Inhalation of Respirable Crystalline Silica (RCS) generated during construction activities such as cutting or grinding can cause lung cancer and the irreversible lung disease. Exposure to RCS is common on construction sites because silica is a naturally occurring mineral that is present in many construction materials. The Silica Control Tool is a risk assessment tool that was developed by the BC Construction Safety Alliance and the University of British Columbia to assist construction employers to create exposure control plans for managing the health risks of RCS on construction worksites.

The polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), a multi-factorial heterogeneous syndrome with complex pathologies, affects up to 10% of women of reproductive age and accounts for 75% of anovulatory infertility. The annual costs of PCOS and associated infertility in Canada are staggering and are estimated to be $450M. Tissue-residing stem cells play important roles in the regulation of various physiological and pathological processes, through self-renewal, differentiation and cell-cell communication to maintain tissue homoeostasis and mediate repair and regeneration.

The main objective of this project is to design a novel plastic recycling technology invented by GreeNovel Incorporation. The process is based on microwave pyrolysis of the wastes at high temperatures and in the absence of oxygen to be decomposed to pyrolysis-oil and gas. The modelling of the novel microwave pyrolysis system and the product processing section will be performed. The process simulation tool will be provided to determine the properties of the products and operating conditions of each section.

Welding has widespread use in manufacturing, and its quality often determines the overall performance of the manufactured part. Nevertheless, due to the complex nature of the process, weld quality inspection remains manual with the standard approach of QA for defects after production completes. This introduces significant costs of downtime and reworks associated with finding defects at the late stages of production. This project leverages advanced data analytics and machine learning to develop and validate an automated real-time quality inspection system for industrial welding operations.

Recent improvements in Cloud Accounting software have reduced the demand for data entry and challenging analysis. However, industry has not totally adopted these new resources and many still use traditional accounting and bookkeeping methods, which require a lot of manual efforts. Paperless system has seen improved accuracy and speed of delivery. With the advance of AI technologies, we are confident that machines will exceed human procedural performance with accounting and bookkeeping tasks.

This project will undertake research on priorities and concerns that arise within Indigenous and Coastal Communities across Canada. Shipping provides benefits to many remove communities in delivering critical supplies, but the increase in shipping due to growth in activities such as tourism, mining and other industries presents a risk to the environment, livelihoods and food sources. The project aims at enhancing general understanding of the relationship between shipping and Indigenous coastal communities, to better inform decision makers, rights holders and stakeholders.

Wound dressings are indispensable in medical operation as they protect the wound from contamination by foreign matter, absorb wound exudate and control the humidity of the wound to promote healing. Mitigating technology can be integrated in modern wound dressings to expedite the healing process and reduce scarring. In this proposal, we will develop an innovative Janus wound dressing that is water repellent on one side and water absorbing on the other.

A successful computer application can easily have millions of users, but handling the network traffic generated by millions of users is not easy. The server system has to be well designed in order to properly process large, concurrent, and distributed data streams without affecting user experience. In addition, users do not generate data constantly, they often put a burst of load on the network instead. Therefore, the server system needs to be scalable as well.

The proposed research seeks to learn more about the ways Sponsorship Agreement Holders (SAHs), collaborate with Constituent Groups (CGs) and Co-sponsors to sponsor refugees to resettle in Canada. For this project, the Canadian Unitarian Council (CUC), will be used as a case study. Given the limited capacity and resources that SAHs have available to them to do this humanitarian work, building effective systems of collaboration between all sponsors is important.

Coastal habitats are critical for the health, livelihoods and social well-being of Canadian communities. In British Columbia, log handling and storage areas create wood waste that falls to the seafloor and does not decompose, degrading important habitats and substantially reducing the number of species can live there. To manage the impacts of habitat degradation, it is important to have accurate methods for measuring species diversity, but marine animals are difficult and time-consuming to identify and many remain unknown to science.