As the Winnipeg Free Press (WFP) reports:

The Ford F-150 Lightning is making a splash as the electric vehicle that could move the mark forward for a big segment of motorists across the country.

Research snapshot, 2016

• Antibiotic resistance is posing a huge threat. But instead of relying on new drugs to beat the bugs’ defences, what if we took away their defence?
• U of M alumnus contributes to major discovery in physics by detecting a gravitational wave. Einstein would be proud.
• We find black holes hiding behind their own exhaust.
• A grad student in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Recreation management won an award for his thesis on transgender policies in sport.
• Hematology research got major boost in 2016 when a $2M professorship was announced.
• U of M researchers got global attention after reporting that artificially sweetened beverages consumed in pregnancy is linked to increased weight gain in infants.
• Distinguished Professor Frank Plummer was recognized for groundbreaking research with 2016 Canada Gairdner Wightman Award.
• We opened a new kind of research lab this spring at the Grace General Hospital. It focuses on enhancing students’ and clinicians’ empathic communication skills with patients, families and caregivers.
• Childhood mental illness is a serious and widespread problem in Manitoba that is now getting attention thanks to a study by the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy.
• Professors Ryan Cardwell and Chad Lawley were awarded the John Vanderkamp Prize by the Canadian Economics Association for writing the best paper in the journal Canadian Public Policy, which is still making waves in policy circles.
• Bees got better homes thanks to the University of Manitoba’s open international bee house design competition.
• Faculty of Education’s Graham Lea is working with veterans in new ways by helping them to share their stories through theatre.

Longer reads to tuck into

• Here’s a story about what happens when you’re team is too talented and bold. How hundreds of students built a satellite that was too ambitious for a competition, resulting in them to come in second place. But that doesn’t matter becasue it will still go into orbit.
• This facility will change everything, including ramen noodles. We opened the most advanced material research institute full of technology so new we were the first to purchase it.
• No one thought it was possible, yet they did it. U of M alumni develop a brain laser that is saving people who’d otherwise have a death sentence.

Every material is on the table for examination and improvement at the newly renovated and outfitted $16.7-million Manitoba Institute for Materials (MIM), which officially opened July 8. MIM possesses three microscopes so cutting edge the University of Manitoba was the first institution to order them.

Founded in 2009, MIM recently built a new facility underground to bring together more than 200 researchers and students from across disciplines.

Dan Vandal, Member of Parliament for Saint Boniface – Saint Vital, on behalf of the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development and the Minister Responsible for Western Economic Diversification Canada, and Sarah Guillemard, Member of the Legislative Assembly for Fort Richmond on behalf of Education and Training Minister Ian Wishart, joined University of Manitoba President and Vice-Chancellor David T. Barnard for the opening activities.

“This state-of-the-art facility will enable academia and industry to integrate more fully and capitalize on the growing importance of composites, as well as aerospace research and development being undertaken in Western Canada,” said MP Dan Vandal.  “The results of their research will provide us with the discoveries, and new materials, we need to build a strong, clean economy.”

The cornerstone of MIM is the three electron microscopes that allow researchers and industry users to study the structure, behaviour, and design uses of materials.

“This world-class facility is an investment by our partners in a collaborative approach,” says Dr. David Barnard, President and Vice-Chancellor at the University of Manitoba. “MIM brings together hundreds of students and researchers, university-wide, as well as industry seeking expertise and access to the finest instruments.”

The Manitoba government provided one million dollars to support the construction of this new, state-of-the-art facility.

“The Manitoba Institute of Materials plays a key role in developing innovative new materials that contribute to leading-edge technology,” says MLA Sarah Guillemard. “With this new facility and equipment, the institute is providing hands-on experience for students while helping to develop skilled workers that enable Manitoba to compete in the global economy.”

President and Vice-Chancellor David Barnard, Vice-President (Research and International) Digvir Jayas, MLA Sarah Guillemard and MP Dan Vandal listen to Composites and Materials Characterization Facility Manager Ravinder Sidhu at the opening of MIM on July 8, 2016.

