Announcements

Haotian Sun supervised by Wenxing Zhou.

Video Transcript:

I know you don't see them quite often, but pipelines are indeed everywhere across Canada. Up till today, pipelines are still the safest and most effective means to distribute water, crude oil, natural gas, hydrogen, etc. to millions of families and factories around the world. Although considered to be relatively safe among all kinds of infrastructures and taken for granted by the general public, the failure of pipelines can be catastrophic. Hydrocarbons in pipelines exert fluctuating pressures to the internal surface of the pipe wall. With different kinds of defects penetrating the pipe wall, if the internal pressure is low, hydrocarbons will leak and contaminate the surrounding environment. If the internal pressure is unfortunately high, pipelines are likely to explode, combust, and cause fatalities. The pipeline bursts shown in the picture just occurred in our city of London two years ago, and you can clearly see how dangerous it is. It is significant to guarantee that our pipelines are safe and such things never happen again. Leading failures causes for pipelines are corrosion, cracking, material failure and ground movement. Among them, cracking seems to be the most dangerous failure mechanism since they cannot be accurately detected with our current technology. In addition, the rule of crack is highly uncertain and may lead to sudden failure without any warning. Ground cracks are in the process of environment such as groundwater, which typically has a pH near seven, they even grow faster. We call such things a near neutral pH stress corrosion cracking. In the bottom picture, you can we can see that how it looks like on a real pipeline. My research is to predict its gross behaviour so that the remaining life of cracked pipelines can be estimated and actions can be taken before bad things happen. Near neutral pH stress corrosion cracking propagates inherently in a random manner since it is affected by many things. Such as different ions in the groundwater, different kinds of stresses apply to the crack the morphology of the crack and so on and so forth. Actually, even until today, this real mechanism remains unknown. Therefore, let's just forget about this mechanism and use a gamma stochastic process to predict this growth path. Gamma process is very suitable for predicting structural degradation because it is monotonically increasing. The parameters in the gamma process are uncertain and their probabilistic characteristics can be evaluated using hierarchical Bayesian technology and Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation. The heterogeneity in the degradation paths of this kind cracked pipes units is consider by introducing a random effect to the basic gamma process. Getting a little bit lost about these fancy names. That's totally fine. Essentially, my model will end up generate lots of growth paths. The real growth path is within the upper and lower boundaries. Pick the very middle one and I am confident it is a good prediction. Fix the cracked pipe in time according to the predicted growth past and it will be safe again.

Brianna Rector

Video Transcript:

Transition metals such as iron, copper and nickel are found in a wide range of alloys commonly used in industry. One concern with the use of these alloys in industrial settings is the long term potential for corrosion to weaken them and shorten their lifespans. But being able to predict the extent of metal loss within the actual service environment of the material, has long been considered by corrosion scientists to be the grand challenge. Currently, there's no corrosion model that can be used to predict corrosion of different metals and alloys over a wide range of solution conditions and time periods. This is because corrosion is a uniquely complicated system. Not only do we need to consider the electrochemical reactions of the metal surface, but we have to be concerned about the metal ions that go from the solid to the solution phase. We also need to be able to describe the different transport processes and chemical reactions that these metal ions can undergo once they are in solution, which change with time and solution conditions. Because of this, existing reaction kinetics don't work to predict corrosion in these systems. Recent research from our group has demonstrated that corrosion can be a nonlinear process, meaning that feedback loops between steps within the mechanism are possible. This is where the species that are produced by one reaction affect the rate or progress of another reaction in the system. These feedback loops generate periodic behaviour that can't be described as existing rate models that focus on describing the overall process instead of the dynamics between the individual steps. So to address this grand challenge of predicting corrosion in service environments, our group is focused on developing a corrosion mechanism and determining the parameters within the service environment that affect corrosion behaviour, like pH, typing concentration of oxidant, and flow rate. Since we have a pretty good idea of the corrosion mechanism, I've been able to carefully and systematically design electrochemical experiments that can be used to extract rates and rate parameters for key steps within the mechanism. In an electrochemical experiment, the net current is related to the rate of the redox reactions and is dependent on time and potential. While the rate of other chemical and transport reactions are dependent on the solution environment. We can vary the transport, redox and chemical environments and determine how they change the time dependent behaviour of the current. We can then examine the relationship between current and potential to get dynamic information that we can use to fine tune rate and flex equations for different steps. We can also use the experimental information to validate the model at different stages of development. While this modelling work is just beginning, this mechanistic approach to corrosion rate models gets us one step closer to tackling the grand challenge of predictive corrosion modelling.

