Arts & Science grads are often featured in newspapers and magazines, on television and radio shows, and otherwise in the media. See below to see how our alumni are making the news.
Artsci grad David Landry has just started a 10-month nonpartisan internship, where he’ll be immersed in the work at the provincial legislature through the Ontario Legislature Internship Programme. Read more here.
Abby Eaton and Flynn O’Dacre spent their summer on Middleton Island, a remote, uninhabited island that lies 130 kilometers off the coast of Alaska. They were there to study seabirds, in particular the rhinoceros auklet and the black-legged kittiwake, as a part of a long-term research project that monitors the health of the birds to help understand the health of the world’s oceans. Eaton and O’Dacre are graduate students working under Emily Choy at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Listen to the interview here.
Arts & Science alum, Emily Osborne (Artsci, 2024) has published an op-ed for The Globe and Mail that looks at the serious harm of fake reviews on e-commerce platforms and shares a potential solution that could reduce the number of fake reviews and, in turn, possibly even improve consumer trust. Read more here.
Flynn O’Dacre will be returning to Middleton Island this summer to take part in seabird research. Read more here.
Climate change will introduce high levels of uncertainty in agriculture and impact the production of food. Erin Mierdel’s policy paper presents ways to tackle this challenge and build resilience to climate change in agriculture.This Ontario 360 policy brief was selected by faculty as the most outstanding paper of the 2022 Capstone course in the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy’s Master of Public Policy program. Read more here.
Peter Osborne, Suzan Fraser, Robert Centa, Amelia Daurio named as new judges. Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada David Lametti has announced the appointments of Peter Osborne, Suzan Fraser, Robert Centa, and Amelia Daurio to the Superior Court of Justice of Ontario. Read more here.
Big and small habits that harbour a sense of familiarity when revisiting old relationships are a dominant theme in Farzana Doctor’s new carefully structured poetry collection, You Still Look The Same. Doctor wrote the collection throughout her forties, a period she found to be the most challenging in her life so far. Read more here.
Children with medical complexity (CMC) are hypothesized to have unique housing and accessibility needs due to their medical fragility and medical technology dependency; however, research on prevalence and types of housing need in CMC is limited. Read more here.
McMaster’s Midwifery Program will grow by 50 per cent in the coming academic year as it welcomes a group of stranded students from the financially plagued Laurentian University. Read more here.
“Affordable housing” might seem an oxymoron in this pandemic-influenced era of skyrocketing real estate prices. Read more here.
Congratulations to Dr. Alia Sunderji on receiving the Global Community Impact Award at the 2021 McMaster Alumni Awards Celebration. Read more here.
The Rebecca Towers COVID-19 outbreak shines a light on the City of Hamilton’s failure to support tenants during the pandemic. Read more here.
Championing initiatives that support student development, student life and successful student outcomes is the priority for McMaster’s new director, student success. Read more here.
More than a year into the pandemic, one thing is clear: Provincial governments do not have a consistent plan when it comes to COVID-19 testing of students and school staff. Read more here.
Emergency initiative distributes nutritious food to struggling households, but funding is running out. Read more here.
For hundreds of COVID-19 patients in some of Ontario’s hardest hit regions, hospitals from other cities have been a saving grace. Read more here.
Over the past year, Canadians — just like much of the world — have increasingly lived their lives online. The pandemic pushed us to use the internet in new ways: digital doctor visits, first dates and family dinners over Zoom, grocery shopping via apps. Read more here.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed suit against Facebook (FB-Q) in tandem with 48 attorneys-general last week to challenge the social-media giant’s “unchecked power over personal data and social interactions.” Read more here.
Canadian doctor Samantha Nutt had big plans for 2020, hoping to raise more than $1-million extra to expand her relief work in war-torn countries. Read more here.
Dr. Alia Sunderji ’10 was one of the doctors who signed a letter to Congress warning about the potential spread of the flu after the Trump administration decided not to administer the flu vaccine to migrant families in border detention camps. Read more here.
Among Colombia’s largest Indigenous group, lack of access to clean water is leading to alarmingly high levels of child mortality and malnutrition. This problem could grow worse because of the pandemic. Read more here.
Resident Doctors of Canada has launched Inside the Lives of Canada’s Resident Doctors, an anthology featuring stories, poems, and visual art by thirty-six residents from across Canada, including three Arts & Science grads (Class of 2014). Read more here.
Great minds think alike. Even though they were both Mac grads, Arnav Agarwal ‘14 and Rishi Bansal ‘20 hadn’t met – until they both had similar ideas to capture the untold stories of COVID-19 frontline workers. Read more here.
