Science Contours Fall 2016

FUTURE FOCUS

IMPACT of the Fort McMurray fires Vol 33, No 2, Fall/Winter 2016

science.ualberta.ca

Vol 33, No 2, Fall/Winter 2016

The University of Alberta Faculty of Science is a research and teaching powerhouse dedicated to shaping the future by pushing the boundaries of knowledge in the classroom, laboratory, and field. Through exceptional teaching, learning, and research experiences, we competitively position our students, staff, and faculty for current and future success.

Science Contours is a semi-annual publication dedicated to highlighting the collective achievements of the Faculty of Science community. It is distributed to alumni and friends of the Faculty.

Dean of Science Jonathan Schaeffer Editor Jennifer Pascoe Associate Editor Katie Willis Design Lime Design Inc.

Contributing Writers Sarah Boon Kristy Condon Julie Naylor Jennifer Pascoe Alan Shapiro Photography John Ulan

Send your comments to: The Editor, Science Contours Faculty of Science 6-197 CCIS, University of Alberta Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2E9 science.contours@ualberta.ca

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Resilient roots Revered for their beauty and distinctively fan-shaped leaves, gingko trees are often considered a symbol of longevity. A so-called living fossil, the gingko tree has gone relatively unchanged in more than 200 million years.

Though it is not naturally grown on the prairies, the University of Alberta’s North Campus is home to one gingko tree, planted in honour of former U of A chancellor Sandy Mactaggart (’90 LLD), in front of Athabasca Hall, home to the Department of Computing Science.

contents 7

Dean’s message

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Science news

› Mammoth mystery solved

› Here comes the sun

› Developing Earth systems scientists

› With apologies to Chomsky

› Papal handshake

› Eliminating the uncompetitive edge

› “Space tsunami” causes third Van Allen belt

12 Mountains 101 Mastering the mountains one tip at a time 14 Trust your gut Alumna shares her sustainability story COVER STORY

18 › Future focus Life after the Fort McMurray fires 24 I am woman, hear me code Computing science progress more than 150 years in the making 28 Diversity report card Margaret-Ann Armour on the state of women in science 31 A New York state of mind Life-changing events lead alumna away from the lab 34 Awards and accolades 35 Alumni perspectives “The decision to break with tradition is not an easy one.”

—Rekha Kulshreshtha (’87 BSc, ’89 BSc EPhys)

IN THE FIELD

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Muddied waters Suzanne Tank (biological sciences) used a unique long-term data set to reveal an influx of carbon in the northern river system over a 40-year period. This indicates that the changing climate is muddying the waters of the Mackenzie River basin. “Not only can this tell us about what’s happening on land, it’s also really important in understanding what’s going on in the ocean,” says Tank. Read more about Tank’s research at uab.ca/scinews.

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IN THE LAB

Rhythmic development University of Alberta geneticists have made a surprising discovery about circadian rhythm, proving it does a lot more than keep time.

While well established that our internal clock regulates our eating and sleeping schedules, the new study—led by post-doctoral fellow Francesa Di Cara and Kirst King-Jones (biological sciences)—demonstrates that circadian rhythms are also essential for the normal development of an organism. Read more about this research at uab.ca/scinews.

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DEAN’S MESSAGE

Exceptional women in science

This issue of Contours focuses on women in science. Why, you might ask, are we shining the spotlight on one gender?

Some academic disciplines have gender diversity problems at the professorial and/or student participation level: the pool of potential recruits is lopsided. The Faculty of Science has, for example, challenges with computing science, mathematics, physics, and geology—all are generally maledominated scientific disciplines. At the student level, we engage high schools to encourage the best students—male or female—to come to the University of Alberta. Unfortunately for many students, their gender biases are formed well before they first come in contact with the University of Alberta. In part, this is why I see the Faculty of Science summer camps being so important. It is critical that we motivate interest in science at an early age among all genders.

At the professorial level, things are more challenging. In our maledominated disciplines, we actively recruit for exceptional female professors, who are in great demand but short supply. In this issue, we interview Margaret-Ann Armour, associate dean (diversity) and a passionate advocate for women in science. She, better than anyone, understands the challenges our faculty faces as we add diversity (and not just women) to the professor

ranks. And, to ensure we are true to our theme of women in science, the interview is conducted by alumna and science writer Sarah Boon.

In our male-dominated disciplines, we actively recruit for exceptional female professors, who are in great demand but short supply.

We also highlight the work of two faculty members, human geographer Tara McGee (earth and atmospheric sciences) and environmental chemist Sarah Styler (chemistry), who give us their perspectives on the unfolding story of the Fort McMurry fire.

Earlier this year, we were horrified by the tragedy, but life goes on, and a wounded community has begun the long process of healing.

We profile the student group Ada’s Team in the Department of Computing Science (Ada refers to Ada Lovelace, arguably the first computer programmer in history). This group of students promotes computer science as a discipline that has tremendous opportunities for women and minorities.

They also work with us on our all-girls summer computing camps.

Graduate student Laura Redmond talks about our next free online course (Mountains 101), alumna Shannon Leblanc tells us to “trust our gut—it’s full of good bacteria!” and we hear how alumna Rheanna Sand is taking the world by storm.

And there’s more . . . a lot more.

I am delighted to contribute to another outstanding issue of Contours.

This magazine was produced by an all-female team—amazingly talented people. Just a coincidence . . . or is it?

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Duane Froese (earth and atmospheric sciences), Canada Research Chair in Northern Environmental Change, and PhD student Lauren Davies uncover the truth about the St. Paul mammoth extinction.

SCIENCE

NEWS

Mammoth mystery solved Why did the St. Paul Island mammoths go extinct more than 6000 years after mainland populations? That was the question asked by an international team of scientists including Duane Froese (earth and atmospheric sciences), Canada Research Chair in Northern Environmental Change, and his PhD student Lauren Davies.

“We didn’t think we’d find the smoking gun with the exact evidence of mammoth extinction,” says Froese, who worked with Davies on lake chronology and fossil dating to help find answers to this long-held question. Though mammoths on mainland continental North America and Siberia went extinct roughly 12,000 years ago, mammoths survived for another 6000 years on St. Paul Island, located in the middle of the Bering Strait off the coast of Alaska. This is

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the largest of the Pribilof Islands, a group of five volcanic islands that had no evidence of human activity until the 18th century.

“This is an area that we can control for human effects, because there was no archeological record until Russians came in the 18th century,” Froese explains. “The timing of the extinction is typically based on the last dated fossil, but determining that is challenging. It’s a relatively stable climate, so we also examined other variables using the lake record.”

Using a lake core sample from St. Paul Island, Froese, Davies, and their colleagues examined mammoth DNA in lake sediment and discovered that the megafauna were present up to 5700 years ago.

Through radiocarbon dating—identifying layers of volcanic ash—and using the presence of fungal spores—species that lived off of mammoth feces—as well as ancient sedimentary DNA in

the lake, which disappeared around the same period, the scientists were able to pinpoint the time of extinction.

“The combination of fossil dating, DNA, and fungal material confirmed exactly when the mammoths went extinct. The bigger question is why,” says Froese.

The scientists also looked at other biological indicators and discovered that the lakes started to get shallower over time as the island decreased in size.

“The mammoths were actually degrading their habitat, trampling down the edges of land near the lake and moving sediments into their freshwater source,” continues Froese.

This repeated erosion and infill decreased the water level by four to six metres over a period of 4000 years, leading to an ultimate freshwater limitation for the mammoths and their eventual decline and extinction.

PHOTO: UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS

Developing Earth system scientists

Jillian Buriak (chemistry) is developing low-cost solar cells to help propel Canada toward a low-carbon future.

HERE COMES THE SUN The University of Alberta will launch a new institute aimed at reducing the environmental footprint of fossil fuels and developing new low-carbon energy systems, thanks to a $75-million federal grant.

The U of A’s Future Energy Systems Research Institute will bring together researchers across disciplines to improve energy systems related to unconventional hydrocarbon sources. Their research will include work on tailings ponds, greenhouse emissions, water use, land reclamation, and safe, efficient energy transportation.

The institute will build on U of A strengths in advanced materials, smart electrical grids, and bioprocessing to help move Canada to a low-carbon energy economy.

The $75-million federal investment is part of the Canada First Excellence Research Fund to strategically invest in areas where post-secondary research institutions have a competitive advantage and can become global leaders. In total, the Government of Canada invested $900 million in 13 Canadian research universities.

Chemistry Professor Jillian Buriak is the type of researcher who can apply for funding through the new institute. Buriak is developing low-cost solar cells, including a version that uses a spray-coating technology.

