Five University of Alberta researchers in diverse fields have been recognized by the Royal Society of Canada, the country's oldest and most prestigious scholarly institute.
Joining the 2025 class of Royal Society fellows are engineering professor Biao Huang and business professor Michael Lounsbury.
As well, chemistry professor Matthew Macauley, associate business professor Angelique Slade Shantz and humanities professor Sheena Wilson have been named to the society's College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists in recognition of their high levels of achievement early in their academic careers.
Biao Huang: process control innovator
To run their operations, industrial and manufacturing plants rely on process control — regulating the systems that help manage production safely and efficiently.
As a leader in the field, Biao Huang, a professor of chemicals and material engineering in the Faculty of Engineering, focuses his research on developing ways to assess and address issues within those crucial systems, "which ultimately helps industries navigate economic and environmental challenges in the global market," he says.
A fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and one of the most decorated members of the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering, Huang leads work that has made it possible for safer, more intelligent plant operations in the face of diverse and dynamic conditions.
He developed a theory for assessing multivariate control system performance, which has become a critically important reference for the field. Building on that, he conducted further innovative work in data-driven predictive control. His recent work in predictive soft sensing involves using computer systems and models to make process control more accurate and less expensive without the need for additional sensor hardware.
Huang's work has led to significant practical uses for process control in such key industries as oil extraction, creating greater accuracy and reliability, lower maintenance costs, increased production and a decreased environmental footprint.
"By addressing long-standing challenges, the innovative principles of predictive soft sensing technology have led to groundbreaking advances across industrial process applications, including not just oil production but also energy systems and materials processing," he notes.
Michael Lounsbury: empowering entrepreneurship for all
Where do great entrepreneurial ideas come from, and what does it take for them to flourish?
These are questions business professor Michael Lounsbury has devoted his career to answering.
In the process, he created a new global field of scholarly study — cultural entrepreneurship — that looks at how entrepreneurial processes are fundamentally and profoundly shaped by cultural norms within society. For example, his recent work on "emancipatory entrepreneurship" aims to unpack the challenges equity deserving entrepreneurs face.
"I have focused a great deal on how novel practices become legitimated and how more marginalized and equity-deserving groups are able to gain a more secure social footing and enhance their resilience," explains Lounsbury, who was awarded the Canada Research Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation in 2015.
Lounsbury co-created and is still academic director for the U of A's eHUB entrepreneurship centre, which empowers student and faculty entrepreneurs across the university no matter what their interest, from high tech to social innovation. In addition, eHUB has engaged in various outreach efforts in the wider community, including a partnership with a local high school.
"My initial work helped catalyze a whole field of more critical, culturally oriented studies on entrepreneurship that not only broadened the scope of entrepreneurial studies beyond a narrow focus on Silicon Valley-style high technology entrepreneurship, but also emphasized how even that form of entrepreneurship cannot be understood without appreciating its socio-cultural embeddedness," says Lounsbury. "My approach dovetails with many efforts that aim to reimagine entrepreneurship as a set of processes that can enable progressive social change, not just wealth creation."
For instance, eHUB's new partnership with the Fyrefly Institute is creating a Canada-wide 2SLGBTQI+ entrepreneurship knowledge hub focused on ways to remove barriers and empower people in that community.
Lounsbury is professor and A.F. (Chip) Collins Chair in the Alberta School of Business and chair of the department of Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Management. He is also a part-time professor with the Australian National University College of Business and Economics, and editor-in-chief of Research in the Sociology of Organizations. Lounsbury is the author or co-author of several books, including Cultural Entrepreneurship (2019) and The Institutional Logics Perspective: A New Approach to Culture, Structure and Process (2012).
Emerging leaders recognized
Macauley, Slade Shantz and Wilson earned citations from the Royal Society of Canada as members of an emerging generation of Canadian intellectual leadership.
Macauley, professor in the Faculty of Science and adjunct associate professor in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, is an internationally recognized expert in the field of applied chemistry, as Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Chemical Glycoimmunology and Raymond U. Lemieux Chair of Carbohydrate Chemistry. Through a research program that explores the biological roles of carbohydrates and how they control the body's immune cells, his work has resulted in important insights into Alzheimer's disease and cancer, as well as unique tools being used by research groups around the world.
Slade Shantz, an associate professor of strategy, entrepreneurship and management at the Alberta School of Business, is the Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Social Entrepreneurship. Her work explores the role of business and entrepreneurship in addressing two pressing societal issues: how to support economic growth that ensures everyone has a basic standard of living, and how to do so without exceeding Earth's resources.
Wilson, a professor at Campus Saint-Jean, is a leading scholar of energy humanities, co-founder of the Petrocultures Research Group and member of Future Energy Systems at the U of A. Her intersectional and interdisciplinary climate justice research focuses on how an extractivist worldview that produces environmental damage also fuels exploitation of humans and other species. Wilson's research, advice to policy-makers and public efforts to promote epistemic justice and the overall health of the planet are rooted in her diverse community-based collaborations.
