Start Date:  July 1, 2021

Key words associated with the Chair's Research:

• Anishinaabe resurgence
• Indigenous health
• Anishinaabe knowledges
• Indigenous research methodologies
• Indigenous education

Anticipated Research Impact (importance of the research and how it will benefit Canadians):

Dr. Ray's research privileges Indigenous ways of knowing and being to advance decolonial futures.

Decolonial Futures:

Through the Chairship, Dr. Ray will forward her research on relationships with land and Indigenous health in Northwestern Ontario, anti-racism in health care, and work toward the recognition of Indigenous knowledges and experience in the admissions and credential processes at post-secondary institutions. Additionally, in acknowledgement of the ongoing and vital role of Indigenous ways of knowing and self-determination to a decolonizing agenda, Dr. Ray will continue to develop projects that strengthen local and international Indigenous research networks and build Indigenous governed research infrastructure.

For more information about Dr. Lana Ray, please visit her profile

Start Date:  May 1, 2023

Key words associated with the Chair's Research:

My research experience is interdisciplinary and collaborative contributing to a broad range of fields of study including: social work, palliative care education, gerontology, and MAiD

Anticipated Research Impact (importance of the research and how it will benefit Canadians):

This proposed research responds to a regionally relevant issue occurring throughout NWO, access to healthcare, specifically access to medical assistance in dying. It is important to understand what information and supports Canadians need at end of life.

Lakehead University Research Chair Project: The Experience of MAiD in Northwestern Ontario; A qualitative research study

According to the Canadian Government’s most recent annual report on Medical assistance in dying (MAiD), there were 10,064 deaths using MAiD in Canada in 2021. It was estimated that there were over 150 MAiD provisions in Northwestern Ontario. Data is not gathered on the number of requests for MAiD made or assessments completed but MAiD not provided in our region. This research will explore experiences of people from Northwestern Ontario who have tried unsuccessfully to access MAiD. Interviews with individuals and their family and friends and digital stories will be used to deepen our understanding and awareness of these experiences. This research responds to a regionally relevant issue occurring throughout Northwestern Ontario, access to healthcare, specifically access to MAiD. It is strongly aligned with Lakehead University’s research priority of Cultures, Societies and Social Justice. The objectives of this research project are to:

1. Acquire a deeper understanding of the experiences of people living in Northwest Ontario who are attempting to access MAiD but may be unsuccessful;
2. Increase the understanding about the questions, concerns, and desires that people in northwestern Ontario have about MAiD and other aspects of end-of-life care;
3. Increase the information people in Northwest Ontario have about MAiD using digital stories;
4. Expand upon a multi-year research program informed by people who have been impacted by MAiD that will directly address identified knowledge, system and policy gaps; to develop a research relationship with community partners and community members as a basis for future collaboration.

For more information about Dr. Katherine Kortes-Miller, please visit her profile

Start Date: May 1, 2023

Key words associated with the Chair's Research:

Drug delivery, Aerosol characteristics, Deposition efficiency, CFD modeling, Redesign Inhalers

Anticipated Research Impact (importance of the research and how it will benefit Canadians):

This research is of great importance to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry in Canada and to the health of Photo of Dr. Leila Pakzad, LURC in Respiratory Aerosol Dynamics with Applications to Pharmaceutical Drug DeliveryCanadian residents. Conventional inhaler devices are widely used but inefficient at delivering pharmaceutical drug aerosols to the lungs due to high (>25%) deposit losses in the device and month-throat airway. Failure to deliver the necessary drug to the lungs may result in severe health problems, ranging from side effects to clinical treatment failure. Reducing these losses means better health outcomes for patients. Further, a lower dose of drugs can be used, which minimizes side effects and lowers costs. Inhaler device performance is, therefore, vital for optimal drug delivery to the site of action and subsequent clinical outcomes.

The design of current inhaler devices is based on limited empirical data. The proposed experimental and modelling research program will improve our understanding of drug aerosol/particle/droplet generation, delivery, and deposition in the human respiratory tract. It will provide guidance to assess the performance of existing conventional inhaler devices, upgrade existing designs, and design novel devices. This will result in more efficient use of medications and, thus, cost savings for the pharmaceutical industry and patients. It will also improve inhaler device design and selection, facilitate more reliable monitoring and control of drug delivery, and increase throughput for existing devices. Thus, the proposed research will contribute to the Canadian pharmaceutical industry's financial health and will impact Canadian society through improved quality of life and health in the face of air pollution and disease.

The research plan could also impact education by fostering innovation in the curriculum of the Chemical Engineering departments. Furthermore, it will promote respiratory drug delivery as an area of specialization in Chemical Engineering. In addition, graduate students participating in the proposed research program obtain practical and modelling skills that will guide them to make significant contributions to the future.

This proposed program is also relevant for inhaler design, making it attractive to companies engaged in such development, besides the expected fundamental contributions to respiratory drug delivery, a new patent application is envisioned.

Lakehead University Research Chair Project: Respiratory Aerosol Dynamics with Applications to Pharmaceutical Drug Delivery

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is the third leading cause of death worldwide, with mortality to rise to 3.2 million in 2019. Effective treatment of respiratory diseases depends on the properties of the aerosol produced by an inhaler and the lungs' drug deposition efficiency, requiring an understanding of aerosol behaviour.

My multiphase (solid-liquid-gas) flow research focuses on interactions between solid particles, liquid droplets, and gas bubbles in drug inhalation systems. This research proposal aims (1) to link drug deposition to inhaler design and operation and, ultimately, to drug deposition efficiency, (2) to identify and eliminate conditions leading to aerosol drug flow pathologies, and (3) to design a novel aerosol delivery system that can efficiently produce small aerosol particles and deliver a reliable dose to the lungs.

