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Congratulations to Professor Huaiping Zhu, who was honoured this year by the Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society (CAIMS). He received the 2024 CAIMS-Fields Industrial Prize, and presented the Industrial Research Prize Lecture at the , held June 24-27, 2024.

Zhu, based in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics, is a leader in infectious disease modelling. He directs the Centre for Disease Modelling (CDM) and Laboratory of Mathematical Parallel Systems (LAMPS) at 91亚色, as well as the pan-Canadian One Health Modelling Network for Emerging Infection (OMNI). Through his work in CDM, LAMPS and OMNI, he has advanced the understanding of pandemic dynamics and provided timely guidance for public health policy.

His CAIMS Industrial Research Prize Lecture focused on modelling studies for the transmission of mosquito-borne diseases in Canada. Warming, climate variability and extreme weather events are expected to drive an increase in frequency and intensity of mosquito-borne disease (MBD) outbreaks globally. In Canada, this will mean an increased risk of endemic and emerging MBD outbreaks, such as West Nile virus, dengue and other MBDs with origins in tropical regions. To characterize the incidence and spread of mosquito-borne diseases among people and animals, the West Nile virus surveillance system has adopted a One Health approach involving experts from human, animal and environmental domains.

In his lecture, Zhu presented data-driven modelling for Culex mosquito populations, as well as a dynamic study of models for the threshold conditions for an outbreak and recurrent outbreaks. He also discussed the risk of MBDs in Canada if warming continues, and how modelling studies will contribute to early warning capacity for emerging infectious disease outbreaks as a key adaptive response to climate change.

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Thirty Faculty of Science researchers received Discovery Grants totalling more than $6.0 million, with 10 of these faculty members also receiving Discovery Launch Supplements (valued at $12,500 each). Additionally, four Science researchers received a total of more than $2.1 million in Sub-atomic Physics Discovery Grants. For a complete list of recipients, see below.

Discovery Grant (including Discovery Launch Supplements) recipients:

Andrew Donini, Department of Biology
Salt and water balance in aquatic insects
$47,000 per year for a five-year term

Gordon Fitch, Department of Biology
Tritrophic interactions in a changing world: understanding how urbanization shapes plant-pollinator-parasite interactions to influence pollinator health and pollination services
$38,000 per year for a five-year term
*Discovery Launch Supplement ($12,500)

Katalin Hudak, Department of Biology
Regulation and activity of plant ribosome inactivating protein
$48,000 per year for a five-year term

Kohitij Kar, Department of Biology
Probing the mechanisms of primate visual intelligence
$38,000 per year for a five-year term
*Discovery Launch Supplement ($12,500)

Terrance Kubiseski, Department of Biology
Regulation of Caenorhabditis elegans Stress Response
$40,000 per year for a five-year term

Raymond Kwong, Department of Biology
Understanding the homeostatic regulation and neurophysiology of essential trace metals in zebrafish
$39,000 per year for a five-year term

John McDermott, Department of Biology
Nucleolar Regulation and Function in Myogenic Cells
$48,000 per year for a five-year term

Eryn McFarlane, Department of Biology
The interplay between genetics and the environment on hybrid fitness
$29,000 per year for a five-year term
*Discovery Launch Supplement ($12,500)

Sandra Rehan, Department of Biology
Integrative genomics for pollinator health and social evolution
$65,000 per year for a five-year term

Gary Sweeney, Department of Biology
Examining cellular consequences of excess iron on skeletal muscle
$33,000 per year for a five-year term

Yongjoo Kim, Department of Chemistry
Methods to Create Mutations in Cells to Understand and Improve Protein Function
$37,000 per year for a five-year term
*Discovery Launch Supplement ($12,500)

Arturo Orellana, Department of Chemistry
Modern Approaches to Electrocyclization of Heptatrienyl Anions
$36,000 per year for a five-year term

Derek Wilson, Department of Chemistry
Advancing Hydrogen Deuterium Exchange Mass Spectrometry to Explore the Dynamic Origins of Protein (mis)Function
$36,000 per year for a five-year term

Cora Young, Department of Chemistry
Characterizing the abundance, sources, and fate of fluorinated gases in the atmosphere
$62,000 per year for a five-year term

Tao Zeng, Department of Chemistry
Theoretical studies of vibronic and spin-vibronic couplings: methodological development and applications in materials science
$36,000 per year for a five-year term

Nantel Bergeron, Department of Mathematics & Statistics
Quasisymmetric varieties, Schubert polynomials and other algebraic combinatorial systems
$27,000 per year for a five-year term

