Projets novateurs réalisés

Bioprinting composite hydrogels to accelerate tissue regeneration in scarred vocal folds

The high frequency of vocal fold vibrations, especially in singers and voice professionals may aberrantly change the biomechanical properties of the vocal folds, leading to voice disorders. The slow rate of wound healing due to the limited cell migration is the main problem with current methods of vocal fold treatment. The goal of this project is to investigate the possibility of using bioprinting technology to study cell migration in injectable hydrogels in order to accelerate the wound healing process in human vocal folds. This proposed research project involves various fields of study, including engineering, acoustics, medicine, chemistry, biology, and physics. The multidisciplinarity nature of this project necessitates the expertise of researchers from other fields. More specifically, doing short-term research at a pioneer lab in bioprinting technology, which is equipped with high-resolution bioprinters, will remarkably help me to conduct several cell migration tests using bioprinted patterns. With this aim, Prof. Yu Shrike Zhang, who is the principal investigator of the Laboratory of Engineered Living Systems at Harvard Medical School, accepted to host me for this research project. The outcome of this work will be helpful for my PhD thesis and the results will be culminated in a conference paper.

Development of Carbon Nanotube based Impdance Sensor

The goal of this project is to design a Carbon Nanotube thin film-based sensor for the detection of heart failure biomarkers. The student will participate in the sensor fabrication group. He will learn Micro-fabrication related techniques and knowledge; such as Carbon Nanotube thin film synthesis using Chemical Vapor Deposition, Microfluidic channel fabrication and gold film deposition with e-beam evaporator. The student is expected to provide support in developing current design and optimizing the fabrication procedure.

Valuable Books: Fifteenth-Century Books of Hours as Evidence of Social, Sentimental, and Artistic Value

This project examines medieval commonplace prayer books, known as Books of Hours, and their uses in fifteenth-century England. Art historical scholarship on the topic has tended to focus on the most sumptuous examples of the genre and their material value in the use of costly materials such as gold leaf and rare pigments, or their aesthetic value in terms of technical virtuosity and innovative illuminations. Adding to this, I will examine more accessible, affordable examples made for prospective buyers in the proto-mass production market. I propose that the common types of texts and images that make up these books, as well as various owners’ marks such as annotations, doodles, additions of small paintings or tokens, and records of family births and deaths, are indications of different types of value: social value, as carriers of shared interests in religiosity and participation in the community; and sentimental value, as a site for collecting and accumulating family history and memories of the community.

Development of spinal associative stimulation using motor point stimulation

Studies have shown that delivering combination of two stimulation can improve muscle responses and related nerve function in spinal cord injury patients and able-bodied people. Typically, a painless magnetic stimulation through the scalp over the brain, and electrical stimulation to the knee over a peripheral nerve (a nerve that sends signals to muscles and receives sensory information to and from the brain) is used in this technique. However, the peripheral nerves we can stimulate are technically limited, which means that rehabilitation techniques utilizing this method are limited. We aim to develop a new method using muscle and lumbar stimulation instead of peripheral nerve and brain stimulation. The purpose of the present study is to examine if paring muscle and lumbar stimulation can alter the neural and motor function in able-bodied people. This study will help the development of effective rehabilitation techniques for spinal cord injury in the future.

PHA (bioplastics) production from organic waste

I will be joining the ongoing project led by TU Delft in partnership with Paques BV and Orgaworld to develop a sustainable technology for the production of bioplastic in the form of polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) from organic waste at the Lelystad Innovation Centre (L.I.C.) located next to the dry anaerobic digestion facility (Biocel) in Lelystad. The goal of the project is to demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of PHA production from organic waste using microbial enrichment cultures. This involves the continuous improvement of the individual sub-processes such as PHAs microbes selection and PHA accumulation capacity as well as the overall process in terms of maximizing process stability and productivity while minimizing/eliminating unwanted side processes.

Bidirectional Real-time Control of An Upper-limb Prosthetic Hand

The human hand is a sensation-rich body part, and the loss of hand significantly influences the quality of life. Prosthetics are designed as artificial limbs to replace or substitute the missing part. For providing a natural and intuitive perception of grasp or pressure, a bidirectional prosthetic hand should be able to detect action intentions and sending feedback to the central nervous system at the same time.

To achieve this real-time control, our project will investigate in decoding the movement of fingers from Electromyograph (EMG) signals. By tracking the neuromuscular signals corresponding to various hand movements, a generic muscular-skeletal model could be developed by analyzing, visualizing and decoding from EEG and EMG. Also, different sensory feedback experiments of hand encoding will be conducted.

This project aims to analyze the biological signals of hand movements, and generate a neural interface for prosthetic hands. The main outcomes of this project will be to improve the efficiency and quality of hand prosthetics and support future near-natural hand replacement.

