By Catarina Chagas, Research Outreach and Events Specialist
Queen’s and the Kingston community prepare for popular science festival recently proclaimed an official day on May 7.
Leon's Centre in Downtown Kingston will host over 30 hands-on science activities for people of all ages.
From a bird walk across City Park to seeing real fossils of Ice Age creatures, Queen’s will be once again hosting its favourite hands-on science event: Science Rendezvous. After being canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic and pivoting to virtual in 2021, the Kingston-based science festival is ready for an in-person comeback. Earlier this year, Mayor Bryan Paterson, on behalf of the Kingston City Council, proclaimed May 7, 2022 as “Science Rendezvous Kingston Day” in the City of Kingston.
“I like to say Science Rendezvous Kingston is like a spring garden that bursts into full bloom each May. It is colourful, diverse and waiting to be walked through, discovered and enjoyed,” says Professor Emerita in the Faculty of Education Lynda Colgan, who has been leading the event in Kingston for the past decade.
Science Rendezvous is part of Science Odyssey, a country-wide science festival powered by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to celebrate Canadian research in all STEM areas. This year will mark the 11th annual Science Rendezvous celebrated in Kingston.
The free, family-oriented event at the Leon’s Centre in downtown Kingston will feature Queen’s research in the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). A large team of volunteers, including many Queen’s faculty, staff and students will be on hand to help the public navigate through the exhibits and answer visitor’s questions. Over 30 interactive displays will be set up, covering topics like space research, the human brain and heart, mining, climate, robotics and more.
Exhibitors include the Arthur B. McDonald Canadian Astroparticle Physics Research Institute and SNOLAB, the Queen’s Cardiovascular Imaging Network at Queen's (CINQ Lab), the Chemistry Department, the Department of Physics, Engineering Physics & Astronomy, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, and the Queen’s Baja Dune Buggy team.
Outdoor activities are also part of Science Rendezvous 2022.
That same day, the Kingston Frontenac Public Library will host two different hands-on workshops, “Ice Age”, for grades 4-6, and “Youth Climate Lab Policy Jam,” for secondary students. While these activities are also free, pre-registration is required due to limited space.
Ahead of the big day, the Science Rendezvous team will offer a sneak peek of the activities at Kingston’s Springer Market Square on Wednesday, May 4 from 3-6 pm where the public will have the chance to interact with robots, look inside working beehives, see fossil skulls from pre-historic giant mammals, and operate a ping pong ball cannon.
The program for this year’s science festival also includes virtual presentations and workshops running from May 6-13, including a virtual tour of SNOLAB, Canada’s deep underground research laboratory near Sudbury, Ontario, and a presentation on how robots can improve the daily work of dairy farms. Those virtual activities require pre-registration.
On May 4, the Science Rendezvous Kingston team is also launching STEM on DEMAND, a collection of resources for educators and families to keep STEM learning alive all year long. “With over 30 groups providing videos, activity booklets and instruction sheets, children can learn and have fun to extend the Science Rendezvous experience in many purposeful and engaging ways,” says Dr. Colgan.
For more information and registration links, access the website.
By Catarina Chagas, Research Outreach and Events Specialist
Queen’s researcher Amy Wu investigates how people walk, building knowledge that can lead to the development of robots that can help people with disabilities.
The state-of-the-art Spot robot, a collaborative research tool at Ingenuity Labs, can be used to study topics ranging from autonomous monitoring of remote sites to directly assistance of humans during joint tasks. The robot is capable of walking at fast speeds, on uneven terrain, and up and down stairs, making it highly suitable for test and deployment in the range of environments required for practical applications.
Most people take walking for granted, as this is something they master as toddlers and remains intuitive throughout the rest of their lives. For Amy Wu, the Mitchell Professor in Bio-inspired Robotics in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, walking means much more: human mobility is her object of research.
Dr. Wu pays close attention to how humans move in regular and challenging conditions, looking for insights that will change the way we think and build assistive technologies. Her research blends two interests: biomechanics and robotics, with a focus on locomotion and balance control. In a nutshell, Dr. Wu’s goal is to understand how humans move to help improve human mobility.
“The idea is to study the principles of how humans walk and balance, and use these insights to build better robots,” she explains, noting that there’s a variety of potential applications, from walking robots to wearable devices and exoskeletons that will restore mobility for people with disabilities.
A member of the Ingenuity Labs Research Institute, Dr. Wu’s team uses state-of-the-art technology to investigate human gait and balance. Volunteers in the lab wear reflective markers all over their bodies and walk in front of a high-resolution recording camera and over a platform that measures the force their feet apply to the ground. Additionally, the researchers monitor respiration – specifically, oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide expenditures to better understand the how much energy people exert while walking.
