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.

Near downtown Montréal, the Little Burgundy neighbourhood reveals many contrasts. In the south, it touches the Lachine Canal, a beautiful 14-kilometre cycling and pedestrian pathway that sees millions of visitors every year. In the north, it is bordered by the busy and grey Ville-Marie Expressway. One of the most multicultural communities in the city, Little Burgundy is home to upscale restaurants and boutiques, but also to a vulnerable population that struggles with food insecurity.

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

Imagine you’re having lunch on a courtyard patio downtown. It’s a crisp, sunny autumn day with a light breeze. Your table is against a south-facing brick wall that is bathed in sunlight and there’s a row of tall bushes at the edge of the patio that break the wind. You wore a jacket to the restaurant but after sitting for a few minutes, you’re warm enough to take it off and enjoy the sunshine on your bare arms.

Water contamination adversely affects the lives of two billion people worldwide. According to the World Health Organization, half of the world’s population will struggle with water scarcity by 2025, with 785  million people currently lacking basic access to clean drinking water. However, the demand for consumer products requires mining, which can lead to water contaminants that affect aquatic wildlife, vegetation, and humans.

Professor Isabel Desgagné-Penix and her team at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières are the first to demonstrate that cannabinoids can be successfully grown in microalgae by a process called metabolic engineering.

The process of metabolic engineering extracts the genes responsible for cannabinoid production from cannabis plants and inserts them into algae, creating a type of cannabis surrogacy in algae.

The traditional residential-building industry in Canada suffers from poorly designed ducts with undervented and over-vented areas causing large temperature variations, discomfort, and inefficiency. Most of the heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in Canada work based on a single-zone design in which only one thermostat with a single temperature sensor turns the system on and off.

Companies decide to start the mining of a particular uranium deposit based on many factors. One major consideration for mining is the presence of environmentally impactful elements such as arsenic, nickel, and cobalt by-products known as tailings and waste rock.

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.