on the edge Vol. 35, No. 1, Spring/Summer 2018
science.ualberta.ca
Vol. 35, No. 1, Spring/Summer 2018
The University of Alberta 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 experiences, we competitively position our students, staff, and faculty for current and future success. Science Contours is a semi-annual publication dedicated to highlighting the collective achievements of the Faculty of Science community. It is distributed to alumni and friends of the faculty.
Dean of Science Jonathan Schaeffer Editor Jennifer Pascoe Associate Editor Katie Willis Design Lime Design Inc.
Contributing Writers Suzette Chan Kristy Condon Sofia Osbourne Jennifer Pascoe Katie Willis Photography John Ulan
Send your comments to: The Editor, Science Contours Faculty of Science 6-189 CCIS, University of Alberta Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2E1 science.contours@ualberta.ca
FSC logo
facebook.com/UAlbertaScience @UAlbertaScience @UAlbertaScience UAlbertaScience UAlbertaScience science.ualberta.ca
Tiny cell, big possibilities UAlberta chemists explore Earth-abundant materials to build next-generation solar cells. Read more: p. 12
contents 6
Dean’s message
8
Science news
› Physicists find strong winds around black holes
› 10-year-old helps paleontologists discover ancient fish
› Canada’s first subglacial lakes
› Remembering Richard Taylor
› Diamonds are a scientist’s best friend
› Bright side of the road dust
› Indiana Jones meets AI
› Profile of a pine beetle
12 The future of energy is looking bright Six scientists who are changing how we power our world 16 Window into the future Perfecting the ultra-fast and ultra-small 19 Looking for lithium in all the right places Chris Doornbos’ quest to power high-efficiency batteries 22 Next up in neuroscience The next generation is outside the lab 26 Choose your own (scientific) adventure Alumna Kristen Cote is out of this world 29 The art of artificial intelligence Research associate Kacy Doucet at the intersection of art and science 30 Solution seeker Stuart Rogers on getting the rolling ball robot rolling 34 Alumni perspectives: Science on her skin “I am literally doing the research of my dreams” —Brooke Biddlecombe ('17 BSc)
In the field
4
SPRING/SUMMER 2018
One bird, two behavioural ecologists Graduate student JosuÊ Arteaga Torres (left) and Kim Mathot study chickadees at the University of Alberta’s Botanic Garden to better understand how the birds respond to extremes in their environment. Mathot is an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and a newly named Canada Research Chair in integrative ecology.
S C I E N C E . U A L B E R TA . C A
5
Dean’s message
$26M
Plunge into the unknown
$26M raised for students, research, etc. in the 2017-18 fiscal year. Find out more in the centre spread.
Science “on the edge.” What does that mean? Our first instinct is to say that it is a catchy phrase to refer to new research. You will read lots of that in this issue of Contours, such as creating greener technologies to help fuel high-efficiency batteries, powering the potential for ultra-fast, ultra-small technology, and understanding what
bikes can teach us about the human brain. All par for the course for one of the world’s top research faculties of science. But what does the phrase really mean to convey? An edge is the outer limit of something, an imaginary line that separates two regions. For a scientist, it is the boundary between known and unknown. You can look back on what led you to where you are (the known), but the exciting part is to look forward to see where you can go (the unknown). Sometimes being on the edge is disappointing—nothing of note can be seen on the horizon. Yet more often than not, the edge reveals new things that you couldn’t see or imagine before reaching that point. That is what makes research exciting! As a scientist, being on the edge means one has an important choice to make: retreat back into the known or plunge ahead into the unknown. There are often good reasons for doing the former; after all, the mark of a successful researcher is knowing when to cut your losses (true in science as it is in life). Pushing forward into the unknown has risk. What will we find? Will the scientific results be worth the effort? Scientists prefer to take the road least travelled, and that has made all the difference (with apologies to Robert Frost).
“The more that I’ve gotten involved with research, and actually being able to see where that knowledge comes from first-hand, makes me get more interested in science.” Megan Hansen (fourth-year BSc general, bio sci major, psych minor)
“My favourite memory from my undergrad years was the summer research projects I was involved with. I had the pleasure of working under Dr. Joseph Takits in Chemistry for two summers. I found that to be such a wonderful experience. It opened up my eyes up to research and lit the fire as far as continuous learning and learning on your own.” Wayne Moffat ('83 BSc)
$75M The future of energy looks bright at UAlberta with a new $75-million, 7-year research program funding projects for 100 researchers across campus. More on page 12.
6
SPRING/SUMMER 2018
Byte-Size Science
80% Wind blows away up to 80% of a black hole’s potential meal, says a new discovery. The international study involved researchers from three countries, and data collected over the past 20 years from five international X-ray observatories. Find out more in Science News.
3rd UAlberta ranked 3rd best place in the world to study paleontology and 5th best to study geology, according to the Center for World University Rankings.
10
“Geology is what fuelled the industrial revolution—finding coal, finding minerals. But geology now has to be the answer to what do we do with all the CO2 we are pumping into the atmosphere. We have to find answers for how to continue to be prosperous while at the same time not destroying the Earth.” Stephen Johnston ('85 MSc, '93 PhD), professor and chair (earth and atmospheric sciences)
60/39
A 10-year-old tourist aided in the discovery of a new ancient fish species. Find out more in Science News.
20
More than 20 new faculty members joined the Faculty of Science this year.
We offer 60 undergraduate programs in 39 subject areas. “Try everything . . . you’ll be a well-rounded scientist when you experience every aspect the University of Alberta has to offer. That’s what I’ve done and that’s why I can say my degree in science has been the best time of my life.” Anastasia, Alumna
“The impact of these—what sort of seems like very simple studies, but they are very important for the future. It fascinates me that some of our research scientists and people working in the various areas of science find these very obscure areas of study and to be able to make them special and important for our environment and our world.” Sabina Posadziejewski ('80 BSc) S C I E N C E . U A L B E R TA . C A
7
Science News
UAlberta physicists have found never-before-documented evidence of strong winds around black holes during bright outbursts, when a black hole rapidly consumes mass.
NASA-SWIFT-A. SIMONNET, SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY
Physicists find strong winds around black holes
The winds blow away a large portion of what the black hole would otherwise consume, explains lead author and PhD student Bailey Tetarenko. “In one of our models, the winds removed 80 per cent of the black hole’s potential meal.” The study also sheds light on how mass can transfer to black holes and how black holes can affect the environment around them. Using data from three international space agencies, the scientists used new statistical techniques to study outbursts from stellar-mass black hole X-ray binary systems. Their results show evidence of consistent and strong winds surrounding black holes throughout outbursts. Until now, strong winds had only been seen in limited parts of these events. Depending on their size, stellar-mass black holes have the capacity to consume everything within a three- to 150-kilometre radius. “Not even light can escape from this close to a black hole,” explained Gregory Sivakoff, associate professor of physics and co-author. Sivakoff was named the inaugural science fellow at TELUS World of Science Edmonton in March 2018. So, what exactly causes these winds in space? For now, it remains a mystery—though magnetic fields may play a role. The international study involved researchers from across Canada, Europe, and Japan, and data collected over the past 20 years from five international X-ray observatories. The paper was published in Nature, one of the world’s top peer-reviewed scientific publications.
10-year-old helps paleontologists discover ancient fish species
8
SPRING/SUMMER 2018
Right: This never-before-seen fish is the first found in tropical South America from the Cretaceous period.