Dr. Wu meticulously observes how the human body behaves under different conditions. She pays attention, for instance, to how different joints bend, or how high one needs to lift their feet to avoid tripping, or how a faster or slower gait changes the way the body moves.
“We are also starting to study how people move outside. We monitored volunteers walking in a loop around campus in the summer months and then during winter, looking at how they change their gait to avoid slipping and falling,” says Dr. Wu, noting that there’s not a lot of studies that have looked at stability in walking outdoors – doing experiments in these settings poses some extra challenges to the research, because the environment can’t be completely controlled.
Knowledge obtained through this in-depth investigation of human motion can be applied in a variety of ways, including the previously mentioned wearable devices, or in the development of legged robots that can walk side-by-side with people to help them out, or even robots built to explore places no human can reach – Traveling to another planet? A location devastated by a natural disaster? One can imagine innumerous possibilities.
But while it is easy to dream of imaginative scenarios, Dr. Wu’s feet are firmly planted on the ground. Part of her research is looking at the practical ways in which robots can move from sci-fi movies and books into interacting and supporting humans in their everyday lives. That includes how to balance function and design to facilitate the interaction between humans and robots, which is crucial in developing robots that will help people in their daily tasks. We need to ensure our assistive robots are easy to operate, safe, and, ideally, affordable.
Queen's Engineering researchers designed an exoskeleton that improves walking efficiency, allowing users to walk further while using less energy. The study was featured in the leading academic journal Science. Learn more.
There’s also a lot of practical and ethical questions that need to be answered.
“If robots were everywhere, walking with us, carrying our groceries, or working by our side, how would they affect the way we behave? How can we design robots to be more acceptable and integrated with the society?” asks Dr. Wu.
Those are important questions the team keeps in mind while investigating how humans move and how robots can improve mobility in people with disabilities – one step at a time.
As a member of the international group tasked with updating the Magna Charta Universitatum – the declaration of university freedoms and principles that was first signed in Bologna in 1988 – I am struck by the extent to which the intervening three decades have altered the global consensus about the nature and function of universities. Where the original document spoke eloquently to the fundamental values of the academy, the new Magna Charta Universitatum 2020 reaffirms those values but also expands upon their social function and utility. I would summarise the shift this way: we have moved from an understanding of universities as defined primarily by their ability to transcend historical contingency to a more complicated view, which asserts that timeless principles such as academic freedom and institutional autonomy are the platform from which the academy must engage with history.
If the situation in Europe and around the world in 1988 made it important to speak up for the freedoms without which teaching and research would be impoverished, by 2020 it had become equally important to speak of the responsibilities incumbent on institutions by virtue of the privileges accorded to them. The reality of rapid climate change has brought urgency and authority to this new view of universities, as have parallel trends in the social, cultural, and political climate, and “education for sustainable development” has emerged as the increasingly dominant model for global higher education – one which fuses the concerns of environment, society, and economy.
Recent columns in Times Higher Education have admirably described the diverse ways in which the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been intrinsic to this reorientation of the global academy: as a rallying point for students and staff, as an accountability framework, and as a global language for political action, for example. Here at Queen’s University, the SDGs have been an important frame for our current planning process, and in all of those ways have influenced the manner in which we understand and wish to articulate our mission.
At one point in the process, an influential and valued friend of the university expressed some irritation to me about the way in which the SDGs had come to dominate and disrupt the university’s normally untroubled and inwardly-focused dialogue with itself about mission and values. “And in any case,” came the throwaway dismissal, “there’s nothing original or new about aligning with the SDGs.” Of course, that is true in 2021, but is it relevant? If a university is able to maximise its global impact, does the inherent originality or novelty of its planning parameters matter? In such exchanges – still occurring, I’m certain, on campuses everywhere – we can see that the changing consensus about which I wrote at the start is not yet complete.
It seems to me, in fact, that much of the value of the SDGs as an organising framework for universities resides in their not being proprietary or “original” to one institution, or to an exclusive group of institutions. It has often been pointed out that they now provide a shared language which helps universities in diverse geographical, political, and socio-economic locations understand and build upon the commonality of their work in both teaching and research. Adoption of the SDGs, however variously that is done from institution to institution, is turning the “global academy” from a rhetorical to a real construct, and I can’t imagine why it would be in the interests of any university to hold itself aloof from that transformation. Having watched our planning process unfold at Queen’s over the last two years, I can confirm that what the SDGs do at the global level, they do also at the level of the individual institution, providing a common language that provokes and sustains dialogue – not only between disciplines, but between the academic and non-academic parts of the operation.
I want to end by commenting on the excitement generated when siloes are broken open and when people and units understand how they are united with others in a common purpose and in service to the greater good. To cultivate that understanding has been the primary objective of planning at Queen’s for the last two years, and preparing our first submission to the Impact Rankings has been an intrinsic part of that process of learning and self-discovery. Naturally, we are delighted and excited by where we find ourselves in the rankings, but we are energised in a more profound way by the knowledge of what synergies and collaborations exist or appear possible both within our university and in the global academy.
