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How does metacognition affect learning?

Admin — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 12:01:50 +0000

How does metacognition affect learning?

Published:

Metacognition is a skill that develops throughout childhood and adolescence. As people grow, their ability to accurately judge their knowledge and to act on these judgments tends to improve. However, some students find this metacognitive monitoring and control difficult, and this can impact their ability to learn. In Switzerland, a research team led by Professor Mariëtte van Loon at the University of Zurich and the University of Basel is investigating the links between students’ metacognitive skills and their ability to learn.

Why are some students better at learning than others? Traditional thinking points to differences in cognitive abilities, such as intelligence, memory or processing capacity. But one research group, led by Professor Mariëtte van Loon, is looking at this question from a different angle by studying how metacognition affects students’ ability to learn.

What is metacognition?

“Metacognition is an umbrella term for the ability to reflect on and regulate your own thinking and learning processes,” explains Mariëtte. “Specifically, my team focuses on how children and adolescents monitor and control their learning.” Monitoring refers to a student’s ability to evaluate what they do and do not know, while control refers to their ability to take actions to improve their learning.

“It’s a bit like how a thermostat keeps the temperature in a room constant,” says Mariëtte. “The thermostat needs to constantly assess the temperature and then, based on that monitoring, take an action, such as heating the room up or cooling it down.” This is a process that, once developed, happens automatically. For example, as you read this article, you might come across a passage that you don’t immediately understand and decide to read it again. That is monitoring and control in action.

How does metacognition develop?

“Metacognitive abilities develop substantially throughout childhood and adolescence,” explains Mariëtte. “As people grow, their ability to accurately judge their knowledge and to act on these judgments typically becomes more refined.”

But children do not grow and develop at the same rate, and the same holds true for their metacognitive abilities. “Some students are better at monitoring where they are doing well and where they have gaps in their knowledge,” says Mariëtte. During a reading task, for example, these students are able to assess how well they are understanding the content and go back to re-read sections they didn’t understand. “But other students might just go through the information without monitoring how well they’re understanding it,” continues Mariëtte. “They go through a task, but they don’t question themselves and they don’t recognise their errors.”

These metacognitive abilities can have a huge impact on a student’s ability to learn. “Some years ago, one meta-analysis indicated that metacognitive processes are at least as important as intelligence when it comes to academic achievement,” says Mariëtte. “Our research findings with adolescents suggest a similar pattern. Although intelligence is an important predictor of learning, metacognitive monitoring and control skills also influence how well students learn and perform academically. These skills make a unique contribution above and beyond intelligence.”

How does the team study metacognition?

“The main question that we want to answer is: Why are some students better than others at monitoring and control?” says Mariëtte. “But we also want to dig deeper than this. We want to understand more about these metacognitive skills and answer different research questions.”

For example, Mariëtte’s team wants to figure out if monitoring and control are skills that can be applied in the same way across different tasks – be it reading, maths or learning a language – or if these skills are task-specific. They also want to investigate the relationship between these two skills: Are monitoring and control really separate skills, or are they two parts of one overarching skill?

With these questions in mind, Mariëtte and her team collaborate with schools to conduct their research. “Our research is based on cognitive psychology, but instead of working in a lab, we do our research in school contexts,” explains Mariëtte. “We get students to complete a learning task and ask them to judge how certain they are that their answers are correct and how likely they are to retain the information.”

The team also records which parts of the task the students are focusing on and which items they return to in order to improve their learning. “We also have competitions in which students receive points for correct answers and lose points for incorrect answers,” says Mariëtte. “When assessing metacognition in this way, it encourages students to carefully reflect on the accuracy of their answers.”

In many cognitive psychology experiments, participants must complete tasks under time constraints and without the chance to re-visit their answers. But Mariëtte and her team do things a little differently. “We combine controlled experiments with research on self-regulated learning, where students can take their learning into their own hands,” explains Mariëtte. “In our tasks, students can decide for themselves how long they spend on each item, reflect on their learning and spend time re-studying to improve their responses. In this sense, it is much closer to an actual school environment, where learning is not something that happens only once, but is ongoing and can be adapted.”

What has the team discovered?

“In a recent study, we found that most children have age-appropriate skills that develop over time,” says Mariëtte. “However, there was a small group of students who lagged behind in metacognitive development and struggled to assess their own learning and take subsequent actions to improve it.” What’s more, as other students’ metacognition developed over time, this group struggled to improve.

Download the article

Reference
https://doi.org/10.33424/FUTURUM715

Link to the activity sheet

Team photos taken at the team’s work places and in meeting rooms at the Department of Psychology, University of Zurich. © Foto Mächler AG

These findings have led to many more questions that Mariëtte and her team want to answer. “Do some children show persistent difficulties in metacognitive development? Is it something that we can reliably identify and diagnose? How can we accurately spot the children who need support?” asks Mariëtte. “We are finding answers in our research, but when we find them, we always have more questions!”

One question in particular immediately suggests itself: What can teachers do to support students who struggle with metacognition?

Metacognitive Development Research Group

Project description: Investigating the impact of metacognitive monitoring and control on learning in children and adolescents

Institutions: Department of Psychology, University of Zurich; Faculty of Psychology, University of Basel

Field of research: Developmental cognitive psychology

Funder: Swiss National Science Foundation

Project leader: Professor Mariëtte van Loon

Faculty of Psychology, Department of Human Development, University of Basel

Advice for teachers

“Our research focuses on individual metacognitive monitoring and control processes,” says Mariëtte. “But of course, students’ learning is shaped by many factors, including school culture and classroom management.” These suggestions draw on metacognition research and may help you think about how you can support students whose metacognitive abilities are still developing.

Identify struggling students

Current evidence suggests that teachers do not always accurately estimate their students’ monitoring and control skills. “While teachers are able to identify students with good metacognitive skills, they often find it more difficult to spot those who are struggling,” says Mariëtte. “Studies have found that this is often because teachers judge their students’ abilities based on information that is not directly indicative of their metacognitive skills.”

For example, some teachers base these judgements on how active the student appears in class, how engaged they are with learning tasks or how good their grades are. “Gender and ethnic background also seem to play a role,” says Mariëtte. “Teachers tend to underestimate boys a little more than girls, as well as students from minority backgrounds.”

Mariëtte suggests that the best way to assess your students’ metacognitive abilities is to observe how well they assess their own work. “Simply asking students to score their own answers can give you lots of information about how good they are at distinguishing between errors and correct responses,” says Mariëtte. “It is important for students to be able to identify their mistakes, but it is equally important for them to recognise where they gave the right response, as they might lose confidence and motivation if they think that they are always getting things wrong.”

Provide opportunities for practice

“It is important to create opportunities for your students to practise their monitoring and control skills,” says Mariëtte. “Some research has found that teachers tend to offer low-performing students fewer opportunities to practise self-regulated learning, which can prevent them from improving their monitoring and control skills.” It is important to support the metacognitive development of all students.

Some specific interventions have been shown to improve students’ monitoring. Although this evidence comes mostly from experiments in controlled settings rather than classroom environments, these interventions offer a theoretically-grounded place to start.

For example, in learning aimed at retrieval, the use of delayed judgement and self-scoring can be effective. Ask your students to evaluate how well they remember each item after a short delay, rather than immediately after studying. This will allow them to more accurately identify which information they have and have not learnt.

“When learning is aimed at comprehension, generation tasks may be more effective,” says Mariëtte. “Ask your students to generate summaries, concept maps or diagrams shortly after studying information. These tasks can help students gain insights into how well they understand concepts and their relations to each other.”

Create opportunities for feedback

One of the most effective influences on both monitoring and control is feedback. “While younger students benefit most from immediate, clear and specific feedback, older students can benefit from feedback framed as reflective questions,” says Mariëtte. “Prompting children to think about how they approached a task, which strategies they used and how they reached their conclusions supports their ability to monitor their learning.”

Explicitly training students to use control strategies also appears to be effective. “Teaching students to study strategically – such as spending more time on difficult items and ignoring irrelevant information – can help them make better control decisions and achieve better learning outcomes,” says Mariëtte. “Although more classroom-based research into control processes is needed, our research team is actively investigating this topic and answering new questions!”

Meet the team

Dr Emely Hoch

Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich

I study learning and cognitive processes in an applied context. Understanding how metacognition develops can help bridge the gap between basic research and practical applications in education.

In the future, I would like to better understand how we can support the development of metacognitive abilities in children. I hope this research contributes to effective educational interventions that may prevent learning difficulties and support academic success.

While metacognitive processes are important, they should be considered alongside other aspects of self-regulated learning, including motivation, goal setting and emotional regulation. To achieve a full understanding of learning, we must consider these interconnected processes.

Dr Leila Schächinger

Postdoctoral Researcher, Faculty of Psychology, University of Basel

I study how late elementary school children monitor and control their own learning. My research examines these processes across different activities, such as memory, reading and problem-solving tasks.

I am fascinated by why some students learn more effectively than others. By studying how monitoring and control skills differ between individuals, we may be able to develop interventions that are better tailored to students’ needs. My motivation is to contribute to educational practices that help all students reach their full potential.

I am particularly interested in how students can learn successfully when they are still learning the language of instruction used at school. Many students around the world learn in a language that is not their strongest, which can make learning more challenging. I hope to discover how metacognitive skills can support these students and identify strategies that help them learn effectively despite language barriers.

Eileen Rüegg

PhD Student, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich

I am studying how metacognition is related to other factors that matter for learning, such as memory, intelligence and learning goals. I am interested in which of these factors make a unique contribution to learning, where they overlap and how they influence each other.

I have always been interested in cognitive development because it helps us understand processes that are central to being human: how we think, learn and make sense of our surroundings. Once they get over the abstract term, people often think back to their own experiences in school: how they studied, what worked for them and where they struggled. The connection between a rich and complex research topic and these familiar everyday experiences is fascinating.

I am interested in how metacognitive skills can be assessed reliably in educational contexts. There is a need for practical diagnostic tools that could help practitioners better identify which students may benefit from additional support.

Katharina Zimmerman

PhD Student, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich

I investigate how different psychological processes – such as emotional, motivational and cognitive states – interact with metacognition. A further goal of my work is to formalise verbal theories of metacognition to better understand the underlying mechanisms that drive these processes.

I love being able to contribute to a large collaborative project. I am particularly interested in understanding developmental trajectories and how they relate to learning. Being part of a collaborative research team allows us to examine these questions from different perspectives.

In the future, I hope to better understand why metacognitive abilities differ across individuals and contexts. This will help us identify factors that support effective learning.

Do you have a question for Mariëtte, Emely, Leila, Eileen or Katharina?
Write it in the comments box below and they will get back to you. (Remember, researchers are very busy people, so you may have to wait a few days.)

Learn about new research in the field of education:

futurumcareers.com/beyond-grades-rethinking-how-we-measure-student-success

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Exposing the beauty of mathematics with fractals

Admin — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 11:50:58 +0000

Exposing the beauty of mathematics with fractals

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Fractals are intricate mathematical patterns that repeat forever. At Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières in Canada, Assistant Professor Pierre-Olivier Parisé has helped to expand a method to visually render fractal objects, showcasing the beauty of these intriguing patterns and enabling mathematicians to uncover the extraordinary mathematics that define them.

Talk like a mathematician

Fractal – an image or object that infinitely repeats itself

Render – to create a realistic computer-generated image

Ray tracing – a rendering technique that calculates the paths of individual rays of light through a computer-generated scene

Ray marching – an adaptation of ray tracing in which each ray is advanced along its path in steps

Distance estimator – a mathematical function used in ray marching to estimate how far a ray is from a surface

Multicomplex numbers – a multidimensional extension of complex numbers (imaginary numbers –the square roots of negative numbers – are examples of complex numbers)

Commutative – a system in which the order you apply an operation does not change the result (e.g., a + b = b + a)

What do trees, ferns and broccoli have to do with mathematics? The answer: they represent the mathematical concept of fractals – objects that repeat themselves at smaller and smaller scales. A tree trunk splits into large branches which split into smaller branches which split into twigs, while each fern leaf and broccoli floret is a miniature version of the whole fern frond or broccoli head.

“Strictly speaking, these natural examples are only approximate fractals as they repeat over a limited range,” explains Assistant Professor Pierre-Olivier Parisé, a mathematician at Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières. “In a true mathematical fractal, the object appears within itself infinitely, with new details that keep appearing no matter how far you zoom in.”

