WHAT ICE REMEMBERS
Why researchers are preserving Earth’s vanishing archive
New Possibilities for Science at the University, in the Province and Beyond
one of my privileges as dean of the Faculty of Science is having the opportunity to connect with the alumni, supporters and innovators that comprise our community. Through Contours, we have a special opportunity to celebrate the faculty, alumni and students of this community and share their hard work and successes with you.
This has been an exciting year, with many achievements within our faculty community to celebrate. In March, professor Richard Sutton (Computing Science) was honoured as co-recipient of the 2024 Association for Computing Machinery A.M. Turing Award, the world’s most prestigious prize in computing science. This amazing achievement recognizes Richard’s incredible research and community-building as a founder of reinforcement learning. His leadership has been instrumental in making our faculty, institution and province a global AI hub. In April, associate professor Suzanne Tank (Biological Sciences) was announced as the 2025 Canadian National Champion of the Frontiers Planet Prize, an annual competition to address environmental challenges. The $1M prize recognizes her team’s research into changing river chemistry in the Arctic and what it means for this environment.
Another exciting piece of news was the Government of Alberta’s announcement, as part of Budget 2025, of $100 million to begin transforming the Biological Sciences Building into a STEM and interdisciplinary life sciences research and education hub, to be named the Life Sciences Innovation and Future Technologies (LIFT)
Centre. This investment is welcome news, and will expand access to our programs and increase lab spaces and opportunities for students.
And speaking of lab spaces, this spring we were excited to launch the inaugural cohort of the Science Experiential Skills Advantage (SESA) program, a new experiential learning program designed to help improve the accessibility of hands-on learning opportunities for students. This new donor-funded program pairs student applicants from the faculties of Science and Native Studies with faculty members to mentor them in paid placements. The initiative is not dependent on grades and enables students to earn competitive wages and gain professional experience to build a more inclusive STEM future.
The Faculty of Science has a wellearned reputation for research and teaching, and these new initiatives reflect how we continue to grow to meet the needs of the future. We have a critical role in solving the challenges facing our communities, whether through research breakthroughs in faculty members’ labs, alumni forging ahead in their fields, or the next generation gaining skills and knowledge to take on these problems with confidence.
It is my pleasure to share with you the stories in the following pages, which are just a small selection of the incredible research and teaching your support makes possible every day in the Faculty of Science.
Declan Ali dean, faculty of science
COVER PHOTO BY ALISON CRISCITIELLO; LEFT
PHOTO BY JOHN ULAN
Alison Criscitiello at work in a -36°C freezer at the Canadian Ice Core Lab, housed at the University of Alberta.
Contents
8
Vanishing Archive
Inside the race to save Earth’s climate record, stored in glacial ice and permafrost, before it melts and thaws
14
Beyond the Laboratory
How one researcher identified a gap in the way we do science, and how he plans to address it
2 News
AI architect wins the biggest prize in computing; NASA launch; How we build and shape memory; Royal Society inductees — and more
16 Discussion
A new fund for ethics in AI; Bringing in more experiential learning; How a humble brassica plant superpowered research; A gift to chemistry; A leader in biological sciences mentors others
19 By the Numbers
FInd out how what you give builds the science of tomorrow
Contours
The University of Alberta’s Faculty of Science is a research and teaching powerhouse dedicated to shaping the future, pushing boundaries in the classroom, laboratory and field. Through exceptional teaching, learning and research opportunities, we position our students, staff and faculty for future success. Contours is dedicated to highlighting the achievements of the Faculty of Science community, distributing to our alumni and friends.
Supervising Editors
Lisa Cook, Andrew Lyle
Editor
Mifi Purvis
Senior Associate Editor
Kalyna Hennig Epp
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Declan Ali, Liz Hasham
Art Director
Marcey Andrews
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Bev Betkowski, Karen Sherlock
Contact Us
The Editor, Contours alumni magazine Faculty of Science, 6-194 CCIC University of Alberta Edmonton, Alta., Canada T6G 2E1 science.contours@ualberta.ca
The views and opinions expressed in the magazine do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Alberta, the Faculty of Science or its alumni community. All material is © University of Alberta, except where indicated. If undeliverable in Canada, please return to: Alumni Relations, 3-600 Enterprise Square, University of Alberta, 10230 Jasper Ave., Edmonton, Alta., Canada T5J 4P6.
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The Faculty of Science is part of the College of Natural and Applied Sciences, which brings together scientific expertise across faculties to enable a new level of interdisciplinary research and innovative teaching practices. This college also includes the faculties of: Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences, and Engineering.
RESEARCH, EXPERIMENT, INNOVATE
“The main reason I chose to study statistics is because of its feasibility and wide applicability. It can solve real problems.”
Yafei Wang, assistant professor, Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences
AEROSPACE
Students Reach for the Stars with NASA Launch
STUDENT-LED EXPERIMENT
GATHERS CRUCIAL DATA ON SPACE RADIATION AND EARTH’S CLIMATE
a student team launched their PEPPER-X experiment into space aboard a NASA rocket in August 2024. The project, a culmination of 16 months of work by U of A students from the faculties of Science and Engineering, marks the first time a non-American team has participated in NASA’s RockSat-X program.
PEPPER-X studies interactions between energetic particles from the sun and Earth’s magnetic field, showing their effect on climate. Project manager and graduate student Erik Halliwell praised
the student-led nature of the project and the hands-on experience of designing, manufacturing and testing equipment. Faculty empowered students to “figure it out,” he says. Halliwell won an award for a presentation about the project from the American Geophysical Union.
