Grants and Contributions

Modern technological materials are typically multi-component compounds with complex structures that determine their opto/electronic/chemical properties. The design of new functional materials has been greatly assisted by developments in efficient and accurate electronic-structure methodologies, most notably Density Functional Theory (DFT). But DFT is too expensive to perform the rapid screening of thousands of candidates required for the design of new high-performance materials. This project aims to harness the power of modern Artificial Intelligence to build on the success of DFT and ferret out optimal design parameters. This project is of prime socioeconomic importance, aiming to reduce the environmental footprint of the Alberta oil sands by designing new nanocatalysts for the chemical reactions involved in in-the-reservoir upgrading.

Designing a drug for a specific disease type is highly challenging due to tremendous molecular search space and limited understanding about the disease of interest. Successful discovery of a medicine for a target (gene/protein/pathway) usually last for many years and costs a private pharmaceutical organization billions of dollars, which in turn determines the unaffordable price of medicines in the Canadian and global markets. The emerging of massive biochemical and high-throughput genomic data acquisition techniques and the rise of advanced artificial intelligence paradigms provide an unprecedented opportunity for automatic design of new drugs with much faster pace and much lower cost, igniting hopes to discovery drugs for diseases where no medicines have been found yet. A develop a data- and AI-driven drug design platform/pipeline will be developed for precise and effective treatment of cancers and complex diseases. The project will take advantage of NRC’s unique multidisciplinary expertise in AI, data science, and human health therapeutics, as well as external collaborators’ knowledge and facilities, to tackle challenges in every step of drug design. Project technologies and outcomes will be disruptive and beneficial to all Canadians.
This project will focus on the development and testing of AI methods and molecule parameterization.

Designs for devices that use the atomic silicon quantum dot technique will be determined. This design will attempt to tailor the SET array to optimize the size and arrangement of the SETs and the associated connections so that the capacitance and consequently the charge energy, Ec, make its operation as a CBT at high temperatures possible. The method to interface the SET to the macro-world to enable the measurement of the temperature-dependant electrical conductance change will be developed.

It is well-known that asphalt pavements in cold regions such as Canada are exposed to number of environmental stresses such as thermal fatigue cycles and low-temperatures which result in different modes of distresses most commonly cracking. In addition, repeated application of traffic loads on flexible pavement induces structural cracking known as bottom-up fatigue distress. Considering that cracked pavements are more susceptible to water seepage and frost action, it is crucial to reverse the cracking process through use of self-healing bituminous materials in order to extend the service life of the infrastructure, reduce the amount of Greenhouse Gas emissions and decrease the energy usage. Improving the self-healing properties of asphalt binder and Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) through innovative techniques and novel applications is still at emerging stage. This project will investigate the rheological properties and healing characterization of nano-clay modified asphalt binder and performance testing of HMA specimens containing nano-clay modified asphalt binder.

Silicon nitride is becoming established as an important nanophotonic platform because of its compatibility with CMOS fabrication and its substantially broader spectral transparency range compared to silicon. Silicon nitride allows CMOS integrated photonics to break into new application areas, in particular sensing in the visible and mid-IR spectral ranges, quantum photonics and nonlinear optics. However, silicon nitride poses some fundamental challenges. The high index contrast, which allows device miniaturization, causes significant optical scattering losses, mode size disparity between optical fiber and on-chip waveguides results in high coupling losses, and fabrication tolerances are tight, making manufacturing yield a major concern. Subwavelength engineering was successfully used to overcome similar challenges in silicon waveguides and we believe that this strategy can also be advantageously implemented in the silicon nitride platform, which has not yet been done. In this proposed New Beginnings project, the benefits of subwavelength metamaterial engineering for the emerging nitride nanophotonic platform will be demonstrated. This can result in major advances in state-of-the-art silicon nitride integrated devices, including new photonic sensors, next generation quantum communications chips and on-chip optical amplifiers for telecom applications.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a serious and growing problem in the treatment of infectious disease. Broadly, the potential to use combat AMR using collateral sensitivity, a phenomenon whereby resistance to one antimicrobial results in sensitivity to other drugs will be examined. The hypothesis that collateral sensitivities can be used to slow the emergence of AMR will be tested. The central premise of this hypothesis is that the use of one drug will select against mutations that confer resistance to a second drug. For example, if streptomycin resistance mutations confer sensitivity to chloramphenicol, then treatment of a sensitive population of bacteria with chloramphenicol should slow the emergence of streptomycin resistance by selecting against specific, collaterally sensitive mutations. The team will test this hypothesis using a combination of conventional mutation rate assays and sequencing. This work will provide crucial tests of the central logic of using collateral sensitivity to fight AMR; such tests have not thus far been carried out.

Delivery of drugs to the central nervous system is hampered by the blood-brain barrier (BBB), a complex structure composed of multiple cells types and tissues that is subjected to forces due to blood flow. Current brain drug development relies on cells in dishes or animal models of the BBB that do not fully mimic human physiology and therefore cannot effectively predict whether a therapeutic will cross the BBB in a patient. Improved BBB models are necessary to overcome these challenges. To this end, we will develop novel microfluidic chips into which laboratory BBB models can 3D bioprinted, grown, and used to test drug compounds in an environment that mimics key aspects of the human BBB. These platforms are expected to improve the drug development pipeline by reducing animal usage and drug development costs while improving the identification of promising drug candidates.

Terahertz (THz) radiation is a form of electromagnetic energy that occupies a broad frequency band between 0.1 and 10 THz, and is non-ionizing. These frequencies coincide with natural dynamics of biological systems, including low-frequency vibrational modes of large molecules (e.g., all proteins, DNA) and the stretching/twisting modes of hydrogen bond networks that are ubiquitous in biological systems. This interaction mechanism is the basis behind existing novel THz diagnostic imaging technologies for which the high sensitivity to molecular/chemical structure provides excellent contrast between diseased and healthy tissue. However, exposure to higher levels of THz radiation can also affect the structure and function of target biomolecules. This project investigates these effects of intense terahertz radiation in proteins, cells, and skin tissue.

The Ultrafast Nanotools lab, houses the source of terahertz radiation and sample chambers that will be used to perform biological exposure studies. This is central to the proposed research, as sufficient radiation sources of the type required for these investigations are not commercially available. The state-of-the-art sources of intense terahertz pulses constructed for research purposes are known to be capable of generating peak electric fields and intensity distributions sufficient to induce significant non-thermal biological effect in target samples, as reported in several academic publications.

The objective of the SDG Funding Program is to support sustainable development projects that: • Support the development and utilization of effective approaches to address sustainable development and the social, economic and environmental issues and challenges; • Develop, exchange and apply knowledge, tools and resources that address sustainable development needs of individuals, families and communities; • Foster partnerships and networks to address sustainable development and the existing and emerging social, economic and environmental issues; • Recognize and support the ability of organizations to identify and address sustainable development priorities; • Recognize and promote engagement initiatives at the international, national, subnational, and/or local level that mobilize assets and develop capacities and resources for action; and/or • Foster Indigenous traditional knowledge on sustainable development.

The objective of the EAF is to support community based projects across Canada that improve accessibility, remove barriers, and enable Canadians with disabilities to participate in and contribute to their community.