The benefit was designed to encourage people to stay home, noted Rob Gillezeau, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Victoria. “We actively wanted to keep people away from work. That was the policy goal,” he said. “It definitely makes sense to revise it again as we shift into the reopening period.” Read more here.
With an increasing number of COVID-19 patients expected over the next few months, some Canadian hospitals could face significant shortfalls of ICU beds, according to projections from a team of researchers. Read more here.
A coalition of Canadian charities is asking Ottawa for a $10-billion stabilization fund that would allow them to pay their staff and cover critical expenses amid the global coronavirus pandemic. Read more here.
Melissa Yuan-Innes, an emergency physician in Eastern Ontario, would like to see the Ontario government immediately release the protective equipment it stockpiled after the SARS outbreak, most of which had expired by 2017, according to a report released that year by the province’s auditor-general. Read more here.
Farzana Doctor is trying to break that silence. She is a Toronto author and psychotherapist, and a co-founder of the End FGM Canada Network and WeSpeakOut. The network urges the federal government to acknowledge that FGM/C is a problem here and advocates for Canada to take the lead on protecting girls around the world. Read more here.
The Ada Lovelace Institute and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) have today launched JUST AI, a network of researchers and practitioners, led by Dr Alison Powell from LSE, that will establish a multidisciplinary research base around ‘just AI’ – AI that is ethical, works for the common good and is effectively governed and regulated. Read more here.
Were you forced out of your home by Hamilton’s newly derailed LRT project? A tenant rights group wants you to go public with your story in the hopes of turning the “needless displacement” of dozens of residents into a happier ending, said volunteer Emily Power. Read more here.
The climate crisis makes us worry about the future for our children and grandchildren. As wildfires ravage Australia, we witness the dangers for the planet and its populations. Climate change is the biggest health crisis of this century. As family doctors, we see its impact on patients. Read more here.
This fall, Canadians will cast their ballots in the country’s 43rd general election. For many, climate change will be a defining issue (perhaps for the first time in Canadian history) when they vote for their next federal government. According to polling released in July, climate change is one of the top three issues Canadians say will likely impact how they vote. It’s not surprising that Canadians are concerned about climate change. We are in a climate emergency and many people living in Canada recognize that the clock is ticking on our ability to address the crisis. Read more here.
Dr. Chi Cheng, Physician Researcher and Lead of the NorthBEAT Collaborative, hosted a celebration for the one-year anniversary of NorthBEAT’s Youth Advisory Group. Youth, family members, and community partners gathered on Aug. 15 to celebrate the successes of NorthBEAT’s Youth Advisory Group, including the launch of a new youth-led social media strategy that aims to increase knowledge about psychosis for youth in Northwestern Ontario. Read more here.
An innovative condominium project aimed at increasing the attainability of home ownership has received the go-ahead from Hamilton city council. “This was a big point in the process, and so now we can look to opening our sales office and selling units to anyone who’s interested,” Emily Power, JvN/d manager of community engagement, said Thursday. Read more here.
There’s a rising demand for mental health care services on campuses across Ontario, and administrations are grappling with which services are most needed and how best to implement them. The Agenda speaks to representatives from Queens, McMaster, and the University of Guelph to discuss why it’s time to go beyond just an awareness of the problem to find viable and effective solutions. Watch the video here.
New graduates with student debt will get a discount on their loans thanks to the recent federal budget — but student leaders and financial experts say it’s not enough to soothe the financial anxiety many young people face upon graduation. Read more here.
Everyone expects automation and other tech advances to eliminate some jobs and create others. But in a new report, Canadian futurists say there’s a far wider range of trends that could influence the types of skills that are likely to be in demand — or not — in the future. Read more here.
Both began playing piano at the age of five, both describe themselves as risk takers — and both were enlisted in their second year of McMaster to step up to the podium and conduct. Alexander Cann, artistic director of the Bach Elgar Choir, shares musical notes with Mac student Pascal Adesina, choral director of the McMaster Gospel Choir. Read more here.
Noted British inequality researcher Danny Dorling calls it “the scandal of our times.” He’s referring to more than a century of severe socioeconomic inequalities in health in the United Kingdom, but the pattern is similar in Canada, and every bit as scandalous. Read more here.
City of Hamilton staff have not taken any steps toward last year’s city council direction to sell a surplus site of approximately 3.5-acres south of Wentworth Lodge, identified as a possible location for future seniors’ affordable housing. McMaster University professors Jim Dunn and Richard Harris told the Dundas Star News after the first meeting that creating new affordable space for seniors can have a wider impact on the community. Read more here.
