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Title: Using artificial intelligence for safer and more efficient blood donations.
Presenter: Chen-Yang Su (Grad student).
Donating blood could help save a life, but donors may be at risk of side effects. Did you know that artificial intelligence (AI) is helping to make blood donations safer and more efficient? That's right, computers are getting in on the action! I will describe how, by looking at past donations, AI can help keep donors safe from negative health effects and enable them to donate blood more efficiently so that they can keep saving lives.
Audience : High School (Sec. III-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: The Balanced Brain.
Presenter: Dr. Amy Smith-Dijak (Post Doc).
A balanced brain cell is a healthy brain cell: if they're too active or not active enough, they'll hurt themselves or the cells around them. My research focuses on how brain cells stay balanced and how that balance can fall apart. In this talk, I'll walk through my findings in Huntington disease and ataxia, and how they relate to the wider world of brain health.
Audience : High School (Sec. III-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions). This talk is also available in French.
Title: Liars, cheaters and thieves: when pollinators aren't pollinators.
Presenter: Dr. Anna Hargreaves (faculty).
Pollination is a mutualism, but many plants and animals will trick their way to success if they can. We'll talk weird flowers & surprising culprits...
Audience : High School (Sec. III-V), adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions). This talk is also available in Spanish.
Title: What if we lost just a tad(pole): the effects of toad tadpoles on the environment.
Presenter: Jessica Ford (grad student).
Tadpoles are small and only live in ponds temporarily, can they really make a difference? We will discuss the changes to the ecosystem that occur when we lose toad tadpoles, as well as why frogs and toads are disappearing, and the conservation work we are doing to help an endangered toad population.
Audience : Elementary, high School (Sec. I-V), adults. Length : 30-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: The vigorous shake that could save onions.
Presenter: Anthony Iheonye (grad student).
The talk describes how we could improve the quality of dry food products by using an innovative drying method. This drying method preserves the color and nutrient content of dry foods, heating the food material uniformly. During the talk, i would explain how and why this heating method vigorously shakes onions in order to improve its quality.
Audience : High School (Sec. I-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: Using small microbes to understand big questions about life.
Presenter: Rodrigo Reyes (faculty).
How is DNA, the genetic material, inherited without mistakes across countless generations? How do cells in our body decide how big to grow? What defines how resistant a cell can be to antibiotics? In this presentation, I will describe how I use genetics and fancy microscopy to understand these questions in tiny microorganisms.
Audience : High School (Sec. III-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions). This talk is also available in Spanish.
Title: Host-microbiome dynamics as a source of coral reef resilience.
Presenter: Victoria Glynn (grad student).
Coral reefs are the most biodiverse habitat in the ocean, providing a home to over 25% of all marine life, and sustaining the livelihoods of over 500 million people. This diversity extends past the charismatic macrofauna that live on the reef, such as sharks and turtles, as these ecosystems encompass an equally incredible microbial diversity. Unfortunately, as atmospheric CO2 levels increase, corals and the marine biodiversity they support face increasing extinction risk. I will discuss how taking a host-microbiome perspective, that is considering the coral animal and its microbial symbionts together, presents a more holistic view of these ecosystems, and how this may be a critical lens for protecting reefs in the Anthropocene.
Audience : High School (Sec. I-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: RNA and its role in genes, vaccines and proteins; is there any more to learn?
Presenter: Richard Roy (Faculty).
RNAs have been finally received the notoriety that they deserve after years of being considered a simple intermediate between the DNA and proteins. New roles for RNA suggest that we may not be at the end of new discoveries and novel applications. Simple models and rigorous fundamental scientific inquiry can help us reveal perhaps a few new surprises about this extraordinary family of molecules.
Audience : High School (Sec. III-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: Fundamental science and its role from discovery to the clinic.
Presenter: Richard Roy (Faculty).
The media is full of descriptions of wonderful new scientific advances that for many of us will be life changing. But where to these discoveries come from and how to new approaches in the clinic eventually make their way there? Fundamental science is critical to maintain innovation in our ways of treating multiple diseases, but all this innovation requires investigation at the very basic level.
Audience : High School (Sec. III-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: Using artificial intelligence for safer and more efficient blood donations.
Presenter: Chen-Yang Su (Grad student).
Donating blood could help save a life, but donors may be at risk of side effects. Did you know that artificial intelligence (AI) is helping to make blood donations safer and more efficient? That's right, computers are getting in on the action! I will describe how, by looking at past donations, AI can help keep donors safe from negative health effects and enable them to donate blood more efficiently so that they can keep saving lives.
Audience : High School (Sec. III-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 60-90 minutes (including questions).
Presenter: Paul Kry (Faculty).
Wire metal puzzles, also called disassembly puzzles, are hard for computers to solve and in many cases tricky for humans too. This talk is about how we can teach computers to use puzzles that build on human intuition.
