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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

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

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.”

Next Gen Net Zero

Almost half of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions come from burning fuel for heat and electricity in homes, offices and industrial buildings. Nearly 30 per cent come from transportation.In response, researchers and developers are building a new kind of net zero residential community, one that will produce at least as much energy as it consumes.

Under construction now in London, Ont., with cutting-edge energy efficiency and electric vehicle features, EVE Park is the first of its kind, designed to meet consumer demand while not contributing to global warming.

Along the way, it’s also tackling a fundamental problem faced by the growing sustainable living movement: most people don’t want to cede comfort or aesthetics when buying a green home.

A man stands next to a yellow ladder
Carleton graduate Seungyeon Hong, now developer s2e’s modelling and data specialist, working on the Northern Nomad tiny house

“Consumers are reluctant to make any compromises, that’s just human nature,” says Ashley Hammerbacher, developer s2e‘s project lead on EVE Park. The community’s genesis can be traced back to a MITACS-funded research partnership involving Carleton University engineering researcher Scott Bucking and it relies on key contributions from Carleton master’s graduate Seungyeon Hong, s2e’s modelling and data specialist.

“We’re focusing on providing a sustainable lifestyle without that sacrifice,” says Hammerbacher. “In fact, a lot of our components offer an improvement to traditional lifestyles.”

Located in the northwest corner of the larger, 70-acre West Five sustainable community that’s under construction near the Thames River west of downtown London, EVE Park will consist of 84 townhouses, ranging from one to four bedrooms and about 1,300 to 2,200 square feet. Phase one — half of the units — should be ready for move-in by next summer.

While on the outside the development looks like many other new residential neighbourhoods, on the inside it is very different. Assisted by a micro-grid that’s linked to both a community-scale battery and the local electricity utility, solar panels will produce as much energy as the development uses. There are no natural gas lines in EVE Park, and navigating through the zoning and regulatory approval process to allow this setup has created a path for future sustainable developments to follow.

Rendering of a green land and buildings in Eve Park
Mechanical parking carousels outfitted with EV chargers will reduce the land needed for parking to create more natural outdoor space

EVE Park will also have mechanical parking carousels outfitted with EV chargers, reducing the land needed for parking to create more communal outdoor space and foot/bike paths, and an EV car share program. Other environmentally friendly features include smart, energy-efficient appliances and fixtures in all units, large energy efficient windows, strategic building orientations to maximize natural light, non-toxic materials throughout, natural landscaping and intentionally designed inner courtyards in each building to foster a sense of community.

“We’re really rethinking what a medium-density neighbourhood can look like,” says Hammerbacher. “We want people to experience, as our tagline says, what it’s like to live in a park, not a parking lot.”

Net Zero Buildings Can Encourage Socializing and Energy Efficiency

“Commonly, well-intentioned net zero buildings don’t look that exciting — they just look like big boxes,” adds Hong.

“At EVE Park, we’re trying to change that with unique architecture. A building that consumes less energy is actually a more comfortable space to live in. And the courtyards each building has will encourage both socializing as well as energy conscious living.”

“None of these technologies are brand new, but it’s the amalgamation into a package that is somewhat unique,” says Hammerbacher. “We’d be really happy if other developers looked at us and the lessons we learned and did something similar, which is part of our broader goal of trying to build sustainable housing at scale.”

A rendering of an aerial view of a curved building
Eve Park’s buildings will feature inner courtyards to help foster a sense of community among residents

Hong, who started working for s2e as an intern in 2019 and joined the company full-time in 2020 after graduating from Carleton University, has been concentrating on sustainability engineering work for EVE Park.

During the planning stage, that consisted largely of cost-benefit analysis using computer models and simulations to determine, for example, how much the energy efficiency and occupant comfort would improve by installing a particular type of window and whether it was worth the cost or if other eco measures would offer better returns. Now he has shifted to reviewing and coordinating drawing packages from engineers to help ensure that the build matches the design.

“Everything I learned in grad school has really come in handy,” says Hong, who was a big part of Carleton’s Northern Nomad project — a net zero tiny house built by students to showcase sustainable building technologies that has now been transformed to serve during the construction of EVE Park as an on-site sales centre powered by the sun.

“EVE Park is just one type of living,” says Hong.

“Northern Nomad shows that there’s a range of different things that you can do to make sustainable living possible.”

A man stands at a podium addressing a small crowd
Carleton engineering research Scott Bucking speaks at the Northern Nomad opening in September 2018

“Whenever you try to surmount a big challenge, which the tiny house project did, you bond with the people around you,” says Bucking, Hong’s master’s supervisor. “Seungyeon was pivotal. No matter was the problem is, he’s capable of solving it.