Costco has been fined more than $7 million after the company was found to have accepted illegal kickbacks at 29 pharmacies in warehouses across the province from 2013 to 2015. Ontario’s Ministry of Health announced Friday it would penalize CWC Pharmacies (Ontario) Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Costco Wholesale Canada Ltd., after it found the company received illegal advertising payments before August 2015. Michael Law, the Canada Research Chair in Access to Medicines at the University of British Columbia, said generic drug prices in Canada are historically higher than those in other countries, such as the U.S. Read more here.
Monika Dutt has worked as a doctor in Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, the Northwest Territories and Ontario. Although she has been practising medicine since 2005, a combination of family medicine and public health, each move has required Dr. Dutt to go through the “frustrating and expensive” process of getting a new medical licence. Read more here.
A striking conversation piece greets all visitors to the Toronto head offices of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières Canada (MSF). In the reception area, guests are confronted with a dramatic nine-foot by six-foot multi-coloured world map that almost completely covers one wall. Countries appear in vivid shades of orange, green and blue. Pinned within and outside of these nations are passport-sized photos of some 150 physicians, nurses, logisticians and professional support staff who are helping save and restore lives in locations often plagued by war and other perils. Read more here.
Students from Hamilton’s post-secondary schools are figuring out how to make the community better — with a little help from city hall. Students from Mohawk College, McMaster University and Redeemer University College had a chance to show off the work they have done in tandem with City of Hamilton staff at the CityLAB Hamilton’s program showcase last week. Read more here.
A new clinical trial in breast cancer, combining the TTK drug with the chemotherapy drug Taxol will open across Canada this fall. Dr. Philippe Bedard, Oncologist at the Princess Margaret, has been the lead Clinical Investigator for the Phase 1 trials of both of The Campbell Family Institute drugs and will be involved with the upcoming Phase 2 programs. Read more here.
Sunanna Bhasin is a published author in the flesh, but a hardworking accounting student right underneath. She shares her experiences in the writing world with me and also uncovers the guidance it took, and the moments that made her take UNDERPASS, her self-published book, one step further. Read more here.
[Sunanna’s book can be purchased here].
West Lincoln Memorial Hospital would likely have to close its emergency department, intensive care unit and acute care beds if surgery is relocated to Hamilton for more than two years during building upgrades, warns the interim medical director. “This proposal is effectively a closure of West Lincoln Memorial Hospital,” Dr. Matthew Noble Wohlgemut states in a letter Friday to the Hamilton Health Sciences board and CEO Rob MacIsaac. Read more here. [Read an update here]. [Read the resolution here].
With cannabis set to become legal across Canada this week, government agencies have spent a lot of time, energy and resources educating Canadians on the legal parameters surrounding the soon-to-be-legal drug.However, so much focus on the rules and regulations has resulted in little attention being paid to the process of educating Canadians about cannabis itself. Enter Ben Barrett-Forrest. The Arts & Science graduate wants to help Canadians make informed decisions about cannabis use. Read more here.
Often, we treat loss as though it only happens once. Immediately after someone you love dies, the condolences from friends and colleagues come pouring in for a short while, then the people around you settle back into their lives, and the well wishes and offers for companionship gradually, and understandably, decline. Read more here.
The entire circus around Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation was an unwanted refresher for women and girls of the lessons forced upon us throughout our lives. Read more here.
It’s Wednesday afternoon and the five female volunteers at Bare Market, a Toronto-based package-free shop, are struggling to keep up with demand. Read more here. [Note: Behind paywall]
A terrible inferno engulfed Southern California in December 2017. The largest wildfire in the modern history of California was ignited by six years of drought and winds gusting up to 97 km/h. As flames seared the tinder-dry landscape, over 100,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes and hundreds of buildings were destroyed. It was in the aftermath of this catastrophe that Dr. Cheryl Lousley travelled to the Golden State. Read more here.
Helen Kang earned her PhD in sociology, with a focus on medical sociology and history, from Simon Fraser University. She is now a self-employed consultant who specializes in health-care communication. Read her Q&A here.
The federal government recently announced the launch of a consultation on digital and data transformation. In its press release, the government framed the central issue as seeking a balance between economic innovation and privacy. This is unfortunate. Read more here.
John van Nostrand and Emily Power are planning a condo that will offer personalized solutions for home ownership, including customized unit configuration. The plan is to build a eight-storey building on James North at Ferrie where a portion of the block would be torn down for the project. Read more here.
Dr. Emily Groot is very familiar with Northern Ontario; she grew up in Sault Ste. Marie. Her understanding of the region will be an asset in her new role as the Thunder Bay District Health Unit’s associate medical officer of health. Read more here.
