Bavan Pushpalingam's father, Paramasivam, came to Canada as a refugee after the Tamil genocide in Sri Lanka and had once been a farmer. As a child, Pushpalingam helped him grow okra, eggplant, bitter gourd and herbs, first on a Scarborough apartment balcony and later in the family's backyard.
At UTSC, an early project studying food insecurity among racialized youth in Scarborough during COVID-19 grew into work with the Scarborough Campus Students' Union Food Centre and Feed Scarborough, and eventually fieldwork in Sri Lanka, India, Ghana, Colombia and Mexico, supported by the Laidlaw Leadership and Research Scholarship, the Shastri Indo-Canadian Student Research Fellowship and SDGs@UofT.
He received two undergraduate research awards in Dublin earlier this year and was named a rising star by the Scarborough Walk of Fame. He also founded the Scarborough Hub for Innovation and Public Policy, whose first Emerging Perspectives Youth Summit ran in 2024. "It was really meaningful to be recognized by the community that raised me," he said.
Reported from Inspired by his father, U of T Scarborough grad nourishes food security research with community work, by Don Campbell (U of T Alumni News, August 26, 2026).
More from the original reporting: alumni.utoronto.ca/news/inspired-his-father-u-t-scarborough-grad-nourishes-food-security-research-community-work