The Climate Emergency Unit (CEU), in collaboration with the BC Climate Emergency Campaign, seeks to understand how politicians, media, and civil society organizations in British Columbia frame the connection between affordability and the climate crisis, aiming to shift public perception towards viewing climate spending as an investment in the future. By exploring successful framing strategies […]

Periods of extreme heat and firesmoke are becoming more frequent in British Columbia with devastating consequences. People living at the intersections of poverty, medical vulnerability and low quality housing are often disproportionately impacted by these events. Our research seeks to answer the following questions: 1) How do communities currently navigate these exposures, 2) How can […]

Fuel cells are versatile, low-emission alternative energy sources, but their optimization and failure analyses are complex due to their black-box nature. For fuel cells to perform at peak proficiency, each component requires a different level of hydration, yet these parameters are currently unattainable with conventional diagnostic techniques. In consultation with Greenlight Innovation, this project focuses […]

Forestry directly modifies wildlife habitat, but how can informed, science-based management decisions be made without an adequate understanding of how different species will be affected? In the Central Coast of British Columbia, decades of industrial forestry have converted many stands of old-growth forest to second growth, creating networks of roads and cut blocks of varied […]

Tissue engineering involves extracting cells from patients, growing them in a laboratory setting, and subsequently employing them for disease treatment . However, cell expansion encounters various obstacles, such as significant expenses and labor requirements, resulting in increased treatment costs. Moreover, the industry struggles with challenges such as skilled personnel shortages and difficulties in scaling up […]

Travelling on ice is central to Inuit well-being, identity and culture. Rough sea ice can pose as a hazard, or impediment to travel. Currently, regular, quality, high-resolution information is difficult to obtain from satellite instruments, but synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has shown potential in all these aspects. In this project, the intern will analyse the […]

The East Hastings corridor, from Hamilton to Heatley, lacks a clear understanding of the unmet needs of its primarily low-income and equity-denied residents and community-serving organizations. As health services expand in the area, identifying potential small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to fill commercial unit gaps becomes crucial, especially concerning opportunities for work, shopping, and socializing. […]

This project focuses on enhancing wildfire resilience in the southern Okanagan Highlands of British Columbia to reduce the risk and severity of wildfires. By combining fire spread and carbon budget models, we will evaluate different forest management strategies to lower fuel loads and greenhouse gas emissions. Partnering with Forsite Consultants Ltd. will help us apply […]

The partner sells smart swim goggles. The goggles measure several variables such as stroke, swim speed, and heart rate, and project the information into the goggle lens to provide real-time feedback to the swimmer. The challenge the partner faces is to scientifically validate the instrumentation and application of the goggles to assisting swimmers in optimizing […]

Prostate cancer is the most prevalent malignancy among Canadian men. While treatments exist, many tumors are resistant, highlighting the urgent need to develop more effective therapies. This project aims to develop new drugs for prostate cancer by inhibiting the Lin28 protein, which increases cancer cells’ growth and resistance to treatments. This will be achieved by […]

The health care system in both developing and developed countries are strained by the need for expensive diagnostic instruments and techniques, as well as a lack of medically trained personnel. An inexpensive, easy-to-use technique is proposed to be studied for use in medical and/or point-of-care diagnositics by performing a test on a piece of plastic […]

We perform computations of quantities relevant for density functional theory including uniform gases in a variety of situations with entanglement renormalization methods. The end-goal is to determine where the limits of existing classical methods are for obtaining quantities relevant for density functional theory. In this case, we solve for energies for the uniform gas in […]