Sébastien Avakian (BLUE Fellow)

The concept of Emergence — the phenomena where novel effects, absent in the governing equations, arise from the collective interaction amongst many particles — is a crucial principle in Condensed Matter Physics. Beyond its documentation in this field, Emergence transcends physics and manifests in diverse scenarios like the forming of cells or society. Hence, I posit that Emergence occurs whenever many agents/objects interact under predefined rules and, therefore, identifying quantitative measures for systems with numerous particles exhibiting Emergence using physics tools seems plausible. Soccer, with its simple rules and expansive nature, becomes a suitable subject of study. Drawing inspiration from total football and positional play, I propose that phase transitions, akin to those in matter, also occur in soccer. My project aims to explore soccer’s emergent properties by devising quantities reflecting the game’s state based on collective player motions. I propose to numerically analyze positional data from professional teams in order to develop a mathematical framework to comprehend transitions in play.

Brianna Blackwell

Learning to code is an intimidating process, especially for those who feel like they don’t have an affinity for STEM subjects. For my project, I am creating a game that will teach the basics of programming in Python in a way geared toward humanities (and especially literature) students. The game will emphasize the coding skills necessary for working with text while also building up understanding of the fundamentals of programming. Where most books, apps, and other resources on programming assume their audience is interested in math or the sciences, my game will embrace humanities students’ skills and interests.  

Martina Calçada Kohatsu (BLUE Fellow)

After attending a meditation retreat and perceiving the connections between mind and matter in my own body, I’ve begun to think differently about emotions. Emotions are not nouns to be intellectually apprehended, but rather bodily sensations to be experienced. They are not something to be controlled but observed and understood. Emotion regulation then may be reimagined through stories that bring awareness to bodily sensations instead of prescriptive guidelines for behavior. That is the idea behind “contemplative reading for children," a book that invites children to experience their bodily sensations and understand rather than repress them.
Originally, books invite readers to suspend their bodies and enter a different world. But how can reading prompt children to enter a contemplative state? Secondly, how the language that children understand may affect their experience? This asks a deeper question about to what extent language limits our apprehension and sharing of reality. If children who speak different languages are prompted with the same descriptive bodily sensations, would they report the same experiences? What if they could create their own words for their experiences?

Isabella Chiaravallotti (BLUE Fellow)

My project will merge the burgeoning field of artificial-intelligence-driven language models, and sustainable agriculture. In the face of climate change, a growing global population, and increasingly detrimental agricultural practices, breeders of staple crops are at the helm of making sure that farmers have the cultivars they need to respond to changing climate conditions, increase the yield of their crops, and limit their use of harmful fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. For several decades, plant breeders have used genomic data to estimate the value of specific plants in terms of its use in developing a new cultivar. This process is called genomic prediction, and breeders of staple crops have been trying to use neural networks and machine learning for the task of genomic prediction with limited success. In the hopes of achieving greater success using neural networks for genomic prediction, I would like to turn the task of genomic prediction into a translation question. Can we take genetic marker data and effectively translate it into a description of estimated phenotypes for use in plant breeding programs, to help meet the needs of farmers around the world? 

Madison Cooper

As an undergraduate Mathematics student also pursuing a minor in English literature, I have always been torn between whether I think the world is governed by equations or emotions. More specifically, I have noticed that society often separates mathematical logic, which requires proofs based on universal truths to justify claims, from intuitive logic, which relies more so on emotions, gut feelings, and lived experiences. When thinking about these seemingly distinct views of logic, I cannot help but wonder if there really exists a separation between them, or if one type of logic can be equated to the other. I am curious to explore the reliability of either logic type, and want to imagine what the world would look like if it was governed solely based on one of these thought patterns. After all, our sense of logic greatly shapes the lens through which we see the world. 