PEPPER-X’s selection for the NASA program followed a competition where the team outperformed others from prestigious universities. Joyce Winterton, senior advisor at NASA Wallops Flight Facility, praised the team’s “professionalism and dedication throughout the process.” Students are now analyzing data, which will inform their work on the upcoming RADICALS satellite (see image). Halliwell says the goal is to advance scientific understanding and train the next generation of aerospace professionals. –Jordan Cook
Scaling up space science: The U of A’s upcoming RADICALS mission (artist’s conception here) marks a significant expansion of the university’s space program. This $20M, suitcase-sized satellite, led by Ian Mann’s physics group, represents the next step in scale and ambition, building on the success of previous projects, such as AlbertaSat and PEPPER-X.
NEW INDUCTEES
Faculty Faces in the Royal Society
The Royal Society of Canada honours contributions to science, its inductees among history’s luminaries. Three researchers associated with the Faculty of Science were inducted in 2024. Charles Lee, ’90 BSc(Special), discovered that genes don’t always come in two copies, revolutionizing the understanding of genetics, disease, evolution and diagnostics. Martha White, ’08 BSc (Hons), ’10 MSc, ’15 PhD, is an AI expert in reinforcement learning and adaptable algorithms for sustainable systems.
Stephanie Green is a U of A marine biodiversity conservation expert known for research methods and collaborations, finding solutions to invasive aquatic species.
–Mifi Purvis
500+ FLIGHTS
AI language models draw constant energy due to processing. In one period, GPT‑3 generated the same emissions as a person travelling roundtrip between New York and San Francisco more than 500 times. Vakhtang Putkaradze, of the Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, says neuromorphic computers that mimic real-life neurons might be the answer, in that they’re on only when in use.
TURING AWARD WINNER
AI’s Architect
Sutton earns computing science’s highest prize
richard sutton, a computing science professor and a founder of computational reinforcement learning, has been honoured as corecipient of the 2024 Association for Computing Machinery A.M. Turing Award, the most prestigious prize in computing science.
Sutton was honoured with collaborator Andrew Barto of University of Massachusetts Amherst. Reinforcement learning is a branch of AI with broad applications, from global supply chain optimization to improving the reasoning capabilities of chatbots. The award carries a prize of US$1 million, supported by Google.
AI is about understanding humanity, Sutton says. “It’s the desire to understand the world, to make tools to make ourselves better.”
He likes to say, “work on ideas, not software.” So he and Barto explored the idea of “a learning system that
wants something, that adapts its behaviour to maximize a special signal from its environment.” In 1998 they co-authored Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction
“All major areas of reinforcement learning have hundreds of researchers and papers published every year — all of that is sitting atop Rich’s foundational work,” says computing science professor Michael Bowling.
Sutton founded the Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence Lab, where he serves as a principal investigator. He served as chair of Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence at iCORE/AITF until 2018.
In 2017, he co-founded Google DeepMind Alberta, the company’s first international research lab, and he is a research scientist at Keen Technologies. Sutton’s doctoral student David Silver, alongside Sutton and Martin Müller, developed AlphaGo, a computer program that defeated the best human Go players.
The Turing Award follows many honours, and Sutton’s publications have been cited approximately 150,000 times. –a drianna MaC Pherson
PSYCHOLOGY
Memory’s Mutable Mind
Researchers are exploring how our brains constantly rewrite the past, blurring the lines between recollection and reimagination
ever feel like your memories are less a pristine photo album and more an evolving Wikipedia page?
The Memory for Events (ME) Lab at the University of Alberta is looking at why. Led by Peggy St. Jacques in the Department of Psychology, the researchers aren’t just interested in what you remember, but how you remember it, and how those memories get tweaked, rewritten and sometimes fabricated. Their tools include everything from fMRI scanners to virtual reality headsets, and they’re exploring the neural pathways that light up when we recall a cherished vacation or a cringey first date. St. Jacques says they’re particularly fascinated by the constructive nature of memory — how we edit the past,
adding details, smoothing edges and occasionally creating narratives.
Ever notice how you recall some past events through your own eyes, while others feel like you’re watching yourself in a movie? St. Jacques wanted to look deeper into it. “We’re really interested in how shifting visual perspective during retrieval can actually modify and update memories,” she says. The ME Lab is figuring out how the brain switches between these perspectives, and how that affects the accuracy and emotional charge of autobiographical memories. They’re even using wearable cameras to capture realworld events, then recreating those experiences in the lab to see how perspective influences recall.
Memories aren’t just about the past. The ME Lab is exploring how our ability to reshape memories helps us imagine possibilities, consider different viewpoints and make sense of the world. So, the next time you’re reminiscing with friends and someone’s recollection of that epic camping trip seems a little different from yours, you’ll know why. It’s the brain doing its thing, editing the autobiographical past. –Mi C hael BroW n and Mifi Purvis
EXPERIENTIAL SKILLS
Seeing Themselves in Science
The new Science Experiential Skills Advantage (SESA) program is designed to provide funded work opportunities for undergraduate students, building on the success of other existing Faculty of Science experiential learning initiatives. The program reflects hands-on learning opportunities for students, a core component of Shape: The U of A’s Strategic Plan 2023 2033.
“We aspire to involve as many students as possible in a broad range of training experiences, matching the scope of science conducted at the University of Alberta,” says Jocelyn Hall, associate dean supporting Student Services and the undergraduate student experience. SESA positions aren’t based on grades, but are designed to offer students competitive wages. “SESA will allow students to think broadly about what it means to work as a scientist,” Hall explains. “They could work on research, scientific communication, education, interdisciplinary work and more.”
The program’s first cohort of participants will start their positions this summer, and SESA is supported in part by fundraising. SESA students gain mentorship from faculty members to provide diverse project options, and the students are equipped with the skills and confidence to thrive in startups, industry, education and elsewhere. As Hall says: “By offering experiences that reflect the breadth of science at the U of A, students can partake in transformative opportunities.”
