A new project at Simon Fraser University (SFU) will soon divert wood waste from the landfill and help reduce greenhouse gasses at the University.

SFU and SFU Community Trust are collaborating with Corix Multi-Utility Services Inc., on a $33-million community-based biomass project called the Burnaby Mountain District Energy Utility (BMDEU).

The desalination industry, a critical source of potable water in many arid regions, generated more than $13 billion last year and is expected to double within a decade. Most desalination plants today use a process called reverse osmosis (RO), which forces water through huge rolls of membranes, leaving the salt behind. One of the most expensive operational challenges for such plants is the fouling of these membranes by microorganisms.

From optimizing food production to feed a growing population to discovering the fundamental behaviors and processes of biopolymers, faculty in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) are leveraging the interdisciplinary nature of the department to establish two new, innovative projects.

Over the past decade, increasing temperatures across much of Africa and decreasing rainfall across East Africa have come to represent an alarming climate trend. Chief among concerns is the impact such conditions have on human health.

A University of Windsor engineering professor is leading the way on an industry-academia collaboration that aims to improve drinking water quality in the capital of India.

Rajesh Seth has obtained funding through the India-Canada Centre for Innovative Multidisciplinary Partnerships to Accelerate Community Transformation and Sustainability (IC-IMPACTS) — a Canadian Network of Centres of Excellence dedicated to the development of research collaborations between Canada and India.

Join NOAA all month long as we celebrate the bounty of sustainable seafood! From finfish to shellfish, Americans love seafood—and it's easy to see why. This healthy food choice provides key nutrients and proteins for children and adults. The seafood caught and farmed in the United States comes from some of the most sustainably managed fisheries in the world.

Canada’s health-care system is a point of Canadian pride. We hold it up as a defining national characteristic and an example of what makes us different from Americans. The system has been supported in its current form, more or less, by parties of all political stripes — for nearly 50 years.

As a young Marine stationed in South Carolina in 1981, Frank Roberts recognized that the state’s low country was ideal for oyster farming. His family harvested oysters in the Chesapeake Bay and Long Island Sound, and he had a hunch it would work in South Carolina too.

Roberts eventually started his own oyster farm in South Carolina — making a key contribution to a growing nationwide aquaculture trend worth $1.3 billion (2014 figure), with some help from NOAA.  

Influenza viruses mutate rapidly, which is why flu vaccines have to be redesigned every year. A new study from MIT sheds light on just how these viruses evolve so quickly, and offers a potential way to slow them down.

Onita Basu still vividly remembers the exact moment she decided to devote her career to sustainable water solutions and practices.

“I was in a second-year Chemical Engineering lab working with a solution of water that looked relatively clean,” she recalls. “When I passed the water through a treatment process I was shocked to see an incredible amount of dissolved copper emerge from the solution and begin coating onto various surfaces. It was an eye-opening experience to realize that we cannot always tell what is in our water.”