Our Researchers
At Toronto Metropolitan University, we combine excellence and relevance to advance prosperity and quality of life in Canada. Our researchers are also impacting their fields in areas from literature to nursing and aerospace to digital media.
Innovation is at the core of our research mandate, and the success of our approach is reflected in our strong record of research growth.
Faculty Experts
Toronto Metropolitan University offers its partners access to world-class expertise and facilities.
Highlighted Researchers
Canada Excellence Research Chairs
Karen Soldatic (CERC in Health Equity and Community Wellbeing)
Karen Soldatic‘s empirical research explores how social, cultural, economic and political factors influence health and community well-being. By collaborating directly with diverse, marginalized communities, her research results in more equitable access to disability, health and social service institutions, promoting broad-scale policy and systems change.
Visit our Faculty Experts page to learn more about Karen Soldatic’s research. (external link)
Visit the CERC in Health Equity and Community Wellbeing web page.
Contact: ksoldatic@torontomu.ca
Anna Triandafyllidou (CERC in Migration and Integration)
Anna Triandafyllidou’s main areas of research and teaching are the governance of cultural diversity, migration, and nationalism from a European and international perspective. Her research program investigates the links between migration and post-migration processes, forced and voluntary mobility, internal and international migration, and the role of countries of origin and transit.
Visit our Faculty Experts page to learn more about Anna Triandafyllidou’s research (external link) .
Visit the CERC in Migration and Integration web page.
Contact: anna.triandafyllidou@torontomu.ca
Canada Research Chairs – Tier I
David Gauntlett (Creative Innovation and Leadership)
David Gauntlett is exploring creative processes, self-initiated everyday creativity, and cultures of making and exchanging. His work experiments with platforms for creativity, creative identities, leadership and public understanding of creative practice, all of which are essential to the development and design of content and technologies in business, media, educational organizations and cultural institutions.
Visit our Faculty Experts page to learn more about David Gauntlett’s research (external link) .
Learn more about the Creativity Everything lab. (external link)
Contact: david.gauntlett@torontomu.ca
Michael Olson (Molecular Cell Biology)
Michael Olson is an established leader in cytoskeleton function, the internal structure that shapes all cells in the human body. His research seeks to identify and understand the characteristics of cancer cells that are prone to metastasize, with the aim of creating more effective, targeted drug therapy treatments that improve outcomes for cancer patients.
Learn more about the Olson Lab. (external link, opens in new window) (external link)
Natasha Rajah (Sex, Gender and Diversity in Brain Health, Memory and Aging)
Natasha Rajah is developing a more inclusive understanding of what factors contribute to the trajectories of cognitive aging and healthy and pathological brains. Her research will be conducted using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in combination with cognitive testing of adults from diverse backgrounds to investigate why there are sex differences in the prevalence of some neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease, in which two-thirds of cases are females.
Contact: natasha.rajah@torontomu.ca
Canada Research Chairs – Tier II
Reza Arani (Smart Grid Cyber-Physical Security)
Reza Arani is developing new controls and designs to ensure that smart power grids are secure, sustainable and resilient. His research considers factors such as increasing digital communications along the grid and the growing availability of renewable and clean energy sources. In particular, his work addresses potential digital and physical vulnerabilities in the power system while innovating ways to eliminate, mitigate or detect attacks and threats.
Rupa Banerjee (Economic Inclusion, Employment and Entrepreneurship of Canada’s Immigrants)
Rupa Banerjee is exploring the significant role that non-state actors, such as universities and employers, play in Canada’s immigration system. She aims to increase our understanding of newcomers’ experiences, discover more about how institutions approach this issue and provide insights that can be used to guide policy.
Anton de Ruiter (Spacecraft Dynamics and Control)
Anton de Ruiter is developing next-generation control systems for spacecraft that orbit asteroids. He is also advancing research on trajectory design for low-thrust and autonomous spacecraft that can assemble, inspect and repair large space structures.
Seth Dworkin (Sustainable Energy Modelling and Simulation)
Seth Dworkin's work focuses on improving emissions profiles for aircraft engines and geothermal heating and cooling systems. Using computer models, he looks at ways to enhance these systems' performance and develop models adaptable to industry use.