“It’s rare to find such a complete fossil of a fish from this moment in the Cretaceous period. Deepwater fish are difficult to recover, as well as those from environments with fast-flowing waters,” said Vernygora. “But what surprises me the most is that, after two years of being on a walkway, it was still intact. It’s amazing.”
PHOTO SUPPLIED
The fossil, Candelarhynchus padillai, is about 90 million years old and has no modern relatives, explained Oksana Vernygora, a PhD student and lead author on the study. In fact, the specimen is the first from the Cretaceous period ever found in Colombia and tropical South America. “A kid was walking into the Monastery of La Candelaria during a tour when he
noticed the shape of a fish in a flagstone on the ground,” explained Javier Luque, a PhD candidate and co-author. “He took a photo and showed it to staff at the Centro de Investigaciones Paleontológicas, a local museum we collaborate with to protect and study fossil findings from the region.” The museum then contacted Alison Murray, professor of biological sciences and Vernygora’s supervisor, who joined her colleagues in Colombia to retrace the steps of the 10-year-old tourist. What they found was a nearly perfect, completely intact fossil of an ancient fish in the flagstone walkway.
OKSANA VERNYGORA
Paleontologists from the University of Alberta have discovered a neverbefore-seen species of fish in Colombia, with help from a young and curious tourist.
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Canada’s first subglacial lakes
Richard Taylor in 1967, when he was conducting the series of experiments that would ultimately prove the existence of quarks.
Remembering Richard Taylor The University of Alberta mourned the loss of Nobel-winning physicist and alumnus Richard Taylor in February 2018.
Deep in the Canadian Arctic, scientists have found two lakes located beneath 550 to 750 metres of ice. Located underneath the Devon Ice Cap, one of the largest ice caps in the Canadian Arctic, these are the first subglacial lakes found in Canada and the first isolated hypersaline subglacial lakes in the world. “The ice is frozen to the ground underneath that part of the Devon Ice Cap, so we didn’t expect to find liquid water,” explains Anja Rutishauser, PhD student at the University of Alberta studying with Martin Sharp (earth and atmospheric sciences), who made the discovery while studying airborne radar data acquired by NASA and the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics. “We saw these radar signatures telling us there’s water, but we
thought it was impossible that there could be liquid water underneath this ice, where it is below -10 C.” These newly discovered lakes are a potential habitat for microbial life and may assist scientists in the search for life beyond Earth. Though all subglacial lakes are good stand-ins for life beyond Earth, the hypersaline nature of the Devon lakes makes them particularly tantalizing analogues for ice-covered moons in our solar system. “If we can collect a sample of the water, we may determine whether microbial life exists, how it evolved, and how it continues to live in this cold environment with no connection to the atmosphere,” says Rutishauser. ILLUSTRATION: TREVOR HORBACHEWSKY
Throughout his career, the celebrated particle physicist was an advocate for the value of education and the potential of Canadian research. Taylor was also the only University of Alberta alumnus to win a Nobel Prize. He died at his home in California at age 88. Born in Medicine Hat in 1929, Taylor attended UAlberta, where he earned a bachelor of science degree in 1950 and a master’s degree two years later from the Faculty of Science. Upon graduation, Taylor married U of A education grad Rita Jean Bonneau and was accepted to Stanford University, where he earned his PhD as part of the High Energy Physics Laboratory. Taylor won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1990 for providing the first experimental evidence of quarks, the subatomic particles forming the basis of 99 per cent of all matter. His last visit to the U of A came when he helped officially open the Centennial Centre for Interdisciplinary Science in 2011. Taylor’s love of the unknown was evident whenever he spoke, likening research to a spiritual journey. “Most professors don’t lose joy at discovering new things.”
S C I E N C E . U A L B E R TA . C A
9
Experts in diamond research in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences have made two groundbreaking discoveries this year, thanks to the superdeep sparkling minerals. JEFF W. HARRIS, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW
These diamond-encased garnets can form at depths down to 550 kilometres below Earth’s surface.
Iron Five hundred and fifty kilometres below the Earth’s surface, Thomas Stachel discovered highly oxidized iron—similar to the rust we see on our planet’s surface—within garnets found within diamonds. The finding surprised geoscientists around the globe because there is little opportunity for iron to become so highly oxidized deep below the Earth’s surface.
10
SPRING/SUMMER 2018
“On Earth’s surface, where oxygen is plentiful, iron will oxidize to rust,” explains Stachel, professor and diamond expert. “In the Earth’s deep mantle, we should find iron in its less oxidized form, known as ferrous iron, or in its metal form. But what we found was the exact opposite—the deeper we go, the more oxidized iron we found.” The discovery suggests that something oxidized the rocks in which the superdeep diamonds were found. The suspect? Molten carbonate carried to these great depths in sinking slabs of ancient sea floor.
Calcium silicate perovskite In a diamond from 150 kilometres farther down, Canada Excellence Research Chair Laureate Graham Pearson made another surprising diamond discovery. “Nobody has ever managed to keep this mineral stable at the Earth’s surface,” says Pearson. “The only possible way of preserving this mineral at the Earth’s surface is when it’s trapped in an unyielding container like a diamond. Based on our findings, there could be as much as teratonnes of this perovskite in deep Earth. “The discovery of perovskite in this particular diamond very clearly indicates the recycling of oceanic crust into Earth’s lower mantle, giving insight into just what happens after oceanic plates descend into the depths of the Earth.” Diamonds. Just like Shirley Bassey crooned, they’re forever. Romantically symbolic but also scientifically invaluable. The toughest materials on Earth, they also provide a unique window into Earth’s core.
Bright side of the road dust Chemists have discovered that exposure to sunlight causes chemical reactions in the dust found on Edmonton roads. “We found that when you shine light on road dust, it produces a reactive form of oxygen called singlet oxygen,” says Sarah Styler, assistant professor of chemistry. “It acts as an oxidant in the environment and can cause or influence other chemical reactions.” Styler examined road dust collected from Edmonton’s downtown core in September 2016. Just what those chemical reactions are and how they affect us is something Styler is determined to find out. “Unlike tailpipe emissions, which are increasingly heavily regulated, road dust is much more complex and comes from many different sources,” explains Styler. If contaminants in road dust react with singlet oxygen, that means that sunlight could change the lifetime and potency of those contaminants in ways we don’t yet understand. One group of chemicals that could react with singlet oxygen is a set of toxic components of combustion emissions, known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Next, Styler and her team will examine road dust from other places around the city, including residential, commercial, and park areas, to better understand if and how the different compositions of road dust will influence reactivity.
JASMINE JANES
DIAMONDS ARE A SCIENTIST’S BEST FRIEND
ISTOCK
Science News
Mountain pine beetles have devastated millions of trees on the Canadian landscape.
The mysterious 15th-century Voynich manuscript has baffled historians and cryptographers since its discovery in the 19th century. Scholars had yet to determine which language the text was written in—until artificial intelligence experts joined the investigation. An expert in natural language processing, Greg Kondrak, and graduate student Bradley Hauer used samples of 400 different languages from the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights to systematically identify the language. After running
their algorithms, the pair discovered the text was likely ancient Hebrew and not Arabic as previously thought. “Saying ‘this is Hebrew’ is the first step,” explains Kondrak, professor of computing science. “The next is learning how to decipher it.” Kondrak and Hauer hypothesized the manuscript was created using alphagrams, a puzzle in which each word’s letters appear in alphabetical order. (For example, an alphagram of alphagram is aaaghlmpr.) From here, the pair tried to come up with an algorithm to decipher the scrambled text.
