As whales recover from the past centuries of whaling and as global trade compels shipping traffic to increase, we expect negative whale-ship interactions such as fatal strikes and noise disturbance to become an increasingly serious issue. To develop cost-effective and broadly applicable methods of assessing the risks of ships to whale feeding grounds, I propose […]

Assessing dangerous avalanche conditions requires a reliable stream of weather and snowpack data, which can be difficult and expensive to collect in many remote areas of Canada. Snowpack conditions can be simulated in these areas by coupling weather forecast models with physical snowpack models, however, this method has had limited adoption by avalanche forecasters. The […]

Assessing dangerous avalanche conditions requires a reliable stream of weather and snowpack data, which can be difficult and expensive to collect in many remote areas of Canada. Snowpack conditions can be simulated in these areas by coupling weather forecast models with physical snowpack models, however, this method has had limited adoption by avalanche forecasters. The […]

Spotted Wing Drosophila is an aggressive invasive pest that is high research and management priority for the BC and Canadian berry and small fruit industry. Spotted Wing Drosophila can substantially reduce crop yields despite heavy uses of chemical insecticides, which in some cases can be harmful to the environment and human health. Botanical extracts from […]

NORAM Engineering and Constructors have a technology called salt splitting. This technology is used to produce caustic soda and sulfuric acid. However, the presence of fluoride in this technology can cause the breakdown of the coating on the titanium anode, which can cause premature anode failure. As replacing these titanium anodes can incur significant costs, […]

This project is a collaboration between Triptech Engineering and Software Services LTD and Laboratory for Alternative Energy Conversion (LAEC) at SFU to develop data analytics solutions for PEM fuel cell industry. The fuel cell industry is suffering from component/system failure and coping with analysis of tremendous amounts of data. Knowledge extraction from this complex data […]

Many small insects and creatures utilize reversible adhesion to vertically scale up walls and surfaces. The adhesion mechanisms are reliant on the tip geometry of highly dense fibrillar arrays as opposed to surface chemistry. The arrays can switch between high strength and completely non-adhering states. I will be investigating the role of array aspect ratio […]

Diabetes mellitus, a common metabolic disorder, exhibits neuropathic complications that can eventually lead to disabling pain (Todorovic 2015). This is attributed to hyperglycemia/high glucose resulting in neuronal hyperexcitability (Todorovic 2015). Importantly, diabetes-evoked neuronal hyperexcitability and neurotoxicity can be caused by alterations in voltage-gated sodium channel (VGSC) expression (Hong, Morrow et al. 2004), resulting in changes […]

Diabetes mellitus, a common metabolic disorder, exhibits neuropathic complications that can eventually lead to disabling pain (Todorovic 2015). This is attributed to hyperglycemia/high glucose resulting in neuronal hyperexcitability (Todorovic 2015). Importantly, diabetes-evoked neuronal hyperexcitability and neurotoxicity can be caused by alterations in voltage-gated sodium channel (VGSC) expression (Hong, Morrow et al. 2004), resulting in changes […]

Wearable body sensors are groundbreaking in that they allow for continuous and unobtrusive physiological measurements. The promise is that someday soon, smartphones will monitor our bodily state and thus prevent all kinds of wellbeing implications: acute physiological issues like stroke or heart attack; less acute but still serious illness, such as chronic illnesses caused by […]

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a complication of diabetes which is the most common cause of vision loss among people with diabetes. DR damages and alters the structure of the capillary network (microvasculature) in the retina, a light-sensitive tissue that lines the back of the eye and is responsible for vision. Clinicians can analyze the microvasculature […]