Contours Winter 2022

FACULTY OF SCIENCE MAGAZINE

WINTER 2022

THIS_IS_ GR0UND_CONTR0L SURE, THERE'S HIGH-TECH EQUIPMENT ON THIS SATELLITE, BUT ITS REAL PAYLOAD IS A HOMEGROWN SPACE INDUSTRY

UALBERTA.CA/SCIENCE

contours magazine | winter 2022

1

t e e w sew institute

ector of the Lara Mahal, dir . ute of Alberta tit Ins Glycomics

n

y a part in the la p s d n u o p m comic gar co ease, and gly Abnormal su is d r jo a m ry e of ev to diagnose, s y a w w development e n g in ritical to find research is c . eat Albertans tr d n to the a r o it n o m Alberta adds s Institute of

ic nal ed, the Glycom Net — a natio rm co ly fo G y f tl o n rk ce o e R portant w Alberta. ership and im University of research lead e th t a d e tr n ellence ce network of exc

SPOT LD’S SWEET R O W E H T E WE AR RESEARCH. FOR HEALTH

LEARN MORE. GLYCO-ALBERTA.CA

WINTER 2022

|

VOLUME 39

contents

18

10 features 10 This is Ground Control

What do you get when you combine top research and an educated workforce with a track record of designing and building satellites? A homegrown space industry.

18 The Ghost in the Machine (Is

Unfair) AI and machine learning can reflect or overcome human oversights. Meet a researcher focused on a fix.

22 Solutions Are Built on Basic Science Sometimes it takes years of basic research without an obvious application before you get effective drug delivery, quicker medical tests or a step to greener energy.

36 departments

22

4 Message from the Dean of Science 5 News

Ward away wheat midges; AI-powered bird drones; Urban animal etiquette; Your memory maker — and more!

29 Discussion

Pathways to physics; Sleep to remember; Bloodthirsty Behaviour; De-bias the algorithms — plus more!

34 Closing Shot

Here’s where neuroscience meets art.

contours magazine | winter 2022

3

CONTOURS The University of Alberta’s Faculty of Science is a research and teaching powerhouse dedicated to shaping the future by pushing the boundaries of knowledge in the classroom, laboratory and field.

Through exceptional teaching, learning and research opportunities, we competitively position our students, staff and faculty for future success. Contours is dedicated to highlighting the achievements of the Faculty of Science community, distributing to alumni and friends of the faculty.

Supervising Editors Lisa Cook, Andrew Lyle Editor Mifi Purvis Senior Associate Editors Karen Sherlock, Lisa Szabo Editorial Advisors Liz Hasham, Jennifer-Anne Pascoe, Fred West, Katie Willis Contributing Writers Stephanie Bailey, Elizabeth Chorney-Booth, Christina Frangou, Lewis Kelly, Anna Schmidt Copy Editing, Fact Checking, Proofreading Joyce Byrne, Therese Kehler, Philip Mail, Matthew Stepanic Art Director Brent Morrison Photography Dawn Graves, John Ulan Illustration An Bui, Anja Javelona, Mariella Villalobos Circulation Associate Madisen Gee Contact Us The Editor, Contours alumni magazine, Faculty of Science, 6-194 CCIS, University of Alberta Edmonton, Alta., Canada T6G 2E1 science.contours@ualberta.ca Advertising newtrail@ualberta.ca 780-748-5726 The views and opinions expressed in the magazine do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Alberta, the Faculty of Science, or its alumni community. All material is © The University of Alberta, except where indicated.

If undeliverable in Canada, please return to: Faculty of Science, 6-194 CCIS, University of Alberta Edmonton, Alta., Canada T6G 2E1.

The University of Alberta respectfully acknowledges that it is located on Treaty 6 territory.

Faculty of Science ualberta/science

You Make All Good Things Possible

D

ear Faculty of Science Alumni and Friends, One of my greatest pleasures as Acting Dean of the Faculty of Science has been seeing firsthand the effect of our alumni, donors, government, industry partners and countless community supporters.

This year marked our return to an in-person alumni weekend celebration under the new banner of U of A Days. It was wonderful to connect with so many of you, and I look forward to meeting many more of you.

It’s been a busy year in the Faculty of Science, in which we’ve seen the implementation of the University of Alberta for Tomorrow transformation.

This has meant that, along with Engineering and Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences, we’re part of the College of Natural and Applied Sciences. It brings together and supports all three faculties, fostering opportunities that make us a powerhouse of teaching and research.

It has been wonderful to welcome students back to campus in 2022. The pathways of Quad and the classrooms of CCIS are occupied again, bringing the exciting return of student group activities, extracurricular opportunities and work-integrated learning for our students — which you’ll learn more about in the stories ahead, including how student group AlbertaSat is preparing to launch its second satellite in early 2023 to monitor wildfires from orbit.

Our research activities have been equally busy and successful.

This year saw the formation of the new Glycomics Institute of Alberta under the leadership of chemist Lara Mahal, cementing Alberta’s long leadership in advancing our understanding of abnormal sugar compounds at the root of most major diseases. Our expertise in precision health research has been recognized with a combined federal investment of more than $19 million in The Metabolomics

Innovation Centre (providing critical lab services and clinical study support for health research) and GlyoNet Integrated Services (advancing research, innovation and training in glycomics), which together improve Canadians’ quality of life.

Our faculty’s excellence is internationally recognized in the fields of artificial intelligence, environment and ecology, geoscience and computing science programs, which ranked top-100 globally in this year’s Times Higher Education Subject Rankings.

Biological sciences ranked second in Canada and 30th worldwide in the 2022 Global Ranking of Academic Subjects.

These achievements are the result of the hard work of faculty, staff and students, but it is your support that makes their success possible — enabling cuttingedge research and teaching in the classroom, lab, field, and in partnership with industry. Please enjoy these stories as a glimpse at how your support has made a difference in the achievements, ideas and spirit of innovation that advances our campus, our province and the world.

Frederick G. West ACTING DEAN, FACULTY OF SCIENCE

PHOTO BY SHELLEY BARKLEY

Ward Away Wheat Midges Sustainable crops and food security are pressing concerns the world over

I

n an average year, the wheat midge can cause about $60 million in crop damage, and up to $300 million in bad seasons, says James Harynuk, a professor in the Department of Chemistry. So he and other agricultural scientists are creating new strains of wheat with built-in resistance to the crop’s biggest insect threat.

Female wheat midges are deterred from particular strains of wheat because of the odour the crop emits. Harynuk and co-lead Alejandro Costamagna from the University of Manitoba are looking to identify the warning compounds the wheat is releasing.

They aim to use the information to create new strains of wheat with midge protection. He says it “could be a game changer for the wheat industry.”

The project is funded in part by Results Driven Agriculture Research, Genome Alberta’s Innovation in Agriculture Genomics program, and the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, a five-year, $3-billion investment by federal, provincial and territorial governments. — ADRIANNA MACPHERSON contours magazine | winter 2022

5

news RESEARCH NEWS

AI-powered Drone Protects Birds U of A researchers and industry partners are developing software to keep birds out of harm’s way

Clean Resource Innovation Network (CRIN) Digital Oil and Gas Technology Competition. The competition fosters technology solutions for Canada’s oil and gas industry to improve environmental protection and operational and business competitiveness.

Cicoria is optimistic the CRIN project will create five or six new internships or company jobs within the next two years.

He’s also hopeful his company’s overall growth will create 50 to 100 jobs over the next five years, strengthened by this kind of high-tech research.

By working with real-world datasets provided by companies like Aerium Analytics, the students working on the project get in-demand skills, says Cheng. “The CRIN project is a great example of building a bridge between academia and industry.”

— BEV BETKOWSKI

the animal in a firm voice while backing away.” But looking at a wild animal is one of the most enjoyable things you can possibly do with your time, she says. “Psychologists have shown that a person watching an animal gets a huge dopamine hit just from seeing it in a natural setting.”

ADVICE YOU CAN USE

Urban Guide to Animal Etiquette Climb a tree or turn and flee? With wildlife encounters becoming more common in cities, conservation biologist Colleen Cassady St. Clair, ’88 BSc(Spec) offers three tips to keep humans and animals safe. — LEWIS KELLY DON’T FEED THEM “Animals become ‘food conditioned,’ a term we use when they associate people with food and become very aggressive,” says St. Clair. “Food-conditioned carnivores are often destroyed to protect public safety.” She says that a surprising amount of food conditioning happens

6

ualberta.ca/science

unintentionally through animals eating things like compost, bird seed, uncontained garbage and fallen fruit.

