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York Research Chairs are the University’s internal counterpart to the national Canada Research Chair Program (CRCP) and recognizes outstanding researchers at York.

There are two types of York Research Chairs (YRCs):

Tier 1 recognizes established research leaders at the rank of full professor
Tier 2 recognizes emerging research leaders within 15 years of their first academic appointment, and early-career researchers within five years of their first academic appointment.

Both have five-year terms and are renewable based on peer review and the continuing availability of resources. YRCs receive similar support provided by the CRCP.

Featured Research Chairs

Robert Allison
YRC in Stereoscopic Vision and Depth Perception
Allison, Lassonde School of Engineering, is interested in human perceptual responses in virtual environments and the study of stereoscopic visions. He is also interested in the measurement and analysis of eye movements and the applications of this technology.
Janine Marchessault
YRC in Media Arts in Community Engagement
Marchessault is a Professor in the School of Arts, Media, Performance & Design. Her research has engaged with four areas: the history of large screen media; diverse models of public art, festivals, and site-specific curation; 21st century moving-image archives and notions of collective memory/history.

York Research Chairs Program Report - Report from York Research Chair Program Review Panel (March 2018)

Tier 1 Chairs
Tier 2 Chairs

Chun Peng
YRC in Women's Reproductive Health
Peng is a Professor in the Department of biology in the Faculty of Science. Her research will enhance the overall understanding of female reproductive health and may lead to the development of novel biomarkers for preeclampsia and therapeutics for ovarian cancer.
Robert Allison
YRC in Stereoscopic Vision and Depth Perception
Allison, Lassonde School of Engineering, is interested in human perceptual responses in virtual environments and the study of stereoscopic visions. He is also interested in the measurement and analysis of eye movements and the applications of this technology.
Kristin Andrews
YRC in Philosophy of Animal Minds
Andrews, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, has done extensive research into issues related to social understanding and animal rights. She will investigate how we can characterize social norms, which are often perceived as uniquely human, to reveal their existence in animals.
Gary Sweeney
YRC in Mechanisms of Cardiometabolic Diseases
Sweeney, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, is an expert on diabetes and cardiovascular disease. His work focuses on understanding mechanisms of cardiometabolic diseases, such as heart failure, and is designed to advance knowledge that will facilitate our fundamental understanding of causes of these diseases.
Ilijas Farah
YRC in Foundations of Operator Algebras
Farah, Faculty of Science, singlehandedly developed the field of the applications of logic to operator algebras, revealing deep and unexpected connections between the foundations of mathematics and some of the most concrete and ubiquitous mathematical objects.
James Elder
YRC in Human and Computer Vision
Elder is a professor in the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Psychology at York University. His research looks to develop novel and useful computer vision algorithms and machine vision systems through a better understanding of visual processing in biological systems.
Janine Marchessault
YRC in Media Arts in Community Engagement
Marchessault is a Professor in the School of Arts, Media, Performance & Design. Her research has engaged with four areas: the history of large screen media; diverse models of public art, festivals, and site-specific curation; 21st century moving-image archives and notions of collective memory/history.
Jianhong Wu
YRC in Industrial and Applied Mathematics
Wu, Faculty of Science, is an expert in dynamical systems, disease modelling and vaccine evaluation. His YRC program aims, in part, to understand biological and physical systems wherein predation occurs.
Jimmy Huang
YRC in Big Data Analytics
Huang, School of Information Technology, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, works to develop next-generation information retrieval techniques for a variety of information search applications by extracting knowledge by automatically searching and analyzing big textual, medical and social media data.
Kerry Kawakami
YRC in Equity and Diversity
Kawakami, Faculty of Health, is Principal Investigator of the Social Cognition Lab. Her work on implicit biases provides insight into how we perceive people from different social groups, how we react to intergroup bias, and strategies to reduce prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination.
Lauren Sergio
YRC in Brain Health and Gender in Action
Sergio is a Professor in the Faculty of Health. Her research projects examine the effects of age, sex, neurological disease, head injury and experience (elite versus non-elite athletes) on the brain’s control of complex movement.
Lorne Foster
YRC in Black Canadian Studies and Human Rights
Foster, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, is the Director of the Institute for Social Research and the Director of the Diversity & Human Rights Certificate. His work on public policy formation and scholarship on the human rights approach to inclusive organizational change ranks among the best in its field.
Marie-Christine Pioffet
YRC in Franco-Indigenous Relations in the Americas
Pioffet is a Professor at Glendon College. Her work mainly focuses on texts from New France and French literature of the 17th century. She has published around a hundred articles and about ten books, including Voyages en Acadie (1604-1607) by Marc Lescarbot (2007).
Rebecca Pillai Riddell
YRC in Pain and Mental Health
Pillai Riddell is a Professor in the Faculty of Health. She currently is involved with two primary lines of research and participates in the leadership of other programs with colleagues from across the country.
Doug Crawford
YRC in Visuomotor Neuroscience
Crawford, Faculty of Health, is a Distinguished Research Professor in Neuroscience and the Scientific Director of the VISTA program. His work has focused on the control of visual gaze in 3D space, eye-hand coordination and spatial memory during eye movements.
Nantel Bergeron
YRC in Applied Algebra
Bergeron, Faculty of Science, is one of the pioneers in the development of the theory of combinatorial Hopf algebras. His research helps to further insights into the super-symmetry of nature.
Benjamin Berger
YRC in Pluralism and Public Law
Berger, Osgoode Hall Law School, is an expert in law and religion. His interdisciplinary and comparative research aims to advance understanding of the challenges and complexities of public law in diverse societies.
Stephen Gaetz
YRC in Homelessness and Research Impact
Gaetz, Faculty of Education, is the director of the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, the Homeless Hub, and Making the Shift – Youth Homelessness Social Innovation Lab. His research is defined by his collaboration with partners to conduct and mobilize research and have an impact on policy and practice.

