Friday, December 18, 2020

Embracing change: Lessons from 2020 - A Waterloo Resiliency Story

A message from Campus Wellness.

Resilience is a process that looks different for everyone. Resilience often involves using internal resources (like humour, mindfulness, hope, optimism, etc.) and external resources (like contributions to your community, sense of belonging, mentorship, etc.).

Campus Wellness asked the UWaterloo community to share their resiliency stories and received so many. This month they are featuring a story about the importance of Embracing Change, featuring Margaret Mutumba, who talks about how she coped with a particularly difficult year while working on her PhD in the School of Public Health and Health Systems.

“One of the first things I did was turn off the news and turn to meditation and prayer. I took long quiet walks and practiced mindfulness by paying attention to the beauty around me. I also restarted my gratitude journal, writing down three things I am grateful for each day. In addition to this, my supervisor, Dr Craig Janes, made the decision to host weekly lab meetings with my Global Health team to check in on one another. I am so thankful for those meetings because we were able lean on each other for support.”

To read the rest of Margaret’s story, visit her story page.

There are lots of supports out there from family, to friends, to your professors, to our campus services. If you’d like to read other stories or submit your own, view the UW Resilient page.

Q and A with the experts: how do we get people to listen to expert advice?

The University of Waterloo has a number of experts available for comment on various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us with alarming prevalence, the existence of people who simply refuse to listen to expert advice.

When it comes to large groups who refuse to wear masks, or the potential for many people to refuse a vaccine – there are real and often dangerous consequences to grapple with.

How do we combat this phenomenon?

University of Waterloo psychology researcher Ethan Meyers talks about one method that might work.

Why do people refuse to follow expert advice?

This may reflect people’s tendency to be overconfident. As people tend to think they know more than they really do, they may fail to credit experts with possessing any specialized knowledge about a topic. For instance, if I (falsely) believe that I possess extensive knowledge about how COVID-19 spreads, I might not think that scientists or public health authorities know anything that I do not. If this is the case, then it might make sense why I wouldn’t listen to the experts. 

How do you get people to start listening? Is it possible?

It’s possible! Our study shows that when the illusion of knowledge is exposed (compared to when the illusion is not exposed), people revise their beliefs more to the opinion of experts than to the opinion of random members of the public.

Exposing the illusion of knowledge presumably made participants recognize the limits of their knowledge by themselves. That is, we didn't explicitly point out to them that they lacked extensive knowledge, the participants realized it on their own after we asked them to generate an explanation for how something worked (trying to explain something makes us aware of the gaps in our own knowledge).

Does this method work for every topic?

We were a bit surprised by the generality of the effect. We found that people didn't just have to fail to explain how a particular issue worked for the belief revision effect to occur. Instead, people "listened" to the experts even after failing to explain completely unrelated topics. 

For example, in one of our experiments, we found that people started privileging the opinion of economists (over the public) on economic issues after failing to explain how a helicopter takes flight. A topic that has nothing to do with economics.

This suggests that recognizing that we do not know as much as we thought we did might induce a general feeling of intellectual humility – or ignorance – that leaves us more receptive to information from more valid sources (i.e., experts) over less valid ones (i.e., random members of the public).

Ethan Meyers is a member of the Reasoning and Decision Making Lab in the Department of Psychology. His research focuses on how people can reduce their naturally occurring biases when thinking – known as “cognitive de-biasing”.

Remembering Professor Emeritus Bruce Simpson

This article was originally published on the School of Computer Science website.

Computer Science Professor Emeritus Bruce Simpson of Waterloo, Ontario, passed away on December 11, 2020 at Freeport Hospital in Kitchener. Bruce had been living with Parkinson’s and Lewy body dementia for several years.

Bruce was born on May 26, 1940, in Leamington, Ontario, to Agnes Bruce and Richard Simpson. He was raised in Toronto and attended Humberside Collegiate. He graduated in 1962 with a BSc in math, physics and chemistry from the University of Toronto. He then completed an MASc in aeronautical engineering at Toronto in 1963 and a PhD in applied mathematics at the University of Maryland in 1966.

