Three Western PhD graduates are among the recipients of this year’s Governor General’s Academic Medals. Western alumni Breanne Kearney, Jesse Sutton and Alexander Zero have received the Gold Medal, awarded for academic excellence at the graduate level.
Since 1873, the awards have recognized outstanding students across Canada.
Meet this year’s winners, pursuing impactful research across disciplines:
Breanne Kearney, PhD in neuroscience, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry
Kearney completed her PhD in neuroscience at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry in June 2025. Her research bridges neuroscience and mental health care, advancing understanding of how brain network communication contributes to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its treatment.
Drawing on her clinical background as an occupational therapist, Kearney used functional MRI to reveal increased “hypercommunication” between brain regions involved in sensation, movement and memory during traumatic recall, a pattern also linked to greater symptom severity. She further demonstrated that Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR), a novel mind–body psychotherapy, can normalize this atypical connectivity while reducing symptoms.
Kearney’s work was supported by Jonathan and Joshua Graduate Memorial Scholarships and the Homewood Research Institute. During her PhD, she published 11 peer-reviewed articles and co-authored a book, Sensory Pathways to Healing from Trauma: Harnessing the Brain’s Capacity for Change.
Kearney is continuing her career as a clinician-scientist and is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the department of psychiatry. Her work bridges clinical practice and research, with a focus on supporting traumatized children and adults. She is actively involved in international research collaborations aimed at advancing mental health care and trauma-informed practices.
Jesse Sutton, PhD in geography and environment, Faculty of Social Science
Sutton completed his PhD in the department of geography and environment in August 2025. His thesis examined the interactions underpinning the determinants of regional economic resilience. By employing multiple methods, such as interviews and regressions, Sutton developed a unique conceptual framework of how determinants interact in turbulent times and backed this framework with evidence, using Canadian regions as a case study.
Sutton’s work, supervised by geography and environment professor Godwin Arku, was supported by an SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship and an Ontario Graduate Scholarship.
During his graduate studies, Sutton published 18 articles in peer-reviewed journals on various topics, including local economic development, plant closures, spatial analysis and regional economic resilience. These articles ranged from conceptual to empirical papers stemming from national and international collaborative research projects.
Alexander Zero, PhD in kinesiology, Faculty of Health Sciences
Zero completed his doctoral program in the spring of 2025. His thesis centered on basic research in applied human physiology. The work from the thesis (all published in top journals in the field) addressed and settled two long-standing controversies or incomplete explorations of phenomena concerning the effects of contractile activity on muscle failure and enhancement, and the response or adjustments in the output of the central nervous system on muscle force control.
These are fundamental processes required for purposeful daily movements, from speaking to running.
During his journey in kinesiology professor Charles Rice’s laboratory, Zero was supported by a CGS-D NSERC scholarship and the Michael Smith NSERC travel award supplement in 2022-23. Zero published 24 peer-reviewed papers and reviews, with others forthcoming from his time at Western – the majority as first-authored contributions.
