This research project to enhance evacuation planning and resilience hub design in Edmonton will be completed through a partnership between the University of Alberta, Alberta Ecotrust Foundation, the City of Edmonton, and Mitacs. The graduate student interns will complete and guide research tasks related to data collection (e.g., survey and focus groups), data analysis, and research dissemination.

The Operational Excellence (OpEx) team at Spartan Controls is actively involved in several initiatives for developing advanced process control (APC) solutions to the oil sands industry. The OpEx team collaborates with Professor Biao Huang’s research group through the NSERC Industrial Research Chair (IRC) in the Control of Oil Sands Processes program for solutions that require extensive research and development. This proposed project will complement the on-going joint research efforts with the development of new data analysis techniques to address the APC problems.

Basement walls are traditionally built with reinforced concrete in Canada. However, concrete may not perform adequately in the long term and concrete has a huge carbon footprint – more than 8% of global man-made CO2 emission comes from the cement industry. The research project is aimed at timber panel walls, a sustainable material, to replace traditional concrete in the basement construction. The research will primarily be carried out on an existing large-scale experimental timber basement wall on the university campus.

The rapid growth in population and environmental concerns, demands for efficient energy production, precision agriculture, and effective system monitoring. Soil, air, and water ecosystems are the most critical natural resources that if not properly maintained, will have a direct impact on agriculture and human lives. Efficient energy production and smart agriculture are essential to fulfill the increasing human needs and to protect the surrounding environment by using a more advanced type of sensor technology.

Pressurized metered-dose inhalers (pMDIs) are widely used to deliver drugs to the lungs for treatment of respiratory diseases. However, targeting delivery of inhaled drugs to the lungs is not straightforward. The airways of the mouth and throat present a barrier through which inhaled particles must penetrate in order to reach their target sites in the lungs.

The business partner is interested in expanding its understanding of prepayment. Specifically the goal is to predict prepayment risk for mortgages as a function of mortgagors’ characteristics (including data from previous interactions with the bank), and the local economy. In recent years, with the improvement in efficient computing and data storage, the relying on a wide range of mortgagors’ characteristics to predict prepayment risk has become more prevalent in the industry.

This project will allow the Postdoctoral Fellow to undertake important research, by accessing highly confidential Credit Bureau data in the possession of the Bank of Canada. The Postdoctoral Fellow will examine various issues which have important academic as well as policy implications. For example, the Postdoctoral Fellow will examine whether the characteristics of the customers of a specific bank branch (e.g. aggregate profitability or risk) impact the decision of a bank to close that branch.

This project will be used to assist the mining industry in predicting the best possible practices for designing and operating mines. By developing an understand of how comminution tests represent the machinery we can predict what is required to breakdown the raw rocks from the ground into valuable products we can make mining both more economical and more environmentally sustainable.

Steel pipelines as key Canadian infrastructure are often exposed to various geological and environmental conditions that cause defects such as cracks, dents, and gouges in the pipe wall, which can lead to pipe fracture in pipelines, compromising the entire pipeline's functionality and resulting in significant economic losses, environmental issues or even fatalities. There are several methods to predict the fracture capacity, including experimental testing, analytical approaches, and advanced numerical methods.

The Hamlet of Pangnirtung is exploring ways to improve the socio-economic development within the community. In preparation, and with the help of two Mitacs interns, the community would like to research various economic development models, the legal and social requirements for business development, existing local businesses, and explore other northern community socio-economic models, both in northern Canada and internationally.