Thao Do supervised by Clara Wren.

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You just finished dinner and you remembered it's garbage day. You take your waste, wrap it up and put it on the curb. Sounds pretty simple right? Now what happens when the waste is radioactive, now it gets a little bit more complicated. Radioactive waste is a waste form that contains a radioactive nuclear substance, and this is commonly thought of as used fuel from reactors. But over a reactor's lifetime, various components can become radioactively contaminated. Over the past several decades, reactor pipes have corroded and oxide layers have formed on these surfaces. Since these pipes are used in a nuclear reactor, these corroded surfaces are also exposed to radionuclides that can be incorporated into the oxide layers. By removing the active surface contaminants on these pipes, the underlying metal substrate would be free releasable and we won't need to worry about handling and storing kilometers of pipes. And in addition to this, the amount of radioactive waste that needs to be handled, transported and stored would be much smaller. So what surface decontamination technologies can be used? Well, chemical reagents can be highly toxic and the process generates a lot of liquid waste. Whereas, physically abrasive techniques require workers to be in close proximity to a radioactive environment. Now how about using a laser? A laser can be remotely operated. It is a cost-effective approach and lower volumes of waste is generated throughout the decontamination process. Now, in my research, I study and utilize a near infrared laser to remove surface contaminants from a corroded reactor outlet. To explore this, I took reactor alloys such as carbon steel and iron-based alloy and corroded them at high temperatures to simulate iron oxides that form in a nuclear reactor environment. After corrosion, I optimized the laser parameters to obtain the ideal cleaning and oxide removal efficiency for the samples I prepare. The laser that I use in my research has a wavelength of 1064 nanometers. Now, this is really important, because iron oxides are transparent at this wavelength and when you laser pulse a corroded surface what happens is, the energy is deposited at the metal oxide interface and this results in the formation of a high temperature, high pressure, plasma that can expel oxides from the metal surface. This cleaning mechanism is important because in the context of removing radioactive contaminants, ejecting radioactive oxides as large fragments, makes collection easier. Whereas, if you were to use a uv laser, you would vaporize the iron oxides instead, which is not ideal. After laser cleaning, various surface analysis techniques were used to verify and confirm the successful cleaning of the metal surface. My research demonstrates that near-infrared lasers provide a safe, affordable, and efficient alternative to cleaning contaminated reactor alloys, which will greatly reduce the amount of radioactive waste produced in Canada.

Simulation of Magnetic Flux Leakage Sensing Signals to Improve Accuracy of Sizing Corrosion Defects on Oil and Gas Pipelines

The proposed project is aimed at improving the accuracy of magnetic flux leakage (MFL)-based inline inspection tools used to detect and size corrosion defects on oil and gas transmission pipelines. The research will use sophisticated data analysis methodologies to develop algorithms to estimate the corrosion defect sizes and profiles based on the MFL signals. The research has important practical implications for the pipeline corrosion management program as it allows pipeline integrity engineers to more accurately evaluate the remaining capacity of corroded pipelines and develop more effective corrosion mitigation plans. The project will train one PhD student for one year.

Effect of Passivation after Additive Manufacturing of Titanium Alloy on Corrosion Resistance and Protein Binding

It is unclear whether additively manufactured (AM) titanium alloys for biomedical implant applications need to be passivated (immersion in acid to provide a higher corrosion resistance)and whether this procedure has any advantage. ADEISS is Western’s enterprise on its way to commercialize Health Canada approved AM implants. This project will investigate the effect of passivation of those materials on corrosion behavior, released metals, and interactions with proteins, using state-of-the-art methods. This project will provide a solid basis for a decision on the use of passivation during the industrial process of AM titanium implants.

