The lecture will take place Nov. 9 at 2pm in the Robert McEwen Auditorium, W141 Seymour Schulich Building, Keele campus. A reception will follow the talk.

Brains need to make quick sense of massive amounts of ambiguous information with minimal energy costs and have evolved an intriguing mixture of analog and digital mechanisms to allow this efficiency. Analog electrical and biochemical signals inside neurons are used for integrating synaptic inputs from other neurons. The digital part is the all-or-none action potential, or spike, that lasts for a millisecond or less and is used to send messages over a long distance.

Terry Sejnowski

"Spike coincidences occur when neurons fire together at nearly the same time," says Sejnowski. "In this lecture I will show how rare spike coincidences can be used efficiently to represent important visual events and how this architecture can be implemented with analog Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) technology to simplify the early stages of visual processing."

Sejnowski is professor and laboratory head of the Computational Neurobiology laboratory. He is considered to be a pioneer in computational neuroscience and his goal is to understand the principles that link brain to behavior. His laboratory uses both experimental and modeling techniques to study the biophysical properties of synapses and neurons and the population dynamics of large networks of neurons.

Among other things, Sejnowski is interested in the hippocampus, believed to play a major role in learning and memory; and the cerebral cortex, which holds our knowledge of the world and how to interact with it. In his lab, Sejnowski's team uses sophisticated electrical and chemical monitoring techniques to measure changes that occur in the connections among nerve cells in the hippocampus during a simple form of learning. They use the results of these studies to instruct large-scale computers to mimic how these nerve cells work. By studying how the resulting computer simulations can perform operations that resemble the activities of the hippocampus, Sejnowski hopes to gain new knowledge of how the human brain is capable of learning and storing memories. This knowledge ultimately may provide medical specialists with critical clues to combating Alzheimer's disease and other disorders that rob people of the critical ability to remember faces, names, places and events.

Sejnowski has published more than 300 scientific papers and 12 books, including The Computational Brain (1992), with Patricia Churchland. He received his PhD in physics from Princeton University and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School. He was on the faculty at the Johns Hopkins University and now holds the Francis Crick Chair at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies. He is a professor of biology at the University of California, San Diego, where he is co-director of the Institute for Neural Computation and co-director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) . Sejnowski is the president of the Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) Foundation, which organizes an annual conference attended by over 1000 researchers in machine learning and neural computation and is the founding editor-in-chief of Neural Computation published by the MIT Press.

An investigator with the , he is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He has received many honors, including the NSF Young Investigators Award, the Wright Prize for interdisciplinary research from the Harvey Mudd College, the Neural Network Pioneer Award from the Institute of Electricaland Electronics Engineers and the Hebb Prize from the International Neural Network Society.

Sejnowski was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2008, to the National Academy of Sciences in 2010 and to the National Academy of Engineering in 2011. He is one of only 10 living persons to be a member of all three national academies.

The Ian P. Howard Lecture Series in Vision Science provides a venue for world-renowned vision researchers to deliver lectures on their findings.

The series was established in 2006 to celebrate Howard’s enormous contributions to the international reputation of 91��ɫ's Centre for Vision Research. Howard’s own research investigates the fundamental mechanisms that enable humans to orient themselves and perceive the three-dimensional layout of their surroundings.

For further information, contact Teresa Manini, administrative assistant, Centre for Vision Research, at manini@cvr.yorku.ca.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin to research stories on the research website.

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Suraj Unniappan, a biology professor specializing in neuroendocrinology, is delving into the metabolic effects of a protein called nesfatin-1, abundantly present in the brain. His studies found that rats administered with nesfatin-1 ate less, used more stored fat and became more active. In addition, the protein stimulated insulin secretion from the pancreatic beta cells of both rats and mice.

