Laurier faculty members Salar Ghamat, Lianne Leddy and Andrew Spring awarded prestigious Canada Research Chairs

March 13, 2024

Three Wilfrid Laurier University faculty members are being recognized among Canada’s top researchers. The Government of Canada announced Salar Ghamat, Lianne Leddy and Andrew Spring have been named Tier 2 Canada Research Chairs (CRCs). They will each receive research funding for a five-year term, including support for Laurier student researchers. Laurier is currently home to 13 CRCs.

“This is a prestigious program meant to retain some of the world’s most accomplished and promising minds. Our new Canada Research Chairs are well-deserving of their titles,” says Jonathan Newman, vice-president: research. “I look forward to seeing what these three outstanding scholars can achieve with this ongoing support for their research.”

Salar Ghamat

Ghamat, an associate professor of Operations and Decision Sciences at Laurier’s Lazaridis School of Business and Economics, was awarded the Canada Research Chair in Business Analytics in Supply Chain. As chair, he will explore how data analytics can be used to address problems within supply chain and health-care operations.

At the core of supply chain management are relationships between businesses, which account for the majority of the world’s gross domestic product. There is significant value in understanding how to coordinate and optimize business-to-business interactions, and increased availability of data analytics may help achieve this. However, Ghamat says very little existing supply chain data is being analyzed or used effectively by businesses. He plans to develop techniques to extract information from that data and use it to guide real-time decision-making.

“By integrating machine-learning algorithms into supply chain coordination, we can address complexities often overlooked by traditional mechanisms,” says Ghamat.

Machines – or “intelligent agents” – can account for factors such as limited information about retailer inventory or demand uncertainty in a way that existing theoretical mechanisms cannot. Ghamat sees meaningful societal applications for his research, including in the health-care system. 

“My aim is to leverage extensive datasets to improve the health and well-being of Canadians,” he says. “For example, our research could lead to reduced waiting times for health services through better network coordination, resulting in substantial social and economic impacts.”

Lianne Leddy

Leddy, an associate professor of History, was awarded the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Histories and Historical Practice in Canada. As an Anishinaabekwe member of Serpent River First Nation, she has dedicated her career to the decolonization of Canadian history. 

“My research uses an Indigenous feminist lens to bridge Indigenous histories and methodologies with traditional western historical approaches,” says Leddy. “I am prioritizing Indigenous voices and stories.”

One of her research priorities as CRC is to re-examine the experiences of Indigenous women and their relationships to settler forces in the Great Lakes watershed during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Leddy will focus on the later fur trade period, when Indigenous peoples still held the balance of power and colonial relationships were taking shape, a topic explored by settler historians but few Indigenous scholars.

Leddy, who was recently honoured with the 2023 Governor General’s History Award for Scholarly Research, also plans to build a historical research hub to support community-driven projects. By training graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in responsible, ethical historical research, Leddy’s team can develop research projects that arise at the request of Indigenous communities in alignment with their priorities.

“I want to foster a new generation of scholars interested in supporting Indigenous community histories, while at the same time changing the ways Canadians think about the history of these lands now known as Canada,” she says.

Andrew Spring

Spring, an assistant professor in Laurier’s Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, was awarded the Canada Research Chair in Northern Sustainable Food Systems. Regional factors including climate change and high cost of food mean that many communities in northern Canada face issues related to food insecurity.

Alongside Indigenous communities in the Northwest Territories, Spring plans to build case studies of innovative, community-based programs that contribute to sustainable northern food systems. He will also examine how these programs can foster climate change adaptation and mitigation and produce measurable economic, social and cultural outcomes for communities.

“We focus on land stewardship and youth engagement through on-the-land camps that bring researchers, Elders and youth together,” says Spring. “We try to implement food-growing projects that incorporate traditional foods and protect soil and water.”

Spring and his students have invested a great deal of time building relationships with community partners in the Northwest Territories, while facilitating collaborations with regional food producers, organizations and governments. Their ongoing projects include expanding local food production in Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation through raised bed garden plots, greenhouses and the introduction of agroforestry practices.

“I hope our work leads to improved health and well-being for the communities we work in and that other communities can be inspired by these examples to lead their own projects,” says Spring.