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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Dr. Lee examined the meaning and the experience of a sense of belonging with participant researchers from a local refugee community in Vancouver, BC. She proposes a framework for designing and implementing programs and services that facilitate successful refugee settlement by means of addressing the fundamental human need to belong. | Doctor of Philosophy in School and Applied Child Psychology (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Amber Moore's feminist research examined secondary English teacher candidates' responses to teaching and learning about sexual assault narratives. She found that many future educators were committed to combatting rape culture in the literature classroom, which demonstrates the significance of attending to issues of trauma in literacy learning. | Doctor of Philosophy in Language and Literacy Education (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Kaal examined the care people who survived cancer early in life receive in the BC healthcare system. She found that survivors comparatively receive more care and that coordinating care between different doctors matters in terms of the number of doctor visits and cost of care. This work benefits the growing population of young cancer survivors. | Doctor of Philosophy in Population and Public Health (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Barvalia has characterized the immune system using high dimensional single cell systems immunology techniques. He has discovered marked heterogeneity in myeloid cells and identified discrete immune perturbation states in Lyn kinase deficiency and colorectal cancer. His research can further guide the development of novel immunotherapies. | Doctor of Philosophy in Microbiology and Immunology (PhD) |
| 2021 | Canada is a world leader in making newsprint, a product that nobody wants anymore. To utilize existing infrastructure, Dr. Wu's PhD work demonstrated the potential of repurposing this technique as a front end for a biorefinery process. This helps reduce the overall carbon emission by producing renewable bioproducts such as biofuel from biomass. | Doctor of Philosophy in Forestry (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Scurll developed new computational methods to analyze clustering in spatial and high-dimensional data from experiments in cell biology. His methods can advance our understanding of protein clustering on/in cells and of biological heterogeneity among cancer cells. He also conducted experiments to investigate heterogeneity among lymphoma B cells. | Doctor of Philosophy in Mathematics (PhD) |
| 2021 | Is exercise good for us? Undoubtedly it is, however, Dr. Morrison found that physically active older individuals can have heart disease and should undergo a cardiac assessment if engaging in vigorous exercise. This research increases heart health awareness in older physically active individuals to prevent adverse heart events during exercise. | Doctor of Philosophy in Experimental Medicine (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Macdonald investigated practical uses for enzymes that carry out carbohydrate metabolism. This work lead to the discovery of 11 new enzymes and developed a suite of new tools that can be used for future enzyme discovery efforts, which can be applied toward making the next-generation of carbohydrate based materials. | Doctor of Philosophy in Genome Science and Technology (PhD) |
| 2021 | Some chemotherapy drugs can severely damage the heart, leading to lifelong heart complications. Dr. Christidi generated heart cells from patients' stem cells to identify ways to predict and prevent chemotherapy induced side effects. | Doctor of Philosophy in Experimental Medicine (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Koostachin examines how positionality shapes the creative process of Indigenous documentarians, revealing the impacts on core concepts, themes, and forms within their practice of documentary. Her research methodology is rooted in a paradigm that privileges InNiNeWak (Cree) ways of being. | Doctor of Philosophy in Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Babaeijandaghi dissected the role of the immune system in muscle regeneration. His work unveiled the therapeutic potential of a new class of immune-modulatory drugs to treat a debilitating genetic muscular disorder called Duchenne muscular dystrophy. | Doctor of Philosophy in Experimental Medicine (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Nosrati developed a novel drug delivery system that targets and treats rheumatoid arthritis. Her work resulted in concentrating toxic drugs in inflamed joints more effectively with less side effects, reducing inflammation more strongly and for longer periods of time. Patients with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis will benefit from her findings. | Doctor of Philosophy in Pharmaceutical Sciences (PhD) |
| 2021 | Information visualization helps us to explore, analyze and communicate data. Dr. Oppermann studied the use of real-world data in visualization prototyping. He contributed tools, techniques, and guidelines for visualizing indoor spatial data and time-oriented data. He improved recommendations and compact previews for Tableau visualization workbooks. | Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Jansonius showed that chemical manufacturing can safer and cleaner using electricity and water to produce chemicals that would otherwise come from fossil fuel sources. His thesis provides strategies to enhance the efficiency and versatility of electrochemical membrane reactors. | Doctor of Philosophy in Chemistry (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Basham studied tuberculosis (TB) survivor health, including post-TB mortality, airway disease, cardiovascular disease, and depression. These studies contributed to our understanding of the long-term health outcomes of TB survivors, and the need for person-centred models of TB care. | Doctor of Philosophy in Population and Public Health (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Ljubetic studied the thermodynamics and kinetics of gold leaching in ferric chloride media. The dissolution mechanism and its limitations were uncovered using batch leaching and electrochemical techniques. The research would help lay the foundation for development of an alternative technology for gold extraction. | Doctor of Philosophy in Materials Engineering (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Gibson's research focused on understanding the impact of geopolitical coercion on vulnerable nations to design more effective international policies that address the points of conflict between nations. She developed a framework for the analysis of geopolitical coercion to minimize humanitarian harm to the most vulnerable peoples of the world. | Doctor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Studies (PhD) |
| 2021 | Thriving oceans require abundant and biodiverse marine invertebrate communities. Dr. Gillespie examined how marine conservation can be tuned to support data-limited invertebrate species. He found that well-designed marine reserves combined with size limits for fisheries can support invertebrate conservation and contribute to human protein needs. | Doctor of Philosophy in Zoology (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Kang developed a novel econometric framework for modeling persistent and low-frequency stochastic cycles - a crucial feature of macroeconomic and financial data. The framework is used to study the cyclical properties of macroeconomic and financial time series. The presence of stochastic cycles has important implications on macroeconomic models | Doctor of Philosophy in Economics (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Hammond examined changes in the functional properties of human blood stem cells with advancing age. Among his findings was an aging-associated change in the growth-signal requirements and the amount of time required for blood stem cells to divide. | Doctor of Philosophy in Experimental Medicine (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Fang studied first-order optimization algorithms. His work has contributed to a better understanding of first-order methods for structured problems. | Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science (PhD) |
| 2021 | Certain phases of matter admit an intriguing connection to gravity, providing a fruitful way to study exotic objects such as black holes and wormholes. Dr. Lantagne-Hurtubise studied toy models of such holographic quantum matter, discovering new phenomena and developing connections to physical platforms where they may be experimentally probed. | Doctor of Philosophy in Physics (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Lin studied how Campylobacter jejuni helical cell shape is generated by enzyme actions. She found the shape-determining enzymes digest sites in the cell wall structure. This knowledge adds mechanistic insight on bacterial morphology maintenance, and provides a platform to design drugs targeting the helical cell shape necessary for infection. | Doctor of Philosophy in Microbiology and Immunology (PhD) |
| 2021 | Quantum computers are expected to be exponentially faster than conventional computers in completing certain tasks. Dr. Zaribafiyan formulated the concept of hybrid quantum-classical computing and examined how hybrid algorithms can help scale up the applicability of these computers to a wider range of applications, from logistics to drug discovery. | Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical and Computer Engineering (PhD) |
| 2021 | Dr. Lee studied teacher responses to student peer victimization. By way of a social experiment, he found that teachers respond differently to bullying victims with emotional and behavioural problems. His research highlights teacher sensitivity to student mental health differences, and the need for further teacher-focused mental health initiatives. | Doctor of Philosophy in School and Applied Child Psychology (PhD) |