Left: Suraj Unniappan in his lab

“[The rats] actually ate more frequently, but in lesser amounts,” says Unniappan, a member of 91��ɫ’s neuroscience graduate diploma program, and a recipient of a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) New Investigator Award. “In addition, they were more active and we found that their fatty acid oxidization was increased. In other words, the energy reserve being preferably used during nesfatin-1 treatment was fat. This suggests more fat loss, which could eventually result in body weight loss,” he says.  

The findings were reported in two recent research articles from Unniappan’s laboratory: one published today in and another in March 2011 in the . Discovered by a research team from Japan in 2006, nesfatin-1 was earlier found to regulate appetite and the production of body fat when injected into the brain of mice and rats.

Unniappan’s findings indicate that the protein stimulates insulin secretion from the pancreas, a glandular organ, which contains clusters of cells called the islets of Langerhans. These islets produce several important hormones, including the primary glucose-lowering hormone, insulin.

Previously, Unniappan’s team studied mice and found similar results; not only was insulin secretion stimulated, but nesfatin-1 was observed to be lowered in the pancreatic islets of mice with Type 1 diabetes and increased in those with Type 2 diabetes. In Type 1 diabetes, the body no longer produces insulin due to the destruction of cells within the pancreas. In Type 2 diabetes, the body becomes insulin resistant, and obesity often results.

Unniappan’s research, conducted in the Laboratory of Integrative Neuroendocrinology in the Biology Department at 91��ɫ, focuses on identifying and examining the biological effects of gut- and brain-derived appetite-regulatory and metabolic hormones in fish and mammals. 

“We call this the ‘gut-brain axis,’” says Unniappan. “While the brain is involved in many factors that regulate our energy balance, the gut is also responsible for many neural and endocrine signals responsible for regulating hunger, satiety and blood sugar levels. A major question we’re trying to address is how these peptides act and interact with other peptides in the endocrine network – which is so complex – in order to maintain steady blood glucose levels and body weight,” he says.

A better understanding of this gut-brain axis could contribute to developing potential pharmacological interventions for diabetes and obesity.

“New hormone-based treatments that would suppress body weight and blood sugar would be very desirable. However, we are far from developing nesfatin-1 as a candidate molecule. Our current research focuses on further exploring the therapeutic potential of nesfatin-1 in metabolic diseases with debilitating complications,” Unniappan says.

The lead author of both publications is Ronald Gonzalez, a recently graduated PhD student from Unniappan’s lab. The research was conducted in close collaboration with co-authors and 91��ɫ professors Robert Tsushima and Rolando Ceddia. Unniappan’s research is supported by grants from CIHR, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, (NSERC), the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation, and the James H. Cummings Foundation.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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"We try to touch on everyone's area of study in vision research, from brain and visual-motor plasticity to computer models and robotics," says 91��ɫ psychology Professor Jennifer Steeves (right).

The conference will take place June 15 to 18 in the Computer Science & Engineering Building (CSEB), Keele campus. Registration will take place in the CSEB lobby and speaker presentations will be held in CSEB Lecture Hall C. It is hosted by 91��ɫ's in the .

One of the speakers, professor of biological sciences and neuroscience of Mt. Holyoke College, will discuss her own experiences and research with the extent of the brain's plasticity. At one time it was believed that the brain was only malleable during a "critical period" in early childhood, but then, at the age of 48, Barry overcame the stereoblindness she'd had since infancy through optometric vision therapy. She realized at that point there was no absolute "critical period" and that the brain could change and adapt well into adulthood.

Left: Susan Barry

Barry will review the natural history of infantile esotropia – where one or both eyes turn in – demonstrate several rehabilitation procedures that promote stereovision and describe possible mechanisms for wiring changes in the brain. She is the author of Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey into Seeing in Three Dimensions (2009).

Professor of the University of California, San Francisco, will discuss brain plasticity across the human lifespan and how all plasticity mechanisms are, by their fundamental nature, reversible. A large body of behavioural, electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies have documented the progressive neurological changes that arise as a function of normal aging and as expressions of chronic neurological and psychiatric diseases.

