CAMPUS NEWS

STFX TEAM REACHES FINALS OF BANK OF CANADA’S GOVERNOR’S CHALLENGE

Better Understanding The Brain

In ation is at the top of mind of many Canadians, and four StFX students are advising the country’s central bank – the Bank of Canada – how rising prices can be brought back under control. Will Girling (BA honours in economics with subsidiary in mathematics), Mallory Long (BSc joint honours in economics and mathematics), Carly MacDonald (BSc honours in economics with subsidiary in mathematics) and Matt West (BBA joint honours in business and economics) greatly impressed the judges of the Bank of Canada’s Governor’s Challenge monetary policy competition. is event requires teams of undergraduate students to analyze Canadian and international economic and nancial developments in order to advise the Bank of Canada how it should set its trend-setting policy interest rate. e rst round of the competition saw teams from 26 Canadian universities presenting their work remotely to Bank of Canada o cials. e StFX team nished at the top of its six-university division, coming ahead of teams from universities that are more than 10 to 15 times its size. e StFX team will now compete against the other four divisional winners at the national nals, taking place at the Bank of Canada head o ce in Ottawa on February 3-4, 2023

Research work to better understand the brain, work that could potentially help people with degenerative brain disease, was in the spotlight recently as StFX computer science master’s student Athar Omidi defended her thesis on aligning human brain images in a “functional” space instead of a physical space. e value of this work is to not only better understand the brain, but to better help people with degenerative brain disease as their brains may di er in shape quite a bit, says her supervisor, computer science professor Dr. James Hughes. e work provides a framework for aligning brain function in a high-dimensional space rather than in three physical dimensions using a form of sophisticated mathematics within the eld of Optimal Transportation. Machine learning was used to analyze the transformed brains to ensure the accuracy of the novel alignments. e project started as a master thesis under the supervision of Dr. Hughes and mathematics professor Dr. Ryan Lukeman with guidance from psychology professor Dr. Erin Mazerolle. Ms. Omidi successfully defended her master’s thesis in October in front of an examination committee that included the external examiner Dr. Mark Daley, the Vice President, Research at the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research and professor at the University of Western Ontario.

Two projects carrying out important climate change research at StFX will be funded in part by the Government of Canada. On Nov. 23, two StFX faculty members, Dr. Andrew MacDougall and Dr. Dave Risk, were awarded over $2 million in funding from the Climate Action and Awareness Fund. Dr. MacDougall, Coordinator, Climate & Environment, has been awarded $1,557,149 and will lead a project, quantifying the climate bene t of nature-based solutions in Canada. StFX is the lead institution on this research in a partnership with three other universities (Simon Fraser University, University of Victoria, and Concordia.) Dr. Risk, earth sciences professor and head of the Flux Lab, has received $475,500 in funding and will conduct research on COntinuous MEthane mapping in Western Canadian oil and gas Towns (COMET).