The first 16 SDGs point to the areas in which we want to have impact. The 17th tells us what the whole project is really all about: acting in community for the communal good.
By Catarina Chagas, Research Outreach and Events Specialist
Queen’s places 7th in international rankings out of over 1,500 institutions in advancing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
Capturing 7th position globally, Queen’s is ranked in the top 10 of the Times Higher Education (THE) Impact Rankings for the second year in a row. The rankings measure the actions universities are taking to advance the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) both within and beyond their local communities. This 2022 international competition saw participation from over 1,500 post-secondary institutions (up from 1,240 in 2021).
Created in 2019, the THE Impact Rankings are the only international assessment to evaluate how universities’ programs and initiatives align with the SDGs. This set of 17 wide-ranging goals is central to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a universal call to protect the planet and its people.
"I am incredibly proud of the Queen’s community for this repeat stellar performance," says Patrick Deane, Principal and Vice-Chancellor, Queen’s University. "The ranking recognizes the sustained impact we are having in our local and global communities, but also serves to inspire future action fueled by our collective intellectual curiosity, passion to achieve, and commitment to collaboration – key to our mission and values."
Using calibrated metrics and indicators across four key areas – research, teaching, outreach, and stewardship – the rankings assess hundreds of data points and qualitative evidence that tangibly measure the impact of higher education institutions in addressing urgent global challenges. Since its inaugural year in 2019, participation in the THE Rankings has increased from 450 institutions to 1,500 participating institutions across 110 countries in 2022. This includes 400 first-time ranked institutions and 24 Canadian universities.
"The Times Higher Education Impact Rankings are unique in examining universities’ impact on society, through each of the 17 United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals," says Phil Baty, Chief Knowledge Officer, Times Higher Education. "Canada is one of the outstanding performers in this ranking, with ten universities in the world top 50 – and it is great to see Queen’s among Canada’s leading institutions, making the world top 10 and excelling in its contribution to SDG 1, and SDG 11, and SDG 16, in particular. It is important to be able to identify and celebrate the work universities do to make the world a better place."
Queen’s performance
Queen’s results once again reflect the cross-university collaboration and partnership of dozens of units across faculties, portfolios, and departments. Highlights from the 2022 rankings include:
Queen’s was ranked across all 17 SDGs
2nd worldwide for SDG 1: 'No Poverty.' Queen’s strong performance acknowledged the Commitment Scholars program, which provides financial support for students who are members of underserved or underrepresented groups and who have demonstrated leadership in, and commitment to, racial justice, social justice, or diversity initiatives, and Swipe it Forward, a peer-to-peer program that facilitates the donation of meals to students facing food insecurity
2nd worldwide for SDG 16: 'Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions.' In addition to significant collaboration with all levels of government and training the next generation of policy makers though the School of Policy Studies, Queen’s supports academic freedom and is a member of the Scholars at Risk program, which arranges temporary research and teaching positions for scholars whose lives, freedom and well-being are under threat
Queen’s ranked in the top 100 of 12/17 SDGs and in the top 30 of 8/17 SDGs
Evidence of impact
Read the report: Queen's contributions to the UN Sustainable Development Goals: Advancing social impact | 2020-2021 [PDF Report 13 KB]
More than 600 pieces of quantitative and qualitative evidence looked at Queen’s research, teaching, outreach, and stewardship and included:
Queen’s partnership with the Karta Initiative to provide educational opportunities to low-income youth from rural India
The new Queen’s Institute for Global and Population Health, created to boost research, education, service, and collaborative projects that will help advance and decolonize global health systems
Black Youth in STEM, an outreach program engaging Black elementary students in science, technology, engineering, and math programming through fun, hands-on activities in a Black-positive space
Leanpath Spark, a program to measure food waste and foster education and inspire action in Queen’s dining halls
A new Campus Map focused on accessibility to assists campus visitors in navigating Queen’s buildings and accessible routes, entrances, washrooms, and more
The Queen’s University Biological Station, one of Canada’s premier scientific field stations dedicated to environmental and conservation research and outreach
Supporting and connecting women of all ages through the Ban Righ Centre, dedicated to diversity and community building
A website and report created to illustrate Queen’s commitment to the SDGs and showcase programs and initiatives that address some of the world’s most pressing challenges
The Queen's University’s community of exceptional students, researchers, staff, and alumni all contribute to making a positive contribution to social impact and sustainability. For more information on the THE Impact Rankings and how the university is contributing to the SDGs, visit the Advancing Social Impact website.
For the Record provides postings of appointment, committee, grant, award, and other notices set out by collective agreements and university policies and processes. It is the university’s primary vehicle for sharing this information with our community.