"I shall argue that a number of these illnesses represent failure modes of our self-organizing neurological machinery," says Merzenich. These studies of the neurological distortions recorded in patient populations provide "roadmaps" for potentially addressing plasticity-induced changes therapeutically. "I shall illustrate this therapeutic potential by discussing our early progress in developing treatments designed to prevent and/or ameliorate the expressions of chronic neurological and psychiatric illness."

Professor (right) of Georgetown University will present his talk on "Functional Specialization in the Visual Cortex of the Blind", which looks at how the modules in the brain responsible for sight retain their functional specialization in people blind from birth. The difference is that these modules are "hijacked" by input from a non-visual modality, such as audition or touch.

Professor of the University of Montreal will discuss "Cross-Modal Plasticity in Blind and Deaf Subjects: Results on Cortical Reorganization and Performance Do Not Seem to Always Point in the Same Direction".

Left: Franco Lepore

"Numerous results obtained in our laboratory on blind individuals consistently indicate that when tested on behavioural tasks, such as tone discrimination, sound localization in far and near space, navigation on a tactile labyrinth or in angle discrimination, they generally outperform the sighted," says Lepore. "At the cortical level, it appears that this supra-performance rests on the recruitment of visual areas." However, the same does not seem to hold true for deaf individuals, who show somewhat poorer visual abilities for even low-level functions.

Registration information, including a compete and abstracts, is available online. For more information or to download the conference program, visit the website or contact Teresa Manini, Centre for Vision Research administrative assistant, at manini@cvr.yorku.ca.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Physicians and clinicians from , and researchers from 91��ɫ, will speak at an open house Monday about how they are working together – in the hospital and in laboratories – to answer these types of questions.

The researchers, physicians and clinicians will be available to speak to reporters about their projects, which include:

• research with the chronic disease, emergency medicine and surgical departments at Southlake to understand how the brain controls complex movements, shedding light on topics ranging from dementia to concussion.
• improved surveillance of cardiovascular disease in 91��ɫ Region through the use of geospatial analysis, which applies statistical analysis techniques to geographically-based data.
• investigation of the use of Blackberry smartphones and innovative software to help patients reduce health risks through exercise, diet and improve adherence to medication regimens.
• collaboration with cardiac care and oncology clinicians to develop a more personalized approach for targeting the drugs that are used by individuals with cancer and heart disease.

Four research scientists from 91��ɫ’s and have been designed to improve patient care and outcomes, and improve use of technology in the delivery of health care.

Southlake serves 1.5 million people through its regional programs and provides tertiary level care in many areas, offering almost unlimited opportunities for research collaboration between Southlake and 91��ɫ.

What:               Southlake Regional Health Centre welcomes 91��ɫ research scientists in a celebration event that will highlight the efforts of this partnership.
When:              Monday, May 9, 2011, 5:30 – 7:30
Where:             Southlake Regional Health Centre, Auditorium, Level 1, East Building

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of Southlake Regional Health Centre's Corporate Communications department and Media Relations at 91��ɫ.

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If you were wandering through Vari Hall last Wednesday afternoon, you could have stopped and chatted with fourth-year psychology students about some pretty esoteric subjects.

The rotunda was a maze of posters featuring the thesis projects of 78 students ready to explain whether eating disturbances are symptoms of depression, how to measure prejudice, the relationship between exercise and forgiveness, how sound affects perception of space. Their research projects, supervised by faculty members,��spanned all areas of psychology – cognitive, social, developmental, quantitative, history and theory, neuroscience, and clinical.

The end-of-year event has become so big that the Department of Psychology moved it to Vari Hall last year from the crowded halls of the Behavioural Science Building.

The poster projects are worth five per cent of students’ final mark and judged by roving graduate students based on clarity, design and the students’ ability to explain their research in a comprehensive manner. Many will go on to present their research at a variety of national and international conferences.

