Residential school research project reunites children with their communities

Eldon Yellowhorn

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

September brings the start of the new school year, but it is also a time to pause and commemorate the thousands of children that did not come home from Canadian residential schools, while acknowledging the harms to all.      

SFU Indigenous Studies Professor Eldon Yellowhorn is the principal investigator of the Brandon Indian Residential School Cemeteries Project. The project seeks to identify and acknowledge the children buried at the site, and connect them back with family and communities.

Embedding climate action into everything we do

Alison Shaw

ACT – the Action on Climate Team at SFU works with organizations to embed low carbon resilience approaches and nature-based solutions into their planning and operations. They have published a series of resources and toolkits to help businesses and communities take meaningful and achievable climate action.

We spoke with executive director Alison Shaw about ACT's innovative work to create more sustainable cities and communities.

Do teen dating violence prevention programs work?

Jennifer Wong

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Chelsey Lee

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Adolescence is a critical time of emotional, intellectual and personal development. As young people begin dating, situations arise that can cause stress and conflict. SFU Criminology Professor Jennifer Wong and PhD student Chelsey Lee reviewed dozens of studies on teen violence prevention programs to analyze their effectiveness. 
Their article, Examining the effects of teen dating violence prevention programs: a systematic review and meta-analysis, discusses what's working—and what’s not—when it comes to preventing teen dating violence.

Temporary nature-based carbon removals can help achieve Paris Agreement

Kirsten Zickfeld

Faculty of Environment

Kirsten Zickfeld is a Simon Fraser University Distinguished Professor of climate science in the Department of Geography and director of the SFU Climate Research Lab. Her research focuses on the long-term effects of human activities on climate. She recently co-led a study that determined nature-based solutions to capture carbon—such as reforestation—could help achieve Paris Agreement climate goals, but only if paired with other aggressive carbon reduction strategies. 

For the study, Temporary nature-based carbon removal can lower peak warming in a well-below 2 °C scenario, recently published in Nature Communications, Zickfeld and SFU researchers worked with collaborators from Concordia University and Microsoft.

Math as a window into the natural world

Ailene MacPherson

Faculty of Science

SFU Mathematics Professor Ailene MacPherson uses mathematical and statistical tools to address questions at the intersection of evolution, ecology and epidemiology. With advanced degrees in both zoology and mathematics, she has expertise in both biological diversity and applied mathematics.

In her recent paper, Unifying Phylogenetic Birth-Death Models in Epidemiology and Macroevolution, MacPherson worked with researchers from the University of Oregon and the University of British Columbia. The paper discusses several mathematical models used to track the evolution of species, and proposes unifying these models into a single framework that can serve as a guide for scientists and mathematicians.  

Tsleil-Waututh and SFU use traditional knowledge in ocean research and restoration

Leah Bendell

Faculty of Science

Before colonization, the coastal waters of Burrard Inlet were an abundant source of food. SFU Marine Ecology and Ecotoxicology Professor Leah Bendell and graduate student Bridget Doyle, in partnership  with the Tsleil-Waututh Nation to study if the addition of shell hash at specific sites in the inlet would help to restore traditional food sources.

The study, An evaluation of the efficacy of shell hash for the mitigation of intertidal sediment acidification, found that the addition of shell hash helped regulate the variation in sediment pH, an important finding in the understanding of bivalve habitat.

How COVID-19 lockdowns affected crime in Vancouver

Martin Andresen

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Simon Fraser University criminologist Martin Andresen researches the geographical and social factors associated with crime. His study on Vancouver, B.C. crime during the COVID-19 lockdown revealed some predictable trends amid the sudden social experiment of the pandemic. 

The article, In a world called catastrophe: the impact of COVID-19 on neighbourhood level crime in Vancouver, Canada, discusses the findings.

New science innovations to address Parkinson’s and other diseases

David Vocadlo

Faculty of Science

Parkinson’s disease is the most commonly diagnosed neurodegenerative disorder after Alzheimer’s and may affect one in 500 people in their lifetime. Symptoms include tremors, muscle stiffness, and impaired balance and coordination that worsen over time.

Research supervised by Professor David Vocadlo and led by Postdoctoral Fellow Matthew Deen and Senior Research Associate Yanping Zhu developed new chemical biology tools that could lead to better diagnosis and treatment of Parkinson’s. The study, A versatile fluorescence-quenched substrate for quantitative measurement of glucocerebrosidase activity within live cells was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.

Breakthroughs in quantum technology happening at SFU

Stephanie Simmons

Faculty of Science

Researchers worldwide have been working to solve the challenges of harnessing quantum characteristics for complex computation for many years. Simon Fraser University Physics Professor Stephanie Simmons and her team are at the forefront of this research.

With Professor Emeritus Michael Thewalt, Postdoctoral Fellow Daniel Higginbottom, graduate student Alexander Kurkjian and collaborators at the Université de Montréal, Simmons has published groundbreaking research in Nature magazine—the world’s leading multidisciplinary science journal. Their paper, Optical observation of single spins in silicon, documents their work to demonstrate a high-performance means to link silicon qubits, an essential precursor to building a silicon spin photonically-linked quantum computer.

Whence your microbiome?

Eric Jones

Faculty of Science

David Sivak

Faculty of Science

Everyone has a gut microbiome, full of trillions of microbes that influence our health. According to researchers, everyone’s microbiome is different—of the trillions of organisms that reside in the gut, every individual has a unique combination. How do people acquire their personalized gut microbiome? And how can people change their gut microbiome to become healthier?

Postdoctoral Fellow Eric Jones and Physics Professor David Sivak set out to answer these questions. They collaborated with William Ludington from the Carnegie Institution for Science and Jean Carlson from the University of California, Santa Barbara on their recent study, Stochastic microbiome assembly depends on context.