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Thirteen postdoctoral fellows from five different faculties at UĢ����ý have won awards recognizing their success in translating research results into societal impact.

The annual honours researchers from across campus. This year, participating faculties included , , , , and .

“These awards recognize postdoctoral fellows who are actively translating their academic research towards real-world impact,” says , PhD, associate dean, community and innovation, with the Faculty of Science. 

“The nature of such impact ranges from developing commercial products all the way to enabling evidence-based policy development and beyond.”

This year’s award recipients, he noted, highlight such diverse activities ranging from artificial intelligence in health care and environmental technology to next-generation sports science and smart agriculture:

• Dr. Amir Azimi, MD, postdoctoral fellow in the Cumming School of Medicine. Amir is developing AI-enabled technologies that transform routine cardiac MRI and CT scans into personalized models to improve disease diagnosis, risk prediction and precision cardiovascular care.
• Dr. Jayar Espejo, BSc’21, PhD’26, Faculty of Science. Espejo uses biopolymers such as cellulose as an alternative to flocculants for agricultural wastewater treatment.
• Dr. Manuel Ester, PhD’23, postdoctoral associate in the Cumming School of Medicine. His work helps people with chronic conditions such as arthritis and cancer become and stay physically active.
• Dr. Breno Garcia, PhD, postdoctoral associate in the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. Garcia is developing innovative diagnostic and decision-support tools that integrate on-farm diagnostics and machine learning to improve mastitis management and antimicrobial stewardship in dairy herds.
• Dr. Sara H. Tamrin, PhD’23, a Banting postdoctoral fellow in the Schulich School of Engineering. She’s developing EXOSense, a new technology that could help detect cancer earlier by studying tiny lipid-based particles that are naturally released by cancer cells into our bodily fluids.
• Dr. Prathap Iyapazham Vaigunda Suba, PhD’24, a Mitacs Accelerate Entrepreneur postdoctoral associate in the Faculty of Science. His work focuses on developing and scaling up electrochemical carbon capture technologies.
• Dr. Hilkka Kontro, PhD’24, postdoctoral associate in the Faculty of Kinesiology. Kontro is developing physiology-based mathematical models that estimate an athlete's remaining capacity to produce power during exercise.
• Dr. Leila Rezaei, PhD, postdoctoral fellow in the . She is bringing together microbiome science, child development, and computational biology to better understand early-life health.
• Dr. Keely Shaw, PhD, postdoctoral associate at the . Shaw is investigating the interplay between physical activity and nutrition to optimize health and physical function in diverse populations including individuals with impairments, females and older adults.
• Dr. Farzana Shirin, PhD, is exploring the intersections of economics, environmental and food policy in the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and the . Her focus is on consumer preferences for government interventions in carbon taxation and emission reduction in the Canadian agricultural sector.
• Dr. Raissa Souza de Andrade, PhD’25, postdoctoral associate in the Cumming School of Medicine, is developing privacy-preserving distributed learning frameworks that enable AI models to be trained on large, representative, multi-centre datasets without compromising patient data privacy.
• Dr. Lukas Spirig, PhD, in the Schulich School of Engineering, is enabling sustainable transportation through novel materials and electric vehicle technologies. He is currently building additive manufacturing technologies for satellites.
• Dr. Robin Trama, PhD, in the Faculty of Kinesiology, is developing Xplode Track ‘N Train, a smartphone platform that uses GPS, motion sensors and AI to measure the force, speed and power athletes generate while sprinting.

The postdoctoral awards, which are $3,000 each, open for applications each spring.