Accessed by an above ground structure on what is currently parking Lot A (25 Sifton Road), MIM’s labs are located below ground in redeveloped space that once stored a decommissioned cyclotron.

The funding partners for the facility construction and infrastructure are: the Government of Canada through Western Economic Diversification Canada, SFR/FEI, the Province of Manitoba, General Electric, and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (through existing transferred or managed infrastructure).

Derek Oliver says the word “cool” like he’s just spotted a Lamborghini. What the University of Manitoba scientist caught a glimpse of is the inner mechanisms of a giant microscope. He apologizes for the “nerd moment” mid-tour of the renovated space that will soon be home to the Manitoba Institute for Materials (MIM). A technician commissioning the Talos transmission electron microscope (TEM) left the side panel off, revealing a roadway of cords, and flashing lights and bolted flanges. It’s a view few in the world have seen.
“Is it open?” asks Oliver, jockeying for a view. “Wow. Oh, cool.”

The microscope is the first of its kind on Canadian soil and one of only 10 across North America. The $16.7 million MIM Facility for Composite and Material Characterization, of which Oliver is director, is scheduled to open this winter with this massive microscope as its main attraction.

The device is so sensitive to vibration and electronic noise that the acoustically sealed room where it’s housed can’t have fluorescent lighting (since it emits tiny amounts of radiation) and the operator has to control the machine remotely from outside. The microscope’s specifications fill a binder four inches thick, and include parameters as specific as how much the ambient temperature can deviate over an hour.

To the layperson, the microscope looks like a futuristic vending machine. To the expert, it is a finely crafted machine that provides incredibly accurate information in 3-D about the spacing of atoms in a sample.

The more scientists know about the molecular makeup of complex materials—be they rock, metal, plant or plastic—the better they can bring ‘the next big thing’ to life.

“Materials are at the core of our modern life,” says Oliver, an associate professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering.

Indeed, materials research is in demand from industry players looking for ways to improve on everyday items, from the pan we cook with to the cellphone we can’t live without.

These new technologies can shape entire sectors, as is the case for aerospace in Western Canada. Some of MIM’s researchers look at new ways to build and test airplane parts to make them stronger yet lighter, which saves on fuel. More than $3 million of the facility’s funding comes from the federal government’s Western Economic Diversification Program and General Electric to boost Winnipeg’s aerospace industry.

To develop high-tech composite materials, scientists must uncover how its molecules and the atoms within are constructed, how they’re linked together, what geometric shape they form. The more they figure out, the more they realize how much they don’t yet know.

“It’s one of those slightly funny, almost paradoxical things, that you suddenly realize in a sense how little you actually do understand,” says Oliver. “Maybe you’re looking at materials we have used for years and years and years and we’re still discovering new infor­mation. . .This new information enables you to develop a new product or a better product or a new technology.”

The University of Manitoba formed MIM six years ago. The group is made up of researchers from the Faculties of Engineering, Science, Health Sciences, and Agricultural and Food Sciences, as well as the Clayton H. Riddell Faculty of Environment, Earth, and Resources.

Their area of focus runs the gamut, from engineering new materials that build stronger bridges, to developing the next generation of memory technology for our computers, to using ultrasound to develop the perfect ramen noodle. (Over half of Canada’s wheat exports are used to manufacture Asian noodles.)

“This is a massive market impact,” says Oliver. “It’s a neat illustration of the kind of connectivity that we’re trying to build more of.”

Derek Oliver, director, Manitoba Institute for Materials. // Photo by Katie Chalmers-Brooks

Often facilities are developed around one high-profile researcher but in this case, it’s a multi-million dollar invest­ment in a collaborative approach, bringing together more than 200 faculty, researchers and students university-wide. “This facility breaks the mould because it is an institutional investment,” says Oliver.

