An investment of $2.1 million, , will fund transformative work examining history, human behaviour, digital technologies and critical infrastructure to better understand and improve well-being, equity and resilience across Canada.

The CRC program bolster research excellence and advances the development of knowledge that benefits society, the economy and the environment.

"Canada Research Chairs drive new knowledge that strengthens Canada鈥檚 global competitiveness and addresses real-world challenges," says Amir Asif, vice-president research and innovation. "Across 91亚色, this research reflects a commitment to tackling complex issues 鈥� from advancing Indigenous knowledge and addressing addiction, to shaping the future of AI and strengthening critical infrastructure 鈥� in ways that deliver tangible benefits for communities in Canada and beyond."

Alan Corbiere 鈥� Canada Research Chair in Indigenous History of North America (Tier 2, renewal)
Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies

An assistant professor in 91亚色鈥檚 Department of History, Corbiere鈥檚 research focuses on Anishinaabe language, oral traditions and material culture.

Corbiere uses approaches such as the study of treaty negotiations and wampum belts to challenge and reshape historical narratives while supporting the revitalization of Indigenous knowledge and culture.

Matthew Keough 鈥� Canada Research Chair in Addiction Vulnerability (Tier 2)
Faculty of Health

Keough is an associate professor in 91亚色鈥檚 Department of Psychology, a clinical psychologist and a senior scientist with Homewood Research Institute. He studies the causes of addictive behaviours and develops evidence鈥慴ased treatments with a focus on heavy drinking, cannabis use, concurrent disorders and digital interventions for young adults.

Keough also received $100,000 through the Canada Foundation for Innovation鈥檚 which supports research infrastructure projects through its partnership with the CRC program.

Jennifer Pybus 鈥� Canada Research Chair in Data, Empowerment and Artificial Intelligence (Tier 2, renewal)
Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies

Associate professor in the Department of Politics and director of the Centre for Public AI, Pybus studies how social media, mobile platforms and AI use personal data.

Her focus is on strengthening data literacy, supporting informed public debate and examining issues of digital sovereignty and data governance in Canada.

Pirathayini Srikantha 鈥� Canada Research Chair in Reliable and Secure Power Grid Systems (Tier 2, renewal)

Srikantha, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, develops AI鈥慸riven and transactive energy solutions.

The aim of her research is to improve the reliability, security and resilience of electrical power grids and support the design of trustworthy energy systems.

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The initiative, led by Stephanie Gora, assistant professor at the , received $250,000 from the Government of Canada鈥檚 New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF) . The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) program supports bold, interdisciplinary research that tests new ideas and aims for real鈥憌orld impact.

Gora鈥檚 project focuses on drinking water quality in multi鈥憉nit rental housing, where water safety is impacted by the actions of water utilities, tenants, landlords/building owners and regulators.

鈥淭his funding gives us the freedom to step back and take a 鈥榩roblem-first鈥� approach to understanding and improving water safety in rental housing that prioritizes the lived experiences of tenants, as well as building owners and management,鈥� says Gora. 鈥淭he goal is to co-develop technologies and frameworks that address the real barriers to safe water in rental housing."

While Canada has invested heavily in protecting drinking water, quality of water from the tap 鈥� particularly in rental buildings 鈥� remains difficult to assess and address, she adds.

Expertise in engineering, housing and urban planning will come together to examine both the technical and social dimensions of water quality. Gora is joined by co鈥憄rincipal investigator Katherine Perrott (University of Waterloo) and co鈥慳pplicants Judy Duncan (ACORN Canada), Liam Butler and Razieh Salahandish (91亚色), along with Brian Doucet (University of Waterloo) for the project, titled 鈥溾�楥an I drink the tap water?鈥� An interdisciplinary action framework for water quality assurance in multi鈥憉nit rental housing.鈥�

According to Gora, research and policy following the 2000 Walkerton water crisis focused primarily on protecting municipal sources, treatment plants and distribution systems. However, conditions within buildings are a separate risk where aging plumbing, construction materials and maintenance practices can significantly affect water quality by the time it reaches residents鈥� taps.