ENJOY FROM AFAR “Don’t get too close,” says St. Clair. “If you’ve done it inadvertently, back up slowly. Don’t turn and run, as that will invite some animals to chase. Speak to

PUT IT ON THE ’GRAM (AND BEYOND) “Digital tools like smartphones have created ways for people to record their wildlife observations,” says St. Clair.

“The power of having so many people watching wildlife and sharing what they see is changing how we do research.” For instance, she and her students recently submitted for publication a paper based on 10,000 crowd-sourced observations of urban coyotes from citizens reporting the sightings to the Urban Coyote Project.

BOTTOM PHOTO BY MARK TOTTEN; TOP PHOTO BY AERIUM ANALYTICS

birds and industrial sites: they don’t mix well. Now a new research project involving computing scientists and Aerium Analytics, a drone technology company, aims to make the second safer for the first.

Working with Imperial Oil Ltd., several graduate students in the Department of Computing Science’s Multimedia Research Centre will develop AI tools to better detect and deter birds from touching down and nesting in industrial areas like tailings ponds. The project runs until 2024 under lead researcher Irene Cheng, ’96 BSc(Special), ’99 MSc, ’05 PhD, the scientific director of the centre.

The software developed by Aerium Analytics and supported

by Cheng and her team will help Aerium’s patented drone, the RoBird, automatically identify, count, track and report birds coming into an area. Aerium is already using the RoBird to help industry clients with bird deterrence.

“Our RoBird and AI provide more data and details to help resource companies increase their effective management of atrisk bird populations,” says Jordan Cicoria, president of Aerium Analytics. “It also effectively reduces the need for human operation and intervention, which in turn cuts down safety risk, on-site vehicle use and carbon emissions.”

The $1-million project was awarded in January 2022 by the

FINDINGS

Cities Feel the Heat Urban hot spots threaten both people and the environment Nilusha Welegedara and Sandeep Agrawal in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences identified pockets of extreme heat known as “urban heat islands” in Edmonton. The pair found these pockets had higher temperatures than surrounding rural areas in summer and winter.

Surface temperatures in the city have increased as much as 12 C compared with nearby rural areas over the last 20 years, says Welegedara, a postdoctoral researcher. “[Heat islands] exacerbate the impact of heat waves, going beyond the comfort zone of humans,” she says.

Higher urban temperatures can lead to heat stroke or exhaustion and increase health risks for vulnerable people.

The environment also takes a hit from

hot temperatures as people run air conditioners.

The findings show cities need to pay attention to the rise in urban heat islands and take steps to mitigate them, says Agrawal, director of the U of A’s School of Urban and Regional Planning. Planners can ease hot spots by planting urban forests, retaining mature trees and increasing vegetation cover, he adds. “We want to reduce potential severe consequences on Edmontonians’ health and well-being.”

The research was funded through Future Energy Systems, a crossdisciplinary research and teaching network at the U of A working to develop innovations for energy transition. The work was also supported by the Alberta Ecotrust Foundation under the CitiesIPCC Legacy Research Grant Program and the City of Edmonton, with air quality data obtained from PurpleAir Inc. — BEV BETKOWSKI

NUMBERS

$

7.9M

Donations given in 2021/22 to support Faculty of Science research

PSYCHOLOGY

Your Memory Maker

PHOTO BY DAWN GRAVES

VR Research shows how your brain builds memories “Although we know a lot about how the brain remembers real-world memories, understanding how the brain initially forms real-world memories has been elusive,” says Peggy St. Jacques, a psychology researcher in the Faculty of Science who also holds the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory and is a member of the Neuroscience and Mental Health Institute at the U of A. Her work is making memory less elusive.

Participants in St. Jacques’s Memory for Events Lab can don virtual reality headsets while within an MRI scanner so that when the scan is being taken, they’re experiencing an immersive, 360-degree 3D video of the event. A thorough understanding of how memories are formed and how the brain supports them is critical to understanding and one day treating disorders that affect our memories, such conditions as Alzheimer’s disease and PTSD. St. Jacques has been named one of 118 exceptional early-career Sloan Research Fellows. The Sloan Research Fellowships are twoyear, $75,000 awards given out each year by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to researchers considered to be the next generation of leaders in their fields. Fifty-one previous fellows have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.

— ADRIANNA MACPHERSON

contours magazine | winter 2022

7

news

IN THE FIELD

Peak Study

PRION DISEASE RESEARCH

Not Just an Ungulate Problem Canada’s iconic beaver is susceptible to a fatal deer illness Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is an infectious neurological disorder, similar to mad cow disease, that typically affects cervids such as deer, elk and moose. “CWD is always fatal. There’s no cure. There are no treatments,” says Debbie McKenzie, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and a member of the Neuroscience and Mental Health Institute.

It gets worse. The disease is increasing in geographic range and prevalence, and a new study by researchers suggests the fatal disease may spread among other wildlife, notably beavers. Collecting data is the first step towards mitigating spillover of the disease from cervids to other animals.

McKenzie and her team started by examining beavers, because of significant geographical overlap between beavers and deer, particularly at water sources, she says.

In collaboration with David Westaway and his team in the U of A’s Centre for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases, McKenzie created a beaver analogue in a lab model to study how the semi-aquatic mammals might respond to infection from sources such as deer, elk, hamsters and mice.

“We had no idea if CWD or any prion would go into beavers, so we basically took everything we had and tested it,” says McKenzie. “We were absolutely astounded that nearly every strain showed infection.” McKenzie and her team are planning to look at susceptibility of transmission into pronghorn antelope populations next.

The project received funding from Genome Canada, Genome Alberta, the Alberta Prion Research Institute, Alberta Agriculture and Forestry and the University of Alberta. Co-authors on the study include Allen Herbst at the U.S. Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Center, Alicia Otero from the University of Zaragoza, and several researchers involved with the U of A’s Centre for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases: Serene Wohlgemuth ’00 BSc(Hons), ’07 PhD, Jing Yang, Andrew R. Castle, Diana Martinez Moreno, ’19 BSc(Spec) and Judd M. Aiken.

— ADRIANNA MACPHERSON

8

ualberta.ca/science

Long, cylindrical ice cores are like books recounting our climate history, making Canada’s tallest mountain, Mount Logan, one of the world’s best libraries. This past spring, Alison Criscitiello and six other scientists travelled to Mount Logan to extract ice core samples from the summit, with support from the National Geographic Society.

Criscitiello is the director of the Canadian Ice Core Lab (CICL) at the University of Alberta, which is equipped to store and study ice cores from glaciers in mountain and polar areas.

The cores are environmental records that have captured gas, pollen, dust, ions and isotopes that researchers use to study the air and climate of the past. Samples go back to 79,000 BCE and the collection also holds ice cores from Prince of Wales Icefield and the Agassiz, Devon, and Penny ice caps all along the Arctic Archipelago.

In 2001 and 2002, the oldest ever ice-core record was collected from Mount Logan’s summit plateau. Criscitiello and her group returned to the summit in 2021/22 to expand their records, and to advance other research by using newer equipment and methods. The CICL comprises more than 10,000 years of evidence of changes to our climate in 1.4 kilometres of ice core samples.

Of the Logan expedition, Criscitiello says that it yielded data beyond what she’d hoped. “Every single scientific objective was ticked off,” Criscitiello told the National Geographic. “I think this was the highest-risk, highest-reward project that I’ve ever had the opportunity to lead.” The team extracted ice to a depth of 327 metres, which she says is likely the new record for oldest non-polar ice recovered in North America. It will provide researchers at the CICL with a trove of environmental data.

– MIFI PURVIS

BOTTOM PHOTO BY JOHN ULAN; TOP PHOTO BY GETTY IMAGES

Glaciologist extracted more than 900 kilograms of ice and a wealth of data from Canada’s highest mountain

PALEONTOLOGY

Lost and Found (Again) Ancient bones rediscovered on a back shelf shine a spotlight on early paleontology in Alberta

PHOTO BY DAWN GRAVES

Finding old specimens that have been collected but not processed is common in museum curation. And sometimes it becomes a double discovery: one about the specimen, and one about the original finders. A stash of rediscovered bones has cast light on the subtropical forests of the late Cretaceous — and on paleontology of the 1920s.