PROFILE OF A PINE BEETLE Chances are if you’ve visited Jasper in the last few years, you’ve noticed a new dominant colour creeping into the typically green forest scene: red. And when it comes to the pine trees that dominate those forests, red equals dead. What started as a small cluster of affected trees in the western region of the park has spread to more than 10,000 trees in the park today. The culprit? The mountain pine beetle. Janice Cooke, associate professor of biological sciences and director of the NSERC TRIA Mountain Pine Beetle Strategic Network, has been studying the pine beetle for nearly a decade. “The pine trees are basically water starved to death,” says Cooke. Once a tree is infected, beetle larvae develop through the autumn, take a hiatus through the winter months, and
YALE UNIVERSITY
Indiana Jones meets AI “More than 80 per cent of the words were in a Hebrew dictionary, but we still didn’t know if they made sense together,” says Kondrak. This last piece of the puzzle can only be solved by historians of ancient Hebrew, Kondrak explains. Without their expertise, the full meaning of the Voynich manuscript will remain a mystery. As for Kondrak, he and Hauer look forward to applying their algorithms to new samples. “There is no shortage of mysteries,” says Kondrak. “Many ancient scripts remain undeciphered to this day.”
continue developing in the spring. After the damage has been done to an individual tree, TRIA-Net research has shown, the beetles can fly many kilometres to find their next host tree. Part of the reason the beetles have been so successful is their genetics. New research from post-doctoral fellow Jasmine Janes and graduate student Stephen Trevoy demonstrates that the mountain pine beetles found in Jasper National Park are a hybrid of populations from both the north and south of the region. “What we discovered is an eye of the storm where we see a sort of mixture of two genetic populations coming together in Jasper National Park,” explains Janes. While biologically fascinating, the mountain pine beetle provides many concerns for management. Continued research and conservation efforts in Alberta are ongoing to keep mountain pine beetle outbreaks from becoming a full-blown epidemic to the scale of destruction that British Columbia bore witness to just over a decade ago. S C I E N C E . U A L B E R TA . C A
11
By KATIE WILLIS
Photos JOHN ULAN
The future of en is looking brig SIX SCIENTISTS CHANGING HOW WE POWER
12
SPRING/SUMMER 2018
ergy ht OUR WORLD
RESEARCHERS IN THE FACULTY OF SCIENCE and from across campus are honing the future of energy, with a focus on developing new technologies as well as finding solutions for the challenges presented by our legacy energy systems. n Doing so starts with a full-systems approach through the University of Alberta’s Future Energy Systems research initiative, which connects more than 100 researchers and close to 300 graduate students from across seven faculties and campuses. Future Energy Systems is funded with $75 million from Government of Canada’s Canada First Research Excellence Fund, and has launched more than 60 projects. Learn how six Faculty of Science researchers from across disciplines are changing the face of energy in Alberta, Canada, and globally. With upwards of five new projects involving Faculty of Science researchers on the horizon, the future of energy in Canada and around the world is looking bright.
S C I E N C E . U A L B E R TA . C A
13
GEOTHERMAL ENERGY
SOLAR POWER
GEOTHERMAL ENERGY is the next hot thing—literally— in Alberta, with the potential to leverage a clean, renewable resource and fuel a new, sustainable industry. The concept is simple: pump hot water from underground to Earth’s surface using wells. Use that heat to create power, and then inject the cooled water back into the ground at another local site, where it will heat up again. This emerging energy source has the advantage of using the same infrastructure as the oil and gas industry.
THE SOLAR CELLS that convert solar energy are notoriously inefficient to create. Traditionally composed of silicon, created from sand in an energy-intensive process, individual cells can take two to four years to recoup the initial energy required for their creation. And though solar energy is abundant, the use of solar power could be much more common than it currently is.
Target practice Professor Martyn Unsworth (below) is using his geophysical expertise to look underground and find the best places to extract the hot water needed for geothermal energy production. His work involves generating images of underground rock structure using radio waves and other signals to identify the best locations for drilling. “What works in one geographical location doesn’t work everywhere worldwide,” explains Unsworth. “We’re looking at a range of energy technologies that will work together. We have to have a system in combination.” One of the challenges of developing geothermal energy is that it requires a larger initial investment for drilling wells. However, geothermal has the major advantage that it works 24 hours a day, year-round, unlike many other renewable energy sources, making it a complement to other sources of renewable energy.
14
SPRING/SUMMER 2018
Sunnier prospects
Pilot project in Alberta Research associate Jonathan Banks is bringing a pilot project in geothermal energy to Alberta. In partnership with local company Epoch Energy, Banks and his colleagues are working to retrofit oil wells near Hinton with the potential to provide megawatts of power to the local community. “We’ll use the same infrastructure, the same expertise, the same service providers, and the same software,” says Banks. “It’s really just a matter of retooling and retraining the capacity that we already have. Alberta is at a huge advantage for getting started without the steep and expensive learning curve other places are facing.” With his colleagues, Banks is working on reservoir modelling that makes geothermal energy projects possible by finding reservoirs, determining their thermodynamic properties, and modelling fluid flow.
Chemist Jillian Buriak is working to develop inexpensive and manufacturable solar cells. Called the 24-hour solar cell, this technology aims to recoup the energy needed to make it in the space of a single day. The technology grows out of a collaboration with the group of Arthur Mar, and uses machine learning to develop efficient solar cells much faster. “It’s kind of a dream. Realistically, right now, we’re looking at recouping that energy in the space of a few months; but compared to silicon solar cells that require about two years, we are in a strong position,” explains Buriak, Canada Research Chair in Nanomaterials for Energy. Buriak and her research collaborators are exploring Earth-abundant alternatives to silicon—and the prospects look extremely sunny. In addition to alternatives to silicon, Buriak’s group is looking for more flexible, lightweight materials that can be rolled on or spraycoated to a surface, noting that this will help decrease capital and labour costs during initial installation.
BIOFUELS THE TRADITIONAL METHODS of producing energy, including the extraction and refinement of oil and gas, produce emissions that contribute to the greenhouse effect. In some cases, these emissions are byproducts of production, such as carbon dioxide. There are also “fugitive” emissions, when there is not enough of a particular byproduct produced to become something useful but too much to release into the atmosphere without consequence. But what if it were possible to capture these emissions and make them into something useful while also mitigating their negative impact on our environment?
Carbon: zero
The power of AI Part of the challenge in identifying alternative materials is the labour required to weed out materials that won’t work. Enter Arthur Mar, UAlberta chemist, who is harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to identify new materials to be used on solar cells. “My lab is acting as the bridge between the computing scientists who develop the algorithms of machine learning tools and those who want to apply this information to make new things,” says Mar. Using these algorithms, Mar and his team will screen many potential materials to identify the required components of the ideal solar cell material in hopes of building more efficient and powerful cells. From here, Buriak and her research team will investigate the proposed materials over the next two to three years.
Chemist Steven Bergens is looking for ways to reduce the carbon footprint of oil refinement to nearly zero—all with the help of a seemingly simple chemistry equation. “The idea is to take carbon dioxide and create something valuable—like fuels and chemical building blocks,” says Bergens. “Our job is to develop efficient, inexpensive catalysts that are connected to solar energy collectors that make these chemical reactions possible.” Specifically, Bergens hopes to combine carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight to create liquid fuels, carbon monoxide, or methane. Using fuels and products made from carbon dioxide, sunlight, and water would dramatically reduce the total amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. And with a few promising systems already in the works, the future is looking bright.
