Aspire is produced by the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation in partnership with the Communications & Public Affairs Division.

Renowned for its high-profile, research-intensive environment, 快播视频 fosters a community of forward-thinking scholars and changemakers dedicated to creating positive, global change.

In this issue:

Lassonde prof uses AI to expand clinical trials for chronic conditions
Professor Maleknaz Nayebi is part of a research team that is developing an artificial intelligence (AI) platform to increase patient recruitment, adherence and engagement in clinical trials.

Student-teacher team analyzes role of peer influence in teen vaping
Learn more about the mathematical model built by Professor Iain Moyles and PhD student Sarah Machado-Marques to help understand the impact of peer influence on teen vaping habits.

快播视频 researchers explore ways to build trust between humans, robots
Lassonde School of Engineering Professor Michael Jenkin and his colleagues are examining the relationship dynamics between humans and robots, and how they can be improved for the betterment of society.

Drug development discovery made by 快播视频 team could save lives
Distinguished Research Professor Sergey Krylov and his colleagues have uncovered a critical flaw聽that, if addressed, could make the drug development聽process faster, more reliable and less expensive.

The post 快播视频聽researchers pave new paths聽in AI, health care and more appeared first on YFile.

Nayebi, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science in the Lassonde School of Engineering, is working with a consortium of industry leaders, led by global digital health company RxPx, to introduce an 鈥淎I clinical buddy system鈥� that will leverage the technology to increase patient recruitment, adherence and engagement in clinical trials.

Pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars on research and development of promising drugs and therapies and rely on clinical trials to test them on patients. About 85 per cent of all trials fail to recruit enough patients. Many more fall through when the volunteers don鈥檛 properly follow instructions due to lack of education or drop out part way.

Nayebi says the AI platform she is developing can help increase the pool of volunteers needed for clinical trials and the diversity of participants so that effectiveness can be better determined across gender and race.

鈥淭he majority of medicine that we use daily is only tested on men,鈥� she says. 鈥淐an we consider it a success if you don鈥檛 know the impact of using a particular therapy or medicine on me? I say no. The same thing with Indigenous populations. If we don鈥檛 know the effects of a drug on them, that鈥檚 not a success.鈥�

About 76 per cent of those who take part in clinical trials worldwide are white, 11 per cent are Asian and seven per cent are Black. There are many more men than women. The trials, therefore, are failing to reflect the diversity of our populations.

Nayebi鈥檚 plan is to use AI to deploy 鈥渟ocial listening鈥� techniques to find a more diverse pool of patients who might have the right health conditions and attitudes to be good clinical trial candidates. AI would also support patients throughout the trial, ensuring they take the pills at the right times and adhere to the recommended diets, for example. They would have a virtual buddy.

Machine learning will be leveraged to ensure the use of AI is always in compliance with AI regulations, which are inconsistent across jurisdictions and shifting as the technology evolves.

More than one-third of adults globally suffer from multiple chronic conditions, and the rate is increasing because of social, economic, lifestyle and environmental factors. Billions of dollars are wasted when trials fail, and the cost is just as high downstream when the trials don鈥檛 represent the diversity of people. According to Nayebi, traditionally disadvantaged groups have inequitable access to these trials, which means the stakes are high in leveraging emerging technologies to help more of them succeed.

鈥淲e have to extend the meaning of success in clinical trials to include the equity part of it,鈥� Nayebi says. 鈥淎I can help us get at the geographical diversity we鈥檙e looking for in clinical trials, the socioeconomic diversity, as well as age, ethnic and cultural diversity. That鈥檚 important for us. It鈥檚 a basic issue of fairness in health care.鈥�

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鈥淎 lot of people, when they think about math, think about geometry and Pythagoras鈥� theorem,鈥� says Iain Moyles, an associate professor in York鈥檚 Department of Mathematics & Statistics. 鈥淢ath is a language of structure and logic and science that can help you test a hypothesis. So we鈥檝e designed a mathematical model to understand the cause and effect of peer influence in smoking.鈥�

The idea came from PhD student Sarah Machado-Marques in response to a class assignment to experiment with math modelling to explain the psychology behind human behaviour.

