Is there a sustainable solution for “fast fashion” waste?

Naomi Krogman

Faculty of Environment

Thanks to “fast fashion”—the availability of trendy, low-quality clothing designed to be worn and discarded—North Americans send a staggering 10 million tonnes of textiles to landfill each year.

Naomi Krogman is the Dean of SFU’s Faculty of Environment and professor of resource and environmental management. One of her research focuses is sustainable consumption. She recently collaborated with researchers Lauren Degenstein and Rachel McQueen from the University of Alberta to study how the City of Edmonton deals with unwanted clothing. 

Their paper ‘What goes where’? Characterizing Edmonton’s municipal clothing waste stream and consumer clothing disposal suggests innovative ways for municipalities to redirect textiles from landfill and give them a second life. 

Art, activism and imagining a better world

Stephen Collis

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Stephen Collis is a professor of poetry and literature at SFU, and one of Canada’s most celebrated poets. His accolades include the 2011 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, the 2015 Nora and Ted Sterling Prize in Support of Controversy and the 2019 Latner Writers’ Trust of Canada Poetry Prize. His most recent work, A History of the Theories of Rain, was nominated for the Governor General Literary Award as one of Canada’s top five English language books of poetry in 2021.

Top 21 of 2021: SFU scholars making an impact

Throughout this eventful year, SFU scholars have made breakthrough scientific and technological discoveries that have transformed their disciplines, benefitted our communities, and broadened our understanding of the world and our place within it. This week we highlight the top 21 publications of 2021—in both the traditional and Altmetric top-cited rating systems.

 

Healthy aging in women living with HIV

Angela Kaida

Faculty of Health Sciences

Angela Kaida is the Canada Research Chair in Global Perspectives in HIV and Sexual and Reproductive Health and an associate professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences. A global epidemiologist who is also an experienced health practitioner, Kaida leads community-based collaborations locally and globally to study sexual and reproductive health in the context of HIV.

Her recent study, the British Columbia CARMA-CHIWOS Collaboration (BCC3), uses an interdisciplinary and community-based approach to understand healthy aging in women living with HIV.

Informing the Canadian response to COVID-19

Carolijn Colijn

Faculty of Science

Caroline Colijn is a Canada 150 Research Chair in Mathematics for Evolution, Infection and Public Health in SFU’s Department of Mathematics. She leads the MAGPIE Research Group (Mathematical Genomics and Prediction in Infection and Evolution) which carries out research that intersects mathematics, epidemiology and the evolution of pathogens.

Throughout the pandemic, Colijn and her team have worked closely with the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, Genome BC, the Public Health Agency of Canada and others to develop mathematical models to inform the COVID-19 response. Her research articles have been cited and shared thousands of times, and she’s been a valued source of information for the general public in Canadian and international media. 

Counselling with care to heal Indigenous trauma

Alanaise Goodwill

Faculty of Education

Alanaise Goodwill is an Indigenous scientist-practitioner and educator in counselling psychology. She is one of very few Indigenous Registered Psychologists in British Columbia, and maintains active service within several Indigenous communities.

Goodwill’s approach to teaching and research integrates Indigenous language, knowledge and worldviews into the practice of family and group counselling. With this integrated approach she is decolonizing course content and broadening the field of counselling to better serve individuals, communities and practitioners themselves.

She recently collaborated on a paper with UBC colleague Marla J. Buchanan, doctoral student Roger John and graduate student Sarah Panofsky. Indigenous Trauma Intervention Research in Canada: A Narrative Literature Review, was published in the International Indigenous Policy Journal.

To design a more ethical app, consider youth well-being

Alissa Antle

Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology

Alissa Antle is a professor in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology and Director of the Tangible Embodied Child-Computer Interaction Research Lab. An award-winning innovator, designer and builder of interactive technologies, Antle and her team push the boundaries of these innovations to improve, and support children’s cognitive and emotional development. Her thought leadership in computational design and ethics of technologies was recognized by the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists who inducted her as a member in 2015.

Professor Antle and postdoctoral researcher Alexandra Kitson recently co-authored 1,2,3,4 tell me how to grow more: A position paper on children, design ethics and biowearables which examines the ways popular wearable devices such as fitness trackers and smart watches may impact children’s well-being.

“Poster children” of invasion over-represented in marine research

Isabelle M. Côté

Faculty of Science

Isabelle M. Côté is a professor of marine ecology and leads the Marine Ecology Lab, which engages in extensive applied research on marine ecosystems. Over the past three decades her research has provided comprehensive overview of ecological changes on coral reefs and of the effectiveness of Marine Protected Areas from Canada to the Caribbean, while influencing policy and practice for more effective management of shallow-water ecosystems. She is currently Chair of SFU’s Department of Biological Sciences.

Côté’s study Research biases create over-represented “poster children” of marine invasion ecology, was recently published in Conservation Letters.

Understanding the impacts of COVID-19 on older adults

Theodore D. Cosco

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Theodore D. Cosco is an assistant professor of mental health and aging at SFU’s Gerontology Department and Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing at the University of Oxford. He also leads Precision Mental Health, a community-engaged research project based at the SFU Gerontology Research Centre that leverages technology and big data to support the mental health and wellbeing of older adults.

Recently, Cosco and colleagues reviewed the association between frailty and COVID-19 mortality in hospitalized patients. His paper, What is the relationship between validated frailty scores and mortality for adults with COVID-19 in acute hospital care? A systematic review, provides insights into how frailty may or may not influence health outcomes.

Breakthrough technology fuels clean energy shift

Steven Holdcroft

Faculty of Science

Steven Holdcroft is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a professor of chemistry and the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Electrochemical Materials. He is a leading authority on advanced materials for electrochemical energy conversion and storage, materials that are vital to the creation of sustainable energy sources such as fuel cells. His recent paper, On the Evolution of Sulfonated Polyphenylenes as Proton Exchange Membranes describes his ongoing work to create new and environmentally friendly ways to manufacture clean energy.