RDC News: December 2025

Join us at the RDC Holiday Party!

Please join us at our annual RDC holiday party for some snacks and merry mingling!

• It will be held at the Phoenix Bar & Grill on McMaster main campus, from 4pm to 6pm on Tuesday, December 9th.

All are welcome! Hope to see you there.

Holiday Closures

This month we will have the following changes to our usual operating hours:

• No extended hours on the evening of Thursday, Dec. 4th.
• Closed for the University break, from 4pm on Monday Dec. 22nd until after the new year.
• The RDC will reopen on Monday Jan. 5th, 2026.

Please note there will be no vetting during the holiday closure period.

We hope everybody has a safe, happy and healthy holiday season!

Saturday Hours – On Demand

We will be offering Saturday hours this month. We will be open on an ‘appointment’ basis, only if requested. Please sign up via the online booking system as usual.

Offered Saturday hours slots will be:

• Saturday, December 13th – 12pm to 4pm

Congrats & Kudos

Congratulations to RDC researcher Zichun Zhao, who successfully defended his PhD thesis at the end of October. The thesis, titled “Three Essays in Health Economics” (more details here), used various RDC datasets: CCHS, Survey of Household Spending – Cancer Cost linkage, Discharge Abstract Database, National Ambulatory Care Reporting System, Canadian Community Health Survey, and T1 Family File linkage. He was supervised by Michel Grignon, with committe members Katherine Cuff and Jonathan Zhang.

Congrats Zichun!