Mohamed Debbagh (BLUE Fellow)

Plants in a digital medium are commonly represented through various artistic expressions such as video game landscapes and simulated research environments. Plant growth modeling, in the visual sense, is a complex process that combines artistic skills with procedurally generated rendering algorithms to achieve perceptually “realistic”outcomes. While this may be enough for applications including seemingly realistic and visually aesthetic plant growth, it does not capture the true plant's trajectory. Plant systems involve dynamic interactions with environmental conditions and other plants, making them gray or black box systems that can be challenging to capture via a simple linear or polynomial model. This leads us to use rudimentary methods such as the prominent Lindenmayer Systems which still requires pre-rendered art to visually represent the plant. I am proposing a research project as part of the B21 BLUE fellowship which explores an encoded representation akin to Neural Radiance Fields for digital plant representation, and a generative model approach for sampling the encoded latent space to construct realistic rendering of a plant’s growth cycle.  

Christian Denis (BLUE Fellow)

During a physics education, one gets thrown to the head a series of ideas and concepts analogous to jigsaw pieces. Over time, as scientists, we take those pieces and put them together into bigger pictures that tell us things about the world. I think most scientists feel excited when they assemble the pieces of a picture that has not been reported before. This is why I feel excited about the notion of emergence. It seems to me that there are all these puzzle pieces from different fields (renormalization group theory, nonlinear oscillators, information theory, symmetry, emergence, etc.), that fit together to form a new picture. Hence, in this project, I would like to explore ideas related to emergence in the context of, but not limited to, biophysical oscillators/nonlinear oscillators. Recent frameworks for the rigorous description of emergence have used information theory and causality as means to characterize different scales of systems. Applying these ideas to nonlinear oscillators and expanding on them seems like a novel pursuit and I think could yield interesting results.

Murad Gohar (BLUE Fellow)

A writer by disposition, an engineer by training, and an environmentalist by fate, my project is an amalgamation of my personhood at the intersection of sustainability, creative writing, and applied generative AI. I aim to craft a global spatiotemporal map offering insights into our potential collective futures across geography, time and degrees of global warming through the medium of personalized storytelling. A highly speculative proposition - as is the future... 

Mai-Thi Ho

How does walking inspire thinking? More broadly, how does the way we interact with the immediate environment mirror our experience in mental space? 

In a parallel thread, the world is rich with layering shades while our words are discrete. How might we bridge the gap? 

Perhaps the body can complement the sense of continuity, returning the nuances lost among discrete words. Left and right, better and worse are convenient binary terms. But take balancing on one foot, left and right motion are continuous, each feeding into another. That, we all know already. The abstract concept can be traced back to physical experience, which in turn helps our thinking.  

I'm a first year Cognitive Science student, interested in embodied cognition and language as frames to navigate life. 

Mohamad Hosein Danesh (BLUE Fellow)

In this project, the objective is to develop robotic systems capable of undertaking missions to explore celestial bodies. This involves designing robust, autonomous robots that can navigate and conduct scientific experiments in space environments, significantly furthering our understanding of the universe and potentially preparing for human colonization.

Surabhi Joshi (BLUE Fellow)

My idea for BLUE is ‘Modeling lupus.’
Lupus refers to systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), a chronic autoimmune condition, which affects women primarily (9 times more than men). SLE appears to manifest more in Asian, African, and Hispanic individuals.
SLE affects multiple organs in the body. Studying it using clinical trials pose design, analysis, and interpretation challenges. Consequently, the exact cause of lupus is unknown, and its diagnosis and study is difficult.
Modeling a complex condition like lupus where the ‘self’ is not identified correctly by our inner world requires a broad framework that has the potential to understand, explore, and capture the key relations, paradoxes, and nuances, including our genetic and developmental history; Jesper Hoffmeyer put it succinctly when he described living creatures as "history made flesh”.
To explore this topic of modeling lupus theoretically, I plan on using biosemiotics, where the concept of meaning is introduced into biology, and the act of semiosis is an act of meaning-making. Specifically, I plan on exploring Peircean biosemiotics to study the signs, symbols, and interpretation occurring in living organisms with lupus.

Rebecah Kaplun

What is wisdom? From where or whom have you received wisdom previously? In which contexts do you feel more wise, and in which situations do you crave wisdom and wish for wise guidance? 

