About MacSphere

MacSphere is McMaster University's Institutional Repository (IR). The purpose of an IR is to bring together all of a University's research under one umbrella, with an aim to preserve and provide access to that research. The research and scholarly output included in MacSphere has been selected and deposited by the individual university departments and centres on campus.

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Students wishing to deposit their PhD or Masters thesis, please follow the instructions outlined by the School of Graduate Studies.

Communities in MacSphere

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Recent Submissions

Harms Associated with the Divide Between Social and Medical Understandings of Women's Reproductive Health
(2026) Morawski, Izabella
Epistemology and feminism have shown us many of the problems that exist within healthcare for women. What these two miss is the issue that the social communities and medical communities fail to inform each other when looking at women’s reproductive health. In other words, feminism and epistemology have missed that there is a disconnect, or divide, between these two groups which uniquely reinforces itself due to information not being completely transferred. Epistemology and feminism have proven that certain voices are not considered credible due to gender and racial biases (among others), and many individuals choose to minimize their interaction with the medical field. Medical research and clinical practice ignore key testimonies and (intentionally or unintentionally) gatekeep critical information about health from their patients through medical terminology or paywalls. Rather than interacting and building off of each other, a divide is formed about women and their reproductive health and is a reason why when it comes to women’s healthcare, medicine is not equal, science is behind, and women are left dismissed, misdiagnosed, and face inequitable health outcomes. This project includes case studies such as hormonal birth control (HBC) and menstrual blood colours to reinforce its position that lived experience is just as important as the biological experience to build a comprehensive overview of women’s health. This project will suggest a restructuring of the healthcare system to incorporate a more phenomenological approach that incorporates and validates both the personal and biological and which allows for a more fruitful collaboration between patient and physician. Without this collaboration, our system functions on differing levels of power dynamics, mistrust, misinformation, and isolation. The collaboration between the social and medical is imperative for medical advancement and social justice.
Cardiovascular Health Assessment in Pediatric Chronic Inflammatory Disease: The Role of Physical Activity, Aerobic Fitness, and Inflammation
(2025) Byra, Madelyn M.
Exploring the Extrinsic Motivators and Strategies That Drive Immigrants, Newcomers, and Refugees in Western Countries to Engage and Sustain Participation in Physical Activity and Healthy Active Living: A Scoping Review
(2025) Moradkhan, Fatemeh Matin
Research shows that immigrants and refugees are at a higher risk for physical inactivity; however, there is no comprehensive synthesis that investigates the extrinsic motivators that can drive immigrants, newcomers and refugees that come from different backgrounds, and live in Western countries to engage and sustain their participation in physical activities. This scoping review investigates the extrinsic motivators that influence and facilitate the participation of immigrants, newcomers and refugees in Western countries to engage in physical activity and sustain a healthy active lifestyle. The methodology used for conducting this scoping review is based on the Arksey & O’ Mally (2005) framework. The results show that challenges such as time constraints, high costs, safety, and cultural expectations are closely linked and can discourage participation. However, with the right community programs, interventions and supportive policies, these challenges and barriers can be transformed into motivators to encourage regular physical activity among this population. Overall, the study highlights the importance of focusing on community needs and culturally sensitive approaches rather than on individual choices to help immigrants, newcomers and refugees stay active and healthy.
Synthesis and Characterization of Electron-Rich Inhibitors of the α-Carboxyketose Synthases DAHPS And NeuB
(2025) Brzezinski, Weronika
Antibiotic resistance is a growing global health crisis, creating an urgent need for new antibiotics. The α-carboxyketose synthase (αCKS) family, which includes 3-deoxy-Darabinoheptulosonate 7-phosphate synthase (DAHPS), N-acetylneuraminate synthase (NeuB), and 3-deoxy-D-mannooctulosonate 8-phosphate synthase (KDO8PS), offers attractive targets for antibiotic development because these enzymes are essential for bacterial virulence but are absent from mammalian pathways. Although several αCKS inhibitors have been described, none have advanced to clinical application. This work applied a fragment-based and inhibitor-in-pieces approach to design and assess electron-rich and oxime-derived molecules as inhibitors of DAHPS and NeuB. Eleven compounds were synthesized or obtained, and inhibition constants (Ki) were determined. Several compounds showed strong activity, including Me-OPD, which inhibited DAHPS with nanomolar potency (Ki = 7.7 × 10⁻¹⁰ M), making it the tightest-binding small molecule reported for this enzyme. Clear structure-activity trends emerged: DAHPS favored compact, strongly electronwithdrawing substituents, whereas NeuB tolerated bulkier or more polar oxime variants. The inhibitor fragment N-hydroxyalanine (NHA) showed DAHP oxime-like binding behaviour, especially in the presence of glycerol 3-phosphate (Gro3P), indicating its potential to future fulllength inhibitor designs. This work expands the range of αCKS inhibitors and defines structural features explaining DAHPS and NeuB selectivity, providing a better basis for developing more potent and potentially cell-permeable antibacterial candidates.
Performance characterization of the defect-enabled all-silicon avalanche photodiode at telecommunication wavelengths
(2025) Xie, Yanran
Although silicon forms the foundation of the traditional microelectronics industry, the growing demand for higher data transmission capacity and lower energy consumption is propelling the advancement of a complementary technology - Silicon Photonics. It delivers exceptional scalability and power efficiency while enabling low-cost production by leveraging CMOS fabrication facilities and processes. This work describes research on the performance of a fully-integrated, one-material photodetector solution for the Silicon Photonics platform, designed for operation at telecommunication wavelengths, specifically 1550 nm. Following a introductory chapter to place this work into context, Chapter 2 provides a theoretical background of photodetectors and absorption mechanism in silicon. Chapter 3 studies the introduction of defects into silicon waveguides to improve the photodetector efficiency in converting optical signals at 1550 nm. The fabricated devices achieved multiplication gains up to M=35, with gain-bandwidth products reaching 230 GHz, and responsivity as high as 13 A/W. Chapter 4 explores the noise characteristics of these devices and provides a detailed analysis of noise behavior under different operating conditions. The excess noise factor measurements confirmed low-noise avalanche performance with an effective k-value of 0.1, attributed to the dominance of electron-driven carrier multiplication. In Chapter 5, the high-power performance of the detector operating in avalanche mode is studied, particularly the device linearity under high optical power and high electrical RF power input. The device shows one of the highest bandwidth-power product amongst waveguide photodetectors. Chapter 6 conducts a thorough study of the temperature dependency behaviour of the silicon photodetector using integrated on-chip micro-heaters, and experimentally demonstrates an enhanced performance in device sensitivity and noise reduction at elevated temperature relative to room temperature operation. This thesis concludes with Chapter 7, in which a summary of the findings is provided, and suggestion for future work is made.

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