Federal government’s bundled announcement provides funding for dozens of University of Regina researchers.
Watch any crime show, and, more often than not, the crux of most episodes revolves around an eyewitness testimony. Picking the perpetrator out of a lineup is one of the most compelling forms of evidence on TV or in a real investigation. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most problematic because it’s often fraught with error. It’s also the leading cause of wrongful convictions.
This is compounded when the eyewitness to a crime is a child.
According to graduate psychology student Shaelyn Carr from the University of Regina, this is because children want to please the police by picking someone – even if they know it’s not the person they saw, and even when they’ve been told it’s okay to not make a choice – so they are more likely to identify an innocent person from a police lineup than an adult. Making correct identifications gets even more unreliable when there’s a delay between the time of witnessing a crime and identifying someone in a police lineup.
Now, Carr has received $80,000 in federal funding through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowship, along with $28,000 from the U of R’s Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, to help find a way to improve children’s eyewitness testimonies.
Shaelyn Carr, a PhD candidate in psychology, has received $80,000 in federal funding through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowship, along with $28,000 from the U of R’s Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research. (Photo by Trevor Hopkin)
“Past research has explored a number of techniques that assesses the strength and reliability of a child’s eyewitness memory, but very few showed good results. The techniques that have been trialled are also complex and hard to apply in real-life police investigations because they require computer-based algorithms,” says Carr.
Her research will continue work towards finding a developmentally-appropriate tool that is both reliable and useful in the real-world.
“My master’s project tested out a multiple independent lineup (MIL) technique traditionally tested on adults. It requires a witness to make several different identification decisions from a series of lineups. So, one set of lineups would feature different faces, another would show different body shapes, one would show clothing, and one plays different voices,” says Carr.
The premise is that the more lineups the eyewitness selects the suspect in, the more likely the witness has made an accurate facial identification.
“My master’s thesis provided promising evidence that this technique worked well with child eyewitnesses in ideal circumstances, where the child had a strong memory of the culprit, where there was a short time between seeing the perpetrator and seeing the lineup, and where they had a long exposure to them,” says Carr.
“These projects demonstrate the high calibre of researchers who are driven to make societal impacts at the University.”
Her current project will try and determine if the same is true for children where there are poor circumstances, like not having a strong memory of the culprit, having a long delay between seeing the culprit and seeing the lineup, and having a short exposure to the perpetrator.
“If my work improves the eyewitness testimony of kids, this could lead to fewer wrongful convictions,” says Carr.
Carr’s award was announced today as part of a federal government bundled announcement, where dozens of University of Regina researchers, including faculty members and master’s and PhD students, received funding totaling more than $7 million.
Dr. Chris Yost, Vice-President (Research) at the University of Regina, says these projects demonstrate the high calibre of researchers who are driven to make societal impacts at the University.
“Our researchers – from faculty to students – are conducting exciting and meaningful research. They’re passionate about making a difference in the lives of Canadians and pushing the limits of what we think is possible to make this a better place to live now, and into the future.”
Another of the funded projects includes graduate student Joanna Vint’s work in exploring how different types of yoga impact levels of depression, stress, and anxiety.
Joanna Vint, a master’s student in psychology, received $17,500 from the Canada Institutes of Health Research Canada Graduate Scholarship, along with $5,000 from the U of R’s Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research. (Photo by Trevor Hopkin)
For this project, Vint, a master’s student in the psychology department, received $17,500 from the Canada Institutes of Health Research Canada Graduate Scholarship, along with $5,000 from the U of R’s Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research.
Vint says she is studying whether vinyasa yoga - a type of yoga that matches the breath with fast-paced poses that flow from one to the next – reduces anxiety, depression, and stress symptoms more than hatha yoga – a gentler, slower form of yoga where poses are held for longer periods of time.
“Given that anxiety and mood-related disorders are prevalent and on the rise, research on exercise as an intervention to improve psychological well-being is really necessary,” says Vint. “My research will help to provide support for these exercises as efficient interventions, particularly vinyasa yoga, as it combines both exercise and synchronized controlled breathing.”
Also announced today were two new tier-two Canada Research Chairs.
Dr. Arthur Situm is a Canada Research Chair in Small Modular Reactor Safety and Licencing. He received $600,000 from the Canada Research Chairs program, and $200,000 from the Canada Foundation for Innovation to help support his lab’s infrastructure.