Wisdom is not only evermore needed in our society with exponential progress in technology and intelligence coming with an array of moral dilemmas, but wisdom is also shown to increase overall well being, quality and even length of life. In this project I examine what wisdom looks like and consists of, and how it can be applied in various contexts, particularly when making difficult decisions. Further, is there a way to use technological interventions alongside long term changes in institutional systems like universities to enhance and teach for wisdom, preparing us for unforeseen and imminent developments in the future and under an ultimate pursuit of eudaimonia.

Finn Kleckner

My project is centered around finding improvements to the current system of academic publishing. The motivation stems from two main places. My initial interest was provoked after learning about fudged research during the development of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. As it turns out, corporate fudging of research data is not uncommon, Purdue Pharma disrupted the lives of millions by rolling out Oxycontin under false pretenses supported by "academic research". This led me to ask myself how is this possible? The answer is that the credibility of academic research is subjectively evaluated. To steal the words of my collaborator, the currency of science is not knowledge but peer-review. Peer review is the process in which scientific research is validated and ultimately published. The second factor of my motivation I found after minimal research. Published researchers by-and-large detest the peer-review process. It takes a long time, they don't receive compensation, often there are high barriers of entry, and the list goes on.

The scope of this project is large and it is in the narrowing process. One direction is to create a framework for distilling research into Minimal Publishable Units (MPUs) such that essential pieces of evidence can be identified and validated. The idea is to give the ability to connect data together on a broad scope by showing provenance ultimately facilitating transparency. Another direction is to develop software allowing scientists to utilize AI to speed up publishing-related work. Yet another approach is to create an alternative system of authority that improves upon the bias existent in the current system while retaining the necessary elements. This likely includes creating some system involving anonymity and credit rewards.

Mohit Kumar (BLUE Fellow)

I aim to devise Curriculum for Eklavyas (have-nots), a unique curriculum for primary school (Class 3 to 5) students. The curriculum will aim to catalyze quality education and larger behavioral changes regarding learning, educational awareness and opportunities.
At Building 21, I aim to research, discover, and invent curriculum/modules, which will simultaneously go under the experiment with students of my ongoing educational project “Sarathi The Guide” in Firozabad, India. The curriculum at the initial stage of research and experiment intervenes in the basic subject matters of “our surroundings," social science, and the English language. In making them, I plan to utilize my interdisciplinary knowledge of education, social entrepreneurship and lived experiences.
I am excited about this opportunity as it provides me with a physical and mental space to curate a toolkit that is going to reflect an “out-of-the-box” curriculum and implementation. This project aims to work for education beyond conventional schooling, learning, and teaching. Overall, I aim to break the notion that students (Eklavyas) of underserved societies are destined for mediocrity in education, opportunities, and life.

Victoria Macheroub

My project aims to explore the connections between neurodivergence and entrepreneurship. While my focus is not on establishing direct causality, I'm keen on unraveling how certain cognitive and behavioral patterns, often innate to neurodivergent individuals, contribute to their success in entrepreneurial or non-conventional paths. To achieve this, I intend to conduct interviews with entrepreneurs, founders, and other creative minds, spanning the entire neurodivergence and neurotypical spectrum. Through their narratives, I seek to understand their journeys and the obstacles they may have encountered. I hope to deepen our understanding of both neurodivergent and neurotypical thinking tailored to the context of entrepreneurship.

Liliane Murdoch (BLUE Fellow)

My project will focus on musical composition and its different forms. More specifically, I would like to look at different ways in which a song may be written & recorded, with in mind the specific tools that are being used in the process. This could include a physical guitar, a notebook, a digital audio interface such as Ableton or Logic Pro, rhyming dictionaries, Chat GPT & even Python coding.  I will be looking at all aspects of the writing & composing process, from initial contemplation to finalizing a recording. The “why” of my project lies in this desire I have as an artist to understand my craft, and sonically translate an image in the most accurate way possible. In other words, what digital or physical tools (or combination of both) provide the most accurate translation of a human generated and initially intangible idea?

The “why” involves exploring a process that usually seems so automatic that we don’t consider what tangible tools are contributing to the final result, and what specific role those tools are playing in translating the initial idea, which may be a mental image, a feeling, or a thought. Tools may include digital tools but also include pen to paper.