Small but mighty Microbiologist Lisa Stein is developing bacteria that will create useful biofuels from oil and gas production waste products, such as methane. In conjunction with colleagues across campus, Stein is developing a smallbut-mighty bioreactor that will capture waste methane emissions and convert them into something useful. “Essentially, we take single carbon molecules and create complex organic materials, thereby adding a lot of value to these waste products,” says Stein. “Combining that waste methane with our bacteria, we can create biofuels like biodiesel and isoprene.” Smokestack flares are the result of “fugitive” methane emissions in many industries, from water treatment plants to paper mills to oil and gas refineries. The proposed bioreactor will have the capacity to make this fugitive methane useful. Stein’s bacteria combined with this technology will effectively close the loop in our legacy energy system.
S C I E N C E . U A L B E R TA . C A
15
SCIENTISTS COMBINE THE ULTRA-FAST WITH THE ULTRA-SMALL TO PIONEER MICROSCOPY AT
I
Frank Hegmann opened the door to a new lab in Phase 1 of the Centennial Centre for Interdisciplinary Science, a new underground facility adjacent to the biological sciences building. He was waiting for his new equipment to arrive in hopes of building an apparatus that could take microscopy to the next level. The thing was, he had no idea whether it would work. N 20 0 8 ,
16
SPRING/SUMMER 2018
Developing a microscope that can take snapshots of electron dynamics inside a single atom has been a longstanding scientific goal. On one hand, researchers could acquire images of single atoms and molecules on surfaces, but not their electronic motion. On the other hand, ultrafast lasers could be used to record the dynamics of many atoms and molecules at once. After years of working on these
older systems, Hegmann wondered how he could improve the process. “I got to thinking, ‘What if I could kill the proverbial two birds with one stone?’” The leading edge technology at the time was the scanning tunnelling microscope (STM). “To actually see single atoms and to manipulate them into structures opened up a whole new world of being able to visualize
By Suzette Chan Photos John Ulan
Frank Hegmann (right) with PhD student Vedran Jelic (left) and former graduate student Tyler Cocker ('12 PhD, centre)
TERAHERTZ FREQUENCIES
The scanning tunnelling microscope in Frank Hegmann’s physics lab is the product of nearly a decade of work and two generations of graduate students.
nature,” Hegmann says. “But scanning tunnelling microscopes are not very fast instruments. They can only do slow scans. On the ultra-fast side, there’s this whole field of people using these very short laser pulse sources to examine very fast processes in nature.” After joining the University of Alberta as a faculty member, Hegmann eventually applied to the Canadian Foundation for Innovation for a grant
to develop an instrument to look at single molecules and even smaller-scale material. “People were telling me it was risky. We said right in the application that we had no idea if it would work,” Hegmann says. “One of the best Christmas presents I ever got was an email from the Research Services Office, just a few days before the holidays, saying that the grant was funded. I couldn’t believe it.” Youthful inspiration
at the University of Victoria, an undergraduate student named Tyler Cocker had become fascinated with ultra-fast terahertz technology. He decided to do a master’s degree at the University of Alberta with Hegmann. “As Frank was planning the equipment for this new lab, it became a possibility that I could change into M E ANWHILE
the PhD stream and work with Frank on this idea for a new terahertz STM,” says Cocker. “At the time, the lab was an empty room, so this involved some planning. For four years or so, I did terahertz spectroscopy and preplanning for what we expected to happen when we coupled the terahertz pulses with the STM tip.” Progress on this brand-new, mightnot-actually-work technology proved to be anything but a straight path. “There were many moments of discouragement and then elation, and then a point where I would think, ‘OK, that’s as far as it can go.’ And then maybe we need a break, or a pep talk.” Cocker’s efforts eventually paid off. “I’m not sure I would have guessed that, as a student working on it, it would get this far so quickly because, at first, it seemed noisy and difficult to do. Now,
S C I E N C E . U A L B E R TA . C A
17
Advice from the Terahertz STM lab
T
A look inside the world of lasers in Frank Hegmann’s lab.
we can take snapshots of atoms or electron densities around molecules, and it’s remarkable.” Next generation
made additions to the lab. He bought equipment and recruited researchers, including Vedran Jelic ('12 BSc), who was then a University of Alberta undergraduate looking to do research as a summer student. “When I started working in the lab with Tyler, the microscope was sitting on the optics bench, which is not really the ideal environment for such a sensitive instrument,” Jelic remembers. “After Tyler finished his PhD, our plan was to move the microscope into the ultra-high-vacuum chamber to hopefully study features on the atomic scale. Again, we didn’t know if this was going to work, since our model suggested that we might not have enough strength in our laser to see the effect. Thankfully, after a few years of H EGMAN N
18
SPRING/SUMMER 2018
trial and error, we were rewarded with some spectacular results.” After Cocker went on to a postdoctoral fellowship at University of Regensburg in Germany—where he built the world’s second terahertz STM—Jelic stayed at the University of Alberta to complete his PhD while further refining the terahertz STM. The duo will reunite this fall, when Jelic begins a post-doctoral fellowship under Cocker’s supervision at Michigan State University, where Cocker was recently hired as an assistant professor of physics. Together, Cocker and Jelic will be working on what could be the first terahertz STM built in the United States. It would be among at least a dozen other terahertz STMs being developed across the globe. Hegmann, who years ago couldn’t believe he got the initial funding for the project, is amazed by what his team has developed. “The terahertz STM
he future of condensed matter physics began with an empty room—specifically the lab in which Frank Hegmann (physics) developed the world’s first terahertz scanning tunnelling microscope. Now, there is global interest in the terahertz STM from the condensed matter physics community. Professor Hegmann, soon-to-be post-doctoral fellow Vedran Jelic, and assistant professor Tyler Cocker expect to continue working together, and have some advice for aspiring physicists in the field. Jelic advises students to be open to the project that they end up working on. “I didn’t know what I was getting myself into with terahertz STM. I just sort of dove into it and tried to make the best of it, and it turned out really well in my case.” He adds, “There’s some persistence to it, too. Just stay on track and trust that the project might work out.” Cocker says, “My advice from being a post-doc would be not to be afraid of trying new things that are a little outside your wheelhouse. You’ve got a new chance to learn something else new. Take the opportunity to try something out, try something different.” He adds: “And choose a good mentor!” Hegmann’s advice to newly hired assistant professors is to hang in there. “The pre-tenure years are quite challenging. There’s a lot of work to be done. It is nice when you go into the lab and see some new results, so just take pictures along the way. And enjoy it. Enjoy the little moments. You’ve got an empty lab space now, and it’s not going to be empty for long.”
is now a tool that takes an image of what’s happening locally—to actually see the energy go from here to here over a few atoms’ length scale.” With eyes to the future, terahertz STM may one day revolutionize the speed and efficiency of current technology, ranging from solar cells to computer processing.
Looking for lithium Chris Doornbos’ quest to power high-efficiency batteries to unlock the key to energy’s future
in all the right places BY JENNIFER PASCOE
PHOTOS JOHN ULAN
S C I E N C E . U A L B E R TA . C A
19
“
Once we get this project going, we will be able to definitively claim that we are producing the greenest lithium on the planet,” says geology grad Chris Doornbos ('05 BSc) from his Calgary office.
