Published on Brock University (http://www.brocku.ca)

Focus on Five: Researcher Profiles

Tomas Hudlicky, Tony Volk [1], Kendra Coulter [2], Charles Conteh [3], Ejaz Ahmed [4]

In every nook and cranny of Brock University are researchers blazing trails, enabling the wider community to move forward with new information, insights, and innovations. Each month we bring you five such individuals who are making a difference in the world around us.

Chemist <a target="_blank" href="http://www.brocku.ca/mathematics-science/departments-and-centres/chemistry/people/faculty/tomas-hudlicky">Tomas Hudlicky</a> and his <a target="_blank" href="http://www.brocku.ca/mathematics-science/departments-and-centres/chemistry/faculty/Hudlicky/">international team of scientists</a> are on the front line of a growing trend in research: connecting the university laboratory with the laboratory of industry.Late last year, Hudlicky <a target="_blank" href="http://www.brocku.ca/brock-news/?p=20172">signed an agreement</a> with a Canadian drug development company that is testing the anticancer activity of synthetic variants of the natural product pancratistatin. These new drugs are designed and synthesized in Hudlicky's labs. Earlier in the year, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.brocku.ca/brock-news/?p=16198">Hudlicky had passed the $1-million mark</a> in revenues generated through licensing agreements primarily for new processes used in the manufacture of important medicinal agents for pain control and for alcohol and drug addiction.The Ontario Partnership for Innovation and Commercialization recently named Hudlicky <a target="_blank" href="http://www.brocku.ca/brock-news/?p=21763">Innovator of the Year</a> for research leading to “a better quality of life and economic well-being” for society.The university-industry partnerships that Hudlicky and his team members are involved in are expected to help bring to market the fruits of their research, which include new pain and cancer medicines by means of “environmentally benign” chemical processes developed in his labs. [5]

<a name="tonyvolk"></a>Tony Volk, developmental psychologist, Department of Child and Youth StudiesWhy do bullies bully? It’s a basic question that haunts developmental psychologist <a href="http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/child-and-youth-studies/faculty-contacts/anthony-volk" target="_blank">Tony Volk</a>, especially as horrific incidences continue to make headlines across the country.“What I think is going on is they are picking on people below them to send a signal, and the signal is meant not for the victim; it’s meant for people who are close to the bullies’ status,” says Volk. “That signal is, ‘Look at how aggressive I am. I’m a risky, dangerous person to cross.’”As Volk studies how dominance hierarchies work, he’s getting a clearer picture of <a href="http://www.brocku.ca/brock-news/?p=18938" target="_blank">what happens in the mind of a bully</a>. He and his colleagues are also interpreting a wide array of data they collected on children’s personalities, temperaments, abilities and other individual traits to paint a picture of who is a bully and who is a victim.The researchers have a separate study on the role of sports and after-school activities on bullying. And, Volk conducts cross-cultural bullying research in Dominica and with Six Nations communities in Canada.Volk belongs to <a href="http://www.prevnet.ca/" target="_blank">PREVNet</a>, an umbrella network of 68 leading Canadian research scientists, more than 100 graduate students, and 54 youth-serving organizations that make it Canada's authority on research and resources for bullying prevention. He says he is heartened by the attention bullying is starting to receive from Canadian governments. [6]

