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Growing Food Year-Round

Jena Lynde-Smith
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Growing Food Year-Round
Access to nutritious and affordable food is a Canada-wide challenge that disproportionately affects rural and remote communities. While 12.7 per cent of Canadians have insufficient access to food, in Nunavut that number jumps to a startling 57 per cent. This is largely because transporting meat, dairy and produce to isolated areas is difficult, and the food that can make the trip has a drastically reduced shelf-life as well as an increased sticker price to make up for the cost of getting it there.It is now more important than ever for communities to have access to locally grown food, but if they regularly experience cold weather, lack of sun or short and unpredictable growing seasons the challenge becomes all the more daunting.

Alida Burke, a graduate of Carleton University’s Master of Accounting program may have the answer. Burke is co-founder of Growcer Inc., a company that has developed an economically sustainable solution for addressing year-round food access through modular hydroponic farms.

“Everyone deserves to have fresh, healthy, and affordable food,” says the Carleton grad, who launched Growcer in 2016.

A woman in a lab coat smiles for the camera with rows of vegetation visible in the background.
Alida Burke, Growcer Inc. co-founder and Carleton University graduate (Brenna Mackay)

The company manufactures indoor farms made out of 40-foot-long modular structures resembling shipping containers. They are built to withstand temperatures up to 40 C and down to -40 C, along with harsh weather conditions like snow, ice and rain. Growcer’s farm modules are equipped to grow more than 140 types of produce such as lettuce, spinach, and kale.

Breaking Down Barriers to Food Access

Burke’s inspiration for Growcer came after a trip to Iqaluit in 2015 where she saw firsthand the challenges that remote, specifically Indigenous, communities are facing. Fast forward to 2019, Burke and her business partner successfully pitched their idea on Dragon’s Den, a Canadian reality television show. Since its launch, Growcer has expanded to serve farmers, communities, retailers and non-profit organizations all over Canada. In 2021, one of their farms was installed at Ayás Méńmen Child and Family Services to help bring healthy, locally grown food to the Squamish Nation.

“Creating a sustainable healthy source of produce and increasing food sovereignty has long been a goal for the Squamish Nation, and Growcer is another piece of the puzzle,” said Kelley McReynolds, director of Ayás Méńmen Child and Family Services, in a Growcer story.

Growcer’s modular farms provide the perfect atmosphere for food to be grown indoors, all year around. Each system features rows of shelves, stacked vertically, where dozens of plants are grown. The plants sit in a shallow pond of water mixed with specific nutrients to help them thrive – a technique referred to as deep water culture hydroponic farming. This allows the plants to grow without the use of soil. The shelves are lit by LED lights, removing the need for natural light. The system also includes a high-quality HVAC system to circulate fresh air and minimize outdoor contaminants.

A hand wearing a blue glove holds a thermometer up to a plant.
Indoor farming conditions are monitored to ensure an ideal atmosphere for plant growth (Brenna Mackay)

“In just one of our 400 square foot container farms, we can have over 787 plants harvested weekly,” explains Burke.

“This paired with not having to rely on Canada’s outdoor growing season makes for a truly remarkable output.”

One farm which was recently installed in Muskoka, Ontario, is on pace to grow 8,500 pounds of produce in the next year. Another partner in Vaughan, Ontario, is growing in a wheelchair accessible farm, the first of its kind in Canada. To accommodate people with mobility devices, the farm includes wider door widths, lower table heights, power-operated doors, a space for wheelchairs to turnaround and other small improvements to make growing locally accessible.

“It’s extremely important to us that our farms are tailored to work for every kind of person in every kind of place,” Burke says.

People, Planet and Profit

This people-centered line of thinking is at the heart of Burke’s business model which she approaches through a triple bottom line. This means her focus is split between people, planet and profit. She believes in tackling food sovereignty in an environmentally friendly way. As such, Growcer not only reduces the fuel burned from transporting food, but their farms use less land and water than conventional agriculture.

“Helping people and the planet through business shouldn’t be seen as just a nice bonus. It should be a best practise of all companies,” says Burke.

In addition to manufacturing farms, Growcer has extended its reach into education, offering a number of courses and workshops on hydroponics. Their farms are also being put to use at elementary schools, colleges and university campuses across the country. Some institutions use them to teach students about hydroponic farming, while others are growing food for their cafeteria or converting their farms into a local food pantry.

A indoor modular farm resembeling a shipping container.
A Growcer indoor modular farm

For Burke, seeing her business come full circle is what inspires her the most.

“It’s amazing to see how our hard work has helped Indigenous, rural and remote communities achieve their food sovereignty goals,” Burke says.

“I’m so grateful to be part of this important work we’re doing here at Growcer.”

Keeping Older Adults Safe on the Road

Dan Rubinstein
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Keeping Older Adults Safe on the Road

As people age, natural declines in physical and cognitive function affect our ability to process information and make decisions.This has an impact on everyday activities such as driving. For many mature adults, driving is important because it allows them to run errands, attend events and visit with family or friends. It’s a way to engage with the world and buoy one’s mental health, especially for residents of rural or remote areas where public transit is not available.

Moreover, while modern vehicles increasingly contain autonomous or semi-autonomous driving features that are designed to prevent accidents, this technology can be challenging for older people to adopt.

Carleton cognitive science and psychology professor Chris Herdman, director of the Advanced Cognitive Engineering (ACE) Laboratory on the ground floor of the university’s Visualization and Simulation Building, is developing a unique approach to assess the abilities of older drivers.

Using driving simulators and on-road studies at Ottawa’s Area X.O test track, as well as terabytes of data that today’s cars record, Herdman and his team are gaining a better understanding of how cognitive changes affect driver performance as people age.

A man in a suit with his hands folded over each othter poses for a photo.
Advanced Cognitive Engineering (ACE) Laboratory director Chris Herdman

These findings will ultimately inform the development of fair and accurate measures that older adults, their families and health practitioners can use to determine when a driver should be reassessed and how technology can help keep them safe on the road, supporting their continued independence.

“We all know how hard it is for an elderly driver to have their licence taken away,” says Herdman, who has received funding from the National Research Council Canada’s Aging In Place Challenge program and Canadian Institutes of Health Research for this project after completing related studies in collaboration with Transport Canada.

“It is often very difficult for a person to self-reflect on their own driving abilities. It is equally challenging for a family member to judge whether an elderly relative is having difficulty driving. However, there are new ways to gather information about drivers that can tell us when they’re experiencing difficulties and how their abilities are changing. We want to make sure we can provide relevant and timely feedback to elderly drivers and to their families.”

