Media releases

• Fall season cancelled for Ontario university sports

  Monday, June 08, 2020 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: 8 June 2020 – R0098

  There will be no fall season for Brock Badgers student-athletes to compete in this year.

  On Monday, June 8, Ontario University Athletics (OUA) announced the cancellation of its sport programming and championships up until Dec. 31, 2020 based on provincial public health guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic. Similar announcements were made by other provincial governing bodies across the country Monday, and U SPORTS announced that all fall national championships were also cancelled.

  Fall sports cancelled include: baseball, cross country, golf, lacrosse, rowing, rugby, soccer, softball, tennis and ultimate frisbee. All other varsity and club sports are on hold for the remainder of 2020.

  Student-athletes who compete in fall sports will not lose a year of eligibility due to the cancellation of the fall 2020 season.

  “While this has been a challenging course of action for all involved, the health and safety of our student-athletes and all participants remain paramount,” said Gord Grace, OUA President and CEO. “Even though we will not have the opportunity to celebrate our student-athletes on the field during the first term, they remain at the heart of what our organization is about and we will continue to work toward achieving a safe return to play when the time is right to do so.”

  The OUA remains hopeful that student-athletes will be able to return to play in the new year and that sports such as basketball, hockey and volleyball would compete in condensed schedules, added Grace.

  Brock Sports is hosting two virtual town halls to answer questions from student-athletes on Monday, June 8 at 7 p.m. and Tuesday, June 9 at noon. Access information has been sent to the Brock email account of all student-athletes.

  Emily Allan, Associate Director, Athletics, emphasised the importance of a safe return for student-athletes, coaches, administrators, officials and fans.

  “I understand how disappointing this is for everyone, but the most important thing for Brock Sports, the University, the OUA and U SPORTS is the health, safety and well-being of our student-athletes, coaches and staff,” said Allan. “Just like our student-athletes, our coaches and staff in Brock Sports are extremely passionate about what they do, and will work to ensure we get through this together.”

  The Badgers are continuing with virtual team and coach meetings, online physical, technical, skill and strength training sessions, virtual sport medicine support with therapists and physicians, and mental health and academic support.

  “Brock Sports Medicine and Brock Sports performance continue to be committed to providing our Brock athletes with the best virtual resources available ensuring they are prepared to compete when the OUA, Brock University administration and public health provide permission to return to train and return to competition,” said Steve Lidstone, Associate Director, Sport Medicine and Sport Performance.

  Brock Sports will implement a return-to-train protocol when permission has been granted by the provincial government, public health and Brock University administration.

  “I ask that our student-athletes remain focused, strong and committed to their future athletic and academic journey with us,” said Anna Lathrop, Vice-Provost and Associate Vice-President, Students. “Brock athletes know what it is to persevere in the face of adversity, and what it means to ‘push through’ with mental and physical fortitude when competitive conditions bring unforeseen challenges.”

  In addition to the scheduled town hall meetings, a list of Frequently Asked Questions can be found on the Brock University coronavirus web page here.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  * Dan Dakin, Manager Communications and Media Relations, Brock University ddakin@brocku.ca 905-347-1970

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  Categories: Media releases

• Brock researchers part of team studying vaccination strategies for COVID-19

  Monday, June 08, 2020 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: 4 June 2020 – R0097

  The timing of circumstances in Sheridan Houghten’s lab was uncanny, the foreshadowing of a three-university team studying COVID-19 vaccination strategies.

  Just before the end of the 2019 Fall Term, the Brock University Professor of Computer Science and her master’s student Michael Dubé had, along with University of Guelph mathematician Daniel Ashlock, submitted their paper “Modelling of Vaccination Strategies for Epidemics using Evolutionary Computation” for publication.

  “We were looking at a thing called a personal contact network, which tells you which individuals are connected to other ones in whatever way,” Houghten recalls. “In the case of a virus, we were interested in who is meeting up with whom, because that’s how the virus is going to be transmitted.

  “We were thinking of Ebola,” she says. “When a vaccine does come out, there could be a shortage for a while, so you have to decide who is going to be vaccinated first.”

  Their paper describes models of four generic vaccination strategies and compares their effectiveness in curtailing the spread and duration of an epidemic.

  Not long after, COVID-19 began to disrupt the world.

  At the University of St. Francis Xavier in Nova Scotia, Assistant Professor of Computer Science James Hughes had reached out to his former master’s supervisor — Sheridan Houghton. Hughes, a Brock graduate, was interested in collaborating with Houghten and Ashlock on future papers on the topic. The group started looking for funding.

  Then came the Nova Scotia COVID-related research funding. Hughes received, a grant to conduct research on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in setting up a COVID-19 vaccination strategy. The Brock-Guelph-St. Francis Xavier team sprang into action.

  Initially, the team will use a series of curves that show trends in the number of people infected at any given time. It’s the same as the curve referred to in public service messages that urge people to ‘flatten the curve.’

  The researchers will then construct many personal contact networks that show individuals interacting with one another in a particular location. These networks are constructed to match the various curves by simulating an epidemic being unleashed, with ‘patient zero’ becoming infected and then the epidemic spreading from individuals through their interactions in the network.

  Within these networks, everyone is assigned one of various states: those people who are not yet infected but could become infected with COVID-19; those who are infected; and those who have recovered from the illness. How long people are in any given state will also be taken into consideration.

  Suitable vaccination strategies will be explored that will reduce the effects of the epidemic upon the personal contact networks, which are called ‘graphs,” allowing a look at different types of contact networks in different situations.

  Houghten says this is important because if you can find ways to reduce the number of connections between people, then you can flatten the curve.

  “Using this tool, you could implement a more targeted, location-specific approach for the mitigation strategies, whether that be a vaccine, social distancing or other measures,” says Dubé.

  “If you have this graph already, you could give a ranking of who are the most important people in that location to vaccinate to have the greatest effect,” says Houghten.

  These would be people, such as teachers in a classroom, who have contact with many others, or ‘travellers’ who are connected with many communities and can hence spread the virus to those places. Houghten notes that communities can mean anything from a town to a nursing home, school or religious area of congregation.

  To come up with the best model possible on who to vaccinate first, the team is using a branch of artificial intelligence called evolutionary computation, aptly named because the algorithms combine many bits and pieces of information to form new models, a process inspired by nature.

  Dubé and Houghten say they hope public health agencies will use the team’s research in their COVID-19 mitigation and vaccination strategies.

  The paper they wrote in December, along with Ashlock, was supported in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  * Dan Dakin, Manager Communications and Media Relations, Brock University ddakin@brocku.ca or 905-347-1970

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  Categories: Media releases