Innovative Projects Realized

Evaluating the effectiveness of constructed wetlands in Western Canada for municipal wastewater treatment

In Canada, water security challenges include environmental degradation, water pollution, and climate change impacts. Utilizing constructed wetlands (CWs) for wastewater treatment addresses these issues by offering a cost-effective and eco-friendly solution. It helps mitigate pollution, conserve water resources, and adapt to changing environmental conditions, fostering long-term sustainability. However, given the uncertainty surrounding the effectiveness of CWs in the Canadian climate, the partner organization, MAGNA, has initiated the validation of this technology using scientific knowledge. This study evaluates the performance of MAGNA’s CWs under observation, which are treating municipal wastewater in Alberta and Saskatchewan during their first year of operation. The research focuses on assessing the removal rates of conventional water pollutants, aiming to better understand CW efficiencies in cold climate contexts. The insights gained from year-round technology implementation provide valuable information for future designs and optimizations, potentially advancing sustainable wastewater practices in similar regions.

Circular Solutions for 3D construction Printing: Low-Carbon Concrete and 3D Printing Houses

The construction industry, accounting for a substantial 35% of waste and 40% of global carbon emissions, faces the imperative of transitioning to sustainable practices to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 amidst escalating population growth and housing demands. 3D Construction Printing (3DCP) emerges as a viable solution, capable of reducing the carbon footprint by utilizing low-carbon materials, particularly crucial in addressing housing shortages. Although some pioneering projects in the USA, Europe, and Canada have utilized 3DCP with high-carbon materials, the lack of custom-made, low-carbon materials tailored to specific regional needs poses a challenge. This research initiative aims to leverage sustainable additive manufacturing and circular economy principles to develop low-carbon materials for 3D printing housing, utilizing waste and recycled resources. Overcoming challenges related to material reactivity and maintaining performance indicators, the success of this endeavor could not only benefit the 3D construction printing sector globally but also contribute to decarbonizing the broader concrete industry as global demand for concrete continues to rise.

Alternum optimization and validation to support primary cell growth, an in depth study of cell metabolism and signalling

For a hundred years, fetal bovine serum (FBS) is used for cell culture. Cell culture is a critical tool for understanding life, through research, as well as manufacturing biologics, such as vaccine and lab grown meat. It is also used to reproduce tissue which can be used in human graft. FBS is the fertilizer for cells to grow better in an artificial environment. Though it has been unsurpassed, collecting FBS means sacrificing fetuses and pregnant cows. Alterna develops new media supplements to replace FBS. Primary cells are challenging to grow artificially. Optimizing and validating Alterna’s products to work as well for primary cells through an extensive study including cell metabolism transcriptomic is a major step for Alterna and for replacing FBS in all applications.

Cultivating a Compliant Generation: The State and the Regulation ofYouth Political Activism in post-1980 Turkey

The post-1980 generation in Turkey came to identified with political apathy and cynicism. They seemed to lack interest in and knowledge of politics and to be disengaged from political parties and organizations. However, on May 31st 2013 the urban youth have become the forerunners of an anti-government uprising which was ignited by the attempts to demolish Istanbul’s Gezi Park as part of an urban transformation project. Young people took to the streets, occupied the Gezi Park and engaged in extensive social media activism against an increasingly authoritarian government. Their spontenous and unforseen engagement with political activism came as a surprise to many spectators. My project aims to explore the cycles of political disengagement and engagement among the urban and better educated youth in Turkey, particulary among university students in the cities of Istanbul and Ankara, by tracing the role of the state in drawing the boundaries of youth poltical participation. It aims to highlight how the state creates particular opportunities for and obstacles to young people’s engagement with politics.

Development of degradable bio-based polymers

Plastic waste is a global environmental priority for our generation. Many countries, including Canada, have introduced ambitious “zero-plastic waste” policies to move towards a circular plastic economy. The goal of this collaborative project is to develop novel degradable polymers sourced from bio-sourced materials. Polymers are made of repeating units linked by strong carbon-carbon covalent bonds. The main reason for the poor degradability of polymers lies in the stability of carbon-carbon bonds that are highly resistant to environmental factors. To enhance plastic sustainability and degradability, Prof. Craig Hawker’s group at University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) achieved a breakthrough in synthesizing degradable polymers by incorporating cleavable functional groups in the polymer backbone through copolymerization of non-toxic, commercially available Lipoic Acid. The proposed project is to study copolymerization of a-Lipoic Acid with fully bio-based ß-Myrcene. The proposed research will be carried out at the UCSB at the laboratories of Prof. Hawker in close collaboration with BioPACIFIC platform which is one of the best institutes on polymer research with state-of-the-art equipment and world-renowned researchers. This partnership between McGill University and UCSB aims to establish a solid foundation for sustainable polymeric materials.

Locating and characterizing undocumented orphaned wells across the United States

More than a hundred thousand documented orphaned oil and gas wells are known to exist in the United States, with potentially over a million remaining undocumented. Due to funding shortfalls, many orphaned wells remain unplugged and are negatively impacting human health, degrading the environment, and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, such as methane. Nearly $5B in federal funding has been committed to plug documented orphaned wells and locate undocumented orphaned wells, which are wells with unknown locations and well conditions. To inform plugging efforts, optimize mitigation, and improve our understanding of the risks of orphaned wells, we will develop novel frameworks for locating and characterizing undocumented orphaned wells across the United States, combining field work and advanced analytics such as machine learning. The research project aligns with the expertise and ongoing research work of both the home supervisor (McGill University) and host supervisors (Los Alamos National Laboratory), which focus on characterizing orphaned wells and quantifying their methane emissions. Our results will help prioritize plugging and remediation for the hundreds of thousands, potentially over a million, orphaned wells across the country.