Reacting to Surprises on the Road

Herdman’s team uses driving simulators to study driving performance, including how people react to challenging or surprising conditions, like a ball rolling across a road or a railway crossing signal suddenly starting to flash.

Test participants have their hands on a steering wheel and look at a simulated streetscape either on wraparound monitors or through a virtual reality headset. The simulator can determine when the driver notices an event and how quickly they take action, while also monitoring their heartrate and tracking eye movements.

Similar experiments are conducted in an instrumented car on the 16-km roadway network at Area X.O.

A from the back view of a person using a driving simulator, with two hands on the wheel.
A driving simulator to study driving performance

Meanwhile, many modern cars also have sensors that collect data when they’re on the move, such as how frequently the lane departure warning mechanism is engaged or how rapidly people accelerate. Shared in accordance with strict ethical standards — and aggregated to protect the privacy of drivers — this information can also be used to help assess and understand behaviour change.

“We can gather this vast array of data from a vehicle and use machine learning to classify drivers into different levels of performance,” explains Herdman.

“This can be shared with an individual’s driver safety team, and if there’s a decline in somebody’s abilities, it could be time for an assessment.”

The Role of Driver Safety Teams

Driver safety teams are a key part of Herdman’s three-year SENSE-MD project. Comprised of the elderly driver, their family and a health practitioner, the team will receive timely and relevant information to help decide whether they are still able to drive safely.

Understanding how seniors engage with autonomous or semi-autonomous driving technologies is another prong of this project. These features could help drivers, but also could confuse them, and people need to be ready to instantly take full control of a vehicle when required.

“As cars are built with more and more of these technologies,” Herdman says, “they need to be designed in a way that ensures all drivers use them safely.”

Herdman’s research group is truly interdisciplinary. It includes faculty and students who are focused on human factors along with others from engineering. They collaborate with aging-in-place advocacy organizations as well as government and industry associations to ensure that their findings enhance community health.

A person looking at the monitors of a driving simulator.

After all, we know that people’s cognitive abilities decline as they age, but these changes are not uniform. A 90-year-old can be just as sharp as a 30-year-old, so gaining an in-depth understanding of individual behavioural change is the key to improved safety and informed policy decisions.

The New Virtual Classroom

Dan Rubinstein
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The New Virtual Classroom

A group of students sits inside a classroom at the school in Mayo, Yukon, a small village about 400 kilometres north of Whitehorse. An instructor stands at the front of the room, talking to and looking at the students as she demonstrates a complex idea by manipulating an object in her hands.

It’s just an ordinary, everyday learning experience — except that the teacher is nearly 6,000 kilometres away in a small, TV studio-like room on the Carleton University campus in Ottawa, and the class is looking at an incredibly lifelike and life-sized holographic image inside a touchscreen display unit provided by Toronto-based ARHT Media.

This project, led by Sprott School of Business researcher Troy Anderson and part of a broader partnership between Carleton and the First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun, is a striking example of the advances that are transforming education.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, millions of students around the world had to quickly pivot to remote learning, which for many meant hour after tedious hour of watching and listening to their teachers on computer screens. Now, however, new technologies — including holograms and Carleton IT researcher Ali Arya’s virtual reality environments — are creating engaging, interactive experiences for students that transcend distance and other barriers.

“Our partner Northern communities have identified student engagement as one of the more pressing educational problems they face,” says Anderson.

“School staffing and resources are often stretched, and we are investigating the value of this great new technology.

Two older men wearing button up shirts and glasses pose for a photo.
Sprott School of Business researcher Troy Anderson and Carleton IT researcher Ali Arya

“Everything is changing in education,” he adds.

“Students don’t respond to things the way they did before COVID and expectations are different. We’re in a place where we have to completely rethink how we deliver courses. That’s what we’re trying to do here. It’s all about connection and providing opportunities for young people.”

Holograms and Exciting Educational Environments

Anderson’s work with holograms in Mayo has myriad applications, such as recording oral history, language pedagogy and preservation, craft demonstrations, and working with local youth on projects like designing and building skateboard decks to be sold online. But the educational possibilities are particularly compelling.

The low-latency ARHT HoloPresence unit — one of which is also installed in Carleton’s Nicol Building — is equipped with a camera, microphone and soundbar, so whoever is beamed in can interact with anybody in the room.

Back on campus, a fairly simple broadcasting setup — camera, mic, earpiece and a monitor showing what’s happening in the remote classroom — makes it easy for somebody in Ottawa to engage with students and community members in Mayo in real time.

A small crowed looks at a holopresence unit which is beaming in an image of an adult male from another room.
Anderson uses the low-latency ARHT HoloPresence unit to beam himself into a different room

The holograms seem to be more effective than conventional video classes, says Anderson, although he and Sprott colleague Angela Dionisi, with a team of undergraduates, are still assessing their impact.

“Part of our plan is to turn this into a pedagogical tool,” says Anderson, “to help young people learn how to speak traditional languages.”

Immersive Virtual Environments

Arya, a researcher in the Carleton School of Information Technology’s Interactive Media Group, has been working on virtual environments for educational purposes for nearly 15 years.

From early technologies, including a multi-user 3D simulation of the Carleton campus in which international students could practise speaking English with one another, he has moved into immersive head-mounted VR displays and a new web-based VR framework called Circles.

These platforms can be used to teach students in pretty much any discipline, including technical STEM fields, and can be more inclusive than conventional classrooms for people with disabilities.

“You can simulate and visualize things in a more engaging way than traditional ways of presenting content,” explains Arya, who created a stylistic representation of the human brain with Carleton cognitive scientist Jim Davies that students could walk through to learn how it works.

“We can create all kinds of immersive environments that are difficult or impossible to have in the physical world. These can help students understand concepts that are complex and abstract or difficult to visualize.”

Virtual environments can also help ease the stress and anxiety that interferes with a student’s ability to learn by using pictures or messages to motivate and instill a sense of calm. And they can incorporate AI algorithms that give instructors feedback on how students are faring and where they’re struggling.

A man rests his hand on a holopresence unit project the full body image of another man.

“If I’m in a physical classroom and give my students an assignment, I have no idea how they’re doing until I see their output,” says Arya.

“In a virtual environment, the system is constantly interacting with the student and I can observe the process they’re going through. Education should involve process-based evaluation rather than just output-based evaluation, because it’s really important to see how students do things rather than what they produce.”