Previous mathematicians have created techniques to visually render 3D fractals, and Pierre-Olivier and his collaborators have built on these, which has involved developing new mathematical methods. “This is, first and foremost, a piece of foundational mathematics,” he says, highlighting that one of the joys of being a mathematician is having the opportunity to simply push the boundaries of our knowledge. However, his technique can also be used for practical applications. “Fractals have always been good at drawing people into mathematics because you can appreciate their beauty without understanding them,” he says. “I hope these 3D images can serve the same purpose – showing that even something as forbidding as multicomplex analysis has a vivid tangible side that can simply be an object of art.”

What is ray tracing?

Ray tracing is a rendering technique used in computer graphics to produce realistic images (complete with accurate shadows, reflections and lighting) by simulating the physical behaviour of light. It calculates the paths that individual rays of light take as they travel through a scene to reach a viewer. However, as most light emitted from a source will scatter into the scene and never reach the viewer, tracing every ray from a light source would be a waste of computational power. Instead, the ray tracing technique starts from the viewer’s perspective and traces rays backwards into the scene, calculating the path of one ray for every pixel in the image.

“Each ray is followed until it hits the first surface in its path, and at that point the program must work out what colour the pixel should be by gathering information about the lighting where the ray landed,” explains Pierre-Olivier. To do this, the program casts a shadow ray to detect if the object is lit by the light source or if it is in the shadow of another object, plus a reflection ray to see what the surface reflects and a refraction ray to see how light bends through transparent objects. “A single frame in an animated film can require millions of rays which takes hours of rendering time but produces high quality images,” says Pierre-Olivier. “For example, Pixar first used ray tracing for Cars in 2006 to render realistic reflections, shadows and metallic surfaces.”

Why does ray tracing not work for fractal objects?

While graphic designers can use ray tracing to create realistic-looking objects in animated scenes, the technique does not work for rendering true fractal objects. “The real difficulty appears the moment we pass to a genuinely 3D fractal,” says Pierre-Olivier. “As a solid object sitting in space, to obtain a realistic image we must cast rays, find where each one meets the fractal object and light the surface it lands on.” But this is where the assumptions built into ordinary ray tracing break down. Because fractals have infinite detail at every scale, no matter how far you zoom in, the computed ray will never actually reach the object’s surface.

How does Pierre-Olivier render 3D fractals?

To solve the problem of rendering 3D fractals, graphic designers need to use an adapted version of ray tracing known as ray marching, where the ray is advanced along its path from the viewer into the scene in steps, until it is close enough to the fractal to be considered to have reached the surface. At this point, the program follows the usual ray tracing technique to determine what colour the pixel should be. The length of each step in the ray marching technique is defined by a distance estimator – a mathematical function that estimates how far the ray is from the fractal at each step. “Producing such an estimator is a genuine mathematical problem,” says Pierre- Olivier.

Inspired by a distance estimator found for complex numbers, Pierre-Olivier and his collaborators have developed a new mathematical method for calculating distance estimators that uses multicomplex numbers in a commutative number system that models higher dimensional space. “As a result, the properties of 3D fractals can be mathematically proved, rather than merely observed as an image on a screen,” he says. “This means they can be rigorously analysed. The key value of this technique is that it provides a method for exploring the mathematics behind fractals.”

Pierre-Olivier’s work sits at the intersection between mathematical multicomplex dynamics and practical computer graphics, and he hopes both mathematicians and graphic animators will benefit from his distance estimator method to share the incredible beauty of mathematics with the world.

Assistant Professor Pierre-Olivier Parisé

Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Canada

Field of research: Mathematics

Research project: Developing a mathematical method to create and analyse 3D fractals

Funder: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant RGPIN-2026-04740

Website: mathopo.ca

About mathematics

“Mathematics is one of the few subjects you can pursue with almost nothing but your own mind,” enthuses Pierre-Olivier. “Once you have learnt its language, you are free to wander wherever your curiosity leads.” For Pierre-Olivier, the hardest part of being a mathematician is not solving mathematical problems but finding the right problem to tackle in the first place. “I want to solve problems that are hard enough that cracking them will actually mean something,” he says. “Searching for a solution to a difficult mathematical problem feels like a quest! And the quest never ends, because every problem you solve opens new questions.”

Download the article

Reference
https://doi.org/10.33424/FUTURUM714

Link to the activity sheet

“In a true mathematical fractal, the image appears within itself infinitely, with new details that keep appearing no matter how far you zoom in,” says Pierre-Olivier. © Pierre-Olivier Parisé

Pierre-Olivier and his collaborators have developed a mathematical method to create 3D fractals like these. “As a result, the properties of 3D fractals can be mathematically proved, rather than merely observed as an image on a screen,” he says. “This means they can be rigorously analysed. The key value of this technique is that it provides a method for exploring the mathematics behind fractals.” © Pierre-Olivier Parisé

Romanesco broccoli is a natural example of fractals, with each floret being a miniature version of the whole head of broccoli. © NathanS3/Shutterstock.com

The Mandelbrot set is a famous mathematical fractal. As you zoom in on any part of the image, it will provide new details infinitely. © MP_Foto

What does the life of a mathematician look like?

“There is no typical day as a mathematician, and that is part of what I like about the job,” says Pierre-Olivier. “The popular image of a mathematician – someone standing alone at a blackboard all day – captures only a sliver of the reality.” As a researcher, Pierre-Olivier attends conferences to share his research with the mathematics community. “These conferences give me the opportunity to travel around the world and visit incredible places: Vancouver, Toronto, Nashville, Honolulu, London and more,” he says. As a teacher, he prepares and delivers lectures to classes and supervises students conducting research projects. “My record was teaching 147 students where the class had to be taught in an auditorium, like you see in the movies Beautiful Mind and Good Will Hunting!”

What will the future of mathematics look like?

“It’s tempting to think that everything has been discovered in mathematics, but in fact there are more open questions today than ever before,” says Pierre-Olivier, so there are plenty of opportunities for the next generation of mathematicians. As with most areas of life, AI will play a significant role in the future of the field. “AI will help us with problems that demand long, intricate calculations,” predicts Pierre-Olivier. “With AI to carry that burden, mathematicians will be able to study problems in much greater depth than is currently feasible.”

Pathway from school to mathematics

At school, study mathematics and physics. “Algebra, geometry and trigonometry will teach you the language of mathematics,” says Pierre-Olivier. “Physics is where mathematics comes alive as a description of the real world.”

“But more important than the subjects you study is learning to enjoy reasoning about hard problems,” advises Pierre-Olivier. “The most valuable habit you can acquire is the patience to understand why something is true rather than merely how to compute it.”

At university, study a degree in mathematics. Pierre-Olivier recommends taking courses in algebra, probability, real and complex analysis, topology, logic, and programming.

Explore careers in mathematics

“Mathematics is a universal language that underlies physics, computer science, economics, biology and more, so it will open doors in every direction,” says Pierre-Olivier. “A degree in mathematics could lead you almost anywhere!”

Mathematicians can find careers in teaching (for students of all ages), research (developing new solutions to mathematical problems), modelling (of everything from climate change to epidemics to financial risk), machine learning and artificial intelligence, cryptography and computer security, and data science. “Mathematicians aren’t confined to a single industry because mathematics itself is not confined,” says Pierre-Olivier.

“Doing mathematics makes you logical, persistent and resilient,” says Pierre-Olivier. “You learn to break a daunting problem into pieces, reason from what you know to what you do not, and sit with a difficulty for hours or days without giving up. These are qualities all employers value because they transfer to any problem, whether mathematical or not. A mathematician is not trained for one job but for the act of problem-solving itself.”

Meet Pierre-Olivier

When I was a teenager, I had little interest in school. Most of the projects we were assigned did nothing to draw me in. All of that changed, however, when I met two passionate and dedicated mathematics teachers.

The first teacher, Jean-Patrick Paul, moved me with his love of mathematics. He was always enthusiastic, and that enthusiasm became my own – it made me eager to tackle the problems he set for us. I was proud to bring him my solutions, because I knew he would be glad to see my progress and would be just as fascinated as I was by the answer. From that point on, I took my mathematics and physics courses far more seriously.

The second teacher, Denis Tremblay, was the one who ultimately shaped my decision to study mathematics at university. He nurtured my curiosity by offering me intriguing puzzles with captivating solutions. He introduced me to Accromath, a Quebec magazine that makes mathematical ideas accessible to a broad audience. A fire had been kindled in me – one that still burns today.

I first came across 3D fractal images during a summer research project at the end of my second year of university. A mentor, Professor Dominic Rochon, guided me through how to generate and rigorously study 3D fractals and the subject captivated me.

When I’m not solving mathematical problems, I enjoy biking with my wife and daughter. I surf when I can, and I’m learning how to wing foil. I also like repairing things around the house which brings some concreteness to my otherwise abstract work life. I’ve been an avid lover of The Legend of Zelda since I was young, and I still play it out of nostalgia, along with Mario Kart.

I love the fact that mathematics is alive! To study mathematics is to be handed a tool of extraordinary power and beauty to understand the world around us.

Pierre-Olivier’s top tips

1. Learn the foundations of mathematics and learn them well. Mathematics is built in layers, with each resting on the one below, and there are no shortcuts through the bottom layers. So take time to understand why things are true rather than merely how to use them.

2. The next generation of mathematicians will not be replaced by AI, but they will need to work alongside it. So learn how to use AI tools to do the long and mechanical parts of an argument while you keep watch over the ideas. A student who is comfortable both with a chalkboard and computational tools will be well placed to do mathematics in the years ahead.

Do you have a question for Pierre-Olivier?
Write it in the comments box below and he will get back to you. (Remember, researchers are very busy people, so you may have to wait a few days.)

Link your mathematics lessons to real-world learning:

futurumcareers.com/transforming-college-mathematics-education-through-hands-on-modelling-experiences

The post Exposing the beauty of mathematics with fractals appeared first on Futurum.

Your Brain on Failure: Here’s What Failure Does to Your Brain and Quick Techniques to Minimise Its Impact

Admin — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 10:48:53 +0000

Your Brain on Failure: Here’s What Failure Does to Your Brain and Quick Techniques to Minimise Its Impact

Well, it’s that time of year again… Results day is right around the corner. Whether this will be your first results day or your last, you’re probably feeling what students have always felt when awaiting their exam results: the fear of failure.

This guest post, written by Dr Melisa Buie, explains what’s going on in your brain when you feel this fear and how you can train yourself to overcome it. We hope that you can use Dr Buie’s advice to stay calm on results day and look to your future with positivity, no matter your grades.

And of course, from all of us here at Futurum, good luck!

You bombed a test. Your experiment flopped. Your presentation fell flat. Your stomach drops, your face flushes, and your mind goes blank. Here is the thing: that meltdown is not a character flaw. It is your brain doing exactly what it evolved to do.

What is actually happening inside your head?

Your brain has two key players when it comes to failure. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for logic, planning, and reasoning, and the amygdala, which reacts instinctively, flooding your body with adrenaline before your rational mind can assess the situation. Psychologists call this an “emotional hijack.” Your rational brain goes offline, and your body launches into one of four autopilot responses: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.

That is why failure feels so physical: a racing heart, shallow breathing, heat rushing to your face. Your brain treats a bad grade the same way your ancestors’ brains treated a predator leaping from the bushes.

Why failure feels worse than it should

Your brain is also a storyteller. Emotions are not just raw feelings; they are feelings with a story on top. When you fail a chemistry exam, your brain does not just register disappointment. The story: “I’m not smart enough.” The real damage isn’t the failure. It’s the story. That’s what breeds shame, which is heavier than anything that actually happened.

Fear of failure is also learned. Babies fail constantly as they figure out how to crawl, walk, and talk, yet they never hesitate to try again. Over time, society teaches us that mistakes are bad. The more we absorb those messages, the thicker our neural pathways of avoidance become, and the harder it becomes to take risks.

Try This …

Your brain can be rewired. Every time you practise a new response, you build fresh neural circuits. The more you practise, the stronger the connection becomes.

Notice what you’re feeling. Next time panic hits, stop for a second and actually name it. “Okay, this is fear” or “I’m feeling ashamed.” Naming an emotion activates the prefrontal cortex and dials down the amygdala’s alarm. Sounds simple, but naming it takes away some of its power.