Although she has never vaped, she says she wanted to understand why so many of her peers took up the e-cigarette craze when they were in high school.

鈥淚鈥檓 really interested in why people do what they do, what drives people to make certain decisions,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 was walking around campus and noticed that vaping is still relevant in both my age group and also younger age groups, and so I started thinking, how can we use math to address this problem?鈥�

Ten years ago, the surge in vaping among adolescents was considered an epidemic. In 2018, the number of U.S. high-school students vaping nearly doubled in a single year, according to the American Heart Association. More recent data, from Statistics Canada, shows that vaping is still popular among Canadian youth. In 2022, one in 10 Canadians aged 20 to 24 and one in 15 aged 15 to 19 vaped every day, compared with one in 50 Canadians aged 25 and older.

Moyles says the vaping epidemic is not a classic disease like COVID-19 but a social contagion that behaves like one.

鈥淚n a standard disease, you might walk past someone and infect them with an actual virus or bacteria,鈥� he says. 鈥淚n vaping or similar behaviours, an adolescent can pressure someone and you change your behaviour because you were 鈥榠nfected鈥� by the influence of your peer.鈥�

Machado-Marques says it can be a subtle pressure, where teenagers and young adults feel the need to fit in or mimic the behaviour of their friends.

What their research suggests is that while teenagers can be influenced to vape because their friends are, equally so, they may be influenced to quit the habit because their friends are. Their mathematical model shows that the long-term trajectory of vaping is a cyclical pattern of starting and quitting depending on what their cohort is doing.

鈥淲e see this re-emergence in society all the time 鈥� things that were cool when we were kids, then weren鈥檛 cool,鈥� says Moyles. 鈥淥ur kids and our grandkids eventually find them again and once again they become cool.鈥�

The findings from Machado-Marques and Moyles can apply to any adolescent trend where friends have influence on each other. The same cycle can be seen in the pendulum between bell bottoms and skinny jeans, and curly and straight hair, for example.

Moyles says math modelling can be used by parents, teachers and public health authorities to identify cycles of undesirable adolescent behaviours influenced by peers and look for opportunities to intervene.

鈥淭he key learning I would say from our modelling would be to recognize the cycle and to start to saying, 鈥極K, when do we think this sort of thing is happening and how do we get ahead of it?鈥欌��

The researchers say that while prevention is always best, attempts to influence more positive behaviour among adolescents may be strongest coming from other adolescents.

鈥淚f a parent or teacher encourages a certain behaviour, adolescents might do the opposite, just because it's not coming from within their influence group,鈥� says Moyles. 鈥淭he key from the influence structure of our model is to find a way to have that information coming through the peer network.鈥�

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As part of their work, Michael Jenkin, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at York's Lassonde School of Engineering, and his colleagues have been exploring how to build trust between people and machines.

鈥淲e ask questions like, 鈥榃hat shape should a robot be? Should a robot have a face on it? If a robot has a face on it, is it important what the face looks like?鈥欌�� Jenkin says. 鈥淚f you were going to talk to a robot or talk to a kiosk, what should it look like? Should it be big or small? Do people prefer text or is audio better?鈥�

The group has also been looking at how to build robots that can respond to humans in ways that emulate empathy, using AI and machine learning to teach the robot to read a person鈥檚 emotional state and respond accordingly based on their mannerisms and the speed at which they speak.

What they found is that people come with their own prejudices, and they apply those when talking to people and robots. For example, in general, people prefer robots acting as security guards to look like men. In health support roles, they prefer their robots to look like women.

鈥淲e have lots of choices in the design space,鈥� Jenkin says. 鈥淲hat's the right one?鈥�

In one collaboration with industrial partners, including an Ontario-based firm called Cloud Constable, Jenkin and the team looked at how to build a robot that can act as a security guard in public spaces, diffusing potential conflict.

鈥淲e considered things like, does this kind of robot need a face? If the robot has the ability to provide lethal and non-lethal force, who鈥檚 going to take responsibility when it goes wrong? Or, even if it goes right, who鈥檚 responsible?鈥� Jenkin says.

