Faculty and staff at the University of Guelph support SARS-CoV-2 vaccine safety

Faculty at the University of Guelph stand firmly against the spread of vaccine misinformation. Misinformation actively undermines our national public health response and global health security.

With freedom comes responsibility. That applies to academic freedom too. It should not be used to provide cover for misrepresentation and misinformation.

We support evidence-based public health measures, which includes SARS-CoV-2 vaccination.

Read our open letter in support of vaccination (signed by over 80 faculty members).

COVID-19 Pandemic

As a lab, we rang in the New Year with a game of Pandemic and a boatload of holiday cookies. Little did we know that we would soon be dealing with the emergence of a new virus, SARS-CoV-2 that would be declared a real pandemic!

As someone who has spent much of their career working on outbreaks, disease dynamics, and pandemics this means that I have been actively working on COVID-19 research, as well as pandemic preparedness and response activities at the federal and provincial level since early February 2020. I am also currently a member of the PHAC COVID-19 Modelling Expert Advisory Group.

Since March 2020, we have published 6 peer-reviewed manuscripts on different aspects of COVID-19 transmission dynamics, and public health interventions. You can find our most recent COVID-19 research here. While writing research papers is an important part of my job as an academic scientist, I have also written a number of opinion pieces focused on 1) infection prevention and control in school settings, and 2) parenting during a pandemic.

You can find many more details about our COVID-19 projects and related media in my CV which you can find here.

Super Awesome!

Listen to our fearless leader, Dr. Amy Greer, discuss water safety from a One Health perspective on the Super Awesome Science Show.

Congratulations to former mathepilab member Dr. Kelsey Spence!

Kelsey’s research characterizing the movement network of horses in Ontario has been published in PLOS ONE! The results indicated that horses did not travel to the same locations each month, and the most connected locations varied between consecutive months. These results support the need to better understand the variety of locations to which horses can travel in Ontario, as different types of locations may have different associated risks of disease spread.

Congratulations to former math.epi.lab members Gabrielle Brankston and Cyndi Boughen!

Gabrielle and Cyndi (both former math.epi.lab members) have just had a new paper published in PLOS ONE. If you are interested in the relationship between environment, livestock, and human incidence of cryptosporidiosis look no further! 

2017 AAAS Golden Goose Award for Dr. Joyce Longcore

Dr. Joyce Longcore. Photo courtesy of the University of Maine.

This morning I arrived at the office to an email from my doctoral supervisor Dr. Jim Collins at Arizona State University (ASU). The email had been sent to a long list of current and past collaborators of the lab all of whom have worked on or are currently working on research questions related to amphibian decline. The email was to inform us that last night in Washington, Dr. Joyce Longcore, Elaine Lamirande, Dr. Don Nichols and Dr. Allan Pessier, were awarded the 2017 AAAS Golden Goose Award. The award celebrates scientific success stories and Dr. Longcore and the other awardees are the perfect example of a great team doing some wonderful investigative work. 

Jim's email was also a reminder to me of how fortunate I was to complete my graduate training at ASU being mentored by Jim. As a member of his team, I also had the ability to interact with a large network of scientists, and graduate students from across the country that were all a part of a large, NSF funded Integrated Research Challenges in Environmental Biology (IRCEB) project focused on amphibian decline (Dr. Longcore was one of those scientists). It serves as an important reminder to me how experiences, conversations, and being treated as a colleague even when you are a graduate student can really shape the experience of graduate students. I have very fond memories of my time at ASU and the wonderful training environment in which I was "raised". Jim Collins, Elizabeth Davidson and the rest of the IRCEB team were all a huge part of that and seeing Dr. Longcore receive such a prestigious award in recognition of her work in the area of amphibian decline was a really wonderful surprise for a Thursday morning. 

Luz met PM Justin Trudeau at a meeting in Ottawa this week.

Luz managed to get a selfie with our PM Justin Trudeau after the discussion.

The math.epi.lab's very own Luz Kisiel was invited to travel to Ottawa to participate in a discussion with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and President Enrique Peña Nieto on Tuesday, June 28, during the Mexican leader's state visit to Canada.

Luz has conducted research in Mexico looking at owned, and free-roaming dog population dynamics as well as rabies vaccination programs within the State of Hidalgo, Mexico. She was invited to participate in a discussion about collaborative research partnerships and opportunities for students in Canada and Mexico. 

The discussion was held at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa and was moderated by Dr. Ingrid Bejerman, Coordinator for the Canada in the Americas Initiative (CITA) at the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. 

Kelsey's research featured in Western Producer magazine