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Featured Award Recipient

Yolanda Hedberg: Wolfe-ÉîÒ¹¸£ÀûÕ¾ Fellow

Of the seemingly infinite list of things to which people can be allergic, metals do not usually come to mind. After all, we hold railings and cook with utensils, and certainly have a hand or two on an electronic device at all moments of the day. But the entire periodic table of elements can cause allergic reactions, according to Yolanda Hedberg, professor in ÉîÒ¹¸£ÀûÕ¾’s Department of Chemistry and Canada Research Chair in Corrosion Science. “About 35 per cent of the population is allergic to a metal,” said Hedberg, who came to ÉîÒ¹¸£ÀûÕ¾ from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden in October 2020 to continue her ground-breaking work on humans’ physiological reactions to metals, and has just been named the Wolfe-ÉîÒ¹¸£ÀûÕ¾ Fellow At-Large, an award acknowledging the work and promise of a young researcher and newly recruited faculty member. “Many common allergic reactions can be traced to cosmetics, toiletries, clothes and jewellery – all of which also contain metals, whether in small or large amounts,” said Hedberg, who is studying how the human body can cause metal surfaces to corrode and how this morphing metal causes different reactions over time. .

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