Grants and Contributions

This project contributes to the Africa Climate Change Fund (ACCF), focusing on gender equality and climate action in Africa. This funding supports small-scale, climate-resilient projects aimed at increasing women’s economic empowerment and initiatives enhancing women’s participation in climate negotiations in countries across Africa. Project activities include: (1) supporting women and girls in climate change adaptation work and other grantees seeking to address opportunities and challenges for women in the transition to low-carbon economies; and (2) organizing training, outreach and awareness-raising activities to increase women’s participation in climate negotiations and to promote the integration of gender equality issues in national climate plans (NDC) and other national climate change strategies.

The project beneficiaries include women entrepreneurs and their communities in adapting to climate change, government officials working on climate change strategies and negotiations, and stakeholders seeking to integrate gender equality considerations into the NDC process.

This project aims to advance gender equality in education in Tanzania. The project works to address the many barriers preventing girls from enjoying their right to education, through local and national engagement and collaboration with government, schools, and communities. By addressing girls’ education, which is one of the most effective approaches to challenge poverty and inequality, the project works to target the root causes of poverty.

Project activities include: (1) identifying and mentoring girls at risk of dropping out of school; (2) ensuring that girls can access clean, safe toilets, and sanitation facilities and products; (3) raising public awareness and inciting action on issues of girls’ education through multimedia campaigns; and (4) raising government accountability and action through policy dialogue.

This project supports 1,200 volunteer placements, and aims to improve the social and economic well-being of poor and marginalized youth, particularly young women, in developing countries, with a view to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals. In addition to increasing the engagement of diverse groups of Canadians, particularly youth in international development, this project works to strengthen the performance of more than 70 developing country partner organizations, to advance gender equality and economic empowerment for poor and marginalized youth, in particular young women. The project also aims to harness the knowledge, capacity, and expertise of skilled Canadians, to assist developing country partners improve the socio-economic well-being of poor and marginalized youth, particularly young women, by generating inclusive, remunerative and sustainable employment and entrepreneurship opportunities.

Project activities include: (1) deploying volunteers to support developing country partners (including women’s organizations) advance gender equality and equitable inclusion of youth, particularly young women; (2) conducting assessments of developing country partners and providing them with technical support to develop inclusive, gender-responsive and environmentally sustainable policies and practices; (3) establishing gender-sensitive innovation fund to support partners in the developing, testing and scaling of gender-responsive innovations; and (4) launching inclusive awareness-raising campaigns, knowledge products and events to educate diverse groups of Canadians about global issues including gender equality, social inclusion and economic empowerment.

This project supports 2,905 volunteer placements, and aims to improve the economic and/or social wellbeing of the poorest, most marginalized and vulnerable people, particularly women and girls, with a view to contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals.

In addition to increasing the participation of Canadians in international development and key global issues, this project aims to increase the performance of developing country partners to deliver more inclusive, innovative, and environmentally sustainable development initiatives that advance gender equality. This project also works to deliver capacity building through volunteer advisors who act as mentors, advisors or coaches, and become catalysts for partners in the agriculture and tourism sectors of the project countries to realize their full potential.

Project activities include: (1) providing technical assistance in strategic planning and leadership to promote innovative practices that advance inclusiveness, gender equality, and women’s economic empowerment; (2) providing technical assistance in production, operations, quality control, financial procedures, human resources management procedures, customer service, and marketing to promote gender equality and women’s economic empowerment; (3) providing technical assistance to create and/or improve gender-sensitive processes, policies, tools and practices; (4) delivering events and campaigns to inform Canadians about international development issues and opportunities to get involved with these issues; and (5) establishing a fund for partners to procure equipment and supplies necessary to implement an innovation meant to accelerate results through improved productivity, efficiency, sales and income for marginalized and vulnerable groups, particularly women.

