Canada Confesses is an online platform that empowers individuals to anonymously share their experiences with discrimination and connects them with resources. — When third-year UAlberta psychology student Priscilla Ojomu immigrated to Canada from Nigeria in the eight grade, she hoped her new home would be as it is so often advertised: a paragon of multiculturalism and acceptance. Instead, she met classmates who made racially ignorant jokes — sometimes…

Undergraduate student Bailey Brockman looked at the healthcare crisis facing unhoused Canadians for her FURCA award-winning research project — Bailey Brockman is a fourth-year sociology major and one of the winners of this year’s Festival of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (FURCA) Outstanding Sustainability Research Award. For her award-winning project, Brockman investigated the many obstacles that prevent unhoused Canadians from getting quality healthcare. She argues that we can stop…

A new application from researchers in the Department of Civil and Environmental engineering uses Google Earth to create fast, automated solar panel layouts. — Dr. Mustafa Gül, an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, sees a cityscape dotted in solar panels when he envisions Edmonton’s future–and he thinks that by using a new application he and his students developed, we can get there at light speed.

Interns in the Adaptation Resilience Training program share how they are preparing Alberta to weather climate change — It’s too late to completely reverse climate change. Alberta must prepare for a future of severe heat waves, droughts, floods, fires, storms, and other consequences provoked by our unsustainable use of Earth’s natural resources. However, if we act now, we can prevent some of the worst outcomes from natural disasters…

Fighting prejudice, making waste reduction fun, taking out the university’s trash–these leaders are creating a greener, more egalitarian world on and off campus — Here are the winner’s of this year’s Campus Sustainability Leaders awards!

PhD student Stephanie Chute-Ibsen is trying to find a better way to monitor land that has been damaged by industry, and they think soil invertebrates hold the key — By Riley Tjosvold Some say that space is the final frontier, but for Stephanie Chute-Ibsen (pronouns: they/them), the most mysterious part of the universe is right under our feet. A PhD student in land reclamation and remediation, Chute-Ibsen has been fascinated by hidden worlds since childhood, when they remember begging…

Researchers in Mustafa Gül’s lab in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering are using smart phones and cameras to assess the health of built environments — By Riley Tjosvold If bridges could speak, what would they say? Dr. Mustafa Gül, an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, thinks he might have the answer. He has found a cheap, simple and efficient way to “listen” to bridges and detect whether they need repair…

Sustainability Scholar Alumni Sitara Fernandes says that her surplus food redistribution research project set her on an unexpected career path — By Riley Tjosvold A fresh graduate of St. Joseph’s College of Commerce in Bangalore, India, Sitara Fernandes noticed a problem at her new, corporate workplace. Indian tech companies often provide lunch to their employees, but leftovers at Fernandes’s job were being thrown out at the end of the day. So…

PhD students in Omid Ardakanian’s lab are wrestling with making our buildings more energy efficient — and with the privacy concerns that arise from this mission — By Riley Tjosvold This is one of two stories about research happening in Omid Ardakanian’s lab in the Department of Computing Science. Read the first story to learn how this research unit is paving the way for a transition to electric vehicles.