry King)

David McMillen, an associate professor in the department of chemical and physical sciences at U of T Mississauga, will receive $245,400 to develop innovative synthetic biology solutions to critical health problems in developing countries like the Philippines and India.

Synthetic biology is an interdisciplinary research area that seeks to redesign cells so they behave differently – “an engineering effort inside cells,” said McMillen.

For example, scientists could re-program cells so they could better detect and defend against diseases.

The Connaught funding will be used to help formulate policy. In the short term, McMillen and his team will encourage involvement from academic and non-academic global stakeholders that can measure the outcomes and impact of synthetic biology interventions in developing regions.

“[The award will] fund a series of working groups and workshops – we’re going to have a summer institute where we invite people in to get some hands-on experience in synthetic biology, but also hands-on experience with public policy,” said McMillen, who is working with U of T’s Impact Centre accelerator, the Centre for Global Engineering and the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.

The proposed initiative will bring together physical and social scientists, engineers and representatives from industry, government and end-user organizations to move together from brainstorming urgent and realistic targets to identifying creative solutions.

“I see it as part of a larger effort to try to engage people at the �ؿ�ζSM and elsewhere to understand how to deploy [our science] in the Global South.”

(photo by Claude Martel)

A group lead by Adalsteinn Brown, dean of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, will receive $248,789 to help build a new interdisciplinary collaboration at U of T focused on the immunization of seniors, particularly pneumococcal vaccinations.

Healthy aging is an important topic for the Canadian economy and policy-makers – particularly in Ontario, where seniors are becoming an ever-increasing proportion of the population, said Natasha Crowcroft, a professor at Dalla Lana and the Faculty of Medicine’s department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology.

“Older people are a growing demographic,” said Crowcroft, who is also chief science officer at Public Health Ontario and an adjunct scientist at ICES. “We know vaccines can work really well, and we know that we’re not reaching enough older people with vaccines.”

The Connaught Award will also help fund a new Centre for Vaccine-Preventable Diseases, led by Crowcroft. The centre is being supported by vaccine-producer Sanofi-Pasteur – the successor to Connaught Medical Research Laboratories, which was originally established in 1914 to produce diphtheria antitoxin.

The centre will be interdisciplinary, allowing different groups – including health professionals, policy-makers, data scientists, machine learning experts, pharmacists, patients and students – to share space as they seek to better understand and address the growth of preventable illnesses.

“We try to really to touch a lot of different areas and work with a lot of different partners and disciplines,” said Crowcroft.

“It’s trying to help drive forward the idea of the centre by creating networks, forging links and alliances, but [also] oiling the wheels with funding, which makes a huge difference.”

(photo by Horst Herget)

Professor Avrum Gotlieb, in the department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology, will receive $247,000 to build capacity for translational research that enables scientific discoveries to move out of the lab and into the real world, where they can improve patient care, health-care policy and products like pharmaceuticals.

Gotlieb, whose academic research is focused on cardiovascular disease, is also a senior program adviser with U of T’s Translational Research Program, which seeks to move knowledge “towards mechanisms, techniques and approaches that support the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease.”

The Connaught award will support the development and implementation of a Translational Hub – a community dedicated to educational programs, research collaborations and community-building that’s focused on knowledge mobilization and commercialization to improve impact on health and patient outcomes.

“Creation of a community to provide support and infrastructure at the U of T will expedite the growth and development of our local translational infrastructure and its global reach,” said Gotlieb in his project description.

Read about the 2018 winners of the Connaught Global Challenge Award

U of T remembers Joyce Fienberg, killed in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting

Romi Levine — Mon, 29 Oct 2018 14:57:27 +0000

U of T remembers Joyce Fienberg, killed in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting

Romi Levine Mon, 10/29/2018 - 10:57

Cutline

A makeshift memorial located outside of the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh includes the name Joyce Fienberg, who was a U of T alumna (photo by Brendan Smialowski/ AFP/Getty Images)

Topic

City & Culture

Health & Wellness Centre

Cities

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

A �ؿ�ζSM alumna was among the 11 killed in an attack on a synagogue in Pittsburgh on Saturday.