Irene Newman Jimenez

my work builds upon combining my love of post colonial theory, critical race theory, queer theory, and feminist theory with my love of neurological pathways for attention, decision-making, behavior, and habits. 

exploring notions of otherness, identity, positionality, behavior,  -isms, power; hoping to establish behavioral, habitual, neurological underpinnings of othering. if it is socio-psycho-biologically learned, it can be unlearned. 

Hamidah Oderinwale

In science, replicating experiments and achieving consistent results is crucial for maintaining scientific integrity and credibility. But it is getting harder with the rise of machine learning experiments, especially those using computer simulations. These experiments have built-in randomness, making it tough to do them again precisely the same way each time. Reproducibility is important for accountability but can also make model training easier and more precise, supporting capabilities in a world where algorithmic creativity will be increasingly important to make breakthroughs. My research focuses on streamlining data provenance – the documentation of data origins and processes.

Gursween Padda

My project aims to unravel the intricate layers of abuse within Quebec's foster care system by posing critical questions that delve into the core of the issue. What precisely constitutes abuse, and how can we develop accurate definitions and assessments of its pervasive presence? By approaching these questions holistically, drawing insights from various disciplines such as psychology, sociology, and biology, my project aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of abuse within Quebec's foster care system. Additionally, the visual exploration of this project will be done in a documentary format. I will conduct in-depth interviews with a diverse range of experts in the field of foster care. This will include researchers, social workers, psychologists, and individuals with lived experiences within the system. These interviews will serve as a powerful means to bring nuanced perspectives and real-life insights to the forefront, allowing the audience to connect with the human stories behind the statistics. Through my examination, I aspire to contribute valuable insights that can inform not only a critical analysis of the existing issues but also the development of effective, trauma-informed solutions. 

Lisa Pennel

My project explores the interplay between cognitive science and the legal system. I am currently focusing on the future of the legal system through this cognitive science lens. Among others, here a few questions leading my project research, thinking, and development:

1. How does our modern neuroscientific and psychological knowledge of human behavior shape our current legal system? How has this understanding changed historically, and does it differ internationally?

2. Can we mold the legal system to better fit our human nature and society? 

3. If so, how?

Natalia Popovska

How do communities heal? In this project, I hope to understand how incorporating local traditions in transitional justice can help aid in the restoration and longevity of peace.

Asya Ciftci (BLUE Fellow)

My project, 'Structures of Life and Structures of Domination,' proposes a redefinition of freedom through the lens of self-organization, bridging diverse disciplines, including philosophy, physics, biology, ecology, and political science. It challenges the traditional human-centric view of freedom, suggesting that all entities, from individual organisms to entire ecosystems, inherently pursue autonomy and order. This approach applies thermodynamic concepts to understand social and ecological structures, offering new perspectives on environmental ethics and societal organization.
I argue that both natural and social systems exhibit a form of freedom in their intrinsic quest for self-organization against entropy. The project aims to analyze how these systems preserve and augment their internal complexity, illuminating the fundamental principles underpinning life and freedom. This interdisciplinary study can provide insights into the dynamics of domination and resilience in both natural and human realms, potentially reshaping our understanding of environmental policies and the structures of societal governance.

Adam Sanger (BASC Student)

My project investigates the psychological effects that digital labor has on the humans who perform it. Drawing on current research in computer science, anthropology, psychology, and digital humanities, I will try to determine whether the unique and precarious environments where digital laborers work might produce biases in the Artificial Intelligence programs that they create. I find the new forms of work produced by and for technological innovation fascinating. This project allows me to examine whether the social relationships and psychological effects of these new forms of work impact technological innovations themselves.

Cal Smith

My project will investigate some of the remaining ethical quandaries from coursework I performed in Winter 2023 on a McGill manuscript in the Rare Book and Special Collections at the McGill Library. In that work, I was able to trace the origin of Manuscript (MS.) 152 to a hermandad [brotherhood] in Spain. The manuscript describes the rules that govern the hermandad as set by the Catholic church at the time, and the current Hermandad de la Santa Caridad continues to operate under that charter. However, they only possess print copies of the manuscript, which, though the text is essentially the same, the mis-en-page is radically different.

