Each year, over 250 student volunteers contribute approximately 30,000 hours to assisting staff at the Physical Activity Centre of Excellence (PACE), where they monitor exercise tolerance and adherence among PACE participants. Many students describe the experience as life changing.

This year, PACE has advanced the Microcredential in Equitable Activity, Mobility, and Community Health – aimed at equipping McMaster undergraduate students with the expertise they need to design and implement inclusive physical activity programs. Students will develop skills and strategies to deliver safe, effective and personalized exercise programs to marginalized populations – including children, older adults and individuals with chronic illnesses or disabilities – and help them reach their fitness goals.

Under the leadership of Acting PACE Director, Dr. Jennifer Heisz, the microcredential proposal was developed in consultation with the MacPherson Institute. Key components include program objectives, a teaching framework, strategic alignment with McMaster’s mission, and success metrics. The initiative has received guidance from the INSPIRE Office, the Faculty of Science, and the Department of Kinesiology. Once approved by McMaster’s curriculum committee, it will be?the University’s first undergraduate academic microcredential.

In the coming months, PACE will seek academic approval, finalize course materials and collaborate with faculty and community partners to develop learning modules and a capstone project for the microcredential.

Investigators at the Michael G. DeGroote Centre for Transfusion Research (MCTR) are using AI and machine learning to collect and analyze valuable healthcare data. Leveraging the Centre’s 700,000+ patient Transfusion Research, Utilization, Surveillance and Tracking (TRUST) database, researchers are compiling a rich set of data points to train machine learning models and better predict and treat health conditions.

The MCTR has partnered with colleagues from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering to lead two AI projects. The first is an early warning system for heparin-induced thrombocytopenia – a condition that leads to low blood platelets and blood clots – after cardiac surgery. The Centre’s findings will help clinicians identify at-risk patients earlier and target more aggressive, preventative therapies, improving health outcomes in this vulnerable patient group.

The second project – funded by the Hamilton Academic Health Sciences Organization (HAHSO) and supported by the Heersink Signature Scholarship from The Marnix E. Heersink School of Biomedical Innovation & Entrepreneurship – is focused on predicting bleeding in patients with acute leukemia.

To complement these AI initiatives, the Centre has also revamped their TRUST database protocol to assess current blood transfusion use, anticipate future demand for blood and identify risk factors for known and emerging blood transfusion complications using a machine-learning approach. In addition to clinical information, this dataset contains over 1.5 million transfusions and 2.2 million blood products, uniquely positioning the MCTR to link patient, product, and outcome data moving forward.

The Centre for Advanced Research in Experimental and Applied Linguistics (ARiEAL) brings together researchers from around the world versed in linguistics, language, cognition, and cognitive neuroscience. In 2024, ARiEAL launched new partnerships and projects in the realm of responsible artificial intelligence (AI) – one of the next big emerging areas of research in language sciences.

As AI continues to evolve, researchers have warned that Indigenous and racialized peoples, who already suffer from unequal access to information and communication technologies, may suffer the same fate with AI. This trend will have disastrous consequences for equity-seeking groups that are experiencing a digital divide and face barriers to accessing modern technologies. 

Researchers at ARiEAL are committed to understanding the societal and human implications of AI from a language sciences lens. As such, ARiEAL is embarking on several projects that tackle the issue of responsible AI and equity. Two ARiEAL trainees recently completed internships with Statistics Canada, and discussions are underway with SR Research and Compute Canada, among other partners, to collaborate on AI-centred projects. ARiEAL is also planning to submit a Horizon Europe proposal that aims to enhance the accessibility and equity of current language technologies.

With the support of numerous academic, industry, and community partners, these programs will train a workforce that is well-equipped to push the potential of language technologies and develop products and solutions that are cognitively, psychologically, and culturally informed, as well as equitable and inclusive.

Established in 2024, the McMaster Center for Research on Employment and Work (MCREW) fosters innovative interdisciplinary research on changing work, workers and workplaces. Since its inception, MCREW has already secured funding and launched several initiatives to advance research with real-world impact that deepens our understanding of work.

Bringing together faculty and graduate student researchers from McMaster and nearby universities, MCREW’s inaugural conference, titled Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Changing Workplaces, facilitated knowledge exchange in the areas of worker well-being and motivation, new employment arrangements and work structures, and the representation of equity-deserving groups in the Canadian and global workforce.

With support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the DeGroote School of Business and McMaster’s RCI Consolidated Support Fund, MCREW is working to develop infographics and videos that distill findings related to employee well-being, inclusive organizational environments, and the role of government in regulating labour markets – informative materials which can be distributed widely to researchers, community workers, students, and the media.

Also in 2024, Catherine Connelly, Director of MCREW, secured funding from the SSHRC Partnership Development Grant program to advance her project entitled The show must go on: Supporting Canadian professional musicians. Connelly and partners will conduct a qualitative study of musicians, booking agents, venue owners, and festival organizers, as well as a quasi-experiment that follows professional musicians before and after their participation in the project’s negotiation workshop.

The Centre for Advanced Research on Mental Health and Society (ARMS) is leading mental health research in the social sciences for a safer and healthier tomorrow. ARMS’s innovative approach centres the structural and societal aspects of mental health, with a focus on projects and initiatives that explore mental health experiences across all segments of society.

In 2024, ARMS hosted the Mental Health Research Symposium: Building a Community of Practice. The two-day event gathered over 100 attendees, bringing together scholars, students and community organizations to foster dialogue and exchange insights on community-engaged mental health research.

Dr. Ingrid Waldron, Professor and HOPE Chair in Peace and Health at McMaster University, spoke about her research on racial trauma and the importance of building meaningful partnerships with communities. The symposium also featured panel discussions, student poster presentations and open-mic sessions exploring themes like building equitable research collaborations, overcoming power imbalances in community-academic partnerships and applying community-engaged research methodologies.

Coinciding with the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) Hamilton’s Mental Health Week, the symposium featured The Art & Inquiry Soirée, hosted by CMHA Hamilton, where artists, students, and researchers showcased paintings, photography, poetry, and digital art reflecting lived experiences with mental health. The symposium was funded by a SSHRC Connections Grant and exemplified ARMS’s commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration and advancing mental health research through community-driven approaches.