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 | NID |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Dr. Johnson produced functional particles and biodegradable packaging from a polymer called xylan (pronounced as XY-lan) from grass cell walls. She showed that the structure and composition of xylans influences their performance in bio-based materials. Her work represents a step towards a more sustainable, resource-efficient world. | Doctor of Philosophy in Forestry (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Radisavljevic investigated the role of gut bacteria in Parkinson's disease using a mouse model. This work helps with an understanding of which gut bacterial members may play a role in modulating non-motor symptoms of this disease. | Doctor of Philosophy in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Lan identified three genes that regulate an important signal molecule NHP in systemic acquired resistance in plants. The three genes function together and negatively regulate defence-related genes in epigenetic level. These findings assist us in understanding plant defence mechanism and plant disease control. | Doctor of Philosophy in Botany (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Romualdi investigated the effect of chemical composition and thermal cycles on the weld heat affected zone of line pipe steels as a critical aspect of pipeline integrity that will remain significant for future applications including carbon capture and a hydrogen fuel energy matrix. | Doctor of Philosophy in Materials Engineering (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Engstrom explored how someone's social class affects how much we trust them. She found people see lower-class people as more moral - but they also implicitly associate low social class with immorality, and believe lower-class people are more tempted by financial need to betray trust. This research shows the complexity of class stereotypes. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Li explored the dynamics of ocean extreme temperature events, Marine Heatwaves, and their ecological impacts. Her work improves our understanding of the historical and future changes in multiple novel heat stress characteristics globally, and also demonstrates the protective impacts of "training" heat stress conditions on global coral reefs. | Doctor of Philosophy in Geography (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Gallagher examined the visual and musical features of pastoral landscapes (forests and fields) and anti-pastoral areas (ruins and caves) in the video games Final Fantasy X, XII, XIII, and XV. Her research shows that music significantly impacts players' perceptions of these areas, making them feel more relaxed and apprehensive, respectively. | Doctor of Philosophy in Music, Emphasis Musicology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Huang explored the transition experiences of military veterans as they pursued post-secondary studies. The findings from the research are intended to nurture cultural awareness for the unique needs of this population, as well as to enhance practices and policies on Canadian campuses towards better supporting this student population. | Doctor of Philosophy in Counselling Psychology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Huang's research studies the region of the Solar System beyond Neptune. He explored how the plausible brief existence of an extra "rogue" planet in our early Solar System provides possible answers to some long-standing puzzles in the orbital structure of the distant Kuiper Belt of comets beyond Neptune. | Doctor of Philosophy in Astronomy (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Lee explored how engaging in prosocial behavior, including acts of kindness and helping others, can help individuals restore their social connections. Her research suggests that an intervention promoting prosocial behavior is a promising approach to address loneliness and social isolation, particularly for individuals experiencing chronic loneliness. | Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Morse worked on how a common intestinal virus infection influences the immune system and the gut microbiome to trigger the onset of type 1 diabetes. His research shows how environmental stressors engage in cross-communication with the host to impact development of autoimmune diseases. | Doctor of Philosophy in Microbiology and Immunology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Akinlaja adapted proteomics methods towards understanding the infectious processes of a pathogen of the honey bee midgut. Her work provides new insight into how host protein expression and interactions are altered by pathogen infection, and identifies candidate proteins that could be potential therapeutic targets in the resulting disease. | Doctor of Philosophy in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Pan investigated new conditional inference and prediction methods after fitting a joint distribution based on vine copulas, including prediction of an arbitrary variable given others, prediction of a right-censored response, and prediction of an ordinal or continuous response when some explanatory variables are nominal categorical. | Doctor of Philosophy in Statistics (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Michta studied how phase transitions occur in finite volume for some classical models from statistical physics. This work contributes to a better and rigorous understanding of finite-size scaling theory in high dimensions. This is useful to the wide spectrum of people working at the interface between physics and mathematics. | Doctor of Philosophy in Mathematics (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. King studied the experiences of youth returning to high school and re-engaging in their education after sustaining a mild traumatic brain injury/concussion. This research helps us understand the barriers these students face, what is helpful to them in this time, and what can be improved to better support their transition back to school. | Doctor of Philosophy in School and Applied Child Psychology (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Jelsing examined Indigenous and settler colonial visions of the future as they were articulated through prophecy in two nineteenth-century North American "northwests". He showed how these prophecies expressed divergent modes of relationship that help us understand how settler colonialism unfolded in these two distinct places. | Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD) |
| 2023 | Can we find structure in complex systems, like social networks or the interactions between cell proteins? Dr. Briercliffe designed a class of statistical models for discovering hidden structure in networks.By harnessing probability theory, his research created practical tools that allow scientists to reveal order and structure in our complex world. | Doctor of Philosophy in Statistics (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Cui delved into the escalating drug overdose epidemic involving opioid and methamphetamine use. Her research emphasizes the crucial need for comprehensive and integrated treatment and harm reduction strategies to address both opioid and methamphetamine use. | Doctor of Philosophy in Population and Public Health (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Bellwood developed a novel method to document current medical practices aimed at changing human behaviour and inform strategies to improve such practices using the example of prescribing physical activity in primary care. This method has a potential application beyond physical activity prescribing and beyond primary care in future research. | Doctor of Philosophy in Experimental Medicine (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Takeda examined the apparent similarities between the dispositions critical media literacy aims to cultivate and characteristics conspiracy theorists claim to embody. He proposed an approach to demarcate desirable from undesirable critical reading and writing that recognizes the significance of meanings and values in the act of reasoning. | Doctor of Philosophy in Language and Literacy Education (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Super studied soil refugia, experimental warming and nitrogen deposition, and pH and climate effects on ecosystem plant and microbial biodiversity. Tree seedling microbiome predictability changed with refugia, warming increased plant growth, clear-cutting impacted biodiversity predictability, and community diversity increased with higher pH. | Doctor of Philosophy in Forestry (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Flynn developed statistical methods of using structured networks of data to estimate the size of hidden or hard-to-reach populations, and created corresponding software for these techniques to readily be used by researchers across diverse fields. These methods were used to illuminate the true scope of the opioid epidemic in British Columbia. | Doctor of Philosophy in Statistics (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Pinsonneault-Marotte participated in the realisation of the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment telescope and analysis, which resulted in a preliminary detection of hydrogen located nearly 11 billion light-years away. | Doctor of Philosophy in Physics (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Ahmadvand developed a robust optimization model that minimizes the costs and GHGs of forest biomass supply chain for production of syngas to replace natural gas at BC Kraft pulp mills. She also presented an optimal pricing scheme to make the investment in renewable fuels such as syngas more appealing to the pulp and paper industry. | Doctor of Philosophy in Forestry (PhD) |
| 2023 | Dr. Wang devised and carried out landmark experiments using radio-frequency and millimeter-wave fields to control and probe the evolution of ultracold molecular plasmas. His findings have provided new insights into ultracold neutral plasmas specifically, and into disordered many-body systems in general. | Doctor of Philosophy in Physics (PhD) |