While many people who acquire COVID-19 experience only minor symptoms or are completely asymptomatic, others (~20% of patients) experience a severe form of the disease associated with a phenomenon called a cytokine storm, an undesirable immune response that ultimately results in the deposition of fibrotic tissue in the lungs that causes the breathing difficulties and […]

Oncology specialists are few in numbers and cannot be present within every hospital or clinic providing their guidance and support. There are institutions in this world with oncology experts that can provide the best possible care and the knowledge of these experts is stored in medical case files within the hospital. With the power of […]

Epilepsy-related sudden death occurs following uncontrolled recurrent seizure which are usually non-responsive to antiepileptic drugs. These patients found dead in bed usually following heart and respiratory arrest. It is not known whether seizure-affected brain regions regulating cardiorespiratory function play a role in this complication and if so, what is the mechanism underneath in order to […]

The project will develop aqueous-free systems for decontaminating (i.e. inactivation of human pathogens and spoilage microbes) fresh produce that can be applied individually or sequentially. The first intervention is based on a forced-air ozone reactor that introduces the antimicrobial gas through the bed of produced at a controlled flow rate. The advantage of the method […]

Enzyme immobilisation is crucial for preserving the enzyme activity while enabling the enzymes to be recovered and reused for multiple applications in biocatalysis. However, immobilisation can change the structure and functionality of enzymes. Therefore, immobilisation of enzymes needs to be carefully investigated and controlled at fundamental levels. The emerging two-dimensional (2D) materials, such as graphene […]

The goal of this project is to develop advanced mathematical algorithms integrated with the probe design technique to improve the SNR of an NMR measurement. The proposed methods are summarized as: 1) Apply Compressed sensing (CS) technique associated with the optimized recovery method to the current obtained NMR signals. 2) Time-averaging technique can also be […]

Type II diabetes affects around 9% of the North-American population. While it may be reversed by a change of life style and diet, it can cause irrepairable damage if left untreated. Tests that involve taking multiple blood samples are usually administered to find out if a subject has, or is at risk of developing, type […]

Birds and insects who are active at dusk and dawn rely on environmental cues, such as light, to forage. Whip-poor-will are one such bird, and they rely on flying insects that are active during the same periods for food. Which insects, however, is not well understood but is important to know for conservation efforts focused […]

This project proposes for Ontario a transformative approach for identification and surveillance of COVID-19 and prediction of COVID-19 outbreaks based on wastewater-based community-testing epidemiology. WE will identify and measure SARS-CoV-2 RNA and molecular biomarkers of health excreted by populations and use modelling to predict the special-temporal occurrence of emerging outbreaks in sewage wastewaters. Our team […]

Strategies to promote immune defences against COVID-19 infection are urgently needed. The gastrointestinal tract is a potentially important route for COVID-19 infection and for generating protective anti-viral immunity against this pathogen. Certain features of COVID-19 contribute to its ability to evade and subvert our immune defences. Type I interferon is a key immune protein that […]

Machine learning has been applied in various fields and shown promising results in recent years. Researchers have found that tuning machine learning models in a proper way can vastly boost the model performance with respect to the specific AI task. However, tuning machine learning models at scale, especially finding the right hyperparameter values, can be […]

The recent outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 associated coronavirus disease, COVID-19, had been declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization. There is still only a minimal understanding of the virus and an absence of effective targeted therapy for its treatment. Epigenetic regulations in cells control the expression of genes without modifications to the genetic […]