Innovative Projects Realized

How the XMRV virus overcomes restriction by a host’s immune system

Development of the Classification of Small Association Schemes

Non-human adenoviruses as vaccine delivery vehicles

Infectious diseases remain the major cause of death and economic losses in animals/humans. One way to reduce this is by vaccination. Unique and sophisticated biotechnology-based approaches are needed to produce safe, cost-effective, and highly efficacious vaccines. Potential benefits of these vaccines could include the induction of long lived immunity, ability to immunize newborns and induction of a broad spectrum of immune responses. One way to achieve this is to develop live viral vectored gene
deleted vaccines. We have choosen to develop non human adenoviruses (bovine adenovirus [BAdV-]-3; porcine adenovirus [PAdV]-3) as vectors for vaccination of animals and humans. Utilizing a variety of genomic and proteomics approaches, the research in the laboratory includes projects both on adenovirus biology and, on the development and use of non human  adenoviruses as vectors.
The standard of science and its application provide an excellent opportunity for training in modern methods of biotechnology including recombinant DNA technology, cell biology, gene expression and molecular virology. The applicant will be able to expand his/her basic knowledge and have hands on experience in Molecular biology / virology as applied to understanding the biology of adenovirus, live viral vectoring and vaccine development. He/she will be working closely with me and other members (post
doctoral fellows, graduate students and technicians) of my laboratory at Vaccine & Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO), University of Saskatchewan on the specific identified project. He/she will have responsibility for experimental design and execution of the specific research project. As part of the group, he/she will report and seek assistance from the group as required. However, he/she will have access as needed to the advice and assistance of a large group of scientists with a wide range of experience.
VIDO’s multiple discipline (virology, immunology, vaccinology, pathogenomics) based knowledge is readily accessible to all trainees, which provides an excellent training environment for training and teaches them about values of collaboration in present day science. Moreover, it also exposes them to the importance of patenting, commercialization, confidentiality, research planning and, setting up and achieving milestones.

Gasification of canola hull fiber

Assistance/ mentoring will be provided to the student in each activity presented below. The student will involve in variety of activities. The initiation of the work will start with detailed literature review on biomass gasification to gain in depth knowledge of the topic, followed by giving a presentation about the literature review and the research plan. The process set up will be modified according to the experimental plan and needs. The feedstock will be obtained from the local supplier and then crushed, ground and screened to three different sizes. Trial runs will be performed to get familiar with the system. The gas chromatograph will be recalibrated to check the performance. The student will perform elemental analysis and gain knowledge about elemental analyzer operation and data interpretation. The ASTM standards will be selected to carry out proximate analysis by the student.  The student will perform gasification experiments at different process conditions. The student is also going to analyze gas products for each run and perform analysis by plotting graphs at various conditions. At the end of all planned experiments, the results will be summarized in the form of a report/ manuscript.

Using measured erodibility values to assess scour below culverts

Current practice is to estimate the soil’s erosion resistance by assigning the soil at the site to broad categories of the material such as “stiff clay” or “loose sand” and finding the erosion resistance from a range of that parameter for those soil categories that are given in a table.  However, the values given in these tables can be greatly different than measured values of erosion resistance.  The objective of the research project described herein is to incorporate new techniques for determining soil erosion resistance into the design for scour protection at culverts.  The goal is to improve the reliability of scour protection at culverts and to reduce capital construction costs with better determination of needs for riprap placement

Advanced Power Electronics for Photovoltaic Applications

Solar energy has long been recognized as one of the most abundant forms of clean energy. Countless research efforts around the globe are contributing to the steady decline in the cost of photovoltaic power, with the promise of reaching grid parity in the near future. This is a complex target, as the price of conventional energy sources is constantly in flux and heavily dependent on government subsidies. The penetration level of solar power is rapidly increasing in most developed countries due to  government incentives and multi-disciplinary technological advances. The exponential growth of PV technology presents tremendous opportunities for all companies in the semiconductor supply chain, ranging from discrete power devices to mixedsignal control ICs. This project focuses on the state-of-the-art technology in photovoltaic (PV) energy conversion, while the main focus is on the power electronic circuits, controllers and devices used to maximize the harvested energy and interface PV systems to the electrical grid. Small PV arrays in the 2-10 kW range are increasingly being deployed on residential rooftops in urban environments. These applications present a unique set of economic and technological challenges that will be explored in this project.

Quantifying the real-world benefits of DMPPT remains a challenge; however early results are very promising. This project will focus on new topologies and control systems for DMPPT in PV applications. New topologies and control schemes will be developed to maximize the efficiency in PV systems. The project involves a large experimental component using a rooftop PV system.
The student will work in the state-of-the-art power electronics laboratories in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, alongside a talented group of graduate and undergraduate students. The student will work closely with other researchers to develop new power electronic converters for DMPPT PV systems. The novel power electronic circuits will be
tested on UofT’s new rooftop 5 kW reconfigurable PV system. This challenging project will involve circuit and system-level simulations, thermal analysis, printed circuit board design, sourcing electronic components, testing and data analysis.

