Alexa Battler

First-year ��˾��ֱ�� student earned top marks in high school while taking care of her health, getting involved

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 14:51:17 +0000

First-year ��˾��ֱ�� student earned top marks in high school while taking care of her health, getting involved

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 08/15/2024 - 10:51

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Toronto District School Board high school graduate Emma Brijlall Nakahara will pursue a double major in conservation and biodiversity and public policy, and a minor in creative writing, at ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough this fall (photo by Alexa Battler)

Alexa Battler

Topic

Our Community

Back to School 2024

��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough

Undergraduate Students

Subheadline

Emma Brijlall Nakahara, who attended high school virtually and will join ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough this fall, is one of three Toronto District School Board grads recognized for earning top grades this year

Emma Brijlall Nakahara, who is set to begin studies at the University of Toronto this fall, earned one of the highest marks across all of Toronto’s public high schools this year.

Nakahara graduated from the Toronto District School Board’s (TDSB) Virtual Secondary School with an average of 99.7 per cent, making her one of three graduates recognized for earning top grades.

She says she chose the online school in part due to challenges she experiences with low blood sugar that require her to eat frequently to stay focused – a condition that can be difficult to manage in a classroom.

She is a big proponent of advocating for oneself when it comes to accessibility needs.

“Even if it feels a bit weird sometimes, even if your needs are unconventional and people may not understand them, you still have to respect them and you deserve to get the accommodations that you need,” she says.

When she starts at ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough this fall, it’ll be the first time Nakahara has attended in-person classes since she was a child.

Yet, despite never meeting her high school peers and teachers in person, she says she still felt connected to the school community thanks to being involved in extracurricular activities, including the school’s newsletter and yearbook, and tutoring other students.

Emma Brijlall Nakahara was interviewed by several news outlets as one of the TDSB’s top graduates (photo by Alexa Battler)

Outside school, she practices judo, enjoys writing poetry and crocheting, and has nurtured a lifelong love of the environment and conservation by volunteering with the High Park Nature Centre. She also volunteered at the Cedarbrae Branch of the Toronto Public Library in Scarborough, noting that reading is one of her biggest de-stressors – particularly the fantasy genre.

“You have to be more purposeful when you’re in virtual school – about getting out there, communicating with your teachers, staying focused,” she says. “I like to get out and do stuff, so I don’t really think being online impacted my experience.”

At ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough, she will be part of a co-op program and pursuing a double major in conservation and biodiversity and public policy, as well as a minor in creative writing.

She says she chose ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough for several reasons: the option to take three programs and co-op, the convenience of being near her Scarborough home and the Ma Moosh Ka Win Valley Trail, which has received awards for its accessibility features and is frequented by Nakahara’s family.

Nakahara says she’s looking forward to the extra freedom that comes with being a university student – including the chance to explore whatever interests her academically.

“In elementary school, I was maybe a little bored and that made it hard to do my schoolwork,” says Nakahara, who earned her best high school marks in courses such as environmental resource management, calculus and vectors, physics and chemistry. “I think I got higher marks in high school because I was interested in what I was doing.”

Emma Brijlall Nakahara and her fellow top graduates answered questions at a TDSB event (photo by Alexa Battler)

While she felt pressure to maintain her high marks through Grade 12, she says she placed the stress upon herself and knows doing so can be unhealthy.

“That wasn’t necessarily something I should have been doing,” she says. “I think sometimes people feel bad when they get low marks, and I felt bad when I lost marks. But school isn’t the only place where it matters to succeed. People can succeed in all areas of their life.”

When asked for her best study tips at a ceremony honouring the TDSB’s top scholars, she told the audience of news outlets, teachers and family that everyone is different so there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to excelling in school. In her case, she says she prioritized eating and broke her school day up by exercising – a habit she’s planning on keeping this fall on campus at the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre.

“That really helped me stay energized for my schoolwork and made it so it didn’t feel like some endless task I had to do,” she says. “Taking breaks was important.”

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Researchers often witness – but don’t report – same-sex sexual behaviour in mammals: Study

rahul.kalvapalle — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 16:44:44 +0000

Researchers often witness – but don’t report – same-sex sexual behaviour in mammals: Study

rahul.kalvapalle Wed, 07/17/2024 - 12:44

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Rwenzori colobus monkeys are among the 1,500 species of mammals known to engage in same-sex sexual behaviour, but a new study from ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough's department of anthropology suggests the true number is likely much higher (photo by Karyn Anderson)

Alexa Battler

Topic

Breaking Research

Graduate Students

Research & Innovation

��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough

Subheadline

Many wildlife scientists don't publish accounts of same-sex sexual behaviour because they view it as an anomaly or don't consider it a research priority

Same-sex sexual behaviour is far more prevalent in mammals than research would suggest because scientists often don’t report the behaviour when they witness it in the field, according to a University of Toronto Scarborough study.