SUPPLIED
Doornbos, president and CEO of E3 Metals, is determined to drive a shift in energy’s future, powered by a highefficiency battery. “Fundamentally, I’ve always believed that the key to energy’s future is going to be a high-efficiency battery that’s going to allow us to move electricity efficiently,” explains Doornbos. “This belief originated during my days at university, and it was renewed based on the advancement in the lithium ion battery Tesla uses to power their line of electric vehicles. When you look at the price spike in 2015, lithium as a commodity went from $7,000 a tonne to more than $12,000.” Though Doornbos is quick to point out that lithium batteries aren’t the silver bullet to society’s environmental challenges, he believes it’s a promising start to transition us toward a decentralized energy future. Doornbos has had what he describes as a varied sort of career, one that—since graduating from the University of Alberta with a geology degree in 2005—has taken him from copper and gold exploration in the Yukon, northern B.C., and Australia, to oil and gas work with industry in Alberta, then back to Australia and subsequently Sweden for another stint in mineral exploration. In Australia, Doornbos embraced his entrepreneurial leanings and co-founded a company called MinQuest. Working on two projects in Canada motivated an eventual return to his roots, where he found
20
SPRING/SUMMER 2018
Left: Chris Doornbos on the bank of the Bow River in Calgary Right: brine
himself itching to start another company, this time on home turf. “I was told by a mentor that if you can’t find the right job, sometimes you have to create it.” And so, that’s just what Doornbos did. During his quest for the projects needed to start a new company, there was one mineral Doornbos was most keen to find that often eluded the tenacious entrepreneur: Lithium. Looking for lithium took the geology grad around the world and back again to Alberta, proving that sometimes what you seek is right before your eyes. “We looked everywhere for a good lithium project. We’d been in South America, Australia, and Nevada. We even looked at hard-rock projects in Quebec and elsewhere. I was talking to a geologist friend here in Calgary, and he pointed out something I knew but hadn’t ever evaluated—that lithium is prolific throughout the Leduc Reservoir. This wasn’t new information by any stretch. But we staked some ground that had never been staked before by anyone in Alberta.” Thus, E3 Metals was born.
Dan Alessi (centre) and research associates pictured in their University of Alberta lab
Doornbos subsequently secured exploration permits for metallic and industrial minerals for more than half-a-million hectares in Alberta (the Leduc Reservoir stretches from southern Calgary to northern Alberta). He simultaneously hustled to both solidify financial support and determine feasibility of the lithium-focused project, the latter bringing him full circle to the University of Alberta. Collaborative research drives development Returning to his alma mater, Doornbos connected with Dan Alessi, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. The two quickly set to work on a collaborative research development project, supported by NSERC, to determine how best to extract and purify the lithium. “Collaborative research is a great way to start,” says Doornbos. “And we have been really well supported by the federal government. Eventually the work needs to move away from the university so that we can speed up commercialization. So we are taking the dirty boring work out to commercial labs to allow Dan and his team to focus on the fun research and development, testing different ideas.” Alessi and his lab are focusing on developing the chemical side of the extraction technology and will soon be shifting their attention to purifying processes to ensure the lithium meets the 99.999% pure needs of industry. The team has aggressive goals. E3 wants to be producing lithium by 2021. To meet that time frame,
they will be commercializing the extraction technology created by Alessi’s team by the end of this year. In this push to produce sources for sustainable power, Doornbos remains focused on environmentally conscious development. With a goal of no net new ground disturbance, the company will be sourcing project sites abandoned by previous oil and gas operations to minimize the need for new infrastructure. Around the world, other lithium projects take place in mines or large solar evaporation ponds that occupy large footprints and take 18 to 24 months to produce the precious mineral. E3’s process time will be hours and occupy a much smaller footprint to lead to the production of the greenest lithium on the planet. “Our role is simply to develop greener technologies to get the lithium out of the brine,” says Alessi, who holds the Encana Chair in Water Resource Sciences. “We are developing a technology that does not require us to evaporate the brine during the extraction process, and by keeping the lithium in solution, it mitigates the environmental footprint at the surface. And it’s essentially turning a waste product into a resource.” For his part, Alessi is happy to be involved in a project that not only provides interesting research questions to answer, provides funding for post-doctoral fellows and graduate students, but also provides sustainable solutions for some of society’s most pressing energy needs. “Lithium is used everywhere now from cellphones to electric cars to aircraft. The demand is only increasing, and there’s arguably a world-class lithium resource in the brine located here in the Leduc Reservoir,” says Alessi.
S C I E N C E . U A L B E R TA . C A
21
Neuroscientist Kyle Mathewson (left) and graduate student Joanna Scanlon gear up to take their research to the great outdoors.
Next up
neuroscience THE NEXT GENERATION IS OUTSIDE THE LAB By Katie Willis / photos john ulan
22
SPRING/SUMMER 2018
MUCH OF WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE HUMAN BRAIN IS OVERSIMPLIFIED AND, IN SOME CASES, POSSIBLY EVEN WRONG, SUGGESTS KYLE MATHEWSON, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY. AND IT’S BECAUSE A GREAT DEAL OF NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCH IS BASED ON STUDYING FIRST-YEAR UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS SITTING INSIDE HIGHLY CONTROLLED LABORATORIES, WHO HAPPEN TO BE PARTICIPATING IN THE STUDY FOR CREDIT IN INTRODUCTORY PSYCHOLOGY COURSES. SCARY THOUGHT, RIGHT? THE REASONS BEHIND IT ARE MANY—FROM CONVENIENT SAMPLES TO ETHICAL CONCERNS IN TARGETING OTHER POPULATIONS, AS WELL AS CLUNKY TECHNOLOGY.
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
T
the future of neuroscience is outside the lab, argues Mathewson, head of the Attention, Perception, and Performance (APP) Lab in the University of Alberta’s Department of Psychology. “If we want research to apply and contribute to all of society, we need to ensure that we understand how the brain works out in the world where humans actually live, work, and play,” said Mathewson. “That means bringing research participants outside the lab and studying how our brains work in the real world.” In Mathewson’s case, bringing studies outside the lab literally means taking them outside. For the last four years, Mathewson and his student HAT’S WHY
research team in the APP lab have been working on researching the brain outdoors. “We are already finding new phenomena that we can then take back inside the lab to isolate and investigate more precisely,” explains Mathewson. “I think this is going to be a gold mine for researchers.” ●●●●●●●●
This is your brain outdoors. garnered international media attention this year, including a feature in Time magazine. The study, conducted with graduate student Joanna Scanlon, had participants perform a simple cognitive task while riding a bike outdoors. Data were compared with data from the same task conducted on a stationary bike indoors. Results show that our brains process stimuli, like sounds and sights, differently when we are outdoors. “Something about being outdoors changes brain activity,” says Scanlon, who co-authored the study with Mathewson’s guidance. “We noticed that brain activity associated with ONE SUCH STUDY
S C I E N C E . U A L B E R TA . C A
23
Safety and biking The use of bicycles in Mathewson’s lab is no accident. A passionate biker, Mathewson commutes to campus year-round and has been a large part of the push for safe bike lanes in Edmonton. He remains an advocate for improving accessibility to all forms of transportation in and around the University of Alberta and is a proud member of Paths for People, a non-profit organization focused on improving transportation in Alberta’s capital city.
Kyle Mathewson (left) is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology. His brother, Kory Mathewson (right), is doing his PhD in the Department of Computing Science.
