The intern will analyze blood samples of patients with high-risk prostate cancer. The cancer cells will be isolated from the blood sample and the genetic material will be stained and then imaged by a high-intensity-high-focus 3D microscope. Next, the telomeres (ends of genes) will be studied and compared. The point is to see the progression of cancer cells in the blood at the time of diagnosis and then also after treatment has been given. The results will be useful in predicting possible screening methods that are much more economical and less invasive.

Structured lipids, specifically diacylglyceride (DAG) oils, have potential to replace trans fats and oils high in saturated fats such as palm and thus provide healthier oils with improved functionalities and sustainability. However, they are produced using costly and environmentally unfriendly “enzyme in solvent” systems, and have shortcomings when utilized in certain food applications. DAG oils are clinically claimed to help reduce fat accumulation and can have a major impact on obesity, which is currently identified as a global health risk by the United Nations World Health Organization.

Infectious diseases ranging from avian influenza to Ebola virus infection are among the most serious health emergencies in Canada and globally. Current diagnosis methods such as cell culture, ELISA and PCR suffer from inaccuracy, high-cost and lengthy procedures. Therefore, there has been a growing trend to develop new point-of-care diagnostic tools and microfluidic devices are considered as an important enabling technology owing to its advantages in miniaturization, precise fluidic control, low-cost and high-throughput.

The purpose of the project is to generate soybean plants able to tolerate whole plant submergence and waterlogging (soil submergence). This will be achieved by inducing Pgb, a gene normally present in soybean and known to confer tolerance to excessive humidity, through genetic manipulations. Correlative studies between Pgb expression and performance under excessive water conditions will also be conducted in commercial varieties of soybean. Similar studies will be conducted to assess the effect of altered Pgb level to drought stress.

In northern countries, ice storms can cause major power disruptions such as the one that occurred in the Toronto area on December 2013 that left more than 300,000 customers with no electricity immediately after the storm. Prediction of ice formation on power cables can help on taking actions for removing the ice before a major problem occurs. Currently Manitoba Hydro HVDC Research Centre has a vision based ice detection system that uses digital images taken from the overhead line conductors.

The proposed internships will be aimed at developing advanced computer (software) and hardware platforms for simulation of modern power-electronic converter systems used in emerging electric power transmission systems. In particular, modular multi-level converter (MMC) simulations will be targeted. These converters are considered the primary candidates for dc systems used to integrate renewable energy sources into the existing grid. These two internships will develop functional models that can be readily used for the analysis and design of systems involving modular multi-level converters.

Two Hat Security is a company that develops next generation moderation tools for social networking apps. Since images are of the most important data shared by social networking apps, an important problem for the company is to identify images that are unsafe or inappropriate. In particular, images containing certain objects (e.g. knife, gun, bikini, etc.) are considered unsafe. It is obviously not practical to manually sift through all the images to find the unsafe ones.