Department Head Search - Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering
Dr. Keith Pilkey’s term as Head of the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering ends Dec. 31, 2022.
In accordance with the terms of Article 41 of the Collective Agreement between Queen’s University Faculty Association (QUFA) and Queen’s University, a selection committee will be formed to consider the present state and future prospects of the department, and to assist the Provost and Vice Principal (Academic) in the selection of a Department Head.
Members of the bargaining unit will elect five members. Faculty, staff and students are also invited to nominate staff and students from the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and faculty from cognate disciplines, for membership on the selection committee.
Nominations should be sent to Kevin J. Deluzio (Chair), c/o Jacqueline Hill, Staffing Officer, Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science by May 13, 2022.
Queen’s receives $3 million from the New Frontiers in Research Fund programs for projects pushing the frontiers of knowledge and pioneering solutions to overcome challenges brought on by the pandemic.
Queen’s researchers are developing out-of-the-box solutions to wicked problems.
The Government of Canada has announced a $45 million investment to support high-risk, high-reward research through the New Frontiers in Research Fund (NFRF) Exploration and Research in a Pandemic Context streams. The announcement was made Monday by the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, and the Honourable Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Health. Queen’s researchers have received a total of $3 million in support.
"The NFRF programs challenge researchers to come up with out-of-the-box solutions to complex global problems – from climate change to how we can leverage learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic," says Nancy Ross, Vice-Principal (Research). "Congratulations to our funded research teams for their novel ideas and creativity. I look forward to seeing how these projects progress and evolve."
Pushing the boundaries of research
The 2021 Exploration stream grants funding for programs that propose exciting new areas of research with an interdisciplinary approach. Five Queen’s research programs will receive $250,000 each:
Cao Thang Dinh and Laurence Yang (Chemical Engineering) will work with a team of experts in electrochemical engineering, computational system biology, and microbiology to find solutions to improve the efficiency of bioprocesses – that is, processes that use living cells to convert carbon dioxide, renewable, non-food biomass and waste into chemicals with industrial applications – by powering them with renewable electricity such as wind and solar using an electrochemical process. Their research has potential impact in reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as enabling cost-effective, large-scale production of biodegradable bioplastics to reduce plastic waste.
The genetic and epigenetic origins of cancer are the root of a program led by Anna Panchenko (Pathology and Molecular Medicine) and Maria Aristizabal (Biology). The team will investigate the role of mutations in histone genes in the genesis of cancer using an integrative in silico/ in vivo platform. Histones are proteins that help form the structure of chromosomes and might have the potential to be used as diagnostic biomarkers or targets for therapeutic intervention.
Zongchao Jia (Biomedical and Molecular Sciences) and Yong Jun Lai (Mechanical and Materials Engineering) are partnering to develop a microsensor to help test novel drugs with potential to treat bacterial infections without causing antibiotic resistance. They will work with a family of compounds that, instead of killing the bacteria, reduce their virulence. The immediate application of the research would be to treat infections caused by Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an opportunistic bacterium known for causing severe disease, particularly in immunocompromised patients and those with cystic fibrosis.
A team led by Beata Batorowicz (School of Rehabilitation Therapy) and Sidney Givigi (School of Computing), experts in the fields of rehabilitation science, child development, computer science, engineering, education, and ethics will work together to develop new tools to improve communication for children with neuromotor disabilities. Their idea is to use robots to improve quantity and quality of social interactions, helping children overcome the challenges posed by impaired speech and mobility.
Jason Gallivan (Biomedical and Molecular Sciences/ Psychology) and Anita Tusche (Economics/ Psychology) are looking into the potential of digital technology to protect people from the bodily effects of social isolation – experienced, for example, during the pandemic lockdowns. They aim to understand the multifaceted neurobiological changes that occur during isolation and test how virtual interactions – like video chats – can reduce them. The team expects results could be used to rethink digital technology applications (e.g. remote education, telemedicine) and social policy (e.g. concerning vulnerable populations with limited access to digital resources).
Seeing the pandemic impacts and opportunities through multiple lenses
Understanding how urbanisation affects biodiversity is essential for the sustainability of healthy human and wildlife communities. Scholarly attention is lacking, however, on urbanisation in economically disadvantaged areas. After shifting to community-based research in response to Covid restrictions, researchers Frances Bonier (Biology) and Paul Martin (Biology) began developing a novel, community science method to survey bird populations in cities in developing nations, while working in partnership with local experts and trained participants. Bonier and Martin’s new community science method will allow for important advances in urban ecology, while also addressing the neglect of economically disadvantaged regions in ecological research.
