Innovative Projects Realized

Large-scale production and photostabilization of microparticle and nanoparticle-based delivery vehicles for plant immune aids

New approaches are required to secure our food supply in response to the growing world population, rapid diversification of pests, and accelerating weather-related impacts of climate change. Suncor has recently developed a new category of plant immune aids that activate a plant’s native immune system to induce a range of beneficial responses, including greater resistance to both pest-based and weather-based environmental stresses, while avoiding some of the downstream challenges associated with existing pesticide and fertilizer use. Through this collaboration with Dr. Todd Hoare’s lab at McMaster, these immune response triggering chemicals will be formulated into nano/microparticle-based controlled release vehicles that can provide longer-term protection for the plant (minimizing the dose required and the frequency of required re-application for the farmer) while overcoming some of the current challenges with promoting immune aid transport into plants and stabilizing the immune triggering chemicals in sunlight. TO BE CONT’D

Cultural Food Security: Building connections and capacities for new immigrants in Nova Scotia

Recent immigrants and refugees to Canada bring knowledge and skills that strengthen the economies, sociocultural aspects, and food systems of their new communities. However, challenges associated with being a newcomer, including access to culturally preferred foods compounds food insecurity – inadequate or insecure access to food due to financial constraints – experienced by new immigrants. Food insecurity data in Canada does not, however, capture cultural perspectives on food; newcomers’ access to food is not solely an issue of constrained financial access, but also an issue of the cultural appropriateness of available and accessible food. TO BE CONT’D

Defining the effects of pineal compounds in longevity and cystogenesis using a Drosophila melanogaster model

Promoting healthy ageing and prolonging life span has become a global priority to improve quality of life and reduce caring costs for age-related diabetes, cancer and heart disease. Pineal gland extract was shown to increase longevity in many organisms and protect against age-related degeneration. We will systematically analyze the life-extension properties of components of the pineal gland using the short-lived fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Despite their different appearance, humans and flies share deep similarities and, remarkably, similar molecular mechanisms of ageing, enabling efficient, rapid, whole animal experimentation which would be ethically and/or economically prohibitive in humans or vertebrate models. Using normal flies and our first-in-kind model of polycystic kidney disease characterized by decreased survival and hallmarks of ageing, we will probe for possible novel avenues for healthy life extension and PKD therapy, which will be further developed by the industrial partner.

Characterizing wetlands of different restoration ages in central Alberta using drone-based information (an extension to current Mitacs project: Advanced mapping techniques applied to wetland drone base information; IT08204)

Wetlands provide important ecosystem services to human communities, such as groundwater recharge, storing floodwater, and supplying fishery resources. In Alberta, wetlands cover ~21% of the province, forming one of the Canada’s largest wetlands reserves; however, many of these wetlands have been impacted or lost through human activities. Over the past 30 years, there have been efforts made by the government and partner agencies to restore wetlands, but little is known about the rate of recovery and the state of these restored wetlands, relative to a natural reference condition.. The aim of this research is thus to understand how well wetland ecosystem function recovers after restoration using new and emerging technologies, including Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). Results of this research will help the public and policy-makers better understand the effectiveness of wetland restoration methods in Alberta.TO BE CONT’D

Design Tool for the Thermal Performance of Stormwater Ponds

This project will develop a design tool that can be used by consultant engineers who design these ponds and by the regulatory agencies, including our partner organization (the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority) to assess if a stormwater management pond will meet the thermal objectives for the protection of sensitive aquatic life, including the permanent pool volume, drawdown time, length-to-width ratio, number of berms, optimal depth, and the bottom-draw outlet position for a given pond.

Embedding Project

The Embedding Project is a public-benefit research project that relies on strong social science research methods to bring together thoughtful sustainability intrapreneurs from across industries and around the world, and harnesses their collective knowledge to develop rigorous and practical guidance that benefits everyone. This internship will offer an MBA student the opportunity to gain experience in both practice and research, while learning from leaders in the field. The Intern will spend approximately 75% of their time implementing employment engagement initiatives at Quadreal, a global real estate management company, and 25% of their time documenting and translating their learned experiences in the form of a tool or resource that can then be made publically available to sustainability practitioners more generally.