Arya is excited about the possibilities that technological advances are enabling, but ultimately, he says, it’s not about the tools — it’s about creating environments that engage students, so they’re primed to learn.

Improving Doctor-Patient Communications

Dan Rubinstein
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Improving Doctor-Patient Communications
The human body is an incredibly complex machine. When it stops working properly, the doctors trained to fix it often need to discuss a lot of detailed information with their patients — a vital but typically rushed exchange in Canada’s overburdened health-care system.But what if, instead of sitting behind a desk, looking at a monitor and telling people about their ailments and potential remedies, health-care providers could share health data in an interactive, visual way?

And what if, rather than remaining passive recipients of these reports, patients could provide more data when appropriate and/or play a more active role in the healing process?

To help people become better engaged in their own medical care, Carleton University systems and computer engineering researcher Fateme Rajabiyazdi and her students are developing health information visualization software for large, multi-touch displays.

A professionally dressed woman wearing glasses poses for a photo with her arms crossed.
Carleton University systems and computer engineering researcher Fateme Rajabiyazdi

These displays, which can be positioned upright like a television, or, at the touch of a button, slide flat like a table, look like something one might see on a TV show. Yet this technology is no entertainment industry fabrication; it’s a hardware and software innovation with the potential to improve communication between patients and health-care professionals and foster more collaborative, data-driven decisions.

“We’re moving toward an era of patient-centred care,” says Rajabiyazdi, whose HealthVisFutures Lab is home to a 55-inch, optical, multi-touch, high-resolution display. “The old paternalistic approach — physicians telling people what to do — has changed, but the technology hasn’t caught up yet.”

Her displays have fast, accurate, reliable, robust and unlimited touch functionality that can accommodate interaction by multiple users and different mediums, such as being touched by gloved or ungloved fingers as well as pens, allowing many people to work simultaneously.

“Physicians want patients to be more involved in their own care and patients want this too,” says Rajabiyazdi. “But it doesn’t work well if you have two people trying to look at large collections of data together on a phone. We want to use interactive displays to bring patient data to clinicians’ attention and clinical data into patients’ hands in a more accessible way.”

Making a Visit to the Doctor’s Office Count

Rajabiyazdi, who began her university studies in software engineering and computer science before doing a PhD specializing in information visualization, has long been interested in creating applications to help people manage and improve their health.

“We can make new apps and platforms but it’s challenging to integrate them,” she says, “because physicians are busy and patients can be in a vulnerable situation.”

The inner workings of the human body can be seen on a multi-touch display
People can retain health information more readily if it’s shared in a visual way, helping them become more engaged in decisions about their care

In an average visit to a doctor’s office, there can be just a few minutes to convey a lot of complicated information. Patients might not remember or retain what they’re told about their illness or condition and the things they need to do to get better.

“But if information is shared in a visual way, it can give you a stronger memory,” says Rajabiyazdi.

“And if you’re more engaged in the conversation, that can also help you remember things and support your involvement in the decision-making.”

Health Data: The Rise of Self-Monitoring Devices

With the rise of self-monitoring devices, which keep track of health indicators like blood pressure and glucose levels, as well Fitbits and other gadgets that record things such as heart rate and calories burned, people increasingly have an array of data that could inform their diagnoses and treatment plans. But it needs to be meshed with the test results and other measures that doctors rely on.

“Patients with chronic diseases like diabetes have complex health conditions that can be difficult to treat,” says Rajabiyazdi.

“How do you show a patient what diet is best for them? It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. It has to be tailored to their age and their lifestyle. We’re hoping to help physicians come up with more individualized plans.”

Three people posing for a photo
Rajabiyazdi with graduate research assistant Connor Haberl and PhD student Mahsa Sinaei

Rajabiyazdi is now consulting with doctors, physiotherapists and speech language therapists to learn about how the technology could best support their work

One area in which it could prove beneficial is hybrid remote care — for instance, patients in small or remote communities, who could go to a hospital or clinic and communicate with a specialist hundreds of miles away via one of these displays, a camera and a microphone.

“We see this technology as a communication medium,” says Rajabiyazdi, “and a step toward improved health outcomes.”

Fighting An Invasion

Dan Rubinstein
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Fighting An Invasion
In the early 1990s the mountain pine beetle outbreak began in British Columbia, wiping out more than half of the province’s commercial pine trees. The insect has continued its destructive advance eastward, breaching the Rocky Mountains into Alberta and now threatening the boreal forest in Saskatchewan and beyond.Sustained by a string of winters that weren’t cold enough to effectively reduce its numbers, the small, wood-boring insect — about the size of a grain of rice — has laid waste to approximately 20 million hectares of mainly lodgepole pines in B.C. and Alberta.

To counter the challenges faced by forest ecosystems and industries amid this climate change-fuelled infestation, a group of Carleton University researchers are playing leading roles in a $6.4 million project with a pair of intertwined goals.

Carleton biologist Catherine Cullingham and her scientific collaborators — including Janice Cooke at the University of Alberta — are doing field and lab work to learn why some lodgepole pine populations have genetic resilience to the beetle and how forest managers and policy makers in government and industry can mitigate the risks faced by jack pine and other species.

A large group of trees damanged by fire and mountain pine beetles
Burnt pine forest in the Chilcotin, British Columbia, previously afflicted with pine beetle (redfishweb/iStock)

At the same time, Stephan Schott from Carleton’s School of Public Policy and Administration, alongside Vivian Nguyen from the university’s Institute of Environmental and Interdisciplinary Science, is engaging with communities from Canada’s three westernmost provinces. They’re helping municipal officials, Indigenous groups, the forestry sector, conservation associations, hunters, fishers, hikers and others learn about what responses worked (or did not work) in B.C. and how people can reduce the impacts of the outbreak in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Regardless of their particular perspectives, the researchers are concerned not only about timber value, but also tourism and the ecological and cultural importance of Canada’s forests.

“You can’t just focus on resilient trees,” says Schott, one of more than a dozen Carleton faculty members and graduate students contributing to the project. “Human beings are part of the ecosystem, and we need resilient communities too.”

Understanding Mountain Pine Beetle Genetics

A tremendous leap forward in genome sequencing underpins Cullingham’s part of this project, allowing her to develop a deeper understanding of both mountain pine beetle and tree genetics.

She’s hoping to discover why one tree can withstand the pest while another does not, looking both within one species and by comparing different species, and to learn about how the beetles are adapting to a changing climate.