Find out more at uab.ca/sesa – With files fro M n iall M Ck enna
Students Spin Gold from Fabric Waste
Team takes top medal at iGEM competition
A team of students from four U of A faculties (arts, engineering, medicine and dentistry, and science) has spun a gold-medal solution to the textile waste problem. At the iGEM Grand Jamboree in Paris, the team triumphed over 400 international competitors with their
approach to recycling discarded fabrics.
Their secret? Genetically modified E. coli bacteria. These microscopic recyclers break down textile waste into amino acids and sugars. This “feedstock” is then used to produce valuable spider silk — a strong, durable and
Major Funding for Life Sciences Hub
Doubles Lab Space
science education and research capabilities at the U of A just got more impressive with an investment from the Government of Alberta, announced in the province’s 2025 budget. A major highlight is a $100-million commitment to transform the Biological Sciences Building into the Life Sciences Innovation and Future Technologies (LIFT) Centre, an interdisciplinary life sciences hub that will provide high-service wet lab spaces to
flame-resistant material with applications in biomedicine, aerospace and fashion.
“Synthetic biology is engineering cells to do cool stuff,” explains professor and supervisor David Stuart. The iGEM competition challenges students to tackle global issues using technology.
Fast fashion contributes a staggering 92 million tonnes of textile waste annually, with only 15 per cent recycled, often through harmful chemical processes.
“Most fabrics are produced with multiple materials,” Yousef Mohamed
support agriculture, plant sciences, biotechnology, health and life sciences, microbiology and more.
The funding expands access to science programs and doubles lab spaces for hands-on experimentation.
The centre reflects the U of A’s commitment to prioritizing science education and innovation.
says, “and it’s that interwoven aspect that makes them challenging to recycle.” Mohamed is a Faculty of Science undergrad and iGEM team member.
So the students engineered a two-step system. One set of modified E. coli breaks down materials like keratin and cellulose. A second set produces spider silk.
Stuart says that realworld research doesn’t always follow a textbook path. He attributes the team’s gold medal to effective teamwork, strong communication and outreach, combined with outstanding science, computer science and media skills. The iGEM program has a track record, with past projects leading to new technologies and startups.
The 2024 team hopes to pass the torch to another iGEM group to build and test a bioreactor for the fabric recycling process, underscoring the power of student innovation.
–Gillian r utherford
“LIFT will be a hub for teaching and research across the College of Natural and Applied Sciences and the university,” says Bill Flanagan, U of A president. “It brings together life sciences researchers, faculty, students and industry leaders, benefitting Alberta and beyond.”
Championed by Matina Kalcounis-Rueppell, dean and viceprovost of the College of Natural and Applied Sciences, the centre’s interdisciplinary design reflects the U of A’s leadership in research and education, and its contribution to Alberta’s economy and intellectual landscape. –Geoff M C Master
PHYSICS
A Life in Science
A physicist empowers the next generation of women in STEM
luce gauthier, ’73 PhD, has had a lifelong passion for physics and the sciences. In celebration of that, she’s making the pursuit of graduate-level studies a bit easier for women.
Gauthier was born in Montréal in 1943 to botanist parents, and her father was a professor at Université de Montréal. Her parents had a huge influence on her love for science. “From my childhood, my parents introduced me to natural sciences and to the theory of evolution. They made me aware of the work of Marie Curie,” Gauthier recalls. “One of the reasons I selected physics is because I was fascinated by the infinitely small world and the fundamental building blocks of the universe.”
She undertook her PhD in theoretical physics from the U of A, and completed her dissertation on high-energy particle scattering problems using the mathematical framework of quantum mechanics, leading to her first three publications. She aspired to a faculty position at
Total Research Funding, 2024-25
A strong commitment to advancing scientific discovery
$ 88M
a French-speaking university in Québec and undertook postdoc work at Princeton University and at Université de Montréal. In 197677, she was an invited professor at Université de Moncton where she taught a fourth-year course on quantum mechanics. But a faculty position in Québec was elusive, and she lived an underemployed teaching life in Montréal.
In 1980, Gauthier found a position at Hydro-Québec. She taught and wrote reports related to Gentilly II CANDU power plant and was responsible for an experiment necessary for its commissioning. She subsequently researched problems encountered in Tokamaks, at the Canadian Centre for Magnetic Fusion.
As a French-Canadian woman with a PhD in physics, Gauthier didn’t have an easy career path and, after retirement, she recounted her experience in her first book, Propos d’une physicienne sur la situation de la femme de science. Recently she published Un mot sur la mécanique quantique et son interprétation, aimed at a general interested public. She remains committed to accessible physics education in Canada, establishing an endowment to support the Dr. Luce Gauthier Graduate Scholarship in Physics, and her life stands as a testament to intellectual curiosity, resilience and a dedication to paving the way for future scientists.
–With files fro M the u of a a r C hives
Direct lithium extraction technologies produce battery-grade, crystalline lithium hydroxide monohydrate from briney aquifers in Alberta.
Local Lithium, Unlocked
Alberta company bets on a new extraction process and local talent, tapping an underground reservoir to fuel North America’s EVs
Deep down, a porous, rocky reservoir of non-potable water underlies parts of Alberta: the Leduc Aquifer. And significant amounts of lithium are dissolved in its briney water.
Chris Doornbos, ’05 BSc(Hons), just had to figure out how to extract it.
Doornbos is the CEO of E3 Lithium, a company developing a direct lithium extraction (DLE) project in Alberta to produce battery-grade lithium for the electric vehicle market. He says that 2024 was pivotal for the company, marked by a pre-feasibility study showcasing a $3.7 billion after tax net profit value, based on a 32,000 ton/ year lithium hydroxide operation over a 50 year mine life.