Wrapped in newspaper and tied with baler twine, the 20 or so pieces were pulled from a back shelf on the U of A’s South Campus. Handwriting on the specimens suggests the haul is from the 1920 and 1921 expeditions in what is now Dinosaur Provincial Park, led by the U of A’s first paleontologist, George Sternberg.

Clive Coy, chief technician in the Laboratory for Vertebrate Paleontology, is particularly interested in a piece labelled “three turtle skulls from quarry where numbers eight through 18 were collected.”

“Turtle skulls are extremely rare and — considering how old they are and preserved in just newspaper — they could be quite important,” he says. The skulls are most likely from the time of the Dinosaur Park Formation, which

occurred somewhere between 72 and 76 million years ago. Coy says the specimens also hold value as historical artifacts, offering a glimpse into the U of A’s beginnings in paleontology in the 1920s.

Today, the university’s Laboratory for Vertebrate Paleontology is one of 30 registered museum collections on campus and has on the order of 65,000 specimens. — MICHAEL BROWN

MORE ONLINE

QUOTED

Take in a Science Talks Webinar

“Statistics is a part of AI. Statistics can make AI more reliable, more responsible. I bring this unique statistician perspective to AI and I think this can make the growth of AI even healthier, even faster.”

Building Better Code Through Reuse: We depend on software systems with the hope that these systems do what they are supposed to do. Creating this software is complicated — what software libraries do we use, and how do we ensure code is free of defects? Join Sarah Nadi, assistant professor in the Department of Computing Science and Canada Research Chair in Software Reuse, to learn how software is developed and how innovative techniques using software tracing data are helping software developers create better, more reliable software to benefit us all. To view this and other Science Talks webinars, visit uab.ca/scitalks.

Linglong Kong, professor in the Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, and newly appointed Canada CIFAR Chair in AI, on solving real-world problems from health care to banking contours magazine | winter 2022

9

10

ualberta.ca/science

WHAT DO YOU GET WHEN YOU COMBINE INDUSTRY EXPERTISE AND AN EDUCATED WORKFORCE WITH A TRACK RECORD OF DESIGNING AND BUILDING SATELLITES?

PHOTOS BY REMY BELL

A HOMEGROWN SPACE INDUSTRY, LAUNCHING FROM ALBERTA.

START_THE_C0UNTD0WN_

BY LEWIS KELLY ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARIELLA VILLALOBOS

contours magazine | winter 2022

11

T

he space beyond Earth’s atmosphere is many things, shared by fiction and fact: the final frontier; a unique testing ground for new research; a source of profound awe, inspiration and insight into life, the universe and everything; and much more besides.

One thing space hasn’t been, as a rule, is amenable to undergrads.

Not until recently, anyway.

This is what makes Alberta’s space industry remarkable. The University of Alberta houses something of a space industry incubator right now. It is a club, run almost entirely by and for students, in conjunction with faculty advisors. It’s giving students valuable career skills, diversifying the province’s economy and helping us make smarter decisions down here on terra firma.

“The reality is that nobody knows how to build a spacecraft when they join AlbertaSat,” says Abigail Hoover, AlbertaSat’s outgoing deputy project manager. “But if you’re willing to learn and put in the hours and ask the questions, you’ll learn how to build a satellite by the end.”

Of_Students_and_Satellites

Founded in 2010, AlbertaSat is a student group at the university that designs, builds, tests and operates satellites — specifically “CubeSats,” which can range from about the size of a Rubik’s Cube to a large loaf of bread. AlbertaSat’s first satellite, the Experimental Albertan Satellite #1 — Ex-Alta 1 for short — went to the International Space Station in April 2017 and deployed from there on May 26 that year.

Hoover speaks from experience. She joined AlbertaSat early in her undergrad degree. That’s when she first learned how to operate Ex-Alta 1, which was still orbiting at the time. Hoover has held several positions with AlbertaSat in the years since, playing a role in the planning, design and construction of Ex-Alta 1’s successor, the imaginatively named Ex-Alta 2.

12

ualberta.ca/science

AlbertaSat and the rest of the university’s space endeavours may focus on the heavens, but the work has major implications for life down here, too.

Researchers can monitor space weather that can damage our technology, predict where forest fires will burn with increasing ferocity and look at agriculture, letting us determine field conditions to take steps to improve crop quality and yield.

Space, in other words, achieves the rare

feat of being both practical and cool.

“The thing that’s kept me with AlbertaSat is that, at the end of the day, our stuff goes to space,” she says. “It’s so cool and so rare.

The inspirational factor of the project, the space industry, the difficulty and challenges — it’s all appealing. Space operates on a high calibre. You don’t go to space with your fingers crossed.”

She’s now leaving the university with her bachelor’s degree in hand to study space-

based applications of human-centred design at the Royal College of Art in London — but her connection with AlbertaSat is not yet severed.

After years of hard learning how to build and launch satellites, Hoover is now part of the AlbertaSat brain trust. She’ll stay on in an advisory role over Ex-Alta 2’s launch in early 2023 to make sure the next generation of AlbertaSat science and other undergrads don’t need to start from ground zero. Her AlbertaSat experience has already influenced her career.

“There are two ways AlbertaSat has shaped my career goals,” she says. “The first is technical. You learn how to work on a space mission, understand the process, the scheduling, the finances, the technicalities of building a satellite.

“But the biggest way we see AlbertaSat benefit students, including me, contours magazine | winter 2022

13

is through introduction to non-technical skills. We learn leadership, documentation, schedule stewardship, how to work and communicate under pressure. We’ve seen that when students enter industry with these, their employers take a step back and ask, ‘How do you know this?’ Developing that as an undergrad is a huge asset to everyone.”

Hoover’s arc through AlbertaSat — joining as an undergrad with curiosity and not much else, leaving as a seasoned leader with a head crammed with technical satellite knowledge and soft skills — is almost exactly what its founders had in mind.

“I’d been interested in creating a CubeSat program as a hands-on training activity for students,” says Ian Mann. “Then a group of students came to me, independently, and said they wanted to form a society to do the same thing. At the time there was a national competition just starting up, the Canadian Satellite Design Challenge, and they got together and decided to enter.”

The reason these students approached Mann with their idea is obvious. A professor in the Department of Physics and the Canada Research Chair in Space Physics from 2003 to 2013, Mann is one of the university’s foremost space enthusiasts and one of the world’s foremost experts in space weather.

That made him a good fit to serve as AlbertaSat’s first lead academic advisor.

It was his name on the grants, Mann says, “but it was the student team that led the project. It was a fantastic time and a real rollercoaster.”

On top of his enthusiasm for rollercoasters and for empowering students,

14

ualberta.ca/science

Mann also contributed his scientific expertise to the birth of AlbertaSat and the design of Ex-Alta 1.

You can launch anything into space. An American space startup called Rocket Lab launched the “Humanity Star” — effectively a gigantic disco ball — in 2018. That same year Elon Musk put a sports car in space.

The AlbertaSat team wanted to make more scientific use of their satellite’s precious payload capacity. With Mann’s input they decided to use Ex-Alta 1 to study space weather.

The_Eyes_of_the_Space_Storm_

“We’re all familiar with the sun shooting energy into our sky, and the various ways we harvest that energy,” explains Mann. “But there are other processes at work that we don’t understand that generate what you might call space weather.”

All space weather is driven by the sun — most of it, Mann explains, through the solar wind.

The solar wind is a stream of charged particles that shoots off the sun’s upper atmosphere. When this solar wind interacts with Earth’s magnetic field

it creates the “polar lights” — aurora borealis in the northern hemisphere and aurora australis in the southern hemisphere. The wind varies in intensity, as do other sun-driven space weather events like coronal mass ejections.

At its most intense, space weather can seriously disturb the Earth’s magnetic field. These events are called magnetic storms, and as anyone who has taken high school physics knows, strong magnetic fields influence charged particle motion. This can result in electric fields that can create problems for anything Ex-Alta 2 is set that uses electric current, especially at large scales such as in the electric power grid. for launch in early “There’s a very famous magnetic storm, the Carrington Event, from 1859,” says Mann. “There was no electrical grid to 2023. It will speak of at the time, but contemporary media reports describe telegraph wires bursting into flame.” While a similar event carry a refined today wouldn’t cause your iPhone to combust, there would be serious ramifications, not all of which are easy to predict.

