The Ontario government is investing more than $500,000 in research infrastructure at Trent University through its latest round of Ontario Research Fund – Research Infrastructure (ORF-RI) support and other sources, for five projects that advance health and environmental research across the institution.

“Ontario Research Fund investments are essential to building the research capacity that allows Trent scholars and students to tackle complex challenges,” says Dr. Holger Hintelmann, interim vice-president of Research & Innovation. “These projects demonstrate how provincial support enables innovative research, strengthens experiential learning, and contributes knowledge that benefits communities in Ontario and beyond.”

Advancing muscle and metabolic health research
Dr. Stephanie Tobin, assistant professor in Biology, alongside Dr. Holly Bates recently published peer-reviewed research in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle exploring advancement of scientific understanding of cachexia. It’s a complex syndrome involving involuntary loss of skeletal muscle and body fat that is linked to late-stage chronic disease and death and is estimated to affect between 5% and 15% of heart failure patients.

Research in Prof. Tobin’s lab at Trent has found hypertension associated with cardiac cachexia has sex-dependent physiological responses. Male mice were more susceptible to disease-related weight loss driven by fat tissue inflammation. The findings highlight the importance of accounting for biological sex in future studies of cachexia and heart failure.

“By studying muscle and fat tissue together, we’re able to better understand how the body responds to chronic disease as a whole,” said Prof. Tobin. “Giving undergraduate students meaningful research experience in our lab supports their next steps in graduate and professional programs.”

Now, with additional provincial funding, Prof. Tobin can establish a state-of-the-art rodent physiology suite. Her lab will be able to extend this work by studying how skeletal muscle and adipose tissue respond to chronic disease, obesity, and aging, and by measuring muscle strength, metabolism, and tissue composition with greater precision.

Understanding hearing, communication, and listening effort
Provincial funding for Dr. Sebastien Paquette, a professor in Psychology, is supporting new electroencephalography (EEG) research infrastructure that will enable simultaneous, multi-subject recordings (hyperscanning) and electronically shielded sound booths, strengthening the Trent PsychoAcoustics Lab’s work on listening effort.

EEG is a non-invasive technique that uses sensors placed on the scalp to measure the brain’s electrical activity in real time. This allows Professor Paquette’s research team to examine how the brain processes sound, speech, and music, and to better understand the cognitive effort required to comprehend speech in challenging listening environments such as crowded or noisy spaces.

“Electronically shielded sound booths paired with EEG technology will allow us to study how the brain processes sound and communication in ways that weren’t previously possible,” said Prof. Paquette. “The innovative aspect of this program lies in capturing neural activity from multiple participants concurrently during genuine social exchanges, enabling a new level of insight into the mechanisms of listening effort. It also gives students hands-on experience with tools directly relevant to careers in audiology, speech-language pathology, and rehabilitation sciences.”

Together, these technologies enable Trent researchers to measure brain activity with greater precision during complex listening tasks, with applications in hearing rehabilitation and cochlear implant research aimed at improving quality of life for people with hearing loss.

A broader provincial investment in research capacity
The Ontario Research Fund is also supporting research at Trent by Dr. Shaun Watmough and Dr. Autumn Watkinson focused on nitrogen and ecosystem health, Dr. Cayleih Robertson on animal physiology, and Dr. Jenifer Hendel and Dr. Andrew Vreugdenhil investigating materials characterization, reflecting the breadth of research enabled by investments in advance research equipment and infrastructure.