“We’ve nailed down the tech that works best for Alberta brine,” Doornbos says, “using a combination of internal and externally produced equipment and processes.” That process extracts brine, removes produced gas and uses specialized beads to capture lithium, yielding a significantly purer
concentrate than traditional mining.
Having completed the pre-feasibility study, E3 is optimizing the project, staffing up and finalizing key decisions on plant size and production. Doornbos says the company aims to capitalize on growing lithium demand in North America, and become a key player in the evolving battery supply chain.
“Right now, China produces 75 to 80 per cent of the world’s lithium,” he says. He figures the time is right to use at home skills to diversify the economy. “We have local talent in our oil industry who can take up this work without re skilling.”
“The question isn’t if we need a local lithium supply but how fast we can make it happen,” he says. “We’re ready to build, to produce battery-grade lithium in 2028.” –Mifi Purvis
CHEMISTRY
The Air Inside Your House
when the wind changes during fire season, your indoor air quality takes a hit and measurable pollutants can linger. Ran Zhao, associate professor in the Department of Chemistry, gleaned insights from two research projects focusing on fine particulates. He shared findings in a Science Talks webinar: uab.ca/scitalks.
Wildfire air pollution contains high levels of particulate matter, as well as other harmful pollutants like carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds. Smoke travels far and affects your air quality. An air purifier helps, Zhao says, even one made with a box fan and furnace filters.
Zhao’s research showed that buildings with good ventilation systems and high-quality filters can reduce particulates entering the indoors from wildfire. However, during severe wildfire events, he suggests monitoring with a low-cost air quality sensor.
There are other sources of indoor air pollution, including cooking, cleaning products and building materials. “We should use a higher grade of furnace filter if possible, as I showed in my second study.” –Mifi Purvis
THE VANISHING
VANISHING ARCHIVE
There’s a race underway to save a record of Earth’s climate history. The catch? The data is locked in the ice and frozen ground underfoot. And it’s melting away.
By Lewis Kelly
Climate change is perhaps the most urgent global problem of our time. But if you’re a scientist whose work involves our changing climate, there is another layer of haste: the data that powers your research is literally melting, thawing or otherwise disappearing with each ever-warmer year.
The loss of that data impoverishes everyone living now and generations yet to come. We need it today to understand and manage the effects of climate change. Future scientists with future technologies may be able to mine it with new technologies for insights on their most urgent problems.
University of Alberta scientists Alison Criscitiello and Duane Froese both analyze data drawn from sources jeopardized by climate change. As the world warms, each project they pursue is more urgent than the last — for all of us today and for everyone yet to come.
Here’s how and why they do it.
Core Concerns
Criscitiello focuses her research deeply on specific spots — most recently to a specific depth of 327 metres. That is the length of the ice core that Criscitiello and her collaborators extracted from Mount Logan in 2022. As glacial ice forms, bubbles of atmosphere get trapped within. This makes it an excellent record of past atmospheric conditions — if the ice doesn’t melt.
“In general, our longest climate records from ice cores come from the polar regions, which remain frozen even in the height of summer,” says Criscitiello. “We have these long paleoclimate records from the polar regions, but we lack long-term climate information from the rest of the world.”
“For non-polar regions, there aren’t many places you can go where, in the height of summer and over very long time periods, they don’t melt. We’re talking about the coldest, highest parts of the world’s mountain regions.”
One of those is Mount Logan, which rises almost 6,000 metres above sea level near the southwest corner
of Yukon Territory. Logan is the highest mountain in Canada, but its height alone is not what drew the attention of Criscitiello, a former U.S. climbing ranger and mountain guide turned ice core scientist.
“It sits within the largest non-polar ice field in the world, the St. Elias,” she says. “And Logan itself is huge — it has the largest base of any non-volcanic mountain on Earth, which means the summit plateau is also huge. It’s a bowl 20 kilometres across, sitting at altitude, accumulating a record of ice and not melting.”
After reconnoitering the site with radar in 2021, Criscitiello led a team of seven to the summit plateau of Logan to drill an ice core in 2022. After a punishing ski journey to reach the summit plateau, the team drilled 327 metres of ice in one-metre increments over 12 days using an “eclipse” ice drill developed by expedition member Etienne Gros with Yukon’s Icefield Instruments.
The ice is now safely ensconced in a -36°C freezer at the Canadian Ice Core Lab back at the University of Alberta. Criscitiello and her team divided the samples in half, analyzing half with techniques like ion chromatography, fluorescence spectroscopy and dark-field illumination stratigraphy. Past fire history is useful for future fire projections, and data needs to be local to be useful. “We can’t reconstruct North Pacific fire history with a polar core,” Criscitiello says. “If we want to reconstruct wildfire history in the North Pacific, sea ice history in the Gulf of Alaska or other regional paleoclimate histories, we need a core that comes from there.”
expedition: a trip to Axel Heiberg Island, Nunavut, in April and May 2025 to drill a core from the Müller Ice Cap, which she expects will be at least 10,000 years old. The project will be a collaboration with a Danish research team headed by Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, who holds joint appointments at the University of Manitoba and the University of Copenhagen.
“I’ll be there until the beginning of June,” says Criscitiello. “We’ll have two drills going. The Danes will go to 620-ish metres over two months to get a full climate history, including reconstructing Arctic sea ice in the past. We will drill three approximately 100-metre deep cores with my drill during the second month, to extract enough ice to enable us to investigate the deposition of various environmental contaminants.”
Travelling to some of the most remote parts of the planet and drilling ice cores for 12 hours a day is not easy work. People ask her why she does it.
“There are still huge error bars on the various projections that exist for sea level rise, atmospheric and oceanic temperature rise, trends that have an enormous effect on a huge percentage of the world’s population,” she says. “The only way to reduce those error bars, make appropriate policies and put mitigations in place, is to decrease those error bars.”
