Andrea is interested in understanding the unique characteristics and needs of immigrants with precarious status in Canada, with interests in trauma and identity. She is interested in addressing the paucity of research for these immigrant communities as well as applying her findings to advance immigration-related practices and policies.
Andrea is thankful to be a recipient of the 2023-2024 Richard H. Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship, which will generously support her evidence-based efforts to advocate for the welfare of immigrants. Originally from Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, she is honoured to be part of the research community at Â鶹AV.
B. Parazin, Earth and Planetary Science
B. Parazin is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at Â鶹AV working under the supervision of Dr. Natalya Gomez. Their research will focus on the interactions between ice sheet melting, sea level rise, and climate change as well as on model development. Complex climate, ice sheet and sea level models are used to predict how Earth’s climate will change over the 21st century, however, due to the high computational cost of simulations, these three systems are often considered and modeled separately. This can introduce significant bias and uncertainty into future predictions, as there are several important interactions between these systems that are poorly captured by this approach. B.’s work will be on bridging the gap between these three fields through the development of a whole-Earth coupled climate, ice sheet and sea level model.
This model will first be used to simulate previous interglacial periods, to put constraints on the greatest rates and magnitudes of ice sheet melting seen in Earth’s recent geologic past, and then will be turned to Earth’s future. With this model, they will similarly predict the future rate of ice sheet melting, predict future magnitude and distribution of sea level rise and identify any thresholds for climate tipping points like the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet.
B. Is honored to be a recipient of the 2023-2024 Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship. This funding will prove invaluable in supporting their research on how to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
Camille Simone Zolopa, Educational and Counselling Psychology
Camille Simone Zolopa is a first year doctoral student in Counselling Psychology under the supervision of Dr Dennis Wendt. She is happy to return to her undergraduate alma mater following a Master's degree in Clinical Research Methods at Fordham University in New York City, supervised by Dr Andrew Rasmussen.
Camille is honoured by and grateful for the support of the Richard H. Tomlinson Fellowship as she undertakes this research project.
Camilo Mireles, Anthropology
Camilo Mireles is a first-year doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology at Â鶹AV. His project explores the identity and ideological practices of ordinary people from Mexico before and after the arrival of the Spaniards. In specific, it investigates how landscape, houses, and the use of domestic space were reinterpreted as a form of identity negotiation, in a process of adaptation, resistance, and innovation within large-scale social, political, and economic changes. The study attempts to go beyond an androcentric and colonialist view of reality by combining the descendant community's interests in their past and their traditional knowledge with different research techniques from archaeology, anthropology, and history. This way, the descendent community will play an active role in the investigation process, while we get a better understanding of how the free will of people and the vitality of things and other-than-human entities can shape the relationship between cultural change and people’s identity.
A community-engaged collaborative project like this one, calls for an archaeology with people and for people. At the same time, it highlights the social dimension of broad economic and political processes. Camilo is honored to receive the Richard H. Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship, which will contribute significantly to his goal. Likewise, he is grateful for being able to conduct his research as a part of the Â鶹AV community.
Feikai Lin, Integrated Program in Neuroscience
Feikai Lin is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Integrated Program in Neuroscience under the supervision of Dr. Mark Brandon. She did her master’s study on human visual memory with Dr. Michael Bonner at JHU Cognitive Science. Then she worked as a RA in Dr. Chun Xu’s lab at the Institute of Neuroscience CAS, where she explored hippocampal coding of contexts and spaces with electrophysiology and optogenetics. From these experiences, she found her interest in neural coding for spatial navigation at cells and circuit levels. Although scientists have characterized the properties of head-direction cells, one of the neural bases for spatial navigation, the mechanism of representing and updating directions during reorientation is yet fully understood. Previous work in the Brandon lab found the head-direction population activity decreases as animals reorient. Feikai wants to further demystify the brain circuits that regulate this population activity and allow the navigation system to prepare for uncertainty. Specifically, she plans to map the connectivity of cortical and thalamic regions with neuro-anatomical tracing, record head-direction neural activity with calcium imaging while manipulating with optogenetics, and analyze how this activity changes during circuit-specific manipulation and reorientation behavior. This work will also provide insights into Alzheimer's disease pathology as the "sense of direction" is impaired in the early stage of normal aging and AD.
“It is my great honor to receive the Richard H. Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship. This provides huge support and opportunity for me to fully concentrate on research and build up my knowledge and skills.”
Jingzhi Chen,ĚýPhilosophy
Jingzhi is a first-year Ph.D. student in the philosophy department at Â鶹AV. Prior to her study at Â鶹AV, she studied legal philosophy at the University of Oxford. During her time there, she was drawn by profound and disquieting philosophical questions and decided to delve deeper into this captivating field.
Broadly speaking, Jingzhi’s interest mainly lies in understanding the relation between self and others. She wonders in what sense our beliefs or actions, which are heavily influenced and shaped by the society we live in, can be considered our own, and what normative implications we can draw from this understanding of human agency. Her research project focuses on a more specific question, which concerns our special obligations, such as those owed to our parents and friends. Those obligations, which require us to treat those people preferentially, may have been taken for granted in the past. However, in modern times where the value of autonomy is highly appreciated, whether and why we have those obligations is not obvious anymore. Some young people argue for their individuality as they grow up and are reluctant to admit that they owe anything special to their elderly parents. Open relationships, which allow people to have two or more romantic or sexual partners, are gradually being accepted and even appraised as a modern form of marriage. Do these shifts amount to a raised awareness of individual freedom, or the erosion of a tradition worth preserving? In Jingzhi’s research, she attempts to approach these questions by asking why we have special obligations and identifying the conditions under which they exist. She hopes to delineate the boundary between autonomy and special relationships, which can help us preserve the value of autonomy without losing the significance of special relationships that they ought to have.
Jingzhi is greatly honored to be awarded the Tomlinson Fellowship. This generous funding support not only enables her to concentrate on her academic research without financial distractions but also inspires her to pay it forward to the Â鶹AV community and beyond by producing meaningful research.
Keila Turino Miranda, Kinesiology and Physical Education
Keila Turino Miranda is a first-year PhD in Kinesiology Sciences student in the Cardiovascular Health and Autonomic Research Laboratory (CHARLab). As part of her MSc in Medical Science degree, Keila’s dissertation focused on the validation of prediction equations for the estimation of glomerular filtration rate in transgender individuals on gender-affirming hormone therapy. Keila is a champion within the transgender, gender-diverse and non-binary space and holds national leadership positions with Hypertension Canada and CanSOLVE CKD.
Transgender men (individuals assigned female sex at birth who identify as men) on testosterone therapy appear to have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Given that exogenous hormone use (i.e. testosterone) are an integral component of the management of transgender patients, Keila aims to elucidate the effect of testosterone therapy on blood pressure and blood pressure regulatory mechanisms in transgender men. Further, the paucity of literature evaluating the association between polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and cardiovascular health in transgender men makes it difficult to accurately assess the effects of exogenous testosterone on PCOS etiology, disease progression and treatment. Therefore, she also aims to examine the associations between polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and blood pressure outcomes in transgender men on testosterone.
Keila is thrilled and deeply honoured to represent the CHARLab as the recipient of the 2023-24 Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship. This recognition serves as a testament of her dedication and commitment to academic excellence and research within the transgender, gender-diverse, and non-binary space. The support and resources provided by this fellowship will champion Keila in advancing her doctoral studies and serves as a beacon of encouragement.
Ryan Reffner,ĚýChemistry
Ryan Reffner is an incoming doctoral student in the Kambhampati lab within the department of chemistry at Â鶹AV. Having spent much of his undergraduate degree involved in a variety of research projects, he has narrowed his sights toward the field of spectroscopy. The goal of his research is to use ultrafast laser spectroscopy techniques to study the electronic behavior in perovskite nanocrystals.
Perovskites are of wide interest within material science due to their semiconducting properties and solid-liquid duality with higher tolerance towards physical defects, in addition by being a weakly bound ionic solid instead of strongly covalent bound like most semiconductors in use today. The material also shows immense promise for use in green energy photovoltaics, lighting, and display technologies. Â鶹AV is a unique institution to study this material because of the resources and equipment available. The university has unique access to three types of state-of-the-art spectroscopic techniques: time resolved photoluminescence, transient absorption, and two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy which will be used to elucidate the electronic behavior of the perovskite nanocrystals.
