Up to half of patients with COVID-19 requiring mechanical ventilation in an intensive care unit (ICU) will develop ICU-Acquired Weakness (ICUAW). Neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) holds promise to both prevent and treat ICUAW. NMES applies electrical impulses to muscles through electrodes placed on the skin to induce muscle contractions, and is highly effective in maintaining […]

Mothers can influence the behaviour and physiology of their young even before hatch. In birds that occurs through the deposition of hormones and nutrients into the egg. Mother-hens can be housed in various systems that offer different challenges to the bird. Our project will investigate how housing a mother-hen can affect the resilience of their […]

COVID-19 is the largest pandemic of the 21st century, affecting over 6.6 million individuals and claiming over 391,000 lives worldwide as of June 4, 2020. It is caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV2), which uses a receptor to gain entry into the host and cause active infection. This project involves the expertise […]

This proposal seeks to identify the most promising lead candidate for a COVID-19 vaccine that could be rapidly and inexpensively scaled-up to meet Canada’s COVID-19 vaccine needs. In collaboration with a Canadian biotech company, Entos Pharmaceuticals, we will determine the safety and efficacy of several vaccine candidates to identify the most promising candidate to move […]

The project is a high-throughput method to detect and identify infectious disease such as COVID-19 based on advanced optical technologies developed by Manitoba based Adva Diagnostics Inc. The Adva technologies use the interaction of light with a patient sample to produce a spectral “fingerprint” in minutes without the use of reagents. The spectral “fingerprint” is […]

Social isolation is having a significant impact on the quality of life, physical activity, and sleep patterns of our population. While self-isolation and social distancing provide the most successful method for limiting the progression and spread of infectious diseases like COVID-19, we often overlook the impact of these rules on our population. This impact is […]

Over the last decade, multiple pandemic events have highlighted the vulnerability of the world to existing and emerging infectious threats. Currently, COVID19 has infected >4M people resulting in >300K deaths. Although there are candidate drugs in development, the projected term until an effective COVID therapy or vaccine is available is projected to between 1-2 years. […]

Grasslands cover approximately one third of the Earth’s surface but are among the most threatened and least protected habitats. Livestock grazing is one management strategy to restore degraded grassland ecosystems, but little is known about the effect of grazing on grassland reptiles and amphibians (herpetofauna). World-wide, herpetofauna are in decline and may be particularly susceptible […]

In the context of a pandemic, one of the main challenges is the difficulty of meeting the needs of the population while taking into account the shortage of resources. Thus, it is imperative to innovate and create strategies that are both dynamic and interactive, in an effort to better identify those individuals most at risk […]

Efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 have failed and we face an ongoing pandemic that has already infected millions of people world-wide. There are currently no drugs or vaccines that have been approved for the treatment of COVID-19, and existing blood tests for immunity suffer from inaccuracies. Moreover, since antibody or vaccine development can […]

Social distancing due to COVID-19 has meant that older adults have not been as able to see their doctors. Older adults have chronic conditions, such as diabetes, that can flare up and cause emergencies. So, finding older adults who are unwell is very important. Community support services, such as those providing meals-on-wheels, are available to […]

The detection of SARS-CoV-2, the causative of COVID-19, is challenging because the used techniques, such as nucleic amplification, cannot detect a whole virus. Instead, it amplifies nucleic acids that can be fragmented with no information about the presence of an infectious virus. We propose to use a technology based on the use of a physic […]