Buriak says some estimates predict energy use by humans will double by 2050 and triple by 2100.

The sun is the largest source of power we can access, and the cost of solar power is now on par with hydrocarbons, making it an increasingly viable alternative, she says, noting that more solar energy hits Earth in an hour than all of humanity uses in a year.

“A clean, low-carbon source of plentiful energy is needed to maintain the social and economic security of humanity. From climate change to escalating conflict over energy and resources, our future is at risk unless we transition to a low-carbon future,” says Buriak.

“The Canada First Excellence Research Fund allows the University of Alberta to pioneer a made-in-Alberta solution to help solve the world’s energy challenges, helping us to transition to a low-carbon economy.”

The student who submitted his PhD thesis on a mountaintop has returned to the U of A as the new chair of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Structural geologist Stephen Johnston (’85 MSc, ’93 PhD) recalls the notso-typical experience of submitting his thesis to PhD supervisor Philippe Erdmer. “Philippe flew in on a helicopter to a mountaintop in the Dawson Range, I handed him my thesis, and he flew away again.”

Following work with Shell, the Yukon Geological Survey (Johnston was one of the five founders), and faculty appointments with the University of Durban and then the University of Victoria—where he was director of the School of Earth and Ocean Studies—Johnston is happy to be back in Alberta.

He says that if there is a theme that now ties the department

together, it is climate change. This is both exciting and daunting for the new chair, who says that one of his biggest challenges will be talking to the community about climate change.

“We have this great life because of oil and gas, but we can’t ignore that we have to do something about climate. I think that if we get our alumni engaged, we can do both. We still have to develop and produce hydrocarbons, but we also have to mitigate our environmental footprint.

We can’t send geologists to Calgary who don’t understand the Earth’s system and who don’t understand climate change. People get into geology because they like being outdoors looking at rocks. We don’t want to see the environment destroyed. But we have to make sure that we understand at the university level that we have a responsibility to make sure that we produce Earth system scientists, not just geologists.

They can still be excellent at exploration, but they also have to be thinking how to do things in a way that doesn’t negatively impact the environment.”

In preparation for the 2016-17 academic year, Stephen Johnston (earth and atmospheric sciences) joined undergraduate students at field school in Nordegg, Alberta.

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SCIENCE

NEWS WITH APOLOGIES TO CHOMSKY

Fred West (L) and James Harynuk (R) are using chemistry to combat cheating athletes.

Computational linguists at the University of Alberta have disproved a long-disputed assertion from one of the world’s best-known linguists that English spelling is just fine. In the unruly Wild West of modern languages, English is indisputably the baddest outlaw around. Estimated to be three times more complex than German and 40 times worse than Spanish, English spelling is notorious for its irregularity.

Despite the spelling system’s infamy for inefficiency, a 1968 assertion from Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle’s The Sound Pattern of English asserts that English orthography, or spelling, is “close to optimal”—a claim generally dismissed by linguists ever since, though never scientifically disproved. Until now.

“When we saw Chomsky’s statement, we didn’t think he was exactly right, and talking to linguists whenever I bring up this claim, they say ‘oh, nobody really takes that all that seriously,’” says Garrett Nicolai, a graduate student in the Department of Computing Science. Armed with degrees in both linguistics and computing science, Nicolai was uniquely qualified to put this long-standing contention to the test.

He worked with his PhD supervisor, Grzegorz Kondrak, to automate orthographic consistency. When compared with other spelling systems, traditional English orthography was found not only to be lacking, it was the farthest from optimal out of any of the systems. “Nobody until now has been able to show computationally, in a principled way, that English orthography is very far from optimal,” says Kondrak.

Groundbreaking discovery aside, the most satisfying takeaway may be the collective feeling of validation for anyone who has failed an English spelling test—and maybe for Nicolai, having the last word on one of the most influential linguists of our time.

Papal handshake Master’s student Cosette Gilmour (’15 BSc) is working with renowned meteoriticist Chris Herd (earth and atmospheric sciences) to evaluate the economic potential of asteroids for mining, using meteorites as asteroid analogues. This summer, she had an otherworldly experience of a different kind.

Gilmour travelled to Italy to participate in the Vatican Observatory Summer School, the only Canadian out of 23 participants from 19 different nations. “There were astronomers, astrophysicists, geologists, and engineers from all over the world studying very different things about water in the solar system (the theme of this year’s program). Not only were we being exposed to all these different scientific backgrounds, we were also learning about each other’s cultures, and that was an experience in itself.”

Besides learning invaluable new information that she is eager to apply to her thesis, one of the highlights was meeting Pope Francis, commended for his views on science. “The moment the Pope walked into the room I had this moment of disbelief,” says Gilmour. “The second I shook his hand, I felt this sense of calm, warmth, and security that I have never felt before. You could see the sincerity and compassion in his eyes, and once the handshake was over, I felt a natural high from all the excitement of being in his presence. He is truly a remarkable man. It’s quite amazing how people from all over the world and different religions can come together and be unified by science.”

Cosette Gilmour MSc student, shakes hands with Pope Francis at the Vatican Observatory Summer School in 2016.

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PHOTO: COURTESY THE VATICAN

Eliminating the uncompetitive edge

Imagine a sporting event where anti-doping agencies can test for banned substances without even knowing what they are. This is exactly what two University of Alberta chemists have envisioned, and they now have funding from the Partnership for Clean Competition (PCC) to move their research out of the lab and onto the field.

James Harynuk and Fred West (chemistry) are combining their knowledge of analytical and synthetic chemistry to develop algorithms and a training library to test for both known and emerging performance-enhancing drugs, putting anti-doping agencies one step ahead of cheating athletes.

Harynuk works on gas chromatography—a technique for separating mixtures of molecules—and builds computer-based tools to interpret and understand data arising from these separations in a subject area known as chemoinformatics, the use of informational techniques applied to the field of chemistry.

West’s job will be to develop a training library of molecular structures from which Harynuk’s team will build algorithms to predict molecular behaviour in the separation systems. From there, West will be lending further synthetic support by building new molecules, which Harynuk’s team will then try to identify using their algorithms.

“The approaches we are using are way out there compared to what is currently being done in doping control,” says Harynuk. “There’s a lot of risk, but the potential reward is huge. If these tools work the way we are planning, doping agencies will be ahead of the dopers for the first time, predicting and anticipating a drug before it becomes widely used. For the first time, they’ll be ahead of the game, ahead of the athletes looking to circumvent the rules of fair play.”

“The fun part will be when this technology is used for future Olympics,” says West. “In theory, this technology could be used for Tokyo in 2020.”

“Space tsunami” causes third Van Allen belt Earth’s magnetosphere, the region of space dominated by Earth’s magnetic field, protects our planet from the harsh battering of solar wind. But when solar wind is most violent, extreme space weather storms can create intense radiation in the Van Allen belts, driving electrical currents that can damage terrestrial electrical power grids, putting Earth at risk for potentially trillions of dollars of damage.

A new discovery led by Ian Mann (physics) shows for the first time how the puzzling third Van Allen radiation belt is created by a “space tsunami.” Intense ultra low-frequency plasma waves, excited on the scale of the whole magnetosphere, transport the outer part of the belt radiation harmlessly into interplanetary space and create the previously unexplained feature of the third belt.

For the last 50 years, and since the accidental discovery of the Van Allen belts at the beginning of the space age, forecasting space radiation has become essential to the operation of satellites and human exploration in space. Many of the services we rely on today, such as GPS and satellite-based telecommunications, are affected by radiation within the Van Allen belts. These new findings can help mitigate effects of extreme space weather.

Mann is co-investigator on the NASA Van Allen Probes mission. In this role, one of his main objectives is to model the process by which plasma waves in the magnetosphere control the dynamics of the intense relativistic particles in the Van Allen belts—with one of the goals of the Van Allen Probes mission being to develop sufficient understanding to reach the point of predictability.

Left: Illustration by Andy Kale demonstrating dynamics of the ultra-relativistic third Van Allen radiation belt

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Laura Redmond is an MSc student studying with Rolf Vinebrooke (biological sciences).

Her research interests focus on alpine limnology and ecological adaptations in response to a changing climate. She is a recent recipient of an NSERC Canadian Graduate Scholarship.

Mountains 101 is a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) teaching a comprehensive overview of mountain studies in Alberta, Canada, and around the world. For more information, visit uab.ca/mountains101.

Mountains sents d pre

ins an

ounta the m ve of C. lo r e h O hares ewest MO n ond s Redm he U of A's E D M O N D a r u t La AR ips in L AU R TechT O U R T E S Y PHO

TO: C

What attracted you the University of Alberta?