“Our tiny house touched a zeitgeist button,” adds Bucking.

“People are interested in compact, modular, self-sufficient dwellings that can be easily manufactured. We built a prototype and it’s part of an important conversation about sustainable and affordable housing.”

Extraterrestrial Exploration

Although the possibility of settlements on Mars or mining on the moon ignites the imagination, space exploration delivers many more earthly and everyday benefits.

It improves essential services such as weather forecasting and communications networks, helping to protect people and our planet. It also drives advances in health care, the development of innovative new technologies like water purification systems and lightweight materials, and inspires youth to take an interest in science and engineering.

Launching and operating a spacecraft or satellite is extremely costly and complex, however, which is why an Ottawa-based start-up aims to streamline space exploration through its cutting-edge software, allowing countries and companies to “unlock the potential of new scientific and commercial opportunities on the Earth, moon, Mars and beyond.”

Mission Control Space Services was established by Carleton University graduate and former NASA space shuttle flight controller Ewan Reid in 2015. Shortly afterwards, the company began collaborating with the Canadian Space Agency on artificial intelligence (AI) systems to help planetary rovers navigate more safely.

“We develop technology to operate or automate things that are deployed in harsh and remote environments,” explains Reid, who has a master’s from Carleton’s Technology Innovation Management (TIM) program, which combines entrepreneurship with science and/or engineering.

“We work with partners who use robots, rovers, sensors and other machines and develop ways to control them intelligently, either with AI or through remote tele-operation with humans in the loop controlling them.”

A yellow planetary rover sitting on sand
A demo lunar rover in the moon yard in Mission Control’s office in central Ottawa (Photo: Blair Gable)

Mission Control has two main product lines. One is a cloud-based architectures for operating robots using the internet in places with very limited bandwidth and high latency (the delay before data transfer begins following the command to do so). This software can work with equipment as far away as the moon or Mars and also inaccessible locations on Earth, such as Antarctica or the bottom of the ocean.

The other core product involves AI algorithms on space-rated processors. These processors, which are part of the computing systems on satellites and other orbiting spacecraft, have to be able to handle the shock and vibration of launch as well as the radiation, thermal and vacuum environment of space.

Mission Control’s AI plays a role in processes such as Earth observation. The right algorithm, for example, could automatically detect when a cloud will obstruct the transmission of optical imaging data from a satellite and instigate a workaround.

“There are a lot of scenarios where, if you could do something intelligently on board, in real time, you could send more actionable, critical information down to the ground sooner,” says Reid.

“Our challenge is to help space agencies and companies do this quickly, affordably and repeatedly. It’s about bringing state-of-the-art terrestrial technology to the space domain.”

Space Exploration Opportunities Coming Soon

Mission Control had a chance to showcase its technology on a pair of recent space missions. Last fall, the company uploaded software to a European Space Agency satellite to support an imaging project and validate its ability to use AI algorithms while in orbit.

It also participated in an international mission that launched in December 2022 involving a SpaceX rocket delivering a Japanese lander with a rover from United Arab Emirates to the moon. Mission Control’s AI solution was poised to help process images from the rover that would be sent to Earth — the first-ever demonstration of deep learning beyond low Earth orbit — however flight controllers lost contact with the rover when it was attempting to land in late April 2023.

“It’s one mission with one rover,” says Reid, “but in a sense, this is one of the first steps toward lunar prospecting. That will require many rovers and soil extraction, but it’s coming. And our company can play a critical role early on and position ourselves to do more.”

Ewan Reid stands next to a planetary rover

Since its birth in a business accelerator on the Carleton campus, Mission Control has grown into a flourishing company with 23 employees — including chief technology officer Michele Faragalli, an adjunct professor at Carleton — and another dozen co-op students and interns, including several who are also doing grad school research at the university. Its office near downtown Ottawa features a 4,000-square-foot moon yard as well as an orbital robotics lab.

“We would like to be part of as many missions as possible and contribute as much as we can, things like supporting satellites that are monitoring climate change and supporting space domain awareness to prevent collisions that create debris,” says Reid.

“Our ethos as a company is rooted in scientific discovery. The more we learn about space, the more we’ll learn about our planet and about how to solve problems on Earth.”

Empowering Female Tech Founders

When an entrepreneur wants to launch a company, they typically seek start-up funding through their personal networks or, if they have a track record in business, from conventional sources such as bank loans, government grants and venture capitalists.But if they’re new to entrepreneurship and aren’t close to people with the means to invest in their vision, it can be difficult to get off the ground.

The challenges faced by first-time founders—especially women—were the inspiration for a group of 10 current and former female employees of the e-commerce giant Shopify, who in March 2021 established Backbone Angels, a collective of investors dedicated to supporting businesses and ideas that are often overlooked.

