TABES Program receives Lassonde EDI seed funding

In August, York University’s Lassonde School of Engineering announced new equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) funding initiative to promote a culture of EDI at the School while helping to remove systemic barriers for faculty, students, and staff in academia.

The inaugural competition was a success, with many students, staff, and faculty members applying for funding. The top six projects selected to receive funding were announced on April 13 and SMART-ART was one among them.

Summary of the funded project:

Recruitment Activities for NSERC CREATE: Training in Applied Biotechnology for Environmental Sustainability (TABES) 

The Training in Applied Biotechnology for Environmental Sustainability (TABES) training program is an NSERC-funded, Integrated Circular Bioeconomy-based training program that explores valorization and environmental remediation to enable an effective response to the existing and emerging human and environmental health challenges through a science-engineering interface. The TABES program aims to train highly qualified personnel (HQP) to overcome existing labour force challenges, acquire multidisciplinary skills, and address knowledge gaps that would make the Canadian bioindustry globally competitive. The TABES program is dealing with EDI challenges in Advanced Biotechnology and affiliated fields. Precisely, the under-representation of women, visible minorities, Indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, and the LGBTQ2+ community employees and students in areas of applied biotechnology and engineering is a major challenge.

The proposed EDI initiative aims to address these EDI challenges in the TABES team through various mechanisms to increase opportunities for under-represented groups and reduce biases with a model framework for EDI recruitment. As a part of the initiative, the TABES program will address improving engagement, counteracting unconscious bias, and diversity and inclusion at work. The specific approaches comprise EDI Awareness podcast & publicity, training and workshops, targeted advertisement and recruitment, school, university, and citizen outreach activities, EDI special events, and invited model mentor talks.