I did my undergraduate degree in biology at Queen’s University. I worked in a number of labs, mostly doing aquatic research involving both field and lab work. After my third year, I worked as a field assistant for a project that looked at the range limits of an annual plant, called yellow rattle, in Kananaskis Country. That summer, I fell in love with the mountains and became more interested in research involving extreme environments and how these extremes are affected by our changing climate. At an open house talk at the Barrier Lake Field Station, I learned about the work of the Vinebrooke Lab at the University of Alberta. This research combined my interests in both limnology and mountain studies. The U of A is a renowned research institution, and being able to study what I love here really makes it a perfect match.

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What is your research area? What question are you hoping to answer?

I am an alpine limnologist, and my research explores the factors that determine the community composition of zooplankton in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Concern is increasing over the potential negative impacts of climate change on lakes and ponds, and alpine systems are especially susceptible to such changes. By understanding the distribution of species and the abiotic and biotic factors that contribute, we can gain insights and improve forecasts of ecological impacts of global warming. Alpine freshwater lakes and ponds have relatively simple biological communities that can be observed within a single season and act as an early-warning indicator of broader changes occurring in mountain environments. With this new knowledge, it will be possible to identify vulnerable alpine pond and lake systems and initiate policy and management procedures to conserve these valuable ecosystems.

What is it about the mountains that have such enduring appeal for so many Albertans, Canadians, and people in general?

The mountains create a sense of curiosity and wonder. When you look out at the expanse of peaks, it’s hard not to imagine the dynamic changes that have occurred over a period of time we can’t even comprehend. In the Canadian Rocky Mountains, the vast untamed wilderness has such an enduring appeal for people. It is one of the few remaining truly wild places in the world. The adventures are truly endless.

There is something for everyone in the mountains, and everyone has their own personal connection that makes the mountains special to them.

What is your top tip for mountaineering?

My top tip for mountain travel is to be prepared. In the mountains, you have to be prepared for anything that Mother Nature throws at you— inclement weather, run-ins with wildlife, and unexpected injuries, to name a few. Understanding your risk and being prepared for it is the best way to enjoy the mountains. Having the correct gear, knowing your route, and packing accordingly are all key things to think about before trekking into mountain terrain. In TechTips, we help you prepare for your own mountain adventures!

TECHTIPS

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How to dress for the mountains • Layers are key—in colder weather, add more layers • Start with a wicking layer for moisture transport • The next layer is your insulating layer for warmth • Your outermost layer is your weather protection

What goes in a pack?

101 How did you come to be involved in Mountains 101?

I have become involved in the mountain studies program at the U of A in a number of ways. I first took the mountain backcountry field course last August and was introduced to Zac Robinson (a professor in physical education and recreation who focuses on the cultural and social histories of the Rocky and Columbia mountains) and David Hik (a professor in biological sciences whose research emphasizes plant-herbivoreclimate connections in northern alpine and tundra ecosystems). I was also a teaching assistant for the Introduction to Interdisciplinary Mountain Studies course this past winter, where I taught a lecture on alpine limnology. From there, the mountain world really opened up to me, and Mountains 101 is allowing me to share my passion for the mountains with a broader audience, from mountain ranges all across the world.

What is your role in Mountains 101? What is the information you are sharing through TechTips?

TechTips are a series of general tips and tricks to keep in mind when heading out into the mountains that Matt Peter and I will present at the end of each Mountains 101 lesson. They range from what to wear and what to bring to techniques to safely navigate the mountains. We really want to encourage people to get out into the mountains to have a first-hand look at what they will be learning in Mountains 101. We hope these tips will allow people to do so safely and with a little more confidence in their abilities, while simultaneously reducing their environmental impact. Mountains do not often offer the easiest terrain, but that shouldn’t discourage people from enjoying all the beauty and adventure they have to offer.

• Food and hydration • Sun protection, including high-SPF sunscreen, a full-coverage sunhat, and sunglasses • Multi-tool, such as a pocket knife • Blister kit • Navigation kit, including map and compass • Layers for changing weather • Warm gloves and hat • First-aid kit • Communication tool (cellphone or satellite phone) • Bear spray

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How to plan a trip • Consult your guidebook for insight into how extensive your trip will be • Learn the basics of map reading: topography, ground cover, contour lines • Calculate the trip home, keeping in mind both distance and elevation gain • Pack accordingly

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Stay safe • For glacier travel, falling in is the biggest risk • To prevent falling, travel together attached to a rope at even intervals of 10-12 metres • Bring other tools for snow and ice travel, like crampons and an ice axe • Anchors increase safety margins with ice screws or rock-climbing hardware • Understand the risks and get the right training before heading into higher-risk terrain

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Environmental ethics • Respect all living things: do not approach or feed wildlife • Pack it in, pack it out: take home what you bring to the mountains, including all litter and waste • Stick to hard, durable surfaces to protect fragile vegetation • Take only photos, leave only footprints • Be fire-wise: use a canister camp stove instead of an open flame • “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise” – ALDO LEOPOLD

Background image: Ha Ling Peak in Canmore PHOTO: ZOLTAN KENWELL

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Trust your gut

Shannon Leblanc’s path

to sustainability success

BY JENNIFER PASCOE / PHOTOS JOHN UL AN

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Shannon Leblanc’s path to a science education was typical for a curious kid.

She was really supportive and encouraging. She was a really great supervisor. She’s one of the reasons I stuck around doing what I was doing. It was really exciting. I was learning research and critical thinking skills, and She always questioned why the way things work the those have become so useful to me.” way they do, encouraged by parents who stimulated After completing her honours degree in genetics in 2007, Leblanc worked as Raivio’s lab tech for a year, an interest in the natural world. She followed a sciencewhich solidified her desire to pursue graduate studies. focused enrichment program in high school, and She earned a Julie Payette NSERC scholarship for her eventually enrolled at her local university. But once she first year, an experience she credits for allowing her to arrived at the University of Alberta, her journey turned dive in and focus on her coursework. However, Leblanc into anything but typical. Through many twists, Leblanc says she equally loved TA’ing during her second year. focused divergent interests into an honours degree in “It’s a really cool iterative process to guide a group of genetics and a master’s degree in which she examined 75 students through scientific writing (in the Biology 107 course on science writing), how to cite, how to stress-response pathways in E. coli. She then pursued a write, going through peer review with a chance to go personal passion and volunteer experience to a career in back and write again.” sustainability, and she is now proudly helping her alma Like so many students who make the leap from mater become a more sustainable ecosystem. undergrad to graduate studies, Leblanc found that the journey forced her to not only think “You don’t have deadLeblanc started out in a general more deeply but also to manage her lines as clearly laid science degree with a focus on biology, time in a completely different way. “You out for you, you don’t picking up on her childhood fascinadon’t have deadlines as clearly laid out have assignments due. tion with marine life inspired by sailing for you, you don’t have assignments You’re really responsitrips with her British Columbian mothdue. You’re really responsible for your ble for your own work.” er. She was also interested in genetics own work.” A foreshadowing of things and forensics. Half-way through her to come in her career. undergraduate journey, she found herself wanting to Leblanc said the transition to graduate work was specialize. “I was looking at something that piqued my eased by Raivio’s support. “Tracy was a little more interest,” says Leblanc. “I did a little more digging and big-picture oriented, encouraging us to focus on the big realized that genetics was something I found really fas- questions. It gave those of us in her lab an opportunity cinating and could fit with the forensics component— to manage our time and set some of our own goals, it could even fit with many other science areas.” which was a really good skill and definitely helps in my She cut her lab teeth working for three of her own professional life now.” four undergraduate summers as an NSERC student Leblanc’s thesis work focused on stress-response in various labs. It was this experience that connected pathways in E. coli, bacteria that use two component her with Tracy Raivio (biological sciences), who would signal transduction systems to sense changes or become her honours project supervisor, work that stressors in their environment, whether chemical combecome the eventual basis for Leblanc’s master’s pounds, other organisms or proteins, or a human host. project. “Tracy and I had a really good relationship.

Though the pathogenic strains of E. coli frequently get a bad rap in the media, there is a normal strain that lives in our guts all the time as part of our microbiota.

Facing page: Raivio’s lab focuses on how these pathways function Shannon Leblanc (’07 BSc, ’11 MSc) leads the way to sustainability success from a genetic perspective.