“There’s a misconception that there aren’t a lot of women, women of colour and non-binary people looking for funding, which is simply not true,” says Konval Matin, a Carleton University commerce graduate and one of the collective’s 10 founding partners. “There are a lot of them. We know this from the number of applications that we see.

Backbone Angels co-founder Konval Matin
Carleton University commerce graduate and Backbone Angels co-founder Konval Matin

“The majority of these founders want to address problems that they’ve faced themselves,” adds Matin. “People who’ve experienced a problem tend to be more aware of and passionate about the solution. They can design products or services that are tailored to the user experience, which gives them a good chance of succeeding.

“But when you’re looking for an investment through a ‘friends and family’ round of financing, if you’re like me, you probably didn’t grow up knowing people who could write big cheques, because that type of wealth is just not equitably distributed.”

By its first anniversary on International Women’s Day in March 2022, Backbone Angels had invested more than $2.3 million (USD) in 42 companies, half of it going to women of colour.

Entrepreneurs apply through an online form, explaining the issue they’re addressing, what their background is, who their team is comprised of, what traction they’ve had so far, how much money they’re asking for and how they plan to use the funds. If one of the collective’s members is interested, the applicant is asked to present a more detailed pitch.

Backbone Angels Offer a Spectrum of Mentorship and Guidance

Matin and her partners at Backbone Angels decide as individuals whether to invest and what amount. And beyond monetary support, they offer a wide spectrum of mentorship and guidance, tapping into their experiences at Shopify and other jobs to assist the companies they fund in areas such as customer service, law, culture, human resources, product development, design, data management, government relations, marketing and finance.

“We all have a different perspective, a different way of thinking,” says Matin, who was Shopify’s Director of Culture and Talent Development for six years and is one of three Carleton alumni in Backbone Angels, along with Sprott School of Business graduate Brittany Forsyth, the former Chief Talent Officer at Shopify, and Alexandra Clark, a Political Science graduate and Shopify’s VP, Strategic Initiatives.

“Even if a venture receives funding from one or two of us, the beautiful thing about Backbone Angels is that you access the expertise of all 10 of us.”

Among the companies that Matin has invested in are Texas-based sustainable pre-fab home builder Astreia, digital trademarking platform Haloo and Toronto-based Daily Blends, which uses smart fridges to serve ready-to-eat fresh food 24/7 and meshes with her interest in helping people access healthy, nutritious food.

“I’m really interested in solving problems at an infrastructure level,” says Matin, “and as a collective we’re interested in companies that specifically solve problems through scale, because that’s what we all experienced at Shopify.”

As much as Matin enjoys working with her partners in Backbone Angels—women who trust and respect one another—and believes wholeheartedly in their mission, she stresses that it’s not a charity, that they see business success as the key to progress.

“We all think that there should be more women starting companies, that they should own a bigger piece of the pie and become investors themselves,” she says.

“I also think that the experiences they’ve had can play a major role in their ability to launch viable businesses.

“They can come up with better, more creative solutions because of their lived experiences, and the restraints they’ve faced can give them the resiliency they need to keep going and push through barriers. The problems they’re tackling need to be solved. They have critical skills and knowledge—and so do we.”

Diversity in the Media

Journalism is a cornerstone of our democracy. Its purpose, according to the American Press Institute, is to provide people “with the information they need to make the best possible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies and their governments.”When news outlets and digital media platforms don’t reflect the communities they serve, however, journalism can lead to polarized views and social discord—one of the fundamental challenges of the 21st century.

At Carleton University, home to the oldest journalism school in Canada, faculty are striving to reverse decades of systemic racism and make newsrooms more inclusive and diverse by teaching the next generation of journalists to share stories that capture the country’s broad spectrum of perspectives.

A pair of new professors and the ground-breaking courses they teach are a big part of this transformation.

This past winter, a group of students was the first cohort to enrol in “Journalism and Belonging,” which was created by Nana aba Duncan. The veteran CBC radio host, podcaster and media researcher joined Carleton in 2021 as the Carty Chair in Journalism, Diversity and Inclusion Studies—the first position of its kind at any Canadian journalism school.

Carty Chair in Journalism, Diversity and Inclusion Studies, Nana aba Duncan
Nana aba Duncan, Carleton University’s Carty Chair in Journalism, Diversity and Inclusion Studies

In the class, Duncan and her students talked about many things: personal biases, discriminatory practices in media, and how stereotypes intersect with editorial decisions and everyday work situations. “Students were encouraged,” she says, “to really think about the kind of journalists they want to be.