Audience : High School (Sec. III-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: Artistic aerial robots.
Presenter: Paul Kry (Faculty).
Robots have become a vehicle for exploring ideas in the production of creative artifacts such as drawings and paintings. At the core of many of these endeavors are important technical challenges and computational problems. This talk will focus on two aerial robot applications that use small quadrotor robots to create stippled portraits and light paintings of animals.
Audience : High School (Sec. III-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: Towards Robotic Societies - Blockchain Technology Secures Swarm Robots.
Presenter : Hanqing Zhao (Grad student).
Have you ever been amazed by the sight of ants collectively moving a big piece of food? The power of teamwork in eusocial animals has inspired the creation of swarm robotics -- where simple robots collaborate to solve complex tasks. Yet, should these robots trust each other unconditionally, and how do they stay resilient to malfunctioning peers and attacks from intruders? I will introduce the origins of swarm robotics, and how blockchain technology applies principles of human societal governance to secure swarm robots.
Audience: High School (Sec. III-V), CEGEP, adults. Length: 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: Bubble, bubble, toil and eruption . . . from champagne to volcanoes.
Presenter: Dr. Don Baker (faculty).
The formation of bubbles plays a fundamental role in controlling volcanic eruptions; similar processes occur when a champagne bottle is opened. I will discuss how my studies on the formation and evolution of bubbles in the laboratory, and by computer simulation, help us understand how bubbles affect volcanic eruptions. The goal of the research is to better understand how bubbles form and interconnect, with the hope that such knowledge will help us better predict the intensity of volcanic eruptions.
Audience(s) : High school (Sec. III-V), CEGEP, adult. Length: 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: How does nature grow giant (2 m) crystals?
Presenter: Dr. Don Baker (faculty).
Rare igneous (fire-formed) rocks called pegmatites are notable because they can contain individual crystals meters in size — the same size as the rocks themselves, even though they cooled and crystallized on time scales as short as weeks to months. The formation of these giant crystals remain enigmatic, but I will discuss how our research in the lab at the micron scale sheds light on the origin of these meter-scale crystals.
Audience(s) : High school (Sec. III-V), CEGEP, adult. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: Picky eaters: understanding the diet of marine microorganisms.
Presenter: Dr. Nagissa Mahmoudi (faculty).
My talk focuses on research that examines what microbes are eating in the ocean and what that means for oil spills/climate change.
Audience : High school (Sec. I-V), CEGEP. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: Global warming: we've had this coming for a long time. NOTE: not available in 2022-23.
Presenter: Dr. Ni colas Cowan (faculty).
I will explain the 19th century physics that led to the first prediction of global warming, and the 20th century confirmation of this prediction.
Audience : CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: The search for life around other stars. NOTE: not available in 2022-23.
Presenter: Dr. Nicolas Cowan (faculty).
I will describe how we measure the properties of planets tens of light years away, and how we can search them for signs of life.
Audience : High school (Sec. III-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: Methane: the good, the bad, and the ugly .
Presenter: Dr. Peter Douglas (faculty).
Methane is an source of energy and a greenhouse gas. By better understanding how it enters the atmosphere we can help stop global warming.
Audience : High school (Sec. I-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: What molecules in mud can tell us about the Ancient Maya.
Presenter: Dr. Peter Douglas (faculty).
The amazing cities of the Ancient Maya mysteriously fell into ruin 100 years ago — measurements of mud can help us understand why.
Audience : High school (Sec. I-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: Surviving Snowball Earth .
Presenter: Maxwell Lechte (post doc).
Hundreds of millions of years ago, when complex life was first beginning to evolve, the world froze over completely. This event known as "Snowball Earth" threatened the survival of life on Earth. Clues found in rocks deposited by ancient glaciers provide answers to how life survived this extreme ice age.
Audience : High school (Sec. I-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: How to destroy a rock (and your equipment) in hyperacidic water .
Presenter: Vincent Van Hinsberg (faculty).
Kawah Ijen volcano in Indonesia has the largest hyperacidic lake in the world. Water from this lake seeps out and reacts with rocks and soils with a negative environmental impact. However, the lake also provides us with an opportunity to understand how volcanoes work and to monitor their hazards.
Audience : High school (Sec. I-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: Ocean acidifcation: The indisputable problem!
Presenter: Alfonso Mucci (faculty).
Ocean Acidification (OA) is seen as the other carbon dioxide (CO2) problem. Oceanic uptake of anthropogenic CO2 decreases the pH, carbonate ion concentration and saturation state of surface ocean waters with respect to calcium carbonate (CaCO3) minerals. OA is a potential threat to the health of marine ecosystems, notably to calcifying organisms whose ability to secrete their CaCO3 skeletons might be hindered. OA also triggers the dissolution of carbonate minerals on the seafloor, neutralizing man-made CO2. OA threatens the marine food chain and may lead to the demise of coral reefs.
