Check out significant past news for our group below.
November 1, 2025 - Caroline Duncan and Stephanie Gora were featured in a from 91ÑÇÉ« Research about the team's Arctic research.
October 20, 2025 - Caroline Duncan and Stephanie Gora were featured in a for Caroline's research in Cambridge Bay, which included work with local students to investigate elevated lead and copper levels in drinking water caused by aging plumbing and corrosive water conditions. Their study highlighted a significant northern infrastructure gap, showing that contamination often occurs inside household tanks and pipes rather than at the community’s treatment plant.
October 15, 2025 - Ammar Mahgoub graduated with his MASc in Civil Engineering.
October 7, 2025 - The Water Resources Society of 91ÑÇÉ«, led by Yeuhyun (Kevin) Kim, toured the RC Harris Water Treatment Plant in Toronto, Ontario.
October 5-7, 2025 - Stephanie Gora and Maranath Hormiz attended the Atlantic Canada Water and Wastewater Association Conference. Maranath presented "Machine learning for water and wastewater treatment optimization."
September 7-10, 2025 - Stephanie Gora presented "Ultraviolet light for biofilm control" at the international UV Association's World Congress in Lisbon, Portugal.
August 27, 2025 - The SSWRG hosted a guest talk and campus tour with Professor Erle Robertson from the University of Pennsylvania in collaboration with the One WATER Institute, the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research, and the Lassonde School of Engineering.
July/August 2025 - Yiqian Wu successfully completed her PhD comprehensive exam.
July 8, 2025 - Ammar Mahgoub successfully defended his Master of Applied Science thesis. He investigated water safety in a small subarctic Canadian community with a decentralized truck and cistern water system. Ammar travelled to this community in July and August 2024 to collect data on microbial activity inside various household cisterns. Through statistical analysis, Ammar assessed if microbial activity varied due to cistern location, age, cleaning, or other water quality parameters. The microbial activity of drinking water at various stages of the local water treatment plant (WTP) were compared as well. Ammar found that there was no statistical significance between microbial activity and the location or age of cisterns, but did find that cleaning had a significant impact. He also found statistically significant levels of microbial activity at the different stages of the WTP with turbidity demonstrating a moderate correlation.
June 26, 2025 - The SSWRG hosted a guest talk by Professor Sarah Jane Payne from Queen’s University in collaboration with the One WATER Institute.
June 15-19, 2025 - Yeuhyun (Kevin) Kim will be travelling to Ottawa to present his research at the Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition.
June 10, 2025 - Stephanie Gora, Maranath Hormiz, Mohammad Ibraheem, and Dr. Usman T. Khan will tour the Tri-County Water Treatment Plant.
June 1-7, 2025 - Caroline Duncan and Stephanie Gora will be travelling to Cambridge Bay to continue the work established in the community through Caroline's PhD project.
May 28-30, 2025 - Caroline Duncan and Ammar Mahgoub will be travelling to Winnipeg to present their respective research at the CSCE Annual Conference 2025.
May 13, 2025 - Stephanie Gora presented at an event co-hosted by One WATER and 91ÑÇÉ« Region. Adedapo Adeola and Mohammad Ibraheem attended the event.
May 12, 2025 - Stephanie Gora was awarded the OWWA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Award. Check out a post about it .
May 10, 2025 - Yiqian Wu returned from a research trip to the University of Massachusetts Amherst as part of the Alliance International: UV for Biofilm Control in Humanitarian Settings Project.
May 8, 2025 - Noah Mathi has joined our team as a Research Assistant for the duration of the summer under the co-supervision of Stephanie Gora and Shital Desai from The School of Arts, Media, Performance & Design.
April 29, 2025 - Patrick Di Falco was awarded a Teaching Assistant Recognition Award.
April 25, 2025 - Caroline Duncan, Audrey Tam, Ammar Mahgoub, and Patrick Di Falco presented their respective research at Annual Graduate Research Day 2025.
April 18, 2025 - Caroline Duncan, Elan Chalmers, and Stephanie Gora published their paper entitled "Application of water safety planning to improve drinking water safety in an Arctic community – a case study in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut." This paper presents a case study of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, identifying water quality hazards, outlining operational vulnerabilities affecting drinking water safety, and highlighting how water safety planning could be implemented to better protect drinking water quality in the community. Check out the paper .
March 27, 2025 - Stephanie Gora provided a presentation entitled "Control of Biofilm with UV Light" as part of the One WATER Seminar Series: In Recognition of World Water Day
February 25, 2025 - Caroline Duncan presented her research as part of the One WATER Seminar Series
February 24, 2025 - Stephanie Gora, Adedapo Adeola, Victoria Carroll, Yiqian Wu, and Patrick Di Falco attended the 60th Central Canadian Symposium on Water Quality Research at TMU. Check out some pictures from the event here.
January 24, 2025 - Ammar Mahgoub was awarded the NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Graduate School Scholarship.
January 24, 2025 - Elan Chalmers, Caroline Duncan, and Stephanie Gora published their paper entitled "Development of water safety risk matrices to improve water safety in Arctic drinking water systems in Nunavut, Canada." The paper proposes a water safety planning (WSP) framework for Nunavut which has been informed by previous Arctic WSPs and existing risk scoring systems. Check out the paper .