“I want students to swing for the fences with their ideas and creativity. I don’t want them to worry about being called an activist when they pitch stories from their community because they don’t see many stories from their community. I want all journalists to be valued equally.”

Duncan was joined on the journalism school faculty last year by Adrian Harewood, the long-time anchor of CBC Ottawa’s TV newscast.

Carleton University journalism professor Adrian Harewood taught Journalism, Race and Diversity
Carleton University journalism professor Adrian Harewood

Harewood taught a master’s-level course that he had developed, “Journalism, Race and Diversity,” which is also the first of its kind in Canada. The course connects Carleton students with prominent journalists working on a variety of media platforms, including web, television, podcasts and print publishing.

“Understanding race is fundamental to understanding our world,” says Harewood. “But if you are going to tell the stories of your community, you don’t only need to understand race, you also need to understand class, gender, sexuality and disability. All of these are part of the reality of your community. You need to understand them to provide your audience with critical analysis and insight.”

Journalism to Build a Better World

Harewood is constantly impressed with and inspired by the students he works with at Carleton.

“They care deeply about creating a journalistic practice that helps us build a better world,” he says. “They want to be part of the solution to the challenges that we face.

“If journalism is truly going to reflect society back onto itself,” he adds, “it’s important that everyone has an opportunity to be heard. Ultimately, this helps us better understand the human condition, so we better understand ourselves and our world.”

Carleton University student Angel Xing embodies the changing face of journalism in Canada.

Heading into her third year, Xing initially wanted to study journalism to improve her writing and researching skills on the path toward law school. Now, however, she has developed a passion for the craft.

Carleton journalism student Angel Xing
Carleton University journalism student Angel Xing

“I’ve started to see how media narratives play a big role in constructing social narratives,” she says, “and how even though we are cognizant of the fact that there are people behind journalism, there are hidden prejudices and biases that come into play. In this program, we’re seeing how it’s possible to recognize that different people experience different truths.”

Xing, who grew up with her Chinese-Canadian immigrant family in the Greater Toronto Area, recalls mostly seeing her community covered in the mainstream press when there were natural disasters in China or anti-Asian hate crimes committed in Canada. Their everyday lives weren’t represented. At times, she felt like a visitor in this country.

Xing has strived to go beyond sensational stories in her journalism, putting together a multimedia freelance piece for CBC, for example, about how businesses in Ottawa’s Chinatown have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“What I’ve learned since starting this program,” she says, “is that the purpose of journalism is to serve the public.”

When asked about Carleton’s efforts to change the voice, face and stories of Canada’s newsrooms, Xing is clear: “This is something that could catalyze a paradigm shift.”

Permafrost Thaw and Our Climate

About 40 per cent of Canada’s land mass is underlain by permafrost, a layer of permanently frozen ground beneath the surface of the planet’s colder regions.As climate change drives up global temperatures, the ice in permafrost is thawing, posing a major threat to Arctic communities, infrastructure and ecosystems, as well as landscapes in other parts of the world.

To help Canada and other countries mitigate and adapt to this profound challenge, a network of scientists coordinated by Carleton University—in collaboration with Indigenous communities, industry partners and government agencies—is striving to address a set of interrelated questions: where and when is permafrost thaw occurring and what are the hazards arising from this?

Prof. Stephan Gruber researching permafrost thaw and helping plan for the future
Stephan Gruber, Carleton University’s Canada Research Chair in Climate Change Impacts/Adaptation in Northern Canada and the scientific director of NSERC PermafrostNet

Established in 2019 with a $5.5 million grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, NSERC PermafrostNet brings together researchers from a dozen universities, including scientific director Stephan Gruber, the Canada Research Chair in Climate Change Impacts/Adaptation in Northern Canada at Carleton.

“Unexpected and often bad things happen when permafrost thaws,” says Gruber.

“When ground that was hard for centuries becomes soft, or like a slurry, the buildings, roads and runways that are on it can be damaged or require a lot of costly maintenance and repairs.

“Permafrost thaw can also change hydrology, impacting everything from vegetation and wildlife to infrastructure. If a lake drains, it can reduce access to traditional food such as fish or berries.”

The warming experienced in Canada’s north over the past couple decades has already led to significant permafrost thaw. Roads and structures have been damaged or threatened by thaw slumps, Gruber says. As warming accelerates and continues, “we need to prepare for changes that are outside what our species has ever lived through,” he says. “It’s a completely new story now.”

Bridging the Gap in Permafrost Research

Gruber’s personal research focus—which involves field work around ground ice loss and spatial variation—mirrors that of NSERC PermafrostNet as a whole. He wants to bridge the gap between the location-specific observations of geoscience and the broader, big-picture modelling of climate science to better understand specific concerns on a wide scale.