Audience : High school (Sec. I-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: Everything everywhere all the time: environmental monitoring and citizen science
Presenter: Dr. William Minarik (faculty).
Sensors that quantify the world around us: ground motion, water/sea level, greenhouse gases, etc. have become inexpensive and accessible. In parallel, software advances have made operating these sensors easy for nearly anyone. I will explore the contributions that citizen science and networks of inexpensive sensors can make to advancing our understanding, documenting our environment, and engaging local communities.
Audience : High school (Sec. III-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: Journey towards the center of the Earth, via Japan
Presenter: Dr. William Minarik (faculty).
Experimental petrology uses presses and furnaces to squeeze and heat rocks to the conditions found in the Earth's interior. Uncommon instruments called synchrotrons (one of which is in Japan) allow us to use X-rays to peer inside our experiments while they are running; it's like a window into the deep Earth. The results of these studies help us to understand the workings of plate tectonics and the origin of volcanic lavas.
Audience : CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: Lessons Learned from an Accidental Career in Medical Journalism.
Presenter: Christopher Labos (Faculty)
Is most published research wrong? Sometimes it seems that way. Almost every food has at one point been shown to both cause and prevent cancer. So how does this happen? In this talk we will look at how some famous studies got it so wrong. We will try to understand why chocolate probably won’t help you win a Nobel prize, why red wine might not be that heart healthy, and why cell phones likely don’t cause cancer.
Learn about: experimental design, the process of science, health guidelines. Audiences: Sec III-V, CEGEP, adult.
Presenter: Christopher Labos (Faculty)
Vaccines are probably one of the great public health achievements of the 20th century. They have saved, who knows how many lives over the past 50 years. And yet people are terrified of them. After having wiped out diseases like smallpox and polio, diseases on the verge of extinction like measles are making a comeback. In this presentation we will answer some of the common questions and concerns surrounding vaccination including mercury and other metals in vaccines, the threat of autism, why we vaccinate infants, and why alternative vaccine schedules are problematic.
Learn about: vaccines, epidemiology, immunity. Audiences: Sec III-V, CEGEP, adult.
Presenter: Christopher Labos (Faculty)
If you watch the news, you will slowly come to believe that everything is bad for you. At some point, everything has caused cancer. But the one thing that is almost universally acknowledged to be good for you is exercise. Exercise is good, not just for heart health, but also for healthy bones, lung function, preventing dementia, cancer and arthritis. So why don’t we do it more? Some may be worried they are too old and some may worry that they are not in good enough health to exercise. In this talk we will look at how and how often to exercise because the reality is that exercise is generally only bad for your health if you don’t do it.
Learn about: exercise, health, immunity. Audiences: Sec III-V, CEGEP, adult.
Presenter: Christopher Labos (Faculty)
Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer in women and yet few women are aware of the risks. But how much of what you’ve heard is actually true? Do most heart attacks come on with no warning? Are women less likely to have chest pain when they have heart disease? Does the birth control pill and hormone replacement therapy increase the risk of heart disease? Have most cardiac medications not been tested on women? Do women do worse after a heart attack compared to men?
Learn about: cardiac health, women's health. Audiences:
Presenter: Christopher Labos (Faculty)
One week eggs are good for you, the next week eggs are bad for you. It’s impossible to keep up. Why has cholesterol been so controversial? Why is cholesterol so hotly debated whereas the other cardiac risk factors like diabetes, hypertension, and smoking don’t generate the same vicious arguments? In this talk we will look at the roots of the apparent cholesterol controversy and see why the lipid hypothesis has been so problematic over the years. We will also see what the latest scientific research says about treating cholesterol and look at why statins have gotten such bad press over the years.
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Presenter: Christopher Labos (Faculty)
Why is it so hard to communicate science to the public? Part of the problem is that medical research can sometimes be wrong. Whether we are talking about how eating chocolate can help you win a Nobel prize or whether coffee can cause a heart attack, sometimes what we hear on the news is not the whole story.
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Presenter: Christopher Labos (Faculty)
Common pain medications like Advil or Aleve are great for relieving arthritis pain or headache. But are they safe? Do they increase the risk of heart disease and raise the blood pressure? And if they aren’t safe, what alternatives are out there?
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Presenter: Christopher Labos (Faculty)
Does climate change and pollution affect our health? Absolutely. But how do we approach the problem? Are all the studies on the issue reliable? How can we approach such a broad topic?
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Title: Why light Matters and Why We Should Conserve It.
Presenter: Hannah Fronenberg (grad student)
We humans have been studying light from the cosmos for millennia. But why? Why is light so important and what does it tell us about our universe? Learn about the discoveries we have been able to make using light from the night sky, and the risk light pollution poses to all types of observations.