Miles Couchman, Department of Mathematics & Statistics
Turbulent mixing in stratified flows
$26,000 per year for a five-year term
*Discovery Launch Supplement ($12,500)

Ilijas Farah, Department of Mathematics & Statistics
K-theory reversing automorphisms of the Calkin algebra. Disintegration of von Neumann algebras
$48,000 per year for a five-year term

Xin Gao, Department of Mathematics & Statistics
Statistical learning methods for multi-task and network data
$27,000 per year for a five-year term

Jane Heffernan, Department of Mathematics & Statistics
Towards an immuno-epidemiological framework: Tradeoffs between biological detail and mathematical complexity
$31,000 per year for a five-year term

Paul Skoufranis, Department of Mathematics & Statistics
Linearization in Bi-Free Probability
$24,000 per year for a five-year term

Jianhong Wu, Department of Mathematics & Statistics
Delay Differential Equations: Theory of Global Dynamics with Applications to Public Health of Zoonotic Diseases
$60,000 per year for a five-year term

Kaiqiong Zhao, Department of Mathematics & Statistics
Novel statistical methods for complex data-enabled learning and causal discovery
$23,000 per year for a five-year term
*Discovery Launch Supplement ($12,500)

Scott Beattie, Department of Physics & Astronomy
Optical Frequency Combs and Atomic Clocks for Frequency and Time Metrology
$19,900 per year for a five-year term
*Discovery Launch Supplement ($12,500)

Charles-Eduoard Boukar茅, Department of Physics & Astronomy
Solidification Dynamics of Rocky Planets Interiors
$28,500 per year for a five-year term
*Discovery Launch Supplement ($12,500)

Eric Hessels, Department of Physics & Astronomy
Tests of Fundamental Physics Using Atoms and Molecules
$61,000 per year for a five-year term

Matthew Johnson, Department of Physics & Astronomy
Fundamental Physics from Microwave Background Secondary Anisotropies and Quantum Simulation of Vacuum Decay
$75,000 per year for a five-year term

Rahul Kannan, Department of Physics & Astronomy
Modelling high redshift structure formation and reionization
$39,000 per year for a five-year term
*Discovery Launch Supplement ($12,500)

Adam Muzzin, Department of Physics & Astronomy
Resolving Galaxy Growth with Canadian-Built Astronomical Instrumentation
$50,000 per year for a five-year term

Paul Scholz, Department of Physics & Astronomy
Revealing the nature of Fast Radio Bursts and unlocking their potential as probes of the Universe
$33,000 per year for a five-year term
*Discovery Launch Supplement ($12,500)

Sub-atomic Physics Discovery Grant recipients:

Nikita Blinov, Department of Physics & Astronomy
Three Directions Toward the Discovery of Dark Matter
$55,000 per year for a five-year term

Deborah Harris, Department of Physics & Astronomy
Paving the way for Neutrino Oscillation Measurements at DUNE
$300,000 per year for a three-year term

Eric Hessels, Department of Physics & Astronomy
Probing PeV-scale physics: Measuring the electron electric dipole moment using barium monofluoride embedded in an argon solid
$165,000 per year for a three-year term

Randy Lewis, Department of Physics & Astronomy
Lattice gauge theory on classical and quantum computers
$90,000 per year for a five-year term

Read the about all of the 91亚色 recipients.

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Thanks to the availability of , an online open educational resource (OER) provided to students at no cost, homework shouldn鈥檛 be as stressful as usual for the hundreds of 91亚色 students enrolled in the Linear Algebra (MATH 1025) course this term.

WeBWorK allows them to practise solving challenging problems as often as they鈥檇 like and provides instantaneous feedback.

鈥淚n mathematics, you need to practise, and with this system, you can keep trying until you get it right,鈥� said Andrew McEachern, an assistant professor and course director for linear algebra. 鈥淔or retention, research shows that engaging with problems multiple times is best. We want students engaged and practising, and this system allows for low, no-stakes practice. There is no cost for failure.鈥�

Online homework platforms aren鈥檛 new, but many of them are costly for students since they are owned by textbook publishing companies.

鈥淭extbook companies have proprietary rights to their platforms and many of them have a lot of bells and whistles that we don鈥檛 need,鈥� McEachern said. 鈥淭his bare-bones system works and does 90 per cent of the job that expert systems do.鈥�

WeBWorK is open source and very customizable. This means it can be downloaded for free, although there are significant costs associated with the server and staff resources. The Faculty of Science is covering these costs to provide the software free of charge to students.