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SUSTAINABILITY ON CAMPUS

Developing a sustainability mindset on campus INTERESTED IN EXPANDING HER OWN PERSPECTIVE, Leblanc

started volunteering during her first year of her master’s when one of her lab-mates partners was leading an initiative to lobby the university to start a formal sustainability office. Leblanc’s efforts were focused on organizing events and encouraging people to volunteer for the campus sustainability coalition. Highlights included a pedal-powered “party with a purpose.”

“It got me fired up. It took me back to my environmental interest.

It got my passion going for this world of sustainability that had always been a personal value but had never been something that I pursued. I rediscovered that and saw there was some tangible work going on right here on campus.”

Through her volunteer experiences, she met several people working in the early days of the sustainability initiative on campus, what would eventually become the Office of Sustainability. Leblanc now works closely with this office in her role as sustainability co-ordinator with Energy Management and Sustainable Operations.

“It was a bit of a leap of faith on their part to hire me. I had worked with them as a student volunteer, I had a master’s, I was educated but not in environmental sciences, and my project management work was all volunteer work. They knew I was capable, but it was definitely a risk for them. I was new and had a lot to learn. It was exciting. I was given validation that this could be a real job and potentially a career.”

Leblanc credits her experience as a science student for helping her navigate a steep learning curve and says that the collegial environment she experienced in the Raivio lab helped prepare her for working as part of a larger team.

She’s pleased by the progress the U of A has made in sustainability since her time as a volunteer in the early lobbying days, and just this past July, she celebrated her own milestone of working for five years to help drive those changes on campus.

“There’s a higher awareness of sustainability on campus now than when I started. That goes for students and staff. There is a greater understanding not just for environmental sustainability—things like recycling and energy systems—but there’s also a larger conversation happening about sustainability,” says Leblanc, citing social sustainability and the people side as examples.

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“How are the people of the university doing? Are they happy? Are they healthy? Are they thriving? Are they able to access education here? Do we have diverse people here, and are we encouraging that? There’s a bit of a broadening of that conversation as that awareness and understanding has grown.”

Leblanc outlines the three pillars of sustainability as environment, economy, and society, or the social side. Inspired by her graduate work, she approaches the three as an ecosystem and says that in order to have a sustainable system, all three need to work together.

Like any good scientist, Leblanc is focused on how a piece of the puzzle fits within the larger whole and spends her time focused on sustainable campus operations. She and her team have spent the last two years redesigning a waste diversion system with a zero-waste approach for campus, now in the process of implementation.

Though zero-waste is meant to be aspirational, the U of A is on target to achieve 90 per cent waste diversion by 2020.

“We compared what we were doing to how things could be if we captured more organics and recyclables to reduce the amount of waste.” The end result is four-stream waste bins—organics, recyclables, mixed paper, and landfill—that are popping up all over campus.

Though zero-waste is meant to be aspirational, the U of A is on target to achieve 90 per cent waste diversion by

“You learn not to just take everything at face value, to dig deeper and question everything. Just because it’s status quo and you’ve been doing it a certain way for a long time doesn’t mean it’s the best way to do things.”

2020. With current waste diversion on campus sitting at 55 per cent, it’s an aggressive goal. Though Leblanc acknowledges it’s a big leap, working with a dedicated team, she’s up for the challenge. She also recently helped draft a reduction plan following the U of A’s greenhouse gas inventory. “It puts me back in a research and teaching mindset. You’re always learning. And none of it is done in isolation.”

In it all, her commitment to her journey has never wavered. She credits her education and grounding in the scientific method for setting her up for career success.

“You learn to not just take everything at face value, to dig deeper and question everything. I understand how to ask a question and how to go about trying to find a reasonable and evidence-based answer. Just because it’s status quo and you’ve been doing it a certain way for a long time doesn’t mean it’s the best way to do things.

Applying a scientific mindset to my work has been really valuable to me, especially in an operational setting where you are examining systems similarly. It is not the same systems, but the approach is similar, looking for interconnections in the system, looking for leverage points, and trying to examine how changing one thing might make the system work better or in your favour or, in the case of sustainability, have a lower environmental impact.”

Leblanc talks about the importance of staying grounded and true to yourself throughout life’s journey and advocates for finding a “home base” from which to safely explore.

“Along with following my passion and trusting my gut, I’ve always liked to have a niche. It doesn’t mean it’s the only place I focus, but it’s kind of like home base.

Tracy’s lab gave me that, the Faculty of Science gave me that with mentors and somewhere to explore from.

Whether you’re in science or a professional setting like mine, there’s always going to be challenge. There’s always going to be stress. It’s not easy, but you have to be intentional about it. And you have to trust your gut.”

After all, as Leblanc quips, it’s full of good bacteria.

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WHEN TARA MCGEE MOVED TO ALBERTA FROM AUSTRALIA IN 2002, WILDFIRE MANAGEMENT WAS A LOW PRIORITY FOR CANADA. ALTHOUGH THE COUNTRY WAS NO STRANGER TO FIRES, THEY WEREN’T SEEN AS POSING A THREAT TO PEOPLE AND COMMUNITIES. “FIRES WERE NOT SOMETHING MOST CANADIANS FELT CONNECTED TO,” MCGEE SHARES.

FUTURE Turn the clock forward to 2016, and news of the Fort McMurray wildfires reaches all around the globe. All 80,000 residents are evacuated from the city—the largest such operation in Alberta’s history. For more than two months, the out-of-control blaze traverses northern Alberta and Saskatchewan, scorching nearly 590,000 hectares of forest.

McGee visited Fort McMurray in the late spring to offer her expertise in disaster management. “Flying in, I could see the large extent of fire damage,” says McGee. The impact was scattered and unpredictable, with several neighbourhoods destroyed and much of the rest of the city left untouched.

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PICTURE THIS › In May 2016, a wildfire swept through Fort McMurray, Alberta.

The fire destroyed nearly 2500 homes and buildings and triggered the largest wildfire evacuation in Alberta history.

BY ALAN SHAPIRO • PHOTOS JOHN ULAN

EFOCUS LIFE AFTER the Fort McMurray fire

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• FUTUREFOCUS

THROUGHOUT HER CAREER AT THE U OF A, MCGEE HAS WATCHED WILDFIRE MOVE FROM THE SIDELINES TO FAMILIAR TERRITORY FOR CANADIANS. ONE MAJOR DRIVER BEHIND THE CHANGING CONVERSATION WAS THE PERSONAL CONNECTION MANY ALBERTANS AND BRITISH COLUMBIANS HAD WITH EVACUEES AND AFFECTED COMMUNITIES. speed means that people may need to evacuate at any time of day or night,” notes McGee. As in the case of Fort McMurray, a fire can start a fair distance away from a community and pose little threat until a sudden change in wind or weather prompts an evacuation.

The human dimension of wildfire

Tara McGee, professor of human geography in the department of earth and atmospheric sciences, visited Fort McMurray in late spring.

Changing the conversation McGee’s research lies at the intersection of people and natural hazards. As a professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, she studies wildfire mitigation by homeowners and local governments as well as how First Nations communities are affected by wildfire evacuations.

Throughout her career at the U of A, McGee has watched wildfire move from the sidelines into familiar territory for Canadians. Fire forced the evacuation of 33,000 people from Kelowna, B.C. in 2003. All of Slave Lake, Alberta’s 7000 residents were evacuated when much of the town was destroyed by a blaze in 2011.

One major driver behind the changing conversation was the personal connection many Albertans and British Columbians had with evacuees and affected communities. Another was the extensive media coverage. Both factors served to focus public and government attention on fire preparedness and mitigation.

The nature of fires makes responses distinct from other natural disasters. Wildfire evacuations are faster, with less lead time compared with other hazards. “The

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Initially, McGee’s research centred on homeowners reducing fire risk. “What we really wanted to know was how Albertans were perceiving and mitigating fire risk.” This focus has since evolved into the FireSmart program, a strategy used across the province to lessen wildfire threats. FireSmart uses homeowner and community-based tools including education, vegetation management, and land-use planning.

Most fire reduction and emergency planning in the province occurs on a municipal level. Communities are responsible for everything from mitigation to response.

Provincial governments provide funding, support, and information, but are only directly responsible for provincial lands. Risk management for each municipality poses its own challenges and opportunities, and thus policy frameworks range widely from one community to another.

McGee and her students conducted studies in 2007 and 2012 to identify how Alberta and B.C. municipalities were diminishing fire risk. They identified a range of strategies including vegetation removal, hazard assessment on homeowner properties, and communication. Land-use planning strategies saw a significant increase between the two studies, particularly in B.C. Another branch of McGee’s research studies how First Nations are affected by wildfire evacuations. The initiative—known as the First Nations Wildfire Evacuation Partnership—brings together

MOST FIRE REDUCTION AND EMERGENCY PLANNING IN THE PROVINCE OCCURS ON A MUNICIPAL LEVEL. COMMUNITIES ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING FROM MITIGATION TO RESPONSE.

