Over 90% new drugs cannot be used in market or perform inefficiently because of their poor water-solubility. Delivery of non-water soluble medicine by using biodegradable carriers can solve the problem. This research work aims to develop N-trimethyl chitosan chloride (TMC)-based nanoparticles used as a drug carrier for delivering non-water soluble medicine to enhance the therapeutic efficiency. Two interns will be involved in this project. Collaborating with Ovensa Inc., we will produce TMC-based nanoparticles with suitable particle size and surface properties.

Heritage Conservation Districts (HCDs) in London Ontario are a success story of architectural heritage preservation. There has been a rapid expansion of designated districts in the city, with the first appearing in 1992 and six more in the years since, with seven more currently on the books. This research will consider residents who relocated outside of the City’s four earliest HCDs post designation, and the reasons for their movement. An animated map will be created, displaying the data in both space and time.

Stents are tubes placed between the kidney and the bladder which prevent blockages which might otherwise damage the kidney. Introducing foreign material into this system allows a platform for bacteria to exist and which will potentially cause infections. These are very common. We propose modifying the surfaces of the materials used in stents to make them “non-stick” to prevent bacteria attaching and then causing infections. We can test this in the laboratory and wish to test different types of material under different conditions which mimic the clinical environment.

This project aims to develop a fast-response, portable and mobile-readable point of care test (POCT) device. Three-dimensional (3D) printing technology is proposed to fabricate the configuration that features components and elements functioning to accommodate and integrate all principle stages of analysis, including sample pre-treatment, fluidic manipulation and signal detection.

Children born with an absent or ineffective right or left ventricle (single ventricle) have a low life expectancy and will undergo at least three surgical procedures ultimately leading to the Fontan Procedure (FP), which allows blood to travel directly to the lungs (bypassing the heart) to become oxygenated. Adolescent FP-patients indicate poor cardiovascular health which in turn could challenge brain blood flow, thereby affecting cognitive capacity and increasing risk of stroke. FP is a relatively new procedure and long-term effects on brain health are unknown.

Micro-tunneling technique is a feasible means to construct pipelines and tunnels in different types of ground including Queenston shale. However, this shale exhibits time-dependent deformation behavior, generally known as the rock swelling, which produces additional stresses on underground structures. These stresses may exceed the allowable tensile or compressive strength of concrete of the pipeline or the tunnel liner, which in-turn may result in cracks in these structures.

The objective of the proposed internship is to conduct a needs assessment to identify the challenges of teaching physical education in elementary school, and determine supports/resources to improve teachers? confidence to instruct physical education. As the GoodLife Kids Foundation supports national, provincial, and local programs that provide ongoing physical activity opportunities for kids, findings from this project will be used to inform future program planning and evaluation of prior initiatives.

Online cognitive testing provides unprecedented opportunities for exploring human brain function among the general population. Cambridge Brain Sciences Inc has created an online cognitive testing platform that has attracted more than 1.5M users and has hosted more than 300 studies of cognition. I plan to leverage their unique dataset to explore the interrelationship between demographic and lifestyle factors, and cognitive performance on a massive scale.

Nearly 2 % of school-aged children face difficulty in understanding speech in the presence of background noise. These children are often referred to audiology clinics for a central auditory processing (CAP) assessment. The purpose of the referral is to rule out an auditory processing disorder (APD). The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association recommends to include electrophysiological measures to assess the neural integrity in children sAPD. However, less than 15 % of audiologist include the electrophysiological measure in their battery of assessment.

Hearing aids are now fully digital, advanced signal processors that monitor the type of sound coming in to the hearing aid. The sound type is automatically classified into one of several types, such as speech in a quiet place, versus telephone listening, versus in a noisy car. These sound types may require different signal processing from the hearing aid. Accordingly, the hearing aid an automatically switch into different signal processing when the sound type changes. Current methods for sound type classification do not monitor the user’s location.