NiRC 2018 Programme

NiRC 2018 8th National Integrative Research Conference Friday, March 23 Carrefour Sherbrooke 475 Sherbrooke St W • Ballroom

Royal Victoria College 3425 University St • West Lounge

Programme

Welcoming message

O

n behalf of the 2018 NiRC Planning Committee, I am honoured and delighted to welcome you to the eighth annual National Integrative Research Conference at McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

I believe that we have chosen venues that guarantee a successful conference and amicable poster presentation/ wine and cheese amid the heart of downtown Montreal.

Keeping with our theme of Sustainability and Progress, our programme is rich and varied with a keynote speech on Medical Ethics, a presentation on interdisciplinary research in action, eight invited student oral sessions, and culminated with a poster session combined with a wine and cheese. We expect to provide numerous opportunities for informal networking throughout the day.

As Chair of NiRC 2018, I know that the success of the conference depends ultimately on the many people with whom I have worked in planning and organizing both the conference programme and the supporting social arrangements. In particular, I would like to thank my Planning Committee for their tireless and comprehensive work over the past several months, from dealing with the details of important aspects of the NiRC and its events to the careful selection of the conference proceedings.

Recognition should also go out to our many sponsors and benefactors who have kept this conference free and accessible to all students. With their help, we have been able to continue our tradition of a student-run conference that truly benefits the student body.

Houji Yao McGill University Chair of the National Integrative Research Conference

Participants

Dr. Jacques Balayla Keynote Speaker

Bailey Bingham

University of Guelph

Dr. Jacques Balayla MD, MPH is a medical graduate from McGill University, where he is currently a trainee in Obstetrics and Gynecology. He also holds a certification in Human Genetics from Harvard Medical School. Honoured by the Quebec Medical Association (QMA) as the “Emerging Medical Professional of the Year” in 2015 and by the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine as a “Quilligan Scholar”, Dr. Balayla is the primary investigator of the “Montreal Criteria for the Ethical Feasibility of Uterine Transplantation”, which have set an international standard when addressing the ethicality of uterine transplants. He is currently the head of “McGill University's Uterine Transplantation Exploratory Committee”, which is in the process of organising the first uterine transplant ever carried out in Canada.

Hailing from small town Ontario, Bailey is a fourthyear undergraduate student of Psychology and Ecology at the University of Guelph. She is currently completing two undergraduate thesis projects in each discipline and is torn over how to integrate her two passions into a Masters. Bailey spends her summers working as a nature interpreter at a provincial park, teaching outdoor education with the Toronto District School Board and/or travelling the world as a trip leader on international community service trips.

In her free time, she loves hiking, making art and collecting more plants than can fit in her tiny apartment.

She is very excited to be attending NiRC with two other members of the Jacobs Lab from the University of Guelph! Bailey will be presenting her research on the impact of metacognition on study behaviour and exam performance in a first-year biology class.

Michal Coret is a fourth-year student in the Bachelor of Health Sciences programme at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. She is passionate about poetic inquiry and ethnodrama in the context of narrative medicine (a field that intersects healthcare and literature). Michal has published three books of poetry and short fiction, and started a creative writing blog (Meet Me in the Common Room). She also loves swing dancing, playing music, and cooking (poorly).

Michal Coret

McMaster University

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Ashley Dhillon is an undergraduate student at the University of Calgary. Currently, she is completing her final year of her honours degree in Psychology and is working as a research assistant at the Healthy Hearts Lab under the supervision of Dr. Lianne Tomfohr-Madsen. Ashley’s research interests are in health psychology, specifically prenatal risk factors on fetal and infant outcomes. She hopes to go on to complete a graduate degree in clinical psychology.

Ashley Dhillon

University of Calgary Joahnna Digal is a fourth-year international student pursuing her Bachelor of Arts and Science Honours in Health Studies. Her research interests are focused on mental health literacy in immigrants and health messaging in emerging adolescents. She is interested in understanding how to improve health literacy in both Canadians and foreign-born individuals, in order to better support health in all communities. In her ongoing honour’s thesis, she is studying what parental factors predict the help-seeking behaviours of university students regarding mental health concerns.