Adam Diamant
YRC in Managing AI-Driven Technologies in Health Care
Diamant, Schulich School of Business, works towards the development of AI tools that support personalized diagnostics and the delivery of outpatient services. His work promises to improve the delivery of health services by reducing barriers to accessing care and empowering practitioners to make data-driven administrative decisions.
Adrian Viens
YRC in Population Health Ethics and Law
Viens, School of Global Health, is interested in the legal and ethical implications of the structural and collective forces that determine population health. His research program looks into how we can extend and refine the law’s capacity to promote health and well-being and reduce health inequities at the population level.
Ali Abdul-Sater
YRC in Regulatory Mechanisms of Inflammation
Abdul-Sater is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health. His research looks at the roles of the protein TRAF1 in controlling inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, the role of Type I interferons in bacterial and viral responses, and how exercise regulates the immune response.
Ali Sadeghi-Naini
YRC in Quantitative Imaging and Smart Biomarkers
Sadeghi-Naini, Lassonde School of Engineering, demonstrated, for the first time, that quantitative ultrasound biomarkers at low frequencies can detect cell death induced by anti-cancer therapies. He seeks to develop quantitative imaging and biomarker technologies integrated with innovative machine learning and computational modeling techniques for precision medicine and personalized therapeutics.
Amro Zayed
YRC in Genomics
Zayed, Faculty of Science, sequences the genomes of thousands of bees to identify mutations that influence their economically and ecologically relevant traits. His program aims to improve the health of Canadian honey bees, which will increase the sustainability and security of Canada’s food supply.
Amy Muise
YRC in Relationships and Sexuality
Muise, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health, studies the maintenance of sexual desire and relationship satisfaction in romantic relationships. Happy relationships are key contributors to overall health and well-being, and lowering the divorce rate helps to reduce financial instability and negative health and psychological consequences.
Andrea Emberley
YRC in Children's Musical Cultures in Practice and Research
Emberley, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, focuses on the relationship between childhood, wellbeing, and musical arts practices. Her work intersects with music sustainability in terms of how children and young people access, innovate, and mobilize musical arts practices within their communities and beyond.
Carmela Murdocca
YRC in Reparative and Racial Justice
Murdocca, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, examines racialization, criminalization and social histories of racial and colonial violence. Her work is concerned with the social and legal politics of repair, redress and reparations.
Cary Wu
YRC in Political Sociology of Health
Cary Wu is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. His research focuses on political culture, race and ethnicity, and health inequality.
Denielle Elliott
YRC in Injured Minds
Elliott, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, focuses on arts-based ethnography and the intersections of colonialism, medicine and science, and politics. Her current project entitled "Neurological Imaginaries" explores the sensorial and affective dimensions of traumatic brain injuries.
Emily Laxer
YRC in Populism, Rights, and Legality
Laxer, Glendon College, looks at the relationship between emerging right-wing populism and the changing landscape of rights and legality in Canada. Her activities will include the launching of a new Observatory of Populism, Rights, and Legality.
Eve Haque
YRC in Linguistic Diversity and Community Vitality
Haque, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, is interested in the regulation and representation of racialized groups in white settler societies. Her current research focus is on the recognition and language rights of non-official language communities in Canada.
Gene Cheung
YRC in Graph Signal Processing
Cheung is a Professor in the Lassonde School of Engineering. His research interests include Graph Signal Processing and 3D Imaging.
Hina Tabassum
YRC in 5G/6G-Enabled Wireless Mobility and Sensing Applications
Tabassum is an Assistant Professor in the Lassonde School of Engineering. Her research interests include 5G/B5G wireless communications, Massive MIMO, mm-wave, Visible light Communication, Free Space Optics, Stochastic geometry, Geometric Probability, and more.
Jacob Beck
YRC in Philosophy of Visual Perception
Beck is an associate professor of philosophy in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. His current research mainly centres on three issues: the format of mental representation, the perception–cognition boundary, and how consciousness and representation interrelate.
Jane Heffernan
YRC in Mathematics of Immunity and Infectious Disease
Heffernan, Faculty of Science, has a body of work in the field of infectious-disease modelling. Her research will develop models of immunity against infection, both in individuals and in populations, which can be used to quantify distributions of immunity and its protective effects.
Joey Cheng
YRC in Leadership, Collaboration, and Teams
Cheng, Faculty of Health, examines the psychological underpinnings of power, status, and social hierarchy. She conducts empirical investigations into gender disparities in power and leadership, thereby addressing ways to overcome barriers to women’s position in work teams, organizations, and society.
John Moores
YRC in Space Exploration
Moores is a Planetary Scientist and an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Space Science Engineering, Lassonde School of Engineering. His research explores the atmospheres and surfaces of other worlds.
