Our ORUs bring together faculty members from different disciplines to foster collaboration in areas where York is a recognized leader. Researchers in the Faculty of Health are members of 8 different research units at York, including the centres and initiatives listed below, creating and mobilizing knowledge to address complex health issues.
The Muscle Health Research Centre (MHRC) provides a centralized and focused research emphasis on the importance of skeletal muscle to the overall health and well-being of Canadians. Skeletal muscle, 40 per cent of a human’s body mass, is a unique and large tissue that significantly contributes to an individual’s metabolism, locomotion and overall quality of life.
The LaMarsh Centre for Youth Research is a collaborative group of faculty and students that supports community-engaged interdisciplinary research in health, education, relationships and development of infants, children, adolescents, emerging adults and families everywhere.
The vision of the York University Centre for Aging Research and Education (YU-CARE) is to promote graceful aging by approaching aging with active and positive responses to changes and challenges throughout the aging process on a societal and individual level. Its mission is to contribute to improved health and well being for older adults. By promoting innovative research, education and advocacy on graceful aging we wish to introduce a radical attitude shift about aging and contribute to improved health for older adults in Canada and around the world.
The Centre for Vision Research (CVR) at York University is an international leader in human and machine vision research. Uniting researchers from psychology, computer science & engineering, biology and kinesiology & health science, work at the centre is highly interdisciplinary and collaborative, rooted in a fundamental research program that merges techniques in human psychophysics, visual neuroscience and computational theory. Leading-edge facilities include a 3T fMRI scanner, a six-sided immersive virtual reality room, and a wide array of visuo-robotic platforms.
The DIGHR is committed to the pursuit of equity and social justice. The DIGHR aims to be transdisciplinary and collaborative in its perspectives and methods, drawing from expertise among its six founding Faculties (Health, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Engineering, Education, Law and Liberal Arts & Professional Studies). Contemporary global challenges mean that the DIGHR is seeding active partnerships with a range of actors locally, nationally and internationally to further research, teaching, policy and practice around the following themes: Planetary Health, Global Health & Humanitarianism, and Global Health Foresighting.
Vision is our most important medium for perceiving and interacting with the surrounding world, so vision research has important implications both for human health and for the technologies that we use to extend our abilities. VISTA, funded by the Canada-First Research Excellence Fund, will integrate the biological and computational vision research of five York faculties, five research centres, and over 50 partners to produce technologies that will help people live healthier, safer, and more productive lives. VISTA aims to be the world’s premier nexus for transdisciplinary, translational vision research.
CAIS unites researchers at York who are collectively advancing the state of the art in the theory and practice of artificial intelligence (AI) systems, governance and public policy. Our systems approach places emphasis on how AI technologies operate when embedded in real-world contexts, interacting with humans and other technologies. Our research focuses on AI systems that address societal priorities in health care, smart cities and sustainability, and are fair, explainable, reliable and trusted.
At York University, the Centre for Integrative and Applied Neuroscience (CIAN) serves as a hub for interdisciplinary research, uniting leading experts, students, community collaborators, and advanced resources. Focused on understanding the intricacies of the nervous system, neuroscience endeavors to decipher the physiological underpinnings of human actions, both in wellness and illness. Statistics indicate that a significant portion of the Canadian population will encounter conditions affecting brain health.