Interested in learning more about bike culture and the introduction of bike lanes in Edmonton? Check out the Urban and Regional Planning program offered through the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at UAlberta.
sensing and perceiving information was different when outdoors, which may indicate that the brain is compensating for environmental distractions.” “Your brain seems like it has to work harder when it’s outside in the real world,” adds Mathewson. While knowing that more distractions (such as traffic noise and nature) will cause us to shift our attention, understanding just how the brain works outdoors requires a great deal of further investigation. But none of this groundbreaking research would have been possible without the portable technology that allowed the research team to get outside—another critical element in the future of neuroscience, according to Mathewson. ●●●●●●●●
Brain scanning: The next generation the human brain, Mathewson, like many other neuroscientists, relies on an electroencephalogram, or EEG, to track and record brain activity. Traditional EEG machines are IN ORDER TO STUDY
24
SPRING/SUMMER 2018
large and stationary—and are accompanied by a price tag of about $30,000. But soon, says Mathewson, these will be a thing of the past. “Portable EEG systems are now easily accessible. You can even purchase them at Best Buy,” says Mathewson. Best of all? The portable technology works anywhere, recording accurate data for the low price of $300 per machine, a fraction of the cost of traditional technology. “As we learn more and more about people’s brains outside in the world, so too do the tools need to be more ubiquitous.” The applications for wearable technology are limitless in both research and teaching. “Now, for a tenth of the cost, I can give my undergraduate students hands-on experience using this kind of technology,” explains Mathewson. “We are taking what,10 years ago, was in the hands of only graduate students and faculty researchers, and giving everyone at the university an opportunity to use it.” And, just like taking portable EEG devices into the classroom or outside,
“WE ARE TAKING WHAT, 10 YEARS AGO, WAS IN THE HANDS OF ONLY GRADUATE STUDENTS AND FACULTY RESEARCHERS, AND GIVING EVERYONE AT THE UNIVERSITY AN OPPORTUNITY TO USE IT.”
researchers can also bring the lab to new populations that were previously out of reach—think patients in long-term care, athletes at soccer practice, or climbers at the top of a mountain. “Most humans are adult workers, but very little neuroscience research addresses the average person going about their everyday life in their natural environment,” explains Mathewson. This is a challenge that wearable, portable technology has the potential to overcome. Yet another benefit of these inexpensive technologies is that curious minds all over the world who may not
Siblings in science Science runs in the Edmonton-based Mathewson family. Kyle’s younger brother Kory Mathewson is in the midst of completing his PhD in the Department of Computing Science under the supervision of artificial intelligence (AI) experts Richard Sutton and Patrick Pilarski. In his research, Kory is exploring the ways in which interactive machine learning can make our lives easier, while also keeping our privacy safe. Kory is also the brain behind A.L.Ex—Artificial Language Experiment— an improv-performing robot that made headlines around the world last year for its performance art. Learn more about Kory’s academic and recreational AI projects in the latest edition of the University of Alberta alumni magazine, New Trail. Kory and Kyle have a third sibling in science. Though not at the University of Alberta, Keyfer Mathewson is working at Shopify and researching the use of machine learning in web and app development. Together, the Mathewson brothers are beginning work on their startup company, PotentialAI, which brings together their unique expertise in human measurement and machine intelligence to unlock data’s true potential.
have had access before can now buy this technology at an affordable price—from researchers to high school students and everyone in between. Mathewson is also working with engineers to develop the next generation of wearable electronics— sleeker, cheaper, and more accurate than what is currently available. “Currently, we’re working on creating flexible, adhesive technology that can be worn on your forehead or behind your ears, making EEG technology even more portable than before,” explains Mathewson.
●●●●●●●●
The very near future also plans to bring his work full circle by developing a research program that brings realism back into the laboratory using virtual reality and video games. “We continue working on basic science, trying to understand how the brain works,” explains Mathewson. “One way that we can develop more realistic testing situations is using virtual reality. This way, we maintain complete control over what the subject HE
sees, while still providing a threedimensional, interactive space.” It’s the perfect combination of realism and control. For Mathewson and his collaborators, the future of neuroscience is already here. Work continues on research both outside and inside the lab, identifying new phenomena and finding new and innovative ways to isolate and investigate them, with a focus on the development and use of wearable EEG technology we can all use.
S C I E N C E . U A L B E R TA . C A
25
CHOOSE YOUR (SCIENTIFIC) ADVE The recipe for an out-of-this-world university experience—or why you should DIY your degree By Kristy Condon
Photo Richard Siemens
Kristen Cote in the University of Alberta’s Astronomical Observatory
26
SPRING/SUMMER 2018
OWN ENTURE To start, measure out equal parts pure and applied science. Add a splash of laser-cooled atoms and one cube satellite. Shake well to combine. Chill for four long Edmonton winters, and serve with a generous helping of get-up-and-go.
K
risten Cote’s ('16 BSc) postsecondary philosophy is simple—“Your degree is what you make it, so if you see something that’s interesting, then just go do it.” Born and raised in Edmonton, the 24-year-old never questioned which university she wanted to attend. “When you have a world-class university in your city, you take advantage of that and live with your parents for four years,” she says. “I didn’t apply anywhere else. U of A was my top choice.” Cote sees the world of space science as her proverbial oyster, leaping nimbly over any barriers encountered throughout her journey in the maledominated STEM fields. “I never thought I couldn’t do it. I wanted to do cool stuff so I did. I didn’t care about what people thought of me or anything else.”
Though choosing which university to attend was easy, Cote was torn on whether to pursue hard science in the form of a physics degree, or go for a more applied route with engineering. In the end, science won out, but she kept her schedule packed with extra projects and activities to ensure she still got the best of both worlds— projects like AlbertaSat. ALBERTA’S FIRST SATELLITE
W
orking alongside more than 40 other undergraduate and graduate students, and with a few faculty advisers, Cote helped to build and launch Alberta’s first satellite into space—the Experimental Albertan 1, or Ex Alta-1. The student-built cube satellite has been orbiting Earth since spring 2017, measuring electron temperature and the density of the plasma surrounding Earth as part of the QB50 mission. Cote still considers her AlbertaSat work her greatest achievement. “Literally, as almost a child—well, not a child but an 18-year-old, and feeling like a child—I got to participate in building a satellite with a bunch of other enthusiastic young adults and actually launch it . . . and that’s insane,” says Cote. “I still have AlbertaSat stickers all over my laptop. I can’t stop talking about it. It’s the best thing I’ve ever been involved with.” The experience was one of several Cote pursued alongside her degree, which also included an honors thesis in quantum optics with Lindsay Leblanc,
S C I E N C E . U A L B E R TA . C A
27
Three members of the AlbertaSat team visit NASA (left to right: Charles Nokes, Collin Cupido, and Kristen Cote).
“I think both that research and AlbertaSat, in a way even though they’re both different and separate, moulded what I’m doing right now. I have become passionate about investigating new techniques in optical science and instrumentation that can be used to explore the universe.”