To get to the materials research hub, you have to go deep underground: 17 steps below the tunnel beneath Allen Building. It will also have a ground-level entrance in a building-cum-island in the parking lot known as A-Lot, 25 Sifton Road. What for years was a space that stored physics equipment—a decommissioned cyclotron—is now reimagined into a modern mix of instrument rooms and lab space.

Welcome to the land of the little, where the size of a sample is described by how much smaller it is than a human hair. Each of the centre’s three new, world-class electron microscopes have their own unique talent and will be used by researchers in different ways.

Take the environmental scanning electron microscope, which can analyze wet or living samples (even a house­fly). Because it requires less of a vacuum, the samples can be examined in their natural state. Geologists can image permafrost—frozen cores of rock, soil or sediments—and their surfaces to see embedded microfossils and better understand and predict global warming. Biological scientists can image the molecular makeup of plants destined to be environmentally friendly plastic.

“We have a lot of plant matter around because we are on the Prairies and there are bits of industry along these lines that we can tap into and want to tap into,” says Oliver.

He’s collaborating with researchers at Caltech and the Florida Institute of Technology to build and modify small rods of silicon. They’re among a large network of labs whose end goal is to develop a device that could use sunlight to split water into its constituent parts: hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen could solve the energy needs of developing countries, and, closer to home, oxygen could be generated for medics to give to patients in remote Manitoba communities.

When imaged close-up, these rods resemble tire marks left from a driver doing doughnuts in a desert. Another view looks like an aerial shot of a depleted lumberyard. A third, Oliver notes, reminds him of the kid’s toy that takes the shape of your hand when you press against its plastic spindles. The images can look striking, even beautiful.

A close-up of metal fibres on the NanoSEM scanning electron microscope could be confused for abstract artwork. “Each of these dots is about one two-thousandths of the width of a human hair,” says 6-foot-2 Oliver.

Researchers from the Composites Innovation Centre (a not-for-profit industrial consortium with whom MIM partners) will use the electron microscopes to analyse naturally grown fibres that offer a more sustainable option to fibreglass.

Alongside researchers from biosystems engineering and chemistry, they’re investigating if plant fibres could replace glass fibres to manufacture wing and engine components for planes. (They’ve already shown local manufacturer Buhler-Versatile a tractor hood and fender made of hemp and agave fibres.) These composites would be as strong as metal but much lighter.

College of Dentistry researchers are looking at ways to make dental coatings and fillings last longer. And agriculture researchers are investigating which fungi grow on grain during its storage—in developing countries, where as much as half of harvests can be lost to spoilage.

“Not only are we showing to the outside world how something that might normally sit in the research domain could be useful to them, but we’re showing the students we graduate how the leading edge of research technology can be relevant to different parts of the world,” says Oliver.

Students will learn alongside researchers and industry partners. From the communal area in the heart of the 9,000-square-foot centre, they can check out imaging from the TEM microscope as it happens.

These details matter, insists Oliver. The facility is designed for collaboration and to encourage students to learn by doing.

He points out another detail in the new space—the frosted design on the many glass walls. These series of lines depict a spectrum. Oliver explains it’s a nod to spectroscopy (the study of how matter can be ‘fingerprinted’) and how sunlight is filtered by the atmosphere. Symbolically, this décor touch brings natural light down into the windowless basement space.

“It’s kind of a fun, little thing,” he says.

The Composites Innovation Centre (CIC) has been a key player in spurring economic growth and developing innovative new materials for industrial applications since its inception in 2003.

Lighter, stronger, cheaper. Used in many products including planes, construction materials and sporting equipment, composites are reinforcing fibres, such as fiberglass or carbon, which are embedded in plastic materials and are generally more efficient than other materials.

CIC is a not-for-profit corporation, jointly sponsored by private industry and government. It works with industry and academic partners to develop composite materials that perform better than traditional manufacturing materials.

Until 2011, it was located at the university’s Smartpark, after which is moved into a 20,000 s.f. facility off campus. The collaborations between CIC and university researchers has been a defining feature.