“University staff and volunteers worked together to provide accommodation, meals, and laundry services, as well as access to physical education programs and facilities, libraries, dental services, health care and mental health supports, and translation services.

It was an incredible effort.”

— DAVID TURPIN, PRESIDENT AND VICE- CHANCELLOR, UNIVERSIT Y OF ALBERTA

By the numbers UAlberta responds to the Fort McMurray crisis STATS: • With support from the Government of Alberta and the Canadian Red Cross, the University of Alberta housed more than 1200 evacuees in 650 rooms at Lister Centre for nearly two months. Another 100 Canadian Red Cross volunteers were housed in residence at Campus Saint-Jean.

• More than 2000 volunteers staffed a barbecue for displaced Fort McMurray residents and the UAlberta community. It raised $16,435 and collected 90 boxes of donated food and personal items.

• During a 10-day period, more than 35,000 Fort McMurray evacuees collected emergency funds in the form of prepaid debit cards at the Butterdome.

• The university also created the Disaster Relief Bursary to support students displaced by natural disasters.

researchers, First Nations stakeholders, and emergency response groups to understand and reduce the negative impacts of wildfire evacuations on First Nations communities. The initiative was created in response to extensive evacuations of First Nations communities in 2011 and includes groups from across Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario.

Wildfire impacts farther afield Just as the management of wildfires involves a diverse range of stakeholders, the study of wildfires requires a variety of scientific disciplines and tools. As a newcomer to Edmonton, Sarah Styler describes her amazement at the smoky haze that enveloped the city during the Fort McMurray fires. “I’d never seen anything like it before.” In her new role as assistant professor of environmental chemistry at the U of A, Styler studies air quality in polluted urban regions, particularly areas affected by dust.

Research on airborne particles—including dust and soot like those from the Fort McMurray fires—informs our understanding of urban air quality and associated health impacts. “A lot of what we know about air quality comes from research in North America and western

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PHOTO: DAWN GRAVES

• FUTUREFOCUS quality in the province. This trend has been recognized by a network of researchers across North America currently examining wildfire impacts on air quality. What kinds of particles do fires release? How does their composition change as they move through the atmosphere? What are the health impacts at and downwind of the fire?

“There are tons of questions that can be asked,” says Styler.

Once her new lab is fully operational, she plans to be out on the roof of the chemistry building sampling at the next hint of smoke.

Future research

Sarah Styler, assistant professor of environmental chemistry, studies air quality and pollution in urban areas.

Europe,” says Styler, “but most of our population growth is not in these places.”

Styler targets her research at developing regions, where our understanding is more limited. Even so, her insights are highly relevant in a Canadian context, since springtime dust emission from roadways can lead to major air quality reductions.

Wildfire emissions are one source of particulate matter and can cause significant reductions in air quality. Particulates can remain in the atmosphere for up to several weeks and be transported for long distances.

This can have implications for air quality far outside the direct vicinity of the fire.

The Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) is used by Environment and Climate Change Canada as a standard measure of air quality. The index is calculated from concentrations of particulate matter, ozone, and nitrogen dioxide, and is used as a health-protection tool.

Throughout the fires, the AQHI in Fort McMurray reached the maximum level, presenting a very high health risk. This was one of the limiting factors for firefighting and cleanup crews. In Edmonton, more than 400 kilometres away, air quality was intermittently poor enough for advisories to be issued.

Smoke plumes are also sensitive to weather conditions and wind direction, which can lead to rapid and often unpredictable changes in air quality. “During the fire, I was asked to contribute to an article on air and water quality,” says Styler. “In the time it took to put the article together, air conditions in Fort McMurray changed from stable to critical.”

In the context of our changing climate, Styler expects wildfires to have a growing influence on air

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As with any natural disaster, the aftermath of the Fort McMurray wildfire bears more questions than answers. How were the fires influenced by changing weather patterns in northern Alberta, and are they a sign of what to expect in the future? How effective was the evacuation (which included more than 1200 people housed at University of Alberta residences), and what could have been done differently? How can the Fort McMurray experience inform wildfire mitigation and preparedness across the province?

McGee has already begun to study how the Fort McMurray experience can help other municipalities improve their preparedness. She developed an online survey to learn about evacuees’ experiences. She continues to connect with key stakeholders and community leaders in Fort McMurray and surrounding communities to identify the major successes and challenges from the evacuation. In one of McGee’s courses this year, she plans to organize interviews with students who volunteered to host and support Fort McMurray evacuees.

McGee hopes that the media coverage and awareness from the fire will lead to other municipalities evaluating their own preparedness, researchers and stakeholders understanding what worked and what didn’t, and higher levels of government supporting municipalities to effectively limit and manage emergencies. “After big events, there is always the hope that there will be many changes.”

Alan Shapiro (’13 BSc) is a science communicator and water resource consultant based in Vancouver. Since completing his BSc in environmental earth science at the U of A, he has worked with students, researchers, and scientific institutions to develop effective science communication strategies. Follow his scientific adventures @litscientist or litscientist.com.

Elly Knight (L) and three of her lab-mates took to fat bikes to navigate the terrain in northern Alberta in the early days of the wildfire.

FIRE FORCES FIELD RESEARCHERS TO

THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX AND ON THE BIKE

BY JENNIFER PASCOE • PHOTO JOHN ULAN

WHEN THE FORT MCMURRAY WILDFIRE ALMOST FORCED THE CANCELLATION OF AN ENTIRE FIELD SEASON, PUTTING THE TIMELINE FOR ELLY KNIGHT’S PHD RESEARCH ON THE FEDERALLY THREATENED COMMON NIGHTHAWK IN POTENTIAL JEOPARDY, THE INDUSTRIOUS STUDENT AND HER COMMITTED SUPERVISOR ERIN BAYNE (BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES) WERE FORCED TO RETHINK THEIR APPROACH. Though many of Bayne’s impressive group of 18 graduate students work in northeastern Alberta, Knight’s field area was the one presented with the most extreme logistical challenges in the early days of the wildfire.

“There was a lot of panic in our lab,” says Knight. “Fires are unpredictable, and ‘The Beast’ was really hard to get a hold of.”

Knight focuses on post-wildfire ecology: her thesis addresses the relationship between nighthawks’ acoustic activity and habitat use. The species typically thrives in burned-out areas.

She works in the Richardson area, a five-year-old burn—the second largest in Alberta’s history with more than 700,000 hectares of boreal forest destroyed in 2011, slightly larger than the 600,000 hectares destroyed this year. Though there was unburned nighthawk habitat buffering the two areas, highway closures and the Fort McMurray evacuation meant restricted access to land and supplies like water, food, and fuel. Additionally, there was a provincial ban on the quads needed to navigate the challenging terrain.

An avid cyclist, Knight joked to Bayne that they should try using bikes instead of quads to get around the sandbox-like boreal forest.

She remembered that before fat bikes became the go-to choice for winter cyclists, they were designed for navigating sand. The only problem was that fat bikes are expensive, and Bayne’s lab had already lost so much equipment in the fire, meaning resources were already at a premium.

Spurred on by suggestions and support from the U of A’s Office of Sustainability, Knight hopped on her road bike to enlist Edmonton bike shops for their help. She was overwhelmed by the response, with both United Cycle and Hardcore Bikes lending two bikes each (from their test bikes and winter rental fleet respectively), no questions asked, to Knight and her three field technicians for their two months in the field.

“It allowed us to work independently and access areas we wouldn’t have been able to otherwise,” says Knight. “We loved using the bikes, because we could just float over the sand.” Moving forward to the next field season, the Bayne lab is going to try to further incorporate this low-carbon approach to their fieldwork.

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I am woman, hear me code Women in computing science advocate for progress more than 150 years in the making (B y K risty Con don ** Photos Joh n U l a n)

1843, Ada Lovelace ** Inpublished notes describing the “Analytical Engine,” a device that would later form the basis for all modern computers. As a result of her contributions, Lovelace is often regarded as the first computer programmer— though she lived and died a century before the advent of modern computers. She was a woman ahead of her time, rising above socially sanctioned restrictions regarding what role women should (or, more accurately, should not) have in science and technology.

Pictured: Ada’s Team vice-president and computing science student Ghazal Jangani.