“I am extremely grateful to Â鶹AV and its generous support through the Richard H. Tomlinson Fellowship. The fellowship will allow me to easily transition into Â鶹AV as an international student and start within the lab pursuing research in my field.”
Taylor Shirtliff-Hinds,ĚýBiology
Originally hailing from Toronto, Taylor Shirtliff-Hinds is a budding neuroscientist and PhD in Biology student in Michael Hendricks’ lab. Her research, made possible by the Tomlinson Fellowship, explores the complexities of coordinated movement by modelling human ataxias in the nematode worm C. elegans. Notably, C. elegans have a simple and mapped nervous system and a short life cycle, which make them especially amenable for neuroscientific research. Additionally, C. elegans can model a wide array of human diseases and can be screened for potential therapeutic drugs that alleviate disease symptoms. Using C. elegans saves time and resources when compared to mammalian models for drug discovery. Accordingly, her research will involve screening thousands of worm mutants for coordination deficits and testing them with libraries of pre-approved drugs to determine which compounds improve motor coordination. In this pursuit, Taylor’s work aids in drug discovery by generating a curated list of potential therapeutic drugs to mitigate ataxia symptoms.
Taylor studied Neuroscience and German in her undergraduate degree at Harvard, and has an MSc in Neuroscience from Oxford. Having lived and worked in Canada, the US, Germany, and the UK, she is excited to open a new chapter of her life in Montreal and continue her research at Â鶹AV. Taylor is honoured to receive a Tomlinson Fellowship, and is extremely grateful for the support of the program. Through both successes and setbacks, she embraces the opportunity to evolve as a researcher and contribute meaningfully to the Â鶹AV community.
Zhixin (Annie) Zhou, Psychology
Zhixin (Annie) is a first-year doctoral student in clinical psychology, supervised by Dr. Anna Weinberg in the Translational Research in Affect and Cognition (TRAC) lab. Having completed her MA degree in clinical psychology at Columbia University, she researched the intergenerational transmission of cognitive control capacity among children at high risk for depression, using electroencephalogram (EEG) and behavioral measures. She will continue her passion for studying risk factors for internalizing disorders (depression and anxiety) among infants and youths.
Specifically, gestation is a critical period of brain development for the fetus, and exposure to high levels of stress can disrupt brain development and increase the risk for future psychopathology. Given the significant and sustained global stressor of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is crucial to elucidate how gestational stress exposure might influence infant brain functioning and the risk for subsequent psychopathology. Ultimately, this research may benefit mothers and children by providing insights for future studies on developing targeted early prevention and intervention strategies.
Annie is honored to receive the Tomlinson Fellowship and is excited to pursue her research at Â鶹AV.
2022-2023
Anne Imouza, Political Science
Anne Imouza is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at Â鶹AV. Her research interests are at the intersection between political behavior and computational social science studies. Specifically, she will build an online index measure to assess political skepticism compared to traditional methods in political science. Political cynicism is a crucial indicator of citizens’ trust in government, institutions, and democratic systems. Only a handful of studies attempt to explain the rise in skepticism through the rise of new information and communication technologies. The general research question proposed is: to what extent do social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram impact political cynicism?
To address this question, she will proceed to a systematic literature review of poll data about users’ social media consumption on political cynicism. Then, a longitudinal and textual analysis will be led through a quasi-experimental design to present the extent of political news consumption on various social media that may impact users’ political cynicism. Lastly, a longitudinal network analysis will be conducted to depict whether the variation in political skepticism of a user is similar to his network of friends over time. The Richard H. Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship will significantly contribute to this goal and help her bring new evidence to the burgeoning body of research that explains how social media may foster political cynicism with network and textual data.
Anthony Bozzo, Experimental Surgery
Anthony is excited to begin a PhD in Experimental Surgery at Â鶹AV under the supervision of Dr Sahir Bhatnager, Dr John Healey and Dr Ahmed Aoude.
After graduating from Â鶹AV's medical school in 2014, Anthony completed a residency in Orthopedic Surgery and a thesis-based MSc with a focus on sarcoma at McMaster University under the supervision of international sarcoma trial pioneer Dr Michelle Ghert. Anthony completed a clinical fellowship in Orthopedic Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City last year. During this fellowship, he became familiar with the role of radiation therapy in the treatment of patients with high-grade soft tissue sarcomas. His research focus is on developing and validating a multi-input neural network model to predict overall survival, risk of local recurrence, and risk of complications from radiation therapy for sarcoma patients. Anthony and his collaborators seek to improve current prognostic systems by incorporating neural network analysis of a pre-operative MRI of the tumor, as well as the clinical variables. The goal is that better prediction of the benefits and complications of radiation therapy for soft tissue sarcoma patients will lead to more personalized treatment decisions. Once developed and validated for this project, the team hopes to apply similar machine learning methods to other clinical research questions.
Anthony is very grateful and honored by the support of the Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship.
Chuta Sano, Computer Science
"I am honored to receive the 2022-23 Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship. I am a first year PhD student in the computer science department, but honestly, I think that is almost as descriptive as me introducing myself as a human being. Although I expect this can be repeated for almost everything considered an academic “field,” computer science has broadened its scope and applicability over the years and will continue to do so. This is great; it speaks to the strength and utility of what might initially seem like abstract nonsense. One change to observe is that due to said broadness, “computer scientists” are quite diverse in interest, experience, and overall approaches to their respective areas of interest.
To descend one step below the giant entity that is computer science, I work in programming language theory… and to go even further, type theory: a particular intersection of mathematical logic, philosophy, and computer science. Historically, this field manifested out of a desire to define the notion of “good” computation in the 20th century and may perhaps be one of the oldest areas of research in what we loosely identify as computer science. Yet, there is so much more to be done! The very early pioneers of computer science graciously left many interesting problems for us to continue to ponder about and develop for time to come, partly due to the fact that we constantly find new interesting problems to consider as our assumptions about computers, such as hardware, demands, etc. shift. One important topic is in concurrency; how do we reason about multiple programs that work together to achieve some goal? How do we take properties of interest, such as “concurrent programs never get stuck,” and express it precisely in the language of mathematics? How do we enforce those properties? These are small samplers of broad questions that many people are trying to take a poke at using various interesting techniques and tools, and I too hope to take a small yet important step in our collective search for these answers using tools from proof theory and logic… just give me a few years to take that step though!"
Kit Chokly, Art History and Communication Studies
Kit Chokly is a white nonbinary trans student who began their PhD in Communication Studies at Â鶹AV in 2022. Their research looks at the pleasures and affordances of media, especially as they intersect with trans experiences. His dissertation project, tentatively titled Feeling weird: An affective analysis of digital trans media practices, proposes using digital curation to explore an emerging niche of digital media practices which utilize “weirdness” to express trans sentiments. These media explore gender in its embodied, social, and subjective forms; are situated in the affective mode of the weird; and are largely made by and for trans people. Their work aims to consider how such media work to circumvent problems of trans media representation and potentially contribute to novel ways of imagining or becoming a gender in mediated and often collaborative spaces.
Feeling weird will examine how these weird trans media practices can be an important part in the development of trans subjectivities, communities, and spaces. Through this research, he intends to contribute to the growing field of transgender media studies and communication studies more broadly by showing that weird trans media and their surrounding community are worth taking seriously—not in spite of, but because of their weirdness. Kit is grateful for the significant opportunity that The Richard H. Tomlinson Fellowship presents to these research pursuits.
Mahdi Mahdavi, Physiology
Mahdi is a first-year PhD in the Cerebral Systems Lab (CSL) within the Department of Physiology. After completing his MD degree, Mahdi decided to continue his passion for systems neuroscience through a research-centered PhD program at Â鶹AV. CSL’s research focuses on sensory and multisensory information processing in the brain. Our brains rely upon multisensory data from the environment to gather information about the external world. For these data to be processed, a crucial intermediate step is required where sensory object inputs are encoded into neural representations in the form of dynamic neural population activity patterns. Although population neural activity might seem complex and high-dimensional at first glance, studies have revealed that population neural activity is often restricted into a low-dimensional manifold spanned by a few independent components called modes. Mahdi’s research will focus on understanding the hierarchical neural representations of multisensory objects and how these representations might be decomposed into linear or non-linear manifolds.