Nanophotonic Enhancement of Silicon Quantum Dot Emission

CThere is currently an effort to merge the electrical and optical properties of light emitting quantum structures, due to their potential application in photonic and optoelectronic devices. However, there is first a need to increase the light emission of Si-QDs systems because at present the light emitted from these nanoparticles is too low in intensity to be used in practical applications. This study works to obtain first proof-of-concept experimental demonstrations of the ability of nanophotonic structures to improve optical and electrical efficiencies of Si quantum emitters.

Martin Badley supervised by James Noel.

Video Transcript:

When you think about a clean energy future, the first examples that come to mind are probably wind, solar and hydro electricity. But with these energy sources come many challenges. Each one can be severely limited by geographical location and weather patterns to provide a reliable base for clean energy. What about nuclear power? To put things in perspective, burning 400 kilograms of coal, 410 liters of oil, or 350 cubic meters of natural gas could each be replaced by a 20 gram pellet of uranium approximately the size of a quarter. These pellets have such high energy density that 10 pellets could power the average Canadian household for an entire year. And when scaled up, a single reactor, containing millions of these pellets could power over half a million homes for a year. Now, power generation in a nuclear reactor occurs through the splitting of atoms to produce heat as a byproduct of atoms splitting the uranium pellets removed from a reactor now known as used fuel, containing radioactive isotopes. Over time, the radioactivity of these isotopes will decrease, but the used fuel will remain a human health risk for hundreds of 1000s of years. For the long term safety of people in the environment, we need to understand the fundamentals of uranium corrosion, to appropriately handle and dispose of the waste produced. The question I'm working to answer is, if a container housing the used fuel fails, what happens to the used fuel inside? To explore this scenario, I am using uranium pellets that were not used in a reactor to investigate the effect of composition and structure prior to irradiation. I let these samples corrode in saltwater and use electrochemistry and solution analysis to record how the material changes over time. The data from this research will be used in computer models to justify Canada's plan for nuclear waste disposal and ensure the safety of people and the environment for generations to come.

Daniela Cappello supervised by Joe Gilroy.

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I bet you're watching this on your phone or computer or tablet right now, aren't you? Yeah, I thought so. I mean, this is a video after all. So look at all those colours on the screen. Pretty nice right? Now what if I told you that the reason you're seeing these different colours is because of research like mine. I'm a synthetic chemist. And my research focuses on developing new molecules, specifically dyes that conduct electricity and emit light in the solid stat. So why are these guys important? Well, they're the colour you're seeing on your screen right now. In my research, I'm most interested in the ability to tune the properties of these dots, where the main framework is shown on the screen in white, based on changing the groups with the R one and R two positions. So what's unique about this particular molecular framework is that unlike most organic molecular dyes that emit light in solution only, these dyes emit light in the solid state. So in the lab, we can install different atoms and molecular groups at these R one and R two positions. And that allows us to observe colours ranging from yellow to red to green, and orange. Structural modifications have other benefits too. Like altering how well these molecules can conduct electricity, and more specifically, how easily these molecules can gain or lose electrons. So being able to understand and alter the electronic properties of these dyes, we can potentially save energy required for next generation of electronic devices to operate. Not only can we alter the colours that these guys admit, and how well they conduct electricity, we can even do so using relatively inexpensive starting materials. And oftentimes in only two synthetic steps. I've been able to make several grams of dye within a day or two for a fraction of the cost for what's required to generate similar dyes with comparable properties. So what my fundamental research and understanding ultimately leads to is the ability for these dyes to be incorporated into technologies such as organic light emitting diodes, or more commonly known as OLEDs, where the emissive and conductive layer require conductive dyes that emit light in the solid state. These devices in reality are very thin, and sometimes even flexible materials. These bullets can then be used in modern day electronics and display technologies, such as your television, your phone, your computer, your tablet, the same technology you're using to watch this video right now. In our world, technology is important and continued research of these emissive dyes and conductive materials is essential for the demands of the technologically driven world that we live in today. Thank you

Harpreet Atwal supervised by Michael S.H. Boutilier.

