To help overcome the increasing risk of hearing loss suffered by construction workers, EERS, a Quebec-based start-up, is developing technology to address this common industrial worksite complaint.

Florian Mayer, a Mitacs Globalink intern who spent his summer at Ryerson University in Toronto, wants to figure out how cities and roads can be built to reduce traffic, while working to improve long-term health outcomes in the world’s busiest cities. Researching alongside Associate Professor Leila Farah, Florian examined how the urban environment affects public health and how planners can work with communities to improve it on a local level. 

But regardless of drones’ ultimate applications, researchers are still trying to determine how to effectively operate more than one at a time.

Working under the direction of University of Alberta Professor Stephanie Yanow and PhD student Catherine Mitran, Ina is looking at samples from pregnant women in several regions in South America who have been infected with a type of malaria parasite called Plasmodium vivax. She’s then exploring the cross-reaction of those samples to that of pregnant women who’ve been infected by a different malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, to see if the first species can create antibodies that contribute to protection against the second species.

Tao is helping develop a structural system that will mitigate hazards in industrial buildings — often containing heavy equipment — during an earthquake.

Tao’s first task involves looking at blueprints of industrial buildings, specifically ones that store overhead cranes, to better understand their design and seismic behaviour. This is a significant step because overhead cranes can change the way a building moves and reacts to an earthquake.

Working under the direction of Professor Jonathan Kelly, Xinyi is helping to extend leading-edge technology that makes it possible for the wheelchair to navigate and drive itself.

Led by Professor Pascale Tremblay in the university’s Department of Rehabilitation, the project has provided a unique research opportunity for Anne-Christine Bricaud, who travelled from France to spend the summer as a Mitacs Globalink research intern. She’s working with a team at Laval to determine the effects of group singing on communication and brain health, especially among senior citizens.

This summer, Alexia’s working on a research project with Dr. Anne Ellis at Queen’s University’s Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences. Dr. Ellis’s research explores allergies and their impact on the Canadian population. Alexia’s project will help determine whether links exist between local pollen counts, a mother’s allergies (or lack of them), and biomarkers of children’s potential allergies in umbilical cord blood. From there, researchers will better understand the impact of pollen on children’s health outcomes and whether pollen-related allergies can be prevented.  

The Aussie is researching a strange phenomenon dubbed ‘The Ranchlands Hum’— a mysterious noise that has plagued residents in the northwest Calgary community of Ranchlands since 2008.

Supervised by Assistant Professor Eftekhar Eftekharpour, Jesua is part of a research team that is investigating a possible biological connection between diabetes and dementia. While recent population studies point to a correlation between diabetes and an increased risk of developing dementia, researchers don’t yet know the exact biological mechanisms that explain it. Jesua is spending his summer investigating one possible answer.