Organizer 

Jermal Jones (MEd) is the associate director, EDIA, at the University of Waterloo Libraries and co-founder of Next Gen Men (NGM), a team of staff and volunteers empowering boys (and men) to change the way they see, think and act about masculinity. He is also a third-year PhD student in the Recreation and Leisure Aging, Health and Wellbeing program, where he studies the intersections between race (Black), ethnicity, gender (men) and ag(e)ing from an interdisciplinary lens.  Jermal will also be teaching PACS 314: Restorative Justice and Transformative Education this spring at Conrad Grebel University College.   

Event Support  

Graham Yeates is an administrative assistant at the University of Waterloo Libraries. He helps coordinate event registration. If you have questions about this event, please contact him at libevents@uwaterloo.ca. 

More information 

Living Books

Trevor Charles, professor, is a microbiologist with expertise in bacterial molecular genetics. His research group studies pathogen surveillance using genomic methods, upcycling of food waste to biodegradable bioplastics, and plant beneficial bacteria. The group also develops methods for functional metagenomics using alternate surrogate hosts and employs these methods to isolate novel genes with interesting functions from microbial community metagenomic libraries. Professor Charles is co-founder of the companies Metagenom Bio Life Science, Healthy Hydroponics InnoTech, and Earth Microbial, as well as founder and executive director of the LiftOff Black Entrepreneurship Program. 

Trevor will speak about the negative consequences to society of ignoring or disregarding Science.
 

Savannah Sloat, science Indigenous initiatives associate director, interacts with students, faculty and members of Indigenous communities in the region, and as a Tuscarora educator and a registered member of Six Nations of the Grand River. Her work focuses on community identity, politics and personhood. Sloat is also working alongside her PhD supervisor Dr. Talena Atfield (History) on a project that is collecting first-hand accounts from Haudenosaunee community members who were involved in the 1988 repatriation of eleven wampum belts to the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. 

Savannah will speak about Indigenous experiences and histories with science education and research.
 

Beth Sandore Namachchivaya, university librarian, scholarly experience focuses on the intersection of human expertise and technological advancements within research libraries, including evaluation of information systems, text data mining, sustainable digital curation networks, and research impact assessment. 

Beth will speak to the fragility of trust in information and the importance of helping people build the life skills needed to become more self‑sufficient judges of the trustworthiness of information, data and AI outputs. 
 

Kate Mercer, BA, MI, PhD, is a liaison librarian for Systems Design Engineering and Biomedical Engineering where she collaborates with faculty, staff, and students to effectively provide instruction and support, and conduct research. She is passionate about understanding how health information and technology interact, how people are accessing, understanding, and disseminating information, and how to better support students through their undergraduate degrees and beyond. 

Kate will speak to how trust in science shapes public understanding of health information and speak to the strategies used in STEM fields to combat growing misinformation. 
 

Siu Hong Yu, is a liaison librarian for Chemistry, Physics & Astronomy, Earth & Environmental Sciences, and Recreation & Leisure Studies. He earned his BSc at Waterloo, pursued his MSc in Chemistry at the University of Alberta, and then worked at the National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa for nine years on vaccine adjuvant research. He has been working as a STEM librarian since 2017 at several institutions after his MLIS at Western University. 

Siu will speak to how trust and authority in science are nuanced and shaped by more than facts and data. He will highlight how genuine curiosity and asking probing questions can strengthen public dialogues, drawing on his experiences studying and TAing chemistry as a graduate student, conducting research in a government laboratory, and now providing research consultations as a STEM librarian.