by Sharon J. Proctor, Ph.D.
Illustration: Leon Zernitsky / images.com / veer

Did you know that the world’s first digital cordless telephone was invented by SFU students? Did you know that the more pollen grains blueberry flowers receive, the bigger the blueberries will be? Did you know that nearly half of reported crime in Vancouver occurs within 750 metres of a Skytrain station?

The early cordless phone was invented by members of SFU’s first engineering class. Margriet Dogterom, a PhD student in biology, learned about the blueberries while doing her thesis research on the work habits of bees. The crime statistic came out of a study by criminology graduate student Jennifer Buckley.

For four decades SFU faculty, staff, and students have been asking questions, gathering facts, developing insights, testing ideas, and coming up with intriguing research results. They’ve worked on the main, Surrey, and Vancouver campuses, at TRIUMF and at the Bamfield Marine Station, and overseas. They’ve solved mysteries, discovered species, produced technologies, and otherwise increased our knowledge and abilities. They’ve published over 19,000 research papers in science alone. Master’s and doctoral students in all disciplines have produced 6,300 theses. Some 83 patents have been issued for SFU inventions, and 61 technologies have been licensed to outside companies. In addition, 70 “spinoff” companies have been set up by the researchers themselves.

University research follows certain rules of evidence: it must be original; you can’t do what someone else has already done; the goal must be the generation of new knowledge, facts, insights, innovations, or solutions; and results must be published after peer review or otherwise shared with the world. If the research produces an invention, this can be patented and licensed.

Of course, all things human and natural are highly complex. This is why SFU encourages researchers in different departments to collaborate on projects. And this is why Mario Pinto fits right in as SFU’s vice-president of research. Not only is he a practising SFU scientist – a chemical biologist who works on drug and vaccine design – but he also has a strong appreciation of music, performance in the arts, and humanities. “Some humanities and social science research can be driven by science and technology advances,” he says. “And fundamental questions in social sciences and humanities can often guide science and technology research. The lack of walls between departments, the ability to move between departments, and the ability to supervise undergraduate research students and graduate students in more than one department – these [characteristics] have allowed me to attack problems in my own interdisciplinary field more effectively. This is a strength of SFU.”

Now let’s meet some SFU researchers and see what they do.

SFU RESEARCHES STUDY THE WORLD WE LIVE IN

Since the inception of SFU, faculty, staff, and students in many disciplines have been exploring the natural world and the world made by humans, and how the two interact. Much of this research has been “curiosity-based,” done solely to gain new knowledge.

• Paul Percival (chemistry), was curious about “supercritical” water, which is what water becomes when it is subjected to 220 times normal atmospheric pressure. At this pressure, liquid water and water vapour exist at the same time. Supercritical water, Percival found, acts like an organic solvent!

• John D’Auria (chemistry) built a small radioactive beam facility at TRIUMF. He used it to determine the ratio at which carbon and oxygen atoms are produced in stars.

• Master’s student James Clowater (biological sciences) had a particular interest in birds. He studied the feeding behaviour
of western grebes in Saanich Inlet. In winter, these birds feed at night on fish. But how do they see the fish? Clowater discovered that the waters of the inlet are teeming with tiny light-emitting (bioluminescent) organisms. They “glow” when disturbed by a
swimming fish.

• Rolf Mathewes (biological sciences) was interested in ancient BC climates. He studied pollen grains found in different earth layers. By identifying the plant species in each layer, he discovered that 2000 years ago a large earthquake severely rocked the Boundary Bay area.

• Murray Schafer and Barry Truax (communication and contemporary arts) recorded and analyzed everyday sounds in Vancouver over a 20-year period. As Vancouver changed, so did its sounds. Truax helped produce a report that identified 46 categories of noise in Vancouver’s “soundscape.”

They explore what it is to be “human”...

Who are we? How do different cultures view the world? Why do we do what we do? How did we end up the way we are today? At SFU, the search for answers involves philosophers, psychologists, brain physiologists, evolutionists, educators, and criminologists.

• Kathleen Akins (philosophy) focuses on human colour vision – its physiology, anatomy, psychology, and physics. She thinks its main function is not to see “colours” or to see things “coloured.” She suggests that colour vision evolved to encode colour contrast information, to note the location and amount of contrast in what we see.

• Charles Crawford (psychology) investigated the evolutionary roots of human behaviour. Among his results were insights into anorexia. A million years ago, anorexia might have been a way for our ancestors to postpone women’s reproduction in difficult times. “When body fat is down to 22 percent of body weight,
ovulation ceases,” he explains. “Ancient hunter-gatherer women would have had little body fat, for they had to work constantly to accumulate and maintain it. Like female athletes today, they could turn menstruation off and on.”

• Gregory Dow, Nancy Olewiler, and Clyde Reed (economics) have proposed a model showing how human beings in southwest Asia could have developed agriculture in response to
climate change.

• Kieran Egan (education) studied imagination and cognitive development in children. He discovered that as children learn to talk, they develop the same mental tools that poets use – metaphor, rhyme, rhythm, meter, and story structures. These enable them to express themselves in words. “They become little poets at age five,” he says.

