Students present work from Undergraduate Research Opportunities program at online showcase

As part of Ryerson’s annual Undergraduate Research Opportunities (URO) program, students spend the summer working on innovative research projects with leading experts from across the university. More than 60 students participated in the program in 2020, completing their studies over 14 weeks before presenting their findings at a virtual showcase attended by their classmates and supervisors.

Students adapted to an online format which required them to summarize their work in just three minutes. The showcase was held from Sept. 14 to Sept. 18 through five separate, live sessions.

In addition to the URO students, participants from three other funding programs presented their work. The programs were Ryerson’s Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Research Opportunities (UIRO) run by the Faculty of Science, the Dean’s Research Fund – Undergraduate Research Experience (DRF-URE) run by the Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science, and the Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRA) run by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

The students’ research ranged in subject from the antimicrobial properties of copper and the use of blockchain in the medical supply chain, to the communication style of Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte, to the potential of podcasts for promoting research, 

The aim of the URO initiative, which is funded by the Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation (OVPRI), is to provide students with opportunities to learn important research-related skills and to prepare for academic and career development.

Steven N. Liss, Ryerson’s vice-president, research and innovation, said during his introductory comments to the sessions that he is inspired each and every year by the students’ research accomplishments. He emphasized the significant role that undergraduates play through their contributions to the university’s scholarly, research and creative (SRC) enterprise, noting that his own early undergraduate research experiences were transformational for him.

“It has just been wonderful to hear over the course of the week the phenomenal work and hearing from all the students who have been participating in SRC-related activities over the course of this past summer and hearing about the phenomenal contributions that they’re making,” he said while introducing the week’s final session, offering congratulations to the students and thanks to the event organizers.

Below are some of the projects presented at the URO online showcase.

The Impacts of COVID-19 on Materials Science

The impacts of COVID-19 on materials science and the assessment of copper as an antimicrobial agent was the research undertaken by Tess King, a second-year civil engineering student who worked with Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science professor Ravi Ravindran for her project.

King’s research, conducted in the Centre for Near-net-shape Processing of Materials Lab, reviewed modern studies done in hospitals to show that in facilities where copper components were put in place, infection rates dropped by 58 per cent. The research showed that different copper alloys, such as copper-silver mixes, showed great potential in antimicrobial effectiveness when used to coat high-touch locations in hospital rooms, with bacteria starting to die immediately after surface contact and 99.9 per cent of bacteria killed 24 hours after exposure to the alloy.

“That’s why replacing high-touch surface areas with copper or copper-alloys seems to show significant reduction in microbial burden over a sustained duration,” she said.

Using Blockchain for Protecting Patients’ Privacy Within the Medical Supply Chain

Nour Mousa, a third-year business technology management student, worked with professor Farid Shirazi of the Ted Rogers School of Management on an investigation into how blockchain could be used for data privacy in health care. Mousa specifically looked at emergency medical supply chains in Chinese hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic. She found that due to equipment donations, there was an overestimate in the level of medical-grade hospital supplies on hand. This in turn contributed to major delays in supply shipments due to fragmented supply chains and late orders, vulnerability of patient data in hospital IT systems, and a lack of interoperability across the supply chain.

“This was a very sensitive situation and there was a need for traceability across the supply chain,” she said. “There are special features that would allow a blockchain to do this.”

Mousa and her supervisor worked on a framework for a hybrid blockchain system that would encrypt private data and permanently record transactions so that they were tamper-proof. It would allow for patients to take control of their own data, enable interoperability of different IT systems across the supply chain, and allow for traceability and real-time updates.

CT Analysis Between Acute Lung Rejection and No Lung Rejection Following Lung Transplant

Gaurav Veer Singh, a medical physics student in his third year, was supervised by professor Miranda Kirby of the Faculty of Science for a project which compared imaging measurements after lung transplants between cases of acute lung rejection to cases where there was no rejection. He said post-transplant diseases impact a significant number of patients, making it urgent to have tools that detect the risk of rejection early.

His objective was to determine if analysis of airway measurements of computed tomography (CT) imaging could distinguish between two groups of patients, those with lung rejection and those with no lung rejection, but the analysis of the data showed that there was no significant difference between the airway measurements of both. He said that’s potentially due to the unequal sample size between the two groups of CT images used for the study.

“It’s a good starting point to perform analysis,” he said, adding future directions would include performing more complex analysis and incorporating machine learning approaches to identifying imaging measurements to predict rejection.

Creating a Virtual Hub for Clinical Learning in Midwifery

To help improve learning resources available to midwifery students while they are on work placements, third-year midwifery student Rebecca Graham explored the possibility of creating a single online platform where information could be centralized. Supervised by Faculty of Community Services professor Elizabeth Allemang, Graham gathered students’ views on the idea of a virtual hub by sending out email surveys.

“The majority of students said that a centralized hub was a really great idea,” said Graham. “We know that we’re on the right track with what we are hoping to create.”  

As part of the survey, students were asked about topics that they would like the resources to cover. Among the areas of particular interest were hands-on skills and decision-making practices, with many students saying that videos would aid their learning. Students also expressed a lot of interest in being able to maintain access to the online platform beyond graduation. Graham now hopes to begin development of the hub.

A Man of the People

President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, is the subject of an ongoing research project by professor Dana Osborne of the Faculty of Arts. Kai Maurin-Jones, a third-year language and intercultural relations student, has been working with professor Osborne on an analysis of Duterte’s communication style.

To see how Duterte’s use of language relates to his public appeal, Maurin-Jones has been analyzing transcriptions of the leader’s speeches using a specialized computer program called MAXQDA. He explained that the particular combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis techniques being employed is atypical of this field of study, adding that he and professor Osborne are still finalizing the methodological approach and are in the process of gathering data.

“Through MAXQDA, we can find metrics such as the frequency of employing certain words or phrases, his use of specific language, against which we can qualitatively compare related information like social and political context, as well as linguistic context, to figure out exactly how, when and why he speaks the way he does,” said Maurin-Jones.

Open Peer Review Podcast

The production of a pilot episode of a new podcast called the Open Peer Review Podcast (external link)  with dual goals of knowledge dissemination and garnering research feedback was the project Valentina Passos Gastaldo, a fourth year media production student, supervised by Faculty of Communication and Design professor Lori Beckstead, contributed to during the summer.

The podcast was developed to offer researchers the chance to receive expert feedback from a peer on their research and offer a different way to disseminate academic studies to a wider audience. The format sees the researcher and peer reviewer joined by a moderator, and the peer reviewer offers constructive feedback. For the pilot episode, moderated by Taylor MacLean, a program lead at Ryerson’s Centre for Communicating Knowledge, professor Beckstead had some recent research reviewed by professor Dario Llinares of the University of Brighton prior to finalizing and submitting a journal paper.

“The main goal of this project, beyond bridging the gap between scientific knowledge and the general population, is to actually foster the development of podcasting as a legitimate research output,” said Passos Gastaldo.

Full list of projects presented at the 2020 URO showcase

Related links:

Read about the 2019 Undergraduate Research Opportunities (URO) showcase

Find out more about student research at Ryerson