If Canada is to meet its ambitious climate goals, addressing persistent labour and skills shortages will be a necessary condition. The research project aims to analyze the employment patterns and composition that current prevail in the electricity and renewable energy sector compared to the broader economy. The research will, in turn, empirically shed light on the various factors underpinning diversity (or lack thereof) in employment in the electricity and renewable energy sector.

Some medications affect the QT interval of the heartbeat and can result in major heart events, which can lead to death. It is unclear exactly how much medications compared to other risk factors contribute to these outcomes and when they will occur. This research project will use data from St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton’s (SJHH) Dovetale-Epic electronic medical record (EMR). Patients who were or were not taking medications that affect the heartbeat and experienced serious heart events will be identified.

Asthma is an airway disease affecting over 330 million people worldwide. More than >5% of people with asthma experience uncontrolled severe disease despite being treated with high doses of steroids which give them a lot of bad side effects1,2. The availability of a new class of drugs recently called biologics have reduced the number of hospitalizations and the need for oral steroids in severe asthmatics with a particular type of inflammatory cell in the airways, called eosinophils.

Drug-impaired driving represents a significant and increasing threat to the safety of Canadians and there is an urgent need for a convenient, rapid and accurate road-side testing technology for impaired driving. Current solution for roadside drug testing only provides qualitative results, while quantitative detection of drugs currently requires expensive equipment, dedicated infrastructure and specialized laboratory personnel. To address this problem, eye3concepts Inc.

With the number of eating disorders rising during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, Body Brave launched the Recovery Support Program as an online platform for individuals (ages 17 and up) experiencing eating disorder symptoms to access support. In this program, clients are offered check-ins, recovery sessions, and resources using a stepped-care model. In addition to various numerical report about the success of the project, a deeper exploration of how clients are liking it and if their needs are being met is still needed.

This project explores how computer algorithms will be used to predict the intelligibility and quality of in-car speech processed by hearing aids. Hearing impaired listeners graded in-car speech for a set of conditions. The conditions include seating position of talker, seating position of speaker, levels of background noise, and hearing aid processing methods. Each hearing impaired participant graded processed speech using multiple criteria. For each assessment criteria, a function is generated that maps the assessed criteria to the result of each computer algorithm.

Clostridioides difficile (C. difficile) infection (CDI) is a common disease associated with hospital stays and is caused by a bacteria known as C. difficile. This project will examine transmission patterns of the bacteria and attempt to develop methods for detection of the pathogen in order to reduce incidence of the disease. This will ease the burden of patients on the hospital system, which I will be partnered with.

The design optimization process of photonic and optoelectronic devices can be time consuming. The modeling of these electrically-long devices is time-intensive. Accurate time-domain and frequency-domain simulation tools such as the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method and the finite element method (FEM) are usually utilized to model these devices. These methods require fine meshing to achieve accurate results. The fine meshing results in slow simulation time.
Designing photonic and optoelectronic devices requires large number of accurate simulations.

Kapoose Creek Wellness (KCW) is building a vertically integrated business to deliver products and services that take advantage of a growing market for the functional and medicinal potential of mushrooms. A key asset in this vision is 320 acres of land within a rainforest on the North Pacific Coast of Vancouver Island where exotic species of fungi abound. Further, KCW has invested in infrastructure, for example, roads, vehicles, housing and, most notably, a substantial research laboratory, in this remarkable setting.

Sepsis is a life-threatening infection of the blood caused by a wide range of bacterial and viral pathogens. Unfortunately most tests today still take days to detect and identify the pathogens and their underlying antimicrobial profiles. Working together with a leading biotechnology company, founded in Toronto, we plan to modify our recently designed algorithms to capture very low levels of circulating pathogens in the blood in a few hours, potentially saving thousands of lives.