Coming to Canada this summer was about more than research for Abhinav Agarwal of the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati; it was about contributing to meaningful research while gaining worldly experiences as a global citizen.

With Canada renewing its commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at last year’s Copenhagen summit, government and industry are seeking new solutions to mitigate global climate change. One such response lies in Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS)—a field which Mechanical Engineering student, Surojit Ganguli can now see himself pursuing thanks to the Mitacs Globalink program.

Some might say the wintery land of Canada could be likened to the magical kingdom of Narnia. But this summer, Brazilian undergraduate student – and C.S. Lewis fan—Alonso Lira likely won’t see the snowy side of the country as he undertakes a biomedical research project at McMaster University’s Faculty of Health Sciences.

This summer, a group of 31 of India’s top undergraduate students visited Cascades as part of the Mitacs Globalink Industry Conference. Created by Mitacs – a national research organization focused on developing the next generation of innovators – Globalink introduces Canada as a world-leading research and innovation destination to top undergraduate students from around the world.

Ankita was hosted by the University of Alberta and worked on her project with Alberta Health Services which involved building a data warehouse to store information of the cancer patients in the province of Alberta.

“I’m learning a lot,” says Amit Badlani, a Mitacs Globalink program participant from India doing a research internship at Carleton University in Ottawa. “I honestly didn’t think I would get so much out of this.”