A doctoral citation summarizes the nature of the independent research, provides a high-level overview of the study, states the significance of the work and says who will benefit from the findings in clear, non-specialized language, so that members of a lay audience will understand it.
| Year | Citation | Program |
|---|---|---|
| 2009 | Dr. Valdez has studied the role of a host-resistant gene in the response to Salmonella infection. She showed that this gene plays a key role in boosting the speed and efficacy of immune response to Salmonella, and this determines whether the host will survive or succumb to the infection. | Doctor of Philosophy in Microbiology and Immunology (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Fjell analyzed short proteins that have antibiotic activity. He developed computer models to identify naturally occurring peptides in the genomes of animals. He also created computer models for potent synthetic peptides against antibiotic-resistant bacteria. These peptides may lead to new drugs for use in the clinic. | Doctor of Philosophy in Experimental Medicine (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Binnendyk investigated the effectiveness of a behavioural feeding intervention that aimed to improve child eating and parent-child interaction during mealtime for families of children with developmental disabilities and feeding problems. Her study is the first in the feeding literature to document a transformation of parent-child relationships in family meals. | Doctor of Philosophy in Special Education (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr Elyasi developed a comprehensive method for the simulation and performance evaluation of UV photoreactors used in water treatment. His work can directly be applied to enhance the performance of industrial UV reactors and reduce the production cost, making this technology more affordable around the world. | Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical and Biological Engineering (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Schwab developed an agent-based forest sector model for evaluating strategic responses to natural disturbances. Modeling the forest industry as a group of interacting agents makes it possible to study the effects of proposed policy changes on ecosystem recovery and the economic viability of individual companies and communities. | Doctor of Philosophy in Forestry (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr Sheikhaei studied the circuit techniques for speed and power improvement of analog-to-digital converters, a ubiquitous block in communication systems. Using current mode logic and pipelining as well as reformulating the conventional encoding function, he achieved more than 2 times improvement in power as compared to the state-of-the-art designs. | Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical and Computer Engineering (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Harker examined how different family practices, mobilities and home spaces create place in the village of Birzeit, Palestine. By focusing on the vibrant, dynamic and diverse nature of this place, his research promotes a range of affirmative connections between Palestine and a variety of other spaces and people. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Lai's research focused on the function of a protein, CD45, which is found exclusively on blood cells, including stem cells. Her work unveiled a new role for this protein in the early development of white blood cells. | Doctor of Philosophy in Microbiology and Immunology (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr Huang's research asks whether a more responsive monetary policy can explain the fall in the volatility of US housing investments. He presents evidence that part of the change comes from a reduced capacity of supply in the housing market. The findings caution against attributing the stability to improvements of the policy or of the financing system. | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Pillutla looked at ways to improve the performance of wireless networks. He used novel techniques to improve energy efficiency and channel usage of general wireless networks. | Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical and Computer Engineering (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Zhang investigated how an important lysolipid regulates vascular tone. She found that this lysolipid possesses biphasic effects on the contractile and relaxant responses of small arteries, resulting in enhanced vascular resistance. These findings may lead to strategies to treat the vascular malfunction caused by lipid accumulation. | Doctor of Philosophy in Pharmaceutical Sciences (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. James studied how the automation of correspondence systems influences sustainability in information environments. Examining the mass production, dissemination, and control of unsolicited electronic mail, his research illuminates the complexities of excess information in order to critically understand online discourse, public expression and knowledge acquisition in the digital age. | Doctor of Philosophy in Language and Literacy Education (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Nordstokke demonstrated through the use of simulation that current tests for equal variances lack robustness of Type-I errors in many situations and introduces a new rank-based version of Levene's test for equal variances that is robust to severely-skewed population distributions. | Doctor of Philosophy in Measurement, Evaluation and Research Methodology (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Kim examined the language socialization experiences of Korean Canadian immigrant university students. The study revealed important challenges and needs of these students, often related to their variable competence in Korean and English, and it also highlighted the students' potentials as bilingual and bicultural individuals. | Doctor of Philosophy in Language and Literacy Education (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Nielsen studied the interface between what an individual understands about him or herself as a learner and a group context for learning in science classrooms. This research considered how individual metacognitive knowledge, skills and behaviors become consequential during group learning activity. | Doctor of Philosophy in Curriculum Studies (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Cheng developed an image reconstruction protocol which improves the quantification accuracy and accelerates the image formation task for dynamic brain imaging in high resolution positron emission tomography (PET). PET is a functional imaging modality used clinically and in research to investigate various diseases and treatment efficacy. | Doctor of Philosophy in Physics (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr Jones took a unique approach to the conservation biology of critically endangered leatherback turtles by rearing leatherbacks from 45g hatchlings to 45kg juveniles at UBC. The data attained on age-at-maturity and resource requirements aid in our understanding of the impacts of human activities in the decline of leatherback populations. | Doctor of Philosophy in Zoology (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Yoshida examined how 10-month-old infants learn to perceive the speech sounds of their native language. Her studies revealed that paying attention to the language sounds is an important part of infants' perceptual learning, counter to the automaticity previously assumed. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr Harrington extended the scope of problems in Statistics where the clustering algorithm Linear Grouping Analysis can be applied. In the first instance, the linearity condition was relaxed by transforming data into an appropriate infinitely dimensional domain. He subsequently adapted an existing paradigm of data compression to be applicable to clustering and other robust methods. | Doctor of Philosophy in Statistics (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Szabo explored the complexities between identities, contexts and reflective processes and how it is that inquiry into these spaces are lived. Through an interdisciplinary view of nursing education she focused on the form and structure of social texts and their potential to manifest a wholly other organic approach to curriculum and instruction. | Doctor of Philosophy in Curriculum Studies (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr Song explained with an integrated model of human abilities why and how gifted students and gifted students with learning disabilities are different from each other in terms of ability and feeling. The characteristics of different groups of gifted students were explained better by the model than by the major models that informed it. | Doctor of Philosophy in Special Education (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr Nodwell found a way to make a new type of anticancer molecule that was originally isolated from a sponge from the oceans off of Papua New Guinea. This complex molecule, called "ceratamine A" shows great potential as an anticancer therapeutic and is currently being evaluated for its suitability as a drug. The new chemical structure of this molecule provides a possible different route to cancer therapy, expanding the currently known list of anicancer drugs. | Doctor of Philosophy in Chemistry (PhD) |
| 2009 | Monte Carlo methods have become the standard tool to solve many problems in statistics and scientific computing. Dr. Holenstein developed a novel Monte Carlo methodology for efficient sampling from high-dimensional distributions. The methods are demonstrated on problems in statistics, biology, chemistry, and finance. | Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Backer laid the theoretical foundation for algorithms that steer car-like robots in order to avoid obstacles. His work improves prior results in that it is more general, is more efficient, and provides explicit performance guarantees. | Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science (PhD) |
| 2009 | Dr. Stefanova designed a novel transparent probe to study heat transfer in a gas-solid particle system. She showed the effect of a key change in flow structure on heat transfer in laboratory and industrial scale units and developed a probabilistic heat transfer model. Her findings are important for the design of gas-solid reactors. | Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical and Biological Engineering (PhD) |