As AI revolutionizes how people collect and process data, and transforms how we work and live, Jenkin says researchers like him 鈥� all over the world, in every sector and service 鈥� are thinking through questions like these as they try to build machines people are comfortable interacting with.

He points to a recent experiment in Europe that probed whether people would accept hugs from robots. The trial looked at whether people prefer their robots in this situation to be padded to replicate the human body and how long people are willing to stay in the embrace of a machine. Spoiler alert: not long.

Jenkin, who is part of 快播视频鈥檚 Connected Minds project that is focused on ethical use of AI, says there are, of course, issues of privacy and security to consider as machines leverage our personal data to appear more human.

Something else to consider is whether using machines to solve problems is just masking deeper societal issues that should be addressed.

Robots, for example, can be programmed to act as companions to isolated seniors, sitting with them while they eat, as evidence suggests this encourages people in homes to eat more and stay healthy longer. But is that the answer to the broader concern about how we treat our most vulnerable?

鈥淭his space is in its infancy,鈥� Jenkin says. 鈥淭here are problems that we have as a society that robots can address. Addressing the fundamental problem is much more desirable, but until we have that fixed, maybe AI can provide a stopgap measure and be part of the solution in that way.鈥�

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The findings by a team led by Sergey Krylov, a Distinguished Research Professor of chemistry at 快播视频, reveal that measurement errors in the early stages of drug discovery can lead to further errors 鈥� in decisions 鈥� as pharmaceutical companies work to develop new drugs.

鈥淧eople are used to doing things a certain way, and they just keep at it, even when it鈥檚 not working,鈥� Krylov says. 鈥淲e need to make people aware of these measurement errors and why it鈥檚 so important to fix them. It鈥檚 time to stop and think about the damage these mistakes cause and start making changes.鈥�

His team is now working to raise awareness of the findings, urging drug developers and academic researchers to change their practices.

鈥淚f we can cut down bad decisions in drug development by even half, we鈥檇 see twice as many drugs making it to market,鈥� Krylov says. 鈥淭hat means saving twice as many lives and making much better use of time and money.鈥�

Pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars a year on drug-discovery research. The process begins with identifying disease-related proteins and then searching for molecules that can bind to those proteins and change their function. For example, fever-reducing drugs work by lowering the production of chemical signals that cause the body鈥檚 internal thermostat to raise its temperature during inflammation.

Vast libraries of chemical compounds are screened and measured to see how strongly each one binds to the target protein. The strength of the binding is quantified and molecules with the strongest interactions go to the next stage of development.

Despite advances in technology, this process remains painstakingly slow, costly and prone to errors.

Krylov鈥檚 team has discovered that these binding measurements are often grossly inaccurate, sometimes off by as much as a factor of 1,000. The molecules identified as having the strongest bindings are particularly susceptible to these large errors.

鈥淭hese mistakes mean promising drug candidates get rejected too soon,鈥� Krylov says. 鈥淲hen the strongest binders are ruled out, it sets off a chain reaction of missed opportunities and expensive delays in research and development.鈥�

To address this, Krylov鈥檚 team developed a practical method to verify whether specific molecules are measured accurately. Their approach allows researchers to flag compounds for reassessment under more rigorous conditions, potentially salvaging overlooked drug candidates.

The team鈥檚 discovery, made just a year ago, has yet to gain widespread traction in the pharmaceutical industry or the academic community. However, Krylov is optimistic about the potential for change.

In the coming years, the researchers plan to publish the findings of their ongoing research in scientific journals, engage with industry partners and present their work at conferences. They have also created a free online software tool that evaluates the accuracy of binding measurements and can even reassess data for molecules previously discarded, offering a second chance for overlooked candidates.

鈥淭his is a long game,鈥� Krylov says. 鈥淭here鈥檚 no quick fix here. It鈥檚 going to take years of education and getting the message out. But if we stick with it, we can really change how drugs are discovered and save a lot of lives.鈥�

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Aspire is produced by the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation in partnership with the Communications & Public Affairs Division.