<a target="_blank" href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/05/01/death-toll-from-bangladesh-factory-collapse-tops-400-officials-say/" name="kendracoulter"></a>Kendra Coulter, labour studies professor, Faculty of Social Sciences<a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/04/27/bangladesh_building_toll_rises_to_352_four_arrested.html" target="_blank">The scene was devastating:</a> some 400 workers dead and scores more trapped in the rubble of a Bangladeshi clothing factory that police ordered evacuated only one day before. When labour studies professor <a target="_blank" href="http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/labour-studies/faculty-members/kendra-coulter">Kendra Coulter</a> saw the unfolding coverage of the April 24 tragedy, she remembered a startling finding by the Workers’ Rights Consortium. It would cost 10 cents per garment, or three per cent of what foreign retail companies spend in Bangladesh for the factories to be raised to ‘Western standards.’ “The latest example is particularly horrific and indicative of a wider problem, of social structures and practices which treat workers, and especially poor workers, as disposable,” she says. Coulter is passionate about the rights and working conditions of workers across the retail “commodity chain.” Most of her current research focuses on front-line retail workers and on strategies for improving work in the sector. She is Canada’s leading university-based retail work researcher and not only has written an impressive number of scholarly articles, but her book “Revolutionizing Retail” hits the shelves in 2014. In addition to her academic writing, Coulter created and maintains<a target="_blank" href="http://revolutionizingretail.org/"> a website dedicated to highlighting retail workers’ collective action and the range of avenues available for improving retail work</a>. She also regularly writes commentaries and shares her insights in the media when key retail events occur, such as Target’s recent incursion into Canada. Coulter calls on retail companies and governments to improve retail workers’ rights, including by ensuring living wages, paid sick days, and the freedom to organize without reprisal. “Retail workers’ well-being is important to me, and it should matter to everyone. What happens in retail affects the entire economy,” she says. “The retail sector is the largest employer in Canada, yet retail workers are often ignored, in addition to being socially and economically devalued. This needs to change.” [7]

<a name="charlesconteh"></a>Charles Conteh, political scientist, Faculty of Social SciencesFor political scientist <a href="http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/political-science/faculty-and-staff/professors-by-area/charles-conteh" target="_blank">Charles Conteh</a>, cities were once upon a time “afterthoughts” of a strong central government or “creatures of provinces.” But no longer: cities and regions are now the drivers of economic growth in a dramatically shifting world economy.Conteh explores this and other themes in his hot-off-the-presses book <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Policy-Governance-Multi-level-Systems-Implementation/dp/0773541217" target="_blank">Policy Governance in Multi-level Systems</a>, with two other books in the offing. He also writes on these themes as a <a href="https://www.brocku.ca/research-at-brock/researchers-in-the-news/community-voices" target="_blank">guest columnist</a> for the St. Catharines Standard. He explains that the old model of a federal or provincial government dictating economic policies from the top – and even the very notion of a “national economy” itself – has given way to a system in which small and medium-sized companies in cities and regions carve out unique niches for themselves in the global market.Fuelling the new “knowledge-driven economy” are partnerships between post-secondary institutions, industry, and public sector agencies in which research and development are applied in the marketplace. The Niagara Region, Conteh says, is going through its own “crisis phase of transition” in moving from a primarily blue-collar, manufacturing-based economy to an innovation and knowledge-based economy. “What can be viewed as a crisis, in reality, is an opportunity to re-think the future of Niagara and, indeed, regions and cities all across Canada.” [8]

<a name="ejazahmed"></a>Ejaz Ahmed, statistician, Dean of Faculty of Mathematics and ScienceIt’s all around us, influencing public opinion, interpreting medical test results, even telling politicians where to put their election campaign money. It’s statistics, a passion that drives statistician <a target="_blank" href="http://www.brocku.ca/mathematics-science/departments-and-centres/mathematics/people/professors/syed-ejaz-ahmed">Ejaz Ahmed</a> to make sure that the humble number is given its dues in the research community and in society. “It’s a growing trend,” says Ahmed. “People are realizing how important statistics are in all aspects of life. Take public policy. How do you make a policy without having any data? And when the data is there, how do you analyze it in order to make sense of it?” Ahmed is an active researcher in the area of “high dimensional data analysis,” a relatively new, cutting edge statistical method that finds similarities and patterns inside of massive and complex data sets, primarily by identifying which of the sometimes millions of variables are relevant to the task and focusing on those variables. To further explore high dimensional data analysis – and to commemorate the 2013 International Year of Statistics – Ahmed organized an <a target="_blank" href="http://www.pims.math.ca/scientific-event/130523-iwpohddai">international statistics conference</a>, to be held in Vancouver in May. He is organizing <a target="_blank" href="http://www.brocku.ca/news/22446 ">another conference in August</a>. Ahmed has also authored and co-authored six statistical and mathematics textbooks, with a further book on high dimensional data analysis on its way. [9]

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