Due to COVID-19, activities that involved singing were restricted, forcing Julia Brook (Drama and Music) and Colleen Renihan’s (Drama and Music) study examining accessible and inclusive music theatre to pivot online. After the online medium proved surprisingly beneficial, particularly for older adults who can experience difficulty travelling to a particular location, Brook and Renihan aim to accelerate the exploration of virtual music theatre to address the pressing need for virtual leisure opportunities for older adults that foster overall well-being. This study is both unprecedented and incredibly relevant given the growing population of older adults in Canada and around the world.
Although we understand what influences mental health, we do not understand the way influences change across situations, nor how they vary between demographics. In response to this gap in understanding and pandemic restrictions highlighting how changes in situation sometimes prevent social interaction, researchers Jonathan Smallwood (Psychology) and Jeffrey Wammes (Psychology) propose developing new methods for quantifying influences on mental health without in-person data collection. Their study will use smartphones to measure a person’s “in the moment” thinking and machine learning will identify how these data are linked to their happiness and productivity. This project could facilitate the creation of a comprehensive mental health database to help researchers and community members better understand how context shapes individual mental health.
The onset of the pandemic came with a huge increase in pandemic-related research, as scientists worked to understand how to reduce transmission and aid in recovery. Journals often struggled to review and disseminate results quickly, leading many researchers to share results publicly without peer review. This increased concerns about the quality and reliability of research findings that policymakers and the public were exposed to, potentially generating confusion, distorting policy, and decreasing some people’s trust in the scientific process. Researchers Christopher Cotton (Economics) and David Maslove (Medicine) are assessing the pandemic experiences of researchers and policymakers who rely on research, as well as exploring novel methods of rapid review and better quality control, including an experiment with a peer-reviewed journal that has been inundated with COVID-related submissions. Their results could revolutionize the ways in which research is reviewed and disseminated, especially during crises.
The waiting time for triage in hospital emergency departments (ED) is an ongoing challenge across Canada. Farhana Zulkernine (School of Computing) and Furkan Alaca (School of Computing) have developed a novel solution to the problem with Triage-Bot: an AI robot used to leverage existing hospital-triage systems by assessing patient’s symptoms and securely linking them to hospital data to assess the criticality of a patient’s health condition. Also deployable to personal residences, this technology could allow remote assessments of patients with COVID or chronic health problems in addition to reducing triage wait time and improving health care services in Canada, overall.
Infants born with complex health conditions require ongoing neonatal follow-up visits to track their health and development to ensure their future wellbeing. The COVID-19 pandemic restrictions have compounded the myriad of geographic and socioeconomic factors posing significant barriers for families to access the care they need. Sandra Fucile (School of Rehabilitation Therapy) and her team at Kingston Health Sciences Centre are proposing the creation of a parent-administered, virtually guided standardised tool for evaluating developmental milestones of at-risk infants. This study has potential to allow for equitable health service delivery to all children across Canada.
The humanitarian crisis in Venezuela is the world’s second largest after Syria. Researchers Susan Bartels (Emergency Medicine) and Amanda Collier (Emergency Medicine) are proposing the use of an app (Balcony.io) to help migrants and humanitarian responders communicate even when travel is restricted, while simultaneously collecting important research data to inform responsive decision making and resource allocation during crises. If successful, this study on the use of Balcony.io in Latin America’s migration crisis will bring the voices and needs of migrants to the forefront, while allowing response teams to pivot in real time to rapidly changing circumstances.
The NFRF is an initiative created by the Canada Research Coordinating Committee. It is managed by a tri-agency program on behalf of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. To find out more about the funding announcement, visit the website.
In recognition of the UN's World Water Day, Queen's researcher Sarah Jane Payne speaks about the importance of water quality and access in combating a global crisis affecting over two billion people.
Dr. Sarah Jane Payne (Civil Engineering)
Clean drinking water is a critical component for sustainable development – from poverty reduction to economic growth and environmental sustainability. Currently, according to the United Nations (UN) there is a global water crisis affecting almost 2.2 billion people who lack access to safe water. To raise awareness of the crisis and support the global work advancing Sustainable Development Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation the UN identified March 22 as World Water Day.
To learn more about innovations in water system infrastructure, the role of sanitation during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the improvements needed to provide equal access to clean water in Canada, the Gazette spoke with Queen’s researcher Sarah Jane Payne (Civil Engineering). An expert in emerging water contaminants and water quality management, Dr. Payne previously worked in the federal public service holding roles in water, wastewater, and environmental policy and regulation for Environment and Climate Change Canada and Health Canada. At Queen’s, she is Co-Lead of the Queen’s COVID-19 Wastewater Surveillance Initiative and Co-Director of the Drinking Water Quality Group (DWQG), an affiliated research program of the Contaminants of Emerging Concern-Research Excellence Network (CEC-REN).
Could you tell us more about the Drinking Water Quality Group and facilities such as the Drinking Water Distribution Lab (DWDL) at Queen’s and how they support your research?
