Graduate student researcher Thomas Rawliuk is working to uncover resilience factors and promote healthier outcomes for all.
Thomas Rawliuk [BSc(Hons)/22, MA/24] started his academic career by attending Red River College to become a paramedic. After he began working as a medic, he found that interacting with patients made him more curious about human physiology and psychology. Because of this he decided to go to university and to explore these concepts with the goal of someday being able to have a larger impact on people's lives.
“When I came to the university as an undergrad, I found that a lot of my previous knowledge from college and from high school was all based on the hard sciences like biology, chemistry and physics, which is why I pursued an undergraduate degree in science,” he said. “But while at UM, I started delving into psychology, and I was struck with a moment of realization that I can blend the two concepts together. I ultimately determined that research was the way I wanted to go and that was because I was interested in how the mind and the body connect.”
As Rawliuk continued his education and ventured into a master’s degree, he discovered that other people were interested in the same thing—and that he could use the knowledge he gained as a paramedic and apply it to the new knowledge he’d gained throughout his undergrad. He decided to focus his research on human resilience, which is the capacity for the body to respond quickly and effectively to mental illness and neurological disease, and how it varies across humans.
“My goals are to identify how the mind and body work together to determine our outcomes when in response to stressful experiences or adversity in life and to develop actionable behaviours that optimally preserve and promote resilience,” he said. "Eventually I’d like to develop a research program that aims to use all aspects of resilience to encourage preventive behaviours that delay or stop the onset of disease.”
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