Robert Gerlai wants to understand the neurobiological mechanisms of the effects of alcohol on the brain. The behaviour geneticist studies changes in behaviour caused by alcohol in zebrafish. He hopes that understanding these behaviours in fish will ultimately reveal something about how humans respond to alcohol.

“Behaviour is the output of the brain,” he says, and analyzing behaviour allows him to reveal how brain function changes in response to alcohol.

The differences between anti-authoritarian movements in the 1970s in India and Pakistan, and the role of specific coffee houses in each country in igniting pro-democracy activism, is the focus of a new study by University of Toronto Mississauga assistant professor of sociology Kristin Plys. The winner of a 2018 Connaught Fund New Researcher Award worth $35,000, Plys’ study is called “Brewing Resistance: Coffee House as a site of social protest against post-colonial authoritarianism in India and Pakistan”.