SUPPLIED
associate professor of physics and Canada Research Chair in ultracold gases for quantum simulation. “I think both that research and AlbertaSat, in a way even though they’re both different and separate, moulded what I’m doing right now. I have become passionate about investigating new techniques in optical science and instrumentation that can be used to explore the universe.” THE NEXT PHASE
C
ote is now wrapping up her master’s degree at York University (Toronto), collaborating with a mix of engineers, physicists, and geologists in the planetary instrumentation lab to explore new instruments for future space missions to other planets, asteroids, or planetary bodies. After that, she’ll embark on her PhD. After being accepted to programs at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the University of Colorado Boulder, and the University of Cambridge, Cote has decided on the University of Toronto. “UToronto is internationally recognized for excellence in physics and is the hub of the Canadian space industry,” explains
SPRING/SUMMER 2018
While Ex-Alta 1 continues to orbit Earth collecting data about space weather, the AlbertaSat team is now working on its second cube satellite mission. ExAlta 2 will help combat forest fires, thanks to funding of $250,000 from the Canadian Space Agency, announced in May.
SUPPLIED
28
Cote. “Another major benefit is the ability to dig into research right away; we’re lucky in Canada that students are trusted to jump into researching what they’re passionate about from the moment they start.” Her research will focus on gravitational wave detection, developing compact optical atomic clocks that could one day be used in space to detect things farther out in the universe than currently possible. “It’s a new era—we’ve entered an age of ‘multimessenger’ astronomy. By detecting gravitational waves in space, we’ll be able to see farther than we’ve ever seen before in the universe, and then we can hopefully answer some really important questions, like, ‘Has the shape of the universe changed over time?’ and ‘What is the future of our universe?’ ” No matter how deep into space her attention is focused, however, Cote won’t soon forget her roots. “Getting my PhD is the next big step, and then hopefully I can help increase Canadian involvement in space exploration,” she says. “Canada is great. Canadian scientists and engineers “Getting my PhD are great, and I think we need is the next big to be more involved in space. step, and then And I definitely want to be hopefully I can part of that.” help increase
Canadian involvement in space exploration.”
The art of artificial intelligence Understanding creative problem solving at the intersection of art and science c B y S of i a O s b ou r n e c
K acy Doucet ('15 BSc) sits at a computer and watches as rabbits and wolves move across the screen, their colours blending together in swirls and bursts. As a research assistant in the U of A’s Artificial General Intelligence Lab, Doucet is helping use AI to model predator-prey relationships. The lab is managed by Vadim Bulitko, a computing science professor known for his focus on interdisciplinarity and his expertise in video games. Together, Bulitko and Doucet found a role that fits her unique blending of art and science. Although Doucet’s background is in biology and psychology, the rabbits and wolves she works with aren’t simulating real animals. Instead, the lab is using the simulation to identify interesting behaviours that can be applied to ambient non-player characters in video games. Non-player characters
are an important feature in modern video games, adding colour and interest, as well as serving as plot devices and providing assistance to players. Doucet brings not only her background in science to the project but also her experience as an artist. The connection between the two fields has always interested her. “Life happens in the intersections for a lot of people,” she says. “Where art and science intersect, that’s where the most exciting things are.” She’s been painting and sketching since childhood, but after putting art aside to focus on her undergraduate studies, Doucet now finds herself exhibiting her art locally. “I always want to have a balance between art and science. I think they inspire each other,” she says. “If I weren’t working in science at all, my art would lack something.”
Above: Kacy Doucet is pictured here with her paintings at an Edmonton art show.
IMAGE PROVIDED.
The predator-prey simulations Doucet is working on look like art themselves, with the animal agents “shouting” colours onto themselves to model camouflage. While the ones and zeroes come together to create stunning images, Doucet is also interested in the lives of each individual agent, something she’s been exploring in her paintings. “It’s all just numbers in the computer,” she says. “But I can’t help but think about what’s going on, and—if this were a real individual—what would they be experiencing?” Doucet’s work in the lab has opened up new questions for her about what intelligence is and where creativity fits. “AI is about more than creating sophisticated calculators. If you want to create something that can think dynamically, you have a lot to learn about what the thinking process entails,” she says. “I think the way that we solve problems is creative.”
S C I E N C E . U A L B E R TA . C A
29
Solution Seeke STUART ROGERS ON THE ROLLING BALL
30
SPRING/SUMMER 2018
If a single quality could be attributed to all great mathematicians, it would have to be an insatiable appetite for problems that need to be solved.
n er
After five years working in industry as an electrical engineer at Lockheed Martin in radar signal processing, it was time for Stuart Rogers ('17 PhD) to scratch a familiar itch. With four degrees already under his belt— a bachelor’s each in mathematics and computer science from Brown, along with a pair of master’s in each of mathematics and electrical engineering from Brown and Old Dominion respectively—Rogers finally had a PhD-worthy problem. Only a handful of researchers in North America were active in his interest area of geometric mechanics and control, so it wasn’t long before he connected with Vakhtang Putkaradze (mathematical and statistical sciences) to see if Putkaradze would be interested in supervising his PhD project. It was a solid match, with each party interested in the experience the other brought to the table.
GETTING ROBOT ROLLING
Remote rolling ball sensors for environments far, far away
Alumnus Stuart Rogers works on the science behind rolling ball robots, like BB-8 from Star Wars: The Force Awakens. (© & ™ Lucasfilm Ltd.) IMAGE PROVIDED.
©&
™L
UCA
SFIL
ML
T D.
BY K RIST Y CONDON
Rogers’ PhD work at the University of Alberta focused on developing algorithms for controlling rolling ball robots. That’s right—just like the iconic BB-8 character from Star Wars: The Force Awakens. As it turns out, there’s a lot of science packed into the little droid. In addition to the obvious questions (how do the other characters understand BB-8’s blips and beeps?), the yet-untapped scientific potential of rolling ball robots presents some exciting new technological and mathematical problems that are ripe for exploration. Though the research area is still new in the literature, rolling ball robots are already showing promise in industry.
S C I E N C E . U A L B E R TA . C A
31
Stuart Rogers in his office at the University of Minnesota. IMAGE PROVIDED.
© & ™ LUCASFILM LTD.
“If the robot has to operate in a very isolated environment, like in the polar caps, how do you recharge that robot as it moves around?” “There are several researchers at Caltech and other universities who are looking at building these and making them move around,” Rogers explains. “And there are some folks in industry interested in building and buying these and packing them with sensors to go operate in remote environments.” Though they may not stack up against their wheeled counterparts, when it comes to traversing rough terrain, rolling ball robots appear to have the advantage in energy efficiency when operating in unconventional locales. “If the robot has to operate in a very isolated environment, like in the polar caps, how do you recharge that robot as it moves around?” asks Rogers. Indeed, in remote locations where solar power is virtually non-existent for months at a time, how to power these sensor-loaded robots is a crucial question.
32
SPRING/SUMMER 2018
It seems that the answer may be an ultralightweight rolling ball robot blowing in the wind. Researchers at Caltech have developed a rolling ball robot called Moball, a remote sensing robot with the prospect of being deployed to Earth’s polar regions to gather environmental data from the most remote areas on the planet. One innovation uniquely qualifying Moball for this mission is its lightweight spherical design, which enables it to harvest energy from surface winds using sliding magnets and to generate self-propulsion. The pioneering technology presents a handy alternative to solar energy in regions where the sun is not a reliable source, like at the South Pole—or on Mars. So—when a rolling ball robot like Moball is not being blown around at the whim of surface winds, how is it operated? That’s where Rogers’ algorithmic problem comes in.
“If you want to move a robot that has wheels attached, it has been studied for so long, and it has been done so many times that there aren’t really any open questions there. But this rolling ball robot, it’s completely new.”