A woman with brown wearing glasses in a coral coloured sweater looks away from the camera.
Carleton University biologist Catherine Cullingham (Chris Roussakis)

“We’re trying to find the genetic variants that living trees have and dead trees don’t,” Cullingham explains.

“We’re also generating genomic data for beetles that died during an early cold snap in Alberta last fall to try to figure out what genes might be associated with whether or not a beetle is able to deal with cold temperatures.”

Last December, Cullingham participated in a national forest pest management forum in Ottawa, continuing her efforts to ensure that decision makers are equipped with the latest research.

“The more info they have, the better choices they can make,” she says. “We’re at a critical point and we don’t know what will happen next.”

Learning from the Mountain Pine Beetle Outbreak

Schott and his team, meanwhile, have been holding workshops in Quesnel and Prince George, B.C., and are preparing for similar sessions in Slave Lake, Alta., and Meadow Lake, Sask.

These locations were chosen because there is significant Indigenous involvement in forestry along this northern corridor — and because, from west to east, the communities are at different stages of the outbreak.

A man in a sweater smiles while posing for a professional photo
Carleton University researcher Stephan Schott

“In B.C., we want to see how forestry practices and management changed after the beetle came through,” says Schott, citing Quesnel’s innovative Forestry Initiatives Program as an example of how the city and its partners are working to prevent wildfires, restore landscapes and diversify the local forest products manufacturing sector.

“B.C. had fairly reactive policies and may have gone too far in terms of salvage logging. They basically cleared large tracts of forest, trying to cash in and sell wood. There could be better risk assessment frameworks. In Saskatchewan, they’re trying to be anticipatory, to learn from B.C. and Alberta.”

Better planning and policy coordination could encourage more value-added forestry manufacturing and other uses and benefits of forests — a diverse approach that would also inform pre- and post-beetle cutting and replanting practices.

“This is about the sustainability of forests and the livelihoods of people and communities,” says Schott. “We need a participatory decision-making model that prioritizes multiple objectives, not just timber value. We can use scientific information to control the spread or at least adapt appropriately to it. This is how communities can better plan for the future.”

Immigration, Communities and the Economy

Dan Rubinstein
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Immigration, Communities and the Economy

Last year, Canada announced plans to increase the number of immigrants to 500,000 per year by 2025.Beyond welcoming people coming for better opportunities or to get away from hazards at home, immigration can help address a significant labour shortage.

Roughly one million jobs are currently vacant — and, considering Canada’s aging population, this shortfall is destined to get worse.

But no matter how well-educated, highly skilled and motivated an economic migrant or refugee might be, the transition from arriving in a new country to securing meaningful employment is rarely smooth.

In fact, immigrant work integration is so complex a challenge that that there is no easy or single solution, say Carleton University researchers Luciara Nardon and Amrita Hari.

Yet Nardon and Hari, who co-authored a recent book on this subject, see the potential for a future in which new Canadians navigate pathways toward careers that are right for them and contribute to the country’s economic stability. But getting there will entail much more collaboration between government, employers, immigrant settlement agencies and professional associations, and a focus on longer-term transformation instead of short-range goals.

Two women pose for a photo.
Carleton University researchers Luciara Nardon and Amrita Hari

“This problem has so many different facets,” says Nardon, the co-director of Carleton’s Centre for Research on Inclusion at Work and a professor at the university’s Sprott School of Business.

“We have to make changes at many different levels at the same time.”

“Newcomer service organizations try to pair people up with jobs, but often they’re looking for immediate results,” explains Hari, the director of Carleton’s Feminist Institute of Social Transformation, by way of example. “They’re not thinking as much about the career trajectory of the newcomer. Similarly, somebody who needs to pay their bills right away is not going to wait for the perfect job.

“We need to shift the conversation away from quick fixes and concentrate on incremental change over time.”

Shift Focus from Outcomes to Process

The government’s 500,000-immigrant figure is itself problematic, argue Nardon and Hari, because it prioritizes an “outcome” over “process.”

“Half a million is just a number,” says Hari.

“We need to talk about integration and who’s going to help people support their families and become part of our economy and society.”

A person holds a book titled Making Sense of Immigrant Work Integration
Making Sense of Immigrant Work Integration by Luciara Nardon and Amrita Hari

Moreover, systemic barriers still exist. Discrimination, misinformation and a lack of intercultural competency, among other factors, are bumps on the road to rewarding work.

Neither Nardon nor Hari blame employers or government or any one type of organization for these problems. There’s been too much finger pointing, they say, and not enough cooperation.

Writing Making Sense of Immigrant Work Integration is their attempt to share research that informs individual, organizational and policy change. The open-access book can help government agencies better understand the perspectives of immigrant service organizations, for instance, and vice versa.

Addressing Labour Shortage: A New Way of Thinking

Canada has changed immigration policies in the past after immense research and advocacy, such as removing the live-in requirement for caregivers, reducing the risk of exploitation. This gives Nardon and Hari hope that similar adjustments can be made.

They foresee, for example, the emergence of occupational/sectoral work permits to replace problematic employer-specific work permits.

Overall, however, improving the employment situation for newcomers and addressing Canada’s urgent labour shortage demands a new way of thinking. In addition to funding for support programs, policies need to shift their focus from jobs to employment trajectories based on economic needs and the professional identities and goals of newcomers.

Two women have a conversation while sitting on opposite ends of a couch.

“It seems reasonable that if you’re a doctor and are moving to a completely different context, you may have to step back a little,” says Nardon, “as long as you are still moving in the right direction — like doing another residency, not working at a café.”

Nardon considers mentorship a critical piece of the puzzle because mentors can serve as the “bridge” between newcomers and employers.

“You have to find the right match, which can be difficult, but these types of relationships can be incentivized,” she says.

“They have to be more than transactional, more than resume preparation. We’d like to see mentorship that really advocates for and champions immigrants and helps them develop careers.”

Universities and colleges, which host thousands of international students, could provide more employment coaching and immigration counselling for foreign students who often want to stay and build their lives in Canada.

“This may not get somebody a job in the next quarter but could yield something in five years,” says Hari. “It would be an investment for the future.”

And it would be emblematic of the shift to a holistic, humanistic perspective that’s required to address the challenge that Canada faces.