Separate facts from stories. Write down what actually happened as if a camera recorded it, then write the story your brain added. Seeing the gap between “I got 42% on my physics test” and “I’m a total failure” helps you challenge the narrative and respond with clarity.

Practise self-compassion. Talk to yourself the way you would talk to a friend who just failed. Research shows self-compassion lowers the stress response and makes you more willing to try again. Beating yourself up strengthens the fear loop and makes future risks feel scarier.

Failure may be uncomfortable, but it does not define your identity. Once you see what your brain is doing, why it’s panicking, you’re not its prisoner anymore. And that’s when you can actually learn and grow.

Dr. Melisa Buie is the co-author of Faceplant: FREE Yourself From Failure’s Funk (Practical Inspiration Publishing), and a speaker, facilitator and organisational strategist with 30+ years of experience in industry, government and academia.

The post Your Brain on Failure: Here’s What Failure Does to Your Brain and Quick Techniques to Minimise Its Impact appeared first on Futurum.

What is it like to work in a radiation oncology department?

Admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 12:00:27 +0000

What is it like to work in a radiation oncology department?

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Radiation oncology is a field of medical science that uses high-energy radiation to kill cancer cells. The field relies on collaboration between researchers and clinicians with a variety of skills and expertise. For example, the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of California, Los Angeles is home to a diverse range of scientists including Dr Erina Vlashi, a radiation oncology researcher, Dr Michael Xiang, a clinical radiation oncologist, Dr Danilo Maziero, a medical physicist, and Dr Fang-I Chu, a biostatistician.

Talk like a radiation oncologist

Glioblastoma – a highly-aggressive form of brain cancer

Oncology – the branch of medicine dedicated to diagnosing, treating and preventing cancer

Reactive oxygen species – highly reactive molecules containing oxygen that can damage DNA, lipids and other cellular structures

Our cells are programmed to obey self-destruct orders when they become irreparably damaged, and most cells valiantly follow these orders, sacrificing themselves for the good of the body. However, cancer cells have been reprogrammed to ignore these instructions and continue to grow and divide, leading to the formation of tumours and the invasion of nearby tissue. If the cancer is not destroyed or removed, it can cause serious health conditions and, ultimately, lead to death.

Fortunately, survival rates are improving as scientists and doctors develop new tests and treatments with reduced toxicity to normal tissue. For example, in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of California, Los Angeles, researchers and clinicians are working together to study cancer cells, test new treatments, design new therapeutic machines and treat patients. This hub of collaboration and teamwork includes Dr Erina Vlashi, a radiation oncology researcher, Dr Michael Xiang, a clinical radiation oncologist, Dr Danilo Maziero, a medical physicist, and Dr Fang-I Chu, a biostatistician.

What is radiation therapy?

“Radiation therapy is a form of cancer treatment that uses high energy ionising radiation to eliminate cancer cells,” explains Erina. “It does this either by damaging DNA molecules directly or by breaking water molecules down into hydrogen and oxygen. This produces reactive oxygen species which go on to damage other molecules in the cell, including DNA.”

Cancer cells are less efficient at repairing damaged DNA than healthy cells, so they can be destroyed with radiation doses that do not irreparably harm healthy cells. Even so, highly sophisticated machines are necessary to focus the radiation at tumours whilst protecting healthy tissue.

“The potential of harming healthy cells limits how much radiation we can deliver to a patient’s tumour,” says Erina. “If we deliver too high of a dose, we risk damaging healthy tissue.” The holy grail of cancer treatment is to find a therapy that kills every cancer cell without harming any normal cells. Unfortunately, for some cancers, radiation treatments are not yet at this stage, but Erina and her team are looking for new ways to make radiation therapy more effective.

“Radiation therapy is used to treat more than 60% of patients with cancer, and it can cure several types of the disease, especially if it is used early in the cancer’s growth,” says Erina. “However, some cancers, such as glioblastomas and pancreatic cancer, are resistant to the radiation doses that we can safely deliver to a patient. One of the main goals of our research is to figure out how to make these tumours more sensitive to radiation therapy so that we can eliminate them using safe doses.”

Why are some cancers resistant to radiation?

Like all cells, cancer cells need nutrients to survive. Through the process of cell metabolism, these nutrients are broken down or combined to help a cell perform its function. However, some cancer cells reprogramme their metabolism to use nutrients for fuelling uncontrolled growth and division, allowing them to form tumours and spread. Some tumours, like glioblastomas, also use their metabolism to ‘shield’ themselves from radiation therapy.

“Glioblastoma cells can use their metabolic reactions to make antioxidants which neutralise the damaging reactive oxygen species generated by radiation therapy,” explains Erina. “This allows them to survive radiation therapy and makes them hard to control using current radiation therapy techniques.”

How does Erina study radiation resistant cancers?

By studying the metabolism of glioblastoma cells, Erina and her team hope to figure out exactly how these cells survive radiation therapy. “Once we understand their strategy, we can devise ways to interfere with it in the hope of making them less resistant to radiation therapy,” she says. “If we are successful, we can achieve much greater tumour control and even find cures for tumours that are currently hard to treat with radiation therapy.”

In the lab, Erina’s team use a variety of experimental techniques to study cancer cells. “We start by testing ‘cell lines’, which are cancer cells that have been isolated during the surgical removal of a glioblastoma and grown in a laboratory environment,” says Erina. “But killing cancer cells in a petri dish is easy; killing them inside a human body without harming healthy tissue is much harder.” This is why the team often tests their new therapies in experimental animals.

“To mimic a human tumour growing in the brain of a patient with cancer, we can implant glioblastoma cells into the brains of experimental mice,” explains Erina. “We also have ‘small animal irradiators’ that resemble the machines used in the clinic to treat patients and are designed to deliver targeted radiation therapy to mice.”

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Reference
https://doi.org/10.33424/FUTURUM711

Link to the activity sheet

Members of the radiation oncology clinic, including physician, medical physicist, certified medical dosimetrist, radiation therapists, nursing, and patient navigator.

Danilo setting up a quality assurance test for the Radiation Oncology department’s 1.5 T MRI scanner.

Dr Prince Kumar, a post-doctoral fellow in Erina’s lab, operating the small animal irradiator.

Lubna Abdulrahman, a UCLA medical student, growing cancer cells for studying tumour metabolism in Erina’s lab.

Tara Moore, a UCLA undergraduate student, performing research in Erina’s lab.

What has Erina discovered?

“We have discovered that if we remove a particular amino acid (called serine) from the diet of mice with glioblastomas, radiation therapy becomes much more effective at slowing the tumours,” says Erina. “We are now looking into whether manipulating the immune system can further enhance this therapeutic effect.”

Erina’s team is also studying pancreatic cancer, which is difficult to treat with radiation therapy, due in part to the pancreas’ location in the body. “Pancreatic tumours tend to be very close to the normal gastrointestinal tract, which is very sensitive to radiation,” explains Erina. “So we are trying to find ways to protect the gastrointestinal tract so that we can make radiation therapy more effective for patients with pancreatic cancer.”

“Ultimately, our goal is to find new strategies to more effectively treat aggressive tumours with radiation therapy and to bring these strategies to patients with cancer,” continues Erina. “Achieving this goal is only possible because we have a variety of skills, tools and expertise within our department, and because we all work together towards a common goal – figuring out how to make radiation therapy as effective as possible in eliminating as many tumours as possible and extending the lives of patients with cancer.”

Dr Erina Vlashi

Field of research: Radiation oncology

Dr Michael Xiang

Field of research: Clinical radiation oncology

Dr Danilo Maziero

Field of research: Medical physics

Dr Fang-I Chu

Field of research: Biostatistics

Department of Radiation Oncology, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Research project: Optimising radiation therapy for treating cancer

Funders: US National Institutes of Health (NIH); National Cancer Institute (NCI)

About radiation oncology

Radiation oncology is a dynamic and multi-disciplinary field. As well as researchers like Erina, the field includes clinicians (who treat patients and run clinical trials to test new treatments), medical physicists (who oversee the development and maintenance of the equipment that delivers radiation therapy) and biostatisticians (who help with the design of clinical trials, statistical analysis, and the interpretation and reporting of results).

Clinical radiation oncologists

Radiation is one of the three main pillars of cancer treatment, along with chemotherapy and surgery. Together, clinicians from each pillar will create treatment plans for each patient. “I meet patients for an initial consultation to discuss the benefits and potential risks of radiation therapy,” says Michael. “Then, I tailor the treatment to the patient’s needs and deliver the therapy. Each step of the process requires working with and managing a diverse team.”

Medical physicists

“As a medical physicist working in radiation oncology, my role is broad and dynamic,” says Danilo. “In the clinic, I work closely with doctors to design treatment plans and make sure that radiation therapy is delivered safely. Radiation therapy relies on complex equipment, and part of my job is making sure these machines are working accurately and safely. I also check the radiation shielding of treatment rooms and test safety systems to make sure that patients, staff and families are protected.”

In addition to clinical work, medical physicists are deeply involved in research and innovation. “We help introduce new technologies and treatment techniques into the clinic, making sure they are safe, effective and truly beneficial for patients,” explains Danilo.

Biostatisticians

“As a biostatistician, I use statistics to gain insight into questions within the field of radiation oncology by extracting, summarising and analysing data,” says Fang-I. “Through answering these questions, we can identify better treatments for patients and advance scientific knowledge.” Fang-I’s job involves providing statistical input throughout the course of a clinical trial – from the planning stage to data collection and analysis – and reporting on the results to make sure they are meaningful and easily understood.

Pathway from school to radiation oncology

To become a radiation oncology researcher, Erina recommends taking as many science classes as you can. “They are all important and teach you to think about scientific questions from different perspectives,” she says.

To become a clinician, Michael recommends studying biology, chemistry, physics and social sciences, all of which are usually required to get into medical school.

To become a medical physicist, Danilo recommends building a strong foundation in physics, mathematics, engineering and programming (specifically Python, C++ or C#).

To become a biostatistician, Fang-I recommends training in applied mathematics, statistics, statistical programming and critical thinking.

Explore careers in radiation oncology

Seek hands-on experiences such as internships, research projects, work shadowing or volunteer opportunities. This is a great way to connect what you’ve learnt in the classroom with real careers.

Reach out and talk to people at different stages of their career journey in radiation oncology. Students at local universities, scientists in research labs and clinicians in local hospitals will all have different perspectives that can give you a realistic, well-rounded view of what your career path might look like.

Meet Erina

Conducting scientific research in radiation oncology, especially in collaborative projects, gives you the opportunity to make a large impact in the lives of patients with cancer. I love introducing my students to this field and guiding them to think about and help solve some of our biggest challenges.

Success in scientific research, including radiation oncology, is built from staying curious, asking good questions and learning from many failed experiments. Curiosity will keep you coming back after all the setbacks.

Marie Curie, Nobel Prize Awardee for her studies in radioactivity, said, “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” So, stay curious, work hard and fear less.

Meet Michael

As a teenager, I was deeply interested in math and science. However, during my studies, I discovered that I was more drawn to taking care of patients than laboratory-based research because of the human element and the immediacy of having a direct, positive impact on others.

Although we have guidelines to help us, every patient’s situation is unique. We often have to weigh-up different treatment options and work with patients to decide which option is best for them. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, not all patients will have favourable outcomes. In these moments, we still strive to provide comfort if cure is not possible. When caring for others, taking care of yourself both mentally and physically is also important, and seeing patients who are healthy and in remission is a motivation to keep doing what we do.

Learning is a lifelong process. We must remain flexible and open to new findings as science and technology advance. As a doctor, other humans have placed their livelihood and well-being in your hands, and that is an awesome and humbling responsibility.

Meet Danilo

As a teenager, I had many interests including skating, karate, music and computers. I encountered medical physics when my grandfather underwent radiation therapy, but didn’t consider it as a career until my final year of high school.

Using physics to help people is incredibly rewarding. Ideas that start as equations or theories can quickly turn into tools that improve patient care. Medical physics is a growing field with strong career prospects and the chance to work with inspiring people on meaningful challenges every day.

Strong communication skills are essential for this career. Being able to explain complex ideas and to listen to perspectives from other disciplines is critical for good teamwork and patient care. Progress often comes from considering the ideas of people who differ from your own background or way of thinking. Respecting and learning from others strengthens both clinical practice and research.