A Novel 3D Sensor based Gesture Controlling System for Video Games

This project will develop a novel sensor based gesture controlling system aiming at significantly improving

game player’s satisfaction via realistic playing engagement/experience. With such interface technology, the

player can control the game directly via his/her natural gestures and body movements which are translated into

game interface parameters in real time. The objectives of this project include the followings. 1) Help the partner

convert an existing proof-of-concept sensor-based Dart game (developed in a previous MITACS project) into a

full featured prototype which includes enhancing the system’s performance, in particular with respect to

robustness and accuracy; and conducting a user validation. 2) Evaluate and compare various recently released

hardware sensor systems. 3) Develop advanced predication functions for full body gesture recognition and

tracking. 4) Adopt machine learning technology for model construction. 5) Apply the above results to build new

gesture controlling modules for other games. This MITACS project will bring substantial R&D results to the

partners, and as well…

Remote Indigenous renewable energy projects: Establishing partnerships and fair power purchase agreements

Nearly all remote Indigenous communities in Canada rely on diesel power plants for electricity. In a few cases, renewable energy projects have already offset diesel power but developing such projects in northern Canada is difficult. Not only do remoteness and harsh winter conditions make development expensive but various policies regarding the cost of electricity create complex economic barriers. Of primary concern is reaching fair power purchase agreements between Indigenous communities and publicly owned utilities. This research is thus intended to illuminate the conditions under which productive partnerships might be established so that Indigenous communities might continue to develop and introduce more renewable energy projects.

CyTOF-based characterization and isolation of MDSC subsets

Myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC) are an unusual type of blood cell that is able to potently turn off immune responses. These cells are not normally present in healthy individuals, when a tumour is present, MDSC can block clearance of the tumour by the body’s immune defenses. A better understanding of how MDSC shut down tumour clearance would greatly improve the success of cancer treatments. Unfortunately, MDSC are difficult for scientists to study because there is currently no effective method to isolate them in pure form. The goal of this project is to design highly effective ways of isolating these cells so that they can be studied in the laboratory. The long-term goal is to understand how to turn these cells “off” in tumours so that a patient will be more able to fight their cancer.TO BE CONT’D

Investigating Renewable Hydrogen Pathways for Low-Carbon Synthetic Fuels: Advanced Solar-to-Hydrogen Platforms

Pathways for low-carbon synthetic fuels are reliant upon large-scale, low-cost, low-carbon and renewable hydrogen supply, which are presently not delivered by existing supply chains. The Clean Energy Research Centre (CERC) at UBC proposes a new research program that will directly address this problem. A new Post-doctoral fellowship (PDF) position will be added to the CERC team, directly responsible for researching and developing new and emerging technology pathways for low-cost, renewable hydrogen production.
The PDF will perform techno-economic analysis of viable near-term renewable H2 pathways, which will inform industry on impacts of technology status, barriers, economic impacts and required technology development for production scale-up and commercialization. In addition, the PDF will perform research, analysis and development of scalable device architectures for solar H2 production, culminating in the design, build and test of a laboratory unit-cell prototype to assess feasibility for large-scale, low-cost solar H2 production.

Investigation of Pet Owner Diets and Feeding Practices for Dogs and Cats

The role of companion animals has evolved over the years of their domestication from that of purely utilitarian hunting or working partnerships to a relationship now more closely resembling that of a family member. Unsurprisingly, trends in companion animal nutrition have begun to closely shadow trends in human nutrition, reflecting the desire of pet owners to feed their companions diets which they consider healthy and beneficial for their pets’ wellbeing. Plant-based diets– also known as vegan or strict vegetarian – have been dominating media and nutritional forums worldwide, as the number of people eliminating animal ingredients from their diets has been steadily increasing. Recently, these diets have been introduced to the companion animal nutrition market as well. The proposed study aims to examine the general pet-owning population and ascertain what motivations and concerns are currently driving pet food purchasing behaviour, with a specific focus on plant-based diets.

Implementation and advancement of algorithm for extracting oxygen saturation data from multispectral analysis of the eye

To work on the development of a tool enabling the measurement of blood oxygenation in the eye in vivo, using non-invasive methods. More specifically, the student involved will work on the development, implementation, and advancement of an algorithm for the measurements of oxygen saturation (through oxyhemoglobin content) in the retina.