“It is an honor to be a recipient of the Tomlinson Fellowship, which has enabled me to deepen my focus on my research by providing support and financial stability. I am thrilled to pursue my research as a part of the Â鶹AV community.”
Mingyu Wan, Integrated Program in Neuroscience
"I am a first year Ph.D. student in Integrated Program in Neuroscience at Â鶹AV. As my MSc. in Dr. Tiffany Schmidt’s lab at Northwestern University was winding down, I looked for other leading visual neuroscience labs, as I wanted to continue in this field for my PhD. Â鶹AV is widely known as a leading neuroscience university, and I became fascinated by Dr. Stuart Trenholm’s research program, which combines various scales of research (from cellular, to synaptic, to circuits, to full brain and behavior), and various experimental models (mice, marmosets, humans, in silico) to address problems in visual neuroscience in a holistic manner. By having access to a wide range of cutting-edge experimental tools, I felt that with my strong analytical and statistics background, I could make a significant impact while performing exciting and important experiments. In Dr. Trenholm’s lab at the Montreal Neurological Institute, I propose to use state-of-the-art RNA sequencing and tracing methods to gain unprecedented insights into how the visual brain is wired, and how vision loss results in changes in brain connectivity. Therefore, I hope that I can embark on this proposed program in the hope of realizing my dream to be a future professor in visual neuroscience at a research university and making my contributions to serving the blind people better in the future.
The Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship has made it possible for me to pursue my research at Â鶹AV. It is my honor to be one of Tomlinson Scholars."
Rachael Morgan, Educational and Counselling Psychology
Rachael Morgan is a first year Ph.D. student in Counselling Psychology, working under the co-supervision of Dr. Caroline Temcheff and Dr. Alexa Martin-Storey in the Healthy Development Lab. She is also a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario. Rachael obtained her Master's degree in Counselling Psychology at the University of Ottawa in 2022, under the supervision of Dr. Tracy Vaillancourt in the Brain and Behaviour Laboratory.
Rachael's research interests broadly focus on examining the links between bullying and child and youth mental health. She is particularily interested in understanding the risk factors that increase students' vulnerability for being bullied, as well as the protective factors that can help prevent adverse outcomes.
Rachael's Doctoral research will examine the associations between gender-based discrimination (i.e., sexist and homophobic discrimination) and adolescent depression and substance use, focusing on the moderating role of conduct problems. The goal of Rachael's research is to inform the development of school-based mental health intervention and prevention efforts that prioritize and meet the needs of gender and sexual minority students, who are particularly vulnerable for experiencing adverse outcomes as a result of being bullied, both in adolescence and over time.
Rachael is honoured represent the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology as the recipient of the 2022-23 Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship. This generous funding has allowed her to continue to pursue her research in bullying, stigma, and adolescent mental health at Â鶹AV as a Ph.D. student. Rachael looks forward to continuing to her Doctoral research as part of the Â鶹AV community.
Sainico Ningthoujam, English
Sainico is a first-year doctoral student in the English Department at Â鶹AV. Her project focuses on literary narratives from South Asia to interrogate the imagination and representation of the environment, and how they map multiple lived experiences of the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch to recognise the significant impact of humans on the environment. But it is also a cultural concept that has wide-ranging ramifications on how we think about nature, human and non-human relations. Her research excavates how different aesthetic forms and genres of indigenous and non-indigenous literary texts confront homogenising convictions of modernity and development to decolonize the Anthropocene. By focusing on local, national and transnational entanglements in relation to the Eastern Himalayas, her thesis reflects on how postcolonial and indigenous narratives navigate multiple identities to retain and reclaim their history, traditions and culture.
She is honoured to receive the Tomlinson Fellowship, which facilitates and supports her research. Through her project, she foregrounds the role of literary and other modes of cultural imagination in how the environment is articulated, represented and communicated in popular discourses and how these narratives influence our perception of climate change.
Swati, Religious Studies
Swati is a first-year PhD student studying South Asian Religions at the School of Religious Studies. She focuses on how religious texts conceptualize divinity with attentiveness to the scholarly interpretations of new theological formulations in medieval Hinduism. Her doctoral research investigates several texts known as the Rama Upanishads, seeking to explain their textual intricacies and reconstruct their role in canonizing Rama as a principal deity within modern Hinduism. Her research also highlights how competing sectarian Hindu movements modulated and redefined orthodox religious categories. Focusing on this shift at a time when various sects were formulating their theologies, differentiating amongst themselves, and creating localized histories contributes to a more nuanced discourse of Hindu sectarianism.
Her research involves philological analysis of Sanskrit texts, including the collection, collation, and study of their extant manuscripts and recensions to piece together their history, contexts, and reception. She is honored to pursue her research at Â鶹AV through the generous support of the Tomlinson Fellowship. She is delighted to work with related manuscripts at the university’s Rare Books and Special Collections and study with scholars reading diverse religious and scholarly traditions.
2021-2022
Benjamin Crosby, Religious Studies
Benjamin Crosby is a first year PhD student in ecclesiastical history at the School of Religious Studies at Â鶹AV. His research is in the history of the English Reformation, the period of religious and political strife which would eventually produce a Church of England independent of the Roman Catholic Church; this independent Church of England is the parent church of global Anglicanism, the third-largest body of Christians in the world. Specifically, he focuses on how two key early theologians of the Church of England, John Jewel and Richard Hooker, constructed a pan-Protestant identity that bound the Church of England to its fellow Protestant churches in Continental Europe.
He is thrilled to be undertaking this research at Â鶹AV, which has been prominent in a scholarly reassessment of the thought of Richard Hooker that has emphasized his continuities with Protestant thought in continental Europe. He is so thankful that the Tomlinson Fellowship makes it possible for him to undertake this work, which has relevance not only for Reformation history but also contemporary conversations about cooperation between Christian churches in Canada and beyond.
Cameron So, Biology
Cameron So is a first year PhD student in the Conservation, Ecology, Evolution, and Behaviour group within the Department of Biology. After completing his master’s degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, he is interested in combining genomic tools and field studies to understand how plants will adapt to changing environments across spatial scales. His interests lie between the intersection of conservation genetics and environmental impacts caused by climate change. Importantly, his research aims to aid the conservation of plant species vulnerable to extirpation or extinction in Canada.
The Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship has made it possible for Cameron to pursue his research questions of interest. He is excited to collaborate with regional conservation organizations to further the protection and conservation of biodiversity in Canada and worldwide. He is grateful for becoming part of the larger Â鶹AV community and looks forward to carrying out research goals.
Charlotte Spruzen, Earth & Planetary Sciences
I am a first-year PhD student working in the Precambrian Research Office and Publican Society, within the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. My research focuses on the Cryogenian period of Earth history, which lasted from 720 to 635 million years ago. During this time, the Earth experienced two long-lived and extreme global glaciations, often referred to as 'Snowball Earth' events, in which ice sheets extended to the tropics and potentially covered the entire globe. The interval between these events saw the deposition of the first massive carbonate reef complexes in Earth's history. These ancient reefs are the focus of my PhD research, the underlying objectives of which will be to establish the timing of reef formation relative to the Snowball Earth events, evaluate microbial and potentially metazoan communities responsible for building the reefs, and to use the reefs to document past seawater chemistry.
I am honoured to be the recipient of the Tomlinson Fellowship, which makes it possible for me to pursue my research at Â鶹AV.
Corinne Sejourne, Psychology
Corinne is a doctoral student in the Clinical Psychology program. She was drawn to the field by a longstanding interest in the underlying mechanisms and clinical application of emotion and emotion regulation. Wide-reaching experiences — including clinical psychology research in depression, bipolar disorder, dementia and caregiver populations; people operations work in the technology sector; and ongoing personal yoga practice and yoga teaching to both clinical and non-clinical populations — have influenced her research aims.
