Big Ideas for a Changing World

McMaster Civil Engineering and School of Earth, Environment & Society Professor, Paulin Coulibaly talks about managing flood risk in Canada, working with Global Water Futures and advocating for EDI at McMaster.

What’s the best cloth mask for the public to use? How can PPE be made to be more sustainable? Can imperfect use of imperfect masks still reduce COVID-19 spread?

Four experts from McMaster’s Centre of Excellence in Protective Equipment and Materials (CEPEM) answer frequently asked questions about cloth masks, and how they’re working with industry partners to improve the next generation of PPE in Canada:

• Catherine Clase – Associate Professor, Medicine, McMaster University; Nephrologist, St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton.
  
• Charles De Lannoy – Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering, McMaster University.
  
• Myrna Dolovich – Professor, Medicine, McMaster University and St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton.
  
• Zeinab Hosseini-Doust – Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering, McMaster University.

What if eye drops and injections used to treat eye diseases could be made to last longer in the eye, improving patient outcomes and reducing visits to the doctor? What if this drug delivery method could be applied to the lung, potentially improving outcomes for COVID-19 patients?

In Episode 8, hear how McMaster engineers at the Sheardown Lab are doing just that.

Guests:

Heather Sheardown, a professor in Chemical Engineering and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Opthalmic Biomaterials

What are the challenges and advantages of e-learning? How will innovation culture shift? How can we make the most of the transformations to education that were required by the pandemic, but may carry on into the future?

In this episode, we play back a virtual panel discussion led by John Preston during this year's Global Engineering Deans Council (GEDC) Industry Forum.

Special thanks to our panelists for their insights, and GEDC and Petrus for organizing the GEDC Industry Forum in partnership with McMaster Engineering.

Guests:

• Joris Melkert, Director of Education in the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at TU Delft in the Netherlands;
• Charlette N’Guessan, Co-founder and CEO of the BACE GROUP, an African digital identity software company, and 2020 recipient of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation;
• Colin Tan, Director of Operations at TusPark UK, a growing science and tech incubator.

What if we could create digital twins of cities and test how different re-opening scenarios will affect the city's population and infrastructure systems? Using network science, machine learning, systems analysis and optimization, McMaster researchers have created CityDNA, a technology that can do just that. They recently received funding from McMaster's COVID-19 Fund to use this technology to inform McMaster's re-opening plans.

GUESTS:

Wael El-Dakhakhni, professor in civil engineering and the McMaster School of Computational Science and Engineering.

Zoe Li, assistant professor in civil engineering.

Interviewed by: John Preston

Produced by: Jessie Park

Edited by: Dan Kim

What if frequently touched surfaces like food packaging, door handles and bus railings could be coated with a plastic that repels bacteria and viruses?