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AVA LOVELACE IMAGE: ALFRED EDWARD CHALON – SCIENCE & SOCIETY PICTURE LIBRARY, PUBLIC DOMAIN, HTTPS:// COMMONS.WIKIMEDIA.ORG/W/INDEX.PHP?CURID=28131684

two centuries later, ** Nearly we’ve come a long way— but not nearly far enough.

After a brief increase in the late-20th century, the number of women graduating from computing science programs actually seems to be declining. In a 2015 article she wrote for Scientific Computing, Maria Klawe (’73 BSc, ’77 PhD, ’07 DSc), Harvey Mudd College president and UAlberta alumna, summarizes the problem:

While the number of undergraduate women pursuing some STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields like biology and chemistry has steadily increased over the past couple of decades, women’s participation in computer science (CS) has actually been declining.

Indeed, within the last 20 years the percentage of undergraduate women who received CS degrees plummeted by almost 40%.

According to the American National Science Foundation (NSF), in 1995 29% of bachelor’s degrees in CS were awarded to women; by 2012, the most recent year for which NSF data is available, only 18% of CS undergraduates were women.

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Eleni Stroulia (top right), Ghazal Jangani (seated) and members of Ada’s Team pictured in Ada’s Base.

T

hese statistics are similarly

reflected here at the Faculty of Science. Although female students represent slightly more than 50 per cent of total undergraduates, female students are outnumbered roughly five to one in computing science. The reasons for this are multifaceted and complex, many of them sociocultural biases that are often established at a young age.

“The situation is bad, and my own personal perspective on my classrooms does not show visible improvement at the undergraduate level,” says Eleni Stroulia, professor in the Department of Computing Science. “There is still a lot to be done to encourage women first, to pursue these careers and second, to not drop out when they find themselves in a minority group in their classes.”

Feeling unwelcome or out of place in class may not seem like a huge issue— after all, most university students will take courses that push them out of their comfort zone at some point in their studies. But this feeling can set off a

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chain reaction. “It takes time to find other women in your classes, to connect with mentors, and to make friends with people of the opposite sex; and in the meantime, it really feels like you don’t belong to this area,” says Ghazal Jangani, a third-year computing science student. “University can be a challenging experience for any student, so these small additional stresses can have a serious impact on students’ grades and overall mental health.”

One of the biggest challenges faced by women and other minorities, explains Stroulia, is loneliness in the face of challenge. “Loneliness is dangerous, especially in the face of adversity, and a support system is essential if we want to retain and mentor and help the women in our department reach their potential,” she says. “Everyone needs a support group, and it is difficult to form one when you feel unlike everyone else around you. It is easy, then, to think that the reason why you are facing difficulties is because you are not ‘meant’ to be in the program.”

In an effort to establish such a support group, Stroulia helped to found Ada’s Team in 2013, a UAlberta student group created to establish a community for women and marginalized people in computing science and technology.

With Stroulia acting as faculty liaison, Ada’s Team was established by a dozen computing science undergraduate and graduate students, mostly women, as well as professors and administrators in the Faculty of Science. The group formed initially out of a shared interest in attending the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing, designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. After several planning meetings for this conference, they decided to apply for official student group status.

“After we had all met through interest in the Grace Hopper Celebration, we started talking about things like impostor syndrome, isolation, and being a small minority in many of our computing science courses,” says the group’s first president, Sarah Beck (’14 BSc), now a software developer at BioWare. “Together, we thought it would be awesome to create a group where we could support each other.”

Inspired by other women in computing science groups at U.S. universities as well as other female-specific tech groups like the Systers online community, Ada’s Team knew its first and most important objective would be to find a visible, accessible space in the Computing Science Centre. In addition to providing a safe and positive space on campus for young women to meet and share the experiences that concern and frustrate them, the office is often used to offer in-house support to CS students, including free tutoring sessions and drop-in activities.

Facing page: Attendees at this summer’s all-girls computing summer camp.

Don’t think you fit the CS “type”?

“Because it’s 2016.”

There is no question of the group’s

value to the U of A. When asked about the value of encouraging diversity in computing science, Computing Science Chair Mario Nascimento says, “I could paraphrase our prime minister and simply say that it is because it is 2016.”

He adds, “computing science, as with many of the other so-called STEM disciplines, has been thought to be a ‘man’s discipline’ for many, many years.

There has never been a reason for that to be even close to true.”

Financial support from the Department of Computing Science and the Faculty of Science has enabled the group to send women to attend the Grace Hopper conference who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford to go. “Many benefited through this experience in finding ways to cope with isolation or stress, for example, or even finding employment through recruiters they met through the conference,” says Beck. “I know one woman got a job with Apple through a recruiter she met at the conference.”

Stroulia hopes to see more actions taken by industry to spark a trickledown effect of positive change. “My original motivation for working on this

Stroulia: The “type” is an accident, and it should play no role in what you choose to do in your life.

Beck: Computing science is for you. There are so many diverse fields and applications that programming applies to. You can work in games, medicine, chemistry, web design, security, robotics, music, and art. I guarantee you the problemsolving skills you pick up when learning programming will be applicable to a career in whatever field you desire.

If you don’t have the time or desire to study computing science at an academic institution, I still insist you try coding. It’s fun and rewarding, and anyone can learn how to program with a little hard work.

Jangani: Never give up, and never let your unconscious mind hold you back from what you like and feel you are capable of doing. The world will never stop for you to go back and change your decisions, so believe in yourself and always stand and fight for what you want. Try to make changes, and to not feel what you don’t like to feel today.

issue is equity and social justice: CS and software engineering (my own area of study) are among the best paying and most versatile jobs today, and I refuse

to accept the situation that a segment of the population—women—is being excluded from them.”

She advocates for companies to offer more high school internships to young women and to be more critical in self-evaluations of their own efforts to increase diversity. “I would like every technical organization to reflect on their membership and set realistic targets and strategies for improving their gender diversity,” she says.

Though progress in the field seems slow, there is renewed hope with the growth of initiatives like WISEST (Women in Scholarship, Engineering, Science & Technology) and Ada’s Team.

Providing safe and supportive communities helps enable champions for a more diverse future in computing science and makes the small ripples that will someday grow into waves of social change.

Looking forward, the group hopes to continue supporting students on campus while also extending their reach beyond campus, helping, for example, with allgirls coding summer camps. They also host a monthly Coffee and Code event to help students break the ice and connect with peers. Students have the opportunity to help each other with school projects, with the added benefit of ensuring everyone feels a little less alone.

“We are all trying so hard to achieve a gender balance, and with the help and support of our department, it becomes easier to promote our goal and see changes in this field,” says Ghazal Jangani, one of the team’s vice-presidents. “Having people who can understand that makes a world of difference and allows us to see the progress we expect to see.”

Adds Nascimento, “Ada’s Team is a much-needed conduit, perhaps a catalyst of sorts, that will identify issues related to diversity—or to the lack thereof— that will help evaluate possible solutions and will finally help implement them.”

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FACULTY OF SCIENCE

DIVERSITY REPORT

BY SAR AH BO O N / PH OTOS J O H N U L AN

Margaret-Ann Armour (centre) with nine of the 14 female faculty members hired during her tenure.

Top row L to R: Claire Currie, Natalia Ivanova Second row from top L to R: Lindsay LeBlanc, Jocelyn Hall Second row from bottom L to R: Sarah Nadi, Florence Williams, Sarah Styler Bottom row L to R: Monireh Faramarzi, Margaret-Ann Armour, Rebecca Case

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DIVERSITY REPORT

IN 2004, GREGORY TAYLOR, THEN DEAN OF THE U OF A’S FACULTY OF SCIENCE, DISCOVERED THAT EVEN THOUGH MORE THAN 50 PER CENT OF THE UNDERGRADUATE SCIENCE POPULATION WAS FEMALE, WOMEN MADE UP ONLY 14 PER CENT OF FACULTY NUMBERS. NOT ONLY THAT, BUT THAT PERCENTAGE HADN’T CHANGED IN SEVEN YEARS.

TO REMEDY THE SITUATION, Taylor

created the position of Associate Dean (diversity). Margaret-Ann Armour (’70 PhD, ’13 DSc)—an experienced champion of women in science who taught in the Department of Chemistry for nearly 30 years—was appointed to the position in 2005.

“I was just getting ready to retire,” recalls Armour. “I already had a list of things I wanted to do in my retirement.

One of them included encouraging women in science and engineering, and since this position supported my goal, I decided to take it.”

Armour wasn’t starting with a blank slate. She had previously founded the Women in Scholarship, Engineering, Science, and Technology (WISEST) program in 1981 and served on the board of the Canadian Centre for Women in Science, Engineering, Trades, and Technology (WinSETT) since 2010.