Criscitello’s drive draws from her personal life. She wants for her children a world with a liveable climate — which means multiyear ice, and seasons of proper cold. And if you want to know how deeply she manifests her mission, the fact that she named her daughter “Winter” should tell you. Maybe one day Winter will wind up analyzing samples from Mount Logan that were drilled by her mom.
The other half of the ice core samples? They are preserved at the Canadian Ice Core Lab for unknown future researchers to study. Current climate models predict a time will come when the viability of the glaciers on Mount Logan are compromised.
At the time of writing this article, the first research papers about the Logan core were in the process of publication, and Criscitiello was preparing for her next
Impermanent Permafrost
Multiyear ice is not the only climate record underfoot. Duane Froese, geoscientist and professor in the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department of the Faculty of Science, studies what’s found within permafrost, which is anything that is in the ground and below freezing temperature for at least two years.
Criscitiello’s team is reserving half the ice samples for unknown future researchers to study. Maybe one will be her daughter Winter, pictured right.
“I got the opportunity to work in Northern Canada as an undergraduate,” he says. “I thought then that it was a one-off trip. But that was 30-some years ago, and I’ve been up every year since except 2020.”
He’s worked on woolly mammoths, Ice Age horses, and the Beringian steppe bison — all pulled from permafrost.
“It’s the best material on the planet for the preservation of past life,” says Froese. “In some areas, a gram of permafrost can have upwards of a billion fragments of DNA from plants and animals from 20-30,000 years ago.”
But for the last 10 years, Froese has worked mostly on the permafrost itself. “The urgency of the challenges of permafrost transitioned my career,” he says.
About half of Canada, mainly in the Arctic, Yukon, NWT and Nunavut, sits on permafrost — for now. Warming temperatures mean that the region shrinks every year. The implications of this are widespread.
Deep Time, Frozen Data
Ice cores at the CICL unlock the Arctic climate’s ancient and modern story
The Canadian Ice Core Lab (CICL) at the U of A is a centre of research and collaboration, focused on maintaining and studying climate records and environmental chemistry in Canadian High Arctic and alpine regions. Its library of ice core samples represents tens of thousands of years of climate records. The CICL archive is for current and future researchers around the world to answer critical climate change questions, representing a climate record stretching back to 79,000 BCE. But the centre’s genesis lay in a more recent and sudden need.
Much of the CICL’s archive was collected in the 2000s and housed first in Whitehorse, then moved to Ottawa. It faced an uncertain future when federal research priorities changed and the archive was defunded.
“Martin Sharp saved the day,” says Claude Labine. “We would have lost a national treasure without him.”
There are three sets of problems caused by thawing permafrost, says Froese. (“Ice melts” he adds. “Permafrost, because of its organic nature, thaws.”)
The first is the impact of permafrost thaw on ecosystems of the North. The vegetation and drainage of an ecosystem can change quickly as permafrost thaws — peatlands can become wetlands. Lakes can lose their outlets and cause floods.
The second is the potential release of greenhouse gas. There are upwards of 1,500 gigatons of carbon stored in Canada’s permafrost soils. This is about twice the amount of carbon in the atmosphere right now, and some of it will be released as permafrost thaws.
The final set of problems is what the thaw means for the communities that live on and near permafrost. Houses, highways and powerlines built on thawing ground can shift, twist or get buried by landslides. As Froese points out, “This is a defining issue for Canada in the 21st century as ground temperatures continue to rise and impact the North.”
A U of A geologist and later the founding director of the CICL, Sharp understood what was at stake. “He was able to find money to move the ice cores and build a facility,” Labine says. The orphaned collection was rescued and relocated to the University of Alberta.
Labine also had a hand in “saving the day,” for ice core science. In 2018, he founded the Canadian Ice Core Archive Endowment, and it fit neatly with his own expertise and interests. Labine’s background is in industry, with the installation and maintenance of automatic weather stations in the High Arctic for Campbell Scientific Canada. “By 1987 we knew we had the climate monitoring equipment that could withstand the Polar Night,” he says, referring to the duration in winter when the sun sets and doesn’t rise again until spring. “We have two pieces of equipment at the CICL that are unique in the world,” he says. They allow scientists to look into the ice core samples anew. And we should be looking, and paying attention. “The Arctic is a reflection of what happens in the Northern Hemisphere.” –Mifi Purvis
Want to learn more? Take a virtual tour of the Canadian Ice Core Lab at uab.ca/scitours to glimpse our climate past for yourself!
Accurate maps of permafrost are essential tools for addressing each set of problems. So how do you figure out where permafrost is distributed over five million square kilometres?
One way is to use technology. Froese collaborates with Martyn Unsworth, a geophysicist at the University of Alberta and Lindsey Heagy at the University of British Columbia, on helicopter surveys of the electrical properties of the ground to map permafrost and ground ice in the North.
“We hang a large instrument under the helicopter that looks like a torpedo,” Froese says. “It uses electromagnetic energy and then measures the frequencies as they come back. This tells you how resistive the ground is — when it’s frozen it’s very resistive. When it’s thawed it’s very conductive. We can look about 100 metres down into the ground, all
Froese says the urgency of the thawing of Canada’s permafrost has implications from a changing landscape to the loss of a carbon sink.
“Permafrost is the best material on the planet for the preservation of past life. A gram can have upwards of a billion fragments of DNA.”
–DUANE FROESE
while travelling more than 100 km/h and making a measurement every few metres. ”
Froese uses similar high-tech approaches to look at permafrost core samples at the University of Alberta’s Permafrost Archives Science Laboratory, home to an industrial CT scanner, multi-sensor core logger, water isotope analyzers and much else besides. These tools help Froese and other experts map permafrost across large distances. But Canada’s North is massive. This is why Froese works with local communities in the North to develop permafrost monitoring capacity on the ground.