Moving in every direction For most people, controlling the movement of a traditional four-wheeled robot is relatively straightforward; the operation would be intuitive for anyone who has driven a car. However, a rolling ball robot’s ability to move in any direction throws a big, spherical wrench into things. “If you want to move a robot that has wheels attached, it has been studied for so long, and it has been done so many times that there aren’t really any open questions there,” says Rogers. “But this rolling ball robot, it’s completely new.” Fortunately, open questions are kind of his thing. The first issue to tackle, Rogers explains, is figuring out a method to actuate the motion. Without any wheels (much less a combustion engine), a rolling ball robot’s movement can be initiated by changing the centre of mass inside the ball—a complicated mathematical challenge on its own. Then, once the actuation technique is decided, the next problem is developing an algorithm to make the robot move where you want it to, like between a pair of points while avoiding a pair of intermediate obstacles. Rogers’ doctoral work in this area culminated in two papers submitted to peer-reviewed journals and recognition in the form of several awards, including the prestigious Anton A. Cseuz Gold
“It appears to me that there is a recent effort on the part of these online retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Target to hire a lot of these well-educated people from other areas of industry— such as aerospace, defence, and finance—or from academia to work on these optimization problems.” Seeking out-of-the box solutions Now an industrial post-doc at the University of Minnesota, Rogers splits his time between research at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) and work with the data science and optimization department of the American retail giant Target. On the academic side at the IMA, Rogers gets to continue his PhD work on rolling ball robots and begin to explore his own solution to a mathematical classic: the falling cat problem. In his other role at Target, he is delving into a complex optimization problem common to online retailers everywhere: box suite optimization, or how to reduce the amount of empty space shipped along with your online purchase.
S C I E N C E . U A L B E R TA . C A
© & ™ LUCASFILM LTD.
Medal in Mathematics, awarded by the Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences to a graduate student for exceptional academic achievement and research excellence. “When Stuart defended [his thesis], everybody was so excited about the quality of his work that we wanted to nominate him for some type of award,” says Putkaradze of his former student. “He was a great candidate, and I think he was a great choice—not because I’m his supervisor, but because he deserves it for his hard work.” Awarded at convocation, the Cseuz gold medal is purposely intended not to supplement tuition and research costs, but to acknowledge the exceptional work already done by students as they move on to the next stage of their careers. Since the nomination comes from the department, careful screening ensures that the medal is awarded to the most deserving student. Despite the recognition he received in the form of the medal and associated cash award, the true prize for Rogers was the discovery of a hard-won solution to a formidable mathematical challenge. “Receiving the medal and the monetary award was very satisfying,” he says, “But I don’t do the research for the money or awards, I do it because I’m passionate about solving the problem and getting the solution.”
“The optimization problem is to design the dimensions of the shipping boxes to ensure that wasted space is a minimum,” he explains. The solution requires an algorithm to analyze vast amounts of historical order data and propose a suite of boxes with optimal dimensions. This type of industry-driven research opportunity for new graduates appears to be blossoming as companies increasingly recognize the margin-expanding potential of brain-power. “It appears to me that there is a recent effort on the part of these online retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Target to hire a lot of these well-educated people from other areas of industry—such as aerospace, defence, and finance—or from academia to work on these optimization problems,” says Rogers, noting that many people in his research group have been working there for less than three years. “There’s a great deal of money in retail, and I think they realized you can increase your profits a huge amount just by optimizing little things.” With one foot in academia and the other in industry, he now has the best of both worlds and no shortage of challenging problems. “In academia when you solve a problem, you submit a paper, and it furthers the academic community—but it often doesn’t do much outside of that,” he says. “So, when you go into industry and you solve some kind of problem that the company or the customer has, it feels good to solve a problem that benefits a much broader community.”
33
Alumni Perspectives
B y B R O O K E B I D D L E C O M B E ( ' 1 7 B S c) / P h o to s J O H N U L A N
Standing out in a crowd For bachelor of science graduate Brooke Biddlecombe, tattoos are a way of commemorating experiences, accomplishments, and roads travelled. A few weeks after her last exam, Biddlecombe decided she would get not one, but two new tattoos reflecting her experience at the University of Alberta. Inked on her leg is the University of Alberta shield, and the word “science” is written across her knuckles, with a polar bear paw print at the end. E A R LY I N MY U N DERGRA DUAT E CA R EER ,
I was sure I had it all figured out. I knew what I wanted to study and where I wanted my education to take me. All of that certainty took a turn rather quickly, as the stress of university and my painfully shy personality came together to amplify a lifelong struggle with anxiety to an unmanageable level. I became so overwhelmed and so unsure of myself I ended up withdrawing from my courses and taking two years off, when I lived abroad for a short while. And although I had some great experiences, what those two years really showed me was that my true passion is in science.
So, two years later, I re-enrolled, switching my degree just slightly to focus on ecology rather than animal biology. This time, I went in with an open mind, an improved awareness of my mental health, and a determination to engage in the “U of A experience.” I joined a student group right off the bat where I met some great people, many of whom are still some of my closest friends. This created a chain reaction where I began to build a support system that was absolutely invaluable throughout the rest of my degree. I exposed myself to many opportunities and experiences in the latter half of my degree that I genuinely would have never considered prior.
To celebrate being the first person on either side of her family to graduate from university, Brooke Biddlecombe had the UAlberta insignia inked on her leg (right). Her mother did too (left).
34
SPRING/SUMMER 2018
With this new-found willingness to put myself out there, I made what I can easily describe as my best decision as an undergraduate. I approached the professor of my favourite course, renowned biologist Andrew Derocher, to be my supervisor for an undergraduate research project. He is now my supervisor for my master’s thesis, where I am literally doing the research of my dreams. Reflecting back on my experience as an undergraduate, I can’t help but think of my proudest day just last spring at convocation. Graduating from university was a huge accomplishment for me, not just because I overcame a mental health struggle that I genuinely thought would keep me from ever finishing a degree, but because I am the first university graduate on both sides of my family. My parents made it very clear how much of an accomplishment that is for me and for our family. And as I look forward toward a life rich with the prospect of continued learning, I am so thankful for the opportunities UAlberta has afforded me. I am thrilled to be the first in what I hope is a long family line of University of Alberta graduates, who are all just as excited to embrace their inner nerd as I continue to be. Speaking of embracing my inner nerd, as a current graduate student, it feels like a very important time to be in science. As young scientists, we have a valuable opportunity to use our skill set to investigate issues that not only interest us, but many of which will make our world better. Whether it be conservation, restoration, health, or development, science is increasingly focused on applied issues and problem solving.
Science on her skin: After graduating with her bachelor of science in June 2017, Brooke Biddlecombe began her master’s degree, studying polar bears with renowned biologist Andrew Derocher.
We also have the unique opportunity of sharing our research in real time to a much wider audience, with the help of internet search engines and social media. But on a smaller scale, there seems to be a push in recent years to make research more accessible to the general public, perfectly exemplified by the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition happening right here at the University of Alberta. As a 3MT finalist earlier this spring, I had an amazing time not only sharing my research in a highly digestible format, but also learning about all the fascinating research that is happening on the U of A campus every day. Platforms like this serve to make science and research more accessible, and—perhaps more importantly—they show the public just how diverse the up-and-coming faces of science really are. And as someone who has a habit of standing out in a crowd, I think that is something worth celebrating.
S C I E N C E . U A L B E R TA . C A
35
Faculty of Science 6-189 CCIS University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta Canada T6G 2E1
Publications Mail Agreement No: 40063605