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GIVEN THAT THERE ARE FEWER WOMEN THAN MEN IN THE SCIENCES, THOSE WOMEN AT THE TOP OF THEIR GAME ARE USUALLY ALSO IN HIGH DEMAND BY SCHOOLS OTHER THAN THE UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA.

These experiences, plus her knowledge of the research on women in science, gave her a solid foundation from which to develop a diversity program.

Armour’s first step in her new role was to create Project Catalyst, a series of 13 initiatives designed to increase the diversity of the Faculty of Science, from identifying strong female candidates for individual positions and personally inviting them to apply, to lobbying for adequate high-quality daycare spaces on or near campus, to implementing a mentoring program for new female faculty.

It’s an ambitious program: since 2005, Armour has overseen the hiring of 14 women out of 37 faculty positions

“IF THERE WERE ONLY ONE OR TWO PROBLEMS KEEPING US FROM GETTING MORE WOMEN ON FACULTY, WE’D HAVE SOLVED THEM BY NOW. BUT IT’S MUCH MORE COMPLEX THAN THAT.”

in total—almost 40 per cent. During this time, the university also hired its first woman in computer science in 18 years—a highly sought-after software engineer, Sarah Nadi, who started in the summer of 2016.

However, 11 years after Armour was hired, the overall percentage of female faculty has increased to only 15 per cent total.

“What this highlights is that gender diversity is a multi-faceted problem,” says Armour. “If there were only one or two problems keeping us from getting more women on faculty, we’d have solved them by now. But it’s much more complex than that.”

First of all, it’s difficult to find women who are even interested in taking on faculty positions. “When I talk to female graduate and postgraduate students, I’m disappointed to hear that many of them aren’t interested in an academic career,” she says. “They don’t want the lifestyle that their supervisors have.”

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DIVERSITY REPORT

Given that there are fewer women than men in the sciences, those women at the top of their game are usually also in high demand by schools other than the University of Alberta. “These are top-notch researchers,” says Armour. “They often have competing offers from other universities.”

It can also be difficult to convince some of the candidates to move to Edmonton, an unfamiliar city without the cachet of Toronto or cities in Europe or the U.S. “To counter this, we try to bring on women who have some connection to the city,” explains Armour. “They may have done one of their degrees here or have family here.”

Then there is the problem of retaining those women who are already on staff, as they are often recruited by other universities.

“In the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, for example, we had six women faculty but lost three between 2013 and 2015,” says Armour. The Department of

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“WE’RE RECOGNIZING THAT, WHILE WE’RE A RESEARCHINTENSIVE UNIVERSITY, WE’RE HERE BECAUSE OF STUDENTS. IF WE BRING IN SOMEONE WHO CAN’T CONNECT WITH UNDERGRADS, WE’RE NOT DOING THE UNIVERSITY A SERVICE.”

Mathematical and Statistical Sciences was similar, with its six female faculty in 2009 dropping to three in 2016.

There are positive trends too, however. “The selection committees are now completely committed to increasing diversity,” says Armour. “They’re more proactive.”

The committees are more aware of things such as the inherent bias in reference letters written for women versus men and take into account more than just research ability when evaluating an applicant’s CV. “We’re recognizing that, while we’re a research-intensive university, we’re here because of students. If we bring in someone who can’t connect with undergrads, we’re not doing the university a service,” says Armour.

While more work remains to be done, Armour feels that her diplomatic approach to the problem is paying dividends. “I ask committee members questions rather than telling them how to do things,” she says. “I don’t tell them

they’re doing things wrong. I ask them to be aware of the influences on women when they’re making decisions. Seeing such a huge change in their attitudes really makes me feel like things are improving.”

If the university can keep up its rate of hiring 40 per cent female faculty and encourage existing female faculty to stay, they’ll be on track to significantly increase the number of female faculty in the Faculty of Science, a positive for the entire University of Alberta campus.

Sarah Boon (’05 PhD) spent seven years as an environmental science professor. Her articles about academic culture, women in science, nature, and the environment have been published in print at Outpost, BC Forest Professional, and iPolitics, and online at Canadian Science Publishing, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, and the Canadian Science Writers’ Association. She has forthcoming work at CBC’s The Nature of Things and Terrain. org. Sarah is a co-founder and serves on the board of directors of Science Borealis, where she was the earth & environmental science editor. Find her at Watershed Moments or on Twitter @SnowHydro.

INSPIRING THE NEXT GENERATION OF STUDENTS Dr. Margaret-Ann Armour School opens in Edmonton’s southwest

Armour beams while posing with two of the students at the newly opened Dr. Margaret-Ann Armour School in Ambleside in Edmonton’s southwest.

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For more than a quarter of a century, Margaret-Ann Armour has been Canada’s premier ambassador of science, volunteering tirelessly to raise national awareness among school-aged girls, educators, parents, and employers of the importance of encouraging women to enter science and engineering.

In recognition of Armour’s exemplary contributions to the community and lifelong dedication to learning, the Edmonton Public School Board has bestowed its highest honour on this indefatigable leader, naming one of its newest schools in her honour. The Dr. Margaret-Ann Armour School— which

opened this fall in Edmonton’s Ambleside community to serve students in kindergarten through grade 9—was named to serve as inspiration for the 600 students and teachers who will roam the new halls. Armour remains active in her engagement of grade-school students in both urban and rural settings. “I want kids to have fun with science,” she says.

“That’s what keeps them interested.” Armour was on hand on the first day of school to welcome students and teachers to the new year and did her best to greet every single one of them with hugs, handshakes, and words of encouragement.

By Julie Naylor

Photos John Ulan

Rheanna Sand’s New York state of mind

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NEW YORK STATE OF MIND

It was a typical February day in New York City when Rheanna Sand (’02 BSc, ’12 PhD), newly minted PhD in hand, began her work as a post-doctoral student alongside Dr. Hugh Hemmings, a renowned anesthesiologist at Weill Cornell Medical College and current chief anesthesiologist at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. “I was plugged into a really prominent group of people,” comments Sand. “The lab was trying to better understand how general anesthesia functions in the body, specifically what the gases used are doing on a cellular, protein level.”

FOR NEARLY THREE YEARS, Sand focused her attention

on one particular protein, related to her U of A graduate work in Warren Gallin’s lab (biological sciences), where she worked on voltage-gated potassium channels.

For the Cornell work, Sand jumped over to sodium channels, more related to anesthesiology. “When you block the sodium channels, you block pain and sensation,” explains Sand. “Researchers know gases are interfering with proteins in some way, but they still don’t understand how.”

Sand would likely have stayed at Cornell for a few more years had it not been for a life-changing event. She met her (now) spouse, who at the time was a medical student with a pending residency at UMass in Boston.

“I had about a year to finish up what I could at Cornell and started looking for a position in Boston. I was fortunate to find a posting with Dr. Paul Rosenberg, an associate professor of neurology at Harvard and a researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital.”

The project took Sand in a new direction—away from the “cells-in-a-dish” skills aligned with her

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“I love all of science, and I’m not sure I want to be in just one area.”

PhD and post-doc—to something she refers to as “messy” biology.

“The project I’m involved in now looks at how to regrow nerves after injury, particularly brain and spinal cord nerves,” explains Sand. “Rosenberg’s lab made a discovery a few years ago that if you can soak up all the metal ions around the injured area right after injury, you can regrow the nerves, more so than any other treatments out there.”

For her part, Sand soaked up her new bench-work atmosphere, learning new skills such as surgical techniques and neuroscience principles.

But earlier this year, Sand’s life was touched by tragedy with the sudden death of her dad. “It’s been a challenging year,” she reveals. “We were really close, and it was completely unexpected, so that really threw me.”

Sand spent the last several months questioning her future at the bench, and concedes she is likely to leave the lab in the next year. After close to 10 years working in the lab, she finds herself at a crossroads wondering what’s next.

In her own words Rheanna talks residential schools, truth and reconciliation, and the support from her community Truth and Reconciliation I read that they will now be teaching about residential schools in the curriculum. That in itself is a huge benefit, because all kids now will have an understanding of what happened.They will have an awareness of it and understand where some of the generational problems are coming from.

Maybe students will have more compassion towards their fellow aboriginal students, and the aboriginal students hopefully won’t feel the shame and stigma that even my generation felt as being native kids. Being proud of your culture would make a huge difference in what the kids can accomplish.

“I’ve always had my eye on other pursuits,” says Sand. “I’ve always been interested in sharing science.