Bruce continued his academic career by pursuing a postdoctoral fellowship at California Technical Institute from 1966 to 1968. He then became an Assistant Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York from 1968 to 1971. He returned to Canada in 1971 as an Assistant Professor in Waterloo’s Department of Applied Analysis and Computer Science, as it was then known. His research interests were in mesh generation and triangulation. Bruce retired from Waterloo officially on June 1, 2005, but continued as an adjunct faculty member at the School of Computer Science.

Bruce served as the Chair of Waterloo’s Department of Computer Science from 1984 to 1987, at which time he was on the Formative Committee for the Information Technology Research Centre. In the 1990s, Bruce served on the Graduate Appraisal Panel for the Ontario Council of Graduate Studies. He was honoured to be named a ‘Pioneer of Computing in Canada’ by IBM in 2005. Both as a Chair and as a senior faculty member, Bruce enjoyed welcoming new computer science faculty members, and he was a mentor, colleague and friend to many over his years.

Bruce maintained an active lifestyle. He enjoyed many sports including lacrosse, basketball, hockey, squash, skiing, and tennis. He continued to play tennis well into his time living with Parkinson’s. He greatly enjoyed music, both classical and popular styles, and played the piano. Family camping trips and travel were favourite recreational activities. Bruce embraced opportunities to live abroad during his sabbaticals in England and France. His career also provided opportunities for travel to a wide variety of international locations.

As the son of a United Church minister, he continued to enjoy the church community as an adult and was an engaged member of Knox Waterloo Presbyterian Church, where he was involved in the Men’s Group.

Bruce is pre-deceased by his mother, father and first wife, Gwen Simpson. He is survived by many loved ones including his wife, Janis, his children (Chris/Jim, Jackie/Matt, Rick/Roshni, Geoff/Jane), ten grandchildren, and his sister, Elizabeth. Bruce maintained loving relationships with extended family members and a multitude of lifelong friends.

A cremation has taken place and a small family funeral will be held. A time for all to join the family in a Celebration of Life will be announced.

Bruce’s family asks that those wishing to honour him consider donations to Knox Waterloo, the Alzheimer’s Society, Grand River Hospital, or the Parkinson’s Society.

For a collection of tributes from Professor Simpson's colleagues at the University, read the full article on the Computer Science website.

Turning a new artificial leaf

This article was originally published in Waterloo Stories.

When Yimin Wu set his sights on finding a solution that would impact both sustainable energy and climate change, he turned to nature for his inspiration.

“Green house gases and CO₂ are a big problem that lead to climate change,” says Wu. “I looked at how we could mimic plants and nature. Plants absorb CO₂ and water and use sunlight to convert them to glucose — fuel for the plant. I wanted to look at the possibility of using a catalyst with CO₂ and water to convert into a useful fuel for human use."

Waterloo engineering professor Yimin Wu. Photo: Brian Caldwell, University of Waterloo.

Wu, who joined Waterloo’s Faculty of Engineering as a professor in 2019, discovered the “artificial leaf” process while leading a team of researchers from the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, as well as scientists at California State University, Northridge, and the City University of Hong Kong. Using an inexpensive red powder called cuprous oxide, Wu was able to covert CO₂ and water into methanol and oxygen.

Moving from the lab to industry

The discovery of the artificial leaf process has attracted interest from the scientific community. Wu’s natural energy paper has been cited more than 30 times by researchers around the world. His work has also been highlighted by the U.S. Department of Energy.

“We didn’t expect so much attention, but it has turned out to be great,” says Wu. “ People are talking about it and we’ve been getting lots of inquiries from industry and venture capitalists.”

The much needed attention will allow Wu to move to the next step in his research, which involves scaling the process from a lab setting to a large-scale operation that can be used by industry.

“Before we can commercialize the process, we have to demonstrate that it will work in a reactor plant,” says Wu. “That involves constructing a building-size reactor. We need industry partners and government support to invest and commit to this journey.” 

Read the full article on Waterloo Stories.