“Over the last several years we’ve worked with Indigenous guardian programs — they are Indigenous landkeepers working in their traditional territory,” Froese says. “We work with them to train Guardians in the monitoring of permafrost, drilling of cores and recovery of ground ice samples.”
The main group Froese and his team work with is the K’asho Got’ine, who oversee a 10,000-square-kilometre Indigenous protected and conserved area in the Northwest Territories.
“We’ll soon start another collaboration in the Sahtu region,” Froese says. And there’s no time to waste.
“Ground temperatures there are well above -1°C . There’s not much room for warming left.”
Clear Urgency
As our planet transforms, so too does the evidence we need to understand it. The race to preserve these fragile records is not just about the past, but about equipping future generations with the knowledge they’ll need to navigate a world we can scarcely imagine.
To Close the Scientific Gap
How one researcher identified what’s missing in the way we do science, and how he plans to address it
By Adrianna MacPherson | Illustration by Pete Ryan
when evolutionary biologist shinichi nakagawa was a doctoral student researching house sparrows in the early 2000s, he figured an important step would be to synthesize all the existing findings on the species. After all, they’re the most widespread bird species, second only to chickens. Countless researchers around the world had already written papers about them. He wanted to ensure he was making an original, impactful contribution to his academic discipline.
However, Nakagawa quickly ran into a problem. Despite being published in reputable journals, the vast majority of the papers were missing information he needed, such as a description of the research methods used or information about sample size, for example. So, from his home base on Lundy, an island in the Bristol Channel separating Wales and southwest England, the young scholar began the tedious task of writing to the authors, one by one, trying to fill in the gaps.
It wasn’t an ideal solution, but it was the first step down the path that would define the next phase of his academic career. Nakagawa realized that the way we do science needed to fundamentally change — and he could be the one to lead that charge.
The information gaps were frustrating and he knew he wasn’t the only scientist encountering them. “I thought, it’s really important to raise awareness of how poor this reporting is,” he says. “That’s how I got started.”
At the time, Nakagawa was spending at least three months a year out in the field, from Antarctica to New Zealand, studying different birds. This shift in scientific focus would mean turning his attention to another subject — scientists themselves.
The primary focus of his research program is metascience, often referred to as “the science of science.” And it’s the focus of the centre he’s establishing at the University of Alberta in his position as a Canada Excellence Research Chair in Open Science and Synthesis in Ecology and Evolution.
“Metascience is sort of
“We’re facing so many urgent issues, like climate change, and these are multifaceted problems. We need to speed research up.”
–SHINICHI NAKAGAWA
a philosophy of science,” Nakagawa explains. “We’re studying how science should be done.”
As he learned in Lundy, papers are often missing critical information.
Sometimes it was simply a lack of detail about how exactly they conducted a particular component of their study. An otherwise small oversight by the original researcher would make it impossible for another scientist to replicate the experiment, a phenomenon aptly termed “the replication crisis.”
And, since “there’s no policing apart from relying on the honesty of each individual scientist,” inaccuracies frequently sneak through undetected.
“According to one of our surveys, 60 to 70 per cent of scientists engaged in some sort of questionable research practice,” Nakagawa says. These practices run the gamut from an oversight in reporting to — thankfully rare — fraud.
His solution? Harness all the tools in our collective arsenal with the aim of making science more accurate, accessible, replicable and, well, better.
After all, if you wanted to get an urgent message
to someone today on the other side of the country, you wouldn’t send a homing pigeon just because that’s the way things used to be done. You’d take advantage of all the tools at your disposal. That’s precisely what Nakagawa’s plans are for the next stage of his research program.
Through the use of artificial intelligence and statistical analysis, it’s possible to weed out flawed research, highlighting studies that are missing key information and presenting situations where there are conflicting findings that require further exploration or expertise.
Meta-analysis can draw connections and patterns between the tens of thousands of papers on a topic. Given the vast quantity of data available, with new papers published every day, it’s impossible for any single scientist to sort through the information the way a sophisticated machine trained with the appropriate algorithms can.
And, through methodological development, researchers can create tools and
systems to ensure reporting best practices, fixing things from the very beginning of the cycle.
Metascience, meta-analysis and methodological development are the pillars of Nakagawa’s research focus, and he’s quick to highlight that any kind of science, from medicine to the social sciences, could benefit from these tools. However, in order to make progress on some of the world’s biggest challenges, he says collaboration is key.
“We’re facing so many urgent issues, like climate change, and these are multifaceted problems. We need biologists, oceanographers, physicists — all sorts of people, all sorts of scientists,” says Nakagawa. “We’ve been doing OK, but we need to speed things up.”
The centre he’s now at the outset of establishing at the U of A will seek to equip more than 250 earlycareer researchers with quantitative data and synthesis skills, building capacity in the next generation of scientists.
Even those who will never set foot in a
laboratory should get a front-row seat to science, Nakagawa says. So he’s prioritizing outreach as another key component of his plan. He has already penned a dialogue-based course book explaining key statistical concepts, and he has plans for other initiatives that target everyone from an elementary student interested in STEM, to a policymaker seeking a way to understand the latest research findings.
In Nakagawa’s vision, the future of science isn’t solitary geniuses toiling away in isolated laboratories. It’s papers with thousands of authors, PhDs earned in a communal fashion and people around the globe working together towards common goals. “As we improve our science, I think the speed of progress will dramatically improve.”
So, spare a thought for Nakagawa’s solitary days on Lundy Island, where a young researcher’s frustration with missing data sparked a vision for transforming science itself.
Discussion
CONNECTING RESEARCH TO THE LARGER CONVERSATION
“University is a special time. I want to expose students to what life can be like, regardless of where they’ve come from.”