Meet Fang-I

There are so many questions in biology and medical science that are relevant to all human beings. While most of these questions may not be answered easily, statistics allows us to have a better grasp on them.

I cherish the opportunity to let my curiosity run free, the strong sense of belonging I get from working as part of a team, and being able to recognise how my input fits into the bigger picture. It is an honour to be part of a positive force aiming to improve patient care and advance medical knowledge.

Students who are passionate about solving problems, helping others and advancing medical knowledge as part of a team will find pursuing a career as a biostatistician in radiation oncology satisfying and rewarding.

Do you have a question for Erina, Michael, Danilo or Fang-I?
Write it in the comments box below and they will get back to you. (Remember, researchers are very busy people, so you may have to wait a few days.)

Learn about cancer care and oncology research:

futurumcareers.com/how-philanthropy-is-improving-cancer-care-and-oncology-research

The post What is it like to work in a radiation oncology department? appeared first on Futurum.

How can Two-Eyed Seeing transform the way we teach?

Admin — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 09:53:45 +0000

How can Two-Eyed Seeing transform the way we teach?

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In many classrooms, STEAM subjects are primarily taught through Western or mainstream scientific approaches. While these methods are powerful, relying on a single worldview can limit how students connect their learning to the world around them. To combat this, the Canadian organisation IndigeSTEAM Society is supporting teachers in adopting Two-Eyed Seeing – a framework that brings together Indigenous/traditional and Western/mainstream ways of knowing to create more meaningful, culturally-responsive learning experiences.

Students and teachers bring their own experiences, cultural backgrounds and ways of understanding the world into the classroom. These perspectives can enrich how learning takes place across the curriculum – not least in STEAM teaching, which uses a ‘Western’ STEM framework. The IndigeSTEAM team is helping teachers explore new ways of approaching teaching through the framework of Two-Eyed Seeing.

Originally shared by Mi’kmaq Elder Albert Marshall, Two-Eyed Seeing refers to, “learning to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the strengths of Western knowledges and ways of knowing, and using both these eyes together, for the benefit of all.”¹Two-Eyed Seeing enables the recognition of traditional knowledge as a distinct and whole knowledge system side-by-side with the mainstream system. IndigeSTEAM recognises that Two-Eyed Seeing encompasses all school and career ‘topics’. It is more than Indigenous and Western worldviews and includes the voices of all human cultures.

Why multiple worldviews matter in education

When STEAM subjects are taught only through a single worldview, learning can sometimes feel disconnected from students’ lives and local environments. Students may master facts and formulas, but struggle to see how their learning relates to themselves, their communities or real-world challenges. “Two-Eyed Seeing students continue to develop academic skills, but gain relational and ethical understandings, which are essential for addressing real-world challenges,” says Kaylee Shannon.

Teaching through Two-Eyed Seeing helps create space for a more complete understanding of how knowledge connects to the world around us. When students engage with both mainstream and Indigenous/traditional ways of knowing, they begin to recognise that knowledge can be both evidence-based and rooted in relationships, lived experience and responsibility. Two-Eyed Seeing is restorative because it brings Indigenous/traditional knowledge back into its rightful place as an equal partner to mainstream subjects like science, challenging the assumption that there is only one valid way to understand the world. Students see that multiple truths can coexist, strengthening one another. “It’s a pedagogical approach – a framework – that brings the strengths of both ways of knowing together,” explains Izzy Ward.

Two-Eyed Seeing in practice at IndigeSTEAM

At IndigeSTEAM, Two-Eyed Seeing is experienced through hands-on programmes designed to bring Indigenous/traditional knowledge and mainstream STEAM learning together. “Through cultural teachings from community members side-by-side with guidance from scientific mentors and teachers, youth learn not only how the natural world functions through the two world views, but also to see the world with both eyes in a way that their Elders and scientist instructors cannot,” says Wendy Hutchins. IndigeSTEAM’s approach helps restore that balance by showing students and teachers that Indigenous knowledge is not an add on, but a complete way of understanding the world that complements the mainstream framework.

IndigeSTEAM’s best example of Two-Eyed Seeing teaching is their mini tipi workshop that combines tipi teachings with geography, history, symbology, mathematics, engineering, and many other aspects and focuses. A simple yet profound Two-Eyed Seeing concept is the side-by-side geometry of the circle and cone with Indigenous ‘geometry’ of the tipi shape representing a living human being: head, skin, ears, toes, teeth, mouth and more.

IndigeSTEAM sees the impact of Two-Eyed Seeing reflected in its alumni. Joe Wolfleg says, “It’s a practical tool for transforming how we communicate and connect.” For Joe, holding both knowledge systems together creates a greater perspective on the world, and has given him the confidence to move through Western spaces without having to question his Indigenous identity.

Two-Eyed Seeing in your classroom

“Two-Eyed Seeing recognises that each perspective offers valuable knowledge, and when they are used together, they can lead to deeper, more holistic learning and problem-solving,” explains Kaylee. “Two-Eyed Seeing is not about simply adding Indigenous content to existing lessons,” emphasises Sheila Norris. Instead, it invites teachers to reflect on how learning is designed so that multiple knowledge systems can be thoughtfully woven into the curriculum from the outset. For example, you could bring in scientists, speakers or story tellers from the local community, have students bring in stories from their cultural background, or include opportunities for place-based learning, where lessons are grounded in the local environment and students are encouraged to learn both from and about the land. It helps to ensure that learning remains connected to community knowledge and local contexts.

Rob Cardinal suggests making your teaching as authentic as possible: “Authentic teaching is actually teaching; it is not lecturing.” Learning from authentic voices such as Elders, Knowledge Keepers and community members allows students to hear stories and teachings that go beyond what textbooks can offer. Two-Eyed Seeing teaching appreciates that Indigenous Peoples are living, evolving communities whose knowledge continues to shape STEAM today. Students learn that knowledge is relational – shaped by land, community, identity and lived experience – and that learning becomes deeper when these relationships are honoured.

Two-Eyed Seeing as a way of being

Two-Eyed Seeing is more than an approach to teaching. “For teachers and students, this can look like approaching learning and decision-making with openness and humility by asking whose voices are included, whose are missing, and how different perspectives can work together,” says Kaylee. Living Two-Eyed Seeing means recognising the history of how Indigenous knowledge was marginalised and understanding the responsibility we carry to restore its voice, authority and rightful place in STEAM education. “Students can see that you care about what you are teaching,” says Rob. “Teachers should also be ready to learn right alongside their students.”

Two-Eyed Seeing is not just another teaching tool, or something secondary to Western/mainstream ways of educating. “The teaching behind Two-Eyed Seeing comes from each person’s identity, culture and lived experience to bring connection to each other and understanding on how our responsibilities are acted upon in the world,” says Sheila. “Teachers and students can live Two-Eyed Seeing by being curious, listening deeply, honouring knowledge they carry from home, and being open to learning from the land and each other.”

¹Two-Eyed Seeing and other lessons learned within a co-learning journey of bringing together indigenous and mainstream knowledges and ways of knowing, Bartlett, Marshall and Marshall (2012) doi: 10.1007/s13412-012-0086-8

IndigeSTEAM Society

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Fields of research: STEAM education; Indigenous education

Project: Encouraging teachers to use Two-Eyed Seeing in their classrooms

Funders: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) PromoScience; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Connections; Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology; Indigenous Youth Roots; Stantec; University of Calgary; Heartland Generation Ltd

Website: indigesteam.ca

Advice for teachers

Getting started

Download the article

Reference
https://doi.org/10.33424/FUTURUM707

Link to the activity sheet

IndigeSTEAM President, Rob Cardinal, with students participating in a mini tipi workshop.

Seven Generations, by Joey Big Snake. “In this piece, I wanted to express how I understand and feel the practice of Two-Eyed Seeing in my own life,” explains Joey. “The figures represent the Seven Generations, showing how knowledge, responsibility and teachings move from those who came before us into the present and forward into those yet to come.”

During IndigeSTEAM’s robot pow wows, students design, build and program robots while learning about pow wow traditions, including dance, music and regalia design.

Robot pow wows blend technology with cultural expression to show students that innovation and tradition are not separate but can work together.

IndigeSTEAM’s mini tipi workshop combines tipi teachings with geography, history, symbology, mathematics and engineering.

Students set up a telescope at an observatory. Star gazing promotes Two-Eyed Seeing by combining Indigenous knowledge about constellations with scientific knowledge about astronomy.

IndigeSTEAM’s workshops encourage students to use Two-Eyed Seeing as they learn about traditions and technology.

A smudge (herbs to be burnt) with a toy bison.

All images © IndigeSTEAM

Two-Eyed Seeing is best understood as something that grows through shared learning, relationships and ongoing reflection – rather than a method that can be learnt in a single training workshop. For teachers who are unsure how to begin, Two-Eyed Seeing does not require having all the answers in advance. “What matters is building authentic relationships and creating space for multiple ways of knowing in your classroom,” says Kaylee. This provides a space where every voice is heard and valued and shifts attention from delivering curriculum content to building relationships with students, the land and the wider community.

Working through challenges

Adopting a new teaching approach can feel unfamiliar at first, and it is normal for teachers to encounter challenges when exploring Two-Eyed Seeing in STEAM education. However, these challenges are not barriers, but starting points for reflection, learning and relationship-building. “Respecting the traditional knowledge is key. Appreciation is not appropriation,” explains Sheila. “Teachers are Knowledge Keepers who teach what they learn.”

“A common challenge is uncertainty about how to respectfully incorporate Indigenous perspectives without oversimplifying or misrepresenting,” says Rob. Building relationships can help address this, whether through connecting with local Indigenous communities, education teams, cultural organisations or Indigenous-led resources. Two-Eyed Seeing involves a shift in classroom relationships. Rather than a top-down model, it encourages shared learning where every voice is valued and the teacher is also a learner. This requires openness and vulnerability, as teaching becomes more relational and responsive. “When teachers are willing to be real with their students, Two-Eyed Seeing becomes something lived, not taught,” continues Rob.

It is important to acknowledge at the beginning of the lesson where the knowledge came from. “In a Two-Eyed Seeing way, we always acknowledge our teachers as we go rather than just giving references at the end,” says Wendy. Assessment can be challenging with Two-Eyed Seeing approaches, just as it can with inquiry, problem or project-based learning. Consider oral, artwork or theatrical-based assessments.

Practical examples of Two-Eyed Seeing in STEAM education

Two-Eyed Seeing can be woven into many familiar STEAM topics in ways that help students connect scientific concepts with relationships, responsibility and lived experience. “For example, when teaching the water cycle, students can explore the scientific processes of evaporation, condensation and precipitation through experiments, observations and diagrams,” says Kaylee. “At the same time, Indigenous knowledge offers teachings about water as living and sacred which connects all life.” Teaching could include local waterways, stories and discussions about caring for and protecting water. Together, these approaches help students understand water not only as a scientific system, but also as something deeply connected to community and the land. If on the land, students can explore topics such as navigation, plants, animals and ecosystems, while developing scientific skills such as observation and environmental testing. Ask the problem-based questions: ‘What problems do you see? What could we do? Should we?’ Let the students learn from each other.

Meet the team

Sheila Norris, Cree Métis, IndigeSTEAM Executive Director, Education Assistant

I try to live in a way that honours relationships with people, the land and myself. This comes with a responsibility to consider how my actions will affect the next seven generations, so I approach situations with respect, love and humility. Two-Eyed Seeing is a reminder that I am strongest when I allow both ways of knowing to guide me. I do not have to choose between one way of knowing or another.

Wendy Hutchins, Ally, IndigeSTEAM Co-founder and Treasurer, PhD Microbiology and Immunology

As an educator, I believe learning must be relevant to students’ lives or they will not see its importance. I learned more from reflection, reading and exploring in the world than from memorising facts for exams. Indigenous ways of knowing return us to older apprenticeship models, learning in the world, on the land, with a mentor, and with deeper thought than rote memorisation.

Kaylee Shannon, Gambler First Nation, IndigeSTEAM Education Manager, BEd

Two-Eyed Seeing shapes the way I see and live in the world. It fuels my curiosity and reminds me that there’s so much to learn. It guides how I live my life and how I teach my children to notice, respect and learn from the world in all its ways. I share the teachings and traditions I learnt from my grandparents with them, and we talk about what they mean today.