Sixty-five wildlife biologists, ecologists and mammologists were surveyed for the study, which was published in PLOS One. Most of them said they declined to publish accounts of same-sex sexual behaviour because they felt the behaviour was an anomaly too rare to be worth reporting, or wasn’t a research priority of their lab.

These results suggest that the paucity of reports of same-sex sexual behaviour among mammals is attributable to a bias against anecdotal evidence.

“We realized some species we had observed engaging in same-sex behaviour were not included in other published reports and we wondered how often other researchers were witnessing it and also not publishing,” says study co-author Karyn Anderson, a PhD candidate in ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough’s department of anthropology. “We decided the best way to get at this information was to go directly to the source.”

Karyn Anderson is completing her PhD thesis on the Rwenzori colobus monkey (supplied image)

Researchers surveyed for the study said they had seen same-sex behaviour (defined as mounting or other genital contact) in nearly 80 per cent of the 54 species they completed surveys on, which ranged from monkeys to elephants. Yet, about 80 per cent of the researchers never published their data.

There were even 17 species on which there was no research stating that they engaged in same-sex behaviour even though experts witnessed it.

“Some respondents reported observing encounters that lasted close to an hour, while others said they had only seen it a few times or very briefly in many years of observation,” says Anderson, who is completing her PhD in the lab of Associate Professor Julie Teichroeb.

When asked why they chose not to collect or publish their findings, none of the researchers reported a discomfort with homosexuality or any prejudice against it.

The study collected demographic information on its respondents too, though nothing was found to impact likelihood of recording or reporting, including their career stage, the animals they studied, and whether they identified as part of the LGBTQS+ community.

A quarter of the respondents said they didn’t report same-sex sexual activity because they had other research goals they needed to prioritize or because they weren’t leading the studies and didn’t determine what was included.

Responses also backed the theory that popular ideas about the role of same-sex behaviours have led researchers to lump it into other categories in their data collection, with many recording it as instances of establishing dominance, playing or creating social bonds. Only 22 per cent of respondents classified it as a unique behaviour.

Most researchers reported they chose not to record or report because existing evidence on same-sex sexual activity is too dominated by eye-witness accounts.

Anderson notes the bias is a feature of Western approaches to wildlife biology, pointing out that Japanese primatologists, for example, tend to place more importance on researchers’ narrative accounts than their Western counterparts.

“At some point anecdotes were no longer considered rigorous enough for some publications, but they can tell us important things about overarching trends,” Anderson says. “One monkey engaging in same-sex behaviour isn’t necessarily going to tell us a lot about its evolution or function, but if all animals engage in it, that’s a whole different story.”

The study notes that other misconceptions of “rare” behaviours have been disproven once researchers began studying them in a more structured, formal way – such as when wild chimpanzees were found to feed their young by chewing up and spitting out their food, akin to birds.

“I hope this encourages scientists to publish on their observations of behaviours that they perceive to be rare,” Anderson says.

After almost losing her mother, ��˾��ֱ�� grad dedicates herself to understanding brain disorders

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 19:16:10 +0000

After almost losing her mother, ��˾��ֱ�� grad dedicates herself to understanding brain disorders

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 06/21/2024 - 15:16

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Olivia Hawco, whose research seeks to understand and treat brain disorders, is graduating from ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough with an honours bachelor of science degree and plans to become a clinician-scientist (photo by Don Campbell)

Topic

Research & Innovation

��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough

Subheadline

“The only thing I wanted when I was a little girl was for my mom to be OK. And I want that for other people, too”

Olivia Hawco was eight years old when she heard a scream from the bathroom – it was her mom, who had just felt something pop in her brain.

Hours later, Hawco learned her mom had suffered a massive stroke, the kind that kills most people before they can even get to the hospital. She was given a 50 per cent chance of surviving.

Doctors couldn’t operate or intervene, so they transferred her to another hospital for more tests. Miraculously, they found the bleeding in her brain had spontaneously healed itself.

“I remember the neurologist saying, ‘Your mom won the lottery,’” says Hawco, who is graduating from the University of Toronto Scarborough with an honours bachelor of science degree and plans to become a clinician-scientist. “The only thing I wanted when I was a little girl was for my mom to be OK. And I want that for other people, too.”

Her mother’s recovery was difficult. She was hospitalized for a week and had to relearn how to walk. Doctors never figured out how she healed herself so suddenly, or why her only lasting symptom was minor difficulties with short-term memories.

The harrowing experience ignited Hawco’s lifelong passion to understand and treat brain diseases – and ultimately prevent them from happening in the first place.

At age 16, Hawco began volunteering at the Markham Stouffville Hospital, where her mom was initially treated. She started in the gift shop as a cashier and worked her way through the wings, assisting with CT scans, cardiology and oncology, and eventually helping in the same ICU where her mother almost died.

It was difficult to be back in that space, Hawco says, but that only made her more certain she was on the right path.