Queen’s is home to two world-class facilities with labs at Mitchell Hall and the Drinking Water Distribution Lab (DWDL). In fact, DWDL is only one of two full-scale research facilities in the world and the only one in North America. When I started working at Queen’s, I quickly discovered that I had many complementary academic interests with DWDL’s lead Yves Filion (Civil Engineering). We formed the Drinking Water Quality Group as a way for us to envision and explore complex, collaborative, and interdisciplinary research, recruit students, and situate Queen’s at the centre for solving critical issues in the water industry.
Currently, the Group is focused on understanding and predicting drinking water quality deterioration and looking for ways to prevent it, specifically through analyzing utilities data collected for regulatory compliance purposes. The DWDL allows us to conduct research in a controlled environment and look at the causes of drinking water discolouration or the accumulation of contaminants on pipe walls and learn about the optimal ways to remove them. We can also conduct smaller scale experiments in Mitchell Hall that allows us to further isolate the key mechanisms. Combining all of this knowledge together, we plan to develop machine learning tools to help predict high risk areas for water quality deterioration. This type of artificial intelligence (AI) tool could allow utilities to optimize their resources by strategically targeting the right areas for maintenance or replacing problematic pipe materials.
Simon van der Plas prepares a wastewater sample for analysis. [Supplied photo]
What is something people may be surprised to know affects their local water quality and what actions could to be taken to minimize harmful effects?
The question I get asked the most is: do I drink tap water? I do! I am a tap water enthusiast, and I enjoy taste testing tap water in different cities. The challenge with local water quality is that the problems can be very localized and can even be specific to your home. Awareness of what issues you might encounter and knowing where to find resources to help is key.
My two biggest "local" water concerns are for private wells and lead service lines. Private wells can become contaminated and pose risks for users such as gastrointestinal illness. The most important thing owners can do is test their wells routinely for microbial contaminants. In Ontario, this water testing is free and there are several resources and actions owners can take to improve their well water quality if needed.
My other big worry is about lead exposure and its harmful effects for infants and children as a powerful neurotoxin. The largest sources of lead in drinking water come from building plumbing materials, such as the service line connecting the distribution system to your house (allowed until 1975), lead tin solder (allowed until 1986), and brass fittings that could contain up to 8 per cent lead (allowed until 2014). Depending on the age of the home, I advise people to connect with their local water utility to ask whether or not lead service lines are expected in their neighbourhood and to have their water tested if needed. If lead is present, there are several options for eliminating it or using a certified treatment device and flushing your taps every day.
Post-Doctoral Fellow Abdul Rahman Alashraf examines the results of a test for viruses. [Supplied Photo]
How did you pivot your wastewater research to confront COVID-19? Your team has been working in partnership with Utilities Kingston, Loyalist Township, the City of Cornwall, and KFL&A Public Health to monitor trends in transmission locally, do you plan to build on your partnerships for future collaborations?
One my undergraduate students asked me if there was a connection between COVID-19 and wastewater. In searching for an answer, I read about some early and important proof-of-concept work out of the Netherlands that also suggested that SARS-CoV-2 wastewater surveillance could be both an early warning tool and non-invasive and inexpensive way to monitor the level of infection in a whole community. There was a lot of initial skepticism that it could be done at all, as detection is almost a needle in a very inhospitable haystack. However, through highly collaborative and open research endeavours provincially, nationally, and globally wastewater-based epidemiology has generated a whirlwind of scientific discovery and insight.
At Queen’s, Stephen Brown (Chemistry) and I lead an amazing team of post-doctoral fellows, technical staff, graduate, undergraduate, and summer students who are working tirelessly in the lab to hone this technique and explore its application possibilities. We have plans to advance wastewater-based epidemiology to monitor other viruses and bacteria as an early warning system for public health decision makers. We are also looking to optimize analysis for other targets and refine the technique as the applications expand.
Our utility and municipal partners are vital to this project and provide sample collection and operational expertise to interpreting sample quality issues. We share the data with our public health unit partners and it is used in their situation awareness and public resources, such as KFL&A Public Health’s COVID-19 in Wastewater dashboard. It is a privilege to do work that is helpful to public health decision makers and an honour to work with the talented people on our team, our partners, as well as our colleagues across Ontario, Canada, and around the world. This project to confront COVID-19 has been the most unexpected, challenging, collaborative, and also the most rewarding work of my career. I’m very excited about our future work together, and the opportunity to protect public health through advancing wastewater science and engineering research.
While Canada is a freshwater-rich country, many here to do not have access to safe and clean water, particularly in Indigenous communities. The federal government has identified water treatment systems and infrastructure as crucial investments with a significant focus on renovating and upgrading existing systems to expand access. What key innovations and developments do you think are needed to retrofit Canada’s ageing water infrastructure for a sustainable future?
