The proposed project addresses the pressing challenges indigenous communities face in the department of Vaupés, Colombia. These challenges include cultural loss, pollution, mental health issues, and ongoing food insecurity despite the region’s extensive biodiversity. Through a participatory approach, the project seeks to engage indigenous communities in understanding the impact of environmental changes, from climate change […]

This proposed project will investigate the failure modes of platinum-rare earth element alloy catalysts for hydrogen fuel cells. These alloys are the current state-of-the-art catalysts in terms of durability for proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs), yet due to their recent discovery are lacking important studies to understand their degradation under working conditions. These types […]

Photonic technologies offer promising prospects for quantum information processing and simulations. Quantum states are usually encoded in photonic degrees of freedom like polarization and spatial modes, enabling the mimicking of target evolutions via a number of devices linearly growing with their temporal extension. This constraint intrinsically makes them lossy and inadequate for extreme quantum dynamics, […]

In this project, we aim to numerically analyze the following conjecture “optimal flows for energy transfer correspond to reconnection of anti-parallel vortex tubes”. We will be tackling this optimization problem using a novel method employed by Professor Protas’ research group over the past few years. This project comes as a way to maintain a strong […]

Our proposed project will examine how invasive species spread. We plan to address this question by studying an invasive fish species, the round goby, and compare individuals at the invasion front with individuals in the established areas of the range on two continents (Europe and North America). Our aim is to determine if there is […]

Major depression (MDD) is a chronic psychiatric disorder. The aim of this project is to examine the link between specific molecular alterations and neuropathology in the brain in patients with MDD. We will use post-mortem brains that were collected by the Sao Paulo autopsy service. More specifically, oxidative modifications to proteins and lipids, and levels […]

This project “Multimodal RAG Explainability (MRAGE)” aims to develop an interactive tool for explaining Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) augmented with retrieval capabilities. LMMs represent a significant advancement in AI, capable of understanding and generating content across multiple modalities like text and images. By employing the retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) methodology, this project queries external knowledge sources […]

It is shown that the rapid administration of treatment in acute stroke patients improves clinical outcomes. In particular, the time it takes to administer treatment once the patient has arrived at the Emergency Department with stroke symptoms is called Door to Needle Time (DTN). The median DTN time at the Grand River Hospital (GRH) currently […]

This project aims to develop a method for delivering reprogramming transcription factor genes to astrocytes in the central nervous system using Intelligent Phagemid-Assembled Gene Expression (iPhAGE) technology. By constructing specific gene blocks and fusion helper plasmids, synthesizing iPhAGE DNA, and purifying iPhAGE preparations, the project seeks to enhance transfection efficiency and assess immune responses and […]

The project “Developing Data Strategies to Enable Healthcare Machine Learning” aims to develop effective strategies to collect, curate, and maintain data in healthcare. A data strategy which enables Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML) models plays a pivotal role in building response healthcare solutions. The project is focused on understanding the fairness aspects of care quality […]

This project aims to develop a system that improves how robots with restricted operating ranges plan their indoor paths for cleaning or surveying. By dividing indoor spaces into manageable areas, the system will enable robots to complete their jobs more efficiently, optimally covering all necessary ground. This project involves both algorithm development and its implementation […]