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What if I told you that we could solve the world's water crisis. About 20% of the world's population has no access to safe drinking water, and the number continues to rise as the population grows and freshwater sources decline. Reverse Osmosis desalination has been the solution for various Middle Eastern countries as their only source of water. The technology uses a membrane barrier and energy to separate salts from the water. That required energy to pump the water through the membrane barrier accounts for more than half of the cost to make drinking water. Discovered in 2004 graphene, a material that looks like a honeycomb, without the piece of course, is the most promising material for our membrane. It gives hundreds of times higher production rates than conventional polymer membranes, with the provided benefits of lowering operating costs. How you ask, because it is single atom thick. The thinness of graphene gives the most minimal resistance for fluid flow, giving us those high production rates. Graphene can support holds the size of small molecules, allowing smaller molecules to pass through, while completely blocking larger molecules. Unfortunately, the lattice is so densely packed that it's impermeable to gases and liquids. So engineers need to use methods like electron beam irradiation to generate nanometer scale pores in graphene sheets to make them selectively permeable. But imagine having to make trillions of nanometer holes per centimeter squared exactly the same size, which is even harder if you want to move to bigger sizes. So here is where we come in. Our goal is to develop atomically thin membranes that solve the problem by replacing the graphene layer with the naturally polished chorus to the Polymer. Such materials naturally have a high density of nanometer pores repeated exactly over the entire surface area. This technology has great potential as different materials will have different sized holes, making this lift up to different molecules extending the range of separation application possible from this technology. Molecular dimensional simulations, on one such material, Graphite Diene, showed the rapid transport of water while rejecting all seawater ions at 100% due to higher energy barriers opposing ion conduction than that for water. So what does this mean? It means that we will be able to use membranes to filter seawater with the high production rates, high selectivity while needing less energy to operate, solving the imminent world water crisis.

Sarai Guerrero supervised by Lijia Liu.

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Imagine you're going to a hospital to investigate an abnormality inside of you. There are two ways to do this. The first way is through a invasive procedure, something that usually involves entering in the body and can sometimes cause harm to the individual. The second way is through non invasive procedures. An example of this would be drinking or having some contrasting dye injected into you, and then waiting some time for getting an X- ray, and then the tissues actually appear on the X-ray because the contrasting dye has bonded to them. Now, you don't just have to use a contrasting dye for this. Sometimes it's possible to use a compound that is energized or gets excited before putting into the person's body. And it actually is able to produce a light or a persistent luminescence for many hours after that first excitation event. These are persistent phosphors. And they have been in development for years. One such type is called Zinc, Gallogermanate, or ZGGO, or ZIGGO, made from zinc, gallium, germanium, and oxygen, plus a doping ion, depending on what you want to use it for. The impressive thing about this is that it is a persistent luminescence or persistent phosphor in the near infrared region that is just below the visible light here. And the reason that's important is because that is what's going to allow us to have that deep tissue imaging, so that we're actually able to visualize a biological activity, or even visualize cancer cells within the body without having to do invasive procedure. And it does that because of how it is structured. Now, since it has been first reported down now many ways to actually synthesize this ZGGO. But we don't really know a lot if the different synthesis methods will affect the physical properties and optical properties of ZGGO. As well as if the reported observations in the different synthesis methods are repeatable across all synthesis methods. So in my work, I'm going to use a synchrotron radiation facility or a synchrotron. A very large building size instrument that is able to produce high energy X- ray or hot X-rays in order to investigate the actual atom bonding of ZGGO and as well as the physical nature and optical properties. In order to see if the synthesis methods do change that physical nature and if the optical properties change, as well as if the observations are repeatable, in order to gain more understanding of this and hopefully find a more definitive synthesis method.

Song Gao supervised by Roberta L. Flemming.