My project thus aims to reflect upon the work I performed. While my work was instrumental in informing the hermandad of the manuscript’s existence, it simultaneously reinforced the library’s claim to the manuscript because now the manuscript has historical and textual context that informs its value. My BLUE project intends to ask the hard ethical questions surrounding archival work; questions that are uncomfortable for the library but also for me personally as a researcher.

Souren Vahdatfarimani

I am interested in our freedom to exist. In contexts that I am curious about, I want to explore the question of being born and being. I want to explore this in the context of people in my home country of Iran and animals in an anthropocentric world. 

My goal is to write a novel that explores these ideas through the lives of characters living in Iran. What is it like to be a female gynecologist working in the desert in a small, patriarchal community? What is it like to be ten and have your report card torn up by your older brother and told you can’t go to school because you’re a girl? What is it like to be kept in a cage smaller than the length of your body to be sold for slaughter or experimentation? Is intelligence the moral measure of an animal’s value? 

These are questions I do not know I could ever, ever answer or honour by attempting to answer. But they are some of the questions that urge my curiosity and my literary interests. It is possible that if/when I finish my first draft, the direction of my story will have diverged from this initial trajectory. I just know my general interests and I know should get started writing.

Emma Vrignaud (BLUE Fellow)

Over the past year I have taken interest in various topics: patterns, randomness, education, language, music, learning, identity, freedom, shape, difference, formalization. I thought about all of these topics again, trying to identify a common thread, what is driving me to ask all these questions?
I came to the conclusion that I am absolutely fascinated by rules. At the moment, I would define a rule through some synonyms: structure, limit, space,order, algorithm, recipe, reason, logic; this definition is bound to evolve!
There are two main interrogations I have about rules which I would like to explore throughout the semester. First, I want to study “latent” or “hidden” rules, by approaching supposedly ruleless phenomena: are there rules of rule-lessness? There are a few phenomena I have in mind: randomness, creativity, chaos. Secondly, I would like to explore our relation to rules: do they exist outside of human interpretation? Are learning and rule-making equivalent?

I know it might be but I am confident I will have the time and determination to explore these questions. In terms of format I would like to be quite free and break some rules! (I’ll add a comic-strip I made.)

Julia Wright

I am interested in how fungi, a fascinating, diverse, and underexplored kingdom of life, can be used to help the environment and those around us. Fungi have immense capabilities, being able to grow on nuclear waste in Chernobyl and potentially form computing networks, yet we know so little about them. During my time at Building 21, I will be exploring fungi’s capabilities, with a focus on waste management and bioremediation. As I investigate this field, I hope to simultaneously give back to the community through diverting waste, improving mycological knowledge, and potentially alleviating food insecurity by donating harvested mushrooms.

Sophie Wu (BLUE Fellow)

There are many ways that ChatGPT has me beat. I do not have the totality of the internet’s knowledge at my fingertips, nor the ability to rewrite a story in iambic pentameter in seconds. But perhaps these “weaknesses” actually give me the “human-ness” that many people claim artificial intelligence still lacks (i.e. take a look at GPT-written short stories). My memories, for example, carry a particular quality to them: a vibe that I can’t quite put my finger on, but one that I’m sure that ChatGPT can’t replicate — even if it happens to have a significantly higher long-term memory capacity than mine!

The word “vibe” — used to imply the ineffability of feeling carried with an experience — has become increasingly popular in recent years. Perhaps it’s how we stake out the importance of our human experiences while computers increasingly challenge the uniqueness of human thought. In this light, I ask: what are the “vibes” that artificial intelligence can’t yet process or reproduce? Could it even be possible to train artificial intelligence to encode/decode these vibes? If so, how? If not, what are the implications of this human-computer difference?

Alexandre Zaezjev (BLUE Fellow)

The "Siren’s Echo" is a sound installation, inspired by my recent research trip to war-torn Ukraine and set in either a dark room or a minimalist VR space. This project recreates the unsettling experience of relentless air raid sirens, symbolizing the immediate dangers of war, and juxtaposes this dehumanizing experience with another dehumanizing one - that of emotionally detached academic intellectualism.