One of the most recent collaborations is a project between FibreCITY, a division of CIC, and the university’s Manitoba Institute for Materials (MIM). This past summer, Issiah Lozada, a fourth-year chemistry student, working with his advisor Kevin McEleney, helped the CIC evaluate the properties of biofibres for use in composites.

“Through FibreCITY, the CIC is looking for natural fibres to use in composite materials,” says McEleney. “These are cheaper and lighter than glass fibres or carbon fibres. The problem with them though is that they are not reproducibly grown, so the batch to batch variation is high. We’ve been asked to develop ways to characterize these fibres so we can start thinking about how we might apply that fibre into the end application.”

McEleney and Lozada studied four fibres that are grown in Manitoba: linen flax, linseed flax, fibre hemp and grain hemp.

Lozada carried out the day to day work on the project, measuring the samples using a small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) technique to determine the size and shape of the substructures in the fibre, and using a mathematical model to analyze the fibres.

“Right now the biofibre field is kind of in its infancy in terms of the composites world,” says McEleney. “They need to figure out ways of grading their fibres (for
end use). This technique will be one of those ways.” Collaborations like this allow students to gain valuable research experience. “We’re looking at publishing this work, so for a student like Issiah, if you can get a publication in during your undergrad, that’s a huge step forward, especially if he wants to go to grad school,” says McEleney.

For his part, Lozada found the experience challenging and rewarding. “This was the first time I’ve worked with SAXS and I had to learn the mathematics involved by myself and not in class with a professor,” he says. “It was definitely a great experience, especially learning new things from different people. Hopefully, more collaborations will come up in the future, and students will have the opportunity to experience them.”

A composite is a reinforc­ing fiber, such as fiberglass or carbon, embedded in a plastic material. The overall engineering performance of a composite is far superior to the individ­ual materials used in isolation. Common uses of composites include aircraft assemblies, body panels on buses, fiberglass boats, reinforcements in civil structures and house construction.

Winnipeg is home to the largest manufacturer in Canada of composite aerospace assemblies and numerous companies that produce compos­ite parts for a variety of applications: from ground transportation vehicles to farm equipment; storage containers and caustic fluid handling systems, reinforcements for bridges and buildings, furniture and environmental technology products.

Founded in 2009, MIM recently built a new facility underground to bring together more than 200 researchers and students from across disciplines. The world-class laboratory allows researchers and industry leaders to interrogate the structure, behaviour, and design uses of materials and composites, which are a cornerstone of our economy.

This strategic infrastructure was made possible by the partnership between the federal (Western Economic Diversification) and provincial governments alongside the University and commercial partners (FEI, SFR, GE, CIC).

What: Manitoba Institute for Materials grand opening
Where: 25 Sifton Road, Fort Garry Campus. (The entry to the laboratory is a glass tower in Parking Lot A)
When: Friday, July 8, 2016, 10 a.m.
Visiting dignitaries: Dan Vandal, Member of Parliament for St. Boniface is attending on behalf of the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. And Sarah Guillemard, MLA for Fort Richmond, is attending on behalf of Education and Training Minister Ian Wishart.

Visuals

The laboratory will demonstrate some of its advanced instrument to members of the media.

Time-lapse videos of MIM’s construction are available for download from Dropbox.

The event, which also includes keynote speeches from award-winning individuals, takes place in the EITC atrium, as well as in nearby rooms.

Since 2009, the Manitoba Institute for Materials (MIM) has drawn together more than 200 researchers and students. Their collaborative efforts are now boosted through a newly opened materials and composites characterization facility, located within the Fort Garry campus. Materials and composites development draws on interdisciplinary strengths at the University of Manitoba to partner with manufacturing industries spanning aerospace, health, mining, manufacturing, agricultural and land transport sectors.

Professor David Levin from biosystems engineering will present one of the keynote speeches at the conference, following on a recent win alongside team members who captured a JEC Innovation Award for work aimed at providing fully renewable biocomposite materials to the Canadian auto industry.