These challenges are particularly pronounced in rental housing, where tenants have limited control over infrastructure and limited access to information.

Multi鈥憉nit buildings constructed before 1960 are more likely to contain lead-bearing plumbing components and lead solder, but water quality issues are not limited to older housing stock. Newer and high鈥憆ise buildings can also experience problems related to water stagnation and interactions between the water and materials used for plumbing.

In January 2024, more than 200 tenants were evacuated from a newly built student apartment building in Hamilton, Ont., due to poor water quality, highlighting the scope of the issue.

The 91亚色鈥憀ed project responds to these gaps by integrating scientific testing with lived experience.

Researchers will begin by testing water samples and interviewing tenants, building owners or managers to understand how water quality issues arise and how they are handled in real-world settings. The team will test how point-of-use and distributed water quality sensors monitor water safety in real time.

The findings will help the team develop a data-driven water safety framework for multi-unit rental buildings using an approach that considers social, environmental and economic impacts while encouraging collaboration among sector partners to clarify shared responsibilities.

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Everyday actions such as reaching for a cup or typing on a keyboard, rely on constant feed back from the brain. It monitors how each movement was executed and makes small refinements as needed. If a hand lands slightly off target, for example, that error is used to improve the next attempt.

Researchers distinguish between two ways the brain's neural activity updates these movements. Sometimes it fine鈥憈unes an existing skill, making small, automatic adjustments 鈥� like when a baseball pitcher corrects their aim after a missed throw. Other times, it must develop a new way of moving altogether, especially when familiar patterns no longer work, such as when moving a computer mouse with your hand one way makes the on-screen cursor move in the opposite direction.

Research led by PhD candidate Raphael Gastrock, supervised by Professor Denise Henriques and research associate Bernard Marius 鈥檛鈥疕art, examines what happens in neural systems when the brain responds to these two forms of learning. Published in , the study compares how the brain responds to errors when refining an existing skill (motor adaptation) versus learning a new one (de novo learning).

鈥淲e wanted to explore how the brain processes errors across these two forms of learning,鈥� Gastrock says. 鈥淎lthough previous research has identified brain signals linked to adapting movements, no studies have directly compared those signals between adaptation and acquiring a completely new way of moving. With this work, we aimed to address that gap.鈥�

To test this, participants completed simple "reaching" tasks using a stylus to move a cursor toward a target on a screen. After establishing how participants moved under normal conditions, researchers altered the visual feedback to compare the two types of learning.

In one case, the cursor was slightly rotated, requiring participants to adjust their aim, representing 鈥渁daptation鈥� learning, where neural systems gradually tweak an existing motion. The other scenario flipped the display like a mirror, meaning left and right were reversed, presenting the more demanding "type of skill "de novo" learning, where the brain creates a new plan to adapt to the movement.

Researchers recorded neural activity using electroencephalography, or EEG, to track how the brain prepared each movement and how it responded after participants saw the result. They found when participants adjusted to the rotated display, their neural activity changed as they improved, suggesting the brain gradually learns how to correct the action. As their aim got better, their responses to errors also became smaller, showing the task was becoming more predictable.

The mirror reversal showed a different pattern, however. Although participants movements improved, their neural activity changed very little, suggesting they had to actively think through each motion instead of relying on automatic adjustments.

Together, the findings point to a simple idea: the brain uses different approaches depending on the kind of problem it faces. When errors are consistent and predictable, it can fine鈥憈une movements automatically; however, when the task requires a new set of rules, it depends more on deliberate, effortful strategies.

This distinction may help explain why some skills are easier to learn 鈥� or relearn 鈥� than others.

鈥淢otor learning plays a central role in everyday activities, from acquiring new skills to recovering function after injury,鈥� Gastrock says. That recovery process is one area where the team鈥檚 findings could have real鈥憌orld impact.

The findings could be especially relevant for physical rehabilitation, where repeated practice and feedback are used to help people regain movement. Understanding when the brain can refine automatically versus when it requires more more cognitively demanding and effortful adaptation, could help design more effective programs.

鈥淏y better understanding the mechanisms behind it, we may be able to improve training and rehabilitation strategies,鈥� he adds.