Learn about: observations using light,light pollution. Audiences: Secondary, CEGEP.
Title: Watching the universe grow up using radio waves.
Presenter: Adrian Liu (faculty)
How big is our Universe? How old is it? How do we use telescopes to look into the past, and how far can we look? How did the universe transform from its "baby" state to the its currently majestic adulthood?
Learn about: radio waves, telescopes, changes in our universe. Other physics topics available. Audiences: Sec III-V, CEGEP, adult.
Title: CHIME: probing the radio sky.
Presenter: Charanjot Brar (staff)
This talk will focus on how to build a radio telescope and how to do astronomy in the age of immense data!
Audience : CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: Weather, macroweather, climate: our random yet predictable atmosphere.
Presenter: Dr. Shaun Lovejoy (faculty)
A popular saying is “the climate is what you expect, the weather is what you get”. Based on a new popular book, we will show why this is wrong.
Audience : CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions). This talk is also available in French.
Title: Global warming: we've had this coming for a long time.
Presenter: Dr. Nicolas Cowan (faculty)
I will explain the 19th century physics that led to the first prediction of global warming, and the 20th century confirmation of this prediction.
Audience : CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: The search for life around other stars.
Presenter: Dr. Nicolas Cowan (faculty)
I will describe how we measure the properties of planets tens of light years away, and how we can search them for signs of life.
Audience : High school (Sec. III-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: The wave, particle, and mechanical properties of light . NOTE: available in winter 2023.
Presenter: Dr. Jack Sankey (faculty)
Depending on the situation, light can behave like a wave or a "quantum" particle. Additionally, it can actually push things around (helping to give comets their tails!). In this talk, I will discuss the physics of light and how we can use its mechanical properties to control the motion of solid objects in the lab.
Audience : High school (Sec. I-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Presenter: Dr. Peter Grutter (faculty)
We are presently living at the dawn of a new age. The societal impact of the Nanotechnology Age is expected to be larger than that of all of life sciences and IT in the past 50 years! Nanotechnology allows us to image, measure and control matter at the nano-meter (i.e. atomic) length scale. Small is different! I will describe how these nano abilities allow us to create structures with amazing properties, leading to huge opportunities as well as challenges in material science, medicine and information technology.
Audience : High school (Sec. I-V), CEGEP. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title : Neutrinos 101: How to Catch a Ghost.
Presenter: Soud Alkharusi (grad student)
Billions of neutrinos pass through us every second, so why did it take us so long to notice? This talk will give an overview of neutrinos and their special place in particle physics and the universe. We will also briefly go over current experiments and open questions.
Audience : High school (Sec. I-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title : Smashing very small things together really hard: why?
Presenter: Nicolas Fortier (grad student)
An overview of why colliding particles together is a thing (and obviously also why it's important), which will include topics such as matter (energy), velocity (relativity), and forces (amongst other things).
Audience : High school (Sec. I-V), CEGEP. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title : Quantum machine learning: Artificial Intelligence enters the Quantum World.
Presenter: Michael Hilke (faculty)
I present here the basics and applications of machine learning together as well as quantum information in the context of new quantum technologies. This leads to the exciting prospect of combining quantumness into machine learning with new applications in technology and everyday experiences.
Audience : High school (Sec. I-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: P erfectionism: the "good", the bad, the ugly.
Presenter: Shelby Levine (graduate student).
My research explores the influence of multidimensional perfectionism on mental health in adolescence and emerging adulthood.
Audience : High school (Sec. I-V), CEGEP. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: Mindfulness, Contemplation, and Creating a Kinder World.
Presenter: Syeda Shireen (Grad student)
I will discuss the importance of self-reflection and contemplation, specifically through mindfulness as a tool and way of life in the development of self-awareness, kindness, and wisdom. I will offer a discussion of these topics within the context of Maslow's hierarchy of needs that culminates in the less well-known stage of self-transcendence that is crucial to the spread of prosociality and compassion within our society.
Audience : High school (Sec. I-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
Title: Blind at first sight? The role of positivity and accuracy of first impressions in romantic interest.
Presenter: Lauren Gazzard (Grad student)
On a first date, is it only important to see a person positively or is it beneficial to accurately perceive their personality as well? Using three speed-dating samples where participants briefly met with and rated the personalities of opposite-sex dating partners, we found that forming more positive personality impressions of potential dating partners was associated with greater romantic interest. In contrast, viewing a potential dating partner more accurately, or more in line with their unique personality, was associated with significantly less romantic interest. This was especially the case for potential partners whose personalities were less romantically appealing, specifically, for those who were lower in extraversion. Thus, on a first date, it may be more romantically beneficial to form a positive, yet inaccurate, first impression.
Audience : High school (Sec. I-V), CEGEP, adults. Length : 45-60 minutes (including questions).
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