She later enrolled at ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough to pursue a specialist in human biology and, in her third year, took a course taught by Assistant Professor Kathlyn Gan in the department of biological sciences. Hawco grew fascinated with Gan’s neuroscience research and eventually landed a position in Gan’s lab, where she has remained ever since.

“Although she joined my lab with no prior research experience, Olivia quickly grasped a wide variety of sophisticated experimental techniques that can elude experienced trainees,” Gan says. “Notably, she designed and executed her own undergraduate research project from scratch, systematically troubleshooting and optimizing her own experiments.”

Hawco is investigating neurons, the cells responsible for transmitting information around the brain. More specifically, she’s studying how neurons communicate by linking to one another through connections called synapses. Synapses degrade over time, leading to many of the aspects of aging that people dread, including memory loss, cognitive decline and dementia.

For her undergraduate thesis, Hawco focused on a protein called SLIT1, which guides neurons to their proper place during early brain development. Hawco suspected SLIT1 could also be impacting the way neurons connect to one another. By working backwards, Hawco is examining how the brain first forms to hopefully create a drug or treatment that can help a damaged brain reform.

“If you're able to form synaptic connections and prevent neuronal death sooner after a stroke, you wouldn't have the same detrimental side effects,” she says. “Maybe that can prevent some of the cognitive decline we see.”

Her work earned her the prestigious NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award last year and she will be supported by the NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship – Master’s Program as she prepares to build on her data and embark on more experiments during her master’s degree this fall. She also won the ��˾��ֱ�� Excellence Award to support her research this summer.

Along with her family, Hawco credits the support she received from her mentors in the department of biological sciences, including Gan and faculty members Aarthi Ashok and Emily Bell. When she wasn’t in the lab, Hawco was involved in several campus clubs, including the Biology Students Association and MedLife, a non-profit that partners with low-income communities in Latin America and Africa to improve access to medicine, education and community development projects.

Hawco also played soccer for most of her life and became a referee when she was just 16 – a role that she credits for having an influence well beyond the pitch.

“Being a referee was hard as a young girl. You have parents – grown men – yelling at you and it can be daunting. I’ve heard my fair share of sexist comments. But I wouldn't trade it for anything, because it's made me realize the importance of confidence, having a thick skin, being a leader and advocating for yourself.”

Motoring into the digital age: Driving school startup seeks to capitalize on industry's 'sketchy' reputation

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 09 May 2024 18:37:41 +0000

Motoring into the digital age: Driving school startup seeks to capitalize on industry's 'sketchy' reputation

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 05/09/2024 - 14:37

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(supplied image)

Topic

Subheadline

Kruzee allows students to do almost everything online - from browsing instructors' profiles to scheduling their appointments - while taking steps to safeguard against fraud

When an undercover CBC journalist recently called several Ontario driving schools, more than two thirds of instructors who were contacted offered to forge paperwork that would say a driver’s education program had been completed – not a single lesson required.

Mikael Castaldo, an alumnus of the University of Toronto Scarborough, says he’s using a high-tech approach to build a driving school where that kind of fraud isn’t allowed to happen.

“That kind of behavior is part of why we're trying to stand out in the industry,” says Castaldo, co-founder of Kruzee. “Everyone has to go through driving school. It shouldn't be this painful or scary or sketchy.”

Driving schools are appealing to new drivers because they issue beginner driver education certificates, which make new drivers eligible for insurance discounts and lets them take their road tests sooner. To receive one, students must complete 10 hours of in-car driving lessons, 10 hours of homework and 20 hours of classroom learning in-person or virtually.

Many Ontario driving schools are small businesses using little technology, Castaldo says, and tracking everything on pen and paper means information can fall through the cracks.

Kruzee, by contrast, is instead digitizing the experience: all learning except in-car lessons is done online, meaning a student’s progress is tracked automatically and there’s no faking whether they’ve finished the classwork or homework.

Kruzee co-founders Mikael Castaldo (left) and Osama Siddique (right) both have backgrounds in management (supplied image)

Castaldo and co-founder Osama Siddique, who earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough in 2017, have brought similar accountability to in-car lessons, which has also helped them combat a frustration they’ve seen often in their research and experienced themselves.

They found that 80 per cent of Yelp reviews for prominent Ontario driving schools were negative and largely hinged on the process of booking in-car lessons. In many reviews, students recount scheduling lessons by texting or calling an instructor and then hoping both parties remembered when and where the lesson would take place – not to mention how many hours of instruction had been completed.

“We were surprised that it was impossible to book lessons online, impossible to know anything about your instructor before you get in the car with them and that the theoretical part was still pretty analog,” Castaldo says. “People complain about booking delays, last-minute cancellations, instructors ghosting them.”

Modernizing driver's ed

Kruzee, by contrast, allows students to use a website to browse profiles and reviews of driving instructors and provides information about which car they will be driving. They can schedule their appointments and get a text to remind them 24 hours before their lesson takes place. Instructors also record students’ progress and bookings through a dedicated app.