A large sign with the Canadian flag which reads: Welcome to Canada
kellyvandellen/iStock

Helping Children Learn Math

Dan Rubinstein
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Helping Children Learn Math

Math is incredibly useful in everyday life. It’s critical for managing money (understanding interest rates and mortgages), getting the best price in shopping, and assessing risks and making informed decisions (for instance, the odds of being exposed to COVID-19 in a certain situation). And it’s essential for a wide range of careers, from banking, construction and nursing to using statistics as a social scientist in government or industry. And yet, as important as it is, some people struggle with math from a very early age — and don’t catch up to their peers.

Which is why Carleton University cognitive science researchers Jo-Anne LeFevre and Heather Douglas have developed a screening tool to help teachers and school boards quickly see which kids are having a hard time with math, so the appropriate supports can be deployed to help them succeed.

A woman with long gray hair and glasses smiles while posing for a photo in a classroom.
Carleton University cognitive science researcher Jo-Anne LeFevre (Brenna Mackay)

“There’s a perception that some people just can’t do math,” says LeFevre, the director of Carleton’s Math Lab, who has been doing research on cognitive development and numeracy for more than 40 years. “Some people get anxious about math, which is unfortunate, because we use it all the time.

“How you’re doing in math in kindergarten will predict how you’ll do in grade six, and students who struggle may drop it once they get to high school. Math may not come easily to everybody, but neither does reading. We send children to school to learn things they won’t pick up naturally through normal everyday experiences. So schools have a responsibility to help children succeed at both reading and math.”

User Friendly and Rapid Results

A couple of years ago, LeFevre and Douglas were contacted by Alberta’s Ministry of Education. The province was looking for somebody to develop a numeracy screener — one that teachers could use with children and receive quick feedback — and had heard about their expertise in this area.

User friendliness and rapid results are important in a tool like this, explains LeFevre, because teachers are busy and often have crowded classrooms but need timely information about whether their students are prepared for learning.

The screening tool they created, which gauges the foundational numeracy skills of children, can be administered in about 20 to 25 minutes. There are different levels, from kindergarten through grade four, and it’s typically done individually for the youngest students and in small groups for older kids.

Students gathered around a laptop with a teacher.
LeFevre and Carleton colleagues Rebecca Merkley (left) and Heather Douglas (right) with several of their students (Brenna Mackay)

For kindergarten, it features the basics, like counting the number of circles on a page, with higher grades assigned increasingly complex tasks, such as number relations (comparing and ordering number symbols) and number operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication).

“A teacher can see right away how a student is responding,” says LeFevre.

“It’s clear which concepts the student doesn’t understand.”

Alberta Education provides the screener to Alberta school authorities to use, free of charge and at their discretion, to help identify students who could benefit from targetted, short-term support.

Levelling the Playing Field for All Students to Learn Math

On the heels of this work, LeFevre, Douglas and their Carleton colleague Rebecca Merkley, along with researchers from several other Canadian universities, received a grant to further develop partnerships around early numeracy screening.

The project’s goal is to engage with school districts across Canada to develop, test and disseminate tools to support mathematical learning in kindergarten through grade three. AIM (Assessment in Mathematics) Partnership researchers are now collaborating with educators in 13 school districts in Ontario, Alberta, Quebec and Manitoba.

Three adults sitting at a desk in an elementary school classroom.
LeFevre with fellow cognitive science researcher Heather Douglas and Carleton University colleague Rebecca Merkley (Brenna Mackay)

Beyond individual students, schools and school districts, these types of tools can help parse broader trends, including the impact of the pandemic on math abilities.

Informal education at home, such as playing numerical board games and other activities involving quantities and spatial skills, may help children as they learn math. But not every family has the same capacity for these activities, says LeFevre, and parents shouldn’t be expected to take on this role. That’s why screening tools, which can be used with all students, are important for ensuring equity in access to educational resources.

One of the purposes of public education is to the “level the playing field,” to give every student the same opportunity.

“We want to use evidence-based tools to make sure that every child has the appropriate supports,” says LeFevre.

“It’s really striking to me from this research how much everyone cares. Whether it’s a teacher, a math consultant, a superintendent, a researcher or someone in an education ministry, everybody I work with really wants kids to be able to learn math, enjoy math, make progress and be prepared to use math throughout their lives.”

Detecting Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Early

Jena Lynde-Smith
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Detecting Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Early

Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s are devastating neurodegenerative diseases, primarily seen in those over the age of 65 and collectively affecting nearly one million Canadians. Where Parkinson’s affects the part of the brain that controls movement, Alzheimer’s targets memory and cognition. Both result in progressive cognitive and physical decline and eventually lead to the inability to function independently. The personal and financial costs of these diseases are severe and are set to worsen with the country’s aging population. By 2030, the number of Canadians with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s is estimated to double and the total annual health care costs are expected to reach up to $16.6 billion.

Tackling this combined health and economic challenge is difficult, but researchers in Carleton University’s Faculty of Engineering & Design believe that early detection of the diseases could be the solution.

“Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s can be managed much more effectively at their onset but there currently aren’t any clinical tests that can provide an early diagnosis,” says Ravi Prakash, a Electrical and Biomedical Engineer and lead researcher in Carleton’s Organic Sensors and Devices Lab.

“Individuals must have significant cognitive and physical deterioration before they can receive a definitive diagnosis.”

A man with a dress shirt under a sweater leans against a railing with his arms crossed, while looking towards the camera.
Organic Sensors and Devices Lab lead researcher Ravi Prakash

Addressing the Need for Non-Invasive Detection

The current testing for these diseases is also extremely onerous and requires invasive measures, with spinal taps being the most common method. This both delays diagnosis and can prevent individuals from going for testing in the first place.

Addressing this issue, Prakash’s team has created a non-invasive detection tool that indicates whether somebody is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. The tool only requires a saliva sample.

“With early intervention, the symptoms of these diseases can be reversed and medications and therapies can be put into place to prevent or slow further deterioration,” Prakash says.

“This could drastically decrease the strain on the health care system and loved ones and improve the quality of life for those diagnosed.”

Created using a 3D printer, the groundbreaking device is about the size of the palm of a hand — making it both portable and cost-effective. It is made up of a circuit board loaded with disposable, single-use sensors that analyze saliva.

Newly created tech that helps with detecting Alzheimer's and Parkinson's

Currently, people have to go to a doctor with their symptoms, where they are put on a waiting list to see specialists and sent for a variety of tests that may not yield any results due to the stage of the disease. Prakash’s test will be able to indicate with high certainty if they have an early onset of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s in that first visit to the doctor.

Health care providers will simply collect a saliva sample through a cheek swab or drool sampling, drop the sample into the sensing area of the tool, plug it into the USB port of a computer and get real-time results.

