UNews - Martin Lalumiere

Exemplary research + engaged students = extraordinary results

trevor.kenney — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 21:54:27 +0000

There were hints that this was coming.

It is no secret that the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge has undergone a cultural shift and been making major inroads as a comprehensive university on both the provincial and national stage. Research institutes have been developed and supported, leading researchers have been actively recruited and research activity now percolates at all levels (undergraduate and graduate alike) and across disciplines.

But when RE$EARCH Infosource tagged the U of L as Canada's Research ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of the Year (2012), Undergraduate Category, it elevated the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ from an emerging comprehensive institution to one of Canada's most influential research universities.

Dr. H.J. Wieden and his iGEM team is an excellent example of the undergraduate research activity that takes place on the U of L campus.

Dr. Dan Weeks, the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ's vice-president (research), is the first to admit that the rise to number one did not happen overnight and is not attributable to one factor.

Statistics tell part of the tale. The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ saw a huge rise in research income over the past year (38.7 per cent), and that growth was the third best of any university in the country. But the U of L story has never been about numbers, and instead is rooted in the community of people who make up the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ.

"A research portfolio must be built strategically, over time, and with support throughout the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ," he says. "It is also dependent on the hard work of faculty members who consistently demonstrate that they are among the very best researchers in Canada. They not only excel in research, but actively engage students in research opportunities that foster the next generation of researchers and innovators."

Therein lies the uniqueness that is the U of L. Undergraduate students are exposed to research opportunities often only available to graduate and PhD level students at other institutions. It's what brought Jennifer Arthur (BA '07, MSc '12) to the U of L, and also what kept her in Lethbridge for her master's studies.

"I could have gone anywhere for university, but I chose the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge specifically for the undergraduate research opportunities available to students," says Arthur, who graduated with her Master of Science in Health Sciences earlier this year. "My experiences in Dr. Glen Prusky's (BASc '86) visual plasticity lab and Dr. Martin Lalumiere's psychophysiology lab gave me the discovery and application piece of my education and prepared me for my master's degree."

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ does not see teaching and research as distinct entities, rather it fosters an atmosphere where its teachers bring their research into the classroom, helping develop the critical thinking and practical research skills today's students deem essential.

Weeks points to programs such as iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine) and AMETHYST (Advanced Methods, Education and Training in Hyperspectral Science and Technology) as examples of student-focused research initiatives that create a new generation of researchers who go on to strengthen Alberta's knowledge-based economy.

"The outcomes from these programs are significant and will benefit students and the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ community for years to come," says Weeks. "What excites me is the potential employment success for graduates who participate in these programs and what they prepare our students for in their careers."

The U of L proudly boasts world-renowned researchers in traditionally scientific fields such as neuroscience, the study of water and physics, but a university does not achieve status as the top undergraduate research institution in the country without diversity in its portfolio. Indeed, it is the breadth of research across the full gamut of disciplines that speaks to a campus-wide philosophy where discovery is valued and supported at every turn.

Weeks points to the establishment of internal research and development funds as potential drivers of research activity going forward. He also highlights the allocation of specific funds for the development of interdisciplinary research teams. The anticipated result will be synergies across disciplines.

The Interdisciplinary Research Development Fund (IRDF), a one-time non-renewable research fund, was created to provide the foundation for developing the next generation of interdisciplinary concentrations of research excellence. In spring 2012, it funded three projects (up to $100,000 each over two years), then approved two more proposals in the fall.

"There is a real breadth to the research activities taking place across campus," says Weeks. "With the establishment of a number of internal funding mechanisms in recent years, it has served as the impetus for new research initiatives that are now being recognized by external agencies. Couple that with the many faculty who already have well established research portfolios and it creates an even more vibrant research environment."

The U of L now boasts nine research centres and institutes that address issues across the sciences, social sciences and humanities. From neuroscience research at the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience, to water management studies in the Water Institute for Sustainable Environments and the study of childhood in the newly established Institute for Child and Youth Studies, U of L research is multidisciplinary and relevant to today's world issues.

"The problems being addressed by U of L researchers are helping to create a better quality of life for local and global communities," says President and Vice-Chancellor Dr. Mike Mahon. "While many factors have contributed to building this capacity, the exceptional work by current and former faculty has played a significant role in attracting additional world-leading researchers to the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ, thereby expanding our research portfolio."

Where the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ goes from here is the most exciting aspect, because as a teaching institution intent on training the next generation of researchers, the U of L is its own renewable knowledge resource. From a student perspective, this is great news.

