Bavan Pushpalingam is an Eelam Tamil-Canadian scholar-activist and community-engaged policy researcher from Scarborough. He is a fourth-year student at the University of Toronto Scarborough, majoring in Public Policy with minors in Food Studies and Urban Governance. As a Research Project Coordinator in the lab, he supports projects such as “Survival Without the State: Community-Led Famine Mitigation in War-Torn Somalia,” by advancing famine mitigation research and shaping the Global Wicked Problems course through sustained engagement with community collaborators. He also founded and leads the Scarborough Hub for Innovation in Public Policy. Bavan represented Canada at the G7 Youth Summit in Rome and is a recipient of two Global Undergraduate Research Awards and the University of Toronto Excellence Award.