Health

Dr. Margaret Mutumba (PhD '23) addressed the Faculties of Health and Science at the fall 2023 convocation ceremony. She is a global health innovator focused on access to affordable health care in low resource settings with more than 10 years of health sector management experience in sub-Saharan Africa. She also has research experience in maternal, reproductive, fertility and health systems.

Laura Lester combines her passions for aeronautics and health sciences through her Master’s of Science in Kinesiology and Health Sciences 

Professor John Hirdes (School of Public Health Sciences) is one of five University of Waterloo researchers to be named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) for their exceptional contributions in Arts, Social Sciences and Sciences.

Dr. Nikolas Knowles, a professor who joined the Department of Kinesiology and Health Sciences in 2022, has received a $100,000 grant from the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund (JELF). He is one of 13 recipients at the University of Waterloo.

Dr. Sharon Kirkpatrick, a professor in the School of Public Health Sciences, was recently named University of Waterloo Research Chair, along with six other professors across campus. The seven-year appointment began July 1, 2023.

Laura Middleton, associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Health Sciences at the University of Waterloo, has been appointed Schlegel Research Chair in Dementia and Active Living for a five-year term starting July 1, 2023.

At the beginning of last summer, master’s student Lena Kozyr fled her home in Ukraine, leaving behind parents, grandparents, relatives and friends to seek refuge in Vancouver, Canada.

Like so many other Ukrainians, Kozyr says the move was bittersweet. Though she was grateful for a sense of safety and was looking forward to new opportunities, a mix of loneliness and anxiety still riddled her. 

Layered over the pandemic in 2021 was an epidemic. Toxic drug overdoses in Canada spiked that year, with almost 8,000 reported deaths from opioid overdoses alone. In British Columbia, 2,264 people died that year of toxic drug overdoses.