Two McMaster graduates awarded the Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal
McMaster awarded the 2026 Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal to Madison Brockbank and Elyse Letts, recognizing the highest academic standing among graduate students. Their work spans gender‑based violence prevention, machine‑learning measurement of toddler activity, and community impact.
Madison Brockbank (PhD 2025, social work) and Elyse Letts (PhD in medical sciences) are McMaster’s 2026 recipients of the Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal. Brockbank, now an assistant professor at the University of Windsor, is noted for anti‑carceral feminist research on violence prevention and is a former SSHRC Vanier scholar. Letts advanced machine‑learning methods to measure toddler movement, validated on over 120 children, and published Little Movers Activity Analysis as an open‑source tool; she is a postdoctoral scholar at McGill. The awards highlight top academic achievement and translation of graduate research into community‑oriented tools.
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