“Whether you are speaking to your supervisor,��other professors or fellow students, it is important to know how to present and communicate your results to different audiences,” says psychology Professor Susan Murtha, who has organized the event for the past three years.

And the students who go on to graduate studies will have to defend their research to external examiners who don’t know much about their field. “It is really important to be able to understand how to communicate.”

Left: Poster winners Angela Deotto (top) and Lilly Solomon. Photos by Brett Thompson

By 4pm, judges had selected two who did it best: Angela Deotto (supervised by Christine Till) for her poster "Mathematical impairment in pediatric-onset multiple sclerosis: Relationship with white matter integrity"; and Lilly Solomon (supervised by Jennifer Steeves) for her poster "MS to the ‘occipital face area’ affects face recognition but not categorization". They won $50 gift certificates to the 91��ɫ Bookstore.

Both Steeves and Till are members of the .

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Please note that only resumes submitted through the described process will be considered.

The posting closes April 14, 2011.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer

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A will embed leading scientists from the postsecondary institution as researchers to work alongside hospital clinical staff and physicians, director of research Patrick Clifford said.

Three researchers and one special projects expert will work with staff to help turn ideas into action that could result in improved patient care and results.

The hospital has 225 research projects on the go, but Mr. Clifford hopes having these experts on hand will increase that number significantly as he feels more research needs to be done in the area of clinical care.

With 500 physicians and 3,000 staff, more than half of whom are specialists in a certain field, there are plenty of ideas at Southlake. Access to experienced researchers will allow those ideas to be developed into active research projects that evaluate how change could affect a patient, he added. “It gives the staff who have ideas a person to turn to learn how to translate the idea from their head into a research study,” Mr. Clifford said.

Each of the three research scientists will be at the hospital one to two days per week and have been assigned to specific programs, including cancer and cardiac, mental health and the surgery and chronic disease programs.

Formal meetings and an open-door policy will allow staff and the researchers to interact on a regular basis to collaborate, exchange knowledge and engage each other. The initiative will strengthen Southlake’s transition into a teaching hospital as the knowledge achieved can be passed down to students.

91��ɫ University doesn’t have a faculty of medicine or a teaching hospital and this opportunity will give the researchers greater access to patients. “The partnership will be beneficial to both parties involved as well as the patients we serve,” Mr. Clifford said.

91��ɫ professors Chris Ardern, , Paul Ritvo and Lauren Sergio will be working on-site when the initiative launches next month.

Mr. Ardern is a professor in the school of kinesiology and health science and is focused on research involving epidemiology of physical activity, obesity and cardio metabolic risk.  He is investigating the role of geospatial analysis to improve the surveillance of cardiovascular disease in 91��ɫ Region and is co-investigator on pre-diabetes detection and physical activity intervention and delivery program. He will work with the hospital’s chronic disease department.

Ms Coe, a biology professor, is working to develop more personalized approaches to disease treatment. She works with proteins that transport drugs used in cancer and cardiac care. Her research in Southlake’s cardiac care and oncology programs will examine how these proteins work in each individuals.

Neuroscientist Ms Sergio examines the effects of age, gender, neurological disease and past head injuries on the brain’s control of complex movement.  She will work with clinicians from Southlake’s chronic disease, emergency medicine and surgical programs.

Mr. Ritvo specializes in behaviour and will serve as the research adviser, physical and mental health liaison and special projects scientist. His current research includes electronic health interventions, using cellphones, smartphones and online programs to alter the habits of diabetics and individuals with HIV and mental health issues. He will work with Southlake clinicians to examine how innovative software applications and technology can help patients reduce health risks through healthy exercise, diet and improved medication administration.

Lauren Sergio is also a member of the .

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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91��ɫ Professors Chris Ardern, , Paul Ritvo and Lauren Sergio will work on site for one to two days a week with hospital clinicians to foster research collaborations and knowledge exchange, and engage in joint knowledge mobilization efforts.

