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With university and college lab doors locked due to the COVID-19 pandemic, student researchers are looking for news ways to explore and discover within their related fields of study.
Recently, the WE-SPARK Health Institute held an online brainstorming session that connected students from St. Clair College and the University of Windsor with educators, administrators and clinician researchers to share ideas.
Tejas Deepak Shinde, an international student at St. Clair College taking data analytics, enjoyed the opportunity to present his COVID-19 related research to the 60 participants and establish potential collaborations with other student researchers.
“It was interesting to see the other projects that are happening and some want to work with us,” said Shinde, a 27-year-old graduate student from India.
Shinde and St. Clair professor John Ulakovich are working on an analytical dashboard that would collect and disseminate key epidemiological metrics to healthcare professionals treating COVID-19 patients.
The dashboard project is one of several virus-related research initiatives funded by WE-SPARK, a local health research collaborative.
“Our goals were to help support researchers to think of creative ways to engage students in research remotely should they be prevented from working face-to-face for their type of research and to elevate experiences for students working remotely overall,” said WE-SPARK executive director Lisa Porter. “ I think it is important for the public to know that as educators and researchers, engaging students is our passion and we really are motivated to make the very best out of whatever COVID is going to throw at us. We don’t want students to lose time, or to have a sub-par experience.”
UWindsor science student Ryan Palazzolo discussed adapting an in-person community outreach activity to an interactive virtual tool. Schulich medical student Justin Senecal talked about the work he’s doing around the barriers to translational research in Windsor and UWindsor masters student Isabelle Hinch shared ideas on how to develop lab skills virtually.
“I participated in the event because I don’t want students to miss out on research experiences,” Hinch said. “The University of Windsor is unique in quantity and quality of the research opportunities available for students even very early on in one’s undergraduate degree. Thanks to these opportunities I found my passion for research and plan to pursue a career in the field. If not for these experiences I don’t know if I would be where I am today, and I don’t want others who might be like me to be set back by the circumstances.”
ellow WE-SPARK executive Dora Cavallo-Medved noted the “Creating Meaningful Research Experiences For Students During a Pandemic” session even attracted interest from professors at Western University and the University of British Columbia.
“We’re not going to stop doing research,” Cavallo-Medved said. “We’re finding new ways of doing research, new possibilities and sharing it across Windsor and Essex and even across the country.”
All of the brainstorming ideas on how to creatively advance research have been posted on the WE-SPARK website at www.wesparkhealth.com.