Lisa Myers
YRC in Indigenous Art and Curatorial Practice
Myers, Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, is a curator and artist with a keen interest in interdisciplinary collaboration. Her research focuses on contemporary Indigenous art considering the varied values and functions of elements, such as medicine plants and language, sound, and knowledge.
Lyndsay Hayhurst
YRC in Sport, Gender and Development and Digital Participatory Research
Hayhurst, Faculty of Health, researches the use of sport to support gender-related development goals, policies and practice. Her current research explores how key stakeholders experience Sport, Gender and Development initiatives focused on girls and women in Canada, Uganda and Nicaragua.
Marlis Schweitzer
YRC in Theatre and Performance History
Schweitzer, School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design, specializes in 19th and early-20th century Anglo-American performance. Her research explores the relationship between historical casting practices, theatre’s role in the circulation and perpetuation of racist stereotypes, and the onstage representation of BIPOC individuals in contemporary Anglo-American performance.
Mathieu Poirier
YRC in Global Health Equity
Poirier, Faculty of Health, is building an innovative interdisciplinary research program to promote global health equity. This program will generate policy-relevant findings to measure and address socially determined inequities in health around the world and innovate new ways to address the world’s most pressing global health challenges.
Mike Daly
YRC in Planetary Science
Daly is a Professor in the Department of Earth and Space Science and Engineering, Lassonde School of Engineering. The YRC enables Daly’s participation in NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu and the return of Canada’s first sample of material from another solar system.
Ozzy Mermut
YRC in Vision Biophotonics
Mermut, Faculty of Science, and her group develop diagnostics and therapeutic biophotonics technologies to address age-related degenerative diseases. These techniques translate to accelerated aging studies in the environment of space, to understand long-term health consequences in space.
Ping Wang
York Research Chair in AI Empowered Next Generation Communication Networks
Wang, Lassonde School of Engineering, is interested in radio resource allocation, network design, performance analysis and optimization for heterogeneous wireless networks and intends to develop innovative techniques for next-generation wireless communications networks in supporting the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) applications.
Sapna Sharma
YRC in Global Change Biology
Sharma is a Professor in the Faculty of Science. Her research focuses on predicting the effects of environmental stressors, such as climate change, invasive species, and habitat alteration on ecosystems and improving the use of quantitative approaches used to generate these predictions.
Sarah Flicker
YRC in Community-Based Participatory Research
Flicker, Faculty of Environmental Studies, is an expert in community development, health promotion and adolescent well-being. Flicker’s innovative program of research focuses on the engagement of youth and other allied actors in environmental, sexual and reproductive justice.
Sean Hillier
YRC in Indigenous Health Policy and One Health
Hillier, Faculty of Health, is a Mi’kmaw scholar and a special adviser to the Dean on Indigenous Resurgence. His research program spans the topics of aging, living with HIV and other infectious diseases, and antimicrobial resistance, all with a concerted focus on policy affecting health care access for Indigenous Peoples in Canada.
Shayna Rosenbaum
YRC in the Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory
Rosenbaum is a Professor in the Faculty of Health and core member of the VISTA program. Her research has shown how different forms of memory are represented in the brain and seeks to develop strategies to help healthy older adults and patients overcome memory loss.
Sheila Colla
YRC in Interdisciplinary Conservation Science
Colla, Faculty of Environmental Studies, is an ecologist using scientific principles to address real-world conservation issues. Her research focuses on the conservation of lesser understood native species such as bees, butterflies and flowering plants.
Shital Desai
YRC in Accessible Interaction Design
Desai is an Assistant Professor in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design. Her research will undertake codesign and development efforts with People with Dementia, caregivers, healthcare practitioners and community partners.
Sue Winton
YRC in Critical Policy Analysis
Winton is a Professor in the Faculty of Education. Her research examines educational policy advocacy, influences, enactment, and their implications for equity.
Taien Ng-Chan
YRC in Marginal & Emergent Media
Ng-Chan is an Assistant Professor in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design. She is currently working on an immersive, interactive media piece that blends concepts around self-representation, critical care, and karaoke.
Uzo Anucha
YRC in Youth and Contexts of Inequity
Anucha, School of Social Work, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, is the Provincial Academic Director of the YouthREX. Her project makes research evidence and evaluation practices accessible to Ontario’s grassroots youth sector through capacity building, knowledge exchange and evaluation leadership.
Valérie A.M. Schoof
YRC in Primate Behavioural Endocrinology
Schoof is a primatologist and an Assistant Professor at Glendon Campus. Her research program focuses on the ecology, sociality, physiology and life history of wild primates in East Africa, and the biological, geographical and cultural factors influencing human-wildlife interactions.

Featured Research Chairs

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