Questions at the heart of her work include: How do emotion and emotion regulation operate, and what are the downstream effects? How can we use a mechanistic understanding of these processes to develop and implement evidence-based treatments that promote adaptive emotion regulation widely? She is honored to have received the generous Tomlinson fellowship, which will enable her seek answers to these questions. Specifically, under the supervision of Dr. Blaine Ditto and Dr. Anna Weinberg, she will investigate how emotion and emotion regulation can operate to confer psychological resilience in diverse populations, and how mechanistic (i.e. psychophysiologic) understanding of this correlation can be applied and disseminated through thoughtful and technological interventions. She is especially interested in serving caregiver populations such as parents, family members of patients, and healthcare workers.
Daniel Jacinto, Political Science
Daniel is a first-year PhD student in the Department of Political Science at Â鶹AV, investigating the relationship between rogue states and international global governance. The term 'rogue state' has been used to refer to regimes that openly challenge the fundamental norms of the international community through aggression, human rights abuses, and the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Such states have been perceived by politicians, policymakers, and the public to be immune to the pressures of international society and fundamentally opposed to its core values. However, the reality is that many rogue states can be seen, to some degree, to act in line with international norms and do occasionally respond to international pressure. How should we characterize the relationship between rogue states and international norms? To address this, Daniel’s research looks at how North Korea—the archetypal rogue state—engages with international norms by examining instances of partial or token compliance. His dissertation, supported by the Richard H. Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship, aims to demonstrate how rogue states are, in fact, sensitive to pressures to conform with international norms, but at the same time take strategic steps to limit their compliance obligations when such obligations go against their political interests.
Protracted public health controversies have often been understood by social scientists as being directly related to the ability of industries to deceive politicians. Whether it is uranium, tobacco, lead or glyphosate, research shows that the safety of these products has remained unquestioned for too long due to industry interference. While industrial deceit certainly tells part of the story, how can we understand the frequency of this kind of controversy without resorting to structural explanations? Furthermore, if industry’s involvement is constant across cases, how can we explain that controversies vary in length and gravity?
Focusing on the case of asbestos, my doctoral research seeks to provide answers to these questions. Major health hazards of asbestos exposure were identified as early as the 1930s. However, in Canada and the United States, asbestos mining only ended between the 1980s and 2010s. In my research, I want to know what structural factors have enabled this significant delay. I explore the role of economic dependence of mono-industrial towns on industry and of geographical concentration of risks as factors that prevented greater awareness on asbestos hazards. I am honoured to be granted a Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship, which allows me to pursue this research in the Sociology Department at Â鶹AV.
Kelsey Huson obtained her Honours BA with Specialization in Psychology and a minor in Gerontology at the University of Ottawa in 2012. The following year, she completed the MSc in Public Health and Health Systems program at the University of Waterloo, under the supervision of Dr. Paul Stolee. Prior to returning to graduate school, Kelsey worked in the field of research and program evaluation across various settings, including public health, academia, and non-profit organizations. More recently, Kelsey completed the MA in Counselling Psychology program at Western University, where she supported the adaptation of healthy relationships programming for Indigenous youth, under the supervision of Dr. Claire Crooks. Kelsey is currently a doctoral student in the PhD in Counselling Psychology program at Â鶹AV, under the supervision of Dr. Dennis Wendt. Kelsey’s research interests include the development and evaluation of strengths- and culture-based interventions related to mental health, substance use, healthy relationships, and community wellness through collaborative partnerships with Indigenous communities.
"It is an honour to be a recipient of the 2021-22 Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship, which allows me to continue pursuing my research interests as a doctoral student at Â鶹AV. My PhD thesis project will focus on the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on traditional healing and culture-based substance use treatments for Indigenous peoples and communities. It is an absolute privilege to conduct this work and I look forward to further opportunities presented as part of being a Tomlinson Scholar."
Scott Sugden, Natural Resource Sciences
I joined the Department of Natural Resource Sciences in 2021 to study how climate change affects arctic ecosystems. We know that increasing arctic temperatures will cause glaciers to melt and permafrost to thaw, but we are less certain about what happens afterward. My research focuses on understanding the biological, geological, and chemical mechanisms behind how microorganisms help “build” brand-new ecosystems from the nutrient-poor soils left behind after glaciers retreat. Will these ecosystems become carbon sources or sinks? How will they contribute to global nutrient cycles? Can we use these systems as models for bioremediation programs designed to “restart” degraded ecosystems? These soils will eventually support plant and animal life, and by studying the early transition from lifeless dirt to a vibrant ecosystem, I intend to explore the future of the arctic landscape.
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2020-2021
Adam Groh, Integrated Program in Neuroscience
Adam Groh is a first year PhD student working in the lab of Dr. Jo Anne Stratton within the Faculty of Neurology and Neurosurgery at the Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital. His research focuses primarily on ependymal cells, a ciliated epithelium that lines the cerebral ventricles. Ependymal cells are vital regulators of cerebrospinal fluid flow, and interestingly, are also disrupted in diseases such as multiple sclerosis. Despite this, these cells have remained critically understudied compared to others in the brain. Adam’s research will investigate the influence of ependymal cell disruption on wider brain health using a novel transgenic model, while also assessing human brain tissues collected in collaboration with the Douglas Bell Canada Brain Bank. His project employs a variety of techniques, such as in vivo magnetic resonance imaging, single cell RNA sequencing, and immunohistochemistry. The Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship has given Adam the financial stability necessary to focus entirely on his research and to grow as a leader and educator in neuroscience. Overall, Adam is excited to be a part of the Tomlinson community, to disseminate his research widely, and to further our understanding of ependymal cells as key support cells within the brain.
Alberto Acquilino, Music
Alberto Acquilino is a first-year PhD student at the Computational Acoustic Modeling Laboratory in the Music Technology Area and active member of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology. He combines his master’s degrees in Musical Performance and Mechanical Engineering with the aim of developing new technologies in support of music pedagogy. Learning to master a musical instrument involves different technical features that still have to be addressed by music technologies, such as facility with timbre, dynamics, steadiness of tone, attack and release precision and refinement, embouchure configuration and variation, finger position and movement, posture and breathing, other than intonation and rhythm. Alberto’s research, funded by the Tomlinson Scholarship, intends to apply novel signal processing and feature extraction techniques, together with intuitive and user-friendly software interfaces, to create new tools that can help instrumentalists and teachers in becoming more efficient and effective with their practice and instruction time.
Amanda Doucette, Linguistics
I am a first-year PhD student in the Department of Linguistics. My research examines how language is represented in the human brain. Specifically, I am looking at how phonology - the organization of speech sounds in a language - is learned and represented. By using machine learning techniques to model human behavior, I believe we can begin to understand what the structure of linguistic knowledge looks like. How much of our linguistic ability is innate, and how much is learned? The Tomlinson Fellowship has made it possible for me to pursue these questions as a PhD student at Â鶹AV, and I am excited to continue my research as a part of the Â鶹AV community.
Anna Halepaska, Architecture
Dennis Ohm, Anthropology
After studying Politics, Gender Studies, and Economics in Frankfurt, Gothenburg, Berlin and New York, I joined the PhD program in Anthropology in 2020. My research interests include queer archives, affect theory, ethnographic fiction, anarchism, and the anthropology of epidemics. In my PhD project, I investigate the politics of intimacy, love, and relationality through the lens of architecture, social movements, and temporality. I hope that my research will contribute not only to an understanding of how the spaces that are considered most intimate are actually political sites that consolidate and sustain capitalist, hetero-patriarchal, and racist structures of domination, but also how resistance in the past, present, and future undermine and re-configure these structures as well as the affective grammars that underwrite them.
Eleftherios Samartzis, Experimental Surgery
As a trained gynecologist from Switzerland pursuing subspeciality training in Gynecologic Oncology at Â鶹AV, the Tomlinson Fellowship has made it possible for me to pursue a PhD program in Experimental Surgery at Â鶹AV during my Clinical Fellowship. My PhD project assesses the acceptance and clinical performance of a novel intrauterine molecular screening test – DOvEEgene – to detect ovarian and endometrial cancer early. DOvEEgene is as an acronym for Detecting Ovarian and Endometrial cancer Early using genomics. This innovative screening test aims at improving prognosis of these cancers, which are currently within the top 4causes of cancer-deaths in Canadian women, by increasing early detection. I am deeply honored to be a Tomlinson Fellowship recipient and grateful to Richard H. Tomlinson for his extraordinary legacy.
