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#10 Enhanced opportunities for undergraduate research and success

Fifty-five students from Science and across the University attended our annual Summer Undergraduate Research Conference to present their summer research projects and network with their peers. The Faculty of Science also established the Earle Nestmann Undergraduate Research Award program, thanks to a generous donation from alumnus Earle Nestmann.

#9 New international education experience programs and initiatives

We launched our 2+2/2+3 Undergraduate International Collaboration Education Programs, which allow students from participating institutions to complete their first two years of study at their home university and their last two or three years at 91亚色. We also created the 91亚色 Science Hainan Learning Centre to support some of our international students currently studying online due to COVID-19.

#8 Celebrating new and renewed Chair positions

We welcomed and celebrated new and renewed Chair appointments, including Canada Research Chairs (Professors Chris Caputo, Kohitij Kar and Raymond Kwong), 91亚色 Research Chairs (Professors Jianhong Wu and Jane Heffernan), the Allan I. Carswell Chair for the Public Understanding of Astronomy (Professor Sarah Rugheimer), the Guy Warwick Rogers Chair in Chemistry (Professor Cora Young), and the Mclaughlin Research Chair (Professor John McDermott).

#7 Three Science professors elected to Royal Society of Canada (RSC)

The elected three 91亚色 Science faculty members: Professor Jianhong Wu, as Fellow, Academy of Science; and Professors Sandra Rehan and Sapna Sharma, as members of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. Recognition by the RSC is the highest honour an individual can achieve in the arts, social sciences and sciences.

#6 New professors join Faculty of Science ranks

We welcomed new faculty members Charlotte de Araujo, Kohitij Kar, Allysa Lumley, Daniela Monaldi, Gloria Orchard, Balint Radics, Kelly Ramsay, Sarah Rugheimer, and Jennifer van Wijngaarden. By recruiting talented new researchers and teachers like these individuals, we are building science for the future and making 91亚色 Science a great place to learn and be a researcher.

#5 Launch of Data Science program

The Department of Mathematics & Statistics launched a new Data Science program, starting fall 2023. The program includes streams in areas of practice such as business and health, together with a capstone course where students work on real-world problems for clients.

#4 Focus on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) for new STS offerings

The Department of Science, Technology & Society (STS) revamped its roster of courses and major and minor options, including two new EDI-focused courses that offer students the opportunity to examine EDI through explorations of past and present issues and controversies in science and technology.

#3 New domes installed at Allan I. Carswell Observatory

Two new state-of-the-art, remote-controlled domes were installed at the Allan I. Carswell Astronomical Observatory, replacing the original domes from the 1960s and opening the night sky for better viewing of planets, stars, nebulae and more.

#2 $7.25M for Global South AI4PEP Network

Professor Jude Kong received $7.25 million from the International Development Research Centre to establish the Global South Artificial Intelligence for Pandemic and Epidemic Preparedness and Response (AI4PEP) Network. The five-year project is aimed at ensuring vulnerable and at-risk populations are included in disease outbreak management and policies.

#1 Launch of Community 2022 initiative

We launched our Community 2022 initiative, aimed at helping faculty, staff and students reconnect in person and support the return to a more robust on-campus presence. Community 2022 includes events for social reconnection, initiatives to welcome new community members, supports for in-person teaching, seminars to support researchers, promotion of health and well-being, and improvements to the Faculty鈥檚 physical environment.

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As his career unfolds, biostatistician Kevin McGregor is becoming very familiar with the human gut microbiome. His work is particularly relevant given the human biome is a community of microorganisms that inhabit our bodies and appears to be linked to numerous health concerns, both physical and mental.

McGregor, an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics in the Faculty of Science, is a biostatistician who joined 91亚色 in 2021 after finishing his PhD at McGill University. He is part of the team involved in creating and teaching in the department鈥檚 , which makes its debut in 2023, but he is also involved in developing statistical models and associated software packages for understanding the makeup of the gut microbiome.

鈥淢y training is very quantitative, so I鈥檓 involved on the mathematical/statistical side,鈥� says McGregor. 鈥淭he microbiologists collect all the data and it鈥檚 my job to come up with the statistical methods to analyze it.鈥�

He might be involved in looking into one species of microorganism if it鈥檚 abundant and considered relevant to a particular disease, such as Crohn鈥檚 disease, or he might be exploring the interaction between various types of microbes in the overall network.

鈥淢icroorganisms don鈥檛 live independently; they may be symbiotic or competing for resources,鈥� says McGregor. 鈥淲e鈥檙e looking for correlations related to metabolic interactions. I usually develop a methodology for analysis and the accompanying software. The first step is more theoretical; then, I create a software package so the microbiologists can plug in the data and get answers.鈥�

Most of the studies compare the genetic sequencing for the microbiomes of hundreds of individuals. Researchers are looking at the counts of various species of microorganisms that are present to see if the patterns align with specific diseases or biomarkers.

One of the challenges of analyzing microbiome data is that numerous zeroes appear to indicate that certain organisms have no presence in an individual鈥檚 microbiome. Sometimes, these are false negatives; the stool sample that was used to sequence the individual鈥檚 gut microbiome simply didn鈥檛 include a specific microbe.

