Undergraduate Student Sustainability Award

Sahand Babaie, Undergraduate Sustainability Award Winner

The Undergraduate Sustainability Award recognizes an undergraduate student who has led an initiative or project to advance sustainability. This initiative or project can be part of course work or take place outside of the learning environment.

Award Recipient: Sahand Babaie, Faculty of Science B.Sc. (General)

Sahand Babaie has been an active volunteer on sustainability projects across campus, including as president of the Science Student’s Association, where he led the work of digitalizing services to help decrease paper waste and shifting away from plastic cutlery to sustainable options. Babaie’s additional volunteer experience includes as a sustainability ambassador with the Office of Sustainability, recycling wood furniture with the Sustainability in Action Facility (SiAF), as social media coordinator for Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) HUB, and as a student representative on the Sustainable Building Manitoba Board.

Recently, Babaie has been a participant in the SDG youth certificate classes put on by the Canadian Sustainable Development Solution Network and will be receiving his certification this spring.

Graduate Student Sustainability Award

Heather Eckton, Graduate Sustainability Award Winner

The Graduate Sustainability Award recognizes a graduate student who has led an initiative or project to advance sustainability. This initiative or project can be a part of course work or take place outside of the learning environment.

Award Recipient: Heather Eckton, Faculty of Education, PhD program

Heather Eckton is a SSHRC Doctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Education, the Climate Action Team Leader with Seven Oaks School Division, and the founder and program coordinator of the Sustainable Living Academy Manitoba in the Seven Oaks School Division. She is also a member of the Expert Advisory Council on the Environment and Climate Change and is a founding member of the Educators for Climate Action Manitoba.

Eckton’s doctoral research focusses on excellence in climate change education and transformational learning. She proposes to build capacity among MB school teachers towards climate change education.

Student Group Sustainability Award

The Student Group Sustainability Award recognizes a group of students who have led an initiative or project to advance sustainability at UM. This group also has made and will continue to make a lasting positive impact on the environmental, economic and social well-being of students at the University of Manitoba.

Prairie iGEM, Student Group Sustainability Award Winner

Award Recipient: Prairie iGEM

Prairie iGEM is a multidisciplinary student group targeting UN sustainable development goals through science and technology. Over two consecutive years, Prairie iGEM dedicated the team’s efforts to solve the polylactic acid (PLA) plastic pollution problem in Manitoba, by developing an engineered plastic eating bacteria that could improve PLA composting under challenging conditions.

The team researched waste management approaches used both within the university and across our province and created educational materials and programs for university members and visiting school students. Through these initiatives and in cooperation with different faculties and organizations, Prairie iGEM has contributed to the development of new strategies to manage waste in Manitoba.

Faculty Sustainability Award

The Faculty Sustainability Award recognizes an individual who has demonstrated exceptional and continuous integration of sustainability into their teaching, research and engagement activities. This individual creates engaging opportunities for students through experiential learning, course design, innovative research and assignment creation. This person also shows a keen interest in campus related activities and sustainability as a whole.

Award Recipient: Dr. Joe Curnow, Educational Administration, Foundations & Psychology, Faculty of Education

Dr. Joe Curnow, Faculty Sustainability Award Winner

Dr. Joe Curnow has a track record of impactful research, community education, and international sustainability leadership. Curnow’s research explores how environmental activists learn through participation in social movements. Through participatory action research with fossil fuel divestment activists, her study examined a climate campaign with the potential to reveal both how mainstream environmental spaces become default spaces of Whiteness, masculinity, and settler-coloniality, as well as how these groups can become politicized, resisting social relations of dominance and centering reconciliation in their approach to climate justice.

Curnow’s research on sustainability learning has garnered prestigious awards. Curnow’s recent community-based education initiatives support sustainability organizing in Winnipeg. As part of the UM Social Justice Hub launch, she facilitated a Direct Action Organizing intensive workshop with cycling activists from UM and across Winnipeg. She has mentored community leaders as they develop practices to scale up their advocacy for sustainable transport infrastructure and safety policies.

For more than twenty years, Curnow has been active in sustainability and environmental activism.

Staff Sustainability Award

Debbie Armstrong, Staff Sustainability Award Winner

The Staff Sustainability Award recognizes an individual staff member’s efforts to educate, advocate and advance sustainability within their department and/or unit. This person shows a keen interest in campus-related activities and sustainability as a whole. Sustainability may or may not be defined in this person’s job responsibilities.

Award Recipient: Debbie Armstrong, Centre for Earth Observation Science, Clayton H. Riddell Faculty of Environment, Earth, and Resources

Debbie Armstrong goes above and beyond to make UM a more sustainable place through her initiatives, teaching and research. Armstrong was instrumental in applying for and receiving a Strategic Initiative Fund to install a first of its kind solar panel system at the Sea-Ice Research Facility. She advances sustainability through cutting-edge environmental research in the ultra-clean trace elements laboratory, where she monitors pollutants and climate change indicators. And as an instructor, Armstrong is sure to include teaching on climate change and sustainability aspects in her courses.

Collaborative Sustainability Award

Period Poverty and Equity on Campus and Beyond, Collaborative Sustainability Award Winner

The Collaborative Sustainability Award recognizes a unique collaborative effort between students, faculty, staff and community members to integrate sustainability into a project or initiative. This unique category puts emphasis on interdepartmental interactions at UM in efforts to find solutions to sustainability-related challenges.