Emma McKay, Integrated Studies in Education
Maggie Chang, Biology
Marjolaine Lamontagne, Political Science
Who speaks on behalf of citizens internationally? If the coronavirus pandemic has shown us anything, it is that regional and federated governments are constitutionally responsible for, and hold distinctive views on, a great number of global issues, including healthcare, environmental politics, and the protection of cultural diversity. Yet, international law excludes them from multilateral organizations where global debates are held, and national and multilateral officials are reluctant to acknowledge their growing participation in international politics.
I am honored to be a recipient of the Richard H. Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship, which allows me to fully dedicate myself to the pursuit of my Ph.D. in International Relations and Comparative Politics. My thesis research will investigate the transformation of diplomatic practices in multilateral organizations and forums where substate actors increasingly assume a formal and informal presence. Among other methods, I will interview diplomatic representatives from substate and national governments to apprehend the informal “ways of doing things” and “background assumptions” that contribute to the reproduction of state sovereignty beyond institutions and political discourse. The goal will be to examine if and how the balance of political legitimacy and the distribution of diplomatic tasks between central and substate governments are changing in the era of globalization, and what are the effects of this transition on global and national governance.
Mathis Messager, Geography
My research seeks to inform the management and conservation of freshwater ecosystems and, in turn, support human cultures and livelihoods that depend on these ecosystems. I take a multidisciplinary approach, leveraging ecology and geosciences, together with the most recent advances in statistics and computing, to promote freshwater sustainability.
My doctoral research, made possible by the Tomlinson doctoral fellowship, will focus on improving our understanding and promote the conservation of rivers that flow only part of the year. From Himalayan snow-fed creeks and Saharan wadis, to small streams in British Columbian rainforests, most rivers and streams on Earth flow only part of the year, yet we know very little about them. This oversight contributes to the degradation of these ecosystems, the main source of water and livelihood for millions of people. Through my thesis, I intend to correct this oversight and enable their conservation.
Ěý
2019-2020
Alexander Herbert, ChemistryĚý
I am a first-year PhD student in the department of Chemistry working in Dr. Eric McCalla’s group. My research concerns lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries. Nearly everyone has used a device powered by a Li-ion battery. They’re in our phones, tablets, laptops, and increasingly, our vehicles. This isn’t by accident. Compared to other types of batteries, Li-ion stores a large amount of high-quality energy in a small package. However, most batteries used today rely on cobalt-containing positive electrodes which are expensive, toxic, and harmful to the environment both to obtain and dispose of. One way to reduce the economic and environmental cost of these batteries is to recycle the cathode material. So far, this has been a challenging process and current economically-viable techniques are prone to contamination from metals such as aluminum. I’m working to increase understanding of the effects of these contaminants on a vast number of cathode materials and develop materials that are more easily recycled by having tolerance to contaminant metals, or potentially develop materials that can use these impurities to their advantage. To achieve this goal, specially designed batteries containing 64 materials are made where each of the samples has different composition and will include a small amount of contaminant metal. Then high-throughput experiments are performed on all 64 materials at the same time to determine which materials perform best. Using these high-throughput techniques, over 100 materials can be analyzed each week. For the top-performing materials, I take a deeper dive into the material, using more specialized techniques to uncover the reason they perform better than the others. Thanks to the Tomlinson fellowship, I have been able to fully focus on optimizing and perfecting the techniques described above using specialized 3D printed tools. This will allow me to screen many more materials more efficiently to give the best chance of uncovering next-generation materials and developing guidelines for the Li-ion battery recycling process making this ubiquitous technology a little greener.
Ege Bicaker, Psychology
Ege Bicaker carries her research in Clinical Psychology. Her research examines the factors that increase risk for and maintain eating disorder symptoms. More specifically, Ege is interested in understanding the role of self-compassion and experiential avoidance in eating disorders through the use of multiple methodologies. Central to her study is investigating whether self-compassion interventions could efficiently alleviate eating disorder symptoms. It is her goal to understand whether similar interventions can be used for different populations in a cost-efficient manner. She hopes to translate the findings of her research into the effective intervention strategies that could be easily adopted in mental health care settings.
Juan Giraldo, History
I’m a Colombian historian trained in the interdisciplinary crossroads between social, agrarian, and environmental fields with experience in archival research, geographical information systems, and journalistic investigation with victims of Colombian armed conflict. My research, funded by 2019 Tomlinson scholarship, explores the environmental history of cocoa farming in the formation of local agro ecological systems among the black communities of south-western Colombia in the period between 1850 and 1950. My purpose is to reconstruct the agro ecologies of freedom built in the wake of slavery by these peasant communities pushed to the natural frontiers of the colonial territorial order. Recovering this history, I believe, will resource contemporary discussions over how to rebuild the agro ecological foundations of Afro-descended communities in the aftermath of Colombia’s internal armed conflict.
Mary Miedema, Biological andĚýBiomedical Engineering
The Tomlinson Fellowship has made it possible for me to pursue a Ph.D. in biological engineering within the thriving neuroimaging community here at Â鶹AV. Not only does this award support my research on signal processing techniques for functional magnetic resonance imaging, it helps me make time to engage with the Â鶹AV community by serving on the Graduate Engineering Equity Committee. I’m thankful for the opportunity to grow as a researcher and a leader as a Tomlinson Scholar.
Mohamed Dikna, Law
Muhammad Taha Manzoor, Mechanical EngineeringĚý
Mr. Taha hails from Pakistan (Bhakkar). He completed his BS in Mechanical Engineering from National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) in 2016, securing Chancellor’s Silver Medal. Later, he moved to Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) where he completed his MS in Mechanical Engineering. During his stay at KAIST, he worked on the application of hybrid nanocomposites to magnetorheological fluids and electromechanical actuators. Recently, his research findings were published in Advanced Functional Materials (I.F: 15.6) journal.
Mr. Taha joined Â鶹AV university in Fall 2019 as a doctoral candidate. His main research goal is to solve the problems concerning the long-term storage of solar energy. Currently, he is investigating key properties of molten salts which govern radiation, convection, and volumetric heat generation interactions.Ěý Mr. Taha is also an enthusiastic writer, with particular interest in world politics and history.
Quinn Abram, BiochemistryĚý
My research focuses on how the molecular evolution of Zika virus (ZIKV) contributes to the recent epidemics in South and Central America. In contrast to historical strains of the virus that mainly circulated in Africa and Southeast Asia, contemporary viral strains from the recent epidemics were associated with new neurological symptoms, and are more infectious in humans and the mosquitos that transmit the virus. I’m interested in how changes in amino acid sequence and RNA genome structure in the contemporary viral strains contribute to the increased infectivity of these strains in mosquito cells. My PhD project will use molecular biology and virology techniques to measure how these biochemical changes in the contemporary strains impact the ability of ZIKV to enter cells, replicate, and produce new infectious viruses. The Tomlinson Fellowship provides financial support that will allow me to focus on conducting my research and unlock opportunities to collaborate and disseminate my research that would otherwise not be available. Through my research, our knowledge of ZIKV biology in mosquitos will be advanced, which will provide a foundation for the development of novel mosquito-based control strategies for combating future epidemics of ZIKV and other mosquito-borne viruses.
Renzo Jose Carlos Calderon Anyosa,ĚýEpidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health
Shiann Whitebean,ĚýIntegrated Studies in Education
Andrea Corral RodrĂguez is an incoming Ph.D. student in the School of Social Work, supervised by Dr. RĂ©gine DĂ©brosse. Andrea earned her Master of Social Work degree at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2023, where she served students in various capacities as an academic advisor, practicum counselor, and supported the Undocumented Student Program.
B. Parazin is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at Â鶹AV working under the supervision of Dr. Natalya Gomez. Their research will focus on the interactions between ice sheet melting, sea level rise, and climate change as well as on model development. Complex climate, ice sheet and sea level models are used to predict how Earth’s climate will change over the 21st century, however, due to the high computational cost of simulations, these three systems are often considered and modeled separately. This can introduce significant bias and uncertainty into future predictions, as there are several important interactions between these systems that are poorly captured by this approach. B.’s work will be on bridging the gap between these three fields through the development of a whole-Earth coupled climate, ice sheet and sea level model.