Izzy Ward, Métis, IndigeSTEAM Education Director, BSc Neuroscience, MEd

As an Indigenous person, I am guided by our traditional ways of knowing and being, and Two-Eyed Seeing helps me hold that cultural knowledge alongside my work in Western science and education. Living this way gives me confidence and harmony in how I understand the world, and it helps Indigenous learners see their culture reflected in their academic studies.

Rob Cardinal, Siksika First Nation, IndigeSTEAM Co-founder and President, BSc Astrophysics

Two-Eyed Seeing has become a natural part of how I view the world. It shapes how I approach people, situations and challenges. It gives me a broader, grounded perspective and reminds me to move with humility, respect and gratitude – values that guide my relationships and decisions.

Joseph Wolfleg, Siksika First Nation, IndigeSTEAM Youth Project Manager and Alumnus

I live Two-Eyed Seeing by using both my cultural teachings and my learning together in everyday life. My culture guides how I understand relationships, responsibility and community, while STEAM helps me understand how things work. Two-Eyed Seeing gave me the confidence to be myself in every space; I do not have to choose between worlds. It showed me that my identity and the knowledge I carry from home are strengths I can use in school, work and with the younger students I support.

Joey Big Snake, Siksika First Nation, IndigeSTEAM Artist in Residence, BFA Media Arts & Digital Tech

For me, Two-Eyed Seeing is about carrying Indigenous and Western ways of knowing with respect, allowing them to support one another without one overpowering the other. It is a way of walking in both worlds while staying grounded in culture, spirit and community. My artwork reflects that relationship and the responsibility of carrying teachings forward in a good way.

Do you have a question for the team?
Write it in the comments box below and they will get back to you. (Remember, researchers are very busy people, so you may have to wait a few days.)

Discover how traditional ways of knowing can enrich geoscience education:

futurumcareers.com/ways-of-knowing

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Sunflower speciation: how do new species evolve?

Admin — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 12:57:07 +0000

Sunflower speciation: how do new species evolve?

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Have you ever wondered why some flowers look and smell so different from one another? The answer lies in the mysterious workings of evolution, the process responsible for the boundless variety of life on our planet. By studying how new species of flowers evolve, Dr Kate Ostevik from the University of California Riverside in the US hopes to improve our understanding of this process and allow us to better protect Earth’s precious biodiversity.

Talk like an evolutionary biologist

Allele – one of two or more versions of a gene that differ in DNA sequence

Chromosome – a thread-like structure made of DNA and protein that contains an organism’s genetic information

Population – a group of organisms of the same species that live in the same area and interbreed

Speciation – the process by which populations evolve to become distinct species

Sterile – unable to produce offspring

Structural variant – a change to the position of a DNA sequence or the number of times it appears in a genome

Viable – able to survive and develop normally

Why are daffodils yellow? Why do roses smell so sweet? Why are sunflowers so tall? Flowers exist in a wonderful variety of shapes, colours and smells, and it’s all thanks to the process of evolution. Over immense spans of time, populations adapt to better face the challenges that life throws at them. As they do, new species emerge, adding to the incredible diversity of life on Earth.

“When populations of the same species live in different environments, they face different challenges,” explains Dr Kate Ostevik from the University of California Riverside. “Facing different climatic conditions, such as droughts or freezing temperatures, and interacting with different co-habitants, such as predators or pollinators, can drive the process of speciation.” Over time, natural selection favours traits that help each population survive and reproduce in its own environment. “As these differences build up, the populations can become so different that they can no longer successfully reproduce with each other,” explains Kate. “When that happens, they have become separate species.”

Speciation in the same place

Sometimes, the process of speciation can take place even when species live in the same habitat. In these cases, it’s not geographical barriers (such as mountain ranges and rivers) that prevent gene flow between populations, but reproductive barriers. “These are incompatibilities that stop two species from mating or producing viable offspring,” explains Kate. “For example, having different mating seasons or flowering at different times prevents two species from reproducing.”

Other species are able to mate, but their hybrid offspring may be sterile or unable to survive for very long. This is sometimes the result of structural variants: changes in the structure of chromosomes, such as sections of DNA being flipped or moved. “When these changes occur, they can reduce the successful mixing of DNA during reproduction,” explains Kate. “Even if individuals from different species mate, these chromosome differences can make offspring less likely to survive and reproduce.”

Evolving in parallel

Structural variants also play a key role in parallel evolution which happens when different populations independently evolve similar traits because they face similar challenges. Normally during reproduction, alleles (specific versions of genes) are reshuffled, meaning that advantageous alleles can be split up. However, structural variants can help to keep important groups of alleles intact. For example, if a section of a chromosome is inverted, it can no longer pair with a normal chromosome, preventing any of the alleles at inverted genes from being reshuffled. If the inverted section of chromosome contains advantageous alleles, they can all be passed down to offspring in a single, protected unit, making it easier for the same traits and reproductive barriers to evolve repeatedly.

“Structural variants can act like shortcuts that help evolution happen in similar ways for different populations,” says Kate. Think of the structural variant as a protective container with useful tools inside. These tools are the advantageous alleles that help a population survive in a particular environment or overcome a particular challenge. When isolated populations use the same genetic tools to solve a similar problem, parallel evolution occurs.

Studying sunflowers

“Sunflowers are useful for studying evolution because they have adapted to similar environments, like sand dunes, in different places across the US,” says Kate. “This means we can study whether the same kind of environment is leading to the same kind of evolutionary changes over and over again.”

Previous research has shown not only that dune sunflowers regularly develop reproductive barriers with non-dune sunflowers, but that these dune sunflowers often have structural variants. “This makes us wonder if dune sunflowers in different places are independently becoming new species in the same way,” says Kate. “My team is testing this by measuring reproductive barriers within and between dune and non-dune sunflowers. We are also using greenhouse crosses and genetic analyses to understand how the genes within structural variants help in dune environments and cause reproductive isolation.”

Kate’s research will improve our understanding of how new species form and whether that process is predictable. “This is important because if we can predict when biodiversity is generated, this might also help us predict when it will be lost,” explains Kate. “Preserving biodiversity is important because it keeps ecosystems functioning, supports human life and helps organisms adapt to a changing world.”

Learning on the job

Kate has integrated students into her research team, helping them learn and gain hands-on experience of evolutionary biology research. “Graduate students, such as Teddy Reitman, work full-time on the project and help lead different parts of the research while undergraduate research assistants, such as Yu Tian, contribute to data collection, experiments and analysis,” she says. “I also incorporate aspects of this project into a first-year undergraduate class. Students help determine which sunflowers successfully fertilised seeds by learning how to genotype both parent plants and their offspring.”

By providing these opportunities to students, Kate is training the next generation of evolutionary biologists. “Stay curious and get involved as early as you can,” she says. “Explore different interests and build connections with people who support you, because those experiences and relationships can really shape your future.”

Dr Kate Ostevik
Assistant Professor, Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology, University of California Riverside, USA

Field of research: Evolutionary biology

Research project: Investigating the speciation process in sunflowers

Funders: This material is based upon work supported by the US National Science Foundation CAREER Program under Award No. 2443424.

Website: osteviklab.com/home

About evolutionary biology

Evolutionary biology investigates the ways in which life on Earth evolves, adapts and changes over long periods of time. The field makes use of information and techniques from many other disciplines including genomics, ecology, developmental biology and palaeontology.

“Evolutionary biologists, like all scientists, try to resolve unanswered questions, which means working at the edge of knowledge,” says Kate. “Because of this, experiments do not always work, data can be messy and we sometimes get things wrong. This is a normal and important part of science, and overcoming these challenges requires persistence, careful testing of ideas and collaboration with others.” Kate recommends developing a ‘growth mindset’ and recognising that mistakes are part of the learning process. Building a strong network of collaborators and mentors who can offer guidance, new perspectives and support will also be helpful.

“My time as an evolutionary biologist is split between analysing data, writing scientific papers and grant proposals, meeting with students to guide their research, and teaching classes,” says Kate. “There are also exciting moments when my schedule looks very different. For example, I sometimes spend a lot of time in the field collecting seeds, working in the greenhouse to grow and maintain plants, and attending conferences to share and learn about research.”

Pathway from school to evolutionary biology

To work in evolutionary biology, it’s important to build a strong foundation in evolution, ecology and genetics, because these topics help you understand how species change and interact with their environments. “Some less obvious (but also important) courses include statistics, coding and writing,” says Kate.

“It’s helpful to get involved early,” says Kate. “Try volunteering on a project, participating in community science initiatives or talking to biologists about research opportunities.”

Look for events at your local universities such as summer schools or outreach programmes. These are great ways to get experience and learn more about how to become a scientist.

Download the article

Reference
https://doi.org/10.33424/FUTURUM706

Link to the activity sheet

Helianthus petiolaris at Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve.

Dune and non-dune Helianthus petiolaris growing in the University of California Riverside lath house.

Teddy conducting fieldwork in the Algodones Dunes of Southern California.

Helianthus niveus ssp. canescens growing in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

A reciprocal transplant where Kate planted dune and non-dune sunflowers into both habitats at Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve.

Kate working in her office.

Sunflower seed germination and seedling transplant materials.

Members of the Ostevik lab (Teddy, Kate, Rebeca, Gangothri, Brennan, and Rajesh) at the Evolution Meetings in Athens, GA, 2025.

Teddy taking care of the sunflowers in the UCR lath house.

Explore careers in evolutionary biology

Career opportunities in evolutionary biology are very broad and include research, conservation, environmental consulting, agriculture, biotechnology, science communication, education and data science.

Kate recommends exploring the resources of academic societies such as the Society for the Study of Evolution to learn more about careers in the field.

Meet the team

Kate

As a teenager, I loved plants, animals and spending time outdoors, and I knew early on that I wanted to be some kind of scientist. However, I didn’t fully connect those interests until my first years of undergraduate study, when I started meeting evolutionary biologists and realising I could turn my curiosity about the natural world into a career studying how species evolve and adapt.

I never find my job boring. There’s always a new question to explore, and I get to do many different types of work, such as fieldwork, data analysis and teaching. I find a lot of meaning in my role as a mentor, where I help students learn, grow and develop their own paths.

I am curious, adaptable and not easily discouraged or offended, which makes it easier to take feedback and keep improving.

Kate’s top tip

Be okay with making mistakes – science is all about trying things, learning and improving.

Teddy

As a teenager, I was interested in becoming a doctor. However, once I entered college, I realised that I was more interested in being outside and discovering things about the natural world than spending time in a hospital.

Science is a march towards discovery, and failure is an inherent part of the process. When we accept this fact, we can learn from failure. For instance, in my first year of working in the Ostevik Lab, I struggled to grow a cohort of sunflower seeds. Further investigation suggested that larger seeds outperformed smaller ones, and this finding led to Yu conducting a follow-up experiment that is now being prepared for publication. Even the most unexpected outcomes are worthy of further exploration.

The Covid-19 pandemic was a challenging time to be a student. Having to attend school remotely made it difficult to gain research experience. Nevertheless, I reached out to faculty to ask if and how I could still be involved in their research. Asking people about their research is a great way to get your foot in the door, even if you have to do it over Zoom. You might gain exposure to an aspect of research that really interests you.

Teddy’s top tip

Find people who have similar interests to you. Peer support is a critical part of research. These relationships can provide support in difficult times and develop into professional collaborations in the future.

Yu

I have been interested in biology since I was young. In elementary school, I received a microscope as a birthday present. I used it to observe many different things such as plant samples, insects and small organisms. That experience made me very curious about how living things work.

I didn’t have very strong grades in high school, so I was worried about whether I could succeed in biology. I started college studying business, but soon felt that I needed to at least try to pursue what I truly enjoyed. So, I switched to biology and worked very hard to improve myself.

I spent my time learning biology, talking with professors and gaining research experience. Through these experiences, I became more confident in my abilities and realised that interest and persistence are more important than being perfect at the beginning.

I am very thankful for the support and encouragement I have received from my professors and other people who have helped me. Their guidance continues to help me improve and become more confident in pursuing science.

Currently, I am working on a research project investigating seed traits and the germination process in prairie sunflowers. My experiences in the Ostevik Lab have helped prepare me for a career in science.

Yu’s top tip

Try to improve little by little every day, even if the changes seem small. Evolution itself works through many small changes over time. In the same way, small daily improvements can eventually make a very big difference.

Do you have a question for Kate, Teddy or Yu?
Write it in the comments box below and they will get back to you. (Remember, researchers are very busy people, so you may have to wait a few days.)