“If a storm like that happened today, what would the impact magnetometer, be on the power grid and on satellites? Would GPS systems still work? What other fallout could there be? Power doesn’t as well as a need to be out for very long before food starts to spoil, logistics networks don’t work and so on.” multispectral We have some idea of the damage. In 1989 a magnetic storm much smaller than the Carrington Event knocked out Quebec’s sensor that will power grid for more than nine hours. Engineers estimate that a massive solar storm could cost the American economy up to help scientists $2 trillion. Recovery could take a decade.

Forecasting space weather and mitigating the impact study wildfires and of magnetic storms both on terrestrial technology and the thousands of satellites orbiting the planet is a major focus of Mann’s work. He’s worked on this front with researchers mitigate their around the world (he chaired the United Nations expert group on space weather from 2015 to 2022) and with governments and impact. industry partners.

In addition to space storm monitoring with AlbertaSat, Mann runs a network of magnetic sensors (or magnetometers) across Canada to track magnetic storms. His lab designed a new compact one to go up on Ex-Alta 1 and collect data from space.

Ex-Alta 1’s mission was successfully completed on November 14, 2018.

As planned from the start, the CubeSat gradually entered a trajectory that allowed it, along with its remarkable sensor, to sink into the atmosphere where it burned up harmlessly, leaving no space debris.

“It was a testament to the students who, through their blood, sweat and tears, got together and made it fly,” says Mann. “What an experience and achievement for an undergraduate team!”

Ex-Alta 2 is set for launch in early 2023. It will carry a refined version of the magnetometer that went up on Ex-Alta 1, as well as a multispectral sensor that will help scientists study wildfires and mitigate their impact.

But AlbertaSat has already helped a second exciting project get off the ground: Wyvern Inc.

Here_Be_Dragons

Headquartered in Edmonton, Wyvern is a space startup founded in 2015 by four University of Alberta graduates: Chris Robson, Callie Lissinna, Kristen Cote, ’16 BSc(Hons), and Kurtis Broda.

“Three of our four co-founders met in AlbertaSat,” says Lissinna, chief operations officer and co-founder of Wyvern.

“Working on that project, I think, is where some of the basic trust among us formed. We showed each other that we could deliver in high-stakes contours magazine | winter 2022

15

137 AlbertaSat donors' names are being sent to space in 2023, etched into the Ex-Alta 2 satellite.

environments on difficult projects.”

Lissinna’s responsibilities on ExAlta 1 included flying the satellite for much of its time in orbit, including its final moments.

“Once it was orbiting, we talked to Ex-Alta 1 five times a day for a year,” she says. She had almost come to think of it as a friend.

“Our team could predict, based on orbital dynamics, when it was going to burn up. It was two in the morning on a school night. The way we communicate with the orbiting spacecraft is to ping it, wait for it to respond. So that night I kept pinging and waiting for it to respond,” she explains. But there was no answer and the silence told them everything.

“It was bittersweet.”

Wyvern builds and operates hyperspectral imaging satellites.

Hyperspectral imaging collects hundreds of pictures at different wavelengths to form 3D images with more colour and detail than are possible with conventional cameras.

“It’s essentially spectroscopy from space,” says Robson, Wyvern’s CEO and another AlbertaSat alum. “You can see the chemical makeup of whatever you’re looking at.”

Hyperspectral imaging’s applications are vast — they include uses in farming, mining, forestry, environmental and emissions monitoring, and the energy industry. The technology attracted Robson’s interest once he finished university and left AlbertaSat, but there was a technical challenge he could not solve.

Resolution is the name of the game in the world of imaging. The resolution a hyperspectral camera can produce is directly proportional to the diameter

16

ualberta.ca/science

of its lens. Launching a lens big enough to break new ground in resolution — and thus stand out in the marketplace — came with a price tag in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

“Basically every business model I put together, I couldn’t find a way to compete with any other hyperspectral company because they’d all be doing the same thing.

Same telescope, same physical limit.”

Then, at a conference in Toronto, Robson

AlbertaSat have major promise to foster a ran into Cote. Cote’s special interest is stellar optics. larger space industry in the province, and Cote had some solutions to that physical limitation. She explained to the global space economy was valued at Robson about deployable optics, which are sensors that can unfold in space.

US$424 billion by Statista in 2019.

In an aha moment, they realized they had a commercial business idea.

“Our space work has achieved some Wyvern’s competitive advantage is its proprietary unfolding camera. Small real success, but there is a risk too,” says enough to be launched in a CubeSat, once in orbit the camera unfolds four Mann. “A lot of it has been done with separate mirrors and aligns them with exquisite precision to provide enough volunteers and goodwill. Most of the effort light collection area to produce orbital images with an impressive resolution is extracurricular. under five metres. The unfolding is very slow and very precise, on the scale of “I’d love to see a space innovation microns for the initial deployment. Then the alignment of each mirror is on centre at the university. The government the scale of nanometres. is interested, industry is interested and Wyvern’s first three satellites are under construction in Scotland. The students are interested. These pieces can first one outfitted with Wyvern's own deployable optics is expected to come together to form a real screaming launch sometime in 2023. With funding secured for its first three launches, success.” the company is already designing its second generation of hyperspectral sensors.

It has also grown to more than 30 employees, many of whom are U of A graduates.

“One reason we stayed in Edmonton is that we have access to these great talent pipelines,” says Robson. “The U of A, AlbertaSat, the U of L, the U of C. There’s also lots of talent in the oil industry — working on downhole things with their own power systems in harsh environments has many aculty of Science faculty —————————— similarities with sending stuff into space.” and grads have starred in Gold costs around $74 per Meghan Dear, ’03 BSc, now serves as more than AlbertaSat and gram, depending on the carat.

Wyvern’s chief growth officer after founding Wyvern. Here’s a quick look Chris Herd’s research involves and running Localize, an agribusiness at two more space stars with material exponentially more startup. university connections. valuable.

“I met Chris about six years ago at a —————————— That’s because Herd, a networking event,” she says. “He told me he As a child, Shawna Pandya, professor in the Department was launching satellites and my thought ’06 BSc(Hons), loved Roberta of Earth and Atmospheric was: ‘That’s great. What does it have to do Bondar — the first Canadian Sciences, is what’s called a with me?’ But agriculture could benefit from woman to go to space and “returned sample scientist” for better data from space. We stayed in touch.” the first neurologist in space.

NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, Dear provided Wyvern’s founders with While Pandya has still yet which dropped the car-sized some tips on financial forecasting, and they to slip the surly bonds of Perseverance rover on the red eventually invited her to join Wyvern in the upper stratosphere, her planet’s surface two years ago.

2021. A member of a farming family, her eyes trajectory places her on course.

Perseverance is still exploring light up when she discusses what Wyvern’s She’s helped test commercial the surface of Mars, but the technology can do in agriculture. spacesuits in microgravity and samples it collects — including “When a farmer is managing tens of today serves as medical advisor rocks — will eventually return to thousands of acres, using satellite imagery for a company that makes VR Earth. When they do, they will be that has enough resolution to inform where tools for health care. She also arguably the most precious rocks to fertilize more or less, or where to apply a holds a black belt in taekwondo. our species has ever known. fungicide or a pesticide — that is incredibly Pandya’s parents moved to And Herd is one of the few powerful,” she says. “The goal is that farmers Canada from India before her Earthly experts chosen by have better information so they can spend birth. As a woman of colour, NASA to analyze them. less, use fewer inputs and get better yields.”

A_GREEN_AND_G0LD_ C0NSTELLATI0N_ F

The_Big_Picture

Dear’s career and her enthusiasm for Wyvern’s agricultural applications are both indicators of the potential of Alberta’s growing space industry. Startups like Wyvern and training programs like

she uses her profile today to advocate for more diversity across the world of STEM. “Representation matters,” she said in an interview last spring.

“We cannot become what we do not see or know.”