The researchers describe the work as an early step, but one that helps clarify how the brain handles different kinds of learning 鈥� and area that has been rarely examined side by side. The dataset has also been made publicly available to support further research.

By showing that human鈥檚 neural systems use distinct processes to fine鈥憈une actions or build new ones, the study offers a clearer framework for understanding how people gain and regain skills.

鈥淚n the long term, I hope findings from these types of studies can help inform rehabilitation approaches, educational strategies and skill training,鈥� Gastrock says.

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For decades, bird flu, a virus that affects avian species鈥� respiratory and digestive systems, has been treated as a problem related to poultry farms and migratory birds, says Moyles. In recent years, however, it has spread beyond those boundaries, appearing in mammals, infecting dairy cattle and, in some cases, humans.

That shift requires better understanding of how the virus is evolving and circulating. 鈥淎vian influenza needs to be monitored carefully, as its ability to adapt and move between species raises concerns about its outbreak potential,鈥� says Moyles, who teaches in the Faculty of Science's Department of Mathematics and Statistics.

As with other infectious diseases, researchers rely on mathematical models to explore how bird flu might spread in situations that are difficult 鈥� or impossible 鈥� to observe directly, including rare spillover events where the virus jumps from one species to another.

These frameworks help decision-makers estimate how quickly a virus spreads, which species are most at risk and how effective control measures might be. Their accuracy can directly shape how outbreaks are monitored and managed. While bird flu is not currently transferring easily between people, its growing ability to infect a wider range of animals has raised concerns that it could increase risk for humans.

Moyles and his collaborators, however, noted that as bird flu was identified in new species, including dairy cattle in 2024, there had been little review on whether existing models capture emerging risks.

鈥淭his prompted us to perform a modern systematic review of mathematical modelling literature related to avian influenza to identify gaps,鈥� says Moyles about the work now published in .

The research team examined 30 peer鈥憆eviewed studies published between 2023 and mid鈥�2025 on how bird flu spreads to assess whether current approaches reflect how the virus behaves today. The work was grounded in a 鈥淥ne Health鈥� perspective, which looks at connections between human, animal and environmental health.

What they found is most frameworks rely on a single, dominant approach. Nearly 90 per cent of the studies used compartmental models, which group populations into simple categories 鈥� for example, those who can catch the virus, those who are infected and those who have recovered. These models are relatively straightforward to work with and are often used to estimate whether an outbreak is likely to grow or fade.

The problem, researchers say, is many of these models are still based on earlier assumptions about how bird flu spreads, when infections were largely confined to wild birds and poultry. Since 2023, the virus has presented widely in birds, been detected in dozens of mammal species and, notably, has affected dairy cattle. Human infections remain rare, but are increasingly linked to contact with livestock. Despite this shift, most models overlook livestock almost entirely, limiting how well they capture bird flu transmission data and related emerging risks.

Studies using agent-based models, which simulate how individual animals or farms interact, and network models, which map how connections like trade or movement spread disease, was far less common. While these approaches can better capture real-world complexity, such as how poultry movements or farm networks influence transmission, they also require more detailed data and computing power.

The review also found broader gaps in how these models are built and tested. Many rely on assumptions or data from older studies, rather than being grounded in current outbreaks. Important features of the virus 鈥� such as how long it incubates, how immunity works or how it persists in the environment 鈥� are often simplified. Perhaps most striking, notes Moyles, is that very few models are tested against real-world data. Only two of the 30 studies compared predictions with actual outbreaks, raising questions about how reliable the methods for predicting virus behaviour is.

Models that leave out livestock, oversimplify immunity or fail to incorporate real evidence may give a false sense of certainty, especially when used to guide policy in fast鈥憁oving outbreaks where the virus behaves differently than in the past.

鈥淎 lack of understanding of the multi-host transmission and spillover of avian influenza creates gaps in surveillance capabilities,鈥� says Moyles.