Liquid Biopsy to Predict Progression and Metastasis in Uveal Melanoma: Potential Malignant Transformation from Nevus

Uveal melanoma (UM) is the most common primary ocular tumor in adults. UM is treated by removing the eye (enucleation) or by local radiation therapy. Despite effective treatments for the ocular tumors, about 50% of patients develop metastasis, which are frequently lethal. Genetic profiling is used to study the molecular changes that occur and is done using tumor tissue from a biopsy.
Intraocular biopsies, however, pose risk to the eye structure and vision, and provide only one assessment of the tumor, but we know that the characteristics of tumors are constantly evolving. Therefore, a new method is needed to monitor UM without enucleation or biopsy.
Liquid biopsy has emerged as a non-invasive alternative to surgical biopsies that enables us to study a tumor through a simple blood sample. The aim of this project is to monitor UM disease course over time using liquid biopsy in a non-invasive manner.

Re-Establishing Affinity: Diaspora Engagement Policies in Central and Eastern Europe

The emigration of people across vast distances has undoubtedly fractured the direct relationship between the state and its populations. Yet, some countries have effectively adopted policies that aim to, not only re-establish a kinship foundation with their communities abroad, but to simultaneously encourage contributions back to the kin-state. Relatively new policy research in the field of Diaspora Engagement Policies (DEPs), has suggested that DEPs can be used to strategically curb portions of economic and social loss incurred by emigration (vis-à-vis easier remittance transfers and flexible policies related to business investment, donations, and the reintegration of nationals).

Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries provide a vital source of analysis yet remain relatively understudied. Despite challenges associated with large-scale emigration cycles and generally low fertility rates, CEE states have successfully acquired sizeable amount of monies through DEP transfers at various institutional levels. Noting the importance of economic growth generated by these policies in CEE, I will examine the variables that contribute to the implementation and durability of these policies. More specifically, by meeting with policy members in a number of CEE countries, TBC

Operationalizing conservation value through multi-species evaluation and implementation on forestlands certified as sustainably managed in Canada

Being certified as sustainable through a third-party organization, such as the Sustainable Forestry Initiative and the Forest Stewardship Council, gives forest products companies and organization a way to demonstrate to consumers that their management practices are ecologically sound. To understand the value of certification programs, it is important to be able to quantify the conservation benefits of certified forest lands in terms of important conservation outcomes. One way to do this is to measure the biodiversity value of certified forests, i.e. how sustainable forest management contributes to the maintenance of biodiversity. This research will provide a concrete way to measure the conservation impact of forest certification on biodiversity through the effect on regional bird community diversity. Bird communities are a reliable indicator of ecological conditions and overall biodiversity, and so provide an excellent species group for understanding how to manage forests sustainably. TO BE CONT’D

Insecure Cuteness: Performed Pamperedness (Sa Jiao) in Romantic Relationships – Experiences of Urban Chinese Youth

This research seeks to understand the motivations behind sa jiao behaviour, understood as performed pamperedness, among Chinese university students. Performed pamperedness is an act in which one party of a romantic relationship behaves in a child-like manner (pouting, throwing tantrums, engaging in ‘baby talk’) in hopes of attaining benefits from their partner (attention, concern, material items). This research uses a psychosocial methodology, combining Adult Attachment Theory with Social Capital Theory to examine the relationship between performed pamperedness and emotional insecurity. Attachment theory is a psychological model which seeks to explain dynamics in interpersonal relationships. Typically understood as beginning in childhood, based on the interaction of children with their caregivers, the attachments formed early in life carry on into adulthood. In romantic relationships attachment types should be able to explain certain behaviors within said relationships, including sa jiao behavior. The psychological factors alone are not enough to explain performed pamperedness. Myriad sociological factors exist which can explain this behavior. This research will focus on determining the social insecurity of the respondents. This will be done by ascertaining the amount of social capital, relative to their peers, a given student has. TBC

Making Stronger and Lighter Wallboard

The ultimate goal of this project is to produce stronger and lighter gypsum wallboards through more sustainable production procedure. The wallboard production plant is divided in three sections: upstream where the raw gypsum is received, midstream where the raw gypsum is processed to produce Calcium Sulfate Hemihydrate (stucco), and downstream where the final wallboard product is produced. The main focus of this internship will be on the downstream section. We will try to improve the wallboards through controlling their chemical composition and physical structure. Gypsum Lab at University of Alberta has been performing research on this topic in last three years and this internship will build up on out current knowledge. Both Continental Building Product Inc. and Gypsum Lab at University of Alberta will benefit from outcomes of this research.

BIM based automatic construction process monitoring

Image-based technology is effective for recording on-site data geospatially and chronologically. It has gained increasing attention in the construction field for progress monitoring, work space analysis and quality assurance. However, a notable downside of image processing is the light condition, particularly for noisy environments such as construction sites. Much research strives to reduce the level of errors in image-based monitoring methods but it still has remained a challenging technique. This project proposes an innovative approach based on thermal image analysis to overcome problems related to the image quality. Construction materials with various emissivity resulting in measurable temperature differences can be a crucial evidence to identify different material. In addition, the convolutional neural network (CNN) based semantic segmentation is used to semantically segment different components, such as column, beam, etc. Together with a camera-view image extracted from BIM model, a cross matching is applied to confirm the presence of different building elements with specific materials, which is the key step to estimate the construction process qualitatively.