Joahnna Digal

University of Saskatchewan

Brandon P.M. Edwards University of Guelph

Brandon is a third-year computer science and statistics student at the University of Guelph. Brandon has always been interested in the natural world around him, with interests ranging from astronomy, meteorology, and, most recently, ornithology. He is an avid birder and has observed over 200 species of birds in Ontario alone. To bridge his interest in ornithology with his major in computer science, Brandon reached out to Dr. Daniel Gillis and Dr. Shoshanah Jacobs to work on creating an interdisciplinary program aimed at computer modelling of an endangered shorebird. Brandon has never been to Quebec and is looking forward to attending NiRC and exploring Montreal with fellow members of the Jacobs lab.

Kalila M. Santiago Dahm is a fourth-year History and Political Science student at Carleton University in Ottawa, where she is an editor for the undergraduate history paper That’s Historic!. Her research interests include the Spanish and American empires, specifically the Philippine islands, as well as gender, sexuality and power. She has presented her research at Carleton and Queen’s University.

Kalila Dahm

University of Carleton

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Participants (cont.)

Olivia Faria is a fourth year Public Affairs and Policy Management student with a specialization in Communication and Information Technology Policy at Carleton University in Ottawa. Her primary research interests concern the intersections of policy, surveillance, privacy and emerging technologies, especially regarding cybersecurity and information security policies.

Olivia Faria

University of Carleton

Lauren Janke

University of Guelph

Straight from the heart of Toronto, Lauren is a fourth-year zoology undergraduate at the University of Guelph with a passion for ecology and entomology. Her passions have allowed her to study dandelion evolution, predator-prey interactions with black-capped chickadees, as well as trek through the Indian jungle. However, her favourite research experience has been integrating those two things by studying rove beetles from Costa Rica. An avid lover of the outdoors, Lauren is usually found between the trees off the trails in Ontario’s numerous parks or with a net in her hands as a nature interpreter with the City of Toronto. When confined to the inside, she loves cooking new recipes, and is always looking for ways to spice up her life with food and music. She is beyond ecstatic to be attending NiRC with two other members from the Jacobs lab at UofG.

Neil Frank is a fourth year student at the Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia.

Born in and raised Calgary, Alberta, Neil has also attended school in United States and Great Britain.

Neil’s economic studies have focused on institutional and socio-economic issues. He is particularly interested in public policy and plans to pursue a Master’s degree in this field.

Neil Frank

University of British Columbia

Lindsey Ogilvie

Lindsey is a graduating student from the University of British Columbia. She is an economics major with a minor in commerce. Her interest in economic development led her to complete an international service learning placement last summer at a microfinance organization in Uganda. During her time at UBC she was a member of the varsity softball team, held multiple part-time positions at the university and was a member of the Office of Regional and International Community Engagement student leadership team.

University of British Columbia

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Carol Scott is a top student at Huron University College in the field of political science, specializing in genocide studies. Scott has written about the fall of the Tito regime in Yugoslavia, the future for Rwanda’s government, and human rights at the Olympics. Scott visited Rwanda in May 2017 to study the process of truth and reconciliation in the nation, which inspired the paper “Health Care and Reconciliation in the Post-Genocide Setting of Rwanda.”

Carol Scott

University of Western Ontario Isabela is a McGill student in her last semester of her undergraduate degree, studying Mathematics and Physiology. She is interested in research that uses mathematical tools to “connect the dots” and quantitatively characterizes how physiological systems work. In the future, she hopes to pursue graduate studies and continue doing research in the field of quantitative life sciences. In her spare time, she likes to watch documentaries, cook new recipes with friends, and treat her body and mind to some yoga.