Renowned for its high-profile, research-intensive environment, 快播视频 fosters a community of forward-thinking scholars and changemakers dedicated to creating positive, global change.

In this issue:

快播视频 prof, students help improve safety of drinking water in Arctic
快播视频 researcher and civil engineering Professor Stephanie Gora is advancing efforts to bring clean, safe water to remote communities in the Arctic. 

快播视频 student鈥檚 bat research supports conservation in Belize
Gliselle Marin, a聽PhD student in biology,聽is pursuing innovative research in Belize that studies bats to advance conservation efforts and identify their important impact on biodiversity.

Rare disease drug initiative led by 快播视频 researcher offers hope for millions
Faculty of Science Professor Conor Douglas is leading efforts to uncover barriers to the development of drugs for rare diseases and identify ways to overcome them.

Research initiative looks to improve life for migrant fishermen
Professor Emeritus Peter Vandergeest is looking to improve the difficult working conditions for migrant fisherman by using research to identify where changes in policies and strategies need to be made.

The post 快播视频 researchers advancing improvements in drinking water, conservation and more appeared first on YFile.

Each year, Gora and five of her students spend weeks 鈥� in some cases, months 鈥� in communities in the Far North. There they are looking at potential approaches to improving water safety in the face of the Arctic鈥檚 extreme climate and remote, unforgiving terrain.

鈥淚t鈥檚 reasonable to want the same level of service when it comes to water as anyone else in Canada,鈥� said Gora, an assistant professor in the Lassonde School of Engineering who leads the University鈥檚 Safe & Sustainable Water Research Group. She is also on the executive team of the One WATER Institute and is a research fellow at the Dadahleh Institute for Global Health Research and the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies.

The challenges to achieving this level of service are enormous.

While most people in Canada have their water delivered underground, the Arctic鈥檚 -50 C temperatures and permafrost mean most water there is delivered via truck and stored in water storage tanks in each building.

鈥淭here鈥檚 a water quantity issue that鈥檚 quite notable,鈥� Gora said of Nunavut, where her research is primarily based. 鈥淭hen, there鈥檚 also a water quality issue. Our research has uncovered evidence of metals and other chemicals at levels above federal guidelines at different points in the water system.鈥�

If the pump needed to push the water through the lake to the water treatment plant fails, parts must be ordered and flown in with all other food and supplies, something that happens only once or twice a year. If the part is bulky, it must then travel by barge, which can only operate a couple of times a year depending on ice and forest fire conditions where it is loaded.

The remoteness of communities in the Arctic means few people who live locally receive water safety training, resulting in a lack of institutional knowledge and a constant turnover of people with various levels of expertise flying in to help.

Gora and her students 鈥� Ammar Mahgoub, Mohammed Ibraheem, Audrey Tam, Caroline Duncan and Elan Chalmers 鈥� are researching an approach to water safety planning that begins with an assessment of what types of risks to clean water exist. The next step is understanding how each risk might be linked to produce an unwanted outcome.

For example, in collaboration with researchers at Universit茅 Laval, they are working to understand what kind of microbes are in the water tanks, exactly how dirty the water is, what happens if the tank is cleaned and how long it takes for it to get dirty again.

鈥淎 lot of our work is focused on understanding what those hazards are, how likely they are to happen and how severe the consequences will be if they aren鈥檛 addressed,鈥� she said. 鈥淏ut we're also trying to understand the intersections between different hazards.鈥�

She explains it this way: microbial contamination resulting from bacteria in a water tank could be the result of insufficient chlorine in the truck that delivered it, indicating the chlorination system isn鈥檛 working. But is the chlorination not working because it hasn鈥檛 been designed correctly for the kind of water being treated, or because the operator lacks training?

Gora said she and her students have the combined skills, experience and connections to close the gap that exists in water safety in the Arctic compared to the rest of Canada, and she鈥檚 gratified to play a role in creating positive change through their research.