The samples, Herd said in 2021, “will provide scientists with opportunities to answer fundamental questions about Mars, including whether life ever existed there, for decades to come.”

contours magazine | winter 2022

17

PHOTOS BY JOHN ULAN

18

ualberta.ca/science

By Elizabeth Chorney-Booth

THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE ( IS UNFAIR ) A tool is only as useful as the thought and design behind it. AI and machine learning can reflect human oversights.

contours magazine | winter 2022

19

c

algorithms to create more trustworthy and effective (for everyone) omputers and artificial intelligence (AI) are designed machine learning applications. to make our lives easier. As much as people like to joke “These algorithms — AI and machine learning — are absolutely about how various algorithms seem to know a little important and there’s no holding them back because there are too much about our habits and that we’re headed to many services and industrial processes that have come to rely on an Orwellian dystopia, AI-based tech can help us make stress-free them,” Hegde says. “I don’t think it’s a question of whether these decisions based on data analysis. Systems that rely on datasets algorithms are useful since we are already down this path. As carry a lot of information about human behaviour, but since they’re they become more deeply embedded and integrated in the ways analyzing numbers rather than making judgment calls about we interact with other people and the world, it becomes more personal traits, many of us take comfort in the idea that those important to take care of the adverse effects that may negatively hauntingly accurate entertainment suggestions are coming from impact us.” a place of dispassionate neutrality. Or, at least that’s what we’d like Hegde’s team is a piece of the puzzle to believe, as our lives become increasingly when it comes to deciphering potential entwined with social media, online shopping ethical concerns in machine learning, and entertainment, facial recognition, and the HEGDE HOPES with scientists around the world working various AI-powered programs used by our on making AI as equitable and benign as banks, governments, health-care services and TO IDENTIFY possible. Researchers like Bei Jiang, ’08 MSc, educational institutions. Making these systems an associate professor in the Department better and fairer is the goal of experts at work WHERE AND of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, in the field, and it just so happens the U of A is a HOW BIAS IS have a keen interest in built-in bias. Jiang heavyweight. has done her own work in the field of gender “I have been interested in privacy and ethics OCCURRING bias in natural language processing and says in AI and have felt I could contribute positively that work like her own and Hegde’s is crucial to this department,” says Nidhi Hegde, ’95 BSc IN MACHINE to understanding how technology-based and an associate professor in the Department LEARNING, LEARNING services are affecting modern life. of Computing Science, who has added her “Fairness research in AI is still somewhat research interests to the pool of expertise.

WHY IT’S under-investigated and there are lots of really “I feel very lucky and privileged to be here.

HAPPENING, interesting research challenges,” Jiang says.

The University of Alberta's Department of “Ultimately we want to use these tools to help Computing Science is world-renowned for its AND HOW us make better decisions and make the world a AI and machine learning programs.” better place.”

Hegde knows that machine learning is only TO BUILD The first step is uncovering exactly what as effective as the data it is given. When AI FAIRNESS bias and unfairness are in relation to machine analyzes patterns in data to predict outcomes learning and how they creep into what we and make decisions, it relies on the datasets AND PRIVACY might think of as “objective” sets of data. It’s researchers have fed it. That can mean some not as if computer programmers are explicitly bad habits when it comes to making choices PROTECTION teaching machines to be unfair to subjects and assessing outcomes. And learning from INTO MACHINE based on race, age, gender or geographical experience sounds pretty human. Bad data can location, but Hegde says those biases can still lead to bad habits when it comes to making LEARNING find their way into an algorithm. choices and assessing outcomes — and it This could come in the form of an takes thoughtful and intentional design by AI APPLICATIONS. unintended bias on a programmer’s part. For researchers to avoid these pitfalls. example, facial recognition software often does These habits are what concerns Hegde, who not evaluate the faces of Black women with the is also a Fellow and Canada CIFAR AI Chair same accuracy it would with white men. This at the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute is likely due to a variety of factors, including fewer images of Black (Amii), a non-profit body that brings together academic and women being fed into databases and cameras not being optimized industry partners to support and empower researchers to create to properly capture darker skin tones, according to the 2018 study an AI and machine learning landscape that is “for good and for all.”

“Gender Shades,” in Proceedings of Machine Learning Research.

Hegde has had a long career as a researcher in the private sector, Other examples of bias to which Hegde points could come from the working on matters concerning machine learning for Bell Labs (the choice of data used to train an AI — like the databases comprising research arm of Nokia) and the Royal Bank of Canada’s Borealis AI people arrested by a particular police department. Since the records research institute. Three years ago Hegde moved back to academia would be of those who are arrested, rather than those who actually at the University of Alberta, where she now leads a team focused on commit or are convicted of crimes (there can be a big discrepancy), ethics in machine learning and AI. The group looks at how issues of location of the arrests and bias of the arresting police would skew privacy and fairness can affect the accuracy of algorithms. Hegde’s the data being used to teach a machine about criminal activity, and work is novel and her research is in progress. With it, she hopes to thus the decisions it makes. identify where and how bias is occurring in machine learning, why “Certain demographics and groups are treated unfairly if the it’s happening, and how to build fairness and privacy protection into

20

ualberta.ca/science

machine’s decision about them is based on a skewed set of data that does not really reflect reality,” Hegde says. “It’s a little complicated to understand why it’s happening, but it happens when care has not been taken in making sure that data has been collected in an unbiased way, what kind of data has been collected or what kind of algorithm is used on that data. Every step that leads to an algorithm giving an outcome is important and any of those steps could lead to a biased result.”

On the other side of the coin, part of Hegde’s team is working specifically on privacy concerns. It’s not new for the public to be worried about digital data and privacy breaches, but in terms of machine learning, the concern is not just about data being leaked, but also the computers inferring certain things based on an individual’s data. For example, an algorithm could make a guess about a person’s health, sexual orientation or political leanings based on their movie-watching or book-buying habits, without that person ever explicitly divulging personal information. Even if the machine’s assumptions are correct, that information may not be something the person wants revealed to the public, employers, or friends and family, let alone a marketing firm or online retailer.

“Privacy is sometimes misunderstood,” Hegde says.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re anonymous or your name is not associated with your data. What it really means is observers should not be able to infer personal information about you that they don’t already know.”

Many of us eagerly feed our data into social media apps knowing that bias already exists in traditional systems that involve human subjectivity. It can be easy to shrug off ethical questions and simply accept fairness and privacy violations as the cost of doing digital business. Many people ignore events like the Cambridge Analytica scandal that saw Facebook users’ data collected for use in political advertisements targeting them, deciding it’s worth a machine being able to infer our political leanings if it means streaming services can seamlessly lead us to our next favourite show. We willingly give commercial businesses personal data every day. Privacy and bias concerns can seem like more of an abstract threat than a practical

concern, but we use AI in all our systems.

“Predictive policing algorithms used in some places will decide whether someone gets bail or is jailed without bail,” Hegde says.

“Research has shown that certain demographic groups have been unfairly treated because the algorithm, which is interpreting biased data it has been provided, would classify them as someone who should receive a tough assessment.” Hegde gives another example of biased machine learning in banking, which can lead to people being turned down for mortgages or business loans if the algorithm decides their race, gender or location makes them likely to default on the loan, even if all of their finances are in order.

But the road to fixing the problem starts with identifying it. Part of Hegde and other researchers’ work includes identifying those instances where a fairness or privacy problem can cause serious, life-changing consequences.

Hegde says that the potential benefits to unbiased AI are monumental. Her goal is to find ways to build anti-bias and privacy protection protocols into machine learning so that the algorithms, and the institutions that rely on them, serve society better.

The more we can trust these tools and our ability to make informed choices, the greater the benefit. Hegde is one of a constellation of AI researchers, including Jiang, at the U of A who are working on such research as smart and connected vehicles, responsive prosthetics, smart homes and more precise health diagnostics. Research is underway in fields as diverse as energy, the environment, the digital economy, manufacturing, transportation, finance and more.

“As a society we should all be trying to put the responsibility less on people and how they use these services and more on the developers and how they use the data in their algorithms,” Hegde says. And end users should have a better understanding of the products we let into our lives. For example, law enforcement shouldn’t think of AI as a bastion of objectivity when they purchase a product claiming “objective, AI-powered solutions” or similar.

“People should ensure they have better knowledge about these algorithms and how you send your data out there. These are not scary things.” contours magazine | winter 2022

21

S N O I T U SOL are BUILT on BASIC SCIENCE Sometimes it takes years of basic research without an obvious application in mind before the magic happens. Effective drug delivery with fewer side effects. Quicker medical test results. A step in the green energy revolution.