Its primary goals are multifaceted: firstly, to amplify the voices of refugees from war-torn regions, presenting their experiences through contemporary multimedia art. Secondly, it focuses on 'aural witnessing' over 'eye-witnessing,' underscoring the importance of auditory experiences in shaping our understanding of crises.

Lastly, the installation examines the tension between emotion and cognition in comprehending human trauma, challenging traditional academic approaches that favor cognitive frameworks. It advocates for a multidisciplinary approach that blends empathic engagement with intellectual rigor, aiming to provide a deeper, more holistic understanding of the complexities surrounding displacement and conflict.

Claudia Baptista Claros (TOSI Scholar)

This project explores the question "what are the cybernetic principles of metasystems?" by analysing the sociological, technical, and philosophical characteristics of information ecosystems. Information ecosystems are defined as all the processes and structures, agents and entities, involved in the creation, dissemination, and access to information (Kuehn, 2023). The practice of science, its associated informational outputs, actors such as researchers or administrative personnel, the physical and institutional structures in which the practice of science is carried out, are all elements that jointly create an information ecosystem. By analyzing and formalizing the interdisciplinary body of theory around the concept of an ecosystem, we can better understand what it means for the practice of science to be open/sealed; in what way? To who? Should it always and indiscriminately be open? How can open science create knowledge?

Tatiana Becerra (TOSI Scholar)

Drawing on indigenous ontological and epistemological definitions of learning and knowing, my project  addresses the intricacy of learning, knowledges and literacies, specifically by exploring their emergence from interaction with the land.  I specifically plan to visually and orally narrate land-based [hi]stories from a rural community in northern Colombia. I will curate [hi]stories from a pool of video-data that I obtained during fieldwork for my PhD dissertation. This video-data includes narratives that members of a rural community shared while walking the Land –mountains, fields, rivers, homes, gardens, ponds in their community. Adults and youth share the practices, beliefs, understanding, historical knowledge that sustain their ways of living and being in their rural community. Through my analysis of these [hi]stories, I expect to shed light on the ways knowledge is created from interaction with the Land. For example, how signs and meanings are evoked during Land-human interactions. These portrayal of embodied, land-based [hi]stories may allow us to recognize the value of local knowledges –especially those from rural communities that are often disregarded or deemed as inferior– for understanding how to engage in sustainable and responsible stewardship of the Land.

Aubin Gasc

The 21st century ‘modern’ state system is composed both of an overarching structure of interaction (anarchism) and a pivotal unit (sovereign states). Sovereignty—key dimensions of which can be traced to mid-17th century Europe, notably a state’s right to self-determination, and by the same token, the emergence of a norm of non-interference—is my core focus. It’s commonly accepted that the idea of sovereignty has much transformed since its original conceptualization: it has become far more porous both in physical terms (the permeability of borders considering technological innovations and recent ‘relevance’ of pandemics; the ‘wavering’ role of territory and nationality with globalized exchanges and migration) and theoretical terms (prevalent non-state actors having determinant impacts of policy; the presence of inter-governmental organizations shaping domestic politics).

 If the normative concept of sovereignty is adapting to our de facto contemporary realities, I will see that it also undergoes an intentional change in its conceptualization, one motivated by on-the-ground realities. Some areas of exploration of this project encompass, but are not limited to: the ‘development’ of a (universal) ontology on apolitical premises of a shared humanity; the premise that we live in a world shaped by conquest and deep grievances; how intervention along R2P premises could be incorporated in this discussion; what are the spaces within the international law system through which human rights can be effectively protected; the significance and  reconceptualization of sovereignty; the profound and inalienable role of individual agency in giving meaning to the institutions and large-scale structures we create; [more to come…]

Using the tools at my disposal (which have been extensively enlarged by my engaging with B21’s community), I endeavour to use political theory, philosophy, psychology, history, and the many more (un)related fields to help me navigate this issue. 