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Let's imagine a scenario that a young man is giving a diamond ring to his lovely girl asking her, will you marry me? More than girl's best friend. When people think of element carbon, they are more likely to think of charcoal used for their delicious barbecue. However, for scientists like us, it's fascinating to see how the specific arrangement of element carbon being transformed into diamonds. Diamonds are our window into the earth. And in fact, they originate from the deep manhole and are carried by a strange rock called kimberlites to the surface. Surprisingly, less than 1% of kimberlites are economic. So how do we target new diamond bearing deposits effectively? And what would be the optimal method to activate future exploration? And that is where my story begins. Luckily, yeah, decent to diamonds, kimberlites also deliver a rarity of high request toss called indicator minerals. To date, mining companies rely on the chemical composition of this minerals to identify diamond rich kimberlites. The bad news is that such matters require complex sampling procedures, expensive cost, and most importantly, they are not universally applicable. So what if we could have a better technology that is capable of analyzing the crystals from different perspectives, but in a more cost effective manner? To answer this crisis, I will use my X-ray beam to bombard the crystals to collect the structure information, because each of them has distinct structural fingerprints. My X-ray beam will return a very unique signal, which in turn can be utilized to classify the crystals and develop future exploration methods, innovatively and the cost effectively. By using the X-ray I'm one step closer to the next generation of diamond deposits. In the bigger picture, it will help us search for a wide range of gemstones or equipped our missions to find a new resources or asteroids or even Mars or even to the future, we can truly find diamonds in our solar system through the better technology like my X-ray. Here is the answer to the question. Will you marry me? Of course I will. But let me see what the diamond ring looks like first. Thank you.

Yaozhu Li supervised by Phil McCausland and Roberta L. Flemming.

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Like our human body is composed of millions of cells, all the Earth like planets and asteroids are formed by millions of minerals. I'm studying one of the most important mineral called olivine. Olivine space rock or meteorites experience a quite different deformation compared to those others. Some dramatically experience hypervelocity impacts, also known as shock from interplanetary collisions during their formation or transformation to Earth. In this catastrophic events, the peak pressure can be over 60 gigaparts, and such deformation is impossible to experience on Earth. Conventionally, we can observe this special deformation by examining sample's textures, such as extinctions, fractures, or recrystallization. These textures are all being crystals in responding to the deconstructive plastic deformation from shock. However, they do not provide any more information about what exactly happens to Crystal lattices. Therefore, in my study, we observe the shock phenomenon by X-ray Diffraction. This technique uses a beam of X-rays that diffract as crystal lattice planes and produce a series of patterns spreading along circular rings, our XRD image. From discrete spots to streaks, or to a realm of spot, these patterns represent sub domain disorientation from now uniformly distributed strings produced by shock. We call those patterns string related mosaicity. In the meantime, we program a powerful algorithm with a Lorentzian and a Gaussian distribution function to mirror, answer and quantitate data in my lab. We also utilize the electron beam electron backscatter diffraction to examine the crystal structure changes. This technique allows me to make observation on nanoscale to investigate the angle of subdomain rotation, and how it compares to surrounding rings and enables me to determine if the sub domain have preferred orientation along the certain crystallographic axis or if the lattice is playing a favorable for such motion. To gather this two phenomena known as sleep system that involves atomic bomb breaking and rebounding as a result of migrating dislocation increased those structures by deformation. From petrographic textures to XRD pattern and from Astroanalysis to sleep system investigation, by integrating all the observation, it can help us to answer the question like, how all have increased their response to the extreme shock effects and what we expect to see. Finally, you might want to ask why we care. It is because olivine widely appears on earth like planets, as well as asteroids. By studying olivine, it is not only expanding our knowledge on mineral properties, but also enhancing our understandings on the formation of other planets as well as the solar system.

Xinyi Li supervised by Wankei Wan.

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Hepatocellular carcinoma is one of the most common primery liver cancers and it is responsible for around 9.6 million deaths in 2018. Typically in each session of treatment patients require two injections. A track emotion into the tumour supplying vessel, followed by a second injection continue larger particles to block the same blood vessel. By doing this, tumour cells can be killed because of this therapeutic effect of the drug and also lack of sufficient nutrients and oxygen for them to grow. However, this can happen that when patients are waiting for their second injection, the drug diffuses out from its original formulation, enters blood stream, travels to other parts of the body and kills your healthy cells. Patients can be suffering from severe side effects and three months after this session they can be told that they need to take an additional one to sufficiently shrink the tumour. However, this could be really challenging because the insoluble blocking material from the original session has already permanently blocked the tumour supplying vessel. So what can we do now to have a better tumour response. This is where my research comes in. My project is to develop an all in one drug delivery system to adjust the limitations of the current delivery formulations. We use a biocompatible polymer as the base and anchor functional nanoparticles into this polymer matrix. The complete package is in the proper range of size to plug it in the tumour supplying vessel and is highly cross linked, porous polymer network can hold large amounts of drug in it and release the drug in a controllable manner over a long period of time. And the nanocomponents in the system make it detectable under more imagining techniques. So during the procedure it can provide really useful information to the doctor. And you might be wondering what will happen to this package once the drug has been completely released. Well it will break down into smaller pieces and dissolve in body fluid. So it will disappear eventually. Need another session of treatment, this time the answer could be yes. So with one single injection of one package we’re able to achieve multiple desirable functions all at once. We are hoping that in the future when patients are taking this type of treatment, we’ll have better tumour response with minimal side effects.