“It’s similar to driving a car,” he explains by way of analogy. “If you never look at your dashboard, you won’t see that your engine light is on. But if you don’t also look far ahead, you might crash into something. We need to use multiple perspectives.”

Ultimately, this research will lead to tools that inform forward-looking permafrost decision-making. This is a pressing issue in the Canadian Arctic, where there are already major housing shortages, where many communities are fly-in or have limited road access, and where permafrost thaw will impact just about everything, including mines and the long-term stability of contaminated sites.

“A lot of the things that inform our actions are empirical,” says Gruber, “but the best practices we had for building on permafrost, for example, may no longer be adequate in a future that differs from what we know today. We need to prepare for persistent changes. We also need to help build capacity in the north, because this is one of the keys to efficient adaption.”

To Gruber, collaborative solutions like the ones developed by NSERC PermafrostNet represent a shift toward a new generation of researchers who approach problems in a holistic way.

Carleton University master's student Emilie Stewart-Jones
Carleton master’s student Emilie Stewart-Jones in the field in the Yukon

Emilie Stewart-Jones, a Carleton University master’s student supervised by Gruber, moved to Whitehorse to be closer to the places where she conducts research.

Stewart-Jones is focused on steep rock faces in the mountain permafrost environments of western Canada. She hikes into the alpine, measures slope angle and aspect, and installs temperature sensors in rock faces as part of her effort to better understand rock fall events in a changing climate.

“I’ve been in the mountains and observed their rock faces through all seasons,” she says. “The knowledge gained from this is subtle but incredibly valuable, which is especially true when you’re working on a modelling-based project. It’s easy to make incorrect assumptions when you don’t know the environment.

“I’ve also worked with and within governments, allowing me to understand their inner workings and priorities,” continues Stewart-Jones.

“It makes sense to collaborate with local people and governments. They can help direct your research to topics and issues that are important, and they provide valuable skills and knowledge. Science doesn’t have to be exclusive—it holds more power when it’s shared.”

Building to Net Zero

In Canada, nearly 30 per cent of the energy consumed is used to heat and cool our buildings, producing more than 20 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. Renewables are on the rise, but before we make the energy systems of our homes, workplaces and commercial spaces more sustainable with sources such as solar power, we need to optimize their roofs, windows, exterior doors and walls — basically everything between the climate-controlled interior and Canada’s extremely variable outdoor environment.

Cynthia Cruickshank, a Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering researcher at Carleton University, is confronting this challenge head-on as director of the Centre for Advanced Building Envelope Research (CABER).

Prof. Cynthia Cruickshank is working on key innovations in building technology key to fighting climate change
Prof. Cynthia Cruickshank, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering researcher & director of the Centre for Advanced Building Envelope Research (CABER) (Photo: Martin Lipman)

CABER, where Cruickshank is the also principal researcher, opened its doors on June 1, 2023, in the west end of Ottawa.

The $5.1-million, 5,700-square-foot lab with 50-foot-high ceilings is used by Cruickshank and her collaborators to develop and test “building envelope” innovations and new methods for renovating buildings designed to improve efficiency, minimize disruption and lower costs. They  tap into advances in super-thin insulation materials, prefabricated construction and panelized retrofits.

“If Canada is to meet its target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions to 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, we have to do more than install better furnaces or heat pumps,” says Chris Baldwin, CABER’s project manager and a post-doc at Carleton.

“The next step to help address climate change is to reduce the energy demands of our buildings.”

Although new builds are part of her research, Cruickshank spends about  three-quarters of her time retrofitting older buildings.

There are around 14 million private dwellings in Canada and roughly 70 per cent of these houses, apartments and condos are at least 30 years old.

“They don’t meet the energy efficiency requirements that are prescribed by today’s building codes,” says Carleton’s Cruickshank.

“That’s where significant opportunities exist. It’s where we can have the biggest impact.”

An Invisible Front in the Fight Against Climate Change

One challenge around retrofits is that energy efficiency isn’t visible. From a homeowner’s perspective, you get more bang for your buck by investing in a new kitchen. Another issue is that most major renovations require occupants to leave their dwellings for a while.

But with the right government incentives, the new materials, and methods that CABER is developing could gain traction. And if retrofits can be completed without displacing residents—for example, by adding exterior panels, an approach that Cruickshank is exploring in partnership with Natural Resources Canada and Ottawa Community Housing — they will be that much more appealing.

The size of the CABER lab allows Cruickshank to replicate real-world conditions and test new technologies at a large scale. To do so, she relies on a few key pieces of equipment: a two-storey guarded hot box to examine the thermal and moisture performance of retrofit wall assemblies, a two-storey pressurized spray rack to assess moisture resilience and in-situ wall openings to examine the interaction between outdoors and the built environment.