My dissatisfaction with the current impact of national and supra-national systems of organization on human lives is the driver to my attempt at partially redefining the way in which states interact with one another, which starts with a transformation of sovereignty itself. 

If it sounds ambitious, it’s because it is. But I’m hoping to get there at some point.

Josh Goldman

Data is the new oil, and there's no doubt about it. Data is now the world's most valuable resource, and companies are investing vast assets to accumulate and maintain their data advantage. From individualized medicine, to self-driving cars, big data has the potential to radically transform our world for the better. However, might there be a cost to recording such large amounts of data? When and how can one consent to having data collected? Do the benefits of data collection outweigh the erosion of individual privacy? These crucial questions will play a leading role in determining the course of humanity's relationship with technology in the 21st century. I am interested in studying these questions from both a technological and political perspective. My initial guiding questions are

1. What are the economic impacts of regulating data collection? 

2. Is it technologically feasible to collect data while protecting individual privacy? 

3. How should lawmakers govern new digital technologies?

While these questions may seem divergent, I view them all as particular manifestations of one fundamental question: What does a good data future look like and how do we get there?

Alvaro Iturralde Zurita (TOSI Scholar)

As researchers, our projects are linked to a lab, whether we use the lab for testing, conducting analysis, or just meeting and exchanging ideas. Having access to these spaces enable us to be a part and contribute to science. However, for those outside of academia, these spaces remain far and the process of research becomes blurry.

In my project, I am exploring how we can break this barrier and bring the lab closer to the people. My proposal includes the creation of an online environment that encourages knowledge exchange and provides tools for students outside of academia to have their first experience conducting research.

Nicia John (TOSI Scholar)

It is captivating the way that movement contorts physical and abstract space.

In my daily research on human motor systems, I conceptualize ballet analogies to make sense of complex neural principles. During ballet training, I use scientific theory to recalibrate my procedural perceptions of motor control. Art and science are intricately intertwined and magnificently multiplicative. It is a joy to pursue both fields in equal tandem and to feel inspired by the weight of untouched interdisciplinary possibilities they hold.

This project, creMAP: The Art-Scientist Platform, proposes to construct an open-access network designed to amplify and promote the voices of innovative professionals who approach new ideas with both methodological thought and vast creativity -- the art-scientist. Using cognitive and behavioural principles of human movement as a tool for exploration, I question the process and potential impact of problem-solving with this dual-minded framework. When and why is the practice of art science necessary, and what is its role in developing the human experience?

I believe that art should be used as a tool to bridge the communicative divide between science and society, and through movement, I seek to facilitate the creation of spaces that minimize this gap.

Lauren Mosley

After reflecting on how my creative writing has evolved in recent years, I began questioning why I shifted from poetry to prose. To explore this further, I would like to work on a series of creative projects that are in dialogue with one-another and later create a visual to map progressions and changes in theme and style. My hope is that this will help me to understand what different creative mediums can contribute to a particular theme or question, and where they are limited. So, starting from initial project (A), each work will respond to the previous one, and will respond differently (ex: no responding to a haiku with a haiku).

Shuting Wang (TOSI Scholar)

I am currently a PhD student in the Faculty of Education at McGill. My background is in biotechnology and molecular biology, and I have been always interested in science education and science communication. My B21 project is focused on developing effective strategies to improve the accessibility of the methods of science.

UNESCO (2013) recognizes science as a paramount collective endeavor and one of the most important channels of knowledge. OECD/PISA defines scientific literacy as the inseparable connection between the knowledge about science and the knowledge about the processes by which scientific knowledge is developed. In today’s intricate information landscape, the way we perceive knowledge and truth, which impacts our decision-making process, should be grounded in reliable methodological tools that enable us to objectively evaluate various claims. Despite a growing sense of mistrust in science, particularly in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the methods of science are still one of the best tools we have when our goal is to reduce uncertainty, increase prediction accuracy, and mitigate our own biases.

Improving the accessibility of the methods of science has the potential to enhance science literacy and foster a better understanding of knowledge. The possible outcome of this project may include greater community involvement in scientific research and a better understanding of socio-scientific issues, like climate change, evolution, and vaccination.