In the coming months, the company is launching a feature that will have instructors track both the hours a student has completed and their specific strengths and areas for improvement, including parallel parking or lane changes. The data will be used to create a custom report card, which instructors can use to further customize lessons.

Kruzee has also created a rigorous process to screen instructors, including extensive background checks and three rounds of interviews. It also conducts regular checks of the operation.

The digital-first approach has helped keep costs low and the company has partnered with two Canadian startups to offer further discounts. For example, Kruzee students get $500 off their first used car bought through Clutch, which lets customers buy a car online, have it delivered to their house, drive it for 10 days and, if it’s not the right fit, return it free of charge. Students can also compare insurance rates with five free quotes from Walnut Insurance.

In addition, Kruzee has a course to prepare students for the first written test needed to get a driver’s licence, the G1, and students who take it are given a full refund if they don’t pass on their first try.

So far, the startup has expanded across Ontario and into British Columbia – and has sights set on entering the huge U.S. market.

“We've been getting a pretty phenomenal response so far in Vancouver, because people are facing the same problems there, and we know it's a similar experience throughout the U.S.,” Castaldo says. “We’ve created a model that gives driving instructors and students what they're looking for – but better.”

Domes near Highland Creek Valley offer a space to link Indigenous knowledge, community and entrepreneurship

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 20:05:35 +0000

Domes near Highland Creek Valley offer a space to link Indigenous knowledge, community and entrepreneurship

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 04/25/2024 - 16:05

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(From left) Lindy Kinoshameg, Jillian Sutherland and Leslie McCue from the dance group Odawa Wiingushk performed at an opening ceremony for the Indigenous Entrepreneurship and Garden Project (all photos by Junyoung Moon)

Topic

Subheadline

The domes, located at ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough, are being constructed as part of the Indigenous Entrepreneurship and Garden Project

Four 24-foot domes resembling giant golf balls have been erected beside the tennis courts in the Highland Creek Valley at the University of Toronto Scarborough – high-tech greenhouses equipped with solar panels, irrigation systems and geothermal tubes that run deep underground.

The domes were constructed as part of the Indigenous Entrepreneurship and Garden Project, an initiative that aims to offer a hands-on complement to the Indigenous Entrepreneurship Workshops, which begin this September and are designed to help students and community members connect Indigenous knowledge, community and entrepreneurship.

The workshops were co-created – and will be taught – by Jonathon Araujo Redbird, a business leader from Saugeen First Nation who runs Redbird Circle Inc., a company specializing in entrepreneurship training based on Indigenous knowledges and values. They’re being offered in partnership with ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough’s The BRIDGE and ��˾��ֱ�� Mississauga’s ICUBE accelerators.

“We want Indigenous youth to come here and make it their second home and learn about the land, how to grow produce from the land and how we can learn entrepreneurship through that process,” says Redbird, who co-founded Redbird Circle with Christina Tachtampa.

The four domes are connected both physically – through an accessible pathway – and thematically

Redbird Circle first partnered with ICUBE in 2021 to offer the Indigenous Entrepreneurship Program. The company then collaborated with the Indigenous Network non-profit to bring the idea of a garden project to life, with the help of a grant from the Canada Community Revitalization Fund.

The series comprises a free, virtual 12-week program modelled on the medicine wheel – an Indigenous symbol of balance between physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being.

The medicine wheel also inspired the themes for the domes, which are interconnected and will stay at a humid 35 degrees C year-round.

The first dome will be dedicated to growing crops that support wellness, while the second will be used to test ways to rejuvenate soil without using chemicals. The third dome will be used to teach entrepreneurship through crops and to find ways to turn produce into high-yield sources of income for Indigenous people and communities.

Finally, dome four will be devoted to experimenting with agriculture technologies, starting with vertical farming equipment made by ��˾��ֱ�� startup Just Vertical.

All four domes will be accessible for people using mobility devices and entirely self-sustaining when construction finishes in the coming months.

Jonathon Araujo Redbird (centre) spoke to community members at the opening ceremony in April

Redbird, who grew up in the Gabriel Dumont housing complex in Scarborough, says he has experienced how difficult it can be for Indigenous people to stay connected to the land on urban reserves. He adds Indigenous people face an added obstacle to building intergenerational wealth in the form of the Indian Act, which he says makes it challenging to borrow money and impossible to trade land with people outside their communities.

“If Indigenous people want to build intergenerational wealth, the only way to do that is to leave our traditional lands and come to the cities,” he says. “And when we do come to the cities, the prices are very high to purchase a home.”

But Redbird says entrepreneurial thinking can play a role in empowering Indigenous people, with agriculture providing one important avenue.

While the workshop series is designed for Indigenous learners, it is open to anyone interested in traditional Indigenous knowledge and entrepreneurship, with community members encouraged to share their thoughts on how they envision the domes’ layouts and uses.

The opening ceremony invited local community members to give their feedback on their visions for the domes

“This is a space that’s very much been created and will continue to be improved upon through that consultative approach and listening to community feedback,” says Arjuna Thaskaran, industry partnerships, innovation and work-integrated learning lead at The BRIDGE. “It’s about having the community take ownership of the space and drive how they want to shape it.”