The partnership will realize important benefits to the research communities at both institutions and for the general public, says 91��ɫ Professor (right), associate vice-president research, science & technology, who led the effort to develop the partnership with Southlake Regional Health Centre.

"The embedded 91��ɫ researchers are senior scientists who will explore and cultivate research collaborations between 91��ɫ and Southlake researchers and clinicians," says Siu. "They will act as 'matchmakers' and brokers and will bring 91��ɫ's research expertise and knowledge to Southlake to facilitate collaboration.

"The partnership will broaden the research capacity for both 91��ɫ researchers and the Southlake clinicians," says Siu. "91��ɫ does not have a Faculty of Medicine or a teaching hospital. As a result,��University researchers do not have the patient access they would like to have. By working with Southlake,��the University is enhancing a collaboration that would benefit both parties."

The embedded University scientists bring to Southlake Regional Health Centre their recognized expertise in biomedical and health research. Southlake is the only community-based hospital in Ontario to offer six regional tertiary programs, including child and adolescent mental health, maternal and child,��cardiac and cancer care.

"We anticipate this to be an outstanding opportunity for both Southlake and 91��ɫ," says , director of research at Southlake.

"Serving some 1.5 million people through our regional programs and providing tertiary level care in many areas, the depth and breadth of programs and services, and the unexplored opportunities for reasearch collaboration between Southlake and 91��ɫ are endless," says Clifford.

"Southlake is interested in strengthening its research in terms of breadth and depth and in fact, Southlake is developing a research institute with a plan to become a teaching hospital with an official affiliation with a Canadian university," says Siu.

91��ɫ is a preferred candidate for this kind of partnership with Southlake, says Siu,��because the two institutions have shared goals and visions, and a willingness to work together.

The partnership offers exceptional training and educational opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students working in the research teams, says Siu.

In addition, the opportunity presented by the collaboration between the two institutions is consistent with the goal of integrating teaching and research with the world outside the University that was articulated in 91��ɫ's recent .

More about the 91��ɫ-Southlake embedded researchers

Chris Ardern (left) is a professor in the School of Kinesiology & Health Science in 91��ɫ's Faculty of Health. His current research interests include the epidemiology of physical activity, obesity and cardiometabolic risk. His most recent work has focused on the use of risk algorithms, behavioural profiling and trajectory modelling approaches to identify high-risk subgroups for the development of the metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease mortality. Arden is currently investigating the role of geospatial analysis to improve the surveillance of cardiovascular disease in 91��ɫ Region, and is a co-investigator on the Pre-diabetes Detection & Physical Activity Intervention and Delivery (PRE-PAID) program, a six-month trial of culturally-preferred physical activity. Ardern will be embedded in Southlake's chronic disease portfolio.

In her research, (right) works on a family of proteins known as nucleoside transporters. These transporters play significant roles in a number of clinical settings because they transport drugs used in cancer and are targets of drugs used in some cardiac care settings. Despite their clinical relevance, Coe, who is a professor of biology in 91��ɫ's Faculty of Science & Engineering, says researchers know very little about how these transporters work and how they differ in terms of their distribution, activity and regulation in individual patients. Using a molecular diagnostics approach, Coe and her team will work with Southlake clinicians from both the cardiac care and oncology portfolios to investigate the transporter profiles in individual patients and correlate these profiles with drug treatments and outcomes. The ultimate goal of this work is to contribute to the efforts to develop more personalized approaches to the treatment of disease.

Paul Ritvo (left) is a behavioural scientist who will serve as the research adviser, physical and mental health liaison and special projects scientist. A professor in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health, Ritvo’s research interests focus on electronic health interventions that employ cell phones, smartphones and online programs to change health behaviours in diabetics, HIV-positive individuals and individuals with mental health difficulties. Ritvo will work with Southlake clinicians to extend current intervention studies that use Blackberry smartphones and innovative software applications to help patients reduce health risks by way of healthy exercise, diet and improved medication adherence.