McEachern and other instructors approached the Faculty about installing WeBWorK and joined forces with Hovig Kouyoumdjian, associate dean of curriculum and pedagogy, and Violeta Gotcheva, director of information technology (IT) for the Faculty, to explore the idea. Gotcheva, along with Steven Chen, a systems administrator, and Kalpita Wagh, an IT learning technology support specialist in the Faculty of Science, met with instructors and IT support teams from other Canadian universities to discuss their experiences with WeBWorK. They also joined the worldwide WeBWorK user group to expand their understanding of its applicability and support requirements.

Although faculty members assumed the IT staff could easily upload the software and run it, Gotcheva explained to them that supporting the platform was more complicated.

鈥淚t鈥檚 essential to ensure any software we run has appropriate security, robustness, reliability and scalability,鈥� she said. 鈥淭his is accomplished by obtaining a server hosting service aligned with the software requirements and hiring skilled staff for system maintenance and user support. After determining this, we realized we needed to install the open-source WeBWorK platform relying on community support.鈥�

Gotcheva, in collaboration with Kouyoumdjian, McEachern, and Michael Haslam and Stephen Watson 鈥� current and former Chairs of the Department of Mathematics & Statistics, respectively 鈥� created a business case for running the platform. They outlined the financial requirements for hosting and maintaining it and the cost savings that would accrue to students compared to the need for a proprietary platform. The Faculty of Science IT team partnered with Pamela Mills, assistant manager of University Information Technology System Management Services, and her team to use the University enterprise virtual server hosting. The WeBWorK pilot received a grant from the Faculty of Science Academic Equipment Fund to cover the server hosting costs, and the Faculty of Science IT team proceeded with the installation.

Now, the pilot is underway in all the linear algebra sections during the winter term.

鈥淭esting the platform across all sections of the course was a bold move, as initially, we anticipated it being piloted only in Andrew鈥檚 section,鈥� said Koyoumdjian. 鈥淲e eagerly look forward to hearing about the experiences from both the faculty and the students.鈥�

So far, said McEachern, instructors haven鈥檛 discovered any insurmountable problems with the platform, and the more than 700 students studying linear algebra this term seem satisfied. He has paired the homework platform with an online help forum on social media platform Discord to provide students with a means for asking questions and getting answers quickly.

鈥淚t鈥檚 amazing how many times other students pitch in with answers before I even get to the question,鈥� McEachern said. 鈥淭hey just do it out of the goodness of their hearts.鈥�

He also said his students are reporting much less anxiety about their homework than usual.

After the term is over, he, the other instructors and the team will review the success of the pilot, examining usage statistics and trends. They are also considering an informal survey of participants.

鈥淚t鈥檚 easy to use and it鈥檚 cost-effective during tough economic times,鈥� said McEachern. 鈥淚n my opinion, if even one student benefits, it鈥檚 worth it.鈥�

Kouyoumdjian also sees it as a tool for student retention.

鈥淢athematics is a foundational subject, and by enriching our students鈥� practice opportunities, we set them up for success and better equip them for future career endeavours鈥� he said. 鈥淭his pilot is a stepping stone, and we plan to extend the use of this platform to other math courses. We鈥檝e also received positive feedback from colleagues outside our Faculty, who expressed enthusiasm for implementing WeBWorK at 91亚色, which indicates a growing interest in adopting such powerful open-source platforms in their own courses as well.鈥�

In addition, noted Gotcheva, the United Nations considers OERs a public good, which aligns well with the 91亚色 Academic Plan鈥檚 commitment to furthering the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

鈥淭he Faculty of Science is committed to OERs,鈥� said Kouyoumdjian. 鈥淥ur aim is to promote the use of resources that are economically more feasible for our students and flexible enough to be reused, revised, remixed and redistributed. WeBWork aligns with these standards of OERs.鈥�

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The 2022 FIFA World Cup ended with a tight win for Argentina over France on penalties, but it was also a triumph for SARS-CoV-2 with a significant jump in the number of cases, some of which 91亚色 researchers say could have been prevented.

New research published today and led by 91亚色 used the 2022 FIFA World Cup as a case study to help determine the best ways to mitigate virus spread and hospitalizations at mass gatherings in the future. A technique was used to sample initial conditions stemming from possible matches held between visiting teams, which then formed the basis of independent simulations of each game.

The paper, , was published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology.

Lead author of the paper, 91亚色 postdoctoral fellow Martin Grunnill, and an academic-industrial collaborative team, including Faculty of Science Distinguished Research Professor , found that pre-travel screenings did little to prevent infections and hospitalizations.