鈥淲ater professionals in the Arctic do tons and tons of good work," she said. "But it's a huge challenge, and I think my team has the skill set to help.鈥�

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Marin鈥檚 commitment to bats was inked two years ago when she put aside a lifelong fear of needles and had three of the flying mammals tattooed on the nape of her neck.

Today, the international student is leveraging all that she is learning about bats to help lead local conservation efforts in Belize, the richly biodiverse country where she was born.

鈥淚 see a future where the people who live amongst the biodiversity here have agency over the resources around them,鈥� said Marin, whose research takes her to the forests of Belize three times a year for weeks at a time.

She has just wrapped up a five-night bat survey in the Lamanai Archaeological Reserve, which is built around the ruins of a pre-classic Mayan city. This kind of field research involves capturing bats in nets and harp traps, which can catch flying bats more easily without damaging their wings.

She is logging the species she finds and also studying their diets. By extracting DNA from their dung, she hopes to understand whether bats are diversifying what they consume because they like the variety, or because they aren鈥檛 getting the nectar, fruit or insects they need from their environment.

Through her field work in Belize, she found that a species of bat believed to limit its food intake to nectar was also eating insects. This particular bat had evolved to have an elongated nose like a hummingbird and a hairy, retractable tongue to help it take in the nectar. Yet, it was eating insects.

鈥淭hat鈥檚 what my research is based off," said Marin. "I鈥檓 looking at what different guilds of bats are supposed to be eating and investigating further to see if there are more anomalies in what they are actually eating.鈥�

What her research finds could lead to improved bat conservation and efforts to conserve the country鈥檚 forests, which are under threat from agricultural expansion, as well as climate and natural disasters like hurricanes. Healthy bats mean healthy forests.

The role birds play in the ecosystem is better understood; yet, at night, when bats are active, they take over many of the same jobs, including dispersing seeds that will grow first in degraded areas and build back forests.

鈥淭he birds perform all these ecosystem roles during the daytime. And bats are kind of their counterparts at night,鈥� she said.

Marin is part of a small movement trying to educate communities, both locally and further afield, about that connection.

She works closely with her supervisor, Elizabeth Clare, an assistant professor of biology at York who runs the Clare Lab devoted to biodiversity, and goes by @Dr_bat_girl on social media.

They both share a desire to raise awareness about the contributions of bats to the ecosystem through her work, and also to destigmatize them.

鈥淭hey go under the radar a lot because they're still stigmatized. When you hear of bats, you think rabies or that they fly into your hair,鈥� she said.

鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot that people just don鈥檛 know. The more I learn about bats, the more I realize how amazing they are.鈥�

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Professor Conor Douglas is leading a global initiative to uncover the economic, political and regulatory barriers that prevent costly research into drugs that could treat rare diseases. The goal is to advance new approaches to drug development that could open the door to a broader range of treatments for rare diseases, not just those for more common ailments.

鈥淭he majority of rare disease patients have no kind of pharmaceutical or biopharmaceutical treatment option,鈥� said Douglas, an associate professor in York鈥檚 Department of Science, Technology & Society. 鈥淭he science is in prime time; it's ready to go. But you can have the fanciest science and technology and it's not going anywhere unless these other issues are being addressed.鈥�

Through the project, Douglas is working with researchers around the world to find and advocate for changes he hopes will diversify a system that has been driven in part by profit motive and regulation.

鈥淎s a society, we're choosing not to develop certain kinds of treatments because they might not be profitable enough,鈥� Douglas said. 鈥淥ur notion of social pharmaceutical innovation is trying to understand initiatives that are tackling these problems of availability, accessibility and affordability in a way that ensures health system sustainability, supports a private insurance system that can afford to cover cutting-edge treatments and where people don鈥檛 have to pay for them out of pocket.鈥�

Although individually they are uncommon, rare diseases as a whole are quite common, with more than 7,000 identified today, and more being discovered as science progresses. It鈥檚 estimated that up to six per cent of people around the world suffer from rare diseases. There are up to two million sufferers in Canada alone, contributing to five to 10 per cent of the country鈥檚 hospitalization costs, according to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Last year, Canada announced a and an investment of $1.5 billion to increase access to and affordability of drugs. As part of the strategy, provinces and territories are expected to cost share through their bilateral purchasing agreements for rare disease treatments with Health Canada.