"When I first started at the U of L nearly 10 years ago, there wasn't the breadth of formal opportunity for undergraduates to participate in research that there is today," says Arthur. "However, what was the same then as it is today, was the commitment of faculty and staff to engage students in a meaningful way and to encourage students in their research endeavours. "When I look at what is now available to students and how the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ continues to enhance those research opportunities, as an alumna I am extremely proud of my ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ. This recognition is richly deserved."

This story first appeared in the Fall 2012 issue of SAM. For a look at the full issue of SAM in a flipbook format, follow this link.

5 Questions With Dr. Martin Lalumiere

trevor.kenney — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 22:03:02 +0000

Dr. Martin Lalumiere is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology. He studies the etiology of sexual aggression, the development of atypical sexual preferences, the physiological assessment of sexual arousal, sex differences in genital arousal, the effect of birth order on development and the determinants of risk taking.

Prior to joining the U of L, he was a research psychologist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, and associate professor of psychiatry and criminology at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Toronto (1997-2004).

Lalumiere teaches courses on criminal behaviour, psychopathology and evolutionary psychology and is a past Chair of the Human Subject Research Committee.

Dr. Martin Lalumiere is a foremost expert on sexual aggression and the development of atypical sexual preferences.

What first piqued your interest in your research discipline?

As an undergraduate student at the Université de Montréal, I signed up to be a research participant for a study on the Pavlovian conditioning of sexual arousal in humans (how can one not be curious about a study like that!). I had a long chat with the PhD student who was running the study, and soon thereafter I applied for a research assistant position in that laboratory. I immediately started running similar studies and discovered that the study of human sexuality was fascinating, complex and extremely rewarding.

How is your research applicable in "the real world"?

I will say that sex is pervasive, important to people and associated with important health and life satisfaction outcomes. Increasing knowledge about sex is bound to have important impacts on things like sex education, prevention of sexually transmitted infections and sexual and relationship satisfaction. In our lab we also study the link between sexual preferences and crimes, with the hope of better preventing sexual crimes.

What is the greatest honour you have received in your career?

I would say the Governor General's Academic Gold Medal, for best graduating student at Queen's ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ. As a graduate student I didn't even know that such a prize existed, and all I was trying to do was to learn English and become a good scientist.

How important are students to your research endeavours?

I spent the first nine years of my career working in research institutes, without much help from students. I was sufficiently productive but felt that something was missing. Since arriving at the U of L in 2004 and establishing the Human Sexual Arousal Laboratory, I discovered the joys and benefits of having undergraduate and graduate students involved in my research. They are very important to my research program. In fact, most of my recent successes are a direct result of having very qualified students in my lab. Their work has shaped the direction of my own research activities.

If you had unlimited funds, which areas of research would you invest?

Currently, my students and I are spending most of our energies attempting to discover why women's genital arousal is not quite consistent with their experience of sexual arousal. It is a great mystery that fascinates us. Is it the most important research question in the world? Probably not. Is it an important question that is likely to lead to concrete answers? Very likely. Will those answers allow us to better understand women's sexuality (a mostly neglected topic in human science)? Very likely.

Already we have received emails from women who have been the victim of rape, and who were tortured by the memory of experiencing genital arousal during the event. We are now able to provide them with a possible explanation, and they find it quite reassuring.

The most important areas of research are those where questions are answerable and can lead to improvement in human welfare.

Having said all this, I think the most important research question for human research has to do with the effects of economic and health inequalities, and the measures needed to diminish those inequalities. We have done some research on this topic and I hope that we will continue to do so.

Each month, the Legend will present 5 Questions With . . . one of our researchers. For a look at the entire catalog of 5 Questions With . . . features, check out the Office of Research and Innovation Services website at www.uleth.ca/research/research_profiles. If you'd like to be profiled, contact Penny Pickles at pickpj@uleth.ca

This story first appeared in the October 2012 issue of the Legend. To see the full issue in a flipbook format, follow this link.

Understanding reasons behind risk taking

trevor.kenney — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 23:18:35 +0000

Sandeep Mishra is an idealist with a realist's background.

The PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology has a keen understanding of what has led to his educational success, and a desire to better society as a result. He'll use his science to do so.

"So much of my education is funded by taxpayers, so I felt a really strong obligation to choose a topic of study that benefits taxpayers and makes society a better place," says Mishra, who is set to defend his PhD thesis in December. "I'm particularly interested in gambling, risk taking and crime, but more specifically, the social and environmental factors that increase or decrease these behaviours."

Studying under the guidance of Dr. Martin Lalumière, Mishra has been working on the well-established concept of inequality and its link to criminal activity. While there is a large body of evidence that has linked inequality with any number of society's ills, there has never been a causal analysis of the relationship – until now.