To address this, the researchers recommend a shift toward more biologically grounded and data-driven modelling by accounting for livestock, incorporating data on how immunity works, including antibody responses and testing model predictions against real-world outbreaks. They also suggest using multiple approaches together, rather than relying on a single forecast, and call for better surveillance data and greater transparency in how models are built and reported.

鈥淲e hope that this review will motivate more One Health mathematical modelling studies and the collection and use of data that support them. This will improve the ability to design meaningful intervention strategies,鈥� says Moyles. 鈥淚n the long term, the goal is to develop models that better capture spillover risk, including early warning signs of the virus emerging in new species and its potential to cause outbreaks.鈥�

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Michael Davies鈥慥enn, a Faculty of Graduate Studies student in the Global Health graduate program, joins the Expert Group on Equitable Access to Water and Sanitation led by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).

The three鈥憏ear appointment highlights the impact of 91亚色 researchers in addressing complex global health and environmental challenges.

The group brings together researchers, policymakers and practitioners and began its work earlier this year to guide the implementation of the World Health Organization鈥檚 Protocol on Water and Health. Its focus is on identifying marginalized populations and supporting their meaningful engagement in water and sanitation decision making.

Davies鈥慥enn鈥檚 research synthesizes Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 鈥� Clean Water and Sanitation, equity, global health and environmental governance. His work examines how water insecurity and climate events, such as floods and drought, influence the risk of infectious diseases, including malaria, cholera and West Nile virus.

鈥淪everal diseases linked to climate change impacts relate to the excess or absence of water,鈥� Davies鈥慥enn says. 鈥淭his suggests water is a key driver of climate鈥憆elated health outcomes.鈥�

In his fieldwork, Davies-Venn focuses on basin鈥慳rea communities along the Orange鈥慡enqu River basin in Southern Africa, a transboundary freshwater resource that supports approximately 20 million people across Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and South Africa. Through participatory research, he studies how environmental and social factors shape disease risk.

鈥淚t is reasonable to argue that human life is impossible without fresh water,鈥� he says. 鈥淵et inequities in access to drinking water persist.鈥�

In some river鈥慴asin communities, open defecation remains common due to limited access to sanitation services which increases the risk of waterborne diseases such as cholera.

鈥淪ome people use the river as a latrine, while others collect water from the same river for domestic use, including drinking,鈥� Davies鈥慥enn says. 鈥淥pen defecation is a serious problem and cholera remains a global challenge. Research also links cholera outbreaks to floods and drought.鈥�

For Davies鈥慥enn, the work is both academic and personal. Having spent his childhood in similar conditions, and surviving malaria, gives him first-hand insight into the challenges these communities face.

Those experiences inform his commitment to global health solutions and his passion to make a difference.

鈥淚f, through working with basin communities, I raise awareness that contributes to saving even one child from cholera, that contribution to science and humanity will give meaning to my life and work,鈥� he says.

A member of the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research, Davies-Venn's research is supervised by Associate Professor Godfred Boateng (), Professor Idil Boran (Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies) and Professor Philipp Pattberg (Vrije University-Amsterdam). In addition to his doctoral committee's guidance, he credits 91亚色 for fostering a collaborative environment that supports interdisciplinary research, helping him bridge his background in environmental governance with public health.

He is completing his doctorate through a cotutelle arrangement between 91亚色 and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, an international partnership that reflects 91亚色鈥檚 commitment to global research collaboration.

Through his work in the expert group, he hopes that by empowering vulnerable populations, and recognizing broader societal failures, critical improvements in equitable access to water and sanitation will lead to healthier communities.

"Micheal鈥檚 appointment reflects the type of globally engaged, interdisciplinary scholarship 91亚色 is cultivating," says Amrita Daftary, professor and graduate program director at the School of Global Health. "Grounded in equity and shaped by lived experience, his work demonstrates how graduate research can contribute to meaningful change beyond the University and Canada."

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Since joining 91亚色 in 2018, the Freud Lab 鈥� led by Associate Professor Erez Freud and in collaboration with the Department of Psychology and the Centre for Vision Research 鈥� has focused on how the brain supports object recognition and interaction. Drawing on neuroimaging, neuropsychological research, developmental studies and motion鈥憈racking technology, the group explores how people perceive the world and act within it.

