Investigating spatial and temporal nutrient trends in the St. Lawrence River

Increasing our knowledge of Canada’s lakes and rivers is essential to maintain healthy aquatic ecosystems and to ensure human enjoyment of these waterbodies. This project will work with the local Indigenous community, Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, to better understand trends in nutrient levels along the Upper St. Lawrence River. Human activities, including agriculture, industry, and […]

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Robust and reliable mid-infrared pulsed fiber laser as a laser scalpel

Mid-infrared pulsed lasers emitting around a wavelength of 2.94 µm have a great potential for biomedical applications such as a laser scalpel their laser radiation can interact strongly with water in biological tissues. The most popular laser scalpel technology is a solid-state laser that provides pulses that can cut through biological tissues but also cause […]

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Characterization of PATL2’s role in Human Fertility for the Development of Non-hormonal Contraceptives

Norethindrone, the first oral contraceptive, is noted as one of the most pivotal molecules to be introduced into society. When introduced in 1960, norethindrone caused a societal paradigm shift by allowing for family planning and providing women with more agency over their reproductive system. Unsurprisingly, the women’s liberation movement, rise of feminism, and the increased […]

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Design and synthesis of well-defined sphingomyelins by a modular, divergent strategy

In 2021, over 2.2 billion doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines were produced to combat a truly devastating pandemic. Such medications represent the fastest vaccines ever to be developed, with some of the highest efficiencies reported. The above vaccines contain messenger RNA (“mRNA”) trapped inside lipid nanoparticles (“LNPs”), which are globules composed of […]

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Examining the impact of invasive dreissenid mussels on the health of the St. Lawrence River

When introduced to a region, non-native invasive species often have negative consequences for native plants, animals, and humans. When introduced to North America, the invasive zebra and quagga mussels altered the structure and function of native aquatic ecosystems. This caused ecological and economic damage by reducing biodiversity and human uses of local surface waters, respectively. […]

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Developing cellulose-based water-resistant coating for packaging applications

This project aims to develop lignocellulosic nanomaterials from Canada’s rich forest fibers for packaging applications. With the banning of single use plastic, more and more paper-based packaging products are developed. However, most of the paper-based packaging products do not have satisfied water-resistant performance. To enhance such performance, lamination using plastic or coating with toxic coating […]

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Developing a safe, low-cost anode free solid-state battery with improved energy density, and longer cycle life

Solid-state lithium metal batteries (SSLBs) are considered the “holy grail” of battery chemistry because of their high capacity and energy density and will remain the dominating technology for the foreseeable future. However, lithium-metal anodes may trigger dendrites growth at high current, which reduces their cycle life, and safety, making SSLBs more challenging to commercialize. Also, […]

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Predicting stellar flares using hidden Markov models

Certain classes of stars in the universe emit flares – dramatic bursts of energy that appear across the electromagnetic spectrum. Flare activity for these stars is highly variable across time, and predicting this behaviour is an interesting problem both from an astronomical and from a statistical viewpoint. Within the field of astrostatistics, “changepoint detection” models […]

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Development of analysis methods for the risk assessment of insect-based protein sources

The increasing reliance on protein sources alternatives to meat-based products includes insects, which have not been extensively monitored or analyzed so far. Yet, there is evidence that insect may contain potentially toxic elements (PTEs), such as arsenic, mercury, cadmium and lead. The development of reliable analysis methods is required to monitor the levels of PTEs, […]

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Sensing with Plasmonic Micro/Nanocapsules

In the context of an aging population and a global environmental pollution problem, it is becoming more and more important to develop novel innovative kinds of sensors, able to detect early health and environmental changes that could potentially affect people’s health. Within this Globalink Research project, we intent to develop plasmonic based sensors, small, cheap […]

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