Sandeep Mishra is excited about the possibility that his research could play a vital role in developing policy.

"The empirical research has been done and it has been shown repeatedly that inequality is linked to crime, but this is research at an aggregate level and does not address causal mechanisms," says Mishra. "I decided that a productive line of research would be inducing inequality in a lab setting. Laboratory experiments, involving random assignment to experimental conditions, offer the only conclusive way to determine whether a variable has a causal effect or not. After introducing conditions of inequality in this setting, I then asked what happens to their responses to risky behaviour?"

His findings could shape public policy for years to come.

"All of the evidence suggests that systemic inequality and competitive disadvantage facilitate risk taking, of which criminal activity is an extreme form," says Mishra. "I've found that reducing risk taking is possible by reducing inequality. All of this has enormous policy implications."

Mishra's study invited students to participate in a series of experiments. One such experiment saw pairs of students tasked to answer a series of questions that tested their risk-taking attitudes. Prior to the test, one student was given $10 for his effort, the other none, under the guise that funding only allowed for one party to be compensated.

In almost every instance, the student who had suffered a perceived inequality chose risky options at a substantially higher level. Further, when students were tasked again to perform the tests, except on this occasion another $10 in funding was found midway through the exercise, thus evening out the imbalance, risk taking behaviour significantly declined.

"If something as simple as $10 can influence risky behaviour in healthy, well-educated, socially higher class undergrads, then you can imagine how this mechanism is just compounded in the real world," says Mishra. "What is remarkable is that as soon as the students realize that their environment isn't actually inequitous, that overall things are pretty fair, presumably, they see no reason to engage in elevated risk taking."

Mishra says his findings are directly relatable to public policy, and points to the current political climate where government policy in general is built around punitive action to deter criminal behaviour.

"They are not really investing in root social issues that facilitate conditions that produce risk taking and crime," says Mishra. "Even though it is costlier and you don't see direct implications, investing in infrastructure and better education for those who are underserved is a more prudent approach. Helping people help themselves out of inequitous situations is the best thing we can do to lower crime rates."

Mishra, who is off to the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Guelph to pursue a post-doctoral fellowship, is a Delhi, Ont. native who began his post-secondary career at Hamilton's McMaster ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ. Excitable and passionate, he credits the U of L and Lalumière for allowing him to grow his research portfolio.

"Martin's one of the most generous human beings you will ever meet," says Mishra. "He consistently puts his graduate students' well-being above his own and he's allowed me to take control and lead my own research program. The facilities I've had to work with go well beyond what most grad students could dream of, and the feedback he gives me is always excellent and very supportive."

GET THE FACTS

· Mishra sees himself as a future policy analyst or university professor.

· He graduated from high school when he was just 15 and studied biochemistry at McMaster for three years before switching to psychology.

· His undergraduate advisor at McMaster recommended Lalumière and the
U of L's Department of Psychology for graduate studies.

· Mishra's other inequality experiment tested examples of competitive disadvantage and used bogus IQ tests as a means to create situations of inequity amongst his experimental participants.

· All the participants in Mishra's study were thoroughly and carefully debriefed about the aims and hypotheses of the study.

This story originally appeared in the Legend. For a look at the full issue of the November Legend in a flipbook format, follow this link.

2010 faculty research awards

trevor.kenney — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 21:36:52 +0000

External SSHRC Grants
(Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council)

Paul Vasey and Martin Lalumiere (Aid to Research Workshops and Conferences in Canada) $23,663
Claudia Malacrida is a co-applicant on a $1 million CURA through the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta

Independent Foundational Grants

Fangfang Li $4,800
Duane Rockerbie $4,000
Ed Wasiak $3,000
David Gregory $11,780
Malla Stavroula $11,500

CREDO Applications
(Community of Research Excellence Development Opportunities)

Kiki Benzon
Robin Bright
Lynn Kennedy
Kevin McGeough
Janice Newberry
Claudia Steinke/Helen Kelley
Wei Xu

CIHR
(Canadian Institutes of Health Research)

Ute Kothe
Igor Kovalchuk
Gerlinde Metz
Paul Vasey
H.-J. Wieden
Kelley Williams-Whitt

AGRI
(Alberta Gaming Research Institute)

Noella Piquette-Tomei, $10,000
Robert Williams, $44,000

Alberta Innovates-Health Solutions
(formerly AHFMR)

Igor Kovalchuk

ARDN
(Alberta Rural Development Network)

Noella Piquette Tomei
Steve Ferzacca

NIH
(National Institutes of Health)