Bilal Farooq (Disruptive Transportation Technologies and Services)
Bilal Farooq’s research explores the possibilities of connected and autonomous vehicles and ride-hailing services. Using advanced sensor networks in combination with big data, he is building prediction models that can inform public policy and make the most efficient use of the transportation systems of today and tomorrow.
Anatoliy Gruzd (Privacy-Preserving Digital Technologies)
To answer questions about why and how data consumers use social media data, Anatoliy Gruzd is expanding on his past work in social media data stewardship to examine the adoption and use of new privacy-preserving technologies and methods by social networking platforms with the aim of understanding how privacy-preserving technologies can be leveraged to benefit Canadians and organizations while fostering digital innovation.
Dae Kun Hwang (Microarchitecture for Advanced Polymeric Materials)
Dae Kun Hwang creates “novel polymer-based platforms” using microparticles with 3D shapes, membranes with 3D pores and surfaces with wrinkled 3D microstructures. His research aims to develop biomedical applications, such as less invasive microneedles for therapeutic drug delivery and low-cost detection of circulating tumour cells, as well as to better understand cellular responses to 3D environments.
April Khademi (AI for Medical Imaging)
April Khademi designs artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools to extract insights from medical images that can be used to augment the workflows of radiologists and pathologists to drive more efficient and accurate diagnoses. This research chair will enable her Image Analysis in Medicine Lab to measure biomarkers from large datasets of MRI scans or digital pathology images to provide more quantitative measurements of diseases such as dementia and cancer.
Visit our Faculty Experts page to learn more about April Khademi’s research. (external link)
Learn more about the Image Analysis in Medicine Lab (IAMLAB)
Contact: akhademi@torontomu.ca
Miranda Kirby (Quantitative Imaging)
Miranda Kirby is developing automated ways of extracting information from CT and MRI images to help assess smoking-related lung diseases. Her research program will help develop new measurements of lung disease, combining image processing with machine learning to extract more information than can be seen by the human eye in the images. She hopes to one day be able to use the new measurements developed to study other lung diseases, such as cystic fibrosis.
Damien Lee (Biskaabiiyang and Indigenous Political Resurgence)
Biskaabiiyang is an Ojibwe term that translates to “returning to ourselves” in English and expresses a research methodology that promotes decolonization using Ojibwe thought. Using this methodology, Damien Lee’s research focuses on Indigenous governance and how various Indigenous communities are practising their own systems of government while disengaging from the systems imposed by Canada’s Indian Act.
Atefeh (Atty) Mashatan (Quality of Security Framework for Internet-of-Things)
Atty Mashatan is examining ways of enhancing contextual security for smart devices in homes and businesses. Her research addresses new threats that have arisen with the widespread adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT), for which she will create new security systems and recommend best practices for users, technical audiences and policymakers.
Sharareh Taghipour (Physical Asset Management)
Sharareh Taghipour is seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in industries – such as transportation, commercial building and heavy manufacturing – by developing state-of-the-art methodologies to enhance energy efficiency. Her approach includes optimizing physical assets such as turbines, transformers and dams. Her work is also essential for establishing sustainable operations in carbon-intensive industries such as mining, iron and steel.
Ali Tavallaei (Systems and Devices for Cardiovascular Interventions)
Ali Tavallaei is working to generate new image-guided therapeutic and diagnostic solutions to overcome and better understand the limitations of the conventional devices employed during minimally invasive cardiovascular procedures, the main interventions performed to diagnose and treat cardiovascular diseases.
Cheryl Thompson (Black Expressive Culture and Creativity)
Cheryl Thompson is working to address gaps in Black expressive cultural histories. She is mapping shifts in Black identity and representation and articulating how diaspora manifests through Black performative cultures. By collaborating with Black scholars, archivists and cultural producers, she aims to develop a new archival method that ensures Black creative histories are accessible and searchable.
Visit our Faculty Experts page to learn more about Cheryl Thompson's research. (external link)
Contact: cheryl.thompson@torontomu.ca
Morteza Zihayat (Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence)
Morteza Zihayat is exploring what it means for AI to be truly human-centred, especially in search, one of the most widely used AI applications. While search engines shape how we access and interact with information, they often fail to align with human values like fairness and trust. Professor Zihayat aims to make access to information and AI-driven decision-making empowering to individuals and diverse communities in an equitable way.
Visit our Faculty Experts page to learn more about Morteza Zihayat's research. (external link)
Contact: mzihayat@torontomu.ca