“The device detects biomarkers specific to these diseases directly through saliva,” Prakash explains.

“It only takes a few seconds to determine whether or not you have it.”

Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Biomarkers Found in Saliva

Biomarkers are biological molecules – such as proteins, antigens, and peptides – that are found in blood, tissue, or other bodily fluids. They provide signs of a normal or abnormal process, or of a condition or disease. Up until recently, it was believed that biomarkers for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s could only be found in blood or tissue. Recent work has indicated their presence, albeit on a smaller scale, in saliva.

“Saliva is the mirror of the body’s health,” says Prakash.

“The ability to non-invasively collect and screen saliva for target biomarkers has the potential to completely change the landscape for diagnostics.”

A woman with a floral patterned shirt and red sweater smiles while looking away from the camera
Researcher and Faculty of Science Dean Maria DeRosa

Prakash’s team was provided with the Parkinson’s biomarkers from Carleton researchers Maria DeRosa and Matthew Holahan from the university’s Faculty of Science, who are using the biomarkers to come up with treatments.

“Matt and I have been working for several years on a way to block the progression of Parkinson’s disease using a synthetic DNA molecule called an aptamer,” says DeRosa.

“It’s been so exciting to see how this same chemistry, applied to Ravi’s sensor platform, might also allow for early detection of the disease.”

Prakash says the early detection tool could also be utilized alongside treatment to monitor disease progression.

The device is currently in the process of commercial evaluation and advanced laboratory testing and is expected to begin clinical testing within the year. Prakash anticipates that the tool will eventually be used in doctor’s offices, hospitals and long-term care homes, and hopes that one day it will be available for people to use from the comfort of their own homes.

“It’s important to not only drive down costs, but also to create accessible testing right here in Canada,” says the Carleton researcher.

“People are suffering and our health care system is burdened. We need home-grown solutions. Canadians helping Canadians — that’s always been my motivation.”

Net-Zero Now

Dan Rubinstein
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Net-Zero Now
To ward off the worst impacts of climate change, Canada has committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. That means in less than three decades the amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) being released into the atmosphere from all sources of emissions — buildings, industry, transportation and so forth — must be no greater than the GHGs being removed.The challenge is that almost everything we do to heat, cool and power our society and feed people emits greenhouse gasses. What we need is a fundamental transformation of how we live in this world.

According to Carleton University researcher James Meadowcroft, this is not an unrealistic goal — as long as government, business and civil society organizations work together, across sectors and regions.

The former is crucial because cutting emissions must happen differently in every sector; reforming transportation, for example, isn’t the same as changing agriculture. Regionality matters because Canada is so vast and geographically diverse.

A professional headshot of an older man wearing a sweater over a dress shirt.
Carleton University researcher James Meadowcroft (Photo: Bryan Gagnon)

Hastening the Move to Net-Zero

To help hasten this transformation, Meadowcroft, who focuses on energy and climate policy, has become one of the research directors of The Transition Accelerator, a charity whose mission is to convene “innovators, progressive industry, researchers and other key groups into collaborative teams that advance Canada down … pathways to a stronger, net-zero future.”

The Accelerator, established in 2019, is concentrating on several areas that it deems ripe for change: electrification and grid integration, building decarbonization, electric vehicle market penetration and hydrogen.

The group believes that by meshing climate mitigation more closely with other national goals, including improved health and the creation of new economic opportunities, it’s possible to move toward net-zero while building a better Canada.

Zero-emissions vehicles (ZEVs) are a good example of how The Accelerator operates.

The organization sought to develop a deep understanding of how the ZEV industry works, what its future could be and what steps must be taken to get there. Then it brought together a collection of willing partners to develop practical on-the-ground projects that will realize these changes.

This led to the launch of a national ZEV supply chain alliance, which aims to help transform the Canadian automotive industry — and its more than 500,000 direct and indirect jobs — into one that’s poised to succeed in the global ZEV marketplace.

Close-up hand grip plug of industrial electric charging machine connected with socket charge
An industrial electric charging machine (Chiradech/iStock)

“This is a sector in which people realize they need to start adapting so they’re better situated for the future,” says Meadowcroft.

“There are innovators everywhere who want to bring about new ways of doing things, but they’re often isolated, so we’re kind of like a matchmaker.”

ZEVs are far from the only transportation solution; public transit, cycling and “15-minute cities” in which one’s daily destinations are within walking distance are also essential.

But when Meadowcroft thinks about how quickly the automobile changed the world after Ford began rolling cars off the assembly line, he sees a valuable history lesson.

“Typically, with these types of major changes, small ideas are bubbling up but it doesn’t look like much is happening,” he says.

“Then you reach an inflection point and in a relatively rapid period of time the new technology stabilizes and takes off. That’s what we’re on the cusp of now.”

Overhauling Multiple Systems

Although individual initiatives such as creating the ZEV supply chain alliance do have an impact, rapid decarbonization will require the overhaul of many systems at the same time.

“We need to develop new business models, change regulatory structures and encourage different consumer attitudes,” says Meadowcroft, who is also on the governing council of Carleton-based Efficiency Canada, the national voice for an energy efficient economy.

“We need to use research in a very applied way to understand how a particular system works and what levers or instruments could be used to make changes.”

A stock image of an ecological home with wind turbines, solar panels on the roof, and an electric car being charged in front of the house at a charging station.
Ecological home concept featuring solar panels, wind turbines and an electric car charging station. (sl-f/iStock)

Efforts to counter climate change in recent years have been too incremental, says Meadowcroft. Science shows us that this transformation isn’t about cutting emissions by a certain percentage. It’s about changing how our society functions.

“Our society is based on technologies and processes that release a lot of GHGs,” says Meadowcroft. “Roughly 80 per cent of our total emissions come from burning fossil fuels. But manufacturing cement and steel for construction also releases emissions. And in Canadian agriculture, about 80 per cent of emissions are related to practices like raising livestock and the use of nitrogen fertilizers.

“I have no doubt that we can and will decarbonize the Canadian economy,” Meadowcroft continues.

“In many cases, the technology exists or is on the horizon. The main obstacles are political, social and economic. Change is going to come. It’s a question of how quickly.”

Tackling Global Warming

Dan Rubinstein
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Tackling Global Warming
Reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and replacing them with renewable sources of clean energy is the most important front in the fight against climate change. This crucial transition will reduce the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that drives global warming.At the same time, we need to develop ways to sequester some of the CO2 that has been accumulating for decades — and a Halifax-based company launched by a pair of Carleton University engineering graduates is developing an innovative solution rooted in the ocean’s capacity to serve as a carbon sink.

