University of Windsor Think Tank event

Story Highlights

• Grants available by organizations for presenters for their research: PSI Foundation, Ontario Trillium Foundation, MITACS, SSHRC and CIHR. 

Chris Houser the Dean of Science at the University of Windsor says that the majority of reported drownings at beaches in Canada are usually men under the ages of 30.  

Beach safety was just one of the topics discussed during the seventh virtual WE Spark Think Tank event in October.  Other presentations discussed housing issues and the impact of homeless shelters in Windsor – Essex and medical imaging applications.  

Lisa Porter, the Director of the We Spark Health Institute, gave a quick introduction to the We Spark Institute and the Think Tank Event. 

“The Tank events originally started back in May 2019 and the official launch was done in March 2020, our mission is to enhance health and wellbeing through transformative research and knowledge translation,” said Porter. 

The main idea of the think tank is where researchers who are the presenters come to discuss their field and what they want to research on and come to look for opinions, suggestions, and advice for their upcoming research projects. 

Houser’s presentation was about public beach safety regarding rip currents and miscommunication when it comes to warning signs and staying close to the Lifeguards. 

“The Research we’ve been working on for nearly 10 years now, it started in Florida when we were working on beach dune interactions looking on how sand moved but we watched a family put their kids directly into a rip current on what is considered the most dangerous islands in the United States, and that really started an entire area of research, looking at beach safety and rip currents,” said Houser. 

Houser has also mentioned that the majority of reported drownings at beaches are usually men under the ages of 30 years old in Canada. The economic burden of those drownings can be estimated to be nearly 1 billion dollars over the last 10 years. Also 80 per cent of those deaths are caused by rip currents and Ontario has the highest number of deaths and highest economic burden because of rip currents. 

When looking at grants that could be available to the presenters only small amounts of grants were shown during the presentation. 

The few grants shown were the PSI Foundation, Ontario Trillium Foundation, MITACS, SSHRC and CIHR. Many of these grants and funding opportunities allow up to $7,000 to $250,000 for funding operations. 

Each presenter had five minutes to pitch their idea to the attendees for their next possible research project. 

Jennifer Bondy is a Family Physician who is a part of the CMHA in Windsor and the director of the Amherstburg Family Health team, Bondy’s presentation focused on the homeless shelters in Windsor Essex and how we can improve them. 

“With the start of the research, I’m very early in research planning and so this program has not yet been implemented and we’re still working on it so part of what would be looking at is a program evaluation,” said Bondy 

Marcus Drover, an assistant professor at the University of Windsor presented the idea of enhancing the use of medical molecule imaging in hospitals. 

Drover has said that the main goal of his research is to “develop sustainable chemistry for energy research as a means to protect our natural world.” 

At the end of the presentations, all attendees and presenters went into  breakout rooms to discuss the presenters’ research further and give out their opinions to the presenters.  

When finished with the break out rooms the end of the Think Tank event, everyone joined back into the main conference meeting to summarize what was discussed in each room and how to go further with the presenters’ research. 

The next Think Tank event will be held on December 3 2021 virtually on Zoom. 

For more information on upcoming Think Tank events and workshops, visit https://www.wesparkhealth.com/conferences-and-workshops.