Zachary Gouveia supervised by Jesse Zhu.

Video Transcript:

When a foreign object is implanted into your tissue, your body can either choose to accept or reject it. Well many of these implantful medical devices possess adequate mechanical integrity, they lack in interface to promote this positive physiological response. For orthopedic and dental medical devices, the interface should promote bone in-growth to ensure the implant remains fixed, while also providing an antimicrobial effect to ensure the implant does not become affected and subsequently loosen. Many approaches in the past have focused on this problem from one side or the other, by either developing a material that can promote bone in-growth or by developing an antimicrobial coating material, the problem being the combination between the two while maintaining clinical viability. Hi I’m Zach and through my work in Doctor Jesse Zhu’s lab we believe that we have come up with the viable technology in the development of a multifunctional clinically translatable coating. Before developing a multifunctional coating it’s important that we evaluate some of our design constraints. The first being that we want this coating material to be able to be cured at relatively low temperatures. The Second being that we want this coating material to be able to be robust to the sheer and tensile forces experienced on the medical device upon implantation, and the last being that the ability for the coating material to be autoclavable so that is can maintain clinical viability. Now that we have assessed our design constraints, it’s time to tackle the problem. The first part of the problem being actually designing the coating framework. For this framework we evaluated bioactive glasses to be an appropriate material given their ability to promote bone in-growth and their robustness in vivo. The only problem being, with traditional bioactive glasses is they often need to be cured at relatively high temperatures to remove Calcium salt bi-products and with traditional calcium alkoxides they suffer from poor networking abilities. To solve this problem, we have designed a novel calcium alkoxide which can be cured over a period of several days and can also promote the network forming ability. So now that we have our framework it is time to furnish our coating material with antimicrobial components. For this we can use anything from antibiotics to metal nanoparticles to create this antibiofilm effect. Through our results currently we’ve been able to show that we can promote bone in growth factors while providing an antimicrobial effect in the development of a true multifunctional coating.

Mi Li supervised by Clara Wren.

Navid Afrasiabian supervised by Colin Denniston.

Video Transcript:

Imagine, a white plate with a hole in the middle of it and a long strand of spaghetti in the plate. Now someone asks you to move this spaghetti strand from one side to another through the hole without touching it. You’re probably going to shake the plate, tilt it around, and hope that part of the strand is going to find the hole, go through and then pull the rest to the other side. I really don’t know why someone would ask you to do such a thing, or why the plate has a hole in it. But this process is very similar to what I am studying. What I am working on as my thesis is capture process of a single polymer chain. In other words I am trying to understand how a polymer chain in a fluid moves and find the entrance of a nanopore and then goes through. So my system consists of a polymer chain in a fluid, like the spaghetti in the plate, and a nanoscale hole in a solid state world, like the hole in the plate. Now, if you let the polymer chain to move randomly in the fluid it takes ages for the polymer to find the entrance. Exactly like shaking the plate and hoping that the strand goes through. So we added a hydrodynamic flow and studied how this hydrodynamic flow affects the motion of the polymer and this capture process. We observe that not only does this hydrodynamic flow facilitate the arrival of the chain and the finding process but also it deforms the chain in a way that most of the time the ends find the hole first. This is very good news for DNA sequencing scientists, because now they know with hydrodynamic flow they can manipulate the confirmation of the DNA before entering the detecting area.