In recent years, the lab has focused on autism, using movement and perception to better understand how people with autism engage with their surroundings.

Over the last six years, the Freud Lab has collaborated with the University of Haifa to collect detailed motion data from autistic participants, using motion鈥憈racking cameras and machine鈥憀earning tools. Among the group鈥檚 successes was a 2025 study that drew wide attention for showing that differences in how grasping and moving objects could be used to distinguish participants with and without autism with a high degree of accuracy.

That work now serves as a foundation for the lab鈥檚 next phase as it is expanding how, where and with whom its data is collected. 鈥淭he idea is to try to expand and to reach out to different educational and clinical institutions in order to help us reach more children and young adults with autism,鈥� Freud says.

Through new clinical鈥� and community鈥慴ased collaborations, the goal is to extend the lab鈥檚 autism studies beyond a single context, while also increasing the number and diversity of participants involved. In doing so, it can broaden both the scope of the data and the questions it can help answer.

Among those efforts is a new collaboration with Autism Therapy & Training, a Vaughan鈥慴ased clinic that works directly with children with autism and their families. It has also partnered with the Summit Center for Education, Research and Training based at Montreal鈥檚 Summit School in Ville Saint鈥慙aurent, a multidisciplinary centre serving more than 600 neurodivergent learners between the ages of five and 21.

Working in clinical and educational settings allows the Freud Lab to study autism in ways that more closely reflect everyday life. Places like Autism Therapy & Training and the Summit School are not controlled study environments, but active spaces where children learn, play and receive support as part of their daily routines.

For researchers, that means observing behaviour as it naturally unfolds in classrooms, therapy rooms and shared activities. Freud and his team are pursuing this work through the use of advanced technologies, in service of a central question that runs through the lab鈥檚 efforts: why people with autism often move differently and what those differences reflect at a neural level.

Previously, much of the group鈥檚 work relied on tightly controlled experiments that required participants to perform specific, constrained motions 鈥� often with tracking markers attached to their fingers. Now, the lab is turning to a tool called Athena, a marker鈥慺ree motion鈥憈racking system developed in collaboration with Jonathan Michaels, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Health.

Athena uses a synchronized array of multiple video cameras to capture motor behaviour from multiple angles at once. Those video streams are aligned in time and analyzed using machine鈥憀earning methods that identify and label different parts of the body, allowing researchers to track and quantify motion in three鈥慸imensional space. For the Freud Lab, that makes it possible to measure how participants move 鈥� such as which hand they use, how quickly and efficiently they complete tasks and how consistent their movements are 鈥� without constraining natural behaviour.

The approach makes it well-suited for work with children with autism; it allows them to engage in familiar, low鈥憄ressure activities, like building Lego models, while the system quietly records information about how they move.

For Freud, these everyday interactions offer enhanced insights into behaviour and lead to more meaningful questions about autism. 鈥淭he goal,鈥� Freud says, 鈥渋s to try and understand what is different about the autistic brain and the autistic representations.鈥�

The findings also point toward a more applied objective: identifying reliable motor patterns that could be used to develop more objective tools for earlier identification. 鈥淚n autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders, we know that early treatment and early intervention are crucially important,鈥� he says, noting that earlier identification can help ensure support is provided at a stage when development is more flexible and interventions may have greater impact.

For Freud, that applied focus is central to his research and reflects an ongoing concern with how scientific work might translate beyond the lab 鈥� how insights about perception, movement and the brain can ultimately help people with autism, their families and the professionals who support them.

鈥淚 see my role as a cognitive neuroscientist as fundamentally about understanding the human mind and brain and how that can meaningfully promote the well鈥慴eing of a broader community,鈥� he says. 鈥淲hen it comes to working with individuals with autism and their families, that responsibility feels especially significant.鈥�

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Adopted in 2015, the SDGs set a 15鈥憏ear global framework to improve lives and reduce inequality by 2030, with recent reports focusing on how close countries are to meeting those targets.

Countries track progress toward the goals using large global datasets that compile indicators such as health outcomes, environmental conditions and social factors. These data are combined into scores that rank performance and enable comparisons across nations.

