Four PhD candidates from York University are recipients of this year's prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships, which support exceptional doctoral students studying in the areas of social sciences and humanities, natural sciences and/or engineering, and health.
Presented by the Government of Canada, the program aims to attract and retain world-class doctoral students by supporting those who demonstrate leadership and a high standard of achievement.
The award is valued at $50,000 per year for three years. Candidates are evaluated on three equally weighted selection criteria: academic excellence, research potential and leadership.
This year's scholars are tackling complex issues with forward-thinking research - work that holds the potential to spark meaningful impact both in their communities and around the world.
Ezekiel Gading, psychology
Gading's research, titled "The ABC of Animal Welfare: The Relationships Between Affect, Behaviour, and Cognition as a Model of Psychological Welfare in Captive Sumatran Orangutans (Pongo abelii)," looks at how to provide positive animal welfare states to zoo-housed Sumatran orangutans.
"With my research, I delve into the relationships between affect (how they feel), behaviour (what they do), and cognition (how they think) as a model of the psychological well-being of orangutans in the context of positive encounters between orangutans and their zookeepers," Gading says. "I aim to build a model of psychological well-being that is appropriate for how they experience the world."
His work will first answer a question related to food reinforcers - that is, anything that increases the likelihood of a desired behaviour being repeated. This means that when an animal performs a desired behaviour (like coming when called, presenting a body part for medical examination or engaging with enrichment), it receives a reward - usually a favourite food item - which reinforces that behaviour.
Gading will explore how the quality of the reinforcer (presentation, availability and more) affects the orangutans' preference for types of food reinforcer. Next, he will examine how the orangutans' choice of reinforcer affects their decision to choose an easy or a difficult cognitive enrichment task. Finally, using the performance data from the orangutans' engagement with the enrichment task, he will compare the effect of age on the development of their short-term memory to that of other zoo-housed primates.
In addition to advancing knowledge about the fundamental cognitive processes of animals, this research will provide animal welfare scientists and animal care professionals with species-appropriate husbandry practices for the animals in their care.
Renee Gorman, biology
Gorman's research, titled "The Role of Transient Outward Potassium Channels in Critical Interactions that Modulate Excitation-Contraction Coupling in the Heart," examines how certain potassium channels influence heart function. It looks at how these channels affect the timing and strength of heart contractions by interacting with other factors that help control the heart's ability to pump, both in healthy and diseased conditions.
"This work will reveal the fundamental mechanisms underlying synchronized contractions in healthy hearts and can provide insight into therapeutic avenues for treating major heart-related conditions when desynchronized," Gorman says.
Her studies focus on a specific set of potassium ion channels (called transient outward potassium channels), which are known to be altered in many cardiovascular conditions, including hypertension and heart failure.
Gorman's early work has revealed that these channels show a remarkably distinct distribution pattern within heart muscle cells and vary between different heart regions across vertebrate species, suggesting they may have a fundamental evolutionary role in determining differences in heart structure and function.
She is investigating how this unique pattern helps explain the known effects of these channels across different vertebrate species. Using a mix of experimental and computational methods, she is also studying how these channels interact with and regulate other parts of the heart's contractile system in both healthy and diseased hearts.
Coral Hillel, physics and astronomy
Hillel's PhD research, titled "Proton Effects on the Photophysics of Molecular Photoswitches: From Mechanisms to Light-Responsive Materials," focuses on azobenzenes - molecules that act like tiny light-activated switches. Her work explores how these molecules change shape in the dark, without light, through a process known as thermal switching.
She studies how adding protons (positively charged particles) can influence how and when these shape changes happen, with the goal of improving the design of materials that respond to light.
"The research seeks to shed light on thermal switching, a process which occurs in the dark' on the order of billionths of a second to several years, depending on how the photoswitch is designed," Hillel says. "Exquisite tuning of the thermal lifetime is imperative for the predictive design and engineering of azobenzenes for various applications."
Through a combination of experimental techniques, novel instrumentation and quantum mechanical modelling, she is investigating how thermal switching can be tuned by protonation - an emerging, simple tool with much fundamental mechanistic insight still lacking. In collaboration with world experts in the field, Hillel seeks to provide key insights to improve the performance of azobenzene-based light-responsive materials, such as biosensors and recyclable bioplastics.
Daniel Olika, law
Olika's research, titled "Navigating the Tax Multilateralism Issues in the African Continental Free Trade Area," lies at the intersection of international tax law and international trade law and seeks to ensure that cross-border tax policy issues do not frustrate the successful implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA).
"The African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) aims to create a single market for trade in goods and services across Africa, promising economic growth and sustainable development," he says.
He explains that the 54 African countries participating in the AfCFTA have varying tax systems, which can create challenges such as double taxation, harmful tax competition for foreign investment, treaty shopping and obstacles to resolving disputes and coordinating tax policies across borders.
"If these challenges are not addressed, taxation could discourage trading under the AfCFTA. My doctoral research proposes to address the cross-border tax policy issues that threaten the successful implementation of the AfCFTA," he says.
Olika's research will address issues related to non-discrimination in international trade and international taxation in light of tax treaty shopping and tax competition, as well as resolution of cross-border tax disputes and multilateral tax cooperation in trade regimes.
To learn more about the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships, visit the Faculty of Graduate Studies website.
This story was originally featured in YFile, York University's community newsletter