22

ualberta.ca/science

By CHRISTINA FRANGOU

Illustrations by ANJA JAVELONA contours magazine | winter 2022

23

O O

ver the last three decades, Ratmir Derda spent many of his waking hours studying how and why certain molecules interact. Now, what started as an interest in basic science is changing the way researchers develop drugs to treat life-threatening illnesses.

Ukrainian-born Derda studied applied physics and mathematics, and biophysics as an undergraduate student in Russia, then moved to the United States to study organic chemistry for his PhD. For a decade, he has run his own lab in the U of A’s Faculty of Science.

He specializes in researching the space where chemistry, physics and biology connect.

In time, he became convinced that treatments for diseases lay in better understanding how ligands, the molecules that bind to receptors on other cells, interact with genes and proteins associated with different diseases.

The theory behind ligand drug-delivery systems, which

24

ualberta.ca/science

Derda and others have been researching for years, goes like this: ligands can deliver drugs directly to diseased cells by binding to them, targeting the cells where drugs can work most effectively. The result holds the promise of fewer side effects from treatment, more purposeful drug delivery and a speedier timeline for drug development.

But it took years of basic research to get there. It meant going down rabbit holes to ask fundamental questions, like: “How can we encode and mine and search in the space of molecules, for no reason whatsoever, other than to be able to search in this space of molecules?” says Derda.

There are many kinds of

targeting ligands: antibodies, aptamers, small molecules and peptides. Of these, Derda believes that peptide ligands are particularly promising. They’re larger than other ligands, so better for binding to receptors.

They’re easily synthesized, making them a convenient and economic option.

In his lab, Derda and colleagues created a proprietary technology to build a massive library of billions of molecules.

And they developed a method to scroll through this library using artificial intelligence, looking for ligands that are suitable for binding to receptors associated with specific diseases.

Derda regularly published his research and presented at meetings where he knew representatives from the pharmaceutical industry were listening. He figured it was a matter of time before someone from industry approached him about translating his work from academia into real-life solutions.

“You don’t necessarily try to sell your work like a pack of knives on TV, but you imply some translational practical value in it

and kind of seed that thought in somebody’s brain,” says Derda.

In 2015, it worked. One company reached out, and then another; neither can be identified due to non-disclosure agreements. They asked Derda to search through his genetically encoded libraries to identify functional ligands for receptors involved in specific diseases.

What’s more, Derda can do this very quickly — repurposing tools used in genomics, like next-generation sequencing and data mining, to analyze mixtures of small ligands to find suitable targets within a matter of hours.

In 2017, Derda, working with the Canadian Glycomics Network (GlycoNet) and the former Alberta Glycomics Centre, launched 48Hour Discovery, a commercially available service to screen billions of molecules simultaneously in a single test tube and get results in 48 hours.

Over the last five years, 48Hour Discovery has worked with five leading global pharmaceutical companies on multiple contracts.

(Derda is now a member of the new Glycomics Institute of Alberta.)

“It’s really a vision of how drug discovery should be done.

It’s a proposal that discovery of drugs should not take them more

Derda’s work at 48Hour Discovery has the potential to save lives, and it illustrates the value of basic science.

The company is among countless examples of basic science helping to solve pressing problems of the time. than two business days,” says Derda.

His work at 48Hour Discovery has the potential to save lives, and it illustrates the value of basic science.

The company is illustrative of countless examples of basic science helping to solve pressing problems.

These solutions are often the result of work initiated long ago.

Yesterday’s Questions Are Tomorrow’s Answers

For instance, in 1928, penicillin was discovered by biologist Alexander Fleming, who returned from summer holiday to find that the Staphylococcus colonies in his lab had been killed by something in the mould that had taken hold in his absence.

In the 1970s, MRI scanners were developed based on research

done years earlier by physicists studying how electrons and atoms respond to magnetism.

In 2016, the Laser Interferometer GravitationalWave Observatory, known as LIGO, picked up the collision of gravitational waves of two black holes 1.3 billion lightyears away. Albert Einstein had predicted these waves a century prior, but this was the first confirmation of their existence.

The same technology has now been adapted for commercial manufacturing, notably in optics.

Basic research is curiositydriven and its short-term results aren’t immediately obvious. At least that’s what L. Rafael Reif, then-president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in a 2017 editorial in Foreign Affairs, the year after the LIGO finding.

It often takes decades for basic science to yield practical applications.

“Yet, we cannot do without it, because it is from such fundamental explorations that the world gets the startling breakthroughs that create entirely new industries,” he continued.

It’s these attempts to expand knowledge that lead to powerful new products and businesses, generate jobs and inspire innovation, he wrote.

Consider the mRNA vaccines for COVID-19: in the late 1980s, two scientists at the University of Pennsylvania, Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, pioneered the mRNA technology that is the backbone of these new vaccines. The companies Pfizer, where Karikó now contours magazine | winter 2022

25

works, and Moderna launched the world’s first mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 in the late fall of 2020, a lightning-quick pace compared to earlier vaccines.

They were successful because of the basic science that had been in development by scientists working in universities over decades.

The Search for Cheaper Lithium

In Canada, this pattern is playing out across industries.

Daniel Alessi, a geochemist and professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, is revolutionizing the extraction of lithium, setting the province up to be a critical player in a green energy revolution.

Demand for lithium has been rising sharply over the last decade, driven by the growing need for lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and large-scale renewable energy storage. Lithium’s cost is also skyrocketing: it has increased nearly 900 per cent since January 2020, a rate almost 10 times that of other critical raw materials in batteries like cobalt and nickel, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a research firm. This trend is expected to continue well into the future, with demand predicted to grow nearly eightfold by 2030.

Today, we mine lithium primarily in two ways. The most common is through salars, the lithium-rich, salt-encrusted depressions on the basins of evaporated lakes that are found mostly in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. This method of lithium extraction is cheap and efficient but environmentally intrusive.

In order to glean lithium from the salars, extractors draw in groundwater from the surrounding areas, which are often places where water is scarce.

Lithium is also sourced through hardrock mines, but these mines leave scars on the landscape and

26

ualberta.ca/science

Resistant Questions

Basic science is everywhere across the Faculty of Science.

For example, at the Charlebois Lab, researchers are asking big questions about the intersection of antimicrobial resistance, bioelectromagnetics and biophysics. Their research exists at the interface of physics and biology and aims to make fundamental advances in our understanding of living systems. They use quantitative mathematical, computational, and machine learning models to perform experiments on genetically engineered and pathogenic yeasts. The team works in the Charlebois biosafety level two biophysics-microbiology laboratory in the Centennial Center for Interdisciplinary Science.They want to apply this knowledge to the growing problem of antimicrobial drug resistance.

require vast amounts of energy.

Estimates suggest that about 15 tonnes of CO2 are released into the atmosphere for every tonne of lithium extracted from hardrock mines.

There is potential for a third way with a smaller environmental footprint. In this scenario, Alberta could be a key player. Most oil and gas wells in Alberta produce saline water, or brine. This brine is five to 10 times saltier than seawater and, among its components, is a bit of lithium: about 50 to 100 parts per million, which is between five and 10 percent of the lithium concentration in salars.

Companies face an enormous technological challenge in separating the lithium from other components in the brine.

“It’s a needle in a haystack problem,” explains Alessi, who holds the Encana Endowed Chair in Water Resources.

In 2016, Alessi’s lab was approached by E3 Metals Corp. (now E3 Lithium) about developing a technology to help extract and separate lithium from oilfield brines in Alberta.

With his colleague Salman Safari, Alessi worked on three grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to develop a technology that would use basic science principles to understand the materials in the brine and find solutions for how to separate the lithium from other components.

In 2019, Safari and Alessi founded their own company, Recion Technologies, Inc., to

develop technology to extract, purify and produce lithium products from lithium-bearing saline waters in Western Canada — addressing what they see as the stumbling blocks in the current technology.

“The biggest positive impact is that we’re enabling the lithium-ion battery industry and, ultimately, the green energy revolution,” Alessi says. Unlike lithium extraction from salars, he describes his technique as low impact and non-toxic.

Alberta is home to hundreds of thousands of oil and gas wells, many of which produce brine as part of the oil and gas extraction process. The brine could be repurposed for lithium extraction, providing another income stream to oil and gas producers, he says.