This project aims to prevent conflict, hold perpetrators accountable, and help societies reconcile through the active promotion of human rights with governments, early warning through monitoring and reporting of violations, and strengthening the role of civil society in fragile and conflict affected states. Project activities include: (1) monitoring and reporting on human rights situations in the target countries; (2) supporting targeted countries to increase implementation of the recommendations of the international human rights mechanisms’ recommendations; and (3) supporting the active participation of civil society, including those representing women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex LGBTI populations, ethnic and religious minorities to defend their human rights.

Water rock reaction, known as serpentinization, has the potential to support life on other worlds (planets and moons), by providing energy. Detecting life at sites of serpentinization on other worlds requires the ability to find serpentinization sites and detect biosignatures, i.e. select investigation sites that have present/past conditions that are/were favourable to support life.

This project aims to study life's signatures (i.e. its isotopic and molecular imprints, and its interaction with the environment) at sites of serpentinization and to contribute that knowledge to a joint international proposal whose purpose is to develop a remote sensing method for detecting habitable sites of serpentinization. This project will result in scientific knowledge of life's biosignatures at active serpentinized springs and preservation of life's biosignatures in inactive serpentinized springs, while contributing to the technological development of an algorithm for detecting serpentinized springs using machine learning and remote sensing data collected from satellites and drones.

Climate change is one of the main environmental concerns for Canadians. The largest climate uncertainty is primarily due to atmospheric water vapor, clouds and precipitations. These processes are a powerful modulator of the greenhouse effect. Currently, we have little knowledge of the global cloud properties, like ice crystal size, number concentration or their links to aerosols in cloud formation and precipitation.

The project goal is to optimize the performance of the Thin Ice Clouds in Far IR Experiment (TICFIRE) instrument from field experimentations, theoretical simulations, and data assimilation. The result will provide unprecedented accuracy on important cloud variables. In time, this work will lead us to significant improvements on weather forecasting and climate processes monitoring.

The state-of-the-art materials used for Lunar and Martian missions are designed for shorter-term missions with only limited digging or mining. The future of space exploration calls for much longer-term missions, including bases, and the possibility of space mining. This will require the development of materials and coatings that will last much longer and resist regolith abrasive wear under much more aggressive conditions of space mining.

The primary purpose of this project is to study the ability of materials and coatings to resist the abrasive wear from regolith, which is the abrasive dust found on the surface of the Moon and Mars. The main objectives are to develop a test to characterize regolith abrasive wear for common structural materials and to develop coatings to resist regolith abrasive wear. The coatings developed to resist regolith abrasive wear can be adapted to other industries in Canada that face similar aggressive conditions, such as mining, oil and gas, aerospace and hydropower.

It is a great challenge to accurately monitor the atmosphere during climate change. Although sensors and technologies have been developed for basic meteorological variables such as temperatures and humidity, their measurements remain severely lacking or inaccurate in critical regions, such as the planetary boundary and the tropopause region.

The purpose of the project is to support the development of a microwave hyper-spectral remote sensor of the atmosphere, HiSRAMS, designed for the future generation of Earth observation satellites. The main objectives are to acquire collocated high-spectral resolution microwave and infrared atmospheric radiation spectra and verify the radiometric accuracy in the measurements, and to compare microwave hyperspectral to infrared hyperspectral in terms of accuracy and information contents of atmospheric temperature and humidity retrieval.

Aerosols and clouds play a critical role in the atmosphere with links to climate, weather, and air quality. While satellite observations have provided global information, questions remain particularly considering the changing climate and the influence of human activity on the atmosphere. The Aerosol Limb Imager (ALI) instrument is a prototype of a satellite sensor that takes images of volcanic plumes, forest fire smoke, stratospheric aerosols, and thin cirrus clouds in the Earth's atmosphere.

The project will continue to advance the ALI concept by taking new aerosol measurements from a stratospheric balloon. The nature of the project, including aspects of instrument design, test, flight, and data analysis, provides the opportunity for students and for the other team members to be involved with nearly all phases of the project and to experience end-to-end space science and technology training.