The methods used to build those rankings, however, can influence the results 鈥� and how close countries appear to be meeting the goals by 2030.

A by 91亚色 researchers Raha Imanirad, an assistant professor at the , and Zijiang Yang, a professor in the School of Information Technology, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, examines how different calculation approaches affect how performance in different nations is understood. The study focuses on SDG 3 鈥� Good Health and Well-Being.

The researchers applied this framework to global health data from 177 World Health Organization member states between 2019 and 2023. Using indicators such as maternal mortality, infectious disease rates, air pollution鈥憆elated deaths, road traffic fatalities and homicide rates, they assessed how rankings shift under different methods.

They found that calculation approaches can significantly change how countries appear to perform. More flexible methods tend to cluster many countries at the top, suggesting broadly similar outcomes and stronger overall progress toward the 2030 targets. Stricter, more consistent approaches produce fewer top rankings and clearer distinctions between countries.

These differences matter; because these rankings are used to assess progress toward the 2030 goals, the choice of method can influence whether progress appears widespread or uneven as the deadline approaches.

The analysis also found that no country achieved a perfect score once data uncertainty was considered, suggesting earlier assessments may have been overly optimistic.

The researchers note that no single method captures the full complexity of public health performance. Some approaches highlight top results and make countries appear stronger, while others produce more consistent comparisons but lower scores. Methods that account for uncertainty offer a more cautious picture, the study suggests.

By combining these approaches, the study proposes a more balanced and transparent way to compare countries, one better suited to assessing progress on SDG 3 as the 2030 deadline approaches.

Findings suggest this type of framework could help policymakers identify and focus on specific gaps, such as air quality, disease prevention and maternal health, in the final years leading up to 2030. As the deadline nears, the study underscores how measurement choices can shape how progress is tracked and how success 鈥� and areas for improvement 鈥� are understood.

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I am delighted to announce that Professor Chris Perry has been appointed associate vice-president research, effective July 1.

Dr. Perry is a professor in the School of Kinesiology & Health Science in the and currently serves as director of 91亚色鈥檚 Muscle Health Research Centre. A leading muscle physiologist, his research focuses on the cellular and metabolic mechanisms underlying muscle weakness in conditions such as muscular dystrophy, cancer and diabetes, as well as the role of exercise in promoting muscle health. His work integrates human, pre-clinical and cellular models and emphasizes collaboration with clinical and industry partners to translate discovery into therapeutic innovation.

In addition to his research leadership, Professor Perry has played a key role in advancing strategic research initiatives and partnerships within the Faculty of Health, including supporting the development of new collaborations and research funding opportunities. In his new role, he will help advance 91亚色鈥檚 research priorities by fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and strengthening partnerships that enhance the University鈥檚 impact locally and globally.

Professor Perry succeeds Professor Pina D鈥橝gostino, who has been appointed a Judge of the Federal Court of Canada following a distinguished career as a legal scholar and research leader at 91亚色. During her tenure as associate vice-president research, Professor D鈥橝gostino made significant contributions to advancing research excellence, interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation across the University. The Division of Research & Innovation extends its sincere gratitude to Professor D鈥橝gostino for her leadership and dedication.

To ensure continuity during the transition period, Professor Mary Goitom, academic director of the Research Commons, will serve as interim associate vice-president research. Dr. Goitom is an associate professor in the School of Social Work, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, whose research focuses on migration, transnationalism, community-engaged scholarship and social justice. In addition to her academic and research contributions, she has served in a number of leadership and mentorship roles at 91亚色 supporting graduate education, faculty initiatives and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Please join the Division of Research & Innovation in congratulating Pina D鈥橝gostino on her appointment, supporting Mary Goitom in her interim leadership role and welcoming Chris Perry as he prepares to assume the AVPR role on July 1.

Amir Asif
Vice-President Research and Innovation

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The program highlights contributions that position 91亚色 as an instutition for research excellence and transformative innovations. 

Research contributed by more than 60 faculty members reflect the breadth of the University's research strengths, spanning sustainability, law, AI, chemistry and the social sciences.

