In response to the vast amount of interest in the North Shore pertaining to intergenerational initiatives, this project seeks to bridge community agencies academic research to provide tangible tools and resources to broaden the awareness of activities connecting different generations in the North Shore to actively contribute to reducing social isolation and loneliness, while enhancing social capital, community capacity, cultural connectedness, social awareness, and social cohesion among various populations in the North Shore community.

This research project will suggest guidelines that can be used by practitioners to formally represent the business benefits of blockchain. The business benefits focused on in this study are the increased financial value and the improved productivity. Formal methods will be applied to communicate these business benefits in unambiguous ways. Specifically, financial methods will be applied to quantify the financial value and conceptual modeling methods will be used to model the business processes related to the blockchain technology.

This research documents the social impact of an Indigenous food systems development and education program called Kitigay. Kitigay means to plant in Ojibway to describe planting food but also ideas and education. This proposed participatory research supports farm and wild rice paddy design, implementation, training, and food product marketing in the First Nation of Brokenhead Ojibway Nation. This research explores how community-led Indigenous food systems education and projects can meet communities' needs and priorities to foster Indigenous food sovereignty and self-determination.

This project extends the development of an innovative fishery by-product business of an earlier Mitacs-funded project (McKay, McLachlan, O’Gorman, Oldroyd and Rad-Spice (2020)). The disposal of by-catch fish in Manitoba has been identified by fishers in Misipawistik Cree Nation as not only environmentally wasteful but also a missed opportunity for sustainable and culturally-relevant economic development. The earlier project is developing a restaurant/grocer survey to estimate the market for fish by-catch products in Manitoba.

As Games User Research (GUR) becomes a mature and essential pillar of game development, the challenges of performing rigorous qualitative and quantitative research in small teams are exacerbated by the disruption caused by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Research methods such as heuristic evaluation, think-aloud usability testing, initial experience testing, playthrough observation, and post-launch data analysis are taught as industry-standard in GUR courses. And they yield important insights on game usability, balance, learnability, and accessibility.

The research project that will be conducted by the intern will enable the creation of a questionnaire that will later be deployed to the indigenous researcher (and graduate student) community. Most of the activities will involve gathering and analysis information from databases (i.e., Aboriginal People’s Survey) and interviews (and focus groups) to ensure that we are asking the right questions. The aim is to better understand the enablers and constraints facing indigenous researchers in Canada, in order to help design interventions that could boost the former and mitigate the latter.

The main goal of this research project is to study if a protein named SEMA3C can be a biomarker for early detection of an aggressive and lethal form of prostate cancer, named Double Negative Prostate Cancer (DNPC). To test if SEMA3C is a contributing factor in the progression of DNPC, we will compare SEMA3C level in tissues from patient and healthy individuals. Then, we will study if SEMA3C level changes in parallel to genetic variations, happening in tumors with cancer growth.

The shared goal of researching how filmmaking can be an effective tool in contributing to water protection efforts, and in promoting safe water access for Indigenous communities, has brought together groups from different cultures, sectors, and countries (Canada and Australia).

With the growth in demand for electric vehicles and mobile devices powered by rechargeable lithium batteries, demand for lithium is expected to increase by over 200% in the next decade. Current lithium production comes primarily from Australia, South America and China. There are significant lithium reserves in the same Saskatchewan aquifers currently being exploited for their concomitant oil reserves.

Renewable sources of electricity continue to increase in market share across all jurisdictions. New wind and solar energy projects in Alberta will be the main drivers to reach the province’s 2030 target to have 30% of its electricity derived from renewable sources. Alongside these projects the power generation companies like TransAlta Corporation will need to look at energy storage solutions to help these intermittent sources of electricity provide reliable and consistent power to the consumer.