Science in Seconds was a big part of my life. I love all of science, and I’m not sure I want to be in just one area.”

Science in Seconds is the brainchild she and fellow science graduates Torah Kachur (’01 BSc, ’08 PhD) and Brittany Trogen (’08 BSc) created in 2009 in an effort to bring topical science issues to the public in a short, condensed video format.

As Sand puts it, her future could go one of two ways.

“I went to an adult space camp last year in Alabama. It was the coolest thing I’ve ever done, and it really opened my eyes to how much space has always been of interest. I made a mental note that if they ever recruit again, I would apply. “ So, when the Canadian Space Agency launched its astronaut recruitment campaign this past June, Sand added her name to the pool.

“I made it through the first cut. I still have hope.

These people have been training their entire lives, so if I make it through even the next cut, I’ll be excited,” she says with a laugh. “So, I guess there is a one-in-3700 chance I’ll be an astronaut this time next year.”

But the more likely option, she admits, is pursuing an interest in patent law.

Through her Harvard connection, Sand has been engaged in the professional development workshops

Residential schools My mom and her older brothers were put into a residential school (the Lacombe Home) in the late ’50s. After five years there, my mom and brothers were split into foster homes. It wasn't until about 10 years later that they were reunited as a family. The legacy of residential schools was present in my family in a direct way, but we overcame a lot of that trauma and my extended family remains very close to this day.

Encouraging youth into the sciences I always had these fundamental questions like what are we, and how do things work? That

What she knows played a role in her next steps?

An awareness of “what is really important to me in this short life we have.”

was always inside for me and was fostered really well by my teachers in high school. I think it is important to have role models— seeing aboriginal people in lab coats and as engineers—and showing the kids that they can do that. I know in my family, it was a lot of community development and Métis politics—with my grandma (Thelma Chalifoux, the first Métis woman to be appointed to the Senate of Canada), I saw she was working to make a change in the community and helping people directly. For me, I wanted to know “what is this world we are living in.”

offered by the school. It is important to her to use her exceptional experience and stay in the sciences, and patent law would give her the opportunity to use her knowledge, become a technical specialist, and bring other scientific ideas to fruition.

And while she is excited to start a new chapter in her career and life, she adds that her decision to leave the bench has not been easy.

“The main reason comes from some stats I learned while sitting on the board for WISEST [Women in Scholarship, Engineering, Science & Technology]: that women make up less than 25 per cent of academic positions even though they are over 50 per cent of the student body during undergrad and grad school,” she notes. “I have been well aware of the drop-off, aware of the wave of women who leave academic science, and I never wanted to contribute to that statistic. The truth is, though, science does remain somewhat of a boys’ club at the higher levels, and while the sexism isn’t blatant, I can’t help but wonder whether it has played a role in my decision to leave.”

What she knows played a role in her next steps?

An awareness of “what is really important to me in this short life we have.”

And for Sand, a bike ride through Prospect Park or walking with her wife through the Park Slope neighbourhood in Brooklyn can put it all in focus.

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AWARDS AND ACCOLADES

2016 Alumni Recognition Awards Our alumni are putting their science educations to work, and the University of Alberta Alumni Awards recognize their extraordinary impacts and celebrate their outstanding achievements.

Congratulations to this year’s Faculty of Science Alumni Award recipients, recognized for their significant contributions to their profession, their community, and society at large.

Joel Cohen (’88 BSc) is an award-winning writer and executive producer for one of the most oft-quoted television shows ever. The Simpsons is an animated half-hour of comedic genius that’s bursting with social commentary on everything from modern culture and social norms to politics and education. After earning his MBA at York University, Cohen started to dabble in writing, eventually moving to Los Angeles and landing a gig writing for the sitcom Suddenly Susan. In 2001, Cohen began writing for The Simpsons, and there’s been no looking back. He now shares his experiences through corporate lectures in a presentation he calls “The Business Tao of Homer: Lessons in Creativity and Innovation from The Simpsons.”

He is also working on various movie projects.

An inspiration to past, present, and future students, Cohen wisely says his education was fuelled by curiosity and a sense of selfdiscovery. His journey from science to satire has been one filled with milestones and success.

When you look at the work of paleoartist Julius T. Csotonyi (’98 BSc, ’02 MSc), you can almost feel the ground shiver and hear the snuffling and snorting of prehistoric beasts. It’s no surprise that Csotonyi is one of the world’s leading natural history illustrators. His work is in museums such as the Royal Tyrrell Museum and the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum. He contributed to Canadian cultural identity by creating five prehistoric animal-themed stamps for Canada Post and coins and medallions for the Royal Canadian Mint. Csotonyi is a favourite artist of paleontologists around the world, as they look to him to illustrate new species for their research publications, bringing the prehistoric past back to life.

He is also a three-time winner of the John J. Lanzendorf PaleoArt Prize, the only award in the scientific community that recognizes paleontological art.

ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA AWARDS

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Graham Pearson (earth and atmospheric sciences) is a world-leading expert on the origin of deep continental roots and the diamonds they host. His research has transformed our knowledge of how continents form. Pearson’s pioneering work on diamonds has revolutionized our understanding of when and where diamonds form and where Earth's deep water is stored. He holds one of the prestigious Canada Excellence Research Chairs, one of only three at the University of Alberta and one of only 26 across the country.

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PHOTO BY VIVID RIBBON

PHOTO BY IAN JACKSON

Congratulations to this year’s Faculty of Science professors who were recently inducted into the Royal Society of Canada, joining a prestigious list of peers, recognized for outstanding scholarly and scientific achievement.

One of the world’s top computing scientists, Richard Sutton (computing sciences) laid the groundwork to make reinforcement learning and artificial intelligence a powerful computational tool with impact in computing science, neuroscience, and psychology. His temporal differences learning algorithm has been used to create self-learning systems for numerous academic and industrial applications. He was recently named by a study out of Seattle’s Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (as reported in Science magazine) as the 16th most influential computer scientist in the world.

Education: the key to choosing my destiny

PHOTO BY SHUTTERSHACK

PHOTO COURTESY CHRISTOPHER GENTILE

WHEN I WAS SIX, my family immigrated to Edmonton from India. As a child, I remember that it was just assumed that my destiny had already been written. I would study hard, get good grades, get a good university degree, get an arranged marriage, have babies, and be a good wife. For the longest time, I accepted this to be my future.

I remember attending campus orientation with my parents. I was interested in chemistry because it was my highest grade in high school, physics because I felt challenged by it, and computer engineering because I had always been fascinated by computers. I ended up joining the honours physics program through the process of elimination. Chemistry seemed too much like cooking to me, and when the students at the computer engineering session talked about the late nights they spent in the computer labs, one look on my parents’ faces was enough to tell me it was a non-starter.

I realize now that my time at the U of A was a time of huge personal development. I watched my friends talk about their dreams and aspira-

The Royal Society of Canada announced that Mark Boyce (biological sciences), Alberta Conservation Association Chair in Fisheries and Wildlife, will receive the Miroslaw Romanowski Medal this fall in recognition for his lifetime contribution to solving environmental problems with numerous wildlife conservation projects. His work, which links theory and application to some of the world’s highest-profile conservation issues, has helped to guide and shape policy in the U.S. and Canada. Interestingly, the first scientist to receive the Romanowski medal was another well-known University of Alberta professor, David Schindler.

tions as they planned out their future lives after graduation. I started asking myself the question, “Why not me?” It took me years of internal debate to answer that question, because the decision to break with tradition is not an easy one. There is no right or wrong answer: I believe that each individual should have the right to choose his or her own destiny.

This story repeats itself around the world.

Over the years, many young women of South Asian background have reached out to me to talk about their dreams, aspirations, and fears. Many fight courageous battles to pursue their dreams, many live double lives, and many give up because it’s too hard.

I had always participated in volunteer programs to encourage young women to pursue careers in science and technology. The idea of establishing a scholarship to support female students in their science education seems like the perfect legacy. And if I can help even one young woman pursue her dreams and potential, it will have all been worthwhile.

PHOTO BY RICHARD SIEMENS

by Rekha Kulshreshtha (’87 BSc, ’89 BSc EPhys)

Alumni Perspectives

It was also announced that Duane Froese (earth and atmospheric sciences) will be inducted into the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. Froese, Canada Research Chair in Northern Environmental Change, is a recognized international leader in the development of multidisciplinary approaches and novel molecular methods applied to samples from ancient permafrost to reconstruct long-term environmental changes. His findings have overturned conventional views on the age and stability of permafrost in North America and revised thinking on the timing of major late-Pleistocene extinction events.

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