Latest news with #UniversityofNewBrunswick
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Canada's Top Youth Scientists Awarded $1.3 Million at the 2025 Canada-Wide Science Fair in Fredericton
FREDERICTON, New Brunswick, June 06, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--From groundbreaking schizophrenia treatment research to innovative sea turtle robots, Canada's top young scientists showcased world-class research and innovation this week at the 63rd Canada-Wide Science Fair. At an awards ceremony this evening at the University of New Brunswick, 219 finalists were recognized with nearly $1.3 million in scholarships and awards at the country's premier youth science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) event. The fair's Best Project Award in Discovery went to Sara Waqas from Calgary for her project, "Neurobiologically Informed Targeted Schizophrenia Treatment: A Multi-Omic, fMRI Approach", while the Best Project in Innovation went to Evan Budz from Burlington, Ontario, for his project "Development of an Autonomous Bionic Sea Turtle Robot for Ecological Monitoring using AI". "This week, we've witnessed the power of youth curiosity in action," said Reni Barlow, Executive Director at Youth Science Canada, organizers of the event. "Every student who undertakes a STEM project deserves to be celebrated for their dedication and creativity. Tonight's winners are a powerful example of the impact youth can make through STEM." * * * * * Top winners, selected by over 200 judges, include: Best Project AwardsBest Project: DiscoverySara Waqas from Calgary, Alberta, for Neurobiologically Informed Targeted Schizophrenia Treatment: A Multi-Omic, fMRI to project Best Project: InnovationEvan Budz from Burlington, Ontario, for Development of an Autonomous Bionic Sea Turtle Robot for Ecological Monitoring using to project Platinum Awards - Discovery Best Junior (Grade 7/8)Claire Sehn from Peterborough, Ontario, for Beat the Blaze: Preventing Wildfires and Drought With a Novel, Biodegradable to project Best Senior (Grade 11/12/Cégep)Hejin Wang from Saint John, New Brunswick, for Controlling Humongous Fungus: Cyanobacteria as a Biocontrol Agent for Root Rot to project Platinum Awards - Innovation Best Junior (Grade 7/8)Trisha Haldar from Windsor, Ontario, for Visual Drug Interaction to project Best Senior (Grade 11/12/Cégep)Chloe Rae Filion and Sophie Rose Filion from Fenwick, Ontario, for The Home Smog Alarm: How clean is your home's air?Link to project * * * * * The 2025 Canada-Wide Science Fair featured 390 student finalists, from Grade 7 through Cégep, showcasing 339 projects. The event drew more than 5,000 visitors and more than 30,000 online viewers. The Canada-Wide Science Fair and STEM Expo continue in person at the University of New Brunswick tomorrow, Friday, June 6, until 2:30 p.m. ADT, with projects remaining online for public viewing afterward. The 64th edition of the Canada-Wide Science Fair will be held at the Edmonton EXPO Centre and the University of Alberta from May 23 to 30, 2026. Members of the public are invited to meet the best project and platinum award winners on Friday, June 6, at 8:30 a.m. ADT in the Richard J. Currie Center at the University of New Brunswick. The panel discussion will also be broadcast Media members are encouraged to participate. Winners will be available for media interviews throughout the week of June 9, 2025, by contacting Mary Moniz at mary@ Photos and videos, as well as the complete list of Canada-Wide Science Fair award recipients, are available here: CWSF 2025 Media Kit About Youth Science Canada Youth Science Canada empowers all Canadian youth to engage their curiosity in discovering and innovating through STEM projects. A registered charity incorporated in 1966, YSC delivers on its mission through national programs, including mySTEMspace, the National STEM Fair Network, Canada-Wide Science Fair, STEM Expo, Team Canada representation at international fairs and Smarter Science professional development for teachers. Through these programs, YSC directly supports the more than 500,000 students who do STEM projects in any given year. For more information, visit View source version on Contacts For more information:Mary MonizTorchia 647-278-0152mary@ Aline BedrosTorchia 514-250-2332aline@ Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Business Wire
3 days ago
- Science
- Business Wire
Canada's Top Youth Scientists Awarded $1.3 Million at the 2025 Canada-Wide Science Fair in Fredericton
FREDERICTON, New Brunswick--(BUSINESS WIRE)--From groundbreaking schizophrenia treatment research to innovative sea turtle robots, Canada's top young scientists showcased world-class research and innovation this week at the 63rd Canada-Wide Science Fair. At an awards ceremony this evening at the University of New Brunswick, 219 finalists were recognized with nearly $1.3 million in scholarships and awards at the country's premier youth science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) event. The fair's Best Project Award in Discovery went to Sara Waqas from Calgary for her project, "Neurobiologically Informed Targeted Schizophrenia Treatment: A Multi-Omic, fMRI Approach", while the Best Project in Innovation went to Evan Budz from Burlington, Ontario, for his project "Development of an Autonomous Bionic Sea Turtle Robot for Ecological Monitoring using AI". "Tonight's winners are a powerful example of the impact youth can make through STEM," said Reni Barlow, Executive Director at Youth Science Canada, organizers of the Canada-Wide Science Fair 2025. Share "This week, we've witnessed the power of youth curiosity in action," said Reni Barlow, Executive Director at Youth Science Canada, organizers of the event. "Every student who undertakes a STEM project deserves to be celebrated for their dedication and creativity. Tonight's winners are a powerful example of the impact youth can make through