Electrochemically gated nanoparticle film field effect transistor: fundamental charge transport studies (part 1) and energy storage applications (part 2)

Nano-materials for Clean Energy

Hierarchical Thermal Transport in Electronic Devices: Nano-Scale and Transistor-Level Modelling

The conventional continuum-based physical relations that describe heat and fluid flow in bulk materials, such as the Navier-Stokes and Fourier equations, break down at sub-continuum scales. The failure of these relations, along with the current trend of miniaturization in man-made devices and wide spread use of nano-structured systems, urge for development of new computational techniques capable of modelling sub-continuum physical phenomena. This project specifically studies the thermal transport modelling in nano‐structured systems.
The proposed project is a part of an ongoing collaboration with an industry partner (Advanced Micro Devices, AMD Inc.) and academic collaborators at University of Texas at Arlington and State University of New York at Binghamton. The overall objective of the project is to provide a computational framework for thermal transport prediction in electronic devices that hierarchically incorporates physics-based models at different lengths from nano to macro scales.

The Globalink student will work on the transistor level modelling. The three-dimensional transistor structure is reconstructed based on the technology used in the current AMD devices using a CAD software. The model includes gate, drain, source, and metal interconnects of the transistor. The reconstructed geometry will be then imported into a computational heat transfer software, e.g., ANSYS, and the temperature distribution inside the transistor components is calculated for different boundary conditions and various working conditions. Using these simulation data, we develop a compact model for the average temperature of a transistor as a function of average temperatures of neighbouring transistors and working conditions. This compact model for a single transistor will be used to model the next length-scale level in the hierarchy, which is the functional block level. Once the thermal transport at the functional block level is achieved, optimization algorithms are applied to find the optimal positioning of these functional blocks on the die surface.

Multi-Scale Adaptive Modelling and Numerical Methods for Reactive Flows

The Globalink student will join and participate in the on-going project outlined above, in which Rolls-Royce Canada is the industrical partner.  The specific focus or role of the Globalink student will involve the study and evaluation of different subfilter-scale models for use in representing the unresolved turbulence-chemistry interactions in large-eddy simulation (LES) of premixed, partially-premixed, and non-premixed turbulent combusting flows.  Several subfilter-scale models will be assessed through comparison of numerical predictions to experimental data for a number of laboratory-scale turbulent flames.  The student will be involved in the development, implementation, and assessment of the LES combustion models.

Dynamic Resource Allocation Algorithms for Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive radio networks are fundamentally different from traditional cellular networks because multiple competing service providers simultaneously co‐exist in the same wireless spectrum. Service providers can significantly increase the network capacity by deploying dynamic resource allocation algorithms that are robust to time‐varying and uncertain environments as well as the actions of other, possibly selfish entities. The proposed project will develop provably good algorithms for user selection as well as power and rate allocation that can be implemented by service providers in the next generation cognitive radio networks.

The proposed project provides a first hand experience on understanding the underlying mathematical theories behind the success of wireless communication systems. In particular, concepts from multi‐user information theory will be used to develop the performance metrics to be optimized, whereas concepts from game theory will be used to model selfishness of competing service providers. Additionally techniques for convergence analysis of iterative algorithms will also be investigated. The state of the art literature is far from providing a complete understanding of good resource allocation algorithms. The proposed project will examine an important generalization of these works, where each transmitter intends to either broadcast or unicast multiple information streams to several recipients. The proposed project will study iterative and distributed joint user selection and power allocation policies that achieve the equilibrium points of this hybrid game.

The student will be involved in all aspects of this project, including literature review, problem formulation, and algorithm development and analysis. He/she will learn the theoretical modeling and analysis of wireless networks and design practical engineering solutions based on these insights

Investigation of single nanoparticle properties by scanning probe microscopy and Raman spectroscopy

This work is designed so that student can be involved in the whole project, learning a large variety of topics, from making nanoparticles, to purifying and characterizing them, with standard techniques and then in the scanning probe microscopy and spectroscopy experiments. However, depending on his/her interests, the concentration of the work can be more on one side vs the other. The project is facilitated by the group organization, in which there are senior scientists working on the various aspects, who will provide needed training in various equipment and techniques, and can guide students in their project as needed. While a number of people may work together in the overall project, the student will have responsibility on a specific area, which he can choose from among the following: magnetic nanoparticles, transition metal oxides with interesting conducting properties, nanoparticles with potential for photocatalysis and potential light emitters. Aside from the experimental work, the student will learn fundamental issues regarding material properties at the nanoscale. The student will also engage with companies interested in nanomaterials, including Vive Nano and Lunanos, and will be exposed to opportunities in technology-based entrepreneurship.