Toward a Collaborative Ethics of Research for Socio-Ecological Transformations

This project investigates the ethical challenges inherent in transformation-oriented research (TR), addressing complex socio-ecological issues like climate change and social inequalities. TR, characterised by normative orientations toward societal change, presents dilemmas such as balancing rigor and relevance, avoiding false neutrality, and addressing epistemic injustice. Despite a resurgence of peer principles and proposals for TR researchers’ skills, we argue for integrating ethical guidelines into researchers’ practical wisdom.

Leveraging a heuristic we developed for reflexive dialogues, the project engages TR researchers, particularly from non-Western contexts, in refining the heuristic. The goal is to translate it into practical use, increasing awareness of gaps and ethical dilemmas faced by TR researchers among university Research Ethics Boards (REBs). Project activities include crafting workshop materials, facilitating dialogue sessions to analyze ethical dilemmas, and developing a policy brief synthesising insights and best practices. The project initiates conversations with university REBs and stakeholders to adapt procedures, fostering ethical conduct in TR’s pursuit of just and sustainable futures.

Advance Electrohydrodynamic Enhance Phase Change Thermal Storage

This research is motivated by a critical need for novel devices and technologies to harvest and store “lost” thermal energy energy at a time when societies around the world are facing surging energy demand. Solid-liquid phase-change materials (PCMs) are attractive solutions as they have a relatively high thermal capacity because of the latent heat of fusion. However, the predictive capability for design and performance optimization including transient control is not readily available primarily due to complexities related to the interaction of the phases and geometric topology. Energy charging time and cell size optimization are two areas that can dramatically advance enhancement and optimization as they significantly affect the cost and economic feasibility of the system.
The objective of this proposed research program is to develop expertise in new heat exchanger design and enhanced thermal storage solutions by establishing electrohydrodynamics (EHD) as the mechanism of enhancement and intelligent control. The proposed research will expand upon fundamental studies spearheaded by the researcher towards the development of prototype EHD heat exchangers and storage devices targeted for waste heat recovery applications.

Exploring the impact of competition and consolidation on Canadian SME farm businesses’ ability to create value

Mergers and acquisitions in the agricultural input supply, food processing, and grocery retail sectors have resulted in high levels of concentration in food supply chains, leading to a power asymmetry between the consolidated large firms in these stages and the smaller farms in the primary production stage. This project will explore whether concentration in farmers’ upstream markets (agricultural input supply) and downstream markets (processing) may influence producers’ ability to be entrepreneurial. The Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project (CAMP), a new not-for-profit organization seeking progressive competition policy reform, has identified the agriculture sector as a priority for its advocacy work and requires data and market insight to provide recommendations to policymakers. Semi-structured interviews will explore the conditions under which farmers are able to create value and will provide qualitative information about the connection between competition and entrepreneurship in Canadian agriculture, Findings will allow CAMP to address an underexplored area of competition policy reform.

Advanced Electrohydrodynamic Thermal Management Technologies for Space and Aerospace Applications.

The use of electric fields to enhance or better control boiling heat transfer, particularly in microgravity conditions, has been identified for several decades by various space agencies. Two-phase heat transfer is an efficient way of transporting high heat flow densities. They are used in many thermal management systems, such as heat pipes, which were first developed for space applications and are now deployed in a wide range of terrestrial applications. This mode of heat transfer can also take place in space propulsion systems, particularly in propellant tanks. However, in the case of terrestrial applications, vapor and liquid flows are mainly controlled by gravitational effects, as these two phases have very different densities. In microgravity conditions, new volumetric forces are needed to compensate for the lack of buoyancy. The application of electric fields within a fluid makes it possible to generate new volumetric forces within a fluid, particularly at liquid-vapor interfaces, which can contribute to flows. A major advantage of this approach, compared with mechanical pumping, is the absence of moving parts, since electric fields can be applied by electrodes external to the fluid. A major difficulty in implementing this approach arises from the complexity of the coupled physical phenomena involved.

Création d’un ensemble stratégique d’initiatives visant à améliorer la biodiversité d’une université

L’érosion de la biodiversité est un problème majeur auquel fait face l’humanité actuellement. Les établissements d’enseignement et de recherche, tout comme les autres organisations privées et civiles, ont un rôle essentiel à jouer dans la préservation de la biodiversité puisqu’ils ont une empreinte écologique résultant de leurs activités. La création d’un ensemble stratégique d’initiatives pour la biodiversité permettra à l’INRS de développer des méthodes innovantes et efficaces pour restaurer les espèces et les écosystèmes affectés par ses activités.
Ce projet permettra à Éco-pivot d’accroître son expertise en milieu universitaire tout en développant de nouveaux contacts pour réaliser sa mission, soit améliorer la connectivité des habitats fauniques en milieu urbain et redonner la place de l’écologie dans la vie urbaine. Éco-pivot a à coeur de former du personnel qualifié et l’accueil d’une stagiaire aux horizons complémentaire enrichira l’équipe et les outils et le matériel développés par la stagiaire pourront continuer à servir après la période de stage.

A Group Recommender System for deviantART

deviantART is the world’s largest online arts community with a huge number of users and items. They currently recommend art to users only via an algorithmic presentation of “popular” items, and an item-item recommender system presented alongside every individual piece of art. deviantART expects to use recommender systems technology to enhance and leverage the contributions of existing “Groups” of users. The intern will combine time series analysis with collaborative filtering to develop a time-variant Matrix Factorization method and apply this new temporal approach to deviantART’s real data. The intern will develop a prototype of the new proposed method and demonstrate its effectiveness through off-line evaluations on real user group engagement data available from deviantART. Thus this internship will help deviantART with improving the ability of artists and their audiences to connect, and to more generally make using deviantART a more human, social, and ultimately enjoyable experience.