Lauren Sergio (right) is a neuroscientist working in 91��ɫ's Sherman Health Science Research Centre. Her current research projects examine the effects of age, sex, neurological disease and past head injuries (of athletes versus non-athletes) on the brain's control of complex movement. In her role with Southlake Regional Health Centre, Sergio will be an embedded researcher in the chronic disease, emergency medicine and surgical portfolios. She works with a wide range of adult populations, including professional hockey players and Alzheimer's disease patients. Her findings have implications for neurological disease diagnosis and rehabilitation and for understanding the fundamental brain mechanisms for movement control. She is using cognitive-motor integration research to test if new instrumentation developed in her laboratory can differentiate between types of dementia. She is also researching the long-term effects of concussion in young athletes. Sergio is a member of the .

The embedded researcher program at Southlake Regional Health Centre is an example of the collaboration between the Faculty of Science & Engineering and the Faculty of Health at 91��ɫ and is part of an ongoing commitment by the Faculties' deans to work together.

For more information on 91��ɫ's partnerships with regional hospitals, see YFile,��April 17, 2009 and  April 21, 2009.

By Jenny Pitt-Clark, YFile editor.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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These benefits come from having a brain that’s constantly juggling two – or even more – languages, said Ellen Bialystok, [Distinguished Research Professor in Psychology, ] at 91��ɫ in Toronto, who spoke at the AAAS annual meeting. For instance, a person who speaks both Hindi and Tamil can’t turn Tamil off even if he’s speaking to only Hindi users, because the brain is constantly deciding which language is most appropriate for a given situation.

This constant back-and-forth between two linguistic systems means frequent exercise for the brain’s so-called executive control functions, located mainly in the prefrontal cortex. This is the part of the brain tasked with focusing one’s attention, ignoring distractions, holding multiple pieces of information in mind when trying to solve a problem, and then flipping back and forth between them.

“If you walk into a room, there are a million things that could attract your attention,” Bialystok said. “How is it we manage to focus at all? How does our mind pay attention to what we need to pay attention to without getting distracted?”

To test one’s ability to identify pertinent nuggets while being bombarded with extraneous information, scientists use something called the Stroop test. Subjects are presented with a word for a particular colour and asked to identify the colour of ink it’s printed in. So if the word is “blue” and it’s printed in blue, no problem. If, on the other hand, the word “blue” is printed in red, they have to sort out which piece of information – the colour of the ink, or the colour being spelled out – is the one they need.

“This is extremely hard to do, because it’s terribly difficult to block out the information from the word,” Bialystok said.

In monolingual speakers, this kind of mental curveball will add 240 milliseconds to their reaction time – a significant delay, in brain reaction terms. Bilingual people, on the other hand, take just 160 extra milliseconds to sort this out. Bialystok theorizes that it’s because they’re used to prioritizing information in potentially confusing situations all day.alz

Those advantages aren’t just useful for schoolchildren – they last over the course of a lifetime. A study published last year in the journal Neurology surveyed 211 patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and found that those who spoke only one language saw the onset of their first symptoms four to five years earlier than their bilingual peers. While knowing two languages doesn’t fight the disease, it does strengthen those parts of the brain that are susceptible to dementia’s early attacks, allowing them to withstand the assault much longer.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Tier 1 CRCs were renewed for professors ,�� and . Professor was awarded an Advancement Chair, taking her from a Tier 2 to a Tier 1 CRC. Each Tier 1 CRC attracts $200,000 annually in federal funding, over a seven-year period, for a total of $1.4 million per chair.

The funding will allow Flett, Hessels, Tsotsos and Vosko to continue their respective research in personality and health, computational vision, atomic physics, and the political economy of gender and work.

“Federal government investment in research is crucial for Canadian universities because we are competing with the rest of the world to attract top researchers,” said Stan Shapson, vice-president research & innovation at 91��ɫ. “Through these investments, researchers at 91��ɫ are able to contribute significantly to new discoveries, public policy and economic development, and national and international dialogue across the full range of disciplines.”