Pre-match screening of spectators and match staff, however, with either a rapid antigen test half a day before or with a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction test one and a half days before a match, was more effective than pre-travel screening. The researchers found doing both pre-travel and pre-match testing had even better outcomes, but what worked best was ensuring all visitors had a COVID-19 vaccination, a second or booster dose, within a few months of departure to the tournament.

鈥淭hat precaution reduced the rate of infection and particularly the rate of hospitalizations,鈥� says Grunnill.

Prior to the FIFA World Cup, COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations were declining in Qatar but began to rise during the tournament peaking at the beginning of the quarter final.

鈥淭he ambitious goal of the partnership research includes developing modelling technologies that can be used to assist in the preparation of major mass gathering events, whether religious or sports related in nature or a major festival,鈥� says Wu. 鈥淲e hope these platforms can be used to provide input into how to help manage respiratory infection risk for the next FIFA World Cup, hosted by North America, and the Olympic Games in Paris this summer.鈥�

Wu points out that even before COVID-19, large events attracting tens of thousands of people spurred the spread of communicable diseases, sometimes globally.

鈥淚n the case of international events like the FIFA World Cup where visitors come from all over the world and return home, there is a higher chance of infections spreading beyond the host country,鈥� says Grunnill.

The work is part of an on-going 91亚色-Sanofi collaborative project, funded by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, that aims to developing a generic modelling framework tailored to specific events involving intensive social-economic activities to support preparing those events with minimal risk of disease outbreak and spreading.

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Miles Couchman, a 91亚色 assistant professor in applied mathematics, Faculty of Science, is part of an international research collaboration featuring a multidisciplinary network of researchers 鈥� including applied mathematicians and mechanical, civil and environmental engineers 鈥� that has been been awarded a highly competitive 2024 Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) Supercomputing Award.

The winning collaborative project looks to better understand turbulence in stratified flows, notably scenarios where a fluid has variable density. One application of particular interest is developing more robust mathematical models for characterizing the turbulence-enhanced mixing of heat in the ocean, a leading area of uncertainty in global climate modelling and a topic of direct importance to global society.

The INCITE program, run by the Office of Science at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), grants 75 computational intensive science projects access to the world鈥檚 fastest supercomputers, located at the DOE鈥檚 Argonne and Oak Ridge national laboratories, to further innovation across the fields of science, engineering and computer science.

Couchman鈥檚 co-project was among 108 total proposals received by INCITE this year from international researchers or research organizations asking for supercomputer access. The evaluation process was highly competitive, with proposals evaluated over the course of four months based on computational readiness, the scalability of a project鈥檚 code and algorithms, and more.

Couchman鈥檚 team was awarded use of Frontier, the largest supercomputer in the world, in 2024 to perform numerical research simulations, allowing the researchers to simulate turbulent processes with unprecedented resolution, leading to more accurate and universal turbulent models. They hope what they learn won鈥檛 just apply to the mixing of heat in water, but how pollutants mix in the atmosphere and more.

The research team is made up of individuals from Duke University, the University of Washington and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in the U.S., as well as the University of Cambridge in the U.K.

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Department of Mathematics & Statistics student Yibin Zheng is the inaugural recipient of the Global Engagement Funding Award (GEFA), created by the Faculty of Science to support 91亚色 science students who want to study or participate in academic activities abroad as part of their degree.

Zheng received the award in recognition of ongoing academic excellence and a profound commitment to expanding his research knowledge and skills across borders. Most recently, he demonstrated those qualities this summer by taking part in the Faculty of Science鈥檚 , which led him to participate in a research internship in the Department of Applied Mathematics at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where he was responsible for using the Bayesian statistics theory to work with R, a programming language, and help solve statistical problems.

GEFA is part of the Faculty of Science鈥檚 efforts to support a wide variety of global experiences and perspectives for science students, notably eligible degree-seeking undergraduate students (domestic or international), by facilitating international academic experiences.

The award was spearheaded by the Office of International Collaborations & Partnerships within the Faculty and 鈥� recognizing the financial barriers that may deter students from engaging in enriching opportunities 鈥� is designed to extend financial aid to ambitious students like Zheng, enabling them to immerse themselves in global scientific communities and endeavours.

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, a professor in 91亚色鈥檚 Department of Mathematics & Statistics at the Faculty of Science, and a member of the Laboratory of Mathematical Parallel Systems, has had a U.S. patent approved for an algorithm that will reduce the training time of artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning (ML).

