Millions of Canadians experience hearing loss that impairs functioning and participation in everyday life, however, only a fraction of these individuals address this loss by adopting and using hearing aids. To address this gap, hearing aid research has traditionally focused on the biology of the ear to improve technical aspects of hearing aids as well as on individual factors related to hearing aid adoption (e.g., degree of hearing aid impairment).

This project seeks to trial the use of protein inputs from freshwater and marine algae and aquatic plants for use either individually or in various combinations in the formulation of an alternative protein fish product. The specific target species and cut for this product is an Atlantic salmon fillet. Therefore, algal biomass that contains the salmon-coloured pigment astaxanthin or astaxanthin extract on its own may be also trialed as ingredients. Overall, the physical, chemical and gelling properties of the different input materials will be characterized.

DeRose Meditation delivers meditation classes to thousands of users worldwide with the goal of improving personal wellbeing, work performance, and overall life for its clients. Through thematic analysis of qualitative interviews with developers of DeRose Meditation, meditation class leaders, and long-time program users, this project will articulate a “Theory of Change” model specific to DeRose Meditation, which will define fundamental, active components of the program, how these components are invoked to generate change, and key outcomes associated with participants in the program.

Currently, most electrodes used for optoelectronic application are coated with metal oxides as a conductive substrate, but are expensive to produce. There have been many studies on finding a cheaper and flexible alternatives such as graphene. Asphaltenes are polyaromatic hydrocarbons defines by their solubility class that has a similar structure to graphene. Asphaltenes are found in crude oil, tar sands and coal, but create several problems in the oil industry and are considered a waste due to its tendency to aggregate.

We are proposing to use a rapid, safe and green electroplating process to adhere antimicrobial phosphonate quaternary ammonium materials onto receptive metal surfaces. Pathogenic infections are responsible for approximately 60% of all hospital acquired infections. In order to help stop the spread, high contact surfaces such as bed rails in hospitals, door knobs etc. require surface treatments that provide both corrosion and antimicrobial resistance. Alternatively, these materials may also be helpful in providing these properties to metal implants such as prosthetic hips.

In order to accelerate the transition of our electricity system to renewable sources, it is important that buildings participate effectively as distributed generators. However, traditional integration methods for solar energy often add complexity to our electricity system. With the rapidly declining costs of battery systems, building-level microgrids are becoming a viable alternative allowing buildings to generate and use renewable energy locally rather than exporting to the grid, enhancing the resilience of energy supply and improving demand profiles.

You may have heard of monitoring heart rate in a smartphone using lasers for measurement. Now think of having the wristband or some other wearable gadget and your health status is monitored in your smartphone or your doctors' cloud. Glucose is one of these parameters that can be measured by this wearable device but the challenge is measuring the concentration of glucose in sweat which is almost 1000 times lower than the glucose in the blood. Our group could measure these ultra-low levels of glucose in synthetized sweat.

Breast cancer is the fourth most frequent cancer in Canada, and affects one in X women during their lifetimes. A variety of different treatments have been tried, some of which damage cellular DNA of the quickly growing cancer cells. High-level DNA damage causes cells to die, and can shrink the tumour and arrest cancer growth. The Sabatinos lab studies how cells deal with DNA damage caused by drugs, and how this impacts their ability to grow and divide. A long-time drug used in cancer chemotherapy is a drug called cis-platinum. Our collaborator, Dr. R.

Grapes are an important Canadian crop. Canadian winemaking industries rely on grape growers. However, grape crops are threatened by a mould that causes downy mildew. This disease spreads onto grape leaves and if left untreated can kill much of the plant. The grape fruit becomes covered in a dense carpet of mould tissue, and the crop is spoiled and lost. Not just a Canadian problem, downy mildew has become an agricultural concern for vineyards world-wide. Global warming is expected to make the incidence and impact of downy mildew worse.

Additive manufacturing, also called 3D printing, of composites can manufacture final parts with high strength and stiffness. In this project, carbon fiber composites with a high temperature polymer are used for 3D printing. A custom 3D printing head installed on a robotic arm is used for manufacturing. Specimens are 3D printed to evaluate structural and thermal properties of final parts. Automated manufacturing of composites using robotic 3D printing is efficient for fabricating small-scale parts with low volume and can open new opportunities for composites.