When Gurudeeban Selvaraj and Satyavani Kaliamurthi came to Canada in 2019, they had no idea they would be creating both a preventative vaccine and a curing drug to address the millennium’s biggest pandemic.

As of May 27, 2020, there have been 2,925,466 infected COVID-19 patients reported worldwide, with a total of 355,727 deaths. The rapid progression of the COVID-19 pandemic has raised concerns regarding the short supply of medical equipment needed to control the rate of transmission and mortality. In most developing countries, transporting vaccines can be difficult without the proper storage technologies, since vaccines and equipment can spoil in high temperatures.

According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, the total number of COVID-19 cases reached a high of 71,486 as of May 13, 2020 — with Ontario and Quebec collectively accounting for 83% of all cases and 92% of the Canadian death toll. With a mortality rate of 3.4%, COVID-19 has created an unprecedented — and growing — demand for a vaccine.

With the spread of COVID-19, a leading University of Alberta research team has developed an innovative coating capable of killing viruses.

Buddy is as old as maple syrup, and it’s not friendly. This burned-Tootsie-Roll taste can ruin syrup flavour and is undetectable until sap is processed — far too late for small producers to recoup costs.

The annual cost of buddy, which the Ontario Maple Syrup Producers Association (OMSPA) estimates can reach into the millions, is a lot of liquid gold for small producers who are forced to sell buddy product at highly reduced rates. To avoid the risk, some producers stop production too early in the season, missing the opportunity to make high-quality syrup.

That’s why Jess is on a mission to develop first-of-its-kind active workwear for women, creating an innovative, fire-retardant fabric with stretch that will form the basis for her first clothing line, set to launch in spring 2020 under her textile and clothing start-up, Jess Black Inc. Her target audience is the growing number of women choosing to work in the trades, currently pegged at four percent according to Statistics Canada’s most recent Labour Force Survey, accounting for 34,800 women.

Timing is everything. In cleantech innovation, it’s the difference between leading and falling behind. For Professor Martin Ordonez’s team at the UBC Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering who work in power electronics and conversion, one of the ways of being ahead is developing clean energy through research in renewable electric vehicles (EV) and power storage.

On the heels of news that global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are soaring to record-breaking levels not seen in 800,000 years, Calgary-based SeeO2 Energy is working to reverse the trend. With the launch of its invention that converts greenhouse-gas emissions into high-value fuels and chemicals before they are released into the environment, founders Drs. Paul Addo and Beatriz Molero Sanchez take pride in helping to improve their world.

Karthik, an undergraduate student at National Institute of Technology in Hamirpur in India, has joined Associate Professor Andrew Park this summer for a 12-week Mitacs Globalink research internship. He’s helping to develop an algorithm that can accurately and precisely identify the most likely location of a potential sniper attack on a public gathering.

Mitacs internships facilitate connections between university students and non-academic partners across Canada. Partner organizations get the immense benefit of high-quality, rigorous research support and access to ground-breaking knowledge from academia—which may be inaccessible otherwise. Highly-skilled students get to apply their research expertise beyond their academic settings, while also building important skills and connections that serve them after graduation.