“To reach our climate goals, we need to remove huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the air,” says Brock Battochio, who co-founded Planetary Technologies with fellow Carleton alumnus Mike Kelland and California marine science researcher Greg Rau.

“Fortunately, the ocean is really good at doing this, so we’re working on a way to enhance the ocean’s ability to capture and store CO2. We’re accelerating a natural process.”

The ocean covers 71 per cent of the planet’s surface and is one of the main mechanisms for regulating carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. This complex geochemical cycle is also one of the building blocks of the marine ecosystem.

Even if all of the excess CO2 in the air today were to be stored in the ocean, the total carbon content would increase by less than one per cent. But because humankind has been emitting so much CO2 — at a rate that outpaces the ability of natural systems process it — seawater has become 30 per cent more acidic. This has a devastating impact on marine life and hinders the ability of the ocean to store carbon dioxide.

In simple terms, Planetary’s solution involves giving the ocean “a giant antacid,” explains Kelland, the company’s CEO. This will supplement the alkalinity that accumulates in the ocean via rain, rivers and rock erosion, helping to neutralize the CO2 that it’s absorbing and making room for more.

Two men dressed in suits sit for an on camera interview. The words 'New Help on the High Seas' appears on a banner towards the bottom of the screen.
Planetary Technologies co-founders and Carleton graduates Mike Kelland (left) and Brock Battochio during their appearance on NBC’s Today Show

CO2 Removal & Recycling Mine Tailings

The beauty of the company’s plan, which has already raised more than $10 million in investments and grants, plus approximately double that in research funding for its partners, is that producing the volume of alkaline material required has prompted Planetary to develop a method to convert billions of tonnes of historic mine tailings into a safe, pure form of alkalinity.

Acquired for now from a shuttered mine in Quebec, these tailings not only provide a catalyst for this experimental but promising method, they also yield the clean fuel hydrogen and in-demand metals such as cobalt and nickel that can be used in batteries as well as solar and wind farms.

In other words, Planetary is essentially recycling mine waste rock into a tool that’s valuable in several different ways. It is planning to build and demonstrate its technology in Quebec next year and eventually expand to mine sites around the world, with the goal of reaching a million tonnes of annual CO2 removal capacity in the next five to ten years.

“Manufacturing this ‘antacid’ is probably the hardest part of what we do,” says Kelland.

“We have to be able to scale up and produce massive quantities of it cheaply, and we have to do it in a way that doesn’t cause additional carbon emissions.

“One of the challenges of this type of early-stage research is that you can’t just jump in,” he adds. “We’re not going to dump a billion tons of antacid into the ocean. We can only operate at the scale that’s safe at the moment, based on the research that’s been done so far.”

A massive pile of mine tailings
A mine tailings pile in Quebec that’s a source of alkalinity for Planetary Technologies

A Constellation of Climate Change Solutions

Battochio, who has a Bachelor of Engineering in Sustainable and Renewable Energy Engineering, and Kelland, whose degree is in Electrical Engineering, started Planetary Technologies in 2019 after they graduated from Carleton.

The pair of entrepreneurs are working and collaborating with dozens of mining and marine ecosystem experts. In Halifax, the main hub for their ocean experiments, they’re testing the addition of alkalinity in a controlled way, to make sure there are no impurities released and no unintended consequences for micro-organisms and other sea life.

Ultimately, Planetary’s method could remove billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and play a key role within a constellation of climate change solutions.

“There’s no silver bullet when it comes to global warming, so we need to try a wide variety of things,” says Kelland.

“We need to actively reduce our emissions — if we don’t do that, nothing else matters. We need to adapt to a changing climate. And true carbon removal has to happen as well.”

Targeting Chronic Pain

Dan Rubinstein
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Targeting Chronic Pain
One in four people around the world experience chronic pain, outnumbering everybody who suffers from diabetes, heart disease and cancer combined. The overall economic impact of this condition — defined as pain that lasts for longer than three months, sometimes for no obvious reason — is estimated at more than $1 trillion USD every year.Yet chronic pain is often considered a quality-of-life concern, not a medical issue, and the majority of patients are not satisfied with the care or therapies they receive.

Carleton University neuroscience researcher Michael Hildebrand has been exploring the causes of chronic pain for more than 15 years. A new project he’s helming — in collaboration with Eli Lilly and Company and The Ottawa Hospital, among others — could lead to a better understanding of what’s happening in the spinal cord to perpetuate this pain and how to develop drugs to treat it.

A man wearing business attire stands in front of an arched doorway.
Neuroscience researcher Michael Hildebrand (Justin Tang)

“This is a huge crisis because we’re dealing with debilitating pain as well as high health care costs and lost productivity,” says Hildebrand. “People may seem fine because they don’t always have outward signs, but it really impacts their ability to function.

“We really need to move the needle on pain research, and it’s an exciting time because we’re mobilizing to address this challenge.”

Although the brain processes pain signals and helps keep you alive by telling you something’s wrong, these sensory impulses are first organized in and travel through the spinal cord. For some people, pain ramps up when it shouldn’t — after an injury has healed, for instance.

Hildebrand believes we can treat pain more effectively by studying the spinal cord and chemically targeting areas where signals are relayed and amplified needlessly.

A medial professional poses for a photo in an operating room.
Neurosurgeon Dr. Eve Tsai (Justin Tang)

He and his students conduct experiments using spinal cord tissue from rats and human organ donors, the latter acquired through their unique partnership with neurosurgeon Dr. Eve Tsai at The Ottawa Hospital. They record electrical signals travelling between neurons and study the molecules that control the delivery of pain signals to the brain.

In a paper published earlier this year, their research showed, for the first time, that neurons in the spinal cords of men and women process pain signals differently — a discovery that could have implications for future drug development.

The Root Causes of Chronic Pain

Hildebrand and Annemarie Dedek, a Mitacs Industrial Postdoctoral Fellow at Carleton, are now working with scientists at Eli Lilly to further this research. They’re using cutting-edge high-definition multi-electrode arrays to enhance their understanding of the mechanisms of pain with the goal of developing new human tissue preclinical screening tests for pain therapies.

“Our focus is investigating the underlying physiology of the human spinal cord,” says Hildebrand.

“A key piece of that puzzle that’s missing is figuring out what’s happening to spinal cord circuitry when you activate these pain pathways or when you block them with treatments. This project will help us identify specific molecules and receptors that are potential drug targets.”