Isabela Vitienes McGill University

Talia Wise is a third year student studying Computer Science and Liberal Arts at McGill University with a focus on digital humanities. She is extremely excited about learning how new technologies shape and affect culture – and playing with technology to figure out how it can be leveraged in both the study and creation of the arts.

Talia Wise

McGill University

An Vuong

McGill University

An is a second year student studying Honours Physics at McGill University. Realizing early on that academic research is at the frontier of scientific and technological innovation, he is thrilled to wake up every day with a mind full of ambition that one day he will make a great contribution to curing lethal disease such as cancers. He is deeply interested in graphene’s properties and its potential application in biotechnology and health science. He believes, one day, with sufficient technology, graphene can bring about a revolution in the medical field. When he is not doing physics or reading about graphene, he indulges himself in movies, music, practicing yoga and meditation.

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Schedule Carrefour Sherbrooke 9:3o

475 Sherbrooke St W

Registration

10:00 Opening Ceremony 10:30 Student Session 1 10:30 Talia Wise

Programmer – Man + Woman = ? Measuring associations between gender and technology on the internet 10:50 Michal Coret Writing Creatively to Foster Empathy in a Healthcare Setting 11:10 Bailey Bingham Metacognition and Exam Performance: Tools for Effective Learning

11:30 Keynote speaker: Dr. Jacques Balayla 12:30 Lunch Break 13:30 Student Session 2 13:30 Lauren Janke Does the lightness of insects change across an elevational gradient?

13:50 Brandon P.M. Edwards Digital Plovers: Informing management decisions of endangered Piping Plovers using an environmental agent-based model 14:10 Lindsey Ogilvie Helping or Hurting? The Cross-Country Effect of Refugees on Economic Growth

14:30

Interdisciplinary Research in Action Presented by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Montreal

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15:15 Recess 15:45 Student Session 3 15:45 Neil Frank Making the Grade: The Contribution of Education Expenditure to Economic Growth 16:10 Carol Scott Health Care and Reconciliation in the PostGenocide Setting of Rwanda

16:30 Closing Remarks

Royal Victoria College

3425 University St

17:00 Poster presentations/Wine & cheese An Vuong Transparent and flexible neural probe based on 3D graphene filled with PDMS Ashley Dillon Association Between Sleep Disturbance and Pain in Early Pregnancy Talia Wise Bailey Bingham Johanna Digal Examination of Parental Factors that Predict Help-Seeking Behaviours in University Students Brandon P.M. Edwards Isabela Vitienes Bone Remodeling in Microgravity Kalila Dahm The Filipina as Imagined and Created as a Tool of American Empire Olivia Faria (Cyber)Securing the Internet of Things: A collaborative approach to governance

19:00 End 9

Team Chair: Houji Yao Directors of Research: Valérie Desharnais, Olivier Séguin-Brault Director of Sponsorship: Charlotte Dingwall Directors of Logistics: Lilia Brahimi, Gaurav Karna, Ivana Nedyalkova Director of Publicity & Media: Jenny Long Directors of Finance: Katarina Majetić, Juliette Ryan-Lortie Members at Large: Elisa Jacquet, Monique Morin VP Academic, Bachelor of Arts and Science Integrative Council: Yilin Wang Programme Design: Sam Stein

Contact Website:

http://www.nircmcgill.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nircmcgill

https:/goo.gl/3bm6YS (Facebook event) Email: Chair: nirc.chair@gmail.com (Houji Yao) Research team: nirc.research@gmail.com (Valérie Desharnais, Olivier Séguin-Brault)

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Partners

https://www.creaprint.ca/

Entering its eighth year, the National Integrative Research Conference is an annual Arts and Science conference. It attracts undergraduates and keynote speakers from universities across Canada and the US to McGill University in MontrĂŠal, QC to present their interdisciplinary research. This year's conference consists of oral and poster research presentations by students from McGill and other universities, keynotes, and ample time for networking. To conclude proceedings the conference will have poster presentations and a wine and cheese in the evening for students to network with professors and speakers.