A Taste of Research

Associate Professor, Faculty of Kinesiology and Health Studies

Our Brains are Built for Change

The human brain is incomplete. It is a constant work in progress that determines how we think, move, and experience the world. Mang will explore how exercise and supportive communities can harness the brain’s remarkable capacity for change, even years after a neurological condition begins.

Bio

What if exercise could help rewire your brain? Dr. Cameron Mang studies how exercise can boost learning and brain plasticity. As Director of the URNeuroLab and founder of Enrich Neurorehabilitation, he brings his research into the community, supporting people living with multiple sclerosis, brain injury, stroke and other neurological conditions. Enrich also serves as a real-world testing ground for new rehabilitation strategies and a training ground for the next generation of rehabilitation professionals. Together, URNeuroLab and Enrich are driving positive change in the lab, the classroom, and the community.

Associate Professor, Physics, Faculty of Science, Campion College

Will AI Data Centres in Orbit Turn Earth into a Ringed Planet?

Starlink, the first mega constellation, has already transformed the night sky, making astronomical research more difficult. Now, SpaceX and several other companies have proposed launching millions of additional “orbital AI data centre” satellites into ring-orbits around the Earth. Lawler explores what happens when the next frontier of technology moves into orbit.

Bio

Dr. Sam Lawler studies the movement of objects through our solar system and has become one of Canada's leading voices on satellite pollution. Motivated in part by SpaceX debris that landed in Saskatchewan, she regularly shares her expertise with major media outlets including the BBC, CBC, CNN, NPR, Scientific American, The New York Times, Wired, and Nature.

Associate Professor and Department Head, Earth Sciences, Faculty of Science

A Tale of Two Rocks: The Rise of Oxygen

How did Earth become a planet where complex life could thrive?

The rock record can provide so much more than just resources. Learning to read the geological record and its chemical signals can shed light on some of the most profound events in Earth’s history, including the rise of oxygen that ultimately helped make complex life possible. What looks like an ordinary rock may hold a story four billion years in the making.

Bio

Rocks can tell stories that stretch back billions of years - if you know how to read them. Dr. Leslie Robbins uses the chemistry preserved in geological materials to uncover how Earth and life evolved together over the past four billion years. His research also looks toward the future, investigating how new sources of critical minerals could help Saskatchewan play a role in the global energy transition. Before joining the U of R, Robbins completed his PhD in Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta and was a Donnelley Environmental Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University.

Professor, Visual Arts, Faculty of Media, Art, and Performance

A Sleuth in the Museum

Sometimes history hides in plain sight. A surgeon. Old letters. A Cree woman. An 18th-century coat. A smallpox epidemic. An 1851 newspaper article, three journals, and painted and beaded coats scattered across different museums.

For Sherry Farrell-Racette, these fragments are clues. Reconstructing Indigenous aesthetic histories relies on reading the living object and following faint traces through provenance records into the broader archive, connecting seemingly unrelated pieces. The process is non-linear, multidisciplinary, painstaking — and fun.

Bio

Sherry Farrell-Racette is an interdisciplinary scholar with an active art and curatorial practice. Born in Manitoba, she is a member of Timiskaming First Nation in Quebec. Farrell-Racette does extensive work in archives and museums with an emphasis on women’s voices and recovering aesthetic knowledge. She was the Distinguished Visiting Indigenous Faculty Fellow at the Jackman Humanities Institute (2016) and received the University Art Association of Canada Lifetime Achievement Award 2021. In 2026 she became the inaugural Audain Fellow in Historical Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada.

Assistant Professor, Criminology, Faculty of Arts

Forget Murder and Mystery: The Real Story of Missing Persons

Why should you care about missing persons? Because what we see — the mysteries, sensational headlines, podcasts, documentaries, and true-crime stories — is not the full picture. Ferguson takes audiences beyond sensational headlines to show who goes missing, why, and why understanding these cases should matter to all of us.

Bio

Dr. Lorna Ferguson is an award-winning criminologist and founder of the Missing Persons Research Hub. Her work examines why people go missing, how police and search-and-rescue teams respond, and how true crime content influences public understanding of these cases. She has worked with police services, search-and-rescue organizations, governments, communities and families across Canada. She has published nationally and internationally on missing persons and policing and is the author/editor of eight books, including Missing Persons: Beyond Serial Killers and Unexplained Disappearances.

PhD Candidate, Faculty of Media, Art and Performance

Valuable Voices: Preventing Physician Vocal Fatigue through Song

A growing number of physicians are experiencing vocal fatigue and strain, particularly those in busy ERs who constantly have to wear face masks. Drawing on humour, which influences our behaviour, McCulloch investigates how singing training can help people develop stronger, more efficient speaking voices, producing more vocal power with less effort.

Bio

A critically acclaimed soprano and voice teacher, Andrea McCulloch has performed across the United States and Canada and collaborates on projects that fuse art and science. Passionate about healthy vocal production through song, she teaches a voice class for medical students at the University of Saskatchewan, and is a sessional instructor for the University of Regina’s Music Department.

PhD Candidate, Faculty of Education 

Are We Listening to African Children?

Do you see me?

This is a question that African children constantly ask themselves in their learning spaces. Matebekwane’s research invites them to share their schooling experiences and aspirations. They are struggling at school because of systemic racism. Her research is a call of action, because every child matters.

Bio

Amanda Matebekwane's research puts the experiences and voices of African children at the centre of conversations about education. Born in Botswana and of African descent, she uses anti-racist and anti-oppressive frameworks to explore Canadian early childhood education, and the experiences of African children in Regina elementary schools. Her research, funded by the Social Science & Humanities Research Council, draws on Critical Race Theory and privileges the marginalized voices to (re)imagine inclusive and culturally sustaining spaces that honour the intellectual legacies of African peoples in Canada.

PhD Candidate, Faculty of Education 

What Teachers Carry

What if burnout isn't a teacher's personal failure, but a broken system's flaw?

Teachers carry heavy burdens for their students, but their capacity has its limits. In this talk, you'll learn how innovative, trauma-integrated research is shifting from individual resilience to systemic support, while reimagining teacher preparation so educators and their students can truly thrive.

Bio

After more than a decade in Saskatchewan classrooms, Jaclyn Roach knows firsthand how much teachers are asked to carry. Now an instructor at the U of R, her work focuses on making schools better, healthier places for both teachers and students. She brings together trauma-informed teaching, teacher wellbeing, literacy and justice to help build supportive, caring learning spaces where everyone feels seen and valued.

Master's Student in Microbiology, Faculty of Science

Root Rot Complex, the Silent Enemy of Canadian Pulses

A disease you can't see from the road could be quietly destroying a Saskatchewan farmer's crop from below.

Saskatchewan farmers wait the entire winter to put their fields to work, only to watch their crops turn yellow and patchy when summer arrives. Aphanomyces root rot can attack pea plants from below the soil, making it difficult to detect until serious damage has already been done. In the blink of an eye, 60 per cent of their yield could be lost. That’s how devastating the root-rot complex is. Grajales explores a new and sustainable way for Prairie farmers to protect their crops.

Bio

Rafael Grajales studies Aphanomyces root rot, a disease that attacks the roots of pea plants and threatens one of the Prairies' important pulse crops. His research looks at whether beneficial bacteria could help slow the disease and support healthier crops. By combining laboratory tests and field experiments, Grajales hopes to find practical new tools that could help farmers facing root rot challenges in Saskatchewan and other Prairie growing regions.