Various academic departments have expressed interest in collaborating on the program. “There are discussions with several programs about Indigenizing some of the current projects and curriculum, and learning about sustainability through Indigenous approaches to urban agriculture,” says Dave Fenton, assistant director of external relations in ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough’s department of management.

Using X (formerly Twitter) has a negative impact on well-being: Study

rahul.kalvapalle — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 20:09:01 +0000

Using X (formerly Twitter) has a negative impact on well-being: Study

rahul.kalvapalle Thu, 03/14/2024 - 16:09

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(photo by ViewApart/Getty Images)

Alexa Battler

Topic

Breaking Research

Subheadline

Despite creating a greater sense of belonging for some users, researchers found that frequenting the social media platform is associated with a drop in positive emotions and a surge in outrage, political polarization and boredom

Researchers at the University of Toronto have confirmed what many have long suspected: using X (formerly known as Twitter) takes a toll on our well-being – although the social media platform itself isn’t entirely to blame.

Published in the journal Communications Psychology, the study found that, while logging onto X led to a greater sense of belonging for some users, it was associated with an immediate drop in positive emotions such as joy and a surge in outrage, political polarization and boredom.

The study also suggested that a person’s reason for opening X in the first place – to check the news or out of boredom – plays a significant role in determining whether they’ll tweet, retweet, like, scroll or otherwise use the platform’s features, which are also tied to emotional impacts.

“We couldn't find any positive effects on well-being,” says Victória Oldemburgo de Mello, a PhD student at ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough who is one of the study’s co-authors. “Even when some of the things people did made them feel like they belonged more, that didn’t translate into increased positive emotions.”

“We couldn't find any positive effects on well-being,” says study co-author Victória Oldemburgo de Mello (photo by Alexa Battler)

As part of the study, researchers tracked the emotions of 252 users in the United States to determine when X was having an impact on them. While the study’s participants were demographically diverse, the researchers’ findings were consistent regardless of age, political allegiance, ethnicity or other factors.

Those who reported using the site as a way to escape their problems scored lower for well-being both after using X and overall, and were angrier and unhappier people. Frequent X users were, on average, more bored and lonelier. In addition, they felt more bored immediately after using X, although not any lonelier.

“I can relate to those findings in the sense that I tend to open social media if I’m momentarily frustrated,” says Oldemburgo de Mello. “When I'm approaching it with this escapism mindset, it's going to be worse overall because I already have a problem.”

People who were more politically polarized, meanwhile, tended to retweet a lot. And the study called it “puzzling” that users felt increasingly polarized when they used X for entertainment, which usually means scrolling through your feed. Users often closed X with a spike in their anger levels. They also became angrier when they used X to find information, though this wasn’t tied to any specific action.

When people went on X seeking social interaction, they tended to reply to tweets and visit profiles – and felt a boost in their sense of belonging. Researchers said the same was true when people checked trending topics.

Extensive research has quantified how much interacting with another person boosts well-being, including positive emotions such as joy. X, on the other hand, appears to be dragging users down.

“Imagine the magnitude of how you feel when you meet someone and you talk to them for a while, you get a little bit of a mood boost,” says Oldemburgo de Mello. “Two-thirds of that magnitude is how bad you feel when you use X.”

The action on X most associated with a lowered state of well-being was scrolling the feed, which is the most frequent activity on X, consuming 74 per cent of the time participants spent on the platform. (Eighty per cent of the content on X is created by 10 per cent of users.)

Researchers found some surprises, too. For example, there was no apparent impact on anxiety and interacting with people who had different political views didn’t increase a user’s polarization – perhaps, researchers said, because of the effect of “echo chambers” that cause users to lean further into a political opinion.

The study’s data was collected in 2021 before tech mogul Elon Musk purchased Twitter and set in motion several changes that resulted in advertisers pulling back from the platform amid concerns about a rise in extremism and hate speech. However, Oldemburgo de Mello says the findings on passive use and the fact that social media’s impact is connected to motive and behaviour are broadly applicable.

“I would expect people to come to social media with maybe a different motivation and different patterns of behaviours,” she says. “Maybe we all should be more intentional with our social media use, avoiding it when we’re bored or frustrated.”

��˾��ֱ�� startup weaves in AI to help second-hand clothing stores grow online

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 14:25:51 +0000

��˾��ֱ�� startup weaves in AI to help second-hand clothing stores grow online

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 03/08/2024 - 09:25

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(photo by OKrasyuk via Getty Images)

Topic

Subheadline

SnapWrite, co-founded by ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough alum Athiya Rastogi, automatically generates product descriptions of clothing items

Picture this: You upload an image of a T-shirt to a software program, and within seconds it generates a detailed product description covering the size, brand, materials, condition and other key features – and uses search engine optimization (SEO) to help get that T-shirt into an online shopping cart.

