Monday, November 6, 2023

Treaties Recognition Week runs from November 5 to 11

A message from the Office of Indigenous Relations.

Treaties Recognition Week honours the importance of treaties and is intended to promote educational opportunities surrounding treaty rights and relationships. Learning about our collective treaty rights and responsibilities fosters greater understanding and nurtures relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.

Treaties Recognition Week also represents one of many steps on the path of healing and reconciliation. This legislation was launched in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, specifically Call to Action 10.vii.- Respecting and honouring Treaty relationships. 

To honour our responsibility, the Office of Indigenous Relations is hosting two insightful discussions and teachings:

• On Monday, November 6 from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. hear from Clayton Samuel King on "100 Years of the Williams Treaties" in EC5 1111.
• Thursday, November 9 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. learn from Myeengun Henry on the "Spirit of the Treaties," online and in person in EC5 1111.

Register for these events on the Office of Indigenous Relations website.

Setting standards and unlocking the potential of synthetic data in health research

By Jordan Flemming. This is an excerpt of an article originally published on Waterloo News.

At the intersection of data privacy, open science and public health, the University of Waterloo has initiated a collaborative effort with several Canadian government agencies to explore the use of synthetic data for research and analysis.

Dr. Helen Chen, a professor in the Faculty of Health and director of the Professional Practice Centre in Health Systems is leading the initiative.

“This collaboration primarily aims to utilize synthetic data's capabilities in addressing the sensitive information held by government agencies,” Chen says. “It is very important we preserve privacy while enabling data sharing and analysis — synthetic data stands to be a critical tool in achieving this balance.”

Synthetic data is artificially generated information that closely mimics the characteristics and patterns of real data without containing any sensitive or personally identifiable information. It is developed through advanced machine learning algorithms and statistical techniques to replicate the properties and structures of real-world datasets.

Chen and her team have worked closely with The Ottawa Hospital on a case study using synthetic data to study a specific drug's use patterns and to train a machine learning model to predict the drug’s efficacy on individual patients.

"The Ottawa Hospital uses MDClone, a synthetic data analytics platform, to generate high quality synthetic data that closely mirrors the characteristics of real data, ensuring no patient information is involved,” Chen says. “Our model based on synthetic data is then provided to the team at the hospital for validation with real data — enabling us to evaluate the effectiveness of synthetic data when compared to the real data."

This collaboration caught the attention of multiple government agencies at a conference in Ottawa organized by Waterloo’s Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute. The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) and the Canada Border Services Agency both expressed interest in the use of synthetic data for research due to the sensitive nature of the data they harbor.

These agencies acknowledge the significance of employing synthetic data for various purposes, such as enhancing pandemic response applications, assessing border crossing patterns and evaluating health policy impacts on vulnerable communities.

By harnessing synthetic data, agencies can conduct essential testing, training and policy evaluations without compromising individual privacy or data security. This approach holds immense promise for enhancing decision-making processes, particularly in cases where real data must remain protected.

Seeing the usefulness of synthetic data from the Ottawa Hospital case study, the collaboration with the Waterloo research team and the federal agencies initiated a feasibility study. The study was conducted by a dedicated team comprising students and faculty members from the University and data scientists within PHAC.

Read the rest of the article on Waterloo News.

Anthropology Grad Forum coming up on Friday

A message from the Department of Anthropology.

Join the 7^th annual Graduate Forum where Public Issues Anthropology MA students will be presenting their research.

Presentations will include:

• Health and Disease in Byzantine Greece: A Dental Analysis of the Temple of Ismenion Apollo, Thebes;
• Childhood health and identity in the Byzantine: A paleopathological analysis of juveniles from Thebes, Greece;
• A Bioarchaeological Secondary Assessment of Pathogen aDNA in Human Metagenomes;
• Maritime Trade of Classical Greece: Examining Contents of Transport Amphorae;
• The Importance of Vaccine Hesitancy;
• Trust, Care, Attunement: An Anthropological  Study of Patient-Doctor Relationships;
• Grids and groups: Live-in domestic work in Costa Rica

The event will be held on November 10 from 10:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. in Arts Lecture Hall AL 124. Lunch will be provided.

Gender Equity Lecture Series continues and other notes

"The office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism's Gender Equity Lecture Series continues this month with Faculty-specific sessions for those who are interested in exploring foundational Gender Equity concepts as it highlights some significant personal, interpersonal, and systemic barriers to gender equity across UWaterloo's campus and it explores the harms of gender inequity, when it arises," says a note from EDIR-O. The next event in the series is for the Faculty of Environment on November 17 from 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. and is entitled Beyond the "Pipeline": Evaluations, Values, and Allyship in Academia.

The Waterloo Climate Institute is hosting Patricia Fuller, Canada's former Climate Change Ambassador, for a lecture entitled International Cooperation on Climate Change in a Complex Global Context on Tuesday, November 17.

"There is no shortage of grounds for pessimism about the prospects for international cooperation on climate change heading into CoP28: heightened geopolitical tensions, the impact of inflation on the politics of climate policy, and divisions over the insufficiency of progress to date to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement," says the talk's abstract. "Against this background, what are the ways forward for global cooperation to meet the climate crisis and what must Canada do to play its part?"

Patricia Fuller is a Senior Fellow at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, and a Senior Advisor with Strategy Corp. She has extensive experience in international relations and public policy.  She was Canada’s Ambassador for Climate Change from 2018 to 2021, leading engagement with international partners and promoting Canadian clean technology. 

The in-person event runs from 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. in EC5 1111.

"Science Technical Services is delighted to announce that after 25 years of dedicated service, Krunomir Dvorski will embark on a well-deserved vacation leading to his retirement, starting on November 24, 2023," says a note from Science Technical Services. "Kruno's innovative solutions throughout the past 25 years have greatly benefited our organization. Congratulations, Kruno! We wish you all the best in your future endeavours."