The City of Charlottetown, PEI, has partnered with Holland College to study the water quality and biodiversity of local watersheds. While data has been collected for over five years, analysis of trends over time had never been done — meaning the municipality and its partners were missing key information for critical management and planning. A Mitacs BSI intern has analyzed this information and provided recommendations for the city to enhance the biodiversity and ecological health of the life in its watershed.

Norman called up his friend Mark Nathan, a cardiologist. 

“We put our heads together to develop the concept further,” said Dr. Nathan. “We were inspired by the idea of a cardiac stent, which is a sterile device used in heart surgery to allow arterial blood flow in patients with heart disease. Stents are different in all the important respects from what we had in mind, however; as with stents, we wanted to create sleeve-like scaffolds that can wrap around a stud, contain and release effective medication, dissolve predictably, and disappear.”