A young woman looks through a high-powered microscrope conducting research on alleviating chronic pain.
Mitacs Industrial Postdoctoral Fellow Annemarie Dedek conducting research (Justin Tang)

Using traditional electrical recording technology, researchers could only study what’s happening inside tissue samples one cell at a time. The multi-electrode arrays in Hildebrand’s lab at The Ottawa Hospital — tiny chips, about six millimetres by six millimetres, containing around 4,000 electrodes — can record the activity of hundreds of neurons at the same time.

“The cells in the spinal cord slices that we use are still communicating and firing,” explains Dedek, who handles the bulk of the hands-on work and relies on computer science specialists at Carleton to figure out how to store and manage the incredibly high volume of data.

“I can put a slice on a multi-electrode array and record activity from the entire circuit. That’s really powerful, because it lets us look at how cells are working in tandem and see circuit-level processes that could be involved in chronic pain.

“Once we understand this circuitry better,” she adds, “this technique could potentially be used to target some of the pathways that we’re studying to disrupt pain signals.”

The Chronic Pain Connection

Eli Lilly approached Hildebrand after seeing Dedek give a talk at a conference.

“Although the pharmaceutical industry has a greater number of resources than our academic colleagues, we don’t always have the ability to perform the exact experiments needed to test a hypothesis,” says Jeff Krajewski, an executive director of pain biology with the company.

“Advances in identifying novel biological mechanisms are typically developed by academic labs. Michael has been a major contributor to chronic pain research throughout his career. His interests aligned perfectly with ours: understanding the spinal mechanisms that underly chronic pain to aid the development of better therapies.”

Three medical professionals posing for a photo in an operating room.

“We want to move toward treatments, but I can’t do all of that in my lab,” says Hildebrand.

“That’s why this is such a natural partnership — Eli Lilly can use the same approaches we’re using to test how specific drugs affect spinal cord circuitry.”

“What keeps me going,” adds Dedek, “is the hope that we’ll have a future where chronic pain is better managed through safe, effective treatments.”

High-Tech Food Security

Dan Rubinstein
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High-Tech Food Security
Two of the biggest worries on the minds of Canadians are climate change and the rising cost of groceries.A brand-new, high-tech indoor gardening pod aims to address both of these food security challenges at the same time — and the first 200 units are scheduled to be delivered to customers before the winter holidays.

Rejuvenate is made by Gatineau, Que., start-up Plantaform, whose founder and CEO is former Carleton University international business student Alberto Aguilar.

Manufactured in Montreal, the product allows people to grow vegetables, herbs and edible flowers at home, in all seasons, using minimal water and energy, no pesticides and very little fertilizer. This will help reduce the fuel required to transport fresh produce from far-flung farms to market and provide access to healthy, chemical-free food regardless of the price increases stemming from inflation and supply-chain bottlenecks.

A man with a black jacket and white shirt smiles for the camera.
Plantaform CEO Alberto Aguilar

The pods — which take up about four square feet of space — use “fogponics” to deliver nutrient-rich vapour to plants. The technology, with ultrasonic vibration transforming water into a fog-like vapour, was developed by NASA for potential use in space, but Aguilar and his team have found a much more earthly application.

“We wanted to focus on solving a problem that really matters,” says Aguilar, a serial entrepreneur who previously launched a company called YourDorm, which helped international and domestic students find homes, and co-founded Relomigo, which makes corporate relocation software. “We’re a green company that’s trying to help promote food security and sustainability.

“In the next 20 years, we’re going to have to double our food supplies to meet global demand. Supply chains are another huge issue. The average meal travels about 2,400 kilometres before it reaches your plate. Why can’t people grow fresh vegetables and herbs where they live?”

The former Carleton student was introduced to the fogponics concept by Kiwa Lang — who he attended high school with in Dubai — while the latter was studying industrial design at university in Australia. Now Plantaform’s chief product officer, Lang was doing research on the subject, liked Aguilar’s business acumen and, in 2019, showed his friend a homemade prototype.

Aguilar, who learned a lot at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business and the Hatch incubation program, was all in.

A living room with a food security-focused gardening pod visible in the corner next to a couch.

Pandemic Raises Awareness About Food Security

In February 2020, Aguilar went to Indonesia for a month to learn about the manufacturing process and mass production. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, which made it more difficult to start a new company, but also convinced many people to become more self-reliant and begin growing vegetables at home.

Aguilar sold his remaining interest in Relomigo and bought a 3D printer, so he and Lang could iterate and optimize prototypes, sometimes spending long days bootstrapping it in their own apartments. They brought in more collaborators, including a former director at the National Research Council Canada, people with biology and electrical engineering backgrounds and hired head of marketing Brendan McGann, a recent Carleton economics graduate.

Media coverage in CTV, Radio Canada and other outlets caught the eye of Olivier Benloulou, a successful Gatineau entrepreneur who became an advisor and invested $250,000, helping the company raise more than $1 million and move toward production. Benloulou recently invested another $500,000 in Plantaform’s second seed round, allowing the company to finalize its commercialization plan.

“We spent about three years doing research and development,” says Aguilar, noting that while fogponics is in the public domain, Plantaform has a patent for integrating the technology into a vertical structure.

“Now we’re in the pre-commercialization stage. It’s taken a little longer than we expected, but that’s because we wanted to keep the product made in Canada for sustainability and supply chain reasons.”

With hundreds of units already pre-ordered, the company will start making Rejuvenate in late fall. They are available online and will be carried by select retailers in early 2023.

A gardening pod sits on a living room table.

The pods can grow up to 15 different plants at the same time, from bok choy, kale and lettuce to basil and oregano, among other greens and herbs, with some maturing in as little as four weeks. Fogponics has been shown to produce higher yields than hydroponics, using 40 to 60 per cent less water, and more nutritious produce because of how the vapour delivers nutrients.

There’s another selling point beyond food security, says Aguilar: available in black or white, the egg-shaped “living pieces of furniture” will look good in a kitchen or living room and serve as conversation starters, getting more people curious about indoor growing.

“We want to make an impact,” says Aguilar, explaining that while most of the company’s resources are dedicated to Rejuvenate, he’s already talking to potential partners about testing the technology at a much larger scale.

“Creating a smart indoor garden was our first step toward educating the world about how important it is to grow your own food. But we’re scaling up right now into the indoor farming industry. That was the whole point of starting this company: we want to help feed the world of the future.”

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