Award Recipient: Period Poverty and Equity, on Campus and Beyond

The Period Poverty and Equity, on Campus and Beyond (PPECB) project is a collaborative project based at the Center for Human Rights Research (CHRR). The PPECB project utilizes a menstrual justice lens to bring together faculty, staff, students and organizations to address period poverty (the increased economic vulnerability resulting from the financial burden posed by the need for menstrual supplies) and promote a broader vision of menstrual justice.

The PPECB was initially funded by a University of Manitoba Strategic Initiatives Award. This one-year project was anchored by an interdisciplinary and inter-faculty research team consisting of CHRR manager Dr. Pauline Tennent, Dr. Adele Perry (Arts), Dr. Julia Smith (Arts), and Dr. Lindsay Larios (Social Work), and supported by Heather Stark of the Office of Sustainability. The PPECB employed two graduate students, Chloe Vickar (Master of Human Rights) and Mikayla Hunter (Master of Community Health Sciences) and three undergraduate students: Bethel Alemaio (Arts), Hannah Belec (Arts), and Victoria Romero (Arts). The PPECB project has engaged approximately 80 volunteers, many of them students and a smaller number of staff and faculty.

Interested in nominating an individual or group for the Sustainability Awards? Keep an eye out for next year’s call for nominations in early 2026.

However, many people carry Streptococcus pyogenes on their bodies, and it doesn’t make them sick. Some of the big questions in the field are when, how and why does it make you sick? And why does Streptococcus become a pathogen?

In answering these questions and to understand how phages transform Streptococcus into a deadly pathogen, Dr. Gerd Prehna and his lab have been studying the phage protein paratox (Prx). Two graduate students, Tasneem Hassan Muna and Nicole Rutbeek from the Prehna Lab have discovered that phages use paratox to control the metabolism of Streptococcus, redirecting DNA processing pathways for the benefit of the phage. With help from undergraduate student Julia Horne, the team was able to demonstrate that paratox also likely regulates when it is time for the phage to leave Streptococcus and go on to infect new bacteria. Muna and Horne now have a protein named after them, JM3 which stands for Julia Muna construct 3.

Prehna goes on to tell us that this discovery, published in the Journal of Nucleic Acids Research, has opened many doors for future research projects.

“What’s neat about this project is that it just keeps giving and it keeps opening more doors. We’ve discovered that it binds a whole bunch of other proteins. However many of these proteins are in regulatory pathways that control the biology of Streptococcus in ways that are completely unstudied and not understood at all. Now we have to characterize all these new brand-new proteins and brand-new pathways and understand how they affect the biology and metabolism of Streptococcus”, says Prehna.

Watch the complete interview on the Faculty of Science’s YouTube channel.

Dr. Avery Miller

“We’re thinking about solving a problem using a step-by-step process in a sort of a very abstract way, and the main tool we use is mathematics”, says Dr. Avery Miller, an associate professor at UM Department of Computer Science who has completed his MSc and PhD in computer science at the University of Toronto following a B.Math from the University of Waterloo. His research focuses on mathematically describing the complexity of algorithmic problem-solving, specifically in communication networks or among teams of mobile entities.

“The importance of the research is to be able to explore new directions and brand-new ideas, not constrained of thinking in terms of the known techniques or the popular techniques. If we discover a brand-new idea or brand-new technique, then people in the industry can take those ideas and go with them. But then on the other side, theoretically, we can prove that certain approaches or certain techniques would not work”, says Miller.

Miller finds community through sport, playing in local 2SLGBTQ+ curling and soccer leagues. Previously, he provided volunteer leadership with Downtown Soccer Toronto, working to build recreational community spaces for members to participate in sports as their authentic selves. We talked about the challenges he has faced in science as a member of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community and how he has navigated that.

“I think the main challenge I faced was sort of getting in my own way. There is a lot of doubt or feeling that I belonged in the area or in the direction I was going in”, says Miller, “How I navigated it was to seek out others and to find others who were in a similar situation and talk to them and get advice, get assurance that there was a successful way through it”.

November 18 is the International Day of 2SLGBTQIA+ People in STEM. At the Faculty of Science, we take the chance to highlight the achievements of 2SLGBTQIA+ people in science by engaging our community through a lecture followed by a panel discussion on November 22. “Breaking barriers: 2SLGBTQIA+ representation and inclusion in science” is back for the second year where we shine a light on not only the accomplishments of 2SLGBTQIA+ people in the Faculty of Science but also discuss challenges and how we can create safe spaces for everyone in science. Miller is among 3 other panellists for this year. Learn more and register to join us.

You can watch the full interview on the Faculty of Science’s YouTube channel.

Dr. Mark Belmonte, professor at the department of biological sciences, in collaboration with other researchers at the Faculty of Science, is using genetics to develop a species-specific molecular fungicide and win the battle against sclerotinia.

Belmonte tells us that while fungicides are a traditional way to combat white mould, they also have negative impacts on other beneficial organisms that are found within the ecological environment. Their approach, however, targets sclerotinia alone with no negative impact on the environment. He emphasizes the need for new technologies in the rise of more resistance that is developing in sclerotinia.

Watch the full interview to see how UM researchers aim to save an almost $30 billion industry in Canada.

Watch the full interview on YouTube.