The Lieutenant Governor’s Visionaries Prize was created to give Ontario’s most creative thinkers a forum for tackling the challenges that Ontarians and Canadians will face over the next 50 years—and to give them a chance to present their solutions in front of a panel of the province’s thought leaders. Winners will be determined in the fall of 2017. More information can be found here.
After earning a Master’s degree in Applied Theatre at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London England, Jill Kooymans has developed a program for using theatre as a tool to help rehabilitate prisoners. Read More.
A new study from Statistics Canada about the precarious position young workers find themselves in — and how little it has changed in four decades — has refocused attention on the federal government’s push to create jobs for youth. The numbers mirror what the expert panel on youth employment has been hearing during their work. Vass Bednar, who chairs the panel, says she has heard issues ranging from the role of governments at all levels in job creation, to the changing business landscape that gives rise to more part-time and temporary work and workers who worry that putting their home address on an application may show them to be from a poorer part of town and dissuade employers from hiring them. Read more here.
The city is getting closer to solidifying its promised transgender and gender nonconforming protocol. The goal of the newly drafted policy — which was pledged by the city as part of a settlement with the Human Rights Tribunal last year — is to “ensure the equitable, fair, and respectful treatment of all persons who work at or otherwise interact with the city as a resident or service user.” A local transgender woman filed an official complaint to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario last October after she was barred by a security guard from using the women’s bathroom at the MacNab Street bus terminal downtown. Clara Matheson, the lawyer for the complainant — who has not been identified by name — said in a statement at the time that the resolution sends a “strong message” that should encourage municipalities generally to review their policies. Read more here.
Dr. Alenia Kysela was one of eight alumni who were inducted into the Alumni Gallery, which recognizes outstanding accomplishments in professional and volunteer life, at the University’s annual Alumni Awards ceremony on Wed. 1 June 2016. Read More.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went outside of Canada’s public service to fill two deputy minister positions in his second shake-up of bureaucracy’s senior ranks within a week. Read More.
Director of MSc Media and Communication (Data & Society) at The London School of Economics and Political Science, Dr. Alison Powell researches systems of technologies. Read More.
A McMaster psychiatrist has displayed her first ever oil painting at a prestigious art show at the Louvre in Paris, France. Read More.
There is an art to caring for the sick that goes beyond conventional science and medicine. Hamilton Health Sciences is joining James Street Supercrawl for the first time Friday to share how hospitals use creativity to heal and comfort. Read More.
McMaster University has officially kicked off its brand-new graduate course in public health — a program borne out of the ripple effects of the SARS crisis. Read More.
Amanda Bell, an assistant clinical professor of the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine’s Niagara Regional Campus, is the 2015 recipient of the John C. Sibley Award for excellence in education by part-time faculty. Read More.
Stephanie McLarty received an Award of Merit at the 2015 Hamilton Environmentalists of the Year Awards on 10 June 2015. Stephanie is the owner of REfficient, an online reuse marketplace. Companies can use REfficient to buy quality, discount telecom and A/V equipment from sustainable sources. See recent articles about Stephanie in the Hamilton Spectator and the McMaster Times (pp. 10-11).
For many new immigrants, the long, cold winter is an unpleasant side effect of becoming a Canuck. Community leader Adrienne Blattel is on a mission to change that. Read More.
Some vegetables never bask under the bright lights of the grocery store’s supermodel catwalk. Read More.
Earlier this week, The Globe and Mail published a column asking public health officers to “focus on disease, not politics.” Read More.
“Vancouver’s south and west-side neighbourhoods offer the least access to fresh affordable food, which can be a serious problem for people who are poor and who have mobility problems.” Read More.
“Canadians have taken water for granted for too long, warns Karen Bakker, geography professor at the University of British Columbia and one of the country’s foremost experts on water governance.” Read More.
The Bach Elg ar Choir closes its season this Saturday with Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus…” It (Judas Maccabaeus) offers a perfect counterpoint to Messiah,” said the BEC’s new conductor, Alex Cann, who acknowledged the possibility of “a certain oratorio fatigure.” Read More.
“We’re all on loan to each other, for what time we have together. The world gave us Tings Chak, on a five-year lease (2005-2010) as it were.” Read more here.
“Eight months and 12 days ago I was still in Canada — at Hamilton Place, to be specific. I received my undergraduate degree from McMaster University that day, along with hundreds of other excited and terrified young students. I left Canada a few months later to start a job with a relief and development organization in Sri Lanka…” Read More.