Grants and Contributions

To facilitate Indigenous participation in dialogues, increase cumulative effects knowledge and support improved understanding of impacts of resource development.

To facilitate Indigenous participation in dialogues, increase cumulative effects knowledge and support improved understanding of impacts of resource development.

To facilitate Indigenous participation in dialogues, increase cumulative effects knowledge and support improved understanding of impacts of resource development.

To facilitate Indigenous participation in dialogues, increase cumulative effects knowledge and support improved understanding of impacts of resource development.

To facilitate Indigenous participation in dialogues, increase cumulative effects knowledge and support improved understanding of impacts of resource development.

To facilitate Indigenous participation in dialogues, increase cumulative effects knowledge and support improved understanding of impacts of resource development.

Researchers will collect publicly available skeletal muscle-relevant single-cell data and in-house cell data from the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, as well as from the NRC’s Disruptive Technology Solutions for Cell and Gene Therapy Program. The AI-methodologies and simulation models developed in this Project will help to better understand the mechanisms of how stem cells differentiate to specific cell types with desired properties, speeding up the optimal strategy for selection while reducing the costs and facilitating the safe and efficient stem cell therapy.

The design of a high-performance micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) requires extensive design simulation to optimize its performance. Complex MEMS implementations, such as in adaptive optics (AO) systems, have multiple competing specifications and structural parameters to optimize. Skilled designers often spend many months of effort to develop such MEMS systems, with design effort often stopping when performance is sufficient as opposed to fully optimized. This slows and limits innovation in applied MEMS technology areas. This Project will focus on the development of AI using multi-objective optimization to automate the design and optimization of complex MEMS systems. The multi-objective MEMS performance problem is one where AI will provide dramatic benefits and significantly accelerate innovation.

The aim of this Project is to generate flexible-use, automated devices for rapid and efficient SARS-CoV-2 genome sequencing in order to enable early detection and molecular epidemiology studies to inform public health policies. The device will be based on the PowerBlade system and should be able to perform complex molecular steps, from virus RNA reverse transcription, to PCR amplification and library preparation for rapid sequencing by nanopore technology. The Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) reaction will also be adopted in combination with nanopore sequencing and applied in the form of a sequencing based rapid molecular test. These devices will be suitable for rapid deployment in the case of COVID-19 threats, as well as future threats in public health laboratories, diagnostic laboratories in hospitals, genomics laboratories and sequence service providers in academia, and the private sector, as well as suitable for point-of-need deployment, including remote locations. The combination of PowerBlade and Nanopore represents a potential flexible, mobile solution, which allows deployment in locations that do not have substantial genomics infrastructure, and therefore, enables the wide use of this system. This should enable low cost-fast turnaround genome sequencing and targeted sequencing in order to identify high risk SARS-CoV-2 virus variants in response to outbreaks and inform public health authorities.

Yellow pea is one of the key pulses grown in Western Canada with considerable interest from the food industry.