That’s what Athiya Rastogi has built with SnapWrite, a startup that uses AI to generate product descriptions from images, helping second-hand clothing stores make a name for themselves in the online marketplace.

“As long as the human eye can see a product’s feature, the AI can see it. Doesn’t matter if it’s a low-quality photo or there’s a busy background,” says Rastogi, who graduated from the University of Toronto Scarborough with an honours bachelor of science in statistics.

Aryaman and Athiya Rastogi

Rastogi built the AI technology with her brother and co-founder Aryaman after taking courses in machine learning. She initially grew the startup out of The Hub, ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough's early-stage entrepreneurship incubator.

SnapWrite has since enjoyed success in pitch competitions including at The Hub and The Bridge, another campus-linked accelerator of ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough, winning around $40,000 in funding without having to give up equity. The startup has also attracted funding from big-league investors including FounderFuel, Inovia Capital and Panache Ventures.

Rastogi says the idea for SnapWrite emerged from a business she operated when she was a student. “While in school, I ran my own resale store and met a woman who ran a pre-loved clothing store,” she says. “When I looked her up on Instagram, there was this endless feed of other accounts that were doing the same thing. This is a market with challenges that have not been fully addressed yet.”

Rastogi explains that demand for second-hand clothing is exploding, but because each pre-owned product is unique, online postings made to sell them must be too – which poses a challenge for businesses trying to keep up with growing inventory.

SnapWrite helps these businesses save on time and labour by enabling them to upload hundreds of photos at once, with the platform giving each item a detailed digital identity in about 15 seconds – a task Rastogi says would take a human worker five to 15 minutes.

What’s more, SnapWrite also integrates with major web platforms such as Shopify, Wix and Magento to automatically sync clothes’ attributes with websites, so that garments can be posted automatically and appear in the right place when shoppers are suggested similar products.

These features have earned SnapWrite a client base of around 50 resellers and counting, including one that has more than 35 stores. The software has digitized 25,000 items and generated more than 700,000 product attributes, saving its users upwards of 6,000 hours, according to the company.

The startup has also managed to rope clothing brands into the second-hand cycle through an initiative in which partner brands ask customers to bring used products back to their stores. These items are then run through the AI and offered to second-hand stores to resell. This model has already saved 25,000 pieces of clothing from ending up in landfills, says Rastogi.

(photo by Don Campbell)

SnapWrite’s AI generates a unique inventory number, which Rastogi envisions could enable a digital passport system of sorts for used clothing. For example, a T-shirt may get digitized by SnapWrite, sold by a thrift store, and then re-donated months later to another second-hand store that also uses SnapWrite – or uploaded to the startup's consignment platform. Even more time would be saved should the AI recognize the shirt and be able to pull up its data.

Having identified a need in the clothing market, Rastogi says she and her brother are now focused on keeping SnapWrite's momentum going. “There’s no software in the Canadian market solving this problem in the resale market right now, so we decided to do it.”

Experimental children’s book goes against the grain – and kids love it

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 20:35:08 +0000

Experimental children’s book goes against the grain – and kids love it

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 01/31/2024 - 15:35

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Michael Gayle participates in a Q-and-A at a Toronto bookstore with his children’s book Krumpp’s First Taste on the shelves behind him (photo by Samar Salman)

Topic

Subheadline

Written by ��˾��ֱ�� alum Michael Gayle, Krumpp’s First Taste has a darker feel and doesn't shy away from complex words and less familiar references

A cover featuring only black text on a red background. Pages of intricate, gothic illustrations drawn entirely in black and white. Big words, a freewheeling rhyming scheme and an ugly main character who hates almost everything in the world – most of all, children.

It doesn’t sound like a recipe for a successful kids’ book – but Michael Gayle says the response to Krumpp’s First Taste suggests children love the unconventional.

“The positive reactions I get from students only makes me want to experiment even more with the genre,” says Gayle, an alumnus of the University of Toronto Scarborough who writes under the pen name Magic Mike.

He published Krumpp’s First Taste last January and spent the year travelling across Europe and North America to perform readings and workshops in schools, where he got to see first-hand how children were reacting to his genre-bending creation.

The book tells the tale of Krumpp, a seemingly incorrigible grump, and Petunia, a little girl determined to cheer him up. Despite Gayle’s darker, Tim-Burton-esque visual style, Petunia looks far closer to what one would expect in a kid’s book – beaming smile, fluffy hair, massive puppy-dog eyes. Krumpp, by contrast, exudes misanthropy. With a hunched back and wearing vintage formalwear, his goblin-like face is dominated by his furrowed brow and deep frown.

He’s also the character kids gravitate toward most.

“The childhood personality is curious,” Gayle says. “There is a slightly forbidden nature to Krumpp, being as beastly and misshapen as he is for a lead picture book character, that I think deeply provokes their intrigue – theirs and adults’ interest, too.”

