Youths spend over $141 billion annually. Yet, these same youth often demonstrate extremely poor understanding of healthy financial habits such as emergency funds and budgeting. The proposed project seeks to tackle two main questions through the Dojo financial literacy learning application. First, what principles/techniques have been shown to positively impact financial literacy (e.g., interactive games, infographics, etc)? Second, is the Dojo platform an effective tool for teaching children about financial literacy?

Past research has established that a high percentage of women in violent relationships experience a traumatic brain injury (TBI), with one article estimating approximately 23 million women in the US living with a TBI from intimate partner violence (IPV) (Ivany & Schminkey, 2016). While previous research has focused on establishing the link between IPV and TBI, further research needs to be conducted into the experiences of these women. The present project seeks to do exactly that, through interviewing of 6-8 women from The Cridge Centre for the Family.

Patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are characterized by decreased prefrontal cortex (PFC) regulation on hyperactive emotion generation regions, such as the amygdala. Real-time (rt)-fMRI neurofeedback allows for localized brain regions to be self-regulated through neuroimaging signal feedback. Recently within our lab, learning to decrease amygdala activation via neurofeedback was shown to normalize the neural circuitry maintaining PTSD, which was negatively correlated to symptoms.

Melanoma, the most deadly type of skin cancer, has increasing incidence and a high mortality rate. Early diagnosis of melanoma is currently the only way to reduce the mortality rate as well as the health care cost of treating melanoma. However, the existing approaches in training melanoma diagnosis are not effective. In this project, we will evaluate a perceptual approach, which mirrors how dermatologists improve their ability in melanoma diagnosis, to train melanoma diagnosis.

Hearing aid research has traditionally focused on improving speech intelligibility for people with hearing loss, but there is increasing interest in addressing other aspects of hearing that contribute to quality of life, particularly music and other non-linguistic information. Listening to music through hearing aids is often dissatisfying due to distortions introduced by current algorithms. Hearing aids restore the intelligibility but not the emotional content of speech, which is carried by acoustic cues that are similar to salient dimensions of music.

The current project aims to examine how tunable LED lighting influences productivity and well-being in students at the Port Coquitlam’s Riverside secondary school. The project aims to identify the optimal lighting conditions in order to maximize productivity and well-being in healthy students as well as students with special needs. We hypothesize that the tunable LED lighting that is consistent with the natural daylight cycle will be more beneficial to students than standard constant lighting condition in an average classroom.

This project aims to examine the effect of unconditional direct cash-transfers to recently homeless individuals in Vancouver, BC, Canada. We will conduct a randomized controlled trial to distribute a one-time unconditional $7,500 cash lump sum to 50 recently homeless individuals from shelters in Vancouver. We will also provide a supplementary motivational training for half of the participants. We will also recruit 50 recently homeless individuals as a control group, and half of these participants will also receive motivational training.

Due to rapid development of technology, such as the Internet of Things, collecting data is easier and cheaper than ever before. As a result, municipal governments and urban centres across Canada are being inundated with data—data that have potential to improve public service. Despite this, local governments do not have enough data expertise to extract insight from these overwhelming datasets, which are often unstructured and “dirty” (i.e., incomplete, inaccurate, and/or erroneous).

It is estimated that the average person spends up to 50% of their waking hours thinking about things other than what they are presently doing (i.e., mind wandering). This internal form of distraction along with its external counterpart (i.e., external distraction) are associated with performance deficits during everyday activities, such as reading or driving. Moreover, individuals are often unaware that their mind has wandered, which can lead to absentminded errors. Depending on the context, the consequences of distraction can range from reduced productivity to injury or even death.

The intern will analyze pre- and post-training survey and interview data from the SARE Centre’s EAAA Train the Trainer workshops in order to improve the quality of this training. These surveys/interviews assess trainees’ previous experience, skills, knowledge, and confidence in relevant areas as indicators of the workshop’s effectiveness.