Learn about how we learn about evolution:

futurumcareers.com/can-modern-technology-uncover-the-secrets-of-evolution

The post Sunflower speciation: how do new species evolve? appeared first on Futurum.

How can biomass improve global sustainability and help the textile industry?

Admin — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 11:16:59 +0000

How can biomass improve global sustainability and help the textile industry?

Published:

Every day, the textile industry contaminates thousands of litres of water with harmful dyes that can impact the environment, aquatic life and human health if not properly treated before being released into waterways. At the University of the Basque Country in Spain, chemical engineer Dr María González Alriols and applied chemist Dr Mirari Antxustegi Bengoetxea are studying how biorefinery processes can create biochar and hydrochar. But how could these charcoal-like solids help clean wastewater, and why are the researchers excited about the possibilities?

Talk like a chemical engineer

Adsorption – a phenomenon in which atoms, ions or molecules accumulate on a material’s internal or external surface. Unlike absorption, where a substance penetrates and disperses throughout the bulk of a material, adsorption is confined exclusively to the surface

Biochar – a carbon-rich, porous solid similar to charcoal which is created by heating biomass without oxygen at very high temperatures

Biomass – plant, animal or microorganism-based material which can be used as a source of energy, materials and chemicals

Biorefinery – a facility that converts biomass into valuable products such as fuel and materials

Hydrochar – a carbon-rich solid created from biomass under aqueous conditions and moderate temperatures

Surface functionality – the available chemical groups on the surface of a material that directly influence its interaction with other substances, such as its capacity to selectively attract and adsorb specific compounds

As global consumption and energy demand increase, so does the need to find sustainable resources that do not harm the environment. At the University of the Basque Country, chemical engineer Dr María González Alriols and applied chemist Dr Mirari Antxustegi Bengoetxea are studying how biorefinery technologies can transform agricultural waste and by-products into valuable resources that can benefit industries and the planet.

What is a biorefinery?

Similar to an oil refinery that converts crude oil into fuel and other products, a biorefinery aims to reach the same outcome by using biomass instead. “There are different types of biorefineries depending on the raw material they use, but they all rely on biomass – which is renewable and organic – rather than fossil fuel resources that are non-renewable (though also organic),” explains María.

Some common types of biomass that are used in biorefineries include wood and woodchips, crops grown for energy production (such as switchgrass), agricultural waste (such as the leftovers of food crops), household waste, food and garden waste, treated sewage, and animal waste. “Some biorefineries are based on sugar-rich feedstocks (e.g., sugarcane or corn), others on oil-rich materials (such as vegetable oils or microalgae), others on woody biomass (including wood and straw) and others on the organic portion of waste streams (such as municipal solid waste, sludge or industrial residues),” explains Mirari.

Download the article

Reference
https://doi.org/10.33424/FUTURUM709

María and Mirari at a conference.

María and Mirari with students María and Lucía.

Similar to classic oil refineries, biorefineries produce biofuels such as bioethanol, biodiesel and biogas (which can be used to make transportation more sustainable). Biorefineries also produce a huge range of other chemicals and materials from which many products present in our everyday life can be produced, such as bio-plastics, bio-textiles and bio-adhesives.

Why can biorefineries be environmentally positive?

Since they rely on using biomass as their source, biorefineries offer a much more sustainable option than oil refineries. “One of the most promising aspects of biorefineries is that they can make by-products and waste materials (such as agricultural and forestry residues or urban waste) more valuable,” says María. “These materials are already generated and would otherwise require treatment, so transforming them in biorefineries improves overall sustainability and resource efficiency.”

Biomass is also widely available across the world, which means it is a fuel system that many people can make the most of. “Fossil fuel resources are concentrated in specific regions of the world, making their supply highly dependent on geopolitical and market instability,” explains Mirari. “On the other hand, biomass is widely distributed and locally available, which helps reduce these risks and supports a more stable, resilient and decentralised resource system.”

What are biochar and hydrochar?

Within their research team, María, Mirari and their students María Molina Corbacho and Lucía Martín Pérez are investigating how biorefineries can turn biomass into two products: biochar and hydrochar.

Biochar is obtained through a thermochemical process that uses high temperatures (500-900 °C) in an oxygen free atmosphere, while hydrochar is produced when biomass is treated with an aqueous solution under milder temperatures (400-500 °C). “This process avoids the need for drying the biomass and efficiently converts it into a solid carbon material, making wet organic waste (such as sludge or food waste) valuable,” says María.

Thanks to their specific properties, biochar and hydrochar can be used in various processes, such as improving soil and capturing carbon from the atmosphere. They can also be used as adsorbents to remove pollutants from contaminated water, which is what the research team has been investigating.

“Biochar is increasingly valued as an adsorbent material for removing toxic compounds from water and gas streams thanks to its high porosity and surface area, while hydrochar provides a high density of surface functional groups that enhance interactions with dye molecules,” explains Mirari.

How can biochar and hydrochar help the textile industry?

According to the United Nations, the textile industry uses 93 billion cubic metres of water each year, with the creation of a single pair of jeans using 7,500 litres. This accounts for nearly 20% of global industrial water pollution and leaves large amounts of water filled with harmful dyes that seriously affect aquatic life and water quality.

The biochar and hydrochar that María and Mirari are creating in biorefineries can remove some of these pollutants and has shown particularly high adsorption capacities for methylene blue – a common dye used in the textile industry that is environmentally harmful, toxic, carcinogenic and can even be fatal to humans in high doses.

This aspect of María and Mirari’s work is particularly interesting as the biochar and hydrochar comes from the by-products of apple orchards. Each year, orchard trees across the world are pruned and cut regularly, leading to a considerable amount of biowaste being produced in the form of leaves and branches. By turning this biomass into biochar and hydrochar, the research team can decontaminate wastewater in a biorefinery process fuelled by orchard wood scraps – a process that not only benefits the textile industry but reduces wastage within the agricultural industry as well.

“I am passionate about biorefinery processes because they enable the transformation of waste into valuable resources, promoting a more circular and efficient use of materials,” says María. Mirari continues, “Biorefinery processes also reduce our dependence on fossil fuel resources and improve resource autonomy.” By using advanced engineering and re-envisioning waste as something useful, María and Mirari’s work is helping to create a world where fuel, chemicals and materials can be produced in a more sustainable way for everyone.

Dr María González Alriols

Dr Mirari Antxustegi Bengoetxea

Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of the Basque Country, Spain

Field of research: Chemical engineering; environmental engineering; renewable energy engineering

Research paper: Apple Pruning-Derived Activated Biochar and Hydrochar for Efficient Dye Adsorption: Response Surface Methodology-Guided Optimization, Kinetic Analysis, and Mechanistic Modelling. Antxustegi and Gonzalez Alriols et al. (2026) doi: 10.3390/recycling11030050

Funders: “Campus Bizia Lab” Program; Vice-rectorate for Coordination and Social Commitment; Directorate of Sustainable Development and Social Commitment; University of the Basque Country (Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, EHU)

Do you have a question for María or Mirari?
Write it in the comments box below and they will get back to you. (Remember, researchers are very busy people, so you may have to wait a few days.)

Discover how chemists are using other adsorbent materials to help society:

futurumcareers.com/using-adsorbents-to-help-society

The post How can biomass improve global sustainability and help the textile industry? appeared first on Futurum.

How do researchers make sure new vaccines are safe?

Admin — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 13:01:11 +0000

How do researchers make sure new vaccines are safe?

Published:

Clinical trials are a rigorous and time-consuming part of medical research, with new drugs or vaccines sometimes taking ten to fifteen years to complete. At the University of Alberta in Canada, Dr Vanessa Meier-Stephenson is trialling a new vaccine for hepatitis C, using several specialist techniques, such as a ‘double-blinded’ approach, to make sure the vaccine is safe and reliable.

Talk like a medical researcher

Adjuvant – an ingredient in vaccines and medicines that strengthens the body’s immune response

Antiviral – a medicine that treats viral infections or viral diseases

Double-blinded – a type of clinical trial where the participants and researchers are unaware of who has received the vaccine and who has received a placebo

E1 and E2 – the surface proteins of the hepatitis C virus that allow it to bind to a cell

Efficacy – the ability of something to produce the intended result

Hepatitis C – a virus which can result in serious liver damage and liver cancer

Phlebotomy – the process of making a puncture in a vein, usually for the purpose of taking blood

Placebo – a treatment that does not contain the active therapy and should therefore produce no physiological effect

Stability testing – testing a product over time to see if it remains stable

T-cell – a type of immune cell that helps the body recognise and fight diseases

Hepatitis C is a virus that infects the liver and is potentially life-threatening if left untreated. According to the World Health Organization, over 240,000 people died from hepatitis C in 2022. Despite decades of research into the field, there is currently still no vaccine for the disease.

At the University of Alberta, Dr Vanessa Meier-Stephenson is a doctor and researcher who is testing a vaccine for hepatitis C. “The University of Alberta is an incredible place for this kind of work,” she says. “Dr Lorne Tyrrell, who developed the first antiviral for hepatitis B, and Sir Michael Houghton, the Nobel Prize winner for the co-discovery of hepatitis C, both work just down the hall from me!”

What is in the new vaccine?

Vaccines are made up of carefully chosen ingredients which all work together to produce the desired effect of fighting the infection. Often, these ingredients include strands of genetic information, adjuvants or specific proteins.

The hepatitis C vaccine that Vanessa is trialling is the next generation of a vaccine developed by Sir Michael Houghton and his team. “Their first-generation vaccine, which was mixed with a different adjuvant, was tested in chimpanzees and showed positive effects,” explains Vanessa. “In 2010, a variation was given to humans in a trial in the US which tested three different doses of the E1 and E2 proteins. They found the lowest dose worked just as well as the higher doses.”

This time, the E1 and E2 proteins inside the vaccine have been produced a little differently. The proteins have also been paired with a stronger adjuvant, in the hope that this will stimulate T-cells more effectively.

Testing time

Once a new vaccine has been developed, the product goes through rigorous pre-clinical testing (which involves animal testing), toxicity screening and stability testing. It then goes through a clinical trial to ensure it is safe and effective for human use. Even though a version of the vaccine that Vanessa is studying has previously been tested in humans, the product must still go through this full process, as the combination of the new adjuvant with the E1 and E2 proteins might cause a different reaction.

One of the final checkboxes for the vaccine is its stability, as Health Canada (the regulatory agency) needs to know that the vaccine components do not fluctuate over time. “We have to prove that the vaccine is biochemically and biologically exactly the same today as it was six months ago,” explains Vanessa. “This involves challenging the product with different temperatures and other environmental factors to ensure its consistency and safety over time.”

While the quality control team completes the stability testing, Vanessa and other members of her team – such as her study coordinator Kelly Kim – can start planning the structure of the clinical trial. “Kelly handles all aspects of the trial, including setting up the protocols, organising the regulatory paperwork, recruiting and screening participants, visit coordination, phlebotomy, follow-up checks, documentation, and on and on!” says Vanessa.

How is the trial structured?

The clinical trial of this hepatitis C vaccine will involve 27 participants, with three taking part in the first stage, and 24 taking part in the second. “The first stage involves staggered dosing and extreme scrutiny,” says Vanessa. The team will monitor the three participants closely for any signs of a negative reaction and make sure there are no unexpected side effects to the vaccine. “In a clinical trial, every little detail is pertinent,” emphasises Vanessa. Once the team is satisfied with the initial safety stage, the trial will move into the second stage with the remaining 24 participants.

Download the article

Reference
https://doi.org/10.33424/FUTURUM695

Link to the activity sheet

A recruitment poster for a Hepatitis C vaccine study

Vanessa’s research group at a team meeting in 2024.

Vanessa’s research group at a team meeting in 2026.

“In the randomised controlled trial stage, half of the participants will receive the actual vaccine product, while the other half will receive a placebo,” explains Vanessa. This stage of the trial will also take a ‘double-blinded’ approach, where both the participants and the clinical team are ‘blind’ to which patients have taken the placebo vaccine. Instead, the vaccine will be administrated by a nurse who is not involved in the data collection, and the syringe will also be covered in tape so the participants cannot guess which mixture they are receiving.