Dr. Arthur Situm, a Canada Research Chair in Small Modular Reactor Safety and Licencing, received $600,000 from the Canada Research Chairs program, and $200,000 from the Canada Foundation for Innovation to help support his lab’s infrastructure. (Photo by Trevor Hopkin)
“Nuclear power is an important tool in the fight against climate change due to its ability to generate power without greenhouse gas emissions,” says Situm.
He says there are plans to deploy several new small modular reactor (SMR) designs in Canada, which have lower upfront capital costs than traditional nuclear power plants and can be deployed to smaller grids, such as Saskatchewan’s. Many of these advanced designs propose to use novel fuels, but these fuels introduce new corrosion problems that must be resolved before the reactor designs can be licensed.
Situm’s lab is developing strategies to mitigate the corrosion of metals when using novel molten salt fuels, to enhance the safety of standard nuclear fuel, and working on how to best dispose of these fuels.
“Overall, my research program will provide valuable insight to both government and private industry as they build and deploy SMRs, while also helping students develop the skills and knowledge necessary to work in this emerging industry,” says Situm.
“My Canada Research Chair program aims to accelerate Canadian nuclear science leadership, while also helping develop technologies to benefit all Canadians.”
Dr. Gojko Vujanovic is a Canada Research Chair in Subatomic Physics Phenomenology. He received $600,000 from the Canada Research Chairs program, and $83,109 from the Canada Foundation for Innovation to help support his lab’s infrastructure.
“I study the fundamental building block of matter that surrounds us by exposing new states of matter that are present beyond solids, liquids, and gases,” says Vujanovic.
The U of R physicist says that these new states of matter exist at extremely high temperatures – trillions of degrees – and are recreated in the laboratory using high-energy nuclear collisions. Such temperatures were produced by the Big Bang when the universe was a millionth of a second old.
Dr. Gojko Vujanovic, a Canada Research Chair in Subatomic Physics Phenomenology, received $600,000 from the Canada Research Chairs program, and $83,109 from the Canada Foundation for Innovation to help support his lab’s infrastructure. (Photo by Trevor Hopkin)
“In high-energy nuclear collisions, these states are extremely short-lived and require extensive physics-based numerical simulations to be understood. My research pushes the boundary of what our computational algorithms and technology can achieve, using a combination of high-performance computing, big data analysis, and artificial intelligence. My Canada Research Chair program aims to accelerate Canadian nuclear science leadership, while also helping develop technologies to benefit all Canadians,” says Vujanovic.
Below is a list of the other University of Regina researchers who received funding as part of the bundled announcement:
Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) Innovation Fund:
Garth Huber, Solenoidal Large Intensity Device (SoLID) Heavy Gas Cherenkov Detector, $509,500
National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Alliance Grants:
Irfan Al-Anbagi, Internet of Things Partial Discharge Detection (PD) System, $25,000
Abdul Bais, Developing Machine Learning Methods for RGB Images to Quantify Crop and Weed Populations Across Agricultural Fields, $300,000
Howard Hamilton, Software Design for Forecasting Populations in Custody and Analysis of Telephone Call Metadata, $300,000
Orland Hoeber, Exploratory Search for Digital Humanities: A Feasibility Study, $25,000
Golam Kabir, Multi-dimensional Resilience Framework Development for Culvert Infrastructure Systems, $25,000
Mehran Mehrandezh, Flight Control of an Unmanned Aerial Manipulator, $25,000
Leslie Robbins, B_RiSkET - Brine Resources in Saskatchewan: Exploration Tools, $60,000
Christopher Somers, Climate change mitigation and adaptation: fisheries changes from phasing out coal-generated electricity, $50,900
Jinkai Xue, Integrated methods to treat per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)-contaminated water matrices, $25,000
Jinkai Xue, Can water treatment residual be useful? A preliminary investigation in the Canadian Prairies, $50,000
Jinkai Xue, 3-D printed dynamic membrane modules for wastewater treatment and reuse, $50,000
Zhanle Wang, Design, modeling and optimization of a hybrid wind-gravity energy system, $25,000
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Development Grants:
Lindsey French, Olfactory Media Library, $45,236
Jennifer MacDonald, Seeing, Reading, and Experiencing the World Differently: Interdisciplinary Possibilities of Counter-Mapping for Truth and Reconciliation Education, $54,971
Safoura Moeeni, Do Partial Unemployment Insurance Programs Work? Evidence from the Canadian Working While on Claim Pilot Project, $54,740
Alexandra Stoddart, Physically Literate Women, May We Know Them and Be Them: An Exploration into the Development of Physical Literacy through Young Women’s Lived Experiences in High School Physical Education, $49,474
