As a returning Globalink student, Pragyan was eligible to apply for the Mitacs Globalink Graduate Fellowship which provides financial support to former Globalink Research Interns who return to Canada for graduate studies at select Mitacs university partners.

Can you tell us a bit about the research you did through Mitacs Accelerate that led to you winning the Mitacs Award for Outstanding Innovation – Post Doctoral?

Currently, ovarian cancer is the fifth most frequent cause of cancer-related deaths for women in Western countries, largely due to its often illusive symptoms and lack of adequate screening methods.

“Participating in research on ovarian cancer has been a rewarding experience. I have learned what it means to be a researcher, what we do in the lab is for the greater good of society,” says Rebeca.

“I was inspired by one of my colleagues at university who was part of the program last year and now promotes it in India.  I was lucky enough to be selected to come here to Canada for research into leukemia in children.”

Manish is about to begin his final year of studies for a Bachelor of Technology degree with a major in Biotechnology and a minor in Computer Science at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati.

Coming from the Birla Institute of Technology & Science in India, he is completing a five year degree combining a Bachelor of Electrical and Electronics Engineering with a Masters of Economics.

“Mitacs Globalink is very well known in my college back home and it has a great reputation.  For students, it’s a big deal to be accepted for an internship because it is so competitive.  I’ve been to Canada on holiday before with my family and really love the country and the culture here and was very happy at being able to return.”

Shouvik is researching Terahertz electromagnetic waves (T waves), which are unique in their ability to make visually opaque objects transparent. T-wave imaging provides remarkable opportunities for applications in non-destructive testing and imaging, medical diagnosis, health monitoring, and chemical and biological identification.

Each student brings different experiences and perspectives to their individual projects, playing a key role in Dr. Desrosiers research. His lab’s first Mitacs Globalink student, Indian student Kuldeep Kumar began a project in the summer of 2011 using machine learning to extract data from social networks in order to analyze their growth and evolution. In 2012, Globalink student Qiquan Shi from China continued, and advanced that same research.

But one of the biggest costs greenhouse operators face is for the energy required to run their lighting systems.  Many greenhouses use inefficient electric lights to compliment light from the sun, particularly in winter.

GE Lighting Solutions, based in Lachine, Québec, sought to develop a new range of LED lighting applications for the greenhouse industry which not only cut down on energy use but also increase plant growth and yields.

For Qiquan Shi, coming to Canada from a tiny village in Guizhou Province in China was the opportunity of a lifetime.  A 2011 Globalink student had told him about the program and he recognized it as his chance to explore the world, despite coming from an impoverished farming family.  Overcoming all obstacles, he achieved outstanding academic success at Wuhan University in China, which gained him the recognition he needed to be selected for the highly-competitive Globalink program.  It enabled him to come to Canada to do advanced research at l’École de technologie supérieure in Montreal.

Together, the students and their professor developed a system to visualize the evolution of a software program from its first inception to the latest edition. The system provides useful information to software engineers and designers as they continually advance computer software packages to be faster and more user-friendly for new computer operating systems.