Research Report 2010-2011 - College of Engineering - University of ...

THEME 1 – BIO-SCIENCE, BIO-ENGINEERING AND BIO-PROCESSING
Overview and Relevance
The nature of the College of Engineering research involving ‘bio-domain’ has once
again proven to be versatile, dynamic and instrumental in enhancement of critical mass
involving multi-disciplines and diverse expertise. The members of this theme are very
active in attracting top quality graduate students/scholars from Worldwide and attracted
significant funding from several sources (provincial, federal, industry). There are addons
to the funding from the “Bio” cluster; Biosciences, Bio-engineering, Bio-processing,
Bio-resources, Biotechnology, Biosystems and Biomedical domain integrated with
several disciplines. As a result, this domain is rapidly evolving to have strong
implications for Canada’s bio-economy drive. The multidisciplinary engineering
research theme is working together in building strong collaboration among faculties in
the College as well as Provincial, Federal and International agencies. Bio-products
(food, feed, fiber and fuel) identified research initiatives have become pathways for
strategic directions in Canada’s strong role within primary bioresources such as
agriculture and forestry, value-addition to bioresources and processing coupled with
utilization of niche technology and engineering aspects. This theme includes a very
broad set of research topics that do overlap with some of the other research theme
areas. It is unique, however, in the involvement of living organisms. Current topics of
research under this theme are: value-added products, bio-processing, bio-fluids, nanotechnology
materials, tissue engineering, biodiversity of agriculture products,
sustainable agricultural production, food quality and safety, functional foods by
fermentation or enzymatic processes, biochemical processing, computational
techniques for analyzing the bio-mechanical behaviour of soft tissue, biomedical
engineering, FEM simulation of bony structures, applications to MEMS & Nano devices,
tribology, and bio-diesel and bio-ethanol for renewable energy sources. This list is not
exclusive. There is an absolute synergy and collaboration with topics that could be
included in theme areas such as energy, environment and materials and sustainable
systems.
Natural health products processing and functional food production, bio-fuels, nanotechnology,
and advanced health technologies have the potential of becoming as
important as the electronics industry to the global market. Food security, quality and
safety have become important issues eclipsing that of environmental and biosystems
concerns. Of special importance to engineering is that of biochemical and chemical
processing that not only serve to greatly increase the value of bioresources, but to
synthesize and extract new products and provide new, economically more efficient and
environmentally safer techniques/processes for waste handling and management, and
production of bio-products.
Theme 1 – Bio-Sciences – Research Report 2010-11 Page 2