From plant defence in soybeans to epidemic modelling, 91ŃÇÉ« graduate researchers are tackling urgent scientific and social questions. The Faculty of Graduate Studies recognizes outstanding research annually through its thesis and dissertation prizes. The annual prizes – valued at $2,000 for doctoral dissertations and $1,000 for master’s theses – honour work defended in the previous calendar year that demonstrates originality, excellence and impact. This year’s awards highlight six projects that explored pressing questions with implications for food security, AI, public health, aging, air quality and workplace accessibility. Together, the projects show how graduate research at 91ŃÇÉ« connects scientific inquiry with real-world challenges.

Five members of the 91ŃÇÉ« community were honoured during Spring Convocation with the University's most prestigious awards in teaching and research: President’s University-Wide Teaching Awards and Distinguished Research Professor. Wahid Khan, a course director in the Faculty of Education and a doctoral student in Kinesiology and Health Sciences, was selected for his commitment to creating inclusive learning environments where every voice, identity and experience is valued. Prilly Bicknell‑Hersco, a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Education, was selected for recognition for her work as a teaching assistant supporting courses in Black studies focused on the experiences of Black communities.

91ŃÇÉ« alumna Randa Qashoa’s journey from the Lassonde School of Engineering to a career advancing space technology highlights the growing impact of women in shaping the future of engineering. Today, Qashoa (BEng ’21, PhD ’25) is a systems engineer at Honeywell Aerospace, where she works on the assembly, integration and testing of quantum communication payloads. While still early in her career, she is already contributing to technologies that could play an important role in the future of secure communications in space. Her path into the industry was shaped by the people and opportunities she encountered at Lassonde.

Three 91ŃÇÉ« scholars have been awarded this year’s Governor General's Gold Medals, honouring exceptional academic achievements among Canadian graduate students. The 2026 recipients are Chimira Nicole Andres, Nicholas Cheng and Joel Landon Prowting. The Governor General's Academic Medals are the highest honour given to outstanding Canadian post-secondary scholars. This year’s awardees represent the University’s dedication to supporting students in achieving academic success.

Antara Dey has won the Mahmoud Eid Graduate Prize at the Canadian Communication Association (CCA) Annual Conference 2026, held at the University of Windsor, Ontario.

The Mahmoud Eid Graduate Prize is presented to the best graduate-level (Master’s or PhD) student paper submitted to the Canadian Communication Association (CCA) annual conference that focuses on media and diversity in Canada, as it pertains to race, religion, and/or Indigeneity.

Dey received the award for her paper, “Curry, Camera, and Communication: Tasting Home in the Bengali Diaspora.”

This paper explores how Bengali food mediates diaspora identity, emotion, and sense of belonging through the mediums of cinema and lived experience. Combining textual analysis and autoethnography, the study examines the films Maacher Jhol (2017) and Daab Chingri (2019) alongside the researcher’s act of sourcing ingredients and cooking these dishes while living in the Bengali diaspora in Canada. Through this dual lens, the paper analyzes how maacher jhol (fish curry) and daab chingri (prawns in coconut milk curry) serve as signifiers that bridge the distance between home and hostland through taste, texture, and memory.

_{Photo of Antara Dey receiving the Mahmoud Eid Graduate Prize at CCA 2026}

The research builds on Banerji (2001), Barthes (1957/1972), and Murcott’s (1986) work on Bengali cuisine, food semiotics, and food identity. The personal accounts expand on the presenter’s experiences of moving away from home, childhood memories of Bengali food, and cooking in a Canadian city while illustrating her journey of cooking two Bengali dishes inspired by her two grandmothers. Bengali foodways, thus, emerge as a system for familial bonding to recreate a sense of home and communicative archive where taste and texture carry the taste of home and connection. Ultimately, the paper enables a discussion of food’s multiple meanings while commemorating its power as a narrator of identity, an emotion of nostalgia, and a sign of cultural expression.

Reflecting on the recognition, Dey shared:

“My grandmothers inspired this research long before I knew it would become an academic project. Through their recipes, I learned that food is memory, history, culture, and a language of love. This paper is both a scholarly exploration and a tribute to the women whose cooking helped me carry a sense of home across continents while living far from my family as part of the Canadian Bengali diaspora. Winning this prize highlights how some of our most powerful stories about identity, migration, and belonging are not only communicated through media, but also through taste, memory, and the recipes passed down across generations.”

At the 91ŃÇÉ« Psychology Clinic, however, researchers and graduate students are working from a different premise: that understanding a child means understanding the family around them. Heather Prime, a clinical psychologist and associate professor in the Faculty of Health, is leading that effort with a team of graduate students. PhD candidate Gillian Shoychet’s doctoral dissertation sits at the centre of this work: she is studying how to implement family assessments in a university clinic, using feedback from families to refine the model. Their work, alongside researcher Maya Koven, is outlined in an article published in JAMA Pediatrics which argues that family systems assessments remain underused in the care of older children and youth.

Research on dogs has expanded rapidly in recent years, offering new insight into one of humanity’s most loyal companions. But postdoctoral fellow Julia Espinosa says much of that knowledge still comes from studies that capture only a limited range of dogs and the people who live with them. Espinosa, a member of the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Health and the Connected Minds program, is among researchers working to better understand dogs as a global species within the fields of comparative psychology and canine science. Her work examines how animals think and behave, and how those processes shape their relationships with people in different environments.

When Ontario made prescription medications free for people under 25, the goal was to improve access to care. New research suggests it also helped prevent some youth mental health crises before they escalated. In 2018, OHIP+ was launched to provide public drug coverage for youth, helping overcome financial barriers to prescription medications for those under 25. For Antony Chum, an associate professor in 91ŃÇɫ’s Faculty of Health who studies how public policy shapes health outcomes, it also created what he describes as a "natural experiment" – an opportunity to track differences before and after free drug coverage was introduced. He examined this "experiment" alongside postdoctoral researchers Peiya Cao and Yihong Bai, as well as PhD student Kristine Ienciu.

Graduate students within the School of Health Policy and Management (SHPM) who are tackling issues from racial inequities in mental health care to workforce shortages in hospitals were recognized for research excellence with Health Graduate Research Awards. The awards highlight work from across the graduate unit within SHPM that specializes in health policy and equity, as well as health system management and data analytics. This year’s recipients presented their work as part of Health Graduate Research Day, an annual event that brings together students and faculty to share and discuss new research. “What stands out is how these students are taking on complex, real-world health challenges with both rigour and care,” says Farah Ahmad, program director of the graduate unit in SHPM. “Their work reflects a growing commitment to equity and meaningful impact through research that not only advances knowledge, but also has the potential to shape practice and policy.”

When Rick Powless learned that Health Sciences North in Sudbury launched its first Indigenous hospital menu, he felt a shift happen. The third-year doctoral student at 91ŃÇÉ«'s Faculty of Education is a Red Seal-certified Indigenous chef, an Ontario College of Teachers-certified educator and a member of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Oneida Nation of the Thames, Bear Clan. He was also the primary consultant on an initiative led by Compass Group Canada to bring Indigenous meals into Ontario hospitals – a project that recognizes the role of traditional and cultural food in healing. His contributions also serve as a testament to his work to advance meaningful cross-cultural engagement.