We're thrilled to introduce the scholars in our Provost's Program for Black and Indigenous Postdoctoral Scholars. Read more about our 2023 and 2024 cohorts of scholars and their research below.
Oludoyin Adigun
Adigun, Oludoyin
Faculty of Science, Department of Biology
Supervisor: Trevor Charles
Oludoyin's research project aims to characterize the interaction between novel Stutzerimonas strains, which are predicted to possess nitrogen fixation genes, and various crop plants including corn, soybean, canola, and wheat. Overall, the research project has the potential to contribute to sustainable agriculture, enhance crop productivity, and advance our understanding of plant-microbe interactions, with implications for both agricultural and environmental sustainability.
Daniel Amoak
Amoak, Daniel
Faculty of Environment, Department of Geography and Environmental Management
Supervisor: Susan Elliot
Daniel will investigate the impact of water security and participatory water governance on women's empowerment throughout their life course in East Africa. This study aligns with the Provost Scholarship's vision of contributing empirical knowledge and promoting gender equality and women's empowerment, which are essential for improving livelihoods and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
Bobbie Bigby
Bigby, Bobbie
Faculty of Health, Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies
Supervisor: Bryan Grimwood
Bobbie's research work examines the ways that tourism can be more than simply an economic tool for Indigenous communities. She is interested in working alongside Indigenous and Tribal communities, including her own, to be able to explore and document how tourism can be a vehicle for resurgence, or (re)connecting people to traditional culture, community and Country (living lands, waters and non-human kin).
Emmanuel Okeke
Okeke, Emmanuel
Faculty of Science, School of Pharmacy
Supervisor: Michael Beazely
Emmanuel's work focuses on understanding the complex causes of Alzheimer's disease (AD), a devastating condition affecting millions worldwide, including over half a million Canadians. Despite significant research efforts, the exact mechanisms leading to AD remain unclear, and current treatments are ineffective. Emmanuel's research aims to bridge this knowledge gap by exploring the interplay between lifestyle factors, environmental toxins, and neurotransmitters (chemical messengers in the brain) in the development of AD.
Shoronia Cross
Cross, Shoronia
Faculty of Science, Department of Chemistry
Supervisor: Pavle Radovanovic
The objective of Cross’ research is to work with multiferroic materials – which means that the magnetization can be switched using an electric field, and the electric polarization can be switched using magnetic fields. This allows for the design of multistate bits which can store data in both their magnetization and electric polarization, allowing for higher density data storage.
The results of this study will provide critical insight into the rational design of multiferroic nanocomposites for applications in future information technologies, including quantum computing.
Dalal Daoud
Daoud, Dalal
Faculty of Arts, Department of Anthropology
Supervisor: Secil Dagtas
Through the Provost’s Postdoctoral Program, Dalal aims to complete a book manuscript on Islamists’ interactions with ethnonational minorities. Her doctoral dissertation explored ruling Islamists’ approaches to minorities in Sudan and Turkey, and found that governing Sudanese and Turkish Islamists did not follow a coherent approach toward minorities. Rather, they changed their approaches diachronically between accommodative and exclusionary toward the different minority groups regardless of religious bond.
Investigating the Islamic Republic’s interactions with minorities will increase our knowledge on how institutions favourable to Islamists affect their decision making. This book project will pique the interest of those studying and researching Islamist politics, minority-state relations, ethnicity and nationalism, and the Middle East North Africa. It will also be of significance to foreign policy makers.
Samuel Gyamerah
Gyamerah, Samuel
Faculty of Mathematics, Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science
Supervisor: Ruodu Wang
Not only does climate change increase global warming but also causes extreme droughts, water scarcity, rising sea levels, catastrophic storms, and water shortages. These effects of climate change have contributed to crop failures and have consequently led to extensive impacts on the economic activities of most rural and indigenous farmers.
Samuel's project will expedite partnership between public and private insurers, farmer cooperatives and groups to provide reasonably priced and sustainable weather-centered index insuranceto smallholder, marginal, and indigenous farmers.
Anny Leudjo Taka
Leudjo Taka, Anny
Faculty of Science, Department of Chemistry
Supervisor: Vivek Maheshwari
Research on sustainable, recyclable, and biodegradable high-efficiency nanomaterials has attracted tremendous attention. The challenge is to develop novel nanomaterials with multifunctional properties useful in various fields.
Anny's project aims to develop novel polymer nanobiocomposites with multifunctional, biodegradable, and recyclable properties. These novel polymer nanobiocomposites will be exploited as nanofiltration membranes for water desalination and as dielectric materials in thin-filmorganic electronic devices. The application of these polymer nanobiocomposites in water desalination and electronic devices represents a potential, sustainable approach to creating a water purification platform and developing a fully working electronics platform while decreasing the devices' environmental footprint.