In addition to University of Manitoba researchers and students, the May 10 conference will feature University of North Dakota participants, along with a group of Daniel McIntyre Collegiate students from Solar Hydrogen Activity Research Kit (SHArK), marking the first time high school students will be presenting a poster in the competition. Teachers co-ordinate the SHArK program and collaborate with MIM. Chemistry Professor David Herbert is the current coordinator for the program.

More details on the conference schedule can be found online.

To follow the conference conversation on Twitter: #MMCON2016

This year, two staff of the Manitoba Institute for Materials, Jennifer Low McEleney (Operations Manager, MIM) and Kevin McEleney (Lab Manager, MIM/Faculty of Science) were recognized as part of the team that has implemented the construction and commissioning of the new Materials and Composites Characterization Facility that is nearing completion. Along with their counterparts, Audrey Marcinco-Jerris (Architectural Services) and Mike Pratt (Physical Plant), Jennifer and Kevin have tirelessly translated the vision of a world-class research and training facility into reality.

This has been an enormous task involving considerable attention to detail so that the installation of $6,000,000 of research instrumentation can mesh with the refurbishment and construction of the facility.Their dedication and communication skills have been critical to ensuring that the project has proceeded as close to schedule as could be projected and is likely to be completed within the budget parameters laid out.

Commenting on the award, Derek Oliver (Director, MIM) observed that “Jennifer and Kevin have provided an example of effective interdisciplinary collaboration and have laid the foundations for the future success of this exciting venture.” Congratulations!

The equipment is so cutting-edge, the University of Manitoba was the first institute in the world to order it.

A rendering of the proposed new MIM building

This state-of-the-art facility, made possible by Western Economic Diversification, a federal program, will enable academia and industry to integrate more fully and capitalize on the growing emphasis on composites and aerospace research and development being undertaken in Western Canada.

“Investing in the Manitoba Institute for Materials will strengthen our University’s and our province’s position at the national forefront of material-related research and development,” said Dr. David Barnard, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manitoba. “This promising new laboratory will empower our researchers to make discoveries that impact lives here and around the world.”

The recently-appointed Director of MIM, Derek Oliver, paid tribute to the founding vision for the facility.

“Michael Freund, our outgoing Director, and Digvir Jayas, Vice-President (Research  and International), have worked tremendously hard to bring this exciting project to fruition. The new facility will not only boost the productivity of world-class scientists and strengthen partnerships with industry, but it can be quickly re-configured as a teaching and training space. Hands-on access to these instruments will become a part of the undergraduate and graduate student experience in addition to a key aspect of courses offered to industry.”

The equipment will be housed in a new facility accessed by an above ground structure on what is currently parking Lot A, with the labs located below ground in space that currently stores a decommissioned cyclotron. The space is being re-developed for MIM.

MIM facilitates and enhances basic and applied materials science in the prairie region. It brings together local industry and academia with international companies like GE, who are contributing $300,000.

This new facility will ensure Manitoba’s lead position in aerospace and composite materials research.

The new infrastructure will include high-performance and easily accessible electron microscopes that will provide industry, researchers, and students an integrated world-class research and training facility.

The high-resolution electron microscopes will be capable of studying complex structures and offer X-ray techniques for understanding the role of interfaces and bulk properties on material performance. These capabilities will align with Composites Innovation Centre (CIC) and regional industry through fundamental material assessment and characterization; they will support manufacturing and prototype-scale testing as well as the investigation of new material issues.

MIM currently possesses a range of tools and technical expertise that, when bolstered by the new tools, will provide a world-class facility to support the growing composites and aerospace materials research effort in the Prairie region as well as the broader R&D community.

FEI, a world leader in the development of electron microscopy techniques, recognizes the incredible potential in establishing a world-class facility in Manitoba and will contribute $2 million toward the new equipment. Western Economic Diversification will provide $3.5 million toward the new equipment.

All together, the facility will represent one of the most modern and complete materials characterization facilities in North America openly available to both academia and industry. Construction will be completed in the first half of 2015.