鈥淭hey are statistically difficult to deal with,鈥� McGregor says. 鈥淚t requires that I develop a statistical method that can look at the network patterns but get around this challenge.鈥�

The programs that McGregor devises must determine what the probability is that any zero truly indicates the absence of that microbe. One of the methods he employs to weed out the false negatives is the zero-inflated logistic normal multinomial model.

Next comes the software development that allows him to 鈥渇it鈥� the model: input real data and get an output. Genetic sequencing of the microbiome provides 鈥渢ons of data,鈥� says McGregor, and the models are complicated. The associated software can take 鈥渉ours and hours to run鈥� on a computer, so he looks for shortcuts, such as the variational Bayes method, a statistical tool that is computationally efficient. McGregor is currently supervising a postdoctoral fellow, Isma茂la Ba, PhD, who is working on this model.

McGregor says he loves the problem-solving aspect of his work, devising new models or improving existing ones. He also likes the real-world applications that his work makes possible and enjoys the opportunity to collaborate with researchers in a broad range of fields. He recently joined forces with Joseph De Souza, an assistant professor of systems neuroscience, to apply for grants that will allow them to examine microbiome data related to Parkinson鈥檚 disease. He鈥檚 also involved with the Integrated Microbiome Platforms for Advancing Causation Testing and Translation (IMPACTT) team, which is a multi-disciplinary microbiome research core across Canadian universities.

鈥淢y dream is to be viewed as having a positive impact on microbiome research, developing models and giving sound advice to researchers in the field,鈥� McGregor says. 鈥淚鈥檇 also like to come up with statistically innovative techniques in this area and be recognized by the statistics community.鈥�

McGregor鈥檚 career is young; look for its impact to grow exponentially.

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91亚色鈥檚 data science program has been in the planning stages for a few years as Department of Mathematics and Statistics Chair Stephen Watson and a team of faculty members examined existing programs throughout North America and talked to a variety of employers about their needs in analyzing large-scale, complex data. The result is a practical program including streams drawn on the University of California Berkeley鈥檚 model that focus on areas of practice such as business and health, together with an innovative year-long capstone course that will require students to work on real-world problems for clients. Both aspects are unique among data science programs in Ontario.

鈥淭his is a career-focused program, and the demand is there,鈥� said Watson. 鈥淚t鈥檚 exciting to have young, enthusiastic faculty leading the charge.鈥�

Seven professors are involved in delivering the new program: Steven Wang, who will direct the capstone course; Yuejiao Cindy Fu, the statistics director; Jairo Diaz-Rodriguez; Kevin McGregor; Xin Gao; Kelly Ramsay; and Yuehua Amy Wu.

Diaz-Rodriguez has developed the introductory data science course, which is being pilot-tested this year, and the follow-on course (Principles and Techniques of Data Science), both required courses in the program. The introductory course offers a panoramic view of the field, and the subsequent course provides additional theory and lays the foundation for the other courses.

鈥淏asically, data is everywhere,鈥� Diaz-Rodriguez said. 鈥淭raditionally, companies and governments made decisions based on feelings, but now we can use data to make decisions, so data scientists can analyze it to help organizations offer better services and make better decisions.

鈥淒ata science is a hot topic,鈥� he noted, one that has only recently developed as a field of study. He speaks from personal experience; his undergraduate degree is in engineering, his master鈥檚 degree is in mathematics, and his PhD is in statistics.

鈥淚 wondered what I was, and data scientist made sense, but 10 or 15 years ago, there was no career path. In the past, companies looked for mathematicians who then had to learn programming. We鈥檝e gathered everything together into one career profile. Our graduates will be prepared for what鈥檚 needed, and won鈥檛 have to catch up.鈥�

McGregor, who specializes in genomics data, sees data science as the intersection between statistics/data analysis and computer science (programming and algorithm development), plus field-specific knowledge.

鈥淲e want people to have a good grounding in both statistics and computer science and an understanding of how to clean the data 鈥� to handle the oddities,鈥� he said. 鈥淢eanwhile, the streams will keep their knowledge practical. By getting exposure to courses in other fields, they鈥檒l understand the problems in that field, as well as the terminology. The streams will also help the students collaborate and interact effectively.鈥�

Five streams are available to students in the program鈥檚 inaugural year: business, in collaboration with the Schulich School of Business; health, in partnership with the School of Health Policy & Management, Faculty of Health; computational arts, in co-operation with the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design; as well as optimization and computation, each in concert with the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Faculty of Science. Watson says that other faculties have also exhibited interest in working with the program to develop additional streams.

The program will include a course in the ethical use of data, offered by the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, which 鈥渋s important given who 91亚色 is,鈥� said Watson. The program also requires a course in communications, which is offered by the Writing Department. Employers asked for the communications course because they need their employees to explain technical subjects to the layperson.

The computing courses are contributed by the Lassonde School of Engineering and the School of Information Technology.

The department hopes to have 100 students enrolled in the program next September, but given the popularity of the field, the demand could be greater.

鈥淚 think the program is going to be very popular,鈥� Diaz-Rodriguez said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 our experience from talking to other universities, and if you look on career websites for data science jobs, you see them advertised everywhere.

鈥淲hen I studied mathematics, people thought the only option was to be a school teacher. Data science has opened a new avenue of work for people in mathematics and statistics.鈥�

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