91��ɫ’s renewals were part of $275.6 million announced by Tony Clement, federal minister of Industry,��to fund 310 new or renewed CRCs at 53 Canadian universities. “The Harper government is continuing its longstanding commitment to invest in science and technology to create jobs, strengthen the economy and improve the quality of life of Canadians,” said Clement. “For the past 10 years, the Canada Research Chairs Program has brought breakthroughs in clean energy, the control of infectious disease, business management, and digital technologies.This funding will help strengthen Canada’s capacity for leading-edge research while, at the same time, building economic opportunities for Canadians.”

Clement made the announcement at the start of a conference to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the CRC program. The conference, which began yesterday at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, continues today. Vosko took part in the “Thinking Ahead: A look at what the future holds for Canada” panel discussion on Wednesday. 91��ɫ Professor (right), Canada Research Chair in Art, Digital Media & Globalization, will participate in today's Art, Technology and Society panel.

91��ɫ has 28 research chairs, including the four renewals announced yesterday. Here are details on the work of the four:

Gordon Flett (left), CRC in Personality and Health (Tier 1), examines personality as the key to many health problems stemming from chronic stress exposure. Certain aspects of the personality trait of perfectionism can be particularly harmful. His team studies risk and resilience factors across the lifespan. He and Paul Hewitt co-developed the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, a model reconstruction of both the personal and interpersonal components of perfectionism. Research based on the model has firmly established that perfectionism has personal and interpersonal components and is associated with various forms of maladjustment, including health problems, depression, anxiety and suicidal tendencies. His research agenda also explores the relationship between perfectionism and psychological disorders, including eating disorders, postpartum depression and recovery from physical illnesses. A professor of psychology, Flett is associate dean, research and graduate education, in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health.

Eric Hessels (right), CRC in Atomic Physics (Tier 1), is researching the difference between matter and antimatter. His 91��ɫ team is working with researchers from Harvard University on a method to trap the antiatoms long enough to conduct experiments. This work is being done in conjunction with the international ATRAP (Antihydrogen Trap) collaboration. Hessels’ research also involves measuring the energies and orbits of helium atoms to provide the most accurate measurement of the “fine structure constant,” which determines the strength of electric and magnetic forces between charged objects. He is a Distinguished Research Professor of Physics at 91��ɫ.

John Tsotsos (left), CRC in Computational Vision (Tier 1), integrates the fields of visual psychology, computer vision, robotics and visual neuroscience to investigate new models of human visual mechanisms and how they may lead to intelligent seeing machines. His research falls into three main themes: visual attention in humans and computer systems, visually guided mobile robotics, and computer vision. He designed the first computerized motion recognition system, used in cardiology, and developed the Selective Tuning Model for visual attention, widely considered the leading model for consolidating current understanding of the process of visual attention. He has also designed an intelligent, visually guided wheelchair intended for physically disabled children. A past director of 91��ɫ’s internationally recognized , Tsotsos is the Distinguished Research Professor of Vision Science in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at 91��ɫ.

Leah F. Vosko (right), CRC in the Political Economy of Gender and Work, examines the contours of precarious employment to foster new statistical, legal, political and economic understandings of this phenomenon. Two of the chair’s principal projects involve constructing a research database on gender, work and labour market insecurity in Canada in comparative perspective — the — and overseeing a research alliance comprised of community and university researchers studying employment standards modernization in Canada and internationally. A professor of political science and a co-director of 91��ɫ’s Centre for Research on Work and Society, Vosko also teaches and supervises students in women’s studies, sociology, public policy administration and law, socio-legal studies, social and political thought, health equity, and communications & culture. Her most recent book, Managing the Margins: Gender, Citizenship and the International Regulation of Precarious Employment, was published earlier this year by Oxford University Press, UK.

By Janice Walls, media relations officer. Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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