“The �ؿ�ζSM condemns the horrific and abhorrent shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh,” said U of T President Meric Gertler, in a statement today.

“In the wake of this senseless and appalling massacre, we are reminded, again, of the grim toll that antisemitism and racism exact on society.”

Joyce Fienberg (then Libman) graduated from University College in 1964 with a degree in social psychology. The following year, she married alumnus Stephen Fienberg and, in the early 1980s, they moved to the Pittsburgh area. Fienberg worked at the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research & Development Center until she retired in 2008. Her husband died in 2016.

The pair had two sons – Howard and Anthony – and six grandchildren.

“Joyce Fienberg was known to her friends and colleagues as a warm and loving individual, with a keen mind and a generous heart,” said President Gertler. “She was a shining example of kindness to everyone who knew her.”

The Fienberg family has deep roots at University College, said President Gertler.

“Fienberg returned to Toronto as recently as 2017 to accept a University College Alumni of Influence Award on behalf of her late husband Stephen Fienberg,” he said.

President Gertler encouraged members of the U of T community who are in need of personal support to take advantage of the following resources, including counseling and chaplaincy services:

Hillel U of T will be holding a community circle for the university’s Jewish community from 5-6 p.m. Monday on the downtown Toronto campus. A public vigil will take place at 7 p.m. at Mel Lastman Square.

Hillel U of T will also hold a public vigil on the front steps of University College at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday. The U of T flag will also be flown at half-mast at all three campuses on Tuesday.

“On behalf of the entire University, I extend deepest condolences to the Jewish community at U of T and beyond. We stand with you in these sad times,” President Gertler said.

Read President Meric Gertler's full statement

Four U of T global projects get almost $1-million funding injection from Connaught Fund

noreen.rasbach — Fri, 20 Jul 2018 13:54:08 +0000

Four U of T global projects get almost $1-million funding injection from Connaught Fund

noreen.rasbach Fri, 07/20/2018 - 09:54

Cutline

Marc Cadotte, a biological sciences professor at �ؿ�ζSM Scarborough, is receiving $242,500 to set up a Global Urban Biological Invasions Consortium (photo by Ken Jones)

Jennifer Robinson

Topic

Global Lens

Connaught Fund

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Forestry

Global

Humanities

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Rotman School of Management

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

U of T Scarborough

Vector Institute

Global research in blockchain technology and using theologies to help build more inclusive societies are among four �ؿ�ζSM projects sharing almost $1 million in funding from this year’s Connaught Global Challenge Award.

The internal award, funded by the Connaught Fund, supports new collaborations involving leading U of T researchers and students from multiple disciplines, along with innovators and thought leaders from other sectors.

The Connaught funding will help these programs get off the ground and boost efforts to find external funding to further develop solutions to global challenges, as well as create new research-oriented academic programs.

“The Connaught Global Challenge Award is unique,” said Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president of research and innovation. “It fosters cross-disciplinary research, harnessing the university’s incredible depth and breadth of expertise to come up with truly innovative, groundbreaking solutions.

“Once again, we have been amazed by the tremendous creativity and desire of U of T’s scholars to work together to tackle some of the world’s most challenging and complicated global problems.”

The recipients of this year’s Connaught Global Challenge Award are:

Marc Cadotte, a biological sciences professor at �ؿ�ζSM Scarborough, is receiving $242,500 to set up a Global Urban Biological Invasions Consortium.

The consortium will oversee a network of projects and collaborations to determine the magnitude of invasion economic and ecosystem impacts in cities around the world.

Understanding invasive plant and animal species – and how best to tackle them – is largely based on insights from natural habitats, yet urban ecosystems differ radically because of the human population. Researchers will study a number of issues including how political, economic, trade, and environmental differences among cities influence how vulnerable they are to invasive species.