For innovations and development, I think of two things. The first is a community-based approach to ensure that the infrastructure is what a community wants, needs, and can operate and maintain. The second is a fulsome definition of sustainability that ensures adequate funding for operation and maintenance, resources for the recruitment, training, and retaining of talent to operate and maintain that infrastructure, and that the infrastructure is robust, efficient, resilient, and climate change ready.
Water is essential to life, and it is a universal need. We need to value it, protect it, celebrate it, and make sure that we can all access it.
By Catarina Chagas, Research Outreach and Events Specialist
New imaging method allows the capture of high resolution and tridimensional images with applications in health care and diagnostics.
The image illustrates the novel Bijective Illumination Collection Imaging (BICI) concept using metasurfaces.
Imaging technologies are key to modern medicine and diagnosis at an early stage, potentially improving patient outcomes. Microscopic imaging allows researchers and professionals to look directly into cells, making it possible to visualize structures and processes that were once invisible. However, an important limitation of current technology is that microscopic imaging in high-resolution is limited to bidimensional (2-D) images obtained in microscope slides, while tissue structures are tridimensional (3-D). For decades, scientists have been looking for a way to address this challenge and obtain 3-D microscopic images.
A paper published in Nature Photonics co-authored by Majid Pahlevani (Electrical and Computer Engineering) and collaborators at Harvard University describes a new technique that can enhance state-of-the-art microscopes, allowing an increase in image resolution, while also making 3-D microscopic imaging possible.
One of the main challenges of imaging on a microscopic scale is tackling diffraction – the rapid spread of tightly focused light – as the phenomenon hampers the obtainment of high-resolution images. In the study, the researchers show that a particular disposition of light and a path created by an ultra-thin optical component composed of an array of nanocolumns on a glass surface (see figures A and B) can break the limitations otherwise imposed by diffraction, thus solving the problem. An optical lens with this arrangement could be built into the next generation of microscopic imaging devices.
“This method, named bijective illumination collection imaging (BICI), can extend the range of high-resolution imaging by over 12-fold compared to the state-of-the-art imaging techniques,” says Pahlevani, an expert in energy and power electronics and their applications in healthcare. He is a member of the Queen’s Centre for Energy and Power Electronics Research (ePOWER). “Unlike conventional imaging techniques, in BICI, the light which illuminates the target and the light collected from the target are distributed along the depth using the nanostructures, making it possible to preserve high resolution imaging along a large depth into the tissue.”
Microscopic imaging in three dimensions enables numerous biological and clinical applications, like providing insight into the intercellular mechanisms, and enabling cancer cell detection and in vivo (in the body) real-time diagnosis.
Another key benefit of the new method is how fast it is to process. “Computationally intensive techniques result in slow imaging, which is not suitable for in vivo imaging,” explains Dr. Pahlevani. “Organs in live patients are not stationary and move, which give rise to artifacts in imaging. Therefore, in vivo imaging requires fast techniques”. Because the new proposed technique is an optical solution for increasing microscopic imaging resolution, it does not require additional computational capacity.
The Nature Photonics paper highlights cancer diagnoses as one of the main applications for the new method: “Pathological changes in the early stages of diseases like cancer are often very subtle and can be easily overlooked. In vivo high-resolution imaging maintained in a large depth range has the potential to enable early and accurate detection and diagnosis”. Dr. Pahlevani is confident BICI can be applied to several existing imaging techniques.
Kevin Deluzio has been appointed to a second five-year term as Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science.
Kevin Deluzio, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, has been reappointed for a five-year term, effective July 1, 2022.
Dr. Deluzio, recently named a 2022 Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada, has served as Dean of Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science (FEAS) since June 2017. Prior to his appointment as Dean, he served as head of the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering from 2014-2017, as well as head of the Human Mobility Research Laboratory at Queen’s.
Throughout his tenure as Dean, Dr. Deluzio has focused on advancing research excellence, expanding experiential learning, and enhancing diversity across the faculty. In the fall of 2020, Dean Deluzio initiated a consultation and strategic planning process to ensure Queen’s remains at the forefront of engineering research and education. The faculty’s new strategic plan, will guide Queen’s Engineering over the next five years as it implements a bold plan to increase research impact, ascend to the forefront of engineering education, and promote engineering for everyone as a platform for diversity and inclusion.
Since becoming Dean, Dr. Deluzio has worked to advance diversity and inclusion across the faculty. Building on Queen’s nationally-recognized Indigenous Futures in Engineering program (InEng; formerly known as Aboriginal Access to Engineering), Queen’s Engineering launched the new Black Youth in STEM program to encourage Black youth in the Kingston area to explore science, engineering, and math and pursue careers in engineering. Working closely with student leaders, Queen’s Engineering also established a local chapter of the National Society for Black Engineers. Queen's Engineering was a founding member of a national program to improve inclusion of Indigenous and Black students pursuing doctoral degrees in engineering, called Indigenous and Black Engineering and Technology (IBET) PhD Project. The faculty also became a signatory of the Engineers Canada 30 by 30 program, created to ensure at least 30 per cent of newly-licensed engineers are women by 2030.
