Join us for the FALL Series 2025

Antibiotics are the cornerstone of modern medicine.

Unfortunately, their continued efficacy is at severe risk due to the global dissemination of antibiotic resistance. Alarmingly, no novel antibiotic classes with clinical utility have been discovered since 1987.

Moreover, large pharmaceutical companies have exited this space in favour of more lucrative therapeutic areas, leaving the burden of new antibiotic discovery on academic labs and small biotechnology companies.

In this talk, we will explore the utility and limitations of artificial intelligence methods for antibiotic discovery to strengthen our lean antibiotic development pipeline and overcome the antibiotic resistance crisis.

A half century is but a blink of an eye through geological time. Climate used to be stable and dependable – summers hot and winters cold. Yet, in the past 50 years, the state of climate has gone from the “ice age cometh” to the overheated planet.

Extremes have become more extreme and extraordinary, and climate disasters more frequent and impactful. Something has happened to our weather such that we can no longer assume yesterday’s weather will apply tomorrow.

Too often, good news is hard to come by in overcoming humankind’s greatest environmental challenge. We are constantly being bombarded with dire warnings about climate breakdown, another emergency or a climate crisis.

In 2025, when the consumption of dirty fossil fuels has peaked and the shortfall is being replaced by renewable energy sources, there is hope for the future.

Ever padded your resume, or applied for a job for which you had no qualifications or experience?

Well in 1883, about a thousand men applied for a job that was never advertised, was without a job description, and for which there was practically no (legal) way for them to have prior experience. They wanted to be Britain’s hangman.

This talk explores the nearly one thousand remarkable letters that were sent by mostly ‘respectable’ men who wanted the position.

I ask the questions: Who were these men? Why did they want the job? And what do their informal job applications tells us about non-elite attitudes towards the state, to capital punishment, and about doing a job that most at the time definitely did not see as a ‘respectable’ one?

Many of the answers surprised me – and may surprise you.

In the years between 1900 and 2025, the nature of food has changed dramatically, and for good reason. In 1900, the world’s population was 1.6B and just 16% of us or roughly 256M lived in cities. Shift to 2025 and there are just short of 8B people living on earth with 65% or 5,200,000,000 of them living in cities far from where foods are grown or produced. That’s a lot of mouths to feed and to quote from the famous Star Trek movie, “Captain, We Have A Problem”.

Between the growth in population, the loss of 33% of the world’s arable land in just the past forty years and climate change, it’s not surprising, that the food we eat is very different from the food that our great grandparents ate. We’ll examine the difference and review the technologies that are allowing us to feed the world now and at least for a while into the future.

And of course, we’ll discuss GMOs or genetically modified foods and organisms.

NORCs … another acronym to add to your vocabulary! Most Canadian seniors want to “age in place”. How can we ensure that possibility is available to us? What community configurations will support this preferred future?

Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities or NORCs are unplanned communities, districts, neighbourhoods or buildings that have a high proportion of older adult residents.

NORCs have received attention in recent years in the media and in research. They represent opportunities to provide supports to help people age in the right place and in one of their choosing.

Dr. Letts will share some research findings and help us understand the concept of NORCs and the range of services and supports that are currently offered in NORCs across Canada