2024-2025 Cohort of Parex Innovation Fellows
Kanwal Bokhari, DBA
Assistant Professor, Haskayne School of Business
Dr. Kanwal Bokhari completed her undergraduate degree in finance from IBA Pakistan before arriving at the University of Calgary, where she pursued both her MBA and doctorate in business administration at the Haskayne School of Business. During her DBA, she was the academic lead for the Financial Feminism Investing Lab, an investment education program with a gender-informed lens. She has been awarded a Parex Fellowship for her project, Turning Tides: Charting Success for Women Entrepreneurs. The project will use machine learning to produce tools useful to entrepreneurs, investors, students, and policymakers.
Victoria Fast, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Geography, Faculty of Arts
Dr. Victoria Fast has a graduate degree in geography and a Doctor of Philosophy in environmental applied science and management from universities in Ontario. Her research and teaching at the University of Calgary encompasses the fields of geographic information science, human geography, and urban studies. Her Parex Fellowship award will support her project, Beyond Infrastructure: Innovating Urban Accessibility through Semantic Mapping. She will address current limitations to infrastructure mapping by adding semantic layers to better tackle issues of accessibility in communities.
Gabriel Ménard, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science
Dr. Gabriel Ménard, who researches inorganic chemistry and clean energy storage, has degrees in Chemistry and Environmental Studies from universities across Canada. He has been awarded a Parex Fellowship to support his project, Selective Electrochemical Direct Lithium Extraction in Flow Using Carboranes. Lithium plays a critical role in our low-carbon energy future, and Ménard’s research team has created a novel strategy to capture lithium directly from salty water mixtures. It offers significant potential benefits to increase access to lithium while reducing costs and environmental impacts.
Kathleen Sitter, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Social Work
Dr. Kathleen Sitter holds the Canada Research Chair in Multisensory Research and Knowledge Translation. She is also a Dorothy Killam Fellow and has more than 25 years experience working in the areas of disability, accessibility, and human rights. Her Parex Fellowship will support her project, Disability Histories, Soundscapes, and Smellwalks: Putting our Stories on the Map. The project, which aims to ensure the preservation of Canadian histories that centres disabled voices in Canadian culture, will build on her existing research and leverage her Multisensory Storytelling Research Studio. It will use app-based technology for people to learn about these untold Canadian histories at different points of interest throughout the country.
Xin Wang, PhD
Professor, Department of Geomatics Engineering, Schulich School of Engineering
Dr. Xin Wang has degrees in computer science and engineering from Northwest University in China and the University of Regina. She has been awarded a Parex Fellowship for her project, Climate-Adaptive Electric Truck Routing and Range Forecasting. With electric trucks expected to play a significant role in reducing carbon emissions, Wang is creating tools to more accurately predict the best routing based on factors that aren’t currently being considered: weather, temperature, road surfaces, driving behaviours and more.