My research focuses on gene regulation in bacterial pathogens, specifically enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC), which is a major cause of infant diarrhea in developing countries. Gaining a better understanding of how bacteria infect their hosts will hopefully, in the long run, allow us to more effectively prevent and treat these diseases
Meghan Azad
Medical & Health Sciences
Broadly speaking, I am interested in the environmental determinants of childhood allergy and asthma. I am part of a multi-disciplinary research team investigating the role of early-life exposures and gut bacteria in the development of asthma.
Megan Highet
Sociology & Anthropology
I am a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta, where I have also had the opportunity to instruct several introductory and higher-level undergraduate courses. My research and teaching interests include: health and wellbeing in frontier and boomtown communities, anthropological demography, the anthropology of infectious disease, medical anthropology, the social history of medicine, bioethics and the social construction of ‘race’. My geographic area of interest has focused upon historic North American populations and I have published several papers pertaining to health in historic Canadian cities, as well as ethical and methodological considerations pertaining to the study of past peoples more broadly.
Andrew Milne
Engineering & Architecture
We're studying drops as air blows over them. Think of your car after a rainstorm. The drops scattered across your windshield will start to oscillate (vibrate) as you pick up speed, and will eventually either evaporate, run back, or blow off your car. I am looking specifically at the oscillation and start of the run back. The adhesion (stickiness) of the drop to the surface depends on the surface tension of the liquid and the solid and tries to keep the drop undeformed and stuck to its starting location. The drag (the force pushing the drop to move) depends on the airspeed and the drop size. Figuring out exactly how the adhesion force and drag force interact is something that hasn’t been done before, and looking at the oscillation of these deformed drops exposed being driven by shearing flow is also something new. We are looking both at regular surfaces, and superhydrophobic (extremely water repelling) surfaces, to understand the differences, and see where each can be best applied.
Applications of this research include:
-Visibility through windshields and mirrors during rainstorms.
-Anti icing of planes and wind turbines (if you can get the water to blow of before it freezes, you can decrease icing).
-Decreasing fuel cell flooding (as a PEM fuel cell operates, it blow air and hydrogen through channels, creating water in one of the channels. If the water isn’t blown out, it can clog (flood) the channel and block the gas flow, dropping the power output). Our research can help with the design of fuel cells to promote and control the shedding of the water.
-Fluid handling in reduced gravity (space) environments. With the reduced gravity present in space, you can't run a condenser in the usual fashion, because the cooled plate will collect water in a puddle (since gravity won't pull the water off). Therefore, you need to apply some other type of force to the drop, and air drag is definitely a good candidate for the job.
-Enhanced oil recovery. In oil recovery, you have water and oil mixed up, and stuck in small channels in the rock. One way to get it out is to force water, or some other liquid, into the rock. So it's like my work, except you'd have oil drops in water flow, instead of the water drops in airflow that I'm looking at. This oil in water system is a field we've just started, with a new Post Doctoral student in our lab.