The guarded hot box is essentially a cube with an internal chamber that’s wired with sensors. One side of the cube is heated, the other is cooled, and a three-by-six-metre wall sample is placed inside. The sensors measure temperature, relative humidity and heat flux—the transfer of energy between the hot and cold sides. Using this data, Cruickshank can calculate a wall’s R value (its ability to resist the transfer of heat).

Meanwhile, the pressurized spray rack is used to assess the air and water tightness of the same wall samples and find out how resilient they are. It simulates rainfall on building components and is pressurized beyond standard atmospheric pressure. This allows it to determine whether construction methods and materials can withstand decades of outdoor exposure.

“We are able to study old and new wall assemblies,” explains Cruickshank, “and observe how well specific retrofit techniques work.”

The CABER lab itself has exterior walls where assemblies are installed and tested, exposing them to heat, cold, wind, rain and snow for years. Some experiments also gauge how new and retrofit construction methods impact things such as a mould and rot, which may behave differently than they do in the more porous homes we live in today.

“Before we can move toward widespread implementation,” says Baldwin, “we need to de-risk these retrofits so that the homeowner and contractors are comfortable doing this work.”

To help address these concerns, CABER has an industry advisory committee to provide guidance on where the gaps are in research and what problems people care about.

“There’s a lot of room for improvement to our buildings’ envelopes,” says Cruickshank, “and this can have a huge impact on climate change.”

Microplastics Pollution and Your Health

Plastic pollution was already viewed as one of the most pressing environmental issues on the planet when, this spring, researchers made a pair of first-time and disturbing discoveries: tiny plastic particles were detected in both human blood and human lungs.Microplastics—pieces of plastic smaller than five millimetres in diameter that typically come from clothing, cosmetics and other everyday products that break down over time—are a mounting health and environmental concern.

They can become airborne, slip through wastewater treatment plants and are consumed by fish and other animals, contaminating natural ecosystems and our bodies. Moreover, the pandemic dramatically increased demand for personal protective equipment and take-out food containers, leading to more single-use plastic that ends up in our oceans and landfill, exacerbating this dangerous cycle.

To help address this problem, Carleton University’s Global Water Institute, which is directed by Civil and Environmental Engineering researcher Banu Örmeci, is collaborating with industry partners to develop technologies to monitor microplastics in water, air and on the land.

Banu Örmeci and her team are using new technology to track down microplastics and other growing environmental threat
Banu Örmeci, Director of Carleton University’s Global Water Institute and Carleton’s Jarislowsky Chair in Water and Global Health

“Microplastics are everywhere, but because they’re still an emerging contaminant, we have neither the methods nor the equipment to measure their concentration in the environment,” says Örmeci, who is also the Carleton’s Jarislowsky Chair in Water and Global Health.

“Take a soil sample, for example. Microplastics are so small, so the first challenge is to separate them from soil, and then we still need to quantify them. We’re basically starting from scratch.”

Monitoring these pollutants is important because in order to mitigate their impact, we need to better understand where they’re present and in what quantity.

“When you conduct any type of scientific research, you make observations and reach conclusions, which often leads to loosely framed recommendations,” says Evan Pilkington, the Global Water Institute’s operations manager. “We’re taking the next step and helping create tools for people like municipal water managers and conservation authority officials, who have to respond to microplastics.

“Our work is focused on developing solutions,” he continues. “We want to empower people and give them the information and tools they need to tackle the very real challenges they’re facing.”

Validating and Testing New Microplastics Technologies

Funded by $250,000 grant from Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Zero Plastic Waste Funding Initiative, Global Water Institute researchers are working with a trio of companies to test and validate their technologies.

One of their partners is Montreal-based Photon etc., whose short-wave infrared hyperspectral imaging (SWIR HSI) technology supports the quick, precise and convenient analysis of microplastics in water at very low concentrations, taking this capability out of the lab and into the field. A recent experiment showed that SWIR HSI can accurately identify several microplastic polymers down to 200 microns in size.

Ocean Diagnostics out of Victoria, B.C., is another partner. Instead of adapting techniques from other areas of study, researchers who study microplastics can use the company’s Saturna tool to obtain consistent sample images for rapid physical analysis of plastic particles.

Scientists using techology to identify microplastics and other threats to the environment

Saturna uses machine learning and AI software to assess the morphology, size, shape, colour and form of a plastic particle, determining its material category— for example, whether it’s a film, a pellet or foam. Ocean Diagnostics is also developing a tool for collecting microplastic samples down to 400 metres below the surface of the ocean, which is vital because more than 99 per cent of plastic waste sinks.

