THUNDER BAY — Lakehead University researchers Christopher Mushquash and Sandra Jeppesen were recognized with Distinguished Researcher Awards on Feb. 27 at Lakehead University’s 2025 Research and Innovation Awards of Excellence. They were among 18 award recipients who were recognized during the awards ceremony at The Outpost on the Thunder Bay campus.
Mushquash, professor at Lakehead University’s Department of Psychology, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Mental Health and Addictions, vice president research at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre and chief scientist, Thunder Bay Regional Health Research Institute, says his research is largely driven by First Nation, Inuit and Métis communities in rural and northern areas of the country with a focus on looking at the very best of what traditional culture-based approaches and cutting edge clinical and medical innovations can do to help improve health outcomes and wellness in general for communities in the north.
“It’s a very nice honour, it’s a very nice recognition of a lot of work that’s been underway for many years with the support of colleagues, trainees, staff, community partners, communities all over northwestern Ontario but across Canada as well,” Mushquash says. “We’ve got a number of new projects underway, one of our large initiatives is our ACCESS Open Minds Indigenous Youth Mental Health and Wellness Network, which is a partnership with many communities and organizations across the country and that’s the focus of a lot of our work right now.”
“I’ve researched for the last 20 or so years with media groups from around the world who do sort of grassroots and community-based media,” says Jeppesen, professor in Media, Film and Communications at Lakehead University’s Orillia campus. “It’s been super interesting, we have a couple of books that have come out of it but what we really aim to do is to understand how they organize themselves and how they fund and sustain their projects. But we also bring them together with each other and they share knowledge and information and through the conversations we’ve had with them they’ve been able to grow and change.”
Jeppesen says she was hired about 15 years ago to create the Media Studies program, now the Media, Film and Communications program, at the Orillia campus.
“It was a very exciting opportunity to start a new program from scratch,” Jeppesen says. “It’s a unique program because we have the critical thinking skills but we also have a lot of production, so it’s pretty exciting. Students have internship placements, we have a media arts showcase every year, which is going to be next week actually in Orillia at the Research and Innovation Week there.”
Research Excellence Awards were presented to Waleed Ejaz, Department of Electrical Engineering, for the NSERC Category and Idevania Costa, School of Nursing, for the SSHRC Category.
The Indigenous Partnership Research Award was presented to Anna Koné Péfoyo, Department of Health Sciences and Lana Ray, Health Disciplines, Athabasca University, for their project, Impact of COVID-19 on Indigenous Communities. Partners included Ariel Root and Janet Gordon, Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority; Paul Capon, Matawa First Nations Chiefs Council; and Janice Spencer and Serena Joseph, Waasegiizhig Nanaandawe’iyewigamig.
The Community Engaged Research Award was presented to Erin Pearson, School of Kinesiology, and partners Thunder Bay District Health Unit, Our Kids Count and City of Thunder Bay, for their project, The Healthy Kids HOME (Health on the Move for Equity) Program: Examining the Feasibility of a Neighbourhood-based Health Promotion Service Model for Equity Deserving Children and Families.
The Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Research Award was presented to Pauline Sameshima, Faculty of Education, for the project, EDI in the HOPE Collaboratory’s Community Engagement.
The Innovation Award was presented to Bryan Wong, LLB student, Bora Laskin Faculty of Law.
The Three-Minute Thesis first-place award was presented to Dylan Di Carlo, MSc candidate, Department of Anthropology, and the second-place award was presented to Siddharth Kishore, MSc candidate, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
The GRADflix Award was presented to Alexandra Haak, MSc candidate, Faculty of Natural Resources Management.
The Graduate Studies Research Excellence Awards were presented to Vira Grynko, PhD Chemistry and Materials Science, for the Natural Sciences and Engineering Category; Chelsea Noël, PhD Clinical Psychology, for the Social Sciences and Humanities Category; and Douglas Newhouse, MSc Kinesiology, for the Health Research Category.
The Graduate Student Conference Poster Winners were Mona Mohammadkhani, PhD candidate, Department of Chemical Engineering, for the Winner Engineering Category; Amy Stieh, MSc candidate, Department of Physics for the Winner NSERC Category; and Maaja Sepa, MHSc candidate, Department of Health Sciences, for the Winner SSHRC Category.
The Post-Doctoral Fellow Excellence Award was presented to Viktoriia Batarchuk, Department of Chemistry.