The two main character's of Gayle's latest work, Petunia, left, and the titular Krumpp (illustrations by Michael Gayle)

In the era of the iPad, books are already a tough sell and children’s book authors need to sway both kids and their parents, Gayle says. So, he set out to create a book any adult could find substance in – one that would transcend a target age group while still belonging in the picture book section. It’s led to the most praise of his three books and landed him seats as a panellist at events across North America.

Gayle packed the book with references to theatre and fine art – and he didn’t shy from complex words like “curmudgeon.” He also sporadically breaks into French and alludes to things that may not be on children’s radar, from loam to capers.

“A great takeaway from the last year has been the confirmation that kids care a lot less about how neatly something fits into a genre, than the experience you’re offering being one they find compelling and fun,” he says.

Not everyone gets what he’s doing, which Gayle says is perfectly fine. His style is so outside the box that his book has been placed in the graphic novel section in some bookstores and has been outright rejected by others.

Michael Gayle shares his work with students at Internacional Aravaca in Madrid, Spain (supplied image)

Gayle capped a hectic year of travel and events with a December signing and Q-and-A at a Toronto bookstore (he's embarking on a reading tour in Western Canada this spring). One audience member asked whether the book is black and white because it’s told through Krumpp’s eyes, suggesting his (initially) miserable world is devoid of colour.

Gayle, however, says he made the choice simply because it felt right for the story, but notes that unpredictable insights are a plus to making something that’s left open to interpretation.

“The stories I’ve written are the products of what has come most naturally to me to make at those moments,” he says. “I think it would sound more impressive if I lied and said these were all calculated steps to try to upend the genre. That idea doesn’t inspire me.

“I’m just a curious person, like the audience I write for, and want to see what treasures might be floating about at the bleeding edges of this thing that I love.”

Aspiring pharmacist hopes to use inclusive excellence award to share knowledge, build bridges

rahul.kalvapalle — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 20:52:54 +0000

Aspiring pharmacist hopes to use inclusive excellence award to share knowledge, build bridges

rahul.kalvapalle Mon, 01/15/2024 - 15:52

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��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough student Ifedinma Agbatekwe is the inaugural winner of the Inclusive Excellence Award in Biological Sciences (all photos by Don Campbell)

Alexa Battler

Topic

Our Community

Department of Biological Sciences

Diversity and Inclusion

��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough

Subheadline

'Seeing someone who looks like you in the space you want to go in – sometimes that can be all the encouragement you need'

It was the height of the pandemic when Ifedinma Agbatekwe walked up to the owner of a Shopper’s Drug Mart and asked to work in the pharmacy.

Then 17 years old, Agbatekwe was trying to decide on a career path. She had been encouraged to explore three options if she wanted to be successful: doctor, lawyer or engineer. None were the right fit, but a career in health care did seem appealing, so Agbatekwe resolved to find her own way into the field.

She landed a co-op placement in the pharmacy and, as wave after wave of COVID-19 hit, worked her way up to overseeing all asymptomatic testing. It was chaotic, she says, and she loved every minute of it.

“I really saw the impact a pharmacist can have, and I thought, ‘This is something I can see myself doing for a long time.'"

Agbatekwe, who is now in her second year at the University of Toronto Scarborough, where she's pursuing a double major in molecular biology, immunology and disease and psychology, is the inaugural winner of the Inclusive Excellence Award in Biological Sciences. Launched by ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough’s department of biological sciences, the award includes a $1,000 cash prize, a year-long meal plan, a paid research opportunity and one-on-one mentorship.

Agbatekwe is being mentored by Professor Maydianne Andrade, a world-renowned evolutionary ecologist whose lab investigates mating habits of black widows. While she was willing to give spider research a try, Andrade helped her find a placement with a stronger connection to her goals – she’s now working in the immunology research lab of Professor Bebhinn Treanor, where she helps take care of the lab space, attends daily meetings and is learning fundamental lab techniques.

She has embraced the chance to learn from graduate students at the lab – they’ve recommended courses, discussed the pros and cons of graduate studies, recounted how they got into research and offered insights into their lived experiences as people of colour in academia.

Agbatekwe has brought that knowledge to bear on her work as a member of the campus’s Biology Students’ Association (BioSA) and the Bio Sci EDI Committee. She laughingly says she wants to “be like Oprah” for people of colour in science – someone who advocates, acts as a bridge for individuals and information, and widely distributes the tools needed to thrive.

“As Black individuals, one thing we lack is information about how to navigate our different options, because we don’t have a lot of people in this specific field,” she says. “If we know how to better navigate the spaces we’re in, we can succeed faster and we can succeed more.”

Ivana Stehlik, a professor in the department of biological sciences and chair of the EDI BioSci committee, says Black and Indigenous students have been underrepresented in the program due to systemic racism and limited access to financial resources and networking opportunities. “This award was made to remove barriers Black and Indigenous students face, and help them feel heard, worry a little less financially and to – very critically – benefit from networking with a research faculty as a member of their research lab,” Stehlik said.

