As the world faces a global plastic waste crisis, new strategies for managing plastic waste are urgently needed. With the goal of creating more degradable and recyclable plastic, Dr. Elisabeth Prince, Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo, is working towards Canada’s ambitious goal of achieving zero plastic waste by 2030.

Plastics are resistant to degradation and persist in the environment for a long time. Plastic waste is typically recycled through a process called mechanical recycling, where plastic waste is melted and remolded at high temperatures into new materials. Yet, not all plastics can be recycled in this way, including rubbers and high-performance plastics called thermosets. These plastics have permanent chemical bonds that give them excellent thermal and mechanical properties. Unfortunately, those same permanent chemical bonds make them impossible to remold upon heating, preventing them from being mechanically recycled. As a result, thermoset and rubber plastic waste is accumulating in landfills and the biosphere.

Dr. Prince’s team is developing new strategies to allow rubbers and thermosets mechanically recyclable. They are introducing thermally dynamic bonds into these materials to allow them to be melted and remolded into new materials. Importantly, the proposed approach would allow crosslinked plastic waste to be recycled using the already established and widespread infrastructure available for mechanical recycling, providing a timely solution to the exponentially worsening global plastic waste crisis. The proposed research is a promising new tool that will help Canada address the plastic waste crisis.

By examining the quantitative impact of McCarthyism on American society and democracy, particularly through studies on the Hollywood blacklist and forthcoming investigations into its effects on targeted groups like the press, labor unions, and liberal politicians, Dr. Tianyi Wang, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Toronto’s research addresses the critical analysis of press independence, political discourse, and the foundations of open dialogue in the context of historical political repression.

McCarthyism, led by figures like Senator Joseph McCarthy, resulted in widespread fear, accusations, and persecution of individuals suspected of communist ties, even without evidence. It is known for suppressing political dissent, civil liberties, and freedom of thought.

Dr. Wang’s research aims to provide quantitative evidence of how McCarthyism affected American society and democracy. One of the studies focuses on the Hollywood blacklist, which affected hundreds of professionals in the entertainment industry. The research examines how this blacklist influenced individual careers and the content of films, particularly its impact on progressive and social themes in movies.

Future projects will explore how McCarthyism affected other targeted groups, such as the press, labor unions, and liberal politicians. For example, journalists were subpoenaed to testify about their political beliefs, and Dr. Wang plans to analyze the impact on press independence and political discourse.

Through pioneering research utilizing gravitational-wave data from extreme cosmic events, such as collisions between massive black holes and neutron stars, Dr. Maya Fishbach, Assistant Professor at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Toronto, is working to not only enhance our understanding of the universe’s most extreme objects but to unravel their origins and contexts, with profound implications for cosmology.

When the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Advanced LIGO) came online in 2015, it detected collisions between massive black holes, producing gravitational waves that travel billions of light years. These waves reveal information about black holes and neutron stars, which are among the universe’s most extreme objects.

Dr. Fishbach has been a leader in the field, extracting insights from these events, such as the masses, spins, and distances of black holes and neutron stars. She plans to continue this research and take advantage of the increasing number of gravitational-wave events. Her approach combines gravitational-wave data with theoretical models and multi-messenger observations, aiming to piece together the origins and contexts of black holes and neutron stars.

To help find potentially habitable planets where scientists can search for signs of life in the future, Dr. Ryan Cloutier, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at McMaster University, tackles key questions about what physical processes dominate the formation and evolution of super-Earths and sub-Neptunes around the most abundant stars in our galaxy.

Dr. Cloutier leads an observationally focused research program with his group of students and postdocs at McMaster University. His research includes using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite to search for planets around over 10,000 red dwarf stars, stars that are less than 50% the size of the Sun and outnumber Sun-like stars 10:1 in the Milky Way. The goals are to measure how common super-Earths are around the smallest red dwarfs and establish whether they begin their lives rocky, like the Earth, or if they initially have a large envelope of water and gas that is later lost to space. 

The research also explores the impacts of energetic flares and stellar winds, and how these processes can drive the loss of planetary atmospheres and affect surface conditions. Part of this endeavour involves developing tools for Canada’s planned flagship mission, CASTOR, which will study red dwarf flares in the UV. Additionally, Dr. Cloutier uses UV spectroscopy from the Hubble Space Telescope to search for signatures of red dwarf stellar winds as they interact with compact, companion stars. These observations help us to understand how energetic flares and winds impact atmospheric evolution and the potential for life on orbiting planets.

His research also investigates how stellar abundances of planet-forming elements like iron, magnesium, and silicon, influence the compositions of super-Earths. By measuring elemental abundances in red dwarfs using the SPIRou spectrograph on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, Dr Cloutier’s work aims to provide insights into the diversity of super-Earth interior compositions. This information will help establish the connection between star-planet compositions and guide our search for potentially habitable Earth-like planets in our cosmic neighbourhood.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic disease affecting approximately 90,000 Canadians and more than 2.5 million people worldwide. As there is currently no effective medication to prevent MS progression, Dr. Kevin Champagne-Jorgensen, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Immunology at the University of Toronto, is exploring how manipulating the microbiota can combat MS progression. This research aims to develop microbe-based therapeutics to improve the health of people with MS and to modify an MS-promoting microbiota into one that protects against MS progression, potentially providing a new way to treat MS patients.

The gastrointestinal tract contains trillions of symbiotic microorganisms (microbiota) that are critical for normal immunity, physiology, and development. Evidence suggests that the gut microbiota may influence MS and other neurological disorders. Dr. Champagne-Jorgensen’s research has found that gut microbes are important for healthy neurodevelopment and has shown a new mechanism where gut bacterial nanoparticles may enter the bloodstream, interacting with the brain and immune systems in both health and disease states. Dr. Champagne-Jorgensen is now expanding on these findings by focusing on microbiota from MS patients to identify which microbes affect disease progression and understand the mechanisms involved. Ultimately, this research aims to modify MS-promoting microbiota to instead protect against MS progression, laying the groundwork for innovative microbe-based therapeutics to enhance the wellbeing of people with MS worldwide.