Camille Simone Zolopa is a first year doctoral student in Counselling Psychology under the supervision of Dr Dennis Wendt. She is happy to return to her undergraduate alma mater following a Master's degree in Clinical Research Methods at Fordham University in New York City, supervised by Dr Andrew Rasmussen.
Camilo Mireles is a first-year doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology at Â鶹AV. His project explores the identity and ideological practices of ordinary people from Mexico before and after the arrival of the Spaniards. In specific, it investigates how landscape, houses, and the use of domestic space were reinterpreted as a form of identity negotiation, in a process of adaptation, resistance, and innovation within large-scale social, political, and economic changes. The study attempts to go beyond an androcentric and colonialist view of reality by combining the descendant community's interests in their past and their traditional knowledge with different research techniques from archaeology, anthropology, and history. This way, the descendent community will play an active role in the investigation process, while we get a better understanding of how the free will of people and the vitality of things and other-than-human entities can shape the relationship between cultural change and people’s identity.
Feikai Lin is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Integrated Program in Neuroscience under the supervision of Dr. Mark Brandon. She did her master’s study on human visual memory with Dr. Michael Bonner at JHU Cognitive Science. Then she worked as a RA in Dr. Chun Xu’s lab at the Institute of Neuroscience CAS, where she explored hippocampal coding of contexts and spaces with electrophysiology and optogenetics. From these experiences, she found her interest in neural coding for spatial navigation at cells and circuit levels. Although scientists have characterized the properties of head-direction cells, one of the neural bases for spatial navigation, the mechanism of representing and updating directions during reorientation is yet fully understood. Previous work in the Brandon lab found the head-direction population activity decreases as animals reorient. Feikai wants to further demystify the brain circuits that regulate this population activity and allow the navigation system to prepare for uncertainty. Specifically, she plans to map the connectivity of cortical and thalamic regions with neuro-anatomical tracing, record head-direction neural activity with calcium imaging while manipulating with optogenetics, and analyze how this activity changes during circuit-specific manipulation and reorientation behavior. This work will also provide insights into Alzheimer's disease pathology as the "sense of direction" is impaired in the early stage of normal aging and AD.
Jingzhi is a first-year Ph.D. student in the philosophy department at Â鶹AV. Prior to her study at Â鶹AV, she studied legal philosophy at the University of Oxford. During her time there, she was drawn by profound and disquieting philosophical questions and decided to delve deeper into this captivating field.
Keila Turino Miranda is a first-year PhD in Kinesiology Sciences student in the Cardiovascular Health and Autonomic Research Laboratory (CHARLab). As part of her MSc in Medical Science degree, Keila’s dissertation focused on the validation of prediction equations for the estimation of glomerular filtration rate in transgender individuals on gender-affirming hormone therapy. Keila is a champion within the transgender, gender-diverse and non-binary space and holds national leadership positions with Hypertension Canada and CanSOLVE CKD.
Ryan Reffner is an incoming doctoral student in the Kambhampati lab within the department of chemistry at Â鶹AV. Having spent much of his undergraduate degree involved in a variety of research projects, he has narrowed his sights toward the field of spectroscopy. The goal of his research is to use ultrafast laser spectroscopy techniques to study the electronic behavior in perovskite nanocrystals.
Originally hailing from Toronto, Taylor Shirtliff-Hinds is a budding neuroscientist and PhD in Biology student in Michael Hendricks’ lab. Her research, made possible by the Tomlinson Fellowship, explores the complexities of coordinated movement by modelling human ataxias in the nematode worm C. elegans. Notably, C. elegans have a simple and mapped nervous system and a short life cycle, which make them especially amenable for neuroscientific research. Additionally, C. elegans can model a wide array of human diseases and can be screened for potential therapeutic drugs that alleviate disease symptoms. Using C. elegans saves time and resources when compared to mammalian models for drug discovery. Accordingly, her research will involve screening thousands of worm mutants for coordination deficits and testing them with libraries of pre-approved drugs to determine which compounds improve motor coordination. In this pursuit, Taylor’s work aids in drug discovery by generating a curated list of potential therapeutic drugs to mitigate ataxia symptoms.
Zhixin (Annie) is a first-year doctoral student in clinical psychology, supervised by Dr. Anna Weinberg in the Translational Research in Affect and Cognition (TRAC) lab. Having completed her MA degree in clinical psychology at Columbia University, she researched the intergenerational transmission of cognitive control capacity among children at high risk for depression, using electroencephalogram (EEG) and behavioral measures. She will continue her passion for studying risk factors for internalizing disorders (depression and anxiety) among infants and youths.
Anne Imouza is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Science at Â鶹AV. Her research interests are at the intersection between political behavior and computational social science studies. Specifically, she will build an online index measure to assess political skepticism compared to traditional methods in political science. Political cynicism is a crucial indicator of citizens’ trust in government, institutions, and democratic systems. Only a handful of studies attempt to explain the rise in skepticism through the rise of new information and communication technologies. The general research question proposed is: to what extent do social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram impact political cynicism?
Anthony is excited to begin a PhD in Experimental Surgery at Â鶹AV under the supervision of Dr Sahir Bhatnager, Dr John Healey and Dr Ahmed Aoude.
"I am honored to receive the 2022-23 Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship. I am a first year PhD student in the computer science department, but honestly, I think that is almost as descriptive as me introducing myself as a human being. Although I expect this can be repeated for almost everything considered an academic “field,” computer science has broadened its scope and applicability over the years and will continue to do so. This is great; it speaks to the strength and utility of what might initially seem like abstract nonsense. One change to observe is that due to said broadness, “computer scientists” are quite diverse in interest, experience, and overall approaches to their respective areas of interest.
Kit Chokly is a white nonbinary trans student who began their PhD in Communication Studies at Â鶹AV in 2022. Their research looks at the pleasures and affordances of media, especially as they intersect with trans experiences. His dissertation project, tentatively titled Feeling weird: An affective analysis of digital trans media practices, proposes using digital curation to explore an emerging niche of digital media practices which utilize “weirdness” to express trans sentiments. These media explore gender in its embodied, social, and subjective forms; are situated in the affective mode of the weird; and are largely made by and for trans people. Their work aims to consider how such media work to circumvent problems of trans media representation and potentially contribute to novel ways of imagining or becoming a gender in mediated and often collaborative spaces.
Mahdi is a first-year PhD in the Cerebral Systems Lab (CSL) within the Department of Physiology. After completing his MD degree, Mahdi decided to continue his passion for systems neuroscience through a research-centered PhD program at Â鶹AV. CSL’s research focuses on sensory and multisensory information processing in the brain. Our brains rely upon multisensory data from the environment to gather information about the external world. For these data to be processed, a crucial intermediate step is required where sensory object inputs are encoded into neural representations in the form of dynamic neural population activity patterns. Although population neural activity might seem complex and high-dimensional at first glance, studies have revealed that population neural activity is often restricted into a low-dimensional manifold spanned by a few independent components called modes. Mahdi’s research will focus on understanding the hierarchical neural representations of multisensory objects and how these representations might be decomposed into linear or non-linear manifolds.
"I am a first year Ph.D. student in Integrated Program in Neuroscience at Â鶹AV. As my MSc. in Dr. Tiffany Schmidt’s lab at Northwestern University was winding down, I looked for other leading visual neuroscience labs, as I wanted to continue in this field for my PhD. Â鶹AV is widely known as a leading neuroscience university, and I became fascinated by Dr. Stuart Trenholm’s research program, which combines various scales of research (from cellular, to synaptic, to circuits, to full brain and behavior), and various experimental models (mice, marmosets, humans, in silico) to address problems in visual neuroscience in a holistic manner. By having access to a wide range of cutting-edge experimental tools, I felt that with my strong analytical and statistics background, I could make a significant impact while performing exciting and important experiments. In Dr. Trenholm’s lab at the Montreal Neurological Institute, I propose to use state-of-the-art RNA sequencing and tracing methods to gain unprecedented insights into how the visual brain is wired, and how vision loss results in changes in brain connectivity. Therefore, I hope that I can embark on this proposed program in the hope of realizing my dream to be a future professor in visual neuroscience at a research university and making my contributions to serving the blind people better in the future.