“It’s potentially not only a cost offset, but the environmental impact is leveraging the infrastructure that’s already here in Western Canada. It’s a nice positive side activity for the oil and gas industry,” Alessi says.

"Or potentially an industry in its own right."

Big AI Serves Smaller Communities

In health care, basic science research at the U of A has led to changes in the way that life-threatening cardiovascular conditions are detected.

As undergraduates, Talwinder Punni, ’16 BSc, and Esmat Naikyar worked on developing deep neural networks — an advanced version of artificial intelligence — as part of the U of A’s Precision Health program.

Precision Health, a collaboration between different departments including health and computer

sciences, uses advanced computer technology to help understand, diagnose and treat disease.

Through their work, Punni and Naikyar saw a role for AI in remotely diagnosing medical conditions in patients, particularly those in small communities away from large medical centres.

In Canada, rural populations do not have equitable access to health care services: one in five Canadians lives far from a major city, but only eight per cent of the country’s doctors work in these places.

In 2020, Punni and Naikyar co-founded Naiad Lab Inc., a spinoff that grew from their research. Today, the company is focused on developing products to improve early detection of cardiovascular disease. To reduce cardiovascular fatalities (the No.1 cause of death globally, according to the WHO), health care providers need to detect early warning signs of cardiovascular disease and intervene, explained Punni. “Detection is the only real solution,” she said. But traditional ECGs can miss cardiovascular disease in early stages, and reading ECGs is a time-consuming process.

Naiad Labs used real-life data from a growing dataset of 300,000 electrocardiogram recordings to train algorithms to detect cardiovascular abnormalities in early stages and flag patients who may benefit from intervention.

Naiad’s first product, Naiad DETECT, offers subscribers an automated analysis of ECGs in order to accelerate early diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases. DETECT works with all 12-lead ECG devices, regardless of manufacturer. The company is currently in partnership in

Canada with TeleMED, through its flagship application, ViTELflo. and is working with virtual telehealth companies in India.

Make Room for Questions

Scientists point out that the business world moves at a rate far quicker than basic science.

The timelines are tighter; the goals more specific. It means less time to carry out exploratory research, that valuable act of looking for answers to satisfy curiosity rather than addressing a specific need of business or government.

And that, says Derda, is exactly why basic science is so vital.

“If we only rely on commercial entities to provide breakthroughs, those breakthroughs usually involve optimization and tightening up of something that already exists,” he says. “Discovering something completely unexpected or something brand new is almost impossible (in the commercial space).”

He plans to continue pursuing answers to fundamental questions in the lab, while working with industry. It’s in the lab where the most pressing problems of the future are already in the process of being solved.

“I think that work is already being done. It just might not be recognized or elevated to the front pages yet,” he says. contours magazine | winter 2022

27

k r wo g iannakis durin Kaelin Koufog . nship in 2018 er int ce ien sc her

s p i h s n r e t n I

TS

FOR STUDEN

fit of up s you the bene ve gi am gr ro ternship P u progress The Science In learning as yo ed at gr te in kthat will of wor le experience to 16 months ab lu va in ga ll ith gree. You’ connections w toward your de d you’ll build an s, ie ud st your add context to ers. oy potential empl

ERS

Y FOR EMPLO

ledgeable and u’ll add a know yo , rn te in e ers find scienc . Intern employ am By taking on a te ur yo to tement ed individual a level of exci d an e highly motivat iv ct pe pers bring a fresh that students iring. g short of insp that is nothin

JOIN TODAY. UAB.CA/SIP 28

ualberta.ca/science

PHOTO COURTESY OF DEPARTMENT OF EARTH AND ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES

Alberta Ammolite T This 75 million-year-old gemstone is the province’s official gemstone

he Provincial Government of Alberta recently added ammolite to the Emblems of Alberta Act, along with current emblems such as the wild rose and petrified wood, Alberta’s official flower and stone. Though ammolite wasn’t officially recognized as a gemstone until 1981, it’s been around far longer than that.

The rock in which ammolite is found is anywhere from 72 million to 75 million years old. It comes from the fossilized shells of ammonites, extinct molluscs that lived in the Bearpaw Sea, a body of water that once covered most of southern Alberta and was part of an ancient inland seaway that split North America in two and ran from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Ammolite is prized for its iridescent appearance, a result of alternating layers of the mineral aragonite and the protein in the ammonites’ shells. — ADRIANNA MACPHERSON

contours magazine | winter 2022

29

discussion

Sock Away That Information Need to remember something? Researchers say ‘sleep on it’

W

e spend about one-third of our lives asleep, a fact that has long-intrigued human scientists — like U of A psychology professor Clayton Dickson — but that figure wouldn’t impress most of the animal kingdom.

Cats and dogs spend at least half of their lives snoozing, while bats and walruses spend three-quarters of their lives asleep. The sleepiest animal may be the koala, which can slumber for up to 22 hours a day.

But why we animals sleep remains a mystery. One hypothesis, Dickson says, is that sleep allows the brain to solidify new memories. In his Brain Rhythms Lab, he and his students study how brain activity during sleep aids in memory processes — kind of moving new memories into long-term storage. Often, this work involves rats, which cycle

30

ualberta.ca/science

through different phases of sleep much like humans do. In a recent webinar, Dickson shared new research from his lab and explained how brain rhythms during sleep may play a role in memory.

Here are a few takeaways.

Our brains are never truly at rest. Unlike a computer that you can power down at the day’s end, the brain experiences non-stop electrical activity, but in the form of nerve impulses passing between neurons. In fact, during sleep, the brain can be more active than when we’re awake, and certain activities, including some that might benefit memory processes, are thought to only happen during sleep.

Dickson says this could be because sleep “frees the brain to do things it might not otherwise be able to do if it was performing its typical sensorymotor function.”

Studying brain waves could help unlock the mystery of memory. The movement of electrical signals through our brains offers clues to understanding what’s happening inside our heads, especially as we snooze. Dickson’s lab found that during deep sleep, two areas of the brain linked to memory (the hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex) seemed to be on co-ordinated wavelengths — or, talking to each other using slow rhythms. Better understanding the synchronization of these rhythms could help uncover mechanisms involved in memory formation.

Going ‘offline’ is crucial for some brain functions. When we’re awake, our brains are busy processing sensory input from our environments and regulating our behaviour. Just as a computer can’t run Zoom while updating its operating system, our brains need to be “offline” for certain tasks. One of these tasks, says Dickson, could be consolidation, in which our brains download important information into permanent storage.

In a recent study in Dickson’s lab, researchers placed rats (natural swimmers) in a circular pool of water with a hidden platform that would allow them to rest from paddling. Once they had found the platform, rats could find their way back to it using visual clues they’d remembered — but how quickly they did so depended on what they did between trials. Rats who slept between trials remembered the route better than those who spent their break awake.

‘Slow-wave sleep’ helps consolidation. A certain phase of sleep — slow-wave or deep sleep — is beneficial to memory consolidation.

During this part of the sleep cycle, our heart rate and breathing slow, and our brain waves are at their slowest. Researchers are still figuring out what happens to our brains (and why) when we get under the covers.

But the more they unravel about this unconscious process, the closer we get to understanding our behaviours and abilities while we’re awake. Dickson’s lab’s work means the solution to the puzzle is more than a distant dream.

Visit the Science Talks webinar page (uab.ca/scitalks) for links to this and other webinars. – CAITLIN CRAWSHAW

PHOTO BY JOHN ULAN

PSYCHOLOGY

COMPUTING SCIENCE

DeepMind in Alberta

D PHYSICS

Walking the Talk ‘It’s our way of saying we take these values seriously’

PHOTO BY JOHN ULAN

I

t started with an email that Mauricio Sacchi, then chair of the Department of Physics, sent out to his colleagues in 2021. His message was simple: the field of physics lacks diversity. Let’s do something about it.

In fact, physics lacks diversity at all levels. In the United States, for example, fewer than four per cent of all undergraduate physics degrees go to Black men and women — a proportion that has shrunk over the last two decades.

Sacchi had already participated in regular committee meetings devoted to the question of how to make the field more accessible to diverse perspectives and experiences. Inspired by these conversations, he reflected on his own privileges as a professor and the ways he could help. That’s when it hit him. What if faculty members took the initiative to create a scholarship to support underrepresented students?