His team includes U of T researchers Marney Isaac, department of physical and environmental sciences and the Centre for Critical Development Studies at U of T Scarborough, and the department of geography; Daniel Silver, department of sociology at U of T Scarborough; Scott MacIvor and Nicholas Mandrak, department of biological sciences at U of T Scarborough and the department of ecology and evolutionary biology; Sara Hughes, department of political science at U of T Mississauga; Marc Johnson, department of biology at U of T Mississauga and director of the Centre for Urban Environments; Marie-Josée Fortin, department of ecology and evolutionary biology; Sandy M. Smith, Faculty of Forestry; and Liat Margolis, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.

In addition, there are external collaborators from research groups in 30 different cities from 19 different countries. The cities are clustered into regional hubs led by Myla Aronson (Rutgers University); David Richardson (University of Stellenbosch); Ingolf Kühn (Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg); Petr Pysek (Institute of Botany, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic); Rafael Zenni (Universidade Federal de Lavras); and Inderjit Singh (Delhi University).

Valentina Napolitano (pictured left), a professor in the department of anthropology, and Simon Coleman, a professor in the department for the study of religion, are receiving $230,000 to further build the U of T tri-campus into a world leading hub of dialogue and expertise on relations between theologies and both the social and the natural sciences.

Theologies, involving multiple means of sensing the divine and orienting everyday practices, remain key to studies of historical and ongoing political forms of social inclusion and exclusion.

The initiative will involve international and interdisciplinary collaborations for the organization of seminars, public lectures and visiting fellowships on the linked themes of sovereignty, sanctity and soil, as well as student initiatives in co-operation with interfaith organizations in the Greater Toronto Area.

Laura Rosella (pictured left), associate professor of epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, is receiving $250,000 to launch a global network to advance innovative research and training in predictive analytics to address pressing global population health challenges.

The multidisciplinary team will create two innovation hubs. One hub will develop and test artificial intelligence, or AI, approaches for population risk prediction and integrate these predictive models into health decision-making. The second team will focus on how best to integrate this knowledge using prescriptive analytics.

The team includes U of T researchers Ajay Agrawal and Avi Goldfarb, Rotman School of Management; Timothy Chan and Scott Sanner, department of mechanical and industrial engineering; and Anna Goldenberg, department of computer science, as well as the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

Andreas Veneris (pictured left), a professor cross-appointed with the Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical and computer engineering and the department of computer science, will receive $250,000 to create the UTLedgerHub, the �ؿ�ζSM’s global knowledge hub for crypto-economic blockchain technology.

The development of distributed ledger technologies such as bitcoin and ethereum has almost entirely occurred outside of the mainstream tech sector, with universities and their researchers largely at the sidelines.

To address this knowledge gap, the UTLedgerHub will bundle research across technology, finance, law and governance to establish U of T as an international leader in research and teaching of decentralized ledger technology and help cement Toronto as a leader in the field at a global scale.

His team includes U of T researchers Andreas Park from the Rotman School of Management; Jon Lindsay from the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy; Katya Malinova from the department of economics, as well as Poonam Puri from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University.

To be considered for Connaught Global Challenge funding, global challenge teams must represent new collaborations involving leading U of T researchers and students from multiple disciplines, along with innovators and thought leaders from other sectors.

The application deadline for the next round of funding is Feb. 1.

Like ‘a performance-enhancing drug’ for cities: U of T's urban genome project

ullahnor — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:01:04 +0000

Like ‘a performance-enhancing drug’ for cities: U of T's urban genome project

ullahnor Mon, 02/13/2017 - 11:01

Cutline

Mark Fox and Dan Silver hope to start unraveling the DNA of cities by researching the makeup of cities like Mumbai (photo by Vidur Malhotra via Flickr)

Jennifer Robinson

Author legacy

Jennifer Robinson

Topic

Global Lens

Connaught Fund

Urban Genome Project

U of T Scarborough