by Maya Lekhi & Lauren Robinson

In Canada, 36 long-term (greater than one year) drinking water advisories remain in effect across 29 Indigenous communities. While boiling water can kill pathogens, it is a time consuming and energy inefficient process that fails to remove other contaminants, such as heavy metals. Living filter membranes (LFMs) made from symbiotic cultures of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY) are capable of filtering living pathogens and heavy metals, as well as being renewable and cost-effective. The findings of this study were applied in designing a user-friendly, at-home filtration system that could be implemented in homes in communities subjected to drinking water advisories.

by Kailee Kuan

Gold nanoparticles can be used in the fight against cancer as contrast agents for medical diagnostics. Their high x-ray attenuation properties make them a favorable candidate for x-ray imaging. AuNPs, or gold nanoparticles, compared to other popular contrast agents such as iodine-based compounds have higher contrast and longer imaging times. Gold nanoparticles can also be used as a drug delivery or gene delivery tool for gene therapy. It has the potential to transport chemotherapy drugs to tumor sites because of its large surface area. Using gold nanoparticles to transport healthy genes into mutated cancer cells could potentially halt the spread of cancer by causing cell death. Hence, though there are no current cures for cancer, gold nanoparticles hold tremendous potential in treating and opposing cancer.

by Rawaan Ibrahim

Classrooms use significant amounts of paper on a daily basis, and even more is thrown out. As the human population continues to grow, more homes are built but at the cost of ecosystems, habitats and agricultural fields. With every house built there are trees cut down, therefore, I wanted to find an alternative to wood paper products as trees are being deforested at an alarming rate. Through experimentation, I was able to utilize mowed grass clippings to make paper out of grass.

by Derek Sheen

Melanoma is the deadliest type of skin cancer and is the fifth most common cancer in the United States. The detection of melanoma in-situ has a survival rate of 99%, while stage IV melanoma has a survival rate of only 18%. Developing a deep learning algorithm to determine whether the lesion is melanoma or not, would provide an alternative to biopsies that has no costs with instant results. The goal of this project is to make a lightweight web application accessible on all devices where users would be able to upload images of their moles into the deep learning model to accurately provide a diagnosis in the comfort of their homes.

by Oliver Baker

Mussels (Mytilus) are a marine invertebrate found all over the world and can contain microplastics. Blue mussels (Mytilus edulis) are important to examine because they are consumed by humans. They are useful for identifying plastics due to their susceptibility to uptake microplastics. By identifying where microplastics are being ingested by mussels, then there could be potential for them to be in that area.

by Caroline Chan

Humans read the emotions of each other to socialize. Machines can be trained to recognize human emotions from facial expressions through artificial intelligence (AI). However, mask-wearing, common due to COVID-19, may affect human and AI’s ability to read emotions. To test this hypothesis, I gathered images of happy or sad faces and added simulated masks to them. I showed the images to 5 volunteers and asked them if each of the images was a happy or a sad face. On average, they correctly recognized 91.6% of the masked images. Next, I trained an AI model with unmasked images and tested it with a different set of unmasked images. The accuracy of the model was 76%. However, when the same model was tested with masked faces, the accuracy dropped to 52%. My study showed that wearing masks makes reading emotions more challenging for humans and AI.

by William Zhao

Every year, Canadian fire departments respond to an estimated 24,000 home structure fires, resulting in an average of 377 deaths and 3,048 injuries, costing over $10 Billion and damaging almost 5280 acres of land. In this paper, I will explain how my fire alarm will reduce the chances of a house fire.