Thursday, July 28, 2022

IBET PhD Project to represent Waterloo in federal competition

This article was originally published on Waterloo News.

An innovative new program that provides financial support, mentorship and networking to Black and Indigenous PhD students has been chosen to represent the University of Waterloo in a federal competition for bold and potentially game-changing projects to address persistent systemic barriers in the research ecosystem and academia.

The Indigenous Black Engineering Technology (IBET) PhD Project, led by Tizazu Mekonnen, associate professor of chemical engineering, is aimed at rapidly increasing the presence of Indigenous and Black academics in engineering and computer science across Canada. Launched only 18 months ago, the program has expanded to 15 universities across Canada with 28 Momentum Fellows in the 2021 and 2022 cohorts.

Along with $120,000 over four years to support the costs of PhD studies, IBET fellows are matched with mentors of their choice from industry or academia. IBET fellows are also able to pursue an internship with an industry partner through an attractive MITACS partnership that incentivizes industry partners.

IBET was chosen as the University’s nomination for the inaugural Robbins-Ollivier Excellence in Equity Award following an online vote for Waterloo employees and students in May and an internal selection committee deliberation. Two other applications, Becoming Coalition and Structured Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE), were also part of the online campus vote.

If the IBET project is awarded the $100,000 Excellence in Equity award, Professor Mekonnen would like to focus on increasing the number of Indigenous PhDs in the program. Currently only two of the 28 Fellows are Indigenous.

Tizazu Mekonnen, associate professor of chemical engineering, is leading the Indigenous Black Engineering Technology (IBET) PhD Project, aimed at rapidly increasing the presence of Indigenous and Black academics in engineering and computer science.

“Right now, we’re very successful in terms of attracting Black students but on the Indigenous front we’re struggling a little bit,” he says. “My hope is we are going to continue to attract more successful students and a key success is to see the students finish the program, get employment and become role models for future engineers.”

Professor Mekonnen would like to see more than 100 fellows at the peak of the program to increase the overall number of Black and Indigenous people trained at the PhD level. When the IBET program started, there were less than 15 Black professors out of more than a thousand in Ontario and he says he was the only Black professor out of nearly 350 faculty in Waterloo Engineering. In Canadian society, about four per cent of people are Black and five per cent are Indigenous.

For IBET fellows the mentorship experience goes beyond core studies and work and extends to social and cultural experiences.

“Fellows want someone who can support their cultural growth and safety in this new environment,” says Mary Robinson, associate dean for Outreach, Equity and Diversity in the Faculty of Engineering.

The IBET PhD program is also educational for the PhD advisors and IBET mentors in understanding student needs.

“The advisors and mentors may not have experienced life as a Black person or an Indigenous person so there’s a lot of education going on while supporting these students. This type of work starts a cultural shift so that the University is more prepared, and more aware of how to create a more inclusive welcoming environment while making changes to the whole system to make it more inclusive,” says Robinson.

Study looks at how digital religion is shaping spirituality among millennials

The growing trend of digital religion among US and Canadian millennials mostly complements, not substitutes, in-person participation in organized religion, a new study found. 

As digital forms of communication increased, many in the religious community saw an opportunity to stem the tide of secularization in North America. The study by University of Waterloo sociology professor Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme explores if digital technologies facilitate a ‘spiritual revolution’ and if they provide important spiritual and religious spaces for new segments of the population removed from more conventional forms of organized religion. 

“We know that more and more people are turning towards digital mediums for spirituality such as chat groups with pastors, online sermons, and religious content on social media,” said Wilkins-Laflamme. “We’ve found that while digital religion isn’t necessarily attracting a lot of new millennials to participate, it is making the experience of those already involved richer.”

Wilkins-Laflamme notes that while digital religion is a phenomenon among many millennials, it’s not a part of the lives of the vast majority of this demographic. 

“It is still present though for a sizeable minority of the young adult population, and for many of them, digital religion plays an important complementary role to the in-person practicing of their faith,” said Wilkins-Laflamme.

While past scholarship has examined the adoption of digital religion and its role in spirituality, Wilkins-Laflamme’s report is the first to examine who exactly is practicing it and to what end.