Mengnan Guo from the Shoesmith/Noel groups

Video Transcript:

What do you think you want to talk about metal corrosion? Right and brown rust at the bottom of your cars. Today I would love to tell you about a specific corrosion. The corrosion of copper coated nuclear was containers containing sulphide solutions. First research motivation. Canada's nationwide electricity production from nuclear power is 16%. for Ontario, it is 56%. Each fuel bundle, as you can see from the figure, can generate enough electricity to power up to 100 homes for a year. As of June 2016, Canada had an inventory of 2.68 million spent fuel bundles which is enough to fill 7-8 hockey rinks to the level of the boards. With that quantity, careful management using a robust plan is required.

Therefore, it is important to develop a safe containment and storage procedure for the permanent disposal of nuclear waste. In Canada, this is our plan. Used fuel bundles will be placed into a cooper-coated nuclear waste container and buried 500 meters into a deep geological repository. The goal is to ensure that safe operation and integrity of the containers over a million years. Since sulphide presence is a major contributor to long term corrosion, let's shift our attention to the bottom left panel discussing copper corrosion in the presence of sulphide. My research focuses on the period long after burial, when sulphides are present and become the dominant threat to the durability of the containers. As you can see from this figure, the production of sulphide is attributed here to the action of sulfate-reducing bacteria from locations remote from the containers. The presence of sulphide can easily drive copper corrosion. To monitor copper corrosion, I use both electrochemical measurements and surface analyses. What do I measure? Potential and current.

Surfaces of copper or then examined after the corrosion tests. One technique that I use is called scanning electron microscopy, which captures images to unfold loads of information including, but not limited to: surface morphologies, and corrosion damage at cross-sections. The second technique that I use is called surface-enhanced Raman scattering. This technique involves shining a laser light onto metal surface, and measuring minute changes in the light as it scatters away from the surface. the technique enhances the fingerprints of a molecule by a million times its normal density. This allows us to study the chemical composition of our corrosion predicts. By understanding that we can better understand the viability of those copper containers. In summary, the goal of this project is to ensure safe operation and integrity longevity of the most containers, protecting people and the environment for generations to come. Thank you.

Trent Gordon from the Gillies group

Ryan Maar from the Gilroy group

Video Transcript:

The United Nations proclaimed 2015 International Year of light and light-based technologies. This was done to recognize the contributions to light science and to highlight the importance of light to humankind. Materials that emit light are used in display technologies and are found in devices such as cell phones and TVs. But they may also be used to help diagnose and treat diseases such as cancer. A key step in developing these two technologies relies on the careful and strategic design of an emissive material. I am a synthetic materials chemist, and my research is focused on designing new molecules, known as dyes, which absorb and emit different colours of light. In particular, I'm interested in how the structure of these dies affects the colour of light that they emit. The dyes that I produce in the lab all have the same general framework, which is shown in light in the same way that Lego can be combined to create new architectures, I utilize reliable and well-established methods to install specific groups of atoms at the R1, R2, and R3 positions of these dyes. In doing so, I am able to tune the colour of emitted light from blue all the way to red.

My research has two main goals. First, I wish to produce guys that have superior performance compared to the current state of the art dyes, and I also wish to produce these dyes as inexpensively as possible. In terms of performance, I have been able to produce a dye that emits red light possesses a remarkably simple structure and is capable of visualizing cells as seen on the image in the far right. In addition, this dye can be produced for $20 a gram. If I was to go and purchase a commercially available dye, it would cost thousands and thousands of dollars per gram. The low cost of production and comparable performance of my dyes makes them ideally suited for use in medicine. Future generations of these dyes will be utilized by surgeons to help precisely locate and remove cancerous tissue without damaging healthy tissue. Ultimately, patients will benefit from a potentially longer and better quality of life and this can be achieved through the careful design of molecular dyes. Thank you.

TianDuo Wang from the Ronald group

Video Transcript: 

Hello, everyone. So I'm sure everyone has instances where they've gone to the store to look for a shirt or new pair of shoes, but couldn't find exactly what they wanted. Now, in those instances, wouldn't have been nice if you could have just-called-up the manufacturer and ask them to make for you exactly what you were looking for. Well, that's what many researchers around the world are currently doing with gene therapy, where we introduced genetic material into disease cells such as cancer and forces these cells to make a unique product that will help us to detect or to treat these diseases. Now, while this approach is extremely attractive, due to his potential, it also carries certain limitations. One of the limitations is the fact that it's not easy to get these genes into cells very efficiently. And it's also difficult to limit off-target effects where normal cells also take up these genes and produce undesirable effects. 

