Rapid Response  Research Grants: 
business and economics

In the decades leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, globalization was virtually economic gospel. National economies grew ever more integrated, and in just twenty years, the total value of international trade tripled. Companies sought savings in developing countries where costs were lower — and those countries competed to attract their investments. Supply chains grew more complex, and the global economy achieved a greater level of integration than ever before.

Then, quite suddenly, it stopped. Factories were shut, and borders closed to non-essential travel. Shop fronts were shuttered, and billions of consumers were told to shelter in place.

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Rapid Response Research Grants: 
​mental health and wellness

No matter how carefully considered your plans are, change can come at you pretty fast. Almost overnight, the COVID-19 pandemic radically disrupted our lives. Our daily routines changed, and in-person interactions came to abrupt halt. For many of us, it caused great anxiety and stress.

​With all of this uncertainty, some would choose to turn to their therapist for support, but even that has changed. In keeping with physical distancing measures, therapists began conducting sessions with videoconferencing software like Zoom, but little is known about how effectively therapists can assess patients using only two-dimensional images.



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Rapid Response Research Grants: e-health and autonomous systems

COVID-19 has presented us with a need for new technologies – and novel ways to use technologies that we already have.
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Dr. Gabriel Wainer is using existing 3D models of campus buildings to determine how the virus diffuses in indoor environments. His team is using Geographical Information Systems and Carleton’s Digital Campus Building Information Model (BIM) map to make models that are extensions of the susceptible-infected-recovered (SEIR) models that predict the dynamics of the pandemic. These will enable the study of different strategies for returning to campus, and will be made available online for remote collaboration and use by decision makers.

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Rapid Response Research Grants:
​epidemiology

Dry cough. Persistent fever. A loss of taste and smell. Skin lesions. Heart palpitations.
COVID-19 is caused by a respiratory virus, but it has proven to be a medical chameleon that impacts much more than our lungs. Ever since the disease was first identified in late 2019, the list of the symptoms associated with it has continued to grow. When COVID-19 arrived in Canada, we knew little about the disease, but researchers are learning more every day. They are developing ways that COVID-19 can be detected, treated, and prevented.

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Rapid Response Research Grants:
​indigenous and international

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed inequality, accentuating both precarity and privilege globally. Yet in Canada, we do not have a complete picture of who has been impacted the most. Several months into the pandemic, we had not even begun to collect race-based data on COVID-19 infections and deaths. We overestimated how many Canadians have access to the internet, and even as the virus was tearing through our country’s elder care homes, we did not have a comprehensive list of where these homes were, exactly how many of them there were.

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Department of Chemistry donates ethanol to make hand sanitizer

To keep safe and stop the spread of the virus, essential workers need to keep their hands clean. Global demand for hand sanitizer has never been higher, and it's at a premium.

Shortly after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, Health Canada sounded the alarm that a shortage was looming, and announced it would expedite licensing for new producers of hand sanitizer.
One of those producers is Peterborough’s Black’s Distillery –typically a maker of rye, vodka, and gin.

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    Contact Ty Burke