In healthcare, communication and clear roles and responsibilities are critical in delivering care to patients. This is difficult to achieve in the best of times; during pandemics and mass casualty events, communication is the first thing to fail, leading to inefficiency, confusion, and ultimately harm to patients. This project aims to develop an automated system […]

COVID-19 results in an increased expression of certain cytokines (i.e. chemicals produced by the body in response to an infection) that may result in inflammation, leading to organ and tissue damage. Cannabidiol (CBD) and cannabigerol (CBG) have been shown to have anti-inflammatory activity. For example, CBD has been shown to reduce the expression of cytokines […]

The world is facing a global pandemic as COVID-19 disrupts and transforms the lives of those everywhere. It comes as no surprise that the closure of non-essential services to slow the spread of COVID-19 has devastated the economy and severely impacted the well-being of many. As the reality of COVID-19 begins to set, questions of […]

Working closely with me, the two interns will have an opportunity to engage with a timely question engendered by the global pandemic: What is changing in our approach to the public realm, and how can we embrace these changes as positive forces in urban design. We will be working quickly on a time-sensitive challenge, in […]

With the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of lives have been lost and society has dramatically changed. However, as these restrictions are eased, rapid and accurate testing is the only way to keep this virus under control. Serapis Labs is working on an at-home test for COVID-19 to screen for current infection. The goal […]

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented global effect. While social distancing and proper PPE can minimize the spread of the virus, at risk populations have remained vulnerable. With additional waves of infection are likely to occur, there is an urgent need for an innovative protective solution. In the current project, we will repurpose a […]

This Mitacs-NSERC COVID-19 joint initiative is to investigate the mechanism of COVID-19 inducing hyperinflammation and cytokine storm. COVID-19 infected cells cause injury that triggers immune cells to release inflammatory cytokines. The partnership with Encyt Technologies Inc. and PI will use established immune macrophage cell lines to identify the molecular mechanism of hyperinflammation induced by COVID-19 […]

In the project, we will use an advanced microscope instrument, called a focused ion beam, to capture 3-D datasets of a coronavirus analogue and SARS-CoV-2 infecting cells to understand its biomechanical relationship at the cellular level. The intern will work on sample preparation, imaging of infection and turning those images into a computerized model to […]

SARS-CoV-2 is a novel, highly infections virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to its rapid spread and high mortality rate, intense research efforts are focused on developing screening tests, antiviral therapies and vaccines. Further research is needed to understand how this virus interacts with host cells to infect them, replicate and release new virus […]

words) The Canadian Red Cross (CRC) has been at the forefront of providing support to the COVID-19 response in Canada. The Global Health Unit (GHU) at CRC is providing health-related technical and operational support to CRC in its efforts to combat the impact of COVID-19 in Canada. To optimize the CRC operations, the GHU is […]

The novel SARS-Coronavirus-2 becomes activated and is infective after interacting with the human TMPRSS2 enzyme, as it primes the virus to enter and hijack lung cells for viral replication. By designing drugs using a strategy that has shown success in inhibiting enzymes structurally similar to TMPRSS2 and understanding the exact shape of this enzyme in […]

Danger scales use a combination of colours, words, and severity levels to efficiently communicate basic hazard information to a target audience. Avalanche warning services around the world use a colour-coded, five-level danger scale to communicate the severity of snow avalanche conditions to recreational backcountry users. While past research has primarily focused on helping forecasters produce […]