Autism spectrum disorder refers to a broad range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviours, speech, and nonverbal communication. This once misunderstood disorder affects a broad range of communications skills and behaviours.

According to Public Health Agency Canada, one in 66 Canadian children are diagnosed with autism.

French Biological Engineering Master’s student, Marie Marbaix is spending her summer contributing to the global investigation into colony collapse disorder. For 12 weeks, she’s joined Professor Levon Abrahamyan at the Université de Montréal to study the co-infection of mites and viruses in honeybees through a Mitacs Globalink research internship. The researchers want to know if co-infection — being afflicted with more than one parasite or virus at once — could be contributing to honeybee deaths, and ultimately, colony collapse.

That’s a huge cost to swallow for farmers and companies around the world whose livelihoods depend on food safety and healthy animals.

Their systems help the makers of everyday technologies ensure that travel by road or air will be safe and reliable for Canadians and others around the world.

When they were approached by a major car manufacturer to develop testing systems for autonomous vehicles, OPAL-RT turned to Mitacs to connect them to the top research talent for their needs.

The issue has attracted researchers from multiple disciplines, including Danielle Benesch, who is examining how perceptions of free will could impact our response to the overdose crisis. Danielle, a Mitacs intern from the Universität Osnabrück in Germany, has studied free will and decision-making for years. She travelled to Canada this summer to work on a project, supervised by Professor Eric Racine of the Université de Montréal, to research the relationship between perceptions of free will and addiction.  

This summer, Nathalia Soares Covre, a Mitacs intern from Brazil, is helping the modelEAU team develop a digital model of an innovative wastewater treatment process. This new process reduces the discharge of nitrogen into lakes and rivers so that plant operators can work to reduce the impact of urban wastewater on local ecosystems.