Sugarbush Spa is a London-based company that specializes in the removal of unwanted body hair by a method known as sugaring. The method, used for centuries in the Middle East, has several notable advantages over traditional waxing. Commercially available sugaring pastes suffer from inconsistency in production and unsatisfactory performance. At its core, the creation of sugaring paste is a synthetic organic chemical reaction, hydrolyzing the disaccharide sucrose to the two monosaccharides glucose and fructose.

major contributor to smog formation is the release of volatile chemicals which are emitted from many sources including automobile exhaust and consumer products. To combat the adverse effects smog has on air quality in North America, agencies such as Environment and Climate Change (Canada) and the Environmental Protection Agency (United States) enforce limits on the types and amounts of chemicals used in industrial applications and consumer products.

Scintrex Trace Corp. is a company that designs and manufactures systems that detect trace amounts of explosives, narcotics, and other chemicals. Due to upcoming changes to Canadian drug laws, they want to develop a new system that can better detect THC in oral fluid for roadside impairment testing. Scintrex is partnering with Professor Jeffrey Smith at Carleton University, and expert in the field of chemical spectroscopy, to develop a new trace detection system.

Chronic inflammation is the common denominator for various diseases, including atherosclerosis, age-related macular degeneration (AMD), obesity, type-2 diabetes, liver diseases and even cancers. In most cases, this inflammation is the result of massive pro-inflammatory macrophage infiltration in tissues, due to their aberrant signalling and dysfunction, in presence of fat accumulation. The CD36 scavenger receptor has been shown to be key player in inflammation, with its TLR2 co-receptor.

NB-BioMatrix Inc. (NBBM) has developed a magnetic chitosan nanoparticle product, Naqua PureTM for industrial heavy metal water remediation. Unlike current heavy metal removal technologies, Naqua PureTM is cheap, environmentally friendly, requires a low energy input, and is highly efficient.

The objective of this research will be to evaluate the ability of a rebar coating strategy to resist chloride induced corrosion and to test its efficacy in mitigating concrete corrosion in potash mill environments. This research project involves a collaboration between academics and the potash industry under the guidance of the International Mineral Innovation Institute (IMII). The academic research team will be able to supply the partner organizations with highly trained HQP with expertise in corrosion and materials science.

Using solids to trap carbon dioxide is an alternative to the conventional and expensive solution based method. The Shimizu group at the University of Calgary has developed an outstanding candidate solid for CO2 capture from flue gas streams based on laboratory studies. This proposal will expand the experience of three interns to bridge science to process and system level engineering while offering expanded professional experience through networking with Bow Valley Innovations, the patent licensee, and their partners.

The use of water sources with high silica concentration has proven to be a major challenge for the operation of steam boilers. Despite advances in conventional technologies, high silica water (>150 mg/L) continues to have a major impact on the operation and efficiency of boilers mainly due to silica deposit, which reduces heat transfer.
This project will investigate the behavior of tannins as a function of colloidal silica concentration, pH, and salt concentration, using photometric dispersion analyzer (PDA) and dynamic light scattering (DLS).

Organic coatings are used to protect surfaces in many prominent industries such as automotive and aerospace. The industrial partner has found it imperative to develop their varnish for aircraft interiors in-house. They have identified a “super varnish” that must have exceptional resistance to cracking, prevention of shrinkage and adhesion to wood substrates (grouped herein as material properties). Secondary "must-have" properties are non-flammability, self-healing characteristics and greener processes.

This project will support the development of mobile sensor technology and data processing techniques that can be used to identify, characterize, and map contaminant sources that impact air quality in British Columbia. Volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds (VOC/SVOCs) are present in the atmosphere as a result of human activities and natural sources. These compounds are important for air quality management as they can be detrimental to human health both directly (some, such as benzene, are carcinogens) and indirectly as precursors to ground-level ozone (a respiratory irritant).