Rekha
Kulshreshtha, ’87 BSc (Hons), an inaugural supporter of the Student Experiential Skills Advantage (SESA) program
EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING
Rock Solid Legacy
Unexpected friendships and experiential learning
imagine a rock, billions of years old, unearthed by a student on an expedition. For Paulette and Tony Lashuk, reading about this incredible find wasn’t just a story about the value of experiential learning. It was a pivotal moment in their philanthropic journey with the U of A. And those commitments
led them down an unexpected path of friendship and purpose.
Back in 2009, the central Alberta couple had already made the decision to include the U of A in their will. But it was an invitation to the annual Quaecumque Vera Honour Society (QVHS) luncheon, a gathering for those planning estate gifts, that
opened their eyes to the impact of their generosity.
“We weren’t quite sure what to expect,” admits Tony. Apprehension quickly dissolved as they found themselves among a “community of like-minded people,” bound by a shared belief in the power of education. The QVHS events have allowed them to connect
LEFT PHOTO BY JOHN
ULAN
with others interested in learning and scientific advancement. Beyond conversations and camaraderie, they’ve forged lasting friendships and met some of Canada’s brightest scientific minds. These gatherings have also illuminated the tangible impact their future gift will have on research and innovation. The Lashuks have made a variety of gifts to the university to support their goal of inspiring achievements in learning, discovery, innovation and leadership for a better world. But it was that story of a student’s discovery — a four-billionyear-old rock unearthed during the university’s donor-supported geology field school in Northern Canada — that resonated with Paulette. Inspired by the impact that handson learning experiences provide, the Lashuks decided to support experiential learning by starting the Anthony and Paulette Lashuk Science Endowment. Their gift will support experiential learning now and for generations to come.
–With files fro M n iall M Ck enna
Research Rankings
The Faculty of Science’s expertise in research areas encompasses some of the most critical and fascinating fields of study.
#1 in Canada for Earth Sciences in Canada for Biological Sciences #2 in Canada for AI #1
#3 in the world for Paleontology
Donor Fuels Climate Change Research
One donor’s climate concern empowers investigation into the evolution of icebergs
driven by interest in humancaused climate change, Mike Morrow, ’70 BSc, ’76MSc, sought a meaningful way to contribute to understanding. His trust in the Faculty of Science led him to support the research of Paul Myers, a physical oceanographer who is interested in the ocean’s role in climate (past and present). This research aims to refine climate models and address pressing questions about the future of Arctic regions.
civilization. Many of the conclusions that will lead to making impactful change are buried in details.
What inspired you to support the North? The Faculty of Science took some guidance from my interest and concerns about anthropogenic climate change, but we did not discuss the topic in detail. I was told that they hired a highly qualified PhD student, to support Paul Myers’ research, physical oceanographer and numerical modeller, who could look at how changes in the Greenland ice sheet lead to more icebergs, and the climatic impact of that change.
Why do you believe supporting this area is important? I think climate change is the greatest existential threat to the future of human
What impact or outcomes would you ideally like to see from this work?
I see it as input to further refinement of modelling the heat transfer in polar oceans, and from there to better modelling of temperate oceans.
If you could address one major gap in Northern research or policy, what would it be? Perhaps this: I see commercial ship traffic starting to happen across the top of North America in the next couple of decades, as already happens along the Siberian coast. What will be the impact of keeping those shipping channels open? Is it even in our best interests?
–as told to aM y s o C hatsky
MODEL ORGANISM
Science Blooms with Arabidopsis
A systematic vision for a better lab plant
Chris and Shauna Somerville finished grad school at the Faculty of Science in 1978, he in math and genetics, she in plant breeding and genetics. Wondering what to do next, they borrowed money and rented a flat in Paris.
Ensconced at the Bibliothèque Universitaire Pierre et Marie Curie, they read research papers that interested them, discussing them later in cafés and bars. They kept returning to the question of how to feed Earth’s growing population.
Shauna, ’76 BSc(Hons), ’78 MSc, proposed they focus on applying the new tools of molecular genetics to the productivity of crop plants.
Chris, ’74 BSc, ’76 MSc, ’78 PhD, ’97 DSc(Honorary), had done research on E. coli, which was a favourite bacterium to study biochemistry and genetics, so he understood the importance of a model organism to facilitate research. At the time, there was no plant analogue to E. coli. Researchers needed
a single plant with a short lifetime, simple genetics and small size, so it could be grown and studied easily.
Chris and Shauna settled on Arabidopsis, a tiny mustard-type plant with a six week life cycle. It had the smallest known amount of DNA of any plant at the time. Others had suggested Arabidopsis as a lab model, but it hadn’t caught on because it wasn’t a crop plant. But all flowering plants are relatively recently evolved from a common ancestor, and the Somervilles figured that discoveries made using Arabidopsis would be applicable to crops. After a few productive months in Paris, they returned to North America to introduce Arabidopsis as the lab mouse of the plant world.
“We were purposeful
in our approach,” Shauna says. “We built an open community, based on sharing data around Arabidopsis.” Before browsers were invented, they built an online community, bouncing emails to subscribers from a server they’d set up. They focused on experiments that gave examples of how to use Arabidopsis genetics. Papers by the Somervilles and others attracted a new generation to molecular biology. By 1984, community members had published 34 papers.
“Now, more than 99,000 papers have been published on Arabidopsis, and our goal to accelerate knowledge acquisition exceeded what we imagined in Paris,” Chris says.
The couple have been academic leaders through their careers at American universities. Now Chris spends his days allocating money for biomedical research at Open Philanthropy, a funder that identifies and supports neglected and tractable projects.
The Somervilles personally donated to the U of A Science, Creativity and Innovation Fund, and recently committed to research with a $1 million gift for undergraduate and graduate research. “We were motivated by gratitude to the Faculty of Science for the education and encouragement,” Shauna says. “We believe our support will foster the curiosity and creativity of students in scientific activities beyond the classroom.” Their gifts are foundational to a new generation of researchers.
