Graduate Student News

Federal Election: Vote on Campus! 
Special Voting Stations Available April 13-16

The federal election is on Monday, April 28, 2025. There are several ways to vote, including through a program designed for students: Vote on Campus. Carleton is hosting special voting stations in the fourth floor Nideyinàn Galleria from Sunday, April 13 to Wednesday, April 16. Visit the Elections Canada website for more information on voting in the upcoming federal election.

There are five ways you can vote if you are living at the address you consider to be home:

1. 1. at your local polling place on election day
2. 2. on one of four advance voting days
3. 3. on campus during the Vote on Campus days
4. 4. at any local Elections Canada office
5. 5. by mail

If you are living away from the address you consider home, you have four options to vote:

1. 1. on campus during the Vote on Campus days
2. 2. at any local Elections Canada office
3. 3. by mail
4. 4. travel to the riding associated with your home address.

Vote on Campus! Special voting stations will be available at Carleton on the fourth floor Nideyinàn Galleria:

• Sunday, April 13 from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.
• Monday, April 14 from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
• Tuesday, April 15 from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
• Wednesday, April 16 from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

All you need to do is bring ID to vote. You will vote for a candidate in the riding where your place of ordinary residence is located.

When you vote on campus, you’ll be voting by special ballot. Find out what to expect when you vote by special ballot.

2025 3MT Competition 

Dam it, I’m stranded: quantifying fish stranding downstream of hydropeaking facilities. See second-place winner Raegan Davis' (Biology) presentation below:

Graduate Students' Association (GSA) Elections

The GSA 2025 General Elections voting period will take place from April 9 to 10. The election is for the following GSA Executive Committee positions: President, VP External and VP Academic. 

The GSA elections are hosted online using the OIRP voting software administered by Carleton University. Elections results will be tabulated through the software and share to the Elections Officer who will then announce them.

Carleton’s Collaborative Robots
Represent the Future of Construction

The construction industry is notoriously resistant to change. Projects can be extremely complex, with architects, engineers, builders and subcontractors guided by different, sometimes competing priorities. They’re also typically risk-averse—or, to be blunt, set in their ways.

New modes of collaboration and new technologies are the key to modernizing how we build. This is an urgent need in Canada, considering the country’s severe housing shortage, the importance of adopting more sustainable processes and materials, and an impending wave of retirements that will see about 20 per cent of the sector’s workforce hang up their hammers by the end of the decade.

Enter Thelma and Louise.

Named after the protagonists of the eponymous early 1990s feminist road-trip film, the pair of collaborative robots are part of the Carleton Sensory Architecture and Liminal Technologies Laboratory‘s effort to belatedly bring construction into the 21st century.

“We’re still in the early stages of this transition,” says CSALT director Sheryl Boyle, who has been an architecture professor at Carleton for 20 years.“The acceptance of new technologies in construction is fairly low. But there are many ways we can help advance the industry and make it more efficient.”

To Boyle, these robots and the 2025 CSALT team—which includes PhD students Kristine Prochnau, Sharmeen Dafedar, master’s students Sam Lane-Smith, Adonis Lau, Catalin Bacalu and Mikhala Gibson and undergrads Oscar Werlich, Oshan Tan, Najah Islam, Vivan Ma, Salma Ibrahim, Gail Cordoza and Blanch Baylosis—represent the future of construction.

The lab’s “cobots” are essentially miniaturized versions of the robotic arms deployed on automotive assembly lines. Small cobots could be used to quickly and safely make prototypes and iterate in architecture offices, evaluating how building components come together. This would be a step toward larger-scale testing in fabrication facilities and, ultimately, production.

A Sweet Solution: Chemistry PhD Student’s Innovation Could Transform Maple Syrup Harvesting

There are few things as Canadian as maple syrup; found in nearly every household, its creation is a delicate process. Every spring, producers tap maple trees to harvest sap but as the temperature rises, the trees begin to bud.

This triggers a chemical shift that creates “buddy sap,” which is unusable for syrup production. There’s no taste or smell to warn producers, leaving them to discover the mistake only after boiling—by which time the batch is already spoiled.

For decades, producers have relied on old wives’ tales, such as watching for frog activity or listening for certain birds, to determine when to stop collecting sap. These methods often result in wasted time and resources.

Thanks to research by Shahad Abdulmawjood, a Chemistry PhD student, a simple test strip could make detecting buddy sap instantaneous.

Abdulmawjood’s research focuses on developing lateral flow assays—imagine a household COVID-19 or pregnancy test—that can identify buddy sap. The test strip is designed to detect two key amino acids, asparagine and methionine, which break down when the tree buds, producing compounds responsible for buddy sap. By using aptamers—synthetic DNA molecules designed to recognize these compounds—the strip provides producers with a fast and reliable way to determine if their sap is still usable.

Abdulmawjood’s interest in this research stems from her love for maple syrup. When she learned about the challenges producers face in detecting buddy sap, she was immediately intrigued.

“I’ve always loved maple syrup and when I heard about this problem, I knew I wanted to find a solution,” she said.

Her enthusiasm led her to take ownership of the project, determined to create a scientific alternative to the traditional methods producers have used for generations. "I wanted to take out the guesswork and give producers an accurate way to know when their sap is no longer any good,” she said.

Abdulmawjood's research has gained industry attention and received funding from the North American Maple Syrup Council and the Ontario Maple Syrup Producers’ Association, which awarded a $25,000 grant. Beyond improving efficiency and preventing losses, the test could open new opportunities for producers.