"I am exceedingly proud to be part of an institution that contains the kind of excellence we are celebrating," says Lisa Philipps, interim president and vice-chancellor. "91亚色 is an institution that offers educational experiences to our students that are informed by this deep research, scholarly and creative excellence; and a place where we also make it part of our mission to reach outside the metaphorical walls of the University to share and collaborate with communities, industry, policy-makers, the media and the wider public."

The recipients demonstrate the purposeful research that is fundamental to real-world change, says Amir Asif, vice-president, research and innovation

The annual awards program serves as an opportunity to recognize the excellence, creativity and ingenuity of 91亚色' research community.

Awards

President鈥檚 Emerging Research Leadership Award (PERLA)
Christopher Caputo, associate professor in the Faculty of Science, received this award for his contributions to sustainable chemistry and materials science. His research advances the use of Earth鈥慳bundant elements as alternatives to rare and precious metals, addressing key environmental and sustainability challenges while influencing catalytic and materials science.

A Tier II Canada Research Chair and recipient of the John Charles Polanyi Prize in Chemistry, Caputo has secured more than $4 million in research funding. His work has resulted in 21 patents and strong industry engagement, demonstrating the translation of discovery into application.  

The President鈥檚 Emerging Research Leadership Award was also awarded to Emily Kidd White, associate professor at , for her pioneering scholarship at the intersection of law, emotion and constitutional theory. Her work applies the philosophy of emotion to legal analysis, examining the gap between formal legal reasoning and the lived realities of legal practice, particularly in international law. 

Her research has shaped scholarly conversations across disciplines and established her as a thinker of global influence, strengthening 91亚色鈥檚 research profile and academic mission. 

President鈥檚 Research Excellence Award
Presented to Jimmy Huang, professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, this award recognizes his contributions to information retrieval, data mining, AI and natural language processing. A Tier 1 91亚色 Research Chair and founding director of the Information Retrieval and Knowledge Management Research Lab, Huang has played a leading role in shaping the future of AI research, including some of the earliest systematic evaluations of large language models.

Huang has secured more than $7 million in external research funding and his work has influenced practice across industry and health care. His mentorship record includes supervising 16 postdoctoral fellows, 23 doctoral students and 32 master鈥檚 students, many of whom have gone on to academic careers.  

President鈥檚 Research Impact Award
Kerry Kawakami, professor in the , received this award聽for the influence and reach of her scholarship on unconscious bias. Her research has reshaped how systemic inequality is understood across academic,聽legal聽and institutional contexts, extending well beyond the聽post-secondary聽sector.

Kawakami鈥檚 work has informed legal practice and judicial decision鈥憁aking, including professional development programs for the Law Society of Ontario, expert testimony and keynote addresses. Her research has been cited in multiple U.S. Supreme Court decisions, demonstrating its impact on public understanding, policy and the pursuit of justice. 

The awards ceremony also highlighted faculty in other categories. 

Book Awards, Literary and Artistic Achievements
Six honourees received this award for their books, creative works and exhibitions that received national or international recognition from peers and leading cultural institutions. 

Major Grants
Recognition for researchers leading significant, externally funded research initiatives that advance knowledge and address complex societal challenges was awarded to seven honourees. 

Other Learned Societies, Fellowships and Awards
91亚色 awarded 12 honourees with this award for their leadership and contributions that have been recognized through election to learned societies, prestigious medals, professional fellowships and national or international honours. 

Outstanding Early Career Awards
Four honourees earned this award to recognize the notable achievements of 91亚色鈥檚 early-career researchers whose work shows strong promise and leadership within their fields. 

Significant Knowledge Mobilization &Impact Awards
For knowledge mobilization and impact outside of academia, 14 honourees were recognized with this award. 

91亚色 Research Chairs, Canada Research Chairs and Distinguished Research Professors
Fifteen honourees were celebrated for these appointments that support research excellence and scholarly leadership at the highest level in their respective fields. 

Royal Society of Canada & Governor General Awards
Two honourees earned this distinction, recognizing faculty who have made remarkable contributions in their research pursuits related to science, humanities and the arts. 