Bruce McNaughton (2 grants awarded by NIH to the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Arizona were successfully transferred to the U of L)

Alberta Cancer Research Institute

Roy Golsteyn

Sport Science Association of Alberta

Jennifer Copeland

Alberta Family Wellness Initiative
(Norlien Foundation)

Noella Piquette-Tomei

NSERC CREATE Grant

Phil Teillet, Physics $1.5 Million over 6 years

NSERC Discovery Grants
(Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada)

Robert Laird, Biological Sciences (Developing and testing the evolutionary reliability theory of senescence) $24,000
Rene Boere, Chemistry & Biochemistry (Redox-generated free radicals: basic science to nanomaterials) $40,000
Paul Hayes, Chemistry & Biochemistry (Organometallic complexes of new pincer ligands: Structure, reactivity and catalysis) $61,000
Steven Mosimann, Chemistry & Biochemistry (Structure and function of PTP like inositol polyphosphatases) $31,000
Nathan Ng, Mathematics & Computer Science (Prime numbers and L-functions) $15,000
Aaron Gruber, Neuroscience (Dopamine modulation of neural dynamics and behavioral flexibility) $27,000
Brian Kolb, Neuroscience (Brain plasticity and behaviour) $105,000
Artur Luczak, Neuroscience (Neuronal population patterns - studying interactions among hundreds of neurons) $26,000
Deborah Saucier, Neuroscience (Neural and hormonal bases of sex differences in spatial ability) $42,000)
Masami Tatsuno, Neuroscience (Quiescent dependent memory consolidation: memory-trace replay during REM sleep) $23,000
David Euston, Psychology (Neural mechanisms of decision making in frontal cortex) $23,000
Martin Lalumiere, Psychology (The nature and functions of genital sexual arousal) $27,000
Paul Vasey, Psychology (The comparative biopsychology of non-conceptive sexuality) $30,000

NSERC Equipment Grants

Aaron Gruber, Neuroscience $96,373
Rene Boere, Chemistry $22,024

* We are unable to post SSHRC winners at this time as SSHRC has not officially announced its award recipients. They will be published once they are made available.

Campus Kudos

trevor.kenney — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 16:21:49 +0000

Congratulations to Drs. Paul Vasey and Martin Lalumiere (Psychology) on their successful Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Aid to Research Workshops and Conferences in Canada application. The workshop will be held May 31 to June 2.

Dafne Carrasco (New Media student) and friends organized the Help Rebuild Haiti T-shirt Fundraiser that featured original T-shirt designs by fellow students, faculty and alumni.

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) recently posted the successful Community-��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Research Alliances (CURA) program applications. U of L professor Dr. Claudia Malacrida (Sociology) is a co-applicant on the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Alberta's, six-year, $1 million grant, titled Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada.

Dr. Janet Youngdahl (Music) was a soprano soloist in Carl Orff's Carmina Burana in Calgary at the Jack Singer Concert Hall on Mar. 27. The concert celebrated the 20th anniversary of Mount Royal's Kantori and also premiers a new work by Imant Raminsh, with the composer in attendance.

Adam Chorneyko of the Pronghorns men's hockey team was named Canada West rookie of the year after a season in which he led all freshmen with 16 goals and 35 points. Defenceman Ryan Pottruff and centre Dustin Moore were named to the Canada West First All-Star Team while goaltender Scott Bowles was named to the second team.

Dr. David Renter (Music) has been invited to be the composer-in-residence at this year's prestigious Stella Royce Music Camp, July 26-30 in Grand Rapids, Mich. He will be debuting a series of original solo piano compositions of varying difficulty for students aged 8-15.

Fourth-year point guard Jeff Price was named to the Canada West men's basketball Second All-Star Team after a stellar first season with the Pronghorns men's basketball program.

Nursing student Alexandra Tritten-Champoux recently received one of seven United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) scholarships awarded to students in their first year of nursing study. The winners needed to be related to a UNA member in good standing and complete an essay on How does the UNA impact nursing worklife?

Music faculty Dr. Janet Youngdahl, Dr. Sandra Stringer, Dr. Blaine Hendsbee and retired music professor Dr. George Evelyn were soloists with the Lethbridge Symphony Orchestra's presentation of Haydn's The Creation on Mar. 29.

Dr. Ed Jurkowski (Music) presented, Random Sounds or Organized Structure? What the Compositional Sketches tell us about Morton Feldman's Late Music, last month at the annual meeting of the Pacific-Northwest Chapter of the American Musicological Society.

UNews - Martin Lalumiere

Exemplary research + engaged students = extraordinary results

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Understanding reasons behind risk taking

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