Rachael Morgan is a first year Ph.D. student in Counselling Psychology, working under the co-supervision of Dr. Caroline Temcheff and Dr. Alexa Martin-Storey in the Healthy Development Lab. She is also a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario. Rachael obtained her Master's degree in Counselling Psychology at the University of Ottawa in 2022, under the supervision of Dr. Tracy Vaillancourt in the Brain and Behaviour Laboratory.
Sainico is a first-year doctoral student in the English Department at Â鶹AV. Her project focuses on literary narratives from South Asia to interrogate the imagination and representation of the environment, and how they map multiple lived experiences of the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch to recognise the significant impact of humans on the environment. But it is also a cultural concept that has wide-ranging ramifications on how we think about nature, human and non-human relations. Her research excavates how different aesthetic forms and genres of indigenous and non-indigenous literary texts confront homogenising convictions of modernity and development to decolonize the Anthropocene. By focusing on local, national and transnational entanglements in relation to the Eastern Himalayas, her thesis reflects on how postcolonial and indigenous narratives navigate multiple identities to retain and reclaim their history, traditions and culture.
Swati is a first-year PhD student studying South Asian Religions at the School of Religious Studies. She focuses on how religious texts conceptualize divinity with attentiveness to the scholarly interpretations of new theological formulations in medieval Hinduism. Her doctoral research investigates several texts known as the Rama Upanishads, seeking to explain their textual intricacies and reconstruct their role in canonizing Rama as a principal deity within modern Hinduism. Her research also highlights how competing sectarian Hindu movements modulated and redefined orthodox religious categories. Focusing on this shift at a time when various sects were formulating their theologies, differentiating amongst themselves, and creating localized histories contributes to a more nuanced discourse of Hindu sectarianism.
Benjamin Crosby is a first year PhD student in ecclesiastical history at the School of Religious Studies at Â鶹AV. His research is in the history of the English Reformation, the period of religious and political strife which would eventually produce a Church of England independent of the Roman Catholic Church; this independent Church of England is the parent church of global Anglicanism, the third-largest body of Christians in the world. Specifically, he focuses on how two key early theologians of the Church of England, John Jewel and Richard Hooker, constructed a pan-Protestant identity that bound the Church of England to its fellow Protestant churches in Continental Europe.
Cameron So is a first year PhD student in the Conservation, Ecology, Evolution, and Behaviour group within the Department of Biology. After completing his master’s degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, he is interested in combining genomic tools and field studies to understand how plants will adapt to changing environments across spatial scales. His interests lie between the intersection of conservation genetics and environmental impacts caused by climate change. Importantly, his research aims to aid the conservation of plant species vulnerable to extirpation or extinction in Canada.
I am a first-year PhD student working in the Precambrian Research Office and Publican Society, within the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. My research focuses on the Cryogenian period of Earth history, which lasted from 720 to 635 million years ago. During this time, the Earth experienced two long-lived and extreme global glaciations, often referred to as 'Snowball Earth' events, in which ice sheets extended to the tropics and potentially covered the entire globe. The interval between these events saw the deposition of the first massive carbonate reef complexes in Earth's history. These ancient reefs are the focus of my PhD research, the underlying objectives of which will be to establish the timing of reef formation relative to the Snowball Earth events, evaluate microbial and potentially metazoan communities responsible for building the reefs, and to use the reefs to document past seawater chemistry.
Corinne is a doctoral student in the Clinical Psychology program. She was drawn to the field by a longstanding interest in the underlying mechanisms and clinical application of emotion and emotion regulation. Wide-reaching experiences — including clinical psychology research in depression, bipolar disorder, dementia and caregiver populations; people operations work in the technology sector; and ongoing personal yoga practice and yoga teaching to both clinical and non-clinical populations — have influenced her research aims.
Daniel is a first-year PhD student in the Department of Political Science at Â鶹AV, investigating the relationship between rogue states and international global governance. The term 'rogue state' has been used to refer to regimes that openly challenge the fundamental norms of the international community through aggression, human rights abuses, and the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Such states have been perceived by politicians, policymakers, and the public to be immune to the pressures of international society and fundamentally opposed to its core values. However, the reality is that many rogue states can be seen, to some degree, to act in line with international norms and do occasionally respond to international pressure. How should we characterize the relationship between rogue states and international norms? To address this, Daniel’s research looks at how North Korea—the archetypal rogue state—engages with international norms by examining instances of partial or token compliance. His dissertation, supported by the Richard H. Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship, aims to demonstrate how rogue states are, in fact, sensitive to pressures to conform with international norms, but at the same time take strategic steps to limit their compliance obligations when such obligations go against their political interests.
Protracted public health controversies have often been understood by social scientists as being directly related to the ability of industries to deceive politicians. Whether it is uranium, tobacco, lead or glyphosate, research shows that the safety of these products has remained unquestioned for too long due to industry interference. While industrial deceit certainly tells part of the story, how can we understand the frequency of this kind of controversy without resorting to structural explanations? Furthermore, if industry’s involvement is constant across cases, how can we explain that controversies vary in length and gravity?
Kelsey Huson obtained her Honours BA with Specialization in Psychology and a minor in Gerontology at the University of Ottawa in 2012. The following year, she completed the MSc in Public Health and Health Systems program at the University of Waterloo, under the supervision of Dr. Paul Stolee. Prior to returning to graduate school, Kelsey worked in the field of research and program evaluation across various settings, including public health, academia, and non-profit organizations. More recently, Kelsey completed the MA in Counselling Psychology program at Western University, where she supported the adaptation of healthy relationships programming for Indigenous youth, under the supervision of Dr. Claire Crooks. Kelsey is currently a doctoral student in the PhD in Counselling Psychology program at Â鶹AV, under the supervision of Dr. Dennis Wendt. Kelsey’s research interests include the development and evaluation of strengths- and culture-based interventions related to mental health, substance use, healthy relationships, and community wellness through collaborative partnerships with Indigenous communities.
I joined the Department of Natural Resource Sciences in 2021 to study how climate change affects arctic ecosystems. We know that increasing arctic temperatures will cause glaciers to melt and permafrost to thaw, but we are less certain about what happens afterward. My research focuses on understanding the biological, geological, and chemical mechanisms behind how microorganisms help “build” brand-new ecosystems from the nutrient-poor soils left behind after glaciers retreat. Will these ecosystems become carbon sources or sinks? How will they contribute to global nutrient cycles? Can we use these systems as models for bioremediation programs designed to “restart” degraded ecosystems? These soils will eventually support plant and animal life, and by studying the early transition from lifeless dirt to a vibrant ecosystem, I intend to explore the future of the arctic landscape.
Adam Groh is a first year PhD student working in the lab of Dr. Jo Anne Stratton within the Faculty of Neurology and Neurosurgery at the Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital. His research focuses primarily on ependymal cells, a ciliated epithelium that lines the cerebral ventricles. Ependymal cells are vital regulators of cerebrospinal fluid flow, and interestingly, are also disrupted in diseases such as multiple sclerosis. Despite this, these cells have remained critically understudied compared to others in the brain. Adam’s research will investigate the influence of ependymal cell disruption on wider brain health using a novel transgenic model, while also assessing human brain tissues collected in collaboration with the Douglas Bell Canada Brain Bank. His project employs a variety of techniques, such as in vivo magnetic resonance imaging, single cell RNA sequencing, and immunohistochemistry. The Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship has given Adam the financial stability necessary to focus entirely on his research and to grow as a leader and educator in neuroscience. Overall, Adam is excited to be a part of the Tomlinson community, to disseminate his research widely, and to further our understanding of ependymal cells as key support cells within the brain.
Alberto Acquilino is a first-year PhD student at the Computational Acoustic Modeling Laboratory in the Music Technology Area and active member of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology. He combines his master’s degrees in Musical Performance and Mechanical Engineering with the aim of developing new technologies in support of music pedagogy. Learning to master a musical instrument involves different technical features that still have to be addressed by music technologies, such as facility with timbre, dynamics, steadiness of tone, attack and release precision and refinement, embouchure configuration and variation, finger position and movement, posture and breathing, other than intonation and rhythm. Alberto’s research, funded by the Tomlinson Scholarship, intends to apply novel signal processing and feature extraction techniques, together with intuitive and user-friendly software interfaces, to create new tools that can help instrumentalists and teachers in becoming more efficient and effective with their practice and instruction time.