STEM." * * * * * Top winners, selected by over 200 judges, include: Best Project Awards Best Project: Discovery Sara Waqas from Calgary, Alberta, for Neurobiologically Informed Targeted Schizophrenia Treatment: A Multi-Omic, fMRI Approach. Link to project Best Project: Innovation Evan Budz from Burlington, Ontario, for Development of an Autonomous Bionic Sea Turtle Robot for Ecological Monitoring using AI. Link to project Platinum Awards - Discovery Best Junior (Grade 7/8) Claire Sehn from Peterborough, Ontario, for Beat the Blaze: Preventing Wildfires and Drought With a Novel, Biodegradable Treatment. Link to project Best Senior (Grade 11/12/Cégep) Hejin Wang from Saint John, New Brunswick, for Controlling Humongous Fungus: Cyanobacteria as a Biocontrol Agent for Root Rot Fungus. Link to project Platinum Awards - Innovation Best Junior (Grade 7/8) Trisha Haldar from Windsor, Ontario, for Visual Drug Interaction Checker. Link to project Best Senior (Grade 11/12/Cégep) Chloe Rae Filion and Sophie Rose Filion from Fenwick, Ontario, for The Home Smog Alarm: How clean is your home's air? Link to project * * * * * The 2025 Canada-Wide Science Fair featured 390 student finalists, from Grade 7 through Cégep, showcasing 339 projects. The event drew more than 5,000 visitors and more than 30,000 online viewers. The Canada-Wide Science Fair and STEM Expo continue in person at the University of New Brunswick tomorrow, Friday, June 6, until 2:30 p.m. ADT, with projects remaining online for public viewing afterward. The 64 th edition of the Canada-Wide Science Fair will be held at the Edmonton EXPO Centre and the University of Alberta from May 23 to 30, 2026. Members of the public are invited to meet the best project and platinum award winners on Friday, June 6, at 8:30 a.m. ADT in the Richard J. Currie Center at the University of New Brunswick. The panel discussion will also be broadcast live. Media members are encouraged to participate. Winners will be available for media interviews throughout the week of June 9, 2025, by contacting Mary Moniz at mary@ Photos and videos, as well as the complete list of Canada-Wide Science Fair award recipients, are available here: CWSF 2025 Media Kit About Youth Science Canada Youth Science Canada empowers all Canadian youth to engage their curiosity in discovering and innovating through STEM projects. A registered charity incorporated in 1966, YSC delivers on its mission through national programs, including mySTEMspace, the National STEM Fair Network, Canada-Wide Science Fair, STEM Expo, Team Canada representation at international fairs and Smarter Science professional development for teachers. Through these programs, YSC directly supports the more than 500,000 students who do STEM projects in any given year. For more information, visit
Calgary Herald
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Calgary Herald
The newest Tory senator is a Trudeau appointee. What to know about about David Adams Richards
Article content He's married to Peggy McIntyre, with whom he has two sons, John Thomas and Anton Richards. Article content While his first published work after studying literature and philosophy at St. Thomas University in the early 1970s was a small book of poems, Richards became an acclaimed Canadian novelist with 16 titles on his resume, along with six non-fiction books and two collections of short stories. Article content His writings have been translated into 12 languages and are part of the curriculum of Canadian and U.S. universities, according to the Senate of Canada. Article content In a style said to be influenced by the likes of Leo Tolstoy and compared to William Blake, his fiction work is mostly set in the Miramichi Valley where he grew up and the characters are inspired by the lives and experiences of its poor and working-class people. Article content Article content Article content Richards has been a writer-in-residence at multiple universities and colleges across Canada, three of which have awarded him honorary doctorates — the University of New Brunswick (1995), Mount Allison University in Sackville (2008), and St. Thomas University in Fredericton (1990). He received the same honour from the Atlantic School of Theology in 2010. Article content In 1998, he became one of just three Canadian writers to win a Governor General's Literary Award in both fiction and non-fiction for Nights Below Station Street (1988) and Lines on the Water: A Fisherman's Life on the Miramichi (1998). Writers Laura G. Salverson and Hugh MacLennan are the others. Meanwhile, his 1993 fiction novel For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down and 2007's The Lost Highway were also nominated for the government honour. Article content Article content In 2000, his Mercy Among the Children was a co-winner of the Giller Prize along with Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje, the only time two recipients have shared the honour in its 31-year history. Lost Highway and The Friends of Meager Fortune (2006) were both longlisted for the Giller. Article content Richards has also been awarded two Gemini Awards for scriptwriting (Small Gifts and For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down), the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Canadian Authors Association Award for his novel Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace, the 2011 Matt Cohen Award for a distinguished lifetime of contribution to Canadian literature and the Canada-Australia Literary Prize. Article content He is a member of the Order of New Brunswick (2005) and the Order of Canada (2009). Article content Richards the Senator Article content When first appointed to the Senate by Trudeau in 2017, two years after the then-prime minister established the Independent Advisory Board for Senate Appointments to make the Upper House less partisan, Richards joined the relatively new Independent Senators Group (ISG).