Agbatekwe has contributed as a mentor herself. After immigrating to Oakville, Ont. from Nigeria at age 13, she spent her high school years volunteering with the Big Brother, Big Sister program, which had her support elementary school students with their academics and personal lives. She then joined the non-profit’s cultural mentorship program and worked specifically with Black students, before getting involved with the Imani Black Academic Mentorship Program at ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough. Agbatekwe has since guided Black girls at a local high school, and became an assistant with the program.

“After George Floyd, I felt like I needed to focus more on Black students and helping them navigate the Black life, because it’s challenging,” she says. “Seeing someone who looks like you in the space you want to go in – sometimes that can be all the encouragement you need.”

Agbatekwe is now applying for the doctor of pharmacy program at ��˾��ֱ��'s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, though she has no plans set in stone — just an overarching goal.

“When I do leave ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough, I want to be able to say I made an impact, and see my impact,” she says.

Canada's net-zero transition should place equity at the forefront: ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough professor

rahul.kalvapalle — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 20:13:11 +0000

Canada's net-zero transition should place equity at the forefront: ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough professor

rahul.kalvapalle Thu, 11/16/2023 - 15:13

Cutline

Professor Patricia Romero-Lankao says equity must be a core consideration of Canada's transition to a net-zero future (supplied image)

Alexa Battler

Topic

Our Community

Canada Excellence Research Chairs

��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough

Subheadline

Patricia Romero-Lankao, who has been appointed a Canada Excellence Research Chair, says clean energy transitions need to take place in an equitable manner

For the last year and a half, the University of Toronto’s Patricia Romero-Lankao has been leading social and policy approaches for a City of Los Angeles project that examines how clean energy transitions can address – and not exacerbate – equity issues.

On Thursday, the LA100 Equity Strategies initiative published its final report about how Los Angeles’s clean energy future can take place in an equitable manner.

The same day, Romero-Lankao, a professor in the department of sociology at ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough, was named a Canada Excellence Research Chair in Sustainability Transitions by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). The position comes with $8 million in research funding that will help Romero-Lankao bring her expertise to bear on how Canada, too, can bolster equity as it transitions to a net-zero carbon future.

“I think we are now in a watershed. We are moving more from the problem to the solution space,” says Romero-Lankao, “We need to focus more on who pays for what, who benefits and who bears the negative impacts so that it’s win-win.”

As cities around the world embark on plans to phase out fossil fuels, they’re also grappling with the fact that their most disadvantaged residents are already being left behind in the clean tech movement.

Los Angeles, for example, plans to power the entire city with clean electricity by 2035. While wealthier Californians slash their carbon footprints and energy bills by buying electric vehicles and installing solar panels, more than 16 per cent of the city's population live below the poverty line — nearly a third of these low-income households can't afford necessary amenities such as air conditioning in the sweltering climate.

Many of the report’s findings stem from Romero-Lankao’s work with community organizers to hold sessions where community members could share their lived experiences, including how past policies and programs failed them.

Key to much of Romero-Lankao’s work is recognition justice — the understanding that past energy projects left severe and ongoing damage to communities through practices like redlining (targeting marginalized areas for high-risk loans) and neglect of housing and infrastructure.

Historically, the people making the lowest incomes shoulder most of the health and socioeconomic impacts of living and working near power plants and refineries, Romero-Lankao says. She adds equity in energy transitions means concentrating the benefits in those communities, while ensuring the inevitable burdens – such as noise from wind farms or impacted property values – don’t again fall on them.

Through analysis and ongoing community feedback, Romero-Lankao and the team designed a series of measures to expand marginalized communities’ access to clean energy, energy-efficient and climate-controlled housing, and affordable electric transit, putting the city on track to meet all their equity goals.

The strategies build on another one of Romero-Lankao’s recent papers, published in Nature Energy, which created a framework to help governments, technology developers and other practitioners launching large-scale green energy projects to hold community dialogues that highlight and address equity issues.

“There is more to our transition than all our beautiful technological ideas; there is a decision-making that politicians and coalitions have to make differently with communities, and this reconfiguration of power is something to catalyze,” she says.

Romero-Lankao has spent decades fighting to make social science an integral part of environmental work. For almost 20 years she was a social scientist for the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research. In addition to publishing 148 peer-reviewed papers, she was the co-leading author of a working group that helped create a ground-breaking assessment report that earned a Nobel Peace Prize for the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Romero-Lankao’s work as a Canada Excellence Research Chair will include centering communities in knowledge production and mobilization as she builds a data repository and toolkits to help make Canada’s net zero carbon transitions equitable. She has found that marginalized communities in Canadian cities – who spend a larger-than-average share of their incomes on energy bills – are particularly concerned about the consequences of clean energy, such as the health impacts of lithium mines, and how the workforce will change.

“I want to create a hub or a platform for us to connect our research with teaching, students, and learning from and with communities,” she says. “I want to be very experimental and risk-seeking, and ensure that we are known for doing amazing work in a couple of years.”