The third partner is Winnipeg’s Particuleye Technologies, whose technology uses computer vision and machine learning to automate the process of counting microplastic fragments and fibres in samples, which researchers otherwise must do manually.

Although these collaborations are all relatively recent, the Global Water Institute had already acquired specific lab equipment for microplastics research, anticipating the need for more work in this area. In addition to the tech side, the institute has also been providing its partners with business and marketing advice, connecting companies to potential funders and clients.

“People and governments are very aware of plastic pollution, but they might have been more conscious of the larger pieces than the smaller pieces in the past,” says Örmeci.

“Previously, the concerns were more on the environmental side. But now there are serious questions about the impact of microplastics on human health.

“Our work is not only research,” she adds. “It’s a technology acceleration project as well, drawing on engineering, scientific and business expertise at Carleton and connecting industry, academia and government so we can develop solutions together.”

Edible Insects

Our planet’s population is expected to reach nearly 11 billion by the end of this century, which will create a major global challenge: How will we feed so many people? Current agricultural practices, whether producing animals or crops, require too much land, water, feed or fertilizer to be sustainable at such a scale.

But Carleton University PhD student Matt Muzzatti believes a small creature could play a big role in the solution to our global food crisis. His research can help provide important protein and nutrients and, at the same time, shows what’s possible when we address significant problems in innovative ways.

Muzzatti, a budding biologist, is exploring the mass rearing of crickets as an alternative food source.

“The edible insect industry likes to describe them as a sustainable superfood,” he says.

“Not only are they healthy for you, but they also require a lot fewer resources to farm than a comparable amount of protein from conventional sources of meat like beef, pork or poultry.”

PhD student Matt Muzzatti, who believes cricket protein could play a big role in the solution to our global food crisis
Carleton University PhD student Matt Muzzatti

Cattle, for example, need 21 times more land, 13 times more water and 8.5 times more feed than what’s required to produce the same amount of cricket protein. The insect also provides ten times more vitamin B12 than salmon, twice as much iron as spinach and twice as much calcium as milk, which is not only good for our bones and teeth but also beneficial for those who are lactose intolerant. And much more is consumable: only 40 per cent of a cow is edible, compared to 80 per cent of a cricket, whose wings and legs are typically removed during processing.

Although the “ick factor” may stop some people from thinking about insects as food, two billion people around the world currently eat more than 1,600 different species of insects. The vast majority are harvested in the wild, explains Muzzatti, and only five species are farmed in any significant way: the Gryllodes sigillatus that he studies, two other types of cricket, the black soldier fly and mealworms.

Muzzatti, who developed an interest in crickets at a campus bug day event while working toward his master’s degree, collaborates with Entomo Farms near Peterborough, Ont. Entomo raises free-range crickets inside three football field-sized barns, where they live between cardboard dividers and have access to troughs of feed and water.

The company—a big part of Ontario’s claim to be the cricket capital of Canada—harvests about eight million insects every week and sells products such as cricket powder at mainstream supermarkets, as well as whole roasted crickets and snacks like energy bars and cheese puffs made with cricket flour.

Versatile cricket protein powder can be added to pasta sauce, smoothies or just about anything you’re cooking, while the roasted crickets are described as having a nutty, sunflower-like taste. Both are an option for vegetarians looking for alternative sources of protein.

The Science of Cricket Protein

Through his research, Muzzatti is attempting to optimize the diet of farmed crickets, to minimize the inputs and maximize the yield. In his lab at Carleton University, he raises hundreds of the insects inside individual plastic cups, which are arrayed on cafeteria trays and kept inside an incubator where the temperature and light can be precisely controlled.

“We make their food in-house—a mixture of proteins, carbs and vitamins—and regulate every ingredient,” says Muzzatti.

“We do things like change the carbohydrate-to-protein ratio and see how that impacts body size, lifespan and time to adulthood. It’s basically analytical baking.”

By paying attention to what and how much a cricket eats, and by weighing it frequently, he hopes to create a “Canada’s Food Guide” for crickets that can help farmers achieve optimal yields by making small tweaks to their diet.

Close up of a cricket on a green leaf

“When we domesticated farm animals, we practiced artificial selection to encourage desirable traits such as larger body size to make farming more efficient,” says Muzzatti. “There’s tons of science around artificial selection, but nobody has really connected the science to edible insects.

“There’s a lot of room for this industry to grow,” he adds.

“It has so much potential.”

Muzzatti, who hopes to establish the first dedicated edible insect research lab in Canada someday, is also involved in a side project. He’s supporting fourth-year Carleton student Sophie Kasdorf, who is using by-products from a brewery, spent grain and yeast, as a source of protein and carbohydrates in cricket feed—recycling waste to make the production of cricket protein even more sustainable.

