Three Western graduates are among the recipients of this year’s Governor General’s Academic Medals. Since 1873, the awards have recognized outstanding students across Canada.
Western PhD graduates Deanne Wah, Gezheng Xu and Julia Yates have received the Gold Medal, awarded for academic excellence at the graduate level.
Deanne Wah is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist who combines behavioural and neural recording techniques to answer crucial questions about how children learn to read and why children with developmental dyslexia experience significant delays in reading development. Wah’s PhD thesis examined the cognitive and neural underpinnings of reading, focusing on the role that letter-sound transparency plays in successful word recognition.
In a series of experiments, they examined the foundational cognitive processes involved in reading. This research included the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to link brain activity to computational models of reading in both healthy adult readers and children learning to read.
Their studies demonstrated key differences in how children with dyslexia represent the spelling and sound of written words and how these representations align with the predictions of a computational model of reading. Their findings significantly enhance our understanding of the neuropsychological foundations that support the uniquely human capacity for reading. The research also informs critical developments in educational practices related to the identification and treatment of dyslexia.
Wah is currently a psychologist at the Thames Valley District School Board.
Her doctoral research addressed a fundamental challenge in artificial intelligence (AI): ensuring that AI systems remain reliable and fair when used in new or changing real-world situations. Combining rigorous mathematical analysis with empirical validation, she developed methods that advance models’ ability to adapt to new environments, handle uncertainty and address inequalities affecting different demographic groups. Her work contributes to the foundations needed for AI that people can trust in practice.
Throughout her doctoral studies, Xu has published 25 peer-reviewed articles in leading international conferences and journals. Her research received spotlight distinctions at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (2022), the International Conference on Learning Representations (2023) and the International Conference on Machine Learning (2026), highlighting the significance of her contributions. Her excellence in research and teaching has also been recognized through Western’s Robert and Ruth Lumsden Graduate Award, the Fields Postdoctoral Fellowship Award and the Graduate Student Teaching Award. Xu was also named a Rising Star in Foundations of AI Research by the University of Warwick and the Oxford ELLIS Unit, the only researcher from Canada to receive this recognition.
Xu currently continues to advance trustworthy AI at Western and will soon join the University of Oxford as a postdoctoral researcher, where she will expand its applications to scientific discovery.
Julia Yates completed her PhD in health and rehabilitation sciences (health promotion) at Western. Yates’ PhD thesis was part of the first Canadian longitudinal study exploring the resilience and protective factors of children previously exposed to parental gender-based violence. This work aims to generate evidence that informs the design, implementation and evaluation of interventions across sectors, including health care, education and social services.
Yates’ work was supposed by a SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship, and she was recognized with internal, external and tri-council awards to support the dissemination of this important work.
During her graduate studies, Yates published 41 articles in peer-reviewed journals, authored three encyclopedia chapters, delivered over 50 presentations at local, national and international meetings or conferences and provided 23 integrated knowledge translation presentations for various organizations across Canada.
Yates is currently a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in the department of community health and epidemiology at Dalhousie University.
Learn more about how Western is preparing future leaders and global citizens.
Deanne Wah, PhD in psychology, Faculty of Social Science
Deanne Wah is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist who combines behavioural and neural recording techniques to answer crucial questions about how children learn to read and why children with developmental dyslexia experience significant delays in reading development. Wah’s PhD thesis examined the cognitive and neural underpinnings of reading, focusing on the role that letter-sound transparency plays in successful word recognition.
In a series of experiments, they examined the foundational cognitive processes involved in reading. This research included the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to link brain activity to computational models of reading in both healthy adult readers and children learning to read.
Their studies demonstrated key differences in how children with dyslexia represent the spelling and sound of written words and how these representations align with the predictions of a computational model of reading. Their findings significantly enhance our understanding of the neuropsychological foundations that support the uniquely human capacity for reading. The research also informs critical developments in educational practices related to the identification and treatment of dyslexia.
Wah is currently a psychologist at the Thames Valley District School Board.
Gezheng Xu, PhD in computer science, Faculty of Science
Gezheng Xu completed her PhD in the department of computer science at Western, supervised by professors Boyu Wang and Charles Ling.Her doctoral research addressed a fundamental challenge in artificial intelligence (AI): ensuring that AI systems remain reliable and fair when used in new or changing real-world situations. Combining rigorous mathematical analysis with empirical validation, she developed methods that advance models’ ability to adapt to new environments, handle uncertainty and address inequalities affecting different demographic groups. Her work contributes to the foundations needed for AI that people can trust in practice.
Throughout her doctoral studies, Xu has published 25 peer-reviewed articles in leading international conferences and journals. Her research received spotlight distinctions at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (2022), the International Conference on Learning Representations (2023) and the International Conference on Machine Learning (2026), highlighting the significance of her contributions. Her excellence in research and teaching has also been recognized through Western’s Robert and Ruth Lumsden Graduate Award, the Fields Postdoctoral Fellowship Award and the Graduate Student Teaching Award. Xu was also named a Rising Star in Foundations of AI Research by the University of Warwick and the Oxford ELLIS Unit, the only researcher from Canada to receive this recognition.
Xu currently continues to advance trustworthy AI at Western and will soon join the University of Oxford as a postdoctoral researcher, where she will expand its applications to scientific discovery.
Julia Yates, PhD in health and rehabilitation sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences
Julia Yates completed her PhD in health and rehabilitation sciences (health promotion) at Western. Yates’ PhD thesis was part of the first Canadian longitudinal study exploring the resilience and protective factors of children previously exposed to parental gender-based violence. This work aims to generate evidence that informs the design, implementation and evaluation of interventions across sectors, including health care, education and social services.
Yates’ work was supposed by a SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship, and she was recognized with internal, external and tri-council awards to support the dissemination of this important work.
During her graduate studies, Yates published 41 articles in peer-reviewed journals, authored three encyclopedia chapters, delivered over 50 presentations at local, national and international meetings or conferences and provided 23 integrated knowledge translation presentations for various organizations across Canada.
Yates is currently a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in the department of community health and epidemiology at Dalhousie University.
Learn more about how Western is preparing future leaders and global citizens.
