Dr. Shoshanah Jacobs and I are incredibly excited to announce the name of our community partner for the fall 2020 Ideas Congress (ICON) classroom. This year, students from across campus will have the opportunity to work with the Oak Tree Project and three different local charitable organizations in support of COVID-19 pandemic relief. The COVID-19Continue reading "#RecoverTogether"

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Just last week I welcomed four new students to our lab, thanks in part to subsidies provided through the Work Integrated Learning Digital Subsidy offered through the Internet Communications and Technology Council of Canada via the Government of Canada’s Student Work Placement Program. Today I’m happy to announce the addition of three more. Jacob Wieler is a SoftwareContinue reading "COVID-19 & Co-op: Work Integrated Learning Through ICTC – Part II"

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Last week I introduced the Exploring COVID-19 Around The World Dashboard that I built using the Shiny Platform. Today I’ve updated the dashboard to include a waffle plot that allows you to compare case and mortality rates across several countries. Interested in how Canada compares to Sweden, for example? The waffle plot can help. EvenContinue reading "COVID-19 Waffle Plots"

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Over the last few months, the Government of Canada has announced new programs and policies to deal with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. One of those announcements included changes to the funding structures that already existed to support the hiring of students in the Co-op program. Specifically, eligibility requirements were relaxed to allow faculty and researchersContinue reading "COVID-19 & Co-op: Work Integrated Learning Through ICTC"

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Dear Students of Fall 2020, The last few months have been a challenge. You have had your regular winter semester interrupted and upended as we made the switch to emergency remote online teaching. Many of you have faced difficult financial and personal challenges as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The world is a differentContinue reading "An Open Letter To The Students Of Fall 2020"

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Over the last 11 or so weeks, thanks in part to physical distancing, I have been exploring the R Shiny platform. For those unfamiliar with Shiny, this is the platform that was used to create the Monitoring COVID-19 In Canada dashboard. And spoiler alert for my future students – this is one of the toolsContinue reading "Exploring COVID-19 Around The World"

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Congratulations to Marshall Asch, Patrick Houlding, and Jeremie Fraeys de Veubeke who have recently been awarded Northern Scientific Training Program grants to support their Master’s research. Valued at $2,150 each, the 2020-2021 awards will support travel to and research with the community of Rigolet, Nunatsiavut. Each of the students are working to optimize wireless mobileContinue reading "Students Awarded Northern Scientific Training Program Grants"

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At the best of times academic writing can be a challenge, particularly for graduate students who are just learning the ropes. However, our system is one in which many academics and academics-in-training conflate the idea of independent work with being alone. So it’s no surprise that graduate students might feel isolated or anxious when theyContinue reading "Writing At A Distance"

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I am excited to announce that I have been selected as a mentor for the STEM Fellowship Undergraduate Big Data Challenge (BDC). The BDC runs May 22-31 (online), with a final event happening sometime in July. The BDC is open to undergraduate students who are interested in data science, statistics, computer science, and more. IfContinue reading "STEM Fellowship: Undergraduate Big Data Challenge"

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As was the case a few weeks ago, we’ve recently made some changes to the Monitoring COVID-19 In Canada Dashboard. At the time, the changes provided more functionality. Today, we’ve updated the dashboard to better represent the current state of the pandemic. CLICK HERE TO LAUNCH THE DASHBOARD What exactly does that mean? During theContinue reading "COVID-19: A Changing Curve"

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