“It’s important to do this sort of blinding to ensure we’re capturing every little detail,” says Vanessa. “For example, if you thought you’d been given the placebo, you might not report the upset stomach you had later that day, or if we saw an abnormality on a test, we might interpret it less significantly if we knew it was a placebo case.” This part of the trial also demands an extremely high level of scrutiny. “Even minor abnormalities in blood tests that I might normally dismiss as a clinician will get documented,” says Vanessa.

What next for the team?

Vanessa and the team have planned out their clinical trial and are confirming stability testing to ensure that their vaccine is safe and stable enough for the rest of the work to start. “We are right at the starting line of the next stage,” says Vanessa. “We have the required approvals from Health Canada, animal studies are complete, and we have our recruitment materials ready to go.”

Through teamwork and collaborative efforts, the team will soon know if the E1 and E2 proteins, alongside the stronger adjuvant, in the new vaccine will create the desired immune response. It is an exciting point in the journey for the research team.

Dr Vanessa Meier- Stephenson
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, Medicine Department,

University of Alberta, Canada

Field of research: Infectious diseases

Research project: Running a double-blinded clinical trial of a hepatitis C vaccine

Funders: Li Ka Shing Applied Virology Institute; Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)

About medical research

Medical research is an exciting area of healthcare where scientists work together on pioneering studies to improve patient care and patient experience. “Medical research is always evolving,” says Vanessa. “It is common for clinical trials to explore drugs, such as medicines, vaccines and natural health products, or the development of devices, such as diagnostic tests, implantable devices and wearable devices.”

Science conducted in the laboratory can provide discoveries that have practical, ‘real world’ medical applications for patients, a research process termed ‘bench to bedside’. But it is not only scientists who work in medical research. “Doctors, nurses and coordinators working directly with patients can work in research,” says Vanessa. “Their involvement also provides discoveries that go into clinical trials.”

The introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) to the field is leading to a wide range of possibilities for the next generation of researchers. “What role does AI play in human research, and how will it impact medicine? Can it be integrated into or enhance certain areas in research?” asks Vanessa. “I would argue that it’s less a case of ‘AI will take over’ or ‘AI will take our jobs’ and more about trying to understand how, with the support of AI, we can increase our efficiencies to achieve the many goals of medical research.”

Pathway from school to medical research

Working in medical research requires a mix of scientific knowledge and interpersonal skills. “It is helpful to know basic sciences (i.e., biology, chemistry) to understand the science behind the research, but we mustn’t forget that social sciences are equally important because most medical research relies on human interactions,” says Vanessa.

At university, study a bachelor’s degree in biology, biochemistry, pharmacy or a similar field. Take extra courses in communication or volunteer in a customer service environment to develop your interpersonal skills. “I would recommend students take whichever courses/subjects interest them most at the time,” adds Vanessa.

To work in research, you will typically need at least a bachelor’s degree. Many researchers complete a topic-focused master’s degree or develop a high-level of expertise with a PhD.

If you live in Alberta, have a look at the University of Alberta High School Youth Researcher Summer Program. “This programme gives high school students the chance to take part in a health-related research project and get paid a stipend over the summer,” says Vanessa.

Explore careers in medical research

“Start with the basics,” says Vanessa. “Try to find opportunities (paid or unpaid) where you can learn more about what research is about and what it can entail. There are institutions, researchers and companies who are constantly seeking people. Be proactive and take the initiative to reach out to them.”

Watch this video of Vanessa working in her lab and explaining her job.

There are many ways to be involved in medical research. “Research work is diverse. There are studies involving bench/wet lab work, chart review work, patient/ participant-facing work and so on, which means there is more than one type of area that may pique your interest,” says Vanessa.

The Certified Clinical Research Professionals Society has some useful information about the different roles and responsibilities in medical research.

Meet Vanessa

Being a doctor and a researcher can be highly stressful. There are a lot of demands on my time, and I want to ensure I’m doing my best in all areas. The implications of poor performance on the clinical side might impact a patient’s length of stay in hospital or, in the worst-case scenarios, their health or life. The implications of performing poorly in the lab are wasted materials and time, so the stakes are much lower, but we need to ensure we’re doing good research or we won’t be able to retain funding. The stresses are different for my different roles, and if a patient (or trial participant) has an issue that comes up that I need to address, all other things take a backseat until it’s been dealt with.

My patients continue to remind me of the bigger picture of what we’re doing. In my lab, it’s the excitement of discovery – the potentials and ‘what ifs’. It’s also incredibly rewarding to be part of those ‘aha’ moments, when a student finally figures out a challenging experiment they’ve been working on or comes up with a neat idea for what to do next based on their data. What drives me to do the clinical trial work is the potential to bring a basic science discovery into the medical realm where it can actually benefit patients – from bench to bedside.

Science is absolutely a team effort; there is no way I could do this alone. On the clinical trial, I work with many other clinicians who help monitor patients to spread the workload. And we have research nurses and pharmacy personnel who also have important roles in the trial process. The most central member of our team is our study coordinator, Kelly. She’s the one who keeps us all organised and ensures the day-to-day operations run smoothly.

Vanessa’s top tips

1. Don’t feel forced into a specific path. Keep looking for opportunities and seek diverse experiences.

2. It’s okay to not have everything figured out — just work hard at each thing you do, and you’ll learn more about yourself and your passions along the way.

3. Don’t internalise failure. If an experiment doesn’t work, ask why and learn from it. Sometimes, a ‘failed’ experiment opens up a whole new area of discovery.

Meet Kelly

Kelly Kim, Study Coordinator, Hepatitis C vaccine clinical trial

When I was growing up, my dad couldn’t run or play with me like the other able-bodied dads could with their kids, as he had a severe limp which limited his mobility. There was a part of me that was determined to become a doctor to fix his leg, and my enthusiasm and passion for medicine took effect from there.

My career has been shaped by curiosity. As an undergraduate student, I volunteered at my local children’s hospital. The opportunity to support research within the emergency department arose, and I’ve been working in research ever since!

My role as Study Coordinator involves reviewing and developing protocols, informed consent forms, data collection forms, databases and manuals; submitting to our local ethics board; recruiting and following up with participants; communicating with study/clinical care teams and the participants; being organised and detail-oriented; prioritising deadlines; and managing day to day activities, just to name a few!

While the fundamentals of research remain the same, every study is different and you need to start anew for each study you work on. Figuring out the logistics of how best to run the study with the resources you are allocated is a massive jigsaw puzzle.

The rewarding part is when you get a study up and running seamlessly and you’re one step closer to success and completion. Somehow, whatever you think will work in theory doesn’t translate into practice, so you end up troubleshooting until you get it just right. But that’s the beauty of working in research because you really don’t know what to expect. It keeps you on your toes!

Kelly’s top tips

1. There are no ‘dumb’ questions so keep asking them! Keep engaging with the work even if it makes you uncomfortable and uncertain.

2. Keep learning, because that’s how you’ll increase your potential. Don’t limit yourself by what you believe is the extent of your abilities and capabilities.

Do you have a question for Vanessa or Kelly?
Write it in the comments box below and they will get back to you. (Remember, researchers are very busy people, so you may have to wait a few days.)

Learn more about how medical researchers conduct clinical trials:

futurumcareers.com/in-evidence-we-trust-how-do-doctors-decide-which-treatments-to-recommend-to-their-patients

The post How do researchers make sure new vaccines are safe? appeared first on Futurum.

How can psychologists generate more realistic avatars for virtual reality experiments?

Admin — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 11:54:03 +0000

How can psychologists generate more realistic avatars for virtual reality experiments?

Published:

Virtual reality is a useful tool for a range of research areas, from perception to therapeutic interventions, where avatars can be used as substitutes for real people in virtual experiments. However, while virtual reality video games often contain lifelike avatars, academic researchers do not have the technology, money or animation expertise to create avatars that look and behave like real people, which limits their usefulness. To address this problem, Dr Rachael Taylor, a behavioural psychologist at the University of Kent in the UK, has developed an accessible method for constructing realistic avatars.

Talk like a behavioural psychologist

Avatar – a computer-generated representation of a person

Blend shape – a deformation of a 3D model

Social presence – the sense of being in the presence of another person

Social signal – a behaviour used to communicate, such as a facial expression or body language

Virtual reality – a computer-generated environment that someone can enter, usually by wearing a virtual reality headset

Have you ever worn a virtual reality headset and entered a computer-generated world to race cars, fight dragons or kill zombies? Virtual reality (also known as VR) allows players to immerse themselves in simulated environments, so they feel truly present in a game.

But virtual reality has many uses beyond entertainment. Psychologists are increasingly conducting experiments in virtual reality because it allows them to create controlled immersive environments to observe how people behave in different situations. For example, by placing participants in virtual rooms with avatars, psychologists can explore how people react to social signals such as gestures and body language. And virtual reality can be used for therapy by exposing patients to immersive experiences while keeping them in a safe space.

“I use virtual reality to investigate how people interpret an avatar’s social signals, such as facial expression and eye gaze,” says Dr Rachael Taylor, a behavioural psychologist at the University of Kent. “Avatars have the potential to be useful research tools because they can be programmed to display consistent behaviours, allowing for standardisation between different participants during experiments.”

However, it is challenging to create computer-generated avatars that look and behave like real humans, which limits how useful these virtual experiments can be. “Previous research has shown that a person’s sense of social presence towards an avatar is influenced by how well the avatar’s appearance and behaviour compare to that of a real person,” Rachael continues. “Therefore, creating realistic avatars that can display social signals is an important step in improving their use for future research.”

How can psychologists create realistic avatars?

The research team in the School of Psychology at the University of Kent has developed a method that other psychologists can use to create more realistic avatars for their virtual reality experiments. The first step involves using a 3D scanner to take many photos of a real person’s head from different angles, capturing both the shape of their face and the texture of their skin and hair. Scanning software can combine the photos to create a visually accurate digital 3D model of the person’s head.

Then, having created an avatar head with a realistic appearance, the next step is to give it realistic behaviour. “To do this, you need to create eye and mouth sockets in the 3D model of the face, so you can insert moveable eyes and teeth,” Rachael explains. “You also need to create blend shapes, which are deformations in the 3D model that reflect movement of different parts of the face, such as an eyebrow raise.” By combining different blend shapes, psychologists can give their avatars different facial expressions. Finally, they can connect their realistic avatar head to a virtual avatar body created using free character creator software.

Download the article

Reference
https://doi.org/10.33424/FUTURUM705

Rachael and her colleagues in the School of Psychology at the University of Kent have developed a method that other psychologists can use to create more realistic avatars for their virtual reality experiments.

The process of creating an avatar with realistic appearance and behaviour.

An example of a virtual reality environment.

How realistic are Rachael’s avatars?

For this avatar creation method to be useful for psychology experiments, people need to respond to the avatars it produces in the same way as they would respond to humans. To test whether this is the case, Rachael and the team conducted their own virtual reality experiments to see how people react to the avatars’ eye gaze and facial expressions.

You are more likely to process the properties of an object, such as its location or colour, if you see someone else looking at it – a phenomenon known as the gaze-cueing effect. Rachael tested whether her avatars produced the gaze-cueing effect by placing participants in a virtual room with an avatar, who would gaze towards the left or right before a white sphere appeared in the room. Participants had to identify the location of the sphere as quickly and accurately as possible. The team found that the spheres were indeed located more quickly when the avatar gazed towards (rather than away from) its location before it appeared, demonstrating human-like gaze-cueing effects.

To see how participants recognise avatar facial expressions, the avatars were also animated to display the emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust. When participants were placed in a virtual room with these avatars, they were generally accurate at recognising their facial expressions.

“Our findings demonstrate the validity of our avatars as research tools and show they have good potential for exploring how people process social signals in virtual reality experiments,” Rachael concludes. “Our avatars produce a strong gaze-cueing effect and are also capable of displaying complex facial expressions.”

How is Rachael’s research helping psychologists?

“By developing our avatar construction method, our goal is to empower researchers who are inexperienced with creating avatars to be able to generate realistic avatars for their virtual reality experiments,” says Rachael. This method for creating realistic avatars does not require expensive equipment, specialist software or animation expertise meaning it is accessible for all psychology researchers.

“In addition to developing the avatar construction technique, I have also written a detailed guide for researchers who are interested in using virtual reality in their experiments but don’t know where to begin,” says Rachael. Through this work, Rachael and the team at the University of Kent hope to advance the wider fields of psychology and behavioural science by teaching other researchers how to create immersive virtual reality experiments containing realistic avatars.