Dean Deluzio has also worked to increase research intensity and advance engineering education. Under his leadership, the faculty launched the Mechatronics and Robotics program, the first new undergraduate engineering program at Queen’s since 2002. During his first term, total research funding has grown by 50 per cent and the number of research graduate students by 25 per cent. The Dean’s Research Fund was used as a means to support large-scale, transformative projects that positions Queen’s Engineering as an international leader in key research areas.
By Teagan Sliz, Research Promotion and Communications Assistant
After a pivot to virtual offerings in 2021, Science Rendezvous Kingston will once again bring Queen’s researchers and community members together in-person to share in science-based fun.
Science Rendezvous Kingston at Leon's Centre in 2019.
Each year, Canada’s national science festival, Science Rendezvous, is held across 30 cities with over 300 events and thousands of hands-on activities. The festival provides participants of all ages with the opportunity to engage with science and to learn about the discoveries being made by Canadian researchers across the nation.
Since 2011, Kingston has been home to one of the most successful local chapters of Science Rendezvous, regularly attracting over 4,000 visitors from across eastern Ontario. Under the leadership of Lynda Colgan, Professor Emerita in the Faculty of Education, Science Rendezvous Kingston is committed to engaging people of all ages with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) research, and creating an unforgettable and educational experience for all attendees.
Virtual Pivot
Last year, Science Rendezvous Kingston had to adapt to limitations brought on by COVID-19. Despite the challenges, Dr. Colgan, Science Rendezvous co-coordinator, Kim Garrett, and a small team orchestrated a successful pivot from in-person to online events, developing a unique 16-day Science Rendezvous program that balanced screen-time sessions and kitchen table or outdoor activities. The events reached over 29,000 people from around the globe.
Science Rendezvous Kingston 2021 featured online activities children could do at home, like this strawberry DNA extraction video.
"Although we hosted live webinars and Q&A sessions, the virtual nature of our event meant that we could record the full session. Soon after the 'live' event, we posted each session on our virtual platform for 'on demand' viewing – a feature that proved to be enormously popular with visitors to the site," says Dr. Colgan.
In recognition of their efforts, the Science Rendezvous Kingston team was awarded the COVID Creative Award by the Board of Directors of Science Rendezvous Canada for executing a successful educational experience for their participants and for their resiliency, creativity, and positivity during these challenging times.
Science Rendezvous 2022
This year, Science Rendezvous Kingston’s theme is ‘DISCOVER’. According to Dr. Colgan, the theme was selected to "highlight the leading-edge STEM research that is being done at Queen’s in all domains and encouraging young students to see themselves as future researchers and scientists who are on a quest to discover solutions to problems that face our world."
Science Rendezvous Kingston will have a hybrid design, offering both virtual and in person options for participants. The hope is that visitors will be able to engage in hands-on learning while preserving the best aspects of 2021’s virtual experience.
These year’s virtual events will include presentations from researchers including Queen’s Astrophysics PhD Candidate Connor Stone, a webinar on robotics use on a dairy farm, a virtual tour of SNOLAB, and a live-streamed hook-up with researchers at a lab in the South Pole.
In addition to webinars and virtual presentations, last year’s popular digital resource, the Daily Book Lists including many Indigenous titles, will once again be available during the 2022 festival. Other digital resources for this year include downloadable self-directed activities such as a geological scavenger hunt and an on-line workshop about how to build an anatomical model of the human GI system.
These virtual and at-home activities will be accompanied by in-person events and workshops including a 'STEM Sampler' in Market Square featuring demonstrations by Ingenuity Labs, Queen’s Physics, the McDonald Institute, Limestone Bee Keepers, and Research Casting International. Visitors to the Leon’s Centre will also be treated to hands-on workshops about the Ice Age and climate change, and a Guided Bird Walk with Dr. Fran Bonier and Dr. Paul Martin through City Park.
Science Rendezvous Kingston 2022 will continue to facilitate events to break down barriers between scientists and the public.
"By bringing science, technology, engineering and math to the streets, we make it possible for visitors across all ages to mix and mingle with award-winning scientists and researchers in the absence of intimidation," says Dr. Colgan. "Informal learning environments like Science Rendezvous can spark student interest in STEM, provide opportunities to broaden and deepen students’ engagement, reinforce scientific concepts and practices introduced during the school day, and promote an appreciation for and interest in the pursuit of science in school and in daily life."
Science Rendezvous Kingston 2022 will run from May 6 to May 20. Learn more about the program on the website.
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