The proposed program will use experimental, numerical, and theoretical methods to address fundamental challenges related to inhaler device design. It will assess the performance of inhalers, guide to upgrade current designs and facilitate the design of new devices.

This research chair appointment is instrumental in allowing me to escalate my research in respiratory drug delivery effectively. Combined with funding from other sources, it will support a growing research group in fluid dynamics, multiphase systems, drug delivery, and CFD modelling and simulation. The proposed research will also lay the foundation for developing research collaborations with the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries and other faculty members at LU and the Northern Ontario School of Medicine.

For more information about Dr. Leila Pakzad, please visit her profile

Start Date: April 1, 202

Key words associated with the Chair's Research:

• Environmental education
• Climate change education
• Social justice education
• Humour

Anticipated Research Impact (importance of the research and how it will benefit Canadians):

Many young people are anxious about the planet’s future. Finding ways to more effectively engage, communicate, and work with them on pressing environmental and social issues, within and beyond formal education systems, is vital. Strategic uses of humour in environmental education may have much to offer in helping learners grapple with complex issues in hopeful and productive ways.

Lakehead University Research Chair Project: Humour in Environmental Education

Most of us can come up with more than one example of a personally or environmentally problematic practice that we engage in despite “knowing better.” Yet we often are told that all that students, or the public, need is more information so that they can make rational decisions on behalf of the environment. Scholars of environmental learning and climate change communication have made abundantly clear that we humans are complicated beings and simply transmitting information is generally insufficient for helping people respond well to the sustainability challenges we are facing. Further, the doom-and-gloom discourse that is unfortunately quite common in environmental circles can leave people feeling overwhelmed, so it is no wonder some tune out or retreat in despair.

While there has been a surge of interest in the emotional dimensions of environmental education recently, humour has received little attention. There are many questions worth exploring. Why, when, where, and how do environmental educators use humour? What are the impacts of using humour on teaching and learning, mental health, or environmental engagement? How does humorous environmental education play in different cultural or multicultural contexts? What comedic forms (e.g., stand-up, film, visual and performance art, comics, cartoons) are particularly generative for environmental education? How could environmental educators collaborate with comedians, artists, and writers to create and facilitate humour-infused teaching, communication, or activist projects?

For more information about Dr. Connie Russell, please visit her profile

Start Date:  April 1, 2021

Key words associated with the Chair's Research:

• Wireless communications
• Signal processing
• Wireless networks

Anticipated Research Impact (importance of the research and how it will benefit Canadians):

A successful outcome of this project would directly impact the users of wireless communications systems by allowing high-speed wireless access in new practical configurations.

Lakehead University Research Chair Project: Massive MIMO and Interference Alignment for Future Machine Type Communications

The aim of this research program is to establish a unified theoretical framework for the marriage of machine learning and multi antenna systems involving machine-type-communications with various practical constraints, and to develop sophisticated signal processing algorithms to realize such a concept in realistic environments.

On the system-level, our research will develop novel and sophisticated interference mitigation algorithms and techniques, leading to new models for wireless network architecture layouts under realistic scenarios (which include hardware-impairments, complexity analysis and selection of multiple access strategies). The performance of the proposed algorithms regarding error probability, outage probability, received signal-to-noise ratio statistics, and throughput will be assessed analytically and via simulations.

For more information about Dr. Salama Ikki, please visit his website

Start Date: January 1, 2022

Key words associated with the Chair's Research:

• Natural Language Processing
• Ethics
• Language Models
• Text corpora
• Metrics

Anticipated Research Impact (importance of the research and how it will benefit Canadians):

The Government of Canada has recognized the importance of Responsible use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) with emphasis on "clear values, ethics, and laws". This research program aims to address the issues of biases in natural language models at every stage of the development process.

Title of SES Research Chair Project: Computational Ethics in Natural Language Processing

Research in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) has exploited the advancements in deep learning models and the exponential increase in text data generated over time to achieve major breakthroughs. Recently proposed NLP models have surpassed human intelligence in a wide variety of tasks (like text summarization/simplification, semantic similarity, and language generation), however they lack interpretability and explainability, i.e., how the models perform such complex tasks. Moreover researchers are focused on improvement in performance, while very little work has been done in investigating the ethical implications of these models.  In the proposed research work, we intend to identify the ethical shortcomings in existing models and propose solutions to efficiently integrate ethics as an integral part of research in NLP.

For more information about Dr. Vijay Mago, please visit his website

Start Date: July 1, 2022

Key words associated with the Chair's Research:

Soil organic carbon, biogeochemistry, land management, stable isotope, carbon cycling

Anticipated Research Impact (importance of the research and how it will benefit Canadians): 

The influence of soil pH and calcium on soil carbon storage and stabilization are not well known in northern soils. These soils store globally significant amounts of carbon and changes in the pool can affect atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and climate.

Title of SES Research Chair Project: Biogeochemical Cycling of Carbon in Northern Soils

Northern soils store a globally significant amount of organic carbon in soil organic matter (SOM). Decomposition of SOM releases carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as a by-product of microbial metabolism. Increases in soil pH resulting from wildfire or the application of lime in agriculture should accelerate the decomposition of these large stores BUT the increases in calcium that accompany the pH increase may protect SOM from decomposition. The chair will explore the effect of soil pH and calcium concentrations on the (de)stabilization of SOM in an established long-term field trial.

Start Date: April 1, 2022

Key words associated with the Chair's Research: 

Occupational health epidemiology; work disability prevention; psychological health and safety; workplace factors; equity, diversity, inclusion; knowledge mobilization

For more information about Dr.Vicki Kristman, please visit her profile