Research Presentations

Allan Wachowich Centre (AW125)

September 28, 2024 12:00 pm - September 28, 2024 3:00 pm

Dr. Eslam AbdAllah conducts research on the security of Autonomous vehicles (AVs). While current vehicles have not achieved full autonomy, they utilize a wide array of sensors and communication systems to interact with other vehicles, mobile devices, the cloud, and various sensors, making them vulnerable to different attacks on these channels. Dr. AdbAllah, alongside student researchers, created a model autonomous car that they use to simulate Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks, and to explore countermeasures that will enhance AV security.

Dr. Jason Daniels conducts research related to the effective use of technology in education and the impact of media use on child development and student engagement. Dr. Daniels’ current research focuses on “Digital Overload: The Health and Wellness Impacts of Problematic Media Use.”

Dr. Jenna Congdon’s research features cognition and welfare experiments designed for fur and harbor seals, emus, gibbons, and red pandas, in collaboration with the Edmonton Valley Zoo. Dr. Congdon will demonstrate how perceptual questions are being investigated using touchscreen apparatuses across a variety of species, and will feature novel enrichment projects designed by our very own CUE undergraduate students.

Dr. Jonathan Strand is the inventor and designer of The Logic Game, an online game being developed to improve users’ reasoning skills. Dr. Strand is working with IT undergraduate student Hamza Ahmed to create the application, where Dr. Eslam AbdAllah supervises the coding, and Dr. Seyma Yildirim-Erbasli is testing the game’s educational effectiveness.

Dr. Matthew Churchward carries out research in cell biology of the brain and spinal cord. Dr. Churchward is interested in how changes in the body can impact brain health and mental health, as well as in developing strategies to improve the function of implanted medical devices in the brain and spinal cord.

Dr. Nasim Hajari’s Smart Waste app is an innovative computer vision-based tool designed to assist households and businesses in separating waste and enhancing their recycling practices. By promoting efficient waste separation at the source, the app not only helps users improve their recycling habits but also significantly eases the workload of waste management centers and processors, leading to a more sustainable waste management system.

Along with co-author Dorothy Woodman, Dr. Reginald Wiebe’s research on Marvel superheroes and cancer narratives has led to The Cancer Plot: Terminal Immortality in Marvel’s Moral Universe, which has been nominated for the Alberta Book Publishing Awards scholarly/academic book of the year. The Cancer Plot focuses on the one villain superheroes can’t defeat: death from cancer. When superheroes (almost) all come back from the dead, what does it mean when cancer can kill a superhero for good?

Dr. Stephen Portillo’s research focus is astrostatistics: improving data analysis techniques so that astronomers can learn more from the data they collect from telescopes. Working with collaborators, Dr. Portillo applied image analysis methods to discover more than 100 asteroids beyond Neptune’s orbit, and he is now working on new approaches to find binary asteroids.