The response to his call to action was swift. In the end, five other professors stepped forward and, along with two other donors, the group rallied to create the Pathways to Physics Award to provide financial support to undergraduate Indigenous students, as well as students who are of a visible or gender minority.

What brought the group of donors together was a shared sense of

responsibility to level the playing field in physics. “To create a more just society, we need to lift roadblocks for people,” Sacchi says. While the brand-new scholarship has not yet been awarded, he hopes it will play a part in recruiting, retaining and empowering students from marginalized groups to become the future leaders and role models in the field. “It’s our way of saying that we take these values seriously,” says Sacchi.

“We’re taking action to support diversity in the department.” – STEPHANIE BAILEY

NUMBERS

$

2.1M

Donations given in 2021/22 in support of students at the Faculty of Science

eepMind Alberta opened the doors on its new international research office in July, marking a fifth anniversary of operations in Edmonton. The organization strongly supports AI research at the University of Alberta, and maintains a strong partnership with the Faculty of Science. The organization includes scientists, engineers, ethicists and more, who are committed to solving intelligence to advance science and benefit humanity. Its bricks-andmortar investment in Edmonton is amazing, and another key way DeepMind’s support makes a difference in the industry is through the DeepMind Scholars Program.

DeepMind has funded the Scholars Program to increase diversity in AI research. The program, which currently supports six master’s students in the Department of Computing Science, aims to graduate students from underrepresented groups in AI, including women, BIPOC and other people. “We’re proud to work with the University of Alberta to give talented, underrepresented students the chance to get more from their graduate study,” said Obum Ekeke OBE, head of education partnerships at DeepMind. "Our vision is to help make the AI ecosystem more representative of society,” he said.

“We’re so thankful for the DeepMind Scholars Program,” said acting dean Fred West. “It creates opportunities and removes obstacles for underrepresented groups, inviting their perspectives to AI.” The DeepMind Scholars Program builds a stronger and more inclusive AI community, bringing a wider range of experiences to AI and computing science, providing substantial financial support to students. Scholars also benefit from a DeepMind mentor, and attend leading AI academic conferences and DeepMind events.

– KATIE WILLIS

contours magazine | winter 2022

31

discussion MATHEMATICAL AND STATISTICAL SCIENCES

Unlearning Bad Habits Research seeks to debias the way computers learn

W

– ADRIANNA MACPHERSON

32

ualberta.ca/science

EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

Create Thinkers, Not Clones Nobody ever got ahead by working in a vacuum

H

ow many uses can you think of for a paperclip? Most people come up with 10 or 15.

Kindergarten kids can come up with 200. Where does that creativity go? Ever since becoming a professor 25 years ago, I’ve devoted my career to trying to find a better way to making it a lifelong practice. The goal of an undergraduate degree, after all, should be to create thinkers, not clones.

That’s why my wife, Maureen O’Connor-McCourt, ’82 PhD, and I were eager to offer our support when we heard about AlbertaSat, the University of Alberta’s student-led space satellite club, funded in large part by donors.

It’s a model for learning that doesn’t test a student’s intelligence by their ability to recite the periodic table. It brings together students to ask the questions and work together to find the answers. They operate like a full-service engineering firm, leading the project from design to launch to operation. Just like you would in the real world.

Closed-book, three-hour exams never

made sense to me. Not as a struggling undergraduate student and definitely not as a working geologist. Whenever a new project came across my desk during my first job in the field, I’d consult with other experts, collaborate on background research and then work together to find solutions. I would never just shut my door to work on my own for hours on end. Why do we expect our undergraduates to?

Complex problems require complex solutions — created by complex teams.

AlbertaSat is currently made up of about 100 multi-disciplinary students, hailing from engineering, business and everything in-between. Their next satellite will take images of current active wildfires, wildfire risk zones, and post-burn sites. (See page 10.) If we stand a chance to solve the world’s most pressing problems — like increasing wildfire risk — we can’t work in a vacuum. So, we shouldn’t teach in one either.

– GEORGE MCCOURT, ’75 BSC(SPEC), ’82 MSC, AS TOLD TO STEPHANIE BAILEY

GETTY IMAGES ILLUSTRATION

hile computers have no bias, the data and programming they rely on is generated by humans and our human biases are reflected in the text samples AI models use to analyze and “understand” language. Computers aren’t immediately able to understand text, explains Lei Ding, first author on a recent study and a graduate student in the Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences. Rather, they need words to be converted into a set of numbers to understand them. Ding is supervised by Bei Jiang, associate professor in the Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences.

Once researchers convert the word to numbers, they’re able to plot them on a 2D graph and visualize the words’ relationships to one another. This allows them to better understand the extent of the gender bias, and later, determine if the bias has been eliminated.

When researchers reduce the bias in a word vector using other gender debiasing methods, they also reduce or eliminate important semantic information about the word. But the semantics offer important contextual data that could be needed in future tasks. For example, when considering a word like “nurse,” researchers want the system to remove any gender information associated with that term, while still retaining semantic links to related words, such as doctor, hospital and medicine.

“We need to preserve that semantic information,” Ding says. Refining the methodology could offer a framework for other researchers to use. Ding says it may be possible to build in functions that could automatically remove bias.

The new methodology is part of a larger project, entitled BIAS: Responsible AI for Gender and Ethnic Labour Market Equality, that is looking to solve realworld problems.

THANKS TO YOU

Science Made Possible Friends, alumni and supporters are creating the positive change that lets students, researchers and community partners make the world better

G

roundbreaking research, field schools, student groups, bursaries, diversity initiatives and more. These experiences mean everything to students and your support fuels them, leading to bigger things. Investing in students and research shapes our collective future. Chemistry

Number of donors to the Faculty of Science:

658

that leads to biomedical breakthroughs. Satellites that predict wildfires and monitor space weather. Foundational science that reveals solutions to intractable problems. That’s what science makes possible, and that’s what supporters like you make possible. Thank you.

36

95

Foundations

TOTAL FOR 2021/22

Corporations & Organizations

391 136 Alumni

Multi-year donors:

Friends

We see who you are:

1,261 464 215 138 118 113 5-9 years

10-14 years

15-19 years

20+ years

First time donors

Staff & faculty donors

contours magazine | winter 2022

33

the closing shot

A Beautiful Mind

I

t can be hard to get your head around the scope of neuroscience. The complex interactions between all of the neurons that drive our nervous systems and our brains are almost unfathomable. Just a small malfunction can lead to disease, yet research to find potential repairs so far just scratches the surface of what there is to know and understand.

That’s why a group of multidisciplinary experts collaborated to provide a different angle of insight into neuroscience research.

The result is Connections: Bringing Neuroscience and Art Together, a luminous art exhibit of 70 multimedia pieces and

34

ualberta.ca/science

a few poems that was on display at the Friends of University Hospitals' McMullen Gallery over the summer and is now available online and as a book. The exhibit depicts the beauty of the brain, its fragility, and the hope that connects everyone touched by the field of neuroscience.

An Bui, ’22 BSc(Hons), is a contributor, inspired by her studies in neuroscience, working on ischemic stroke and collateral therapies. She fell for the brain and the nervous system in high school, which prompted her to pursue neuroscience at the U of A. While not working on her masters in psychiatry at the U of A with Ian Winship, BSc '00, PhD '05, she works as a freelance artist and illustrator. – GILLIAN RUTHERFORD.

This isn’t a big deal

IT’S

E V I S S A M S

INE COURSE

EN ONL MASSIVE OP

r proud to offe is a rt e lb A f yo ve of learning The Universit u need is a lo yo ll A . e n li n about you can learn 29 courses o internet, and tion to the us Canada, and a connec sition, Indigeno an tr gy er en ry for free. the 21st-centu ogramming — pr n ho yt P d logy, an development bugs, paleonto professional ith w er re ca ur are product Or upgrade yo itecture, softw ch ar e ar w ft courses in so arning. inforcement le re or t en em manag

ENROL TODAY. UAB.CA/MOOCS contours magazine | winter 2022

35

Where ideas collide.

This world has been challenged like never before. We meet those challenges grounded by our roots — yet spurred forward by our profound responsibility to seek truth and solve problems. Because at the University of Alberta, we will never be satisfied with the “now.”

We will always be seeking, always be innovating and, most of all, always be leading.

Leading with Purpose. ualberta.ca

36

ualberta.ca/science