I am a first-year PhD student in the Department of Linguistics. My research examines how language is represented in the human brain. Specifically, I am looking at how phonology - the organization of speech sounds in a language - is learned and represented. By using machine learning techniques to model human behavior, I believe we can begin to understand what the structure of linguistic knowledge looks like. How much of our linguistic ability is innate, and how much is learned? The Tomlinson Fellowship has made it possible for me to pursue these questions as a PhD student at Â鶹AV, and I am excited to continue my research as a part of the Â鶹AV community.
After studying Politics, Gender Studies, and Economics in Frankfurt, Gothenburg, Berlin and New York, I joined the PhD program in Anthropology in 2020. My research interests include queer archives, affect theory, ethnographic fiction, anarchism, and the anthropology of epidemics. In my PhD project, I investigate the politics of intimacy, love, and relationality through the lens of architecture, social movements, and temporality. I hope that my research will contribute not only to an understanding of how the spaces that are considered most intimate are actually political sites that consolidate and sustain capitalist, hetero-patriarchal, and racist structures of domination, but also how resistance in the past, present, and future undermine and re-configure these structures as well as the affective grammars that underwrite them.
As a trained gynecologist from Switzerland pursuing subspeciality training in Gynecologic Oncology at Â鶹AV, the Tomlinson Fellowship has made it possible for me to pursue a PhD program in Experimental Surgery at Â鶹AV during my Clinical Fellowship. My PhD project assesses the acceptance and clinical performance of a novel intrauterine molecular screening test – DOvEEgene – to detect ovarian and endometrial cancer early. DOvEEgene is as an acronym for Detecting Ovarian and Endometrial cancer Early using genomics. This innovative screening test aims at improving prognosis of these cancers, which are currently within the top 4 causes of cancer-deaths in Canadian women, by increasing early detection. I am deeply honored to be a Tomlinson Fellowship recipient and grateful to Richard H. Tomlinson for his extraordinary legacy.
Who speaks on behalf of citizens internationally? If the coronavirus pandemic has shown us anything, it is that regional and federated governments are constitutionally responsible for, and hold distinctive views on, a great number of global issues, including healthcare, environmental politics, and the protection of cultural diversity. Yet, international law excludes them from multilateral organizations where global debates are held, and national and multilateral officials are reluctant to acknowledge their growing participation in international politics.
My research seeks to inform the management and conservation of freshwater ecosystems and, in turn, support human cultures and livelihoods that depend on these ecosystems. I take a multidisciplinary approach, leveraging ecology and geosciences, together with the most recent advances in statistics and computing, to promote freshwater sustainability.
I am a first-year PhD student in the department of Chemistry working in Dr. Eric McCalla’s group. My research concerns lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries. Nearly everyone has used a device powered by a Li-ion battery. They’re in our phones, tablets, laptops, and increasingly, our vehicles. This isn’t by accident. Compared to other types of batteries, Li-ion stores a large amount of high-quality energy in a small package. However, most batteries used today rely on cobalt-containing positive electrodes which are expensive, toxic, and harmful to the environment both to obtain and dispose of. One way to reduce the economic and environmental cost of these batteries is to recycle the cathode material. So far, this has been a challenging process and current economically-viable techniques are prone to contamination from metals such as aluminum. I’m working to increase understanding of the effects of these contaminants on a vast number of cathode materials and develop materials that are more easily recycled by having tolerance to contaminant metals, or potentially develop materials that can use these impurities to their advantage. To achieve this goal, specially designed batteries containing 64 materials are made where each of the samples has different composition and will include a small amount of contaminant metal. Then high-throughput experiments are performed on all 64 materials at the same time to determine which materials perform best. Using these high-throughput techniques, over 100 materials can be analyzed each week. For the top-performing materials, I take a deeper dive into the material, using more specialized techniques to uncover the reason they perform better than the others. Thanks to the Tomlinson fellowship, I have been able to fully focus on optimizing and perfecting the techniques described above using specialized 3D printed tools. This will allow me to screen many more materials more efficiently to give the best chance of uncovering next-generation materials and developing guidelines for the Li-ion battery recycling process making this ubiquitous technology a little greener.
Ege Bicaker carries her research in Clinical Psychology. Her research examines the factors that increase risk for and maintain eating disorder symptoms. More specifically, Ege is interested in understanding the role of self-compassion and experiential avoidance in eating disorders through the use of multiple methodologies. Central to her study is investigating whether self-compassion interventions could efficiently alleviate eating disorder symptoms. It is her goal to understand whether similar interventions can be used for different populations in a cost-efficient manner. She hopes to translate the findings of her research into the effective intervention strategies that could be easily adopted in mental health care settings.
I’m a Colombian historian trained in the interdisciplinary crossroads between social, agrarian, and environmental fields with experience in archival research, geographical information systems, and journalistic investigation with victims of Colombian armed conflict. My research, funded by 2019 Tomlinson scholarship, explores the environmental history of cocoa farming in the formation of local agro ecological systems among the black communities of south-western Colombia in the period between 1850 and 1950. My purpose is to reconstruct the agro ecologies of freedom built in the wake of slavery by these peasant communities pushed to the natural frontiers of the colonial territorial order. Recovering this history, I believe, will resource contemporary discussions over how to rebuild the agro ecological foundations of Afro-descended communities in the aftermath of Colombia’s internal armed conflict.
The Tomlinson Fellowship has made it possible for me to pursue a Ph.D. in biological engineering within the thriving neuroimaging community here at Â鶹AV. Not only does this award support my research on signal processing techniques for functional magnetic resonance imaging, it helps me make time to engage with the Â鶹AV community by serving on the Graduate Engineering Equity Committee. I’m thankful for the opportunity to grow as a researcher and a leader as a Tomlinson Scholar.
Mr. Taha hails from Pakistan (Bhakkar). He completed his BS in Mechanical Engineering from National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) in 2016, securing Chancellor’s Silver Medal. Later, he moved to Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) where he completed his MS in Mechanical Engineering. During his stay at KAIST, he worked on the application of hybrid nanocomposites to magnetorheological fluids and electromechanical actuators. Recently, his research findings were published in Advanced Functional Materials (I.F: 15.6) journal.
My research focuses on how the molecular evolution of Zika virus (ZIKV) contributes to the recent epidemics in South and Central America. In contrast to historical strains of the virus that mainly circulated in Africa and Southeast Asia, contemporary viral strains from the recent epidemics were associated with new neurological symptoms, and are more infectious in humans and the mosquitos that transmit the virus. I’m interested in how changes in amino acid sequence and RNA genome structure in the contemporary viral strains contribute to the increased infectivity of these strains in mosquito cells. My PhD project will use molecular biology and virology techniques to measure how these biochemical changes in the contemporary strains impact the ability of ZIKV to enter cells, replicate, and produce new infectious viruses. The Tomlinson Fellowship provides financial support that will allow me to focus on conducting my research and unlock opportunities to collaborate and disseminate my research that would otherwise not be available. Through my research, our knowledge of ZIKV biology in mosquitos will be advanced, which will provide a foundation for the development of novel mosquito-based control strategies for combating future epidemics of ZIKV and other mosquito-borne viruses.
I am honoured to be a 2019-2020 recipient of the Richard H. Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship. I am grateful for the generosity of the donors and the backing I have received at Â鶹AV. My path in academia over the past several years included many challenges and triumphs. To the best of my ability, I have strived to be a positive role model to my family and community. This funding supports my research on Indian Day Schools in my home community of KahnawĂ :ke. My research brings Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) knowledge, stories and voices to the forefront. Indian Day Schools were a source of intergenerational trauma for many First Nations, Inuit, and MĂ©tis communities. I hope to demonstrate through both my research and personal journey that our strength and resilience runs deeper than our trauma. As Indigenous peoples, we can harness the transformational power of education for the sake of our future generations.
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