The patent, titled 鈥�,鈥� was inspired by a 2018 paper titled 鈥�.鈥� Both were based on collaborations with Ricky Fok, a former postdoctoral Fellow student; Aijun An, a professor in the Department of Engineering & Computer Science; and Zana Rashidi, a former graduate research assistant who carried out some of the computing experiments.

The now-patented algorithm, approved this year, was a result of six months of research at 91亚色. It was submitted to the United States Patent and Trademark Office in 2019. The algorithm鈥檚 framework is based on mathematical arguments that helps significantly reduce the training time of machine learning, as it absorbs, processes and analyzes new information. It does so by using a mathematical formula to allow residual networks 鈥� responsible for the training of AI 鈥� to compute in parallel to each other, thereby enabling faster simultaneous learning.

Wang鈥檚 desire to accelerate machine learning鈥檚 abilities is driven, in part, by a specific area of AI applications. 鈥淚 want to apply all the algorithms I develop to health care,鈥� Wang says. 鈥淭his is my dream and mission.鈥�

Wang has especially focused on using AI to improve care for seniors and that work has previously earned him the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Award from the House of Commons for initiatives during COVID-19 to mitigate the spread of the virus in long-term care facilities.

Wang plans to use the patented algorithm in ongoing projects that aim to provide smart monitoring of biological signals for seniors. For example, it could be used in long-term care to continuously monitor electrocardiogram signals at night to register heartbeats that have stopped. To move towards that goal, Wang is also working on building an AI platform that will complement those ambitions, and expects it to be ready in several years.

He is deeply invested in the social impact of AI as a member of the 91亚色 organized research unit Centre for Artificial Intelligence & Society, where researchers at 91亚色 who are collectively advancing the state of the art in the theory and practice of AI systems, governance and public policy.

鈥淚 can use the machine learning to help the long-term care facilities improve the quality of care, but also help out with the struggles of the Canadian health-care system,鈥� says Wang.

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Those countries with the highest rates of severe infections also had the highest rates of reported cases

A new analysis of COVID-19 cases in Africa shows that for most of the continent鈥檚 countries the rate of infection was likely much higher than reported in the initial stages, found 91亚色 researchers.

Case counts reported by most African countries suggest the virus spread slowly during the early part of the pandemic, but the researchers say those numbers likely didn鈥檛 capture the true extent of the spread.

鈥淭he low reporting numbers was likely due to a lack of public awareness, public health resources, monitoring practices, testing availability and stigma,鈥� says Faculty of Science Professor Jude Kong, senior author of the paper and director of the (AI4PEP).

To get a better handle on the real number of those infected, the researchers used an epidemiological mathematical model, along with observed data, for 54 countries in Africa to estimate the number of hidden infections. Data on cumulative number of cases and daily confirmed cases were used to build an epidemic profile for Africa of the initial stage of COVID-19.

What may be most surprising is the estimation that some 66 per cent of all infections in Africa were asymptomatic, while about five per cent were severe and about 27 per cent were mild.

鈥淎frica is primarily comprised of a young population so it鈥檚 possible there were fewer cases, less severe symptoms or more people with asymptomatic symptoms than in a population that has a higher percentage of seniors,鈥� says Postdoctoral Fellow Qing Han, lead researcher on the paper. 鈥淭his suggests the possibility of a lower rate of detection of the virus.鈥�

The researchers found that the basic reproduction number (R0) in each country was much higher than when only reported cases were used as the average overall case reporting rate was low 鈥� estimated at about five per cent continent-wide 鈥� in the early stages for each country. They estimate that the real mean R0 is 2.02 compared to the reported R0 of 0.17 and ranged from 1.12 in Zambia and 3.64 in Nigeria.

鈥淐ounties that showed a R0 of less than one, which basically means there was no outbreak, likely have a much higher true R0. Not investigating the underreported figures could cause an underestimation of the severity and magnitude of the epidemic locally in each country,鈥� says Han.

Those countries with the highest number of severe infections also tended to have the highest reported cases and those with the lowest severe infections generally had the lowest report rate. The researchers say the predicted true numbers of cumulative cases are high above what was reported for all countries with Sudan and Gambia reporting collectively most at 27 per cent and 22 per cent, while most countries reported less than five per cent.

Northern and southern African countries had higher reporting rates compared to central Africa, which could be explained in part by higher health-care spending in the north and south regions. Libya topped all the African countries for having the most nurses and physicians per 1,000 people.

鈥淭he estimated low reporting rates in most African countries point to a need for improved reporting and surveillance systems especially for central Africa,鈥� says Kong, co-executive director of the .

The paper, , was published today in the Royal Society Open Science Journal.

The work was funded by under the Global South AI4COVID Program.

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