Tri-Agency Graduate Scholarships and Fellowships:
Ayomide Adedun, SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship Masters, Stereotype Threat and Institutional Betrayal: Do Microaggressions Influence Cognitive Performance of Women and Racial Minorities? $17,500
Nicole Banton, SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship Masters, Artificial Intelligence as a Subject and Method in Contemporary Printmaking, $17,500
Whitney Blaisdell, SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship Doctoral, Co-creating children’s outdoor play opportunities amongst urbanization in the Canadian prairies, $105,000
Alexa Danyluk, CIHR Canada Graduate Scholarship Masters, The Impact of Unmet Social Support Needs on Coping Behaviour and Depressive Symptoms in Chronic Pain Populations, $17,500
Rachel Evans, NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship Masters, Exploring a New Subgraph of Cayley Graphs, $17,500
Shannon Fayant, SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, Educational Leadership Stories of Métis Iskwêwak (Women), $40,000
Jade Fisher, NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship Masters and Indigenous Scholars Supplement, Characterizing the Molecular Function of ARSACS Disease-Related Protein, Sacsin, $27,500
Siham Hagi Hussein, SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship Masters, Biases in Adults’ Truth and Lie Judgements of Black Children’s Statements: The Impact of Anti-Black and Colour-Blindness Attitudes, $17,500
Jasleen Kaur, SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship Masters, Parenting Behaviours, Paternal Postpartum Depression, and Child Social-Emotional Development during COVID-19, $17,500
Trudy Keil, SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, Exploring teacher activism within and beyond the union in Saskatchewan, $40,000
Juliana Khoury, SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, Sexual violence among Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers: An iterative search for solutions, $80,000
Caleigh Landry, CIHR Canada Graduate Scholarship Doctoral, Examining the impact of content delivery method on internet-delivered cognitive behaviour therapy satisfaction and effectiveness in public safety personnel, $105,000
May Ly, SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, Understanding the Role of Dependence and Trust in Institutions on Wellbeing: A Mixed-Methods Study of Institutional Betrayal, $80,000
Katie MacDonald, SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship Masters, Victim Blaming in the Courtroom: The Influence of Attorney Gender on Juror Decision-Making, $17,500
Kamogelo Matebekwane, SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, An ethnographic study of Black children’s identity construction in early childhood education, $60,000
Sherjan Maybanting, SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship Masters, Understanding the Settlement and Integration of Newcomer Filipinos from Canada’s Economic Based Immigration in Rural Saskatchewan: An Antiracist and Anticolonial Constructivist Grounded Theory Analysis, $17,500
Katlin McCallum, NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship Masters, Changes to the Environment and Aquatic Community of Boundary Reservoir Associated with the Phase Out of Fossil Fuels, $17,500
Kaila Neigum, NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship Masters, Second Life Batteries for Electric Vehicle Charging Stations, $17,500
Abby Phillips, SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship Masters, Exploring the potential of reading blog posts to improve well-being of parents of children with mental illness, $17,500
Colin Rieger, CIHR Canada Graduate Scholarship Masters, Characterization of Staphylococcus aureus susceptibility to antibiotics in Synthetic Wound Fluid, $17,500
Bethany Sander, NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship Doctoral, Experimental Investigation of the Biopsychological Mechanisms Underlying Estradiol-Related Mood Changes, $105,000
Laura Schnell, NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship Masters, Capturing and sequencing plasmids in Saskatchewan’s Qu’Appelle River catchment, $17,500
Robyn Shields, CIHR Canada Graduate Scholarship Doctoral, Validation and psychometric properties of a proposed PTSD screening measure for Canadian PSP, CIHR Doctoral Award, $105,000
Ogle Whitney, NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship Masters and Indigenous Scholars Supplement, The Unveiling of a Lakota Winyan (Woman): A Self-Study in Reclaiming Lakotayapi (Lakota Language), $27,50
In addition, the U of R received funding from:
Research Support Fund: $3,037,329
The Research Support Fund assists Canadian postsecondary institutions with the costs associated with managing their research enterprise, helping them to maintain a world-class research environment.
Incremental Project Grants: $27,289
The Incremental Project Grant is a stream of the Research Support Fund that provides further support for the indirect costs of research.
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