–Mifi Purvis
From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you! Supporters like you champion science.
DONOR IMPACT
Number of donors to the Faculty of Science 1,500+
Number of research publications by faculty and student researchers $13.9M
14
Number of new invention disclosures arising from work at the faculty
Your support superpowers research and experiential learning for a broader range of students across scientific fields. Your gifts provide the fuel to the curious minds of researchers who are working to address the world’s great challenges.
Amount gifted to the Faculty of Science for research
83
Number of donors who work for the University of Alberta as staff or faculty $4.8M BEQUESTS
Legacies of support established through commitments in estate plans 908
From River Flats to Global Fields
Experience fuels a geologist’s desire to share hands-on learning with the next generation in 1954 our family emigrated from Holland to Edmonton. Eight kids, no money, so early on I was working part time delivering newspapers and pumping gas. We moved to Rossdale, down on the North Saskatchewan River Flats. Back then it was a low-income immigrant neighbourhood.
Just out of high school, I spent two summers in northern B.C. working in the sawmills and fighting forest fires to save money for university. In my years at the U of A taking geology, I spent three summers doing geological work, prospecting in the bush for gold, silver and uranium in B.C., northern Saskatchewan and the N.W.T. It was experiential learning!
When I graduated, from the U of A, I worked on the drilling rigs as a mudlogger and wellsite geologist. I also spent two years on the offshore drilling rigs on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and in the High Arctic.
I was determined to work overseas so I joined Texaco
in 1973 since they were an American multinational. It led to 30 years in Indonesia, Nigeria and Angola. With Texaco, I gravitated to management. I wanted to see “the big picture” of what our company was doing, whether we were making our objectives and how we were contributing to the host country.
The teams I led included expats from around the world. Some had degrees from famous universities, but I knew that my degree put me on the same level, because the U of A was one of the top universities in Canada, and the Earth Sciences program was exceptionally good. The stuff I learned was practical, and my U of A degree set me up for a successful worldwide career.
The SESA program, with its focus on students gaining experience doing science, appealed to me as a donor, because I’d learned early on the importance of experience to gaining a foothold.
–tako konin G , ’71 B sC (sP eC), as told to aM y s o C hatsky
A student in Viktoria Wagner’s (Biological Sciences) lab learns how to identify plants collected during ecological field surveys . It’s a tool for researchers to understand changes to plant life in the environment and a handson learning opportunity for students.
COMPUTING SCIENCE
Beginnings and Remembrance
The enduring values of a couple inspire gifts to their alma maters
Denise Murray and her late husband Bill, ’61 BSc (Hons), ’62 MSc, were alike in that they came from families who instilled in them the value of education. Denise is from Australia and Bill was the son of an RCMP member whose postings took the family to various Wesetern Canadian communities. Bill came to think of Edmonton as his hometown, and got an undergraduate degree and a master’s from the Faculty of Science in the 1960s. “He had a great attachment to the U of A,” Denise says.
PHOTO BY JOHN ULAN
Bill spent his career with IBM, which brought the couple to San Jose, Calif., where Denise still lives. Denise was an ESL teacher/trainer and a degree from Stanford and a master’s in applied linguistics from Macquarie University in Sydney. “We both valued the educational opportunities that our countries gave us,” she says, “and we were very much a partnership.” So when the time came to think about a legacy, their values, roots and education drew them to U of A and Macquarie.
“It’s a recognition that we were lucky to get what we were given,” Denise says.
As Bill witnessed the rapid evolution of technology during his
time at IBM, his appreciation for education broadened to include a keen awareness of the ethical considerations that arose with these advancements. His interests lay in ethics in computing, data, security and policy and how they affect the lives of people. “He was interested in what people weight up in considering ease versus security,” Denise says. It’s a very current consideration from a man who had the chance to use the first computers at the U of A. Denise is humble about the couple’s legacy. “It’s not enough to change the world — I consider it seed money for postdocs or researchers.” Sometimes those seeds can grow into ideas that change the world. –Mifi
Purvis
The Multiplier Effect
One grad’s passions fuel a city’s growing ambition
The journey of Abbas Mehdi, ’20 BSc, began in Karachi, took him to Qatar, Pittsburgh, and finally Edmonton, a city he initially knew nothing about. The U of A grad thrives at an Edmonton biotech startup, mentors budding entrepreneurs in the biological sciences, and champions human rights.
A transformative iGEM competition at the U of A ignited his interest in participating in a global biotech network. And mentorship from another U of A grad, Antonio Bruni, helped pave Mehdi’s way into Alberta’s startup ecosystem. Now, Mehdi gives back through Nucleate, connecting Edmonton trainees to a worldwide biotech community. He also volunteers with the John Humphrey Centre, advocating for grassroots-led human rights education.
Mehdi’s involvement in the biotech, startup and volunteer communities makes it easy to forget that he also has a day job as a research and development operations associate with Future Fields. The biotech company uses genetically modified fruit flies to produce recombinant proteins, ranging from simple growth factors similar to insulin used in diabetes treatment to complex proteins such as antibodies.
Mehdi sees Edmonton’s collaborative spirit as key to its growing potential, drawing parallels to Pittsburgh’s tech transformation. For him, investing in Edmonton’s initiatives yields tangible returns, solidifying its place as a rising research and biotech hub.
“I feel good about investing my time and effort into the various initiatives here because you can always see a return,” Mehdi says. “Edmonton has all the right ingredients to be an amazing destination for research as well as biotech.” –Curtis Gilles P ie
Abbas Mehdi
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Upkirat Singh Multani, Bachelor of Science student in the Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology Program, Department of Biological Sciences