Dr. Victoria A. Stuart, Ph.D.

Our appreciation of the world is enhanced
when we understand more about the things within it.

-- Victoria Stuart, 2024

Hello!   👋

I am a mature trans woman 🏳️‍⚧️ , determined (and I mean determined) to make the world a better place.

That identity partly shapes my social justice advocacy in response to contemporary conservative, anti-2SLGBTQIA+ movements.

Building on a wealth of academic and programmatic experience, I seek solutions to scientific and societal issues through the application of science and technology, philosophy, and education.

My overarching advocacy seeks universal human, social, and environmental rights, with a vision of sustainability for future generations.

Here is a bit more about me.

I am originally from the Halifax region of Nova Scotia - Fall River - I have lived in British Columbia, then North Carolina, then British Columbia again (at home in the beautiful Pacific Northwest), for many years. 🙂

Politically, I most align with social democracy.

Scientific research | Consultancy

I am fundamentally interested in information and relationships among data, and their applicability across multiple domains.

I am formally/academically trained in

• biochemistry (Honours B.Sc., Dalhousie University: polynucleotide chemistry, molecular biology),

• occupational and environmental health and safety (M.Sc., Occupational Hygiene Program, University of British Columbia: genotoxicity), and

• molecular life sciences (Ph.D., Biology, University of Victoria: molecular genetics; mechanisms of ageing, mutagenesis, carcinogenesis).

After I was awarded my Ph.D., I spent nearly 8 years in North Carolina conducting postdoctoral work in mitochondrial molecular genetics and bioinformatics at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (Durham, N.C.), before returning to Canada. 🇨🇦 🥳

Here are some of my publications spanning that period.

I also served for a number of years as a life sciences consultant (bioinformatics; molecular genetics; health/medical sciences; physiology and stress response; pathogens; ...) to U.S. federal agencies.

I supplemented that work with extensive self-instruction in programming (e.g. Python; R; BASH scripts) and data science (data structures; relational databases).

I am a Linux superuser, achieving (September 2024) a 5,000 reputation on StackOverflow. 🥳

I am also highly skilled in de novo web development (HTML, JavaScript, CSS, PHP, SSL/TLS). I hand-coded (Vim) my Persagen.org website, for example.

I understand the fundamentals (theory and practice) of machine learning and natural language processing, with a keen interest in information extraction, ontology, and knowledge graphs.

I actively and broadly monitor developments, trends, and applications in the biomedical, life sciences, scientific and technological domains including life sciences research, artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing (including LLM: large language models), etc.

Advocacy

Those core skills (academic scholarship; active learning; critical thinking; problem solving; leadership, teamwork and mentoring; education) are broadly applicable in the humanities, nonprofit, and advocacy domains.

• research; critical reading; active learning

• authorship

• leadership, teamwork, collaboration, and mentoring

Current challenges facing all of us include erosion of rights, liberties, and freedoms; inequality; global warming and climate change; pollution and ecological destruction; corporate greed; disruptive emerging technologies (artificial general intelligence); ... 🤔

Hence, I advocate passionately and tirelessly for environmental health, universal human rights, and social justice – with a particular interest in wealth, power, and influence, the issues they cause, and solutions to those issues.

That independent research has cultivated subject matter expert in political ideologies. My research investigates and tracks wealth, power, and influence - and the issues they cause, and solutions to those issues.

This work includes, but is not limited to:

• ideologies: conservatism; identity politics

• majority-minority relations, including including divisive rhetoric, populism, culture wars

• inequality: discrimination; wealth concentration

• environmental advocacy

• educational outreach: I've been posting on @persagen@Mastodon.social since 2023-May-28.

• Persagen.org - my professional/independent research website 📖 🔎

• demonstration/exemplar: Leonard A. Leo - note the biography, ontology (D3.js visualization), knowledge graph (Cytoscape.js) tabs.

Lastly, as a mature trans woman 🏳️‍⚧️ I also volunteer as a board member for two independent but collaborating nonprofit 2SLGBTQIA+ 🏳️‍🌈 seniors advocacy groups.

• Dignity Seniors Society (DSS): Vancouver, British Columbia; and

• Senior Pride Network Canada/Réseau de la Fierté des Aîné·e·s du Canada (SPNC/RFAC): Ottawa, Ontario.

DSS is dedicated to affecting systemic change that creates culturally appropriate services for 2SLGBTQIA+ seniors across British Columbia - while SPNC/RFAC exists to unite, advocate for, and empower older/senior/elder 2SLGBTQIA+ people across Canada.

If you made it this far, please feel fee to contact me with comments, etc. I am open to collaboration, partnership, subcontracting, consultancy, shared work, and any other opportunities.

I wish you all peace and joy; please be kind to one another! 🕊️

Namaste, 🙏

Victoria Stuart (she/her/hers 🏳️‍⚧️ 🏳️‍🌈)
[Dr. Victoria A. Stuart, Ph.D.]

e: mail@persagen.org [preferred]
e: mail@VictoriasJourney.com [preferred]
e: Victoria.A.Stuart@gmail.com
w: Persagen.org [advocacy]
w: VictoriasJourney.com [personal website]

Land acknowledgement

I acknowledge with gratitude that I live and work on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples - the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

Across Canada, as settlers we operate on the unceded, stolen and treatied traditional territories of hundreds of diverse Indigenous nations, which include Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ Indigenous communities. If you are unsure on whose lands you are currently working on and living on, please refer to Native Land Digital to learn more.

Lastly, as an ally inform yourself on the historical trauma - e.g. the Canadian Indian residential school system and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (Wikipedia)  |  Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (Government of Canada)), treaty violations, colonialism - and persistent institutional (systemic) racism and structural violence perpetuated upon Indigenous peoples.

Kathleen DuVal's excellent 2024 book Native Nations: A Millennium in North America provides a scholarly (U.S.-centric) overview of Native American civilizations and societies pre- and post-European colonialization.