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
New immigration minister must address low Atlantic Canada retention rates, expert says
An economist in New Brunswick says Canada's new immigration minister needs to consider how to keep immigrants in Atlantic Canada, a region that has historically struggled to convince newcomers they should stay for more than a year or two. Lena Metlege Diab, a member of Parliament from Nova Scotia, was recently appointed as Canada's minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship. Herb Emery, who holds the Vaughan Chair in regional economics at the University of New Brunswick, said Diab's Atlantic roots mean she is likely to have a better understanding of the challenges the region faces, especially its difficulty retaining immigrants. Atlantic Canada has lower retention rates for immigrants than the rest of the country, with a Statistics Canada report in December 2024 noting: "Immigrants who left their intended Atlantic provinces were increasingly likely to settle in Ontario." P.E.I. specifically has the lowest retention rate in Canada, though the situation is slightly improving, according to the province's population framework released last year. The three-year retention rate for immigrants to P.E.I. rose from 33.3 per cent in 2017 to 43 per cent in 2021. Emery said the solution to improving these numbers is straightforward: create better economic opportunities. "You need to provide opportunities to earn a good living. When you look at the wages and median incomes of newcomers, they're quite low in the region," Emery told CBC's Island Morning. "What we've tried to prioritize is filling the lower-wage jobs that Canadians don't want to fill, and if you want to be a professional after a couple of years, the opportunities to integrate are better in other provinces, where they have better resources for settlement, they have more opportunities for working in your profession." He said the region has relied on immigration to address immediate labour shortages, particularly due to its aging population and high youth out-migration to other provinces like Alberta and Ontario, but it hasn't focused enough on building a long-term sustainable workforce. "A lot of that reflects the industries we have in the region, which is seasonal, and in a lot of cases, they don't have high margins and they are labour-intensive." Emery added that during the pandemic, there was "a complete lack of control" over the number of immigrants coming into the country. "We weren't doing a good job of integrating the newcomers into our labour market and our wider society," he said. That's why he thinks more effort should be placed on supporting immigrants who are already in the region by helping them get their credentials recognized, so they can work in their professions. He also mentioned the idea of tax policies designed to encourage long-term settlement. "Do you give them a bonus tax break if they remain in that region for longer? "Now, if you put them in low-skilled jobs, there's no advantages to tax breaks. If you create the conditions that somebody can work as a physician, and they start earning a high income, you may give them an advantage to staying if you give them some kind of credit if they remain in the region for five, six, seven years," Emery said. The Atlantic provinces should also focus on keeping international students in the region after they graduate, he said. As Canada explores ways to strengthen its economy in the face of U.S. tariff threats, there's been growing discussion around removing interprovincial trade barriers. But Emery cautioned that when it comes to immigration and economic growth, eliminating these barriers could be "a dangerous gamble for a small region." He said the barriers exist in part to give smaller provinces like those in Atlantic Canada an incentive for businesses to locate there, countering the "economic gravity" that naturally pulls enterprise toward larger provinces. As we start to drop those trade barriers, there's two ways this can go. One is we're really competitive, and we get more jobs and more GDP. The other is, it hollows us out, and we wind up with a health-care system and an education system and not much else. — Economist Herb Emery "When you have thicker labour markets, like in Ontario, it's much easier for an employer that's manufacturing to set up there than in our region, where it may be a tough thing to bring in more labour to fill those jobs that are hard to do," he said. "So as we start to drop those trade barriers, there's two ways this can go. One is we're really competitive, and we get more jobs and more GDP. The other is, it hollows us out, and we wind up with a health-care system and an education system and not much else."