“Social environment does play an important role, with digital religion practices much more prevalent in the generally more religious U.S. context, compared with the generally more secular Canadian context,” said Wilkins-Laflamme. “Digital religion practices are often, but not always, tied to other in-person religious and spiritual activities among millennials.”

The study, Digital Religion Among U.S. and Canadian Millennial Adults, was published in the Review of Religious Research. 

This is how you make a dent in the universe

By Rose Simone. This article was originally published in the Spring 2022 issue of Waterloo Magazine.

How did Janelle Resch (BMath ’10, MMath ’13, PhD ’19) move from a doctoral thesis on the mathematics of sound waves to becoming a co-founder of a biotech firm at the beginning of a pandemic?

Her story is about the celebrated University of Waterloo innovation ecosystem, but it is also about her education: “Mathematics helps you describe the world around you. Having that logical foundation to look at something from first principles, derive a model, and then test that model computationally, is really important for any field.”

It is also about her husband and co-founder Eric Ocelewski, his cancer diagnosis, and their decision to use their talents to “make a dent in the universe on the early-detection, diagnostics problem.”

Ocelewski, co-founder of their pathogen detection company Π∩ϟ (Pi and Power) now at the Velocity incubator, was diagnosed with invasive squamous cell carcinoma on his tongue and underwent intensive surgery and experimental chemotherapy. His father had passed away from a similar cancer, however, advances in genetic screening allowed the couple to predict Eric’s cancer years before it emerged.

Resch points out: “Eric’s surgery and treatment could have been much more simplified if we had caught it earlier.”

The innovation ecosystem at Waterloo has been fundamental to the growth of Π∩ϟ, but Resch says it is critical to recognize the power of the many people who have stepped up to support and encourage her along the way.

“The University of Waterloo is just buildings, but the people inside them make the difference,” Resch says. “There were people who were really supportive and positive who helped us make this happen.”

Among the people at Waterloo who were important to her company, Resch cites Michael Barnett-Cowan, a kinesiology professor who encouraged them to get into the Velocity program; Jeff Aramini, an epidemiologist and entrepreneur who served as a business advisor when the company got into Velocity; Parisa Hamilton (MASc ’09, PhD ’14), the Velocity space lab manager who helped Resch become more comfortable with lab equipment thereby making the transition from acoustics to biotech smoother, and the late Safieddin Safavi-Naeini, a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering who died last year but was the director of the Centre for Intelligent Antenna and Radio Systems that collaborated with the company as it sought to investigate empirical data.

From augmented reality to early detection of pathogens

Resch and Ocelewski were initially not even thinking about going into the biotechnology space. They were intent on launching a company that would create virtual and augmented reality environments for research, education, remote testing and training.

But after Ocelewski was diagnosed with cancer, they wanted to find ways for cancer and other pathogens to be detected earlier to prevent suffering, save lives and preserve quality of life for patients and their families.

The company got its first $100,000 investment from a Velocity Fund Pitch Competition held during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Waterloo incubator had extended its intake to additional new companies to give priority to new technology ideas that could help with Canada’s effort to combat COVID-19. Among the new companies accepted into the program was Π∩ϟ.

Resch says any biotech company startup needs the right facilities and lab equipment and the Velocity facilities provided that environment. “We could not have done that at home, as it wouldn’t be appropriate to do a biotech startup focused on viral pathogen identification in your garage,” she says.

A sensor and algorithms for early detection

The company has since designed and fabricated its own sensor and created algorithms for the detection and identification of pathogens. It is now at a stage of testing its technology in the agricultural sector before extending the technology for bacteria and viruses in human health.

Resch says her applied mathematics PhD from Waterloo was certainly foundational for her company which brands itself with the mathematical symbols Π (pi), ∩ (and), ϟ (power).

“Waterloo stands amongst the giants when it comes to mathematical training at the undergraduate and graduate level,” Resch says. “We compete successfully with places like Harvard, Princeton, Cambridge, Oxford, MIT and Caltech.”

When Resch got into mathematics at Waterloo, her interest was initially in music. Her PhD thesis dealt with non-linear acoustics, its signal analysis and the production and propagation of sound waves in musical instruments. She is now an adjunct professor in the Applied Mathematics Department at the University of Waterloo.

But Resch says that mathematics is applicable everywhere and everything, from music to medicine. “Indeed, Mathematics helps you describe the world around you.”