Tuesday, July 16, 2024

Waterloo awarded for Inclusive Physical Space Framework at CAUBO 2024

(L-R) Top row: Christine Hancock, Joyce Barlow, Mark Lisetto-Smith, Mathew Thijssen, Melissa Moogk-Soulis, and Rob Hunsperger. Bottom row: Stepanka Elias, Jesse Klimitz, Lorene Casiez, Haley Rae Lawson, Michael Philpott, and Michelle Xuereb.

The University of Waterloo was honoured at the 2024 annual conference of the Canadian Association of University Business Officers (CAUBO) as a recipient of the CAUBO Quality and Productivity Awards Program that celebrates the achievements and best practices of its members. Waterloo’s winning achievement was the Inclusive Physical Space Framework, a year-long collaborative project that involved several key offices at Waterloo, including  Plant Operations, Disability Inclusion, Human Resources, the Sustainability Office, and Human Space, a Toronto-based architecture firm.  

The Inclusive Physical Space Framework is an open-resource document intended to encourage the design of physical spaces that prioritize the user experience of all people. This means defining accessibility, well-being, and sustainability goals from the initial conception of a project, developing strategies to meet the goals through the project design, executing them in construction, and maintaining them throughout the lifecycle of the building. The Framework was created using an environmental scan of relevant technical standards as they apply to accessibility, sustainability, and well-being, a survey of the University of Waterloo campus community and the general public, and input from disability advocates and individuals with lived experiences.

This open resource is shared publicly on the University of Waterloo website. It was distributed through the Ontario Network of Accessibility Professionals and various post-secondary membership organizations, such as the Council for Ontario Universities. It is intended to support the PSE sector where there is ownership of multiple buildings and properties with high mobility and traffic by a diverse population. Other sectors with similar organizational structures, such as municipalities, could also leverage the resource.

The award was accepted by Jacinda Reitsma, Vice-President, Administration and Finance, on behalf of the Waterloo project team. "This award is a significant recognition of our commitment to fostering an inclusive environment where everyone feels valued and belongs, not only at Waterloo, but across the post-secondary sector through the shared framework," Reitsma said.

View the CAUBO Quality and Productivity Awards video presentation on the Inclusive Physical Space Framework. For further information on this project, please contact Joyce Barlow, Associate Director, Disability Inclusion, or Christine Hancock, Associate Director, Project Development at inclusive.space@uwaterloo.ca.

Breaking the cycle of burnout

By Naomi Grosman. This article was originally published on the Velocity website.

Burnout is a state of emotional, physical and mental exhaustion — and it’s pervasive.

In the U.S., 72 per cent of the workforce reports stress and anxiety affecting their daily lives, according to peer reviewed research published in the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior.

Dr. Alison Smith (PhD ’09), co-founder and chief scientist at Velocity startup Roga, says that on a physiological level, stress plays a significant role in the development of burnout as does the way we organize our lives day-to-day.

Roga has developed a mental wellness platform, which includes a non-invasive wearable device, to help people manage stress and burnout. Roga recently announced initial venture-backed funding of $1.6 million, joining the more than 400 Velocity-linked companies that have cumulatively created $26 billion USD in enterprise value.

Read the Q&A with Alison Smith on Waterloo News

Pharmacy PhD grad awarded the 2023-2024 Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship

This article was originally published on the School of Pharmacy website.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) announced funding for the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships 2023-2024. Waterloo Pharmacy alum and current postdoctoral fellow at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), Dr. Cindy Hoi Ting Yeung (PhD’23, Dr. Andrea Edginton’s Lab) was ranked 13 out of the 182 researchers for her work on Advancing towards model-informed precision dosing: Ontogeny and pharmacogenetics of commonly used drugs in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Across Canada approximately 1,100 neonates, infants less than four weeks old, per year experience adverse drug reactions to off-label prescribed medications – those not approved by regulatory bodies to treat neonatal populations or neonatal diseases.

For a medication to hit the market, thorough testing on adults is required. As a result, understudied populations, including neonates, are left out of the drug development process.

“The majority of medications, around 90 per cent, used in neonatal treatment are off-label, because many medications have not been studied and approved for this specific population,” Yeung says.

Commonly used medications in neonatal care, indomethacin, used to treat bleeding in the brain and heart abnormalities, and furosemide, used to treat fluid retention, may be underdosed or overdosed because optimal dosing is not yet understood in this population. Complications of non-optimal dosing can lead to heart failure, kidney injuries and bowel injuries in infants.

Yeung’s research will use model-informed precision dosing (MIPD), to develop population pharmacokinetic (popPK) and physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models. These models will help researchers better predict what dose is needed for indomethacin and furosemide in neonates. Specifically, it seeks to understand the dose, exposure (drug levels in the body), and response (the effect of the drug) relationship through studying the genetics and maturation of proteins that affect how drugs are cleared by these rapidly growing and changing neonates. In addition, this method will optimize dose requirements and incorporate other factors not previously considered, including the infant’s age, weight, sex, and other factors to avoid drug-induced toxicity – injuries to the infant.

"My overall goal is to understand what dose to give infants to achieve a certain exposure that can result in a therapeutic effect," says Dr. Yeung. This award highlights my work in populations that are typically left out of the drug development process."

“Other researchers have had similar success from MIPD knowledge in reducing adverse drug reactions in infants. The funding will allow me to collect the data I need to fill in the research gaps to make MIPD a reality for these two commonly used drugs,” Yeung adds.

Yeung thanks the collaborative nature of the team at SickKids, including her supervisor Dr. Tamorah Lewis, Division Head, Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Senior Associate Scientist, Translational Medicine, pharmacists, assay developers, geneticists, patients and caregivers and the research team helping with data collection and analysis.

The Banting Fellowship program provides $70,000 per year over two years to postdoctoral applicants, both nationally and internationally, who will positively contribute to the country's economic, social and research-based growth. In Canada, only 23 researchers receive the award.