CBC
20-05-2025
- Politics
- CBC
UNB law prof warns academics to avoid U.S. border where due process 'is on life support'
Social Sharing Nathan Kalman-Lamb writes about U.S. college football, and he travels to the U.S. often for work. But the University of New Brunswick sociology professor and author says he won't go back. In January, he was denied entry — without explanation — when trying to board a flight from Montreal to Washington for an event for his new book. He later obtained a formal visa by undergoing a vetting process by the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security and tried again two months later. This time he was detained and questioned for three hours and eventually missed his flight. WATCH | 'It's important for them to ask themselves whether it's really essential that they go': Why Canadian academics are being urged not to travel to the U.S. 2 hours ago Duration 4:43 "They rigorously searched all my belongings," Kalman-Lamb said. "They unfurled every sock. They flipped through every page of my book. They went through every item in my wallet." His experience comes as no surprise to Nicole O'Byrne, who has been fielding a lot of calls about similar concerns since Donald Trump became U.S. president and started going after universities and his critics. She's an associate professor at the University of New Brunswick Faculty of Law, and president of the Canadian Law and Society Association, which meets twice a year to discuss legal issues of interest. The association's next event is scheduled for June in Saskatoon. O'Byrne has been flooded with inquiries from Canadians living in the U.S., who are nervous about attending in person. She has been advising them to join remotely instead. Academics staying in Canada O'Byrne said other members who were scheduled to give presentations at the American Law and Society Association conference in Chicago this month, have requested to present at the Canadian conference instead — for a number of reasons. "Some of their academic work is now deemed to be quite controversial, especially the work with respect to diversity and inclusion," O'Byrne said. "We have a lot of professors who are transgender or LGBTQ, and they were worried about passport issues crossing the border. "People are very worried about their social media accounts. The arrest of grad students in the United States has definitely worried the graduate students in our organization, many of whom are going to school in the U.S." She is advising people to not take any unnecessary risks when it comes to border services, whether it be the U.S. or Canada. "You're kind of in a Charter-free zone," she said. "You really have no rights in a border area. What we're used to with respect to due process, with respect to warrants, whether or not you have the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure — that does not apply at borders." She said there are border services agents acting more and more with impunity, and travellers have no clear avenues of redress if their rights are violated. "Our constitutional protections take a long time to build, and as we're seeing in the United States, not that long to destroy," she said. "So if the rule of law is not already dead in the United States, it's definitely on life support." Flagged because of 'critical comments' Kalman-Lamb said border agents asked him questions about his views on violent protests, if he had travelled to Israel, or any of a dozen Muslim countries. The agent then took his phone and searched through it for an hour, causing him to miss his flight. The UNB professor was eventually released and cleared for travel but given no guarantee the same thing wouldn't happen again the next time. These travel-related detentions and denials are becoming a common complaint among academics trying to attend conferences and events in the U.S., and are why the Canadian Association of University Teachers has been advising them against all non-essential travel to the United States. Last month, it advised its 72,000 members to avoid the U.S., especially those from a country experiencing diplomatic tensions with the U.S., or those who have expressed negative opinions about the current administration or its policies, whose work may involve climate change, or those who are transgender. Kalman-Lamb suspects he was flagged because of his "critical comments about Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza and my support of the University of Toronto student anti-genocide encampment." 'An enormous collective loss' Robin Whitaker, the president of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, said all of this has been "extremely unsettling." Some universities are now providing faculty with burner phones when they travel to the U.S., she said, to keep their data secure. Whitaker said this is unprecedented, disturbing and an enormous collective loss for the university community. "We have to see this attack on universities and our knowledge as part of a wider set of attacks on the enabling conditions of democracy itself," she said. "This is part of pushing back the U.S. administration, seeking to control anyone with the potential to challenge them. We've seen them attacking judges, obviously the free press. All of these are essential to a functioning democracy." Not going back Kalman-Lamb said he has recently turned down opportunities to visit Ohio State University and the University of North Carolina, where "college football is a major sport on campus." It's not a decision he takes lightly and not one without consequences either. "It's really meaningful for me ethnographically to be in those spaces and experience the culture of college football and big time athletics in those spaces," he said. "And I won't be able to have those opportunities because of this."