鈥淭here's definitely a policy window right now,鈥� said Douglas, whose innovation project is looking at more ways to ensure drugs for rare diseases are brought to market.

Ideas include involving patients in research and development, teaming them with clinicians to collect data on how drugs are working outside of clinical trials in an effort to move drugs through trials more quickly. In another example, companies trying to bring a treatment to market and provincial health-care systems could enter into risk-sharing agreements as a drug is tested. One such collaboration has already resulted in approval by Health Canada for enzyme replacement therapies to treat Fabry disease, a rare genetic condition caused by a missing enzyme that can attack vital organs.

Douglas said he hopes the examples of winning approaches he and his colleagues are uncovering will offer hope to those who suffer from rare diseases, many of whom struggle to get a diagnosis and then feel hopeless when they learn there is no treatment.

鈥淎lmost all of the cases that we come up against are full of often painful stories of suffering,鈥� he said, adding that the solution doesn鈥檛 lie only with the medical scientists.

鈥淭hey need help from people looking at regulatory changes. We need the patients鈥� input. We need collaboration from industry, and certainly we need buy-in from Health Canada and the provincial health-care systems and pharmaceutical plans. Change is underway; a different way of doing things is possible.鈥�

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Media stories over the past decade have exposed the dark side of industrialized fishing. The fishermen, often from Southeast Asia, whom we rely on to put shrimp and tuna on our tables, have been experiencing labour and human rights abuses that include long, lonely working hours in treacherous weather, for as little as $500 a month.

Peter Vandergeest, a professor emeritus and senior scholar in 快播视频鈥檚 Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change, said he and his partners are using their research skills to uncover data and information that could inform strategies and change policies to improve conditions for these fishermen, many of whom need this work to support their families.

鈥淲e wanted to try to figure out what was going on, beyond the media scandals, and what kinds of strategies could lead to positive change,鈥� said Vandergeest, part of a team of Work at Sea researchers based at the York Centre for Asian Research at 快播视频, as well as the University of Ottawa and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Making life better for migrant fishermen could be about providing information that would support higher wages and fewer hours through organized labour, Vandergeest said. But it could also be as simple as ensuring workers have access to Wi-Fi while they are at sea so they can stay in touch with their loved ones. It could mean enforcing regulations that require ships dock every few months, giving fishermen a chance to feel the ground beneath their feet, socialize and pick up supplies.

Vandergeest said he and his colleagues are not direct activists. Rather, they are academics whose work can support advocacy for change.

鈥淚 wouldn't say we advocate per se, but we have a role as academics, where we can provide arguments for the activists and we can provide data and information that they can then use,鈥� he said.

That includes working in collaboration with organizations like the International Transport Workers鈥� Federation and the International Labour Organization, non-governmental organizations and seafarer missions.

鈥淲e offer information and analysis that could guide the efforts of those people who are working on the advocacy side to change things for the better, and suggest how those changes might be incorporated into policy.鈥�

From Vandergeest鈥檚 perspective, the big seafood processing companies and retailers that supply much of the seafood consumed by people around the world also have culpability when workers on those fishing vessels are mistreated.

As retailers seek to pay less for the products they sell, the processors are increasingly seeking out workers from low-wage countries, something Vandergeest views as 鈥渞acial capitalism.鈥�

鈥淥ur argument is that when you look at seafood supply chains, the really dominant players are not the fishing companies," he said. "They have to sell their product to the big processing companies and also then eventually to the retailers, and these are the ones who kind of set the conditions.鈥�

While 80 per cent of the seafood Canadians consume comes from global seafood processing giants, Vandergeest believes boycotting the tuna we find on the grocery store shelves isn鈥檛 necessarily the answer. Although, for those who can afford it, sourcing out ethically produced seafood would help.

鈥淚 think the solution is to improve working conditions and to fish sustainably, not to simply stop the industry,鈥� he said.

Read more about how 快播视频 is creating positive change for migrant fishermen at .

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