Dr Rachael Taylor
School of Psychology, University of Kent, UK

Field of research: Behavioural psychology

Research paper: High-Fidelity Avatars for Behaviour and Cognition Research in Virtual Environments: An Accessible Construction Method for Scientists. Taylor, R. L., et al (in press)

Funder: Rachael Taylor’s work is funded by a research grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC Grant no ES/X011208/1) to Markus Bindemann at University of Kent and Mike Burton at the University of York.

Do you have a question for Rachael?
Write it in the comments box below and she will get back to you. (Remember, researchers are very busy people, so you may have to wait a few days.)

Learn how Rachael’s colleague, Professor Markus Bindemann, is using realistic avatars to study face perception:

futurumcareers.com/what-if-we-could-do-psychology-experiments-in-virtual-reality

The post How can psychologists generate more realistic avatars for virtual reality experiments? appeared first on Futurum.

What are the links between childhood stroke and epilepsy?

Admin — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 13:30:12 +0000

What are the links between childhood stroke and epilepsy?

Published:

Strokes are most often associated with older adults, but they can happen to babies, children and teenagers too. Although they are rare, childhood strokes can have serious long-term effects, with one in three children going on to develop seizures and epilepsy. At the University of California, San Francisco and Benioff Children’s Hospital in the US, Dr Christine Fox is exploring how the brain heals itself after a childhood stroke and uncovering how this can lead to epilepsy.

Talk like a paediatric vascular neurologist

Cognitive – relating to mental processes including thinking, learning, memory and understanding

Epilepsy – a neurological condition where a person has repeated, unprovoked seizures

Haemorrhagic – caused by bleeding, especially from a ruptured blood vessel

Ischemic – caused by a blockage that reduces or stops blood flow

Neurology – the field of medicine that studies, diagnoses and treats disorders of the nervous system, which includes the brain, spinal cord and nerves

Paediatric – the treatment and medical care of children

Stroke – a medical emergency where blood flow to part of the brain is suddenly interrupted or reduced

Seizure – a sudden burst of abnormal electrical activity in the brain that can affect movement, behaviour or awareness

Around one in four adults will have a stroke in their lifetime, and the risk of having a stroke increases with age. But children can experience strokes too. “Although strokes occur more commonly in adults, a stroke can affect people of any age, including babies, children and teenagers,” says Dr Christine Fox from the University of California, San Francisco. “Childhood strokes are rare, but can lead to later complications, with roughly one in three patients developing epilepsy.”

What is stroke?

There are two main types of stroke: ischemic stroke and haemorrhagic stroke. While ischemic strokes are caused by a blocked blood vessel, haemorrhagic strokes are caused by bleeding in the brain. “Strokes in children often have different causes than those in adults,” says Christine. “Some children have a stroke because of conditions such as heart defects, blood-clotting disorders or a blood vessel malformation in the brain. Sometimes, a stroke will happen in someone who is healthy but gets an infection or injury that damages blood vessels in the head or neck.”

The common signs of a stroke for adults – face drooping, arm weakness, slurred speech, dizziness, headaches – may differ for babies and children. “Childhood strokes are often misdiagnosed at first because most people don’t expect them,” says Christine. “Younger children can’t describe what they’re feeling, so symptoms may seem vague and are easily mistaken for other, more common conditions like migraines.” These misdiagnoses can delay treatment.

“Identifying a childhood stroke as quickly as possible is crucial because the brain is extremely sensitive to losing blood flow, and every minute of delay can lead to more damage,” says Christine. Fast diagnosis allows doctors to begin treatments that restore blood flow, improve recovery and give the brain a better chance to heal.

Once the initial emergency is over, doctors focus on protecting the patient’s brain from further complications and diagnosing the cause to prevent more strokes from happening. Longer term, the priority shifts to rehabilitation. “This can include physical therapy, speech-language therapy and occupational therapy to help with movement and daily tasks,” says Christine. “Children’s brains are still developing, which affects how they respond to injury and how quickly they recover. The good news is that a child’s brain has a strong ability to adapt. With early treatment, rehabilitation and support, many young people can regain skills and continue to lead active, fulfilling lives.”

What are the VIPS studies?

The international research projects VIPS I and VIPS II (Vascular Effects of Infection in Pediatric Stroke) took place between 2010-2014 and 2016-2022 and explored whether common colds or viruses could contribute to ischemic childhood stroke. “The VIPS studies provided strong evidence that minor infections can trigger stroke in children,” says Chrisine. “There is nothing unusual about the infections themselves, so further analyses are underway to uncover whether there is something unusual about how the body responds to infection that leads to stroke.”

What are the links between childhood strokes and epilepsy?

About one in three children who have strokes will go on to develop epilepsy, which is far higher than in adults who have strokes. Epilepsy can be caused by brain injuries and people with epilepsy experience repeated seizures. “Injured brain tissue is more likely to produce abnormal electrical signals, even after it heals,” says Christine. “Epilepsy can start weeks, months or even years after a stroke.”

It is hard to know when a seizure will happen, which can make living with epilepsy tough. “Some children worry that a seizure might happen in public, which can make it harder to concentrate or feel confident in new situations,” says Christine. “Seizures and the fear of having them can influence daily life, school, friendships and confidence.” Some seizures may lead to injuries caused by falling, and anti-seizure medications can cause tiredness, mood swings and cognitive difficulties.

The SCOUTS study

Christine is leading the SCOUTS (Seizures and Children’s Outcomes after Stroke) study, which is trying to understand how the brain recovers after a childhood stroke. She is exploring whether inflammation, which occurs when the brain is healing, might impact the likelihood of epilepsy. “From studies in animals, we know that certain inflammatory responses in the brain after a stroke can influence the chance of developing epilepsy,” says Christine. The SCOUTS study is also identifying which connections in the brain, known as neural networks, are more likely to trigger seizures after a stroke.

“In this study, we are analysing brain images and information about inflammatory markers that were collected from children at the time that they were enrolled in the VIPS studies,” says Christine. “We are collecting new data from those same children, years later, about whether they have developed epilepsy as well as asking about other physical, cognitive and emotional outcomes.”

What are the next steps?

Christine is exploring the differences in the brains of children who develop epilepsy after a stroke compared to those who do not. “The SCOUTS study will help us find ways to predict who is most likely to develop epilepsy after a stroke based on the neural networks that are injured or the inflammatory responses measured in their blood,” she says. “In the long-term, we want to learn how to prevent post-stroke epilepsy. We hope to find treatments, like a medicine that targets a specific inflammatory response, that we can give to children who are at higher risk of epilepsy after a stroke.”

Download the article

Reference
https://doi.org/10.33424/FUTURUM703

Link to the activity sheet

The team at the UCSF Pediatric Stroke Research Center, wearing purple for paediatric stroke awareness. Back row: Catalina Pen, Maria Kuchherzki, Donna Vuong, Christina Wu. Front row: Dr Heather Fullerton, Dr Christine Fox, Dr Rachel Vassar. Not shown: Maya Dhar.

Dr Heather Fullerton, a paediatric vascular neurologist in the Pediatric Stroke and Cerebrovascular Disease Center, led the VIPS I and VIPS II studies.

Research MRI measuring velocity of blood flow through brain arteries in a child with a brain vascular malformation. Brain vascular malformations are one of the risk factors for paediatric stroke.

Christine’s work includes conducting research and working with patients who have had a stroke or who are at risk for a stroke. “It is a privilege to be able to support children and their families during a vulnerable time,” she says.

A heat map representing the location of brain infarcts among children with stroke and post-stroke epilepsy in the SCOUTS study.

Dr Christine Fox
Professor, Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)
Director, Pediatric Stroke and Cerebrovascular Disease Center, Benioff Children’s Hospital, California, USA

Field of research: Paediatric vascular neurology

Research project: Investigating how childhood stroke leads to epilepsy through the Seizures and Children’s Outcomes after Stroke (SCOUTS) Study

Funders: US National Institutes of Health (NIH); American Heart Association; Pediatric Epilepsy Research Foundation

This work is supported by the NIH-NINDS under award number R01NS119896. The contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

About paediatric vascular neurology

“Paediatric vascular neurology is an exciting field because doctors and researchers are still discovering why strokes happen in children and how to treat them more effectively,” says Christine. Childhood strokes are rare, so there is still a lot of research to be done, and working in the field provides the opportunity to carry out meaningful studies and shape future treatments.

For Christine, each day is varied as she splits her time between working with patients, conducting research and teaching students. “In my clinical practice, I am often faced with medical mysteries and challenged to think creatively,” she says. “Working with medical students and neurology residents at different levels of training is rewarding, and as a researcher I get to collaborate with scientists around the world and contribute to research that can genuinely help children. My day-to-day work is highly collaborative, working with many other subspecialists like neurosurgeons, radiologists, intensive care specialists and therapists to name a few. Every day is a little bit different and offers a chance to learn something new.”

Working with a rare disease presents practical problems, such as finding research funding, but the main challenges are on a human level. “Working in an intense hospital setting with children who have serious neurological injuries can be stressful, and, some days, the work is emotionally heavy,” says Christine. “Part of my job is to have hard conversations with parents or kids who are scared, overwhelmed or grieving. While these aspects of my work are challenging, those challenges are also what make the work meaningful. I hope that I can give critical medical care, provide valuable information for families to understand and make medical decisions, and offer human comfort.”

Pathway from school to paediatric vascular neurology

At school, subjects like biology, chemistry and physics can help you build a solid foundation. Developing communication and teamwork skills will also be beneficial.

At university, studying medicine and taking courses in neurology, paediatrics and research methods will build on these foundations.

Christine recommends developing traits such as curiosity, persistence and empathy. “It’s also important to take care of yourself along the way, because medical training is long and can be demanding,” she says. “Developing good study habits, time management skills and coping strategies for stress will serve you throughout your career.”

“Get exposure to healthcare settings by volunteering at hospitals or shadowing doctors to help you understand what it’s like to work with patients and families,” suggests Christine. “Look for opportunities to get involved in research. This will help you build critical thinking skills and find out if you like the day-to-day work of a scientist.”.

Explore careers in paediatric vascular neurology

The UCSF Science & Health Education Partnership runs an eight-week summer internship programme for high school seniors in San Francisco and the UCSF Center for Science, Education and Outreach offers an eight-week summer enrichment programme for high school students. “Many other universities may have opportunities for high school students who are looking for exposure to careers in health or science,” says Christine.

Explore the websites of the World Stroke Organization, the American Academy of Neurology, the International Child Neurology Association and the International Pediatric Stroke Organization for useful information, resources, career advice, and opportunities to volunteer and meet professionals in the field. You could even consider attending events or conferences to discover more.

Meet Christine

As a teenager, I loved to read and to play sports – volleyball, basketball, track and rugby. Playing sports and being physically active has always been helpful for me as a social outlet and to balance other interests with school and work. I would have experienced a lot more burnout if I did not have these fun outlets!

I love working with people. Some of my patients are healthy but have a stroke risk factor, and I teach them how to stay healthy. Some of my patients have had a stroke, and I am involved in their medical treatment during their recovery. It is a privilege to be able to support children and their families during a vulnerable time, to develop long-standing relationships, and to see kids grow and change.

I love working with my colleagues at UCSF and with research collaborators around the world. It’s exciting to be able to travel for work and engage with other people who are interested in similar areas of science and medicine. My schedule is a little different each day and each week, which makes the work interesting and keeps me on my toes.

I love to be physically active. I bike to work almost every day, and enjoy mountain biking, road cycling, snowboarding and running with friends. I have three kids, so our household is pretty busy. I like to cook with my husband and eat family dinner together when we can make it work with everyone’s crazy schedules!

Christine’s top tips

1. Find a sub-discipline that you enjoy. This will help you persevere when the training becomes tiring.

2. Build strong relationships with supportive peers and mentors.

3. Maintain a balance in life with friends, family and your other interests. This is key to satisfaction in whatever career you pursue.

Do you have a question for Christine?
Write it in the comments box below and she will get back to you. (Remember, researchers are very busy people, so you may have to wait a few days.)

Learn more about how researchers and doctors are helping children recover from cancer:

futurumcareers.com/what-can-data-tell-us-about-the-long-term-effects-of-surviving-childhood-or-adolescent-cancer

The post What are the links between childhood stroke and epilepsy? appeared first on Futurum.

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