“Science takes a long time to produce results, but it helps that there’s a bigger picture we’re working toward,” says Muzzatti.

“A project like this makes me feel that I have some control over bigger challenges like climate change. That helps ground me and makes it feel like I’m making a difference.”


Sustainability

Remote, Hybrid or In-Office

At the beginning of 2021, 32 per cent of Canadian employees worked most of their hours from home, compared with only 4 per cent in 2016. As we start to see light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, millions of Canadians could resume working in their offices on a regular basis in the very near future, leaving employers across the country with a significant challenge and opportunity.

“The rise in remote work will have society-wide impacts and provides us with a rare real-time opportunity to learn something new about work and introduce changes that benefit us all.”

  • from the Conference Board of Canada report “Remote, Office, or Hybrid?” co-authored by Carleton’s Linda Duxbury

COVID-19 represents a watershed moment, changing forever how and where people work. As companies and organizations attempt to figure out whether staff should continue working at home full-time or part-time, or if everybody should be back onsite, they need data and direction to make the right decisions.

“We’re at a demarcation point,” says work-life balance and change management expert Linda Duxbury, the Chancellor’s Professor at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business. “The whole system has been destabilized and everything is possible now.”

Linda Duxbury on Hybrid and Remote Work
Linda Duxbury, Chancellor’s Professor at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business

What employers and employees needed was a guide for how to manage talent amid this new reality. Duxbury recognized this need and, in partnership with the Conference Board of Canada, she and her former PhD student Michael Halinski co-authored a report that examined employee preferences around remote, hybrid and in-office work arrangements.

While the pandemic showed that remote work is possible, it does not mean that working at home can replace office work. Moreover, the transition that’s underway is extremely complex because there are so many different employment sectors and types of jobs, not to mention the wide spectrum of individual circumstances.

The Future of Remote Work

Duxbury’s examination of more than 26,000 survey responses from Canadians revealed a rich diversity of experiences and a significant difference of opinion around work preferences going forward.

For many, working from home eroded work-life balance and dramatically increased stress, anxiety and insomnia. Some are looking forward to a full-time return to the office, while others would prefer to remain fully remote. Which explains why even within a single organization or company, a one-size-fits-all solution may not be realistic.

“There’s no playbook for what’s happening,” says Duxbury.

“Managers are going to have to have some honest discussions with employees, who have developed a new set of working habits over the past two years. Organizations and employees need to be willing to compromise on how work will be structured post-pandemic.”

A remote worker

Even if management and staff agree on a hybrid arrangement, however, determining how many days each week are for remote work, as well as which days and whether all employees have to stick to the same schedule, presents a new set of challenges.

“How do you manage a hybrid team?” asks Duxbury, noting that while there are advantages to in-person work, such as brainstorming and relationship building, some tasks can be done well from home.

“It’s much easier to manage a workforce when everybody is remote or everybody is in the office.”

Her suggestion is to gain an in-depth understanding of who is on a workplace team and what the team does, and then come up with a “sweet spot”—the number of days each week that people should be onsite together.

This approach requires communication and flexibility from both employers and employees, which is one of the keys to making the transition to the new work world as smooth as possible.

Duxbury calls for employers and employees to adopt a test-and-learn mindset—experimenting with and piloting new approaches to work as individuals, business units and organizations. In other words, the report states, they must be “willing to start from scratch, question everything and make intentional decisions with a clear, evidence-based rationale.”

A remote manager wearing a headset

“Leaders need to admit that this is all new for them as well,” says Duxbury.

“That’s leadership. While employees need to compromise, there are multiple views out there and no one is likely to get exactly what they want.”

In addition to managing this shift, employers are going to have to find new ways to measure productivity. Remote workers tended to put in longer hours during the pandemic, letting tasks creep into their evenings and weekends, but that didn’t necessarily translate into an increase in output.

As life normalizes—with children back at school and the stress of a global virus diminishing—employees are going to have to find a healthy work-life balance and employers are going to have to figure out how to assess their contributions.

Underlying this transformation is a nationwide talent shortage. In many sectors, employers are competing to recruit and retain staff, which means they may need to take a step back, review their overarching goals as an organization, familiarize themselves with the pros and cons of various work arrangements, and map out a new path.

As Duxbury’s report declares, “The rise in remote work will have society-wide impacts and provides us with a rare real-time opportunity to learn something new about work and introduce changes that benefit us all.”


Click here to download the report at no cost: Remote, Office or Hybrid? Employee Preferences for Post-Pandemic Work Arrangements


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