... and they solve practical problems

SFU researchers have been developing new tools and new ways for us to do things. Andrew Rawicz (engineering science), for instance, tested a substance called “hypericin,” found in St. John’s wort. It’s quickly absorbed by cancer cells. If you shine blue filtered light on them, the cancer cells appear red. Shine an orange light on the cancer cells and the hypericin kills them. Suzanne de Castell (education) developed a computer game that teaches youngsters how to prevent infectious diseases, and Jim Cavers (engineering science) has improved the way cell-phone towers process signals. Mike Thewalt (physics) has been looking into new semi-conducting materials for microchips in ultra-high-speed computers, satellites, microwave circuitry, and fibre-optic communication. And Ash Parameswaran (engineering science) has developed some amazing “micromachines” using silicon-chip technology, including a microscopic breathalyzer, a gas-flow meter, a prostate cancer detector, a microphone, and a microscopic heat source.

Several SFU researchers have developed tools for solving crimes. There’s Gail Anderson (criminology), who did pioneering work on insects that colonize in decomposing dead bodies. Different species arrive and lay eggs following a strict timetable, so authorities can determine time of death by the insects in the corpse and their stage of development. Doctoral student Kim Rossmo (criminology) developed software for tracking serial killers. David Lyon (psychology) determined the characteristics of most stalkers – older, depressed, anxious, self-absorbed, and in troubled marriages. On a larger scale, Paul and Patricia Brantingham (criminology) and Tom Poiker (geography) set up a “crime prevention analysis lab,” complete with a custom-built GIS computer mapping system. Here, researchers study crime patterns using crime, census, zoning, land-use, business, and other data. Among the lab’s findings: burglaries peak on weekdays between 3:45 p.m. and 5:15 p.m. (when teenagers are out of school and their parents are still at work), and most car thefts occur downtown during the day, but in the suburbs during the evenings.

Many SFU innovations end up in the real world

In 1985 SFU created the University/Industry Liaison Office to help faculty, staff, and students commercialize the technologies they’ve developed. The office provides business advice, assists with patent applications, and helps researchers license their inventions to companies. It also can help them set up their own companies. One such SFU spinoff firm is Welichem Biotech Inc. in Burnaby, which was created to commercialize John Webster’s (biological sciences) research results. He had discovered that when certain roundworms invade insect larvae, symbiotic bacteria are released from the worms’ guts. These bacteria release substances that modulate the insect’s immune system. Soon Welichem will begin clinical trials on a skin cream for psoriasis, an autoimmune disease. The cream contains a compound from the bacteria.

SFU’s very first spinoff company was CTF Systems of Port Coquitlam, established in 1970 by members of the physics department who had developed a technology that detects faint magnetic fields. Hal Weinberg (psychology and kinesiology) helped adapt the technology for use in brain research. The result was a magneto-encephalograph (MEG), a medical imaging system now on the market. Though CTF Systems was recently purchased by VSM MedTech Ltd., it is still locally based and the device is still called the CTF MEG system.

SFU researchers also study modern society and the myths we live by

SFU faculty, staff, and students have uncovered some fascinating realities about our society, including myths that prevent us from making good decisions. They’ve also discovered that challenging deeply cherished beliefs can have serious consequences.

• In 1971, Parzival Copes (economics) predicted that Newfoundland would be unable to provide jobs for a large part of its population and that the province’s major employer, the fishing industry, would have to be drastically reduced. This caused a furor and Copes received death threats. Yet, everything he predicted has happened.

• Herbert Grubel (economics) became unpopular with Canadian politicians. He demonstrated how less government regulation, less taxation, and the absence of income redistribution can lead to superior performance with respect to people’s well-being.

• In the realm of crime prevention, Michael Brandt (criminology) discovered that in 70 percent of B.C. deaths attributed to heroin overdose, the cause of death was not heroin. It was something else. His colleague Neil Boyd (criminology) showed that the war on drugs is a failure and should be abandoned. He also found that the drugs that do the greatest harm are legal ones.

• Marilyn Bowman (psychology) found that we tend to over-diagnose post-traumatic stress disorder when tragedies have occurred. Evidently very few people experience long-term distress after a highly traumatic event. Her conclusion: rethink the idea of sending post-traumatic response teams into schools where deaths or sexual assaults have occurred. The very presence of these strangers can create more problems.

The Sterling Prize honours those who challenge our beliefs

In these “politically correct” times, most of us avoid discussing contentious topics. A number of SFU faculty, staff, and students, however, have been doing research in these areas, and they often end up challenging the status quo.

Since 1993, SFU has honoured such researchers with the Sterling Prize. You’ve met three winners already: Charles Crawford, Parzival Copes, and Herbert Grubel. Another recipient was Mark Winston (biological sciences) for his 1997 book, Nature Wars: People vs. Pests, which is about our excessive and dangerous chemical battle to rid ourselves of plant and animal pests. It points out how, 30 years after Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring warned us of the devastation caused by DDT, chemical pesticides are used at a rate of four pounds a year for every person in North America.

The most controversial Sterling Prize winner was SFU master’s student Russel Ogden (criminology). His 1994 thesis documented 34 cases of AIDS victims who had died by assisted suicide, and it detailed how certain (unnamed) doctors, nurses, counsellors, social workers, and priests had helped people with AIDS kill themselves. The revelation shocked Canadian authorities.

What does SFU’s vice-president of research think of all this? “I think it’s essential that we allow researchers freedom to explore,” says Mario Pinto. “If the topic is contentious, so be it. It’s part of the university’s job to push the limits, but the research must be done in a scholarly fashion.” aq

print this story
top of page