View the slide deck below to see a full list of recipients. 

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VR has become an important tool in vision science for studying how humans see and interact with the world. By working inside immersive VR environments, researchers can test colour perception, navigation and more in three鈥慸imensional settings that more closely resemble everyday experiences than traditional laboratory displays.

To create these virtual testing environments, scholars and scientists rely on game engines 鈥� software platforms originally developed for video games. An engine called Unity has become especially popular in vision research because of capabilities that allow scientists to build scenes with realistic lighting, situate objects at precise locations in three鈥慸imensional space and respond in real time to a participant鈥檚 movements.

For example, VR has been used to study colour constancy 鈥� why an object appears to stay the same colour even as lighting changes. Using Unity, scientists can place everyday objects into a virtual scene and alter the colour or intensity of the light while asking participants to judge or match what they see.

Many of Unity鈥檚 features are automated and adaptive. As game players move through a virtual world 鈥� stepping from bright outdoor areas into dark interiors 鈥� the engine automatically adjusts brightness and colour so that details remain visible.

For those who need exact control over brightness and colour, that can be a problem.

鈥淚f researchers and developers don't know precisely what images they're showing in VR, it makes their work less reliable and less replicable,鈥� says Richard Murray, professor at the and director of the Murray Lab, which studies human visual perception.

If a scientist believes they are presenting a stimulus with a specific colour value, but the software transforms it in hidden ways before it reaches a screen or headset, then study results can be subtly distorted. Small differences in display behaviour can make it unclear whether an observed effect reflects human vision or the tools used to present the experiment.

Curious about how these hidden transformations might affect how accurate human vision is in VR, Murray set out to examine how Unity processes lighting, materials and colour before visual stimuli appear on a screen or VR headset.

In work published in the , Murray turned his attention to Unity鈥檚 High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP), the graphics system responsible for translating numbers that define lighting, materials and colours inside the software into the images people see on a screen or headset.

Murray reverse-engineered HDRP鈥檚 rendering process into a series of steps, carefully describing how numerical values for lighting and colour are transformed for screens. He then checked those predictions against Unity鈥檚 actual output and real鈥憌orld display measurements by generating thousands of virtual scenes with different lighting and colour settings to see whether Unity鈥檚 output behaved as expected.

Murray found that, under Unity鈥檚 default settings, brightness and colour can behave in ways that are difficult to anticipate. Visual changes that seem straightforward in an experiment can be subtly reshaped by the software.

As a result, what participants see may not line up exactly with what a researcher intended.

This does not disqualify Unity as an impactful tool, however.

鈥淔rom decades of work on human vision, researchers have developed a good understanding of how we need to be able to control images in order to run reliable experiments,鈥� says Murray. With that knowledge, Murray says, discrepancies can be addressed by treating the game engine like any other complex scientific instrument that requires careful calibration.

With appropriate configuration, Unity can be made to display luminance and colour with high precision 鈥� often close to the physical limits of the display. Additionally, he stresses that precision depends on an ongoing process. Project leaders must measure what the system actually displays, apply corrections based on those measurements and repeat the process whenever hardware or software conditions change.

鈥淢y goal with this project was to not only develop a mathematical model of Unity, but also software tools that would allow researchers to have greater control over experiments in VR,鈥� says Murray, who has made shared open鈥憇ource Unity projects and software tools available to others.

These tools show how to configure Unity for studies, how to run simple calibration checks inside the experiment and how to apply corrections based on real display measurements. They are designed to be reused and adapted, making careful calibration part of everyday VR investigative practice.

By making it possible to trust what participants actually see in VR, Murray鈥檚 work ensures that insights drawn from the use of the medium in studies rest on solid visual foundations. In doing so, it can remain a dependable platform for studying how people see, perceive and interact with the world.

鈥淚 hope that it will enable researchers in a wide range of fields to make better, more informative and more reliable experiments ,鈥� Murray says. 鈥淰R is a technology that will be around for a long time, including in research, so it will be important to get a better understanding of when it provides us with realistic visual environments and when it doesn't.鈥�

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