In order to address these limitations, our group has developed something called Tumor Activatable Mini Circles. Now, Mini Circles, as their name suggests, are very small constructs of DNA, that are by their size, easily able to enter the cells and persist there longer than other types of similar constructs. Also, Mini Circles don't require the use of any sort of viruses, and therefore these are very clinically friendly. So what we put on these Mini Circles is a proverbial on and off switch that can only be turned on by the unique selling machinery in a cancer cell. So these switches are not turned on by healthy normal cells. So when these switches are turned on in the cancer cell, they will express the gene has carried on a Mini Circle, which is for a biomarker reporter that can be found in the urine. So essentially, what we can do is screen patients for cancer by looking for this biomarker in the urine, which is minimally invasive and extremely easy to do.

So what we found so far for prostate cancer is that not only were we able to get prostate cancer cells to secrete much higher levels of this reporter than healthy prostate tissue, but that between prostate tumors, tumors that were more aggressive, actually produce much higher levels of this biomarker in the urine. So not only using these minister goes to we tell that the presence of cancer, but we can also tell whether this cancer was aggressive or non-aggressive, potentially helping patient prognosis and future care.

So really, the exciting part about Mini Circles is that we could have replaced this biomarker with any myriad of other genes for things like imaging or therapy. And so what Mini Circles are is a new type of reagent that can serve as the foundation for many, many gene-based cancer specific studies in the future. And so Mini Circles are like your set of instructions for your ideal shirt or pair of shoes that you can take to a manufacturer so that you can always get what you're looking for.

Congratulations to the three successful CAMBR Seed Grant Recipients listed below along with their project proposals!

As Director, Dr. Gillies will work with her colleagues across the Faculties of Science, Engineering, and the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry to advance materials and biomaterials research, at Western, across Canada and internationally. Dr. Gillies is pleased to be continuing her work on this team and enhancing the visibility and reputation of CAMBR and its researchers.

Dr. Gillies is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at the University of Western Ontario. She obtained her B.Sc. degree in Chemistry from Queen's University, Kingston, Canada in 2000. She then moved to the University of California, Berkeley where she completed her PhD degree in 2004 working under the guidance of Jean Frechet. After postdoctoral work at the University of Bordeaux with Ivan Huc, she joined Western in 2006. Her research interests are in the development of biodegradable polymers, stimuli-responsive polymers, phosphorus-containing polymers, and polymer assemblies. Her team is applying these polymers via multidisciplinary collaborations to a range of applications including coatings, drug delivery, and tissue engineering. She has received a number of awards including a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Biomaterials Synthesis (2006-2016), E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship, R. Mohan Mathur Award for Excellence in Teaching, Early Researcher Award (Ontario), Florence Bucke Science Award, and Fallona Interdisciplinary Science Award (Western).

To promote collaboration among our researchers and connect researchers to work on interdisciplinary projects, CAMBR is pleased to offer up to 3 seed grants of up to $10,000 each to initiate innovative and impactful collaborative projects between CAMBR members. The deadline for submission is January 31, 2019.

Congratulations to CAMBR member Prof. Lars Konermann on his election as a new Fellow the Royal Society of Canada.

Congratulation to Prof.  Elizabeth Gillies on her election to the Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists.

More information on the Royal Society of Canada can be found here .

CAMBR will offer up to 4 awards of $1500 each for trainees to attend an international conference. Additional information was circulated by email. For more information please contact egillie@uwo.ca. The deadline for submission is Nov. 30, 2018 by 4 pm.

CAMBR is pleased to announce the recipients of the summer  2017 research awards (at $4500 each + supervisor contribution; 16 weeks of full-time placement) at Western on a competitive basis in the form of Advanced Materials and Biomaterials Interdisciplinary (AMBI) Undergraduate Research Awards. 

Mason Hermann worked with Robert Hudson (Chemistry) and Robert Bartha (Medical Biophysics) on Caspase Sensitive PET Imaging Agents.

Mark Wheatley worked with Roberta Flemming (Earth Science) and Peter Simpson (Physics) on Calibration of Strain in Materials.