January 3, 2025 - Victoria Carroll has joined our team as a PhD student.
November 29, 2024 - Adedapo Adeola has joined our team as a postdoctoral fellow.
October 25, 2024 - Check out this published by the Lassonde School of Engineering which highlights the work of the Safe and Sustainable Water Research Group on drinking water safety in the Arctic.
September 30, 2024 - Stephanie Gora, Patrick Di Falco, and the Biofilm Task Force published their paper entitled "Control of biofilms with UV light: a critical review of methodologies, research gaps, and future directions." The paper reviewed nearly 60 articles reporting UV/biofilm experiments to better highlight advances and major gaps in research. Stephanie and the team put forward their recommendations for minimum reporting requirements in experiments and a terminology framework that could help create a more uniform understanding between studies. Check out the paper .
September 9, 2024 - Audrey Tam was awarded the RBC Foundation Green Skills Scholarship.
July - August 2024 - Ammar Mahgoub travelled to Kuujjuaq, Quebec for a research trip where he was able to successfully collect data for his research. He looked into microbial levels in household water tanks and water treatment plant processes by collecting water samples and conducting adenosine triphosphate (ATP) analyses. Since ATP is the main carrier of energy for all living organisms, it provides a strong indication of microbial prescence in drinking water. Ammar has since began data analysis to better understand how drinking water quality may be impacted as a result of this microbial activity.
July 2024 - Yeuhyun (Kevin) Kim and Yiqian Wu assisted with the K2I Academy, allowing future researchers the opportunity to work in our lab and present their findings. Check out more about the event in our Field Notes.
June 28, 2024 - Reece Lima-Thompson successfully defended his Master of Applied Science thesis. His research involved an investigation on the impact of the scavenging capacity on costs of the UV chlorine advanced oxidation process (AOP) for drinking water treatment. To complete this, Reece applied the external calibration method to determine scavenging capacity. Reece also developed cost curves to demonstrate the economic feasibility of his research in the context of retrofitting drinking water treatment processes.
May 24, 2024 - Shapour Jafargholinejad successfully defended his Master of Applied Science thesis. His research included the optimization of microfluidic electrochemical sensors for water quality analysis. This involved the development of microfluidic electrochemical sensors through a simplified fabrication process to examine the output signal of the device. Shapour was able to verify his results by using these sensors to detect lead from treated water samples from a water treatment plant in Southern Ontario.
May 5-7, 2024 - Stephanie Gora, Reece Lima-Thompson, Audrey Tam, Yiqian Wu, Maranath Hormiz, and research colleague Michael De Santi attended the OWWA WEAO Joint Conference in Niagara Falls. Check out the our Field Notes to check out some pictures from the event.
April 29, 2024 - Maranath Hormiz and Mohammad Ibraheem have joined our team as candidates for a MASc degree.
April 13-20, 2024 - Stephanie Gora, Caroline Duncan, and Audrey Tam spent the week in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut promoting drinking water safety. Caroline will be staying in the community for the next several week to continue this work. Check out some moments she was able to capture in our Field Notes. You can also check out Steph's post about it along with Polar Knowledge's as well.
April 9, 2024 - Audrey Tam and Patrick Di Falco presented their posters at the 59th Central Canadian Symposium on Water Quality Research at Western University. Check out some pictures from the event in our Field Notes.
March 21, 2024 - Reece Lima-Thompson presented his research at the OWWA Treatment Seminar in Mississauga, Ontario. Check out his post about it .
February 22, 2024 - Get to know more about Ammar Mahgoub by checking out his interview with Lassonde .
January 19, 2024 - Sara Moghaddam-Ghadimi successfully defended her Master of Applied Science thesis. Her research involved the application of engineering design principles to investigate water safety issues within distribution systems. Sara was able to identify potential solutions which were backed up by literature review, stakeholder consultation, and software analysis.
January 16, 2024 - Winners of the 2023 Lassonde Research Photo Contest were announced and our very own Audrey Tam was announced as the winner for "Best EDI Integration & Impact." Take a look at Audrey's photo .
An Update on Caroline's Work in Cambridge Bay (June 2024)
In June 2024, members of the Safe and Sustainable Water Research Team joined Caroline Duncan (Civil Engineering, Lassonde) for the final week of her extended research visit to Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. This complex, community-centered research project pairs water system mapping and extensive water sampling with focus groups and targeted individual interviews with water systems stakeholders (operators, regulators, system users, etc.). The end goal is to develop a participatory system dynamics model that incorporates all of these quantitative and qualitative inputs and can be used by stakeholders to understand and positively influence water safety in Cambridge Bay.
Caroline and Stephanie also had the opportunity to present the key findings from our first research paper about water safety in Nunavut to the Cambridge Bay Municipal Council and other community stakeholders. The goal of this meeting was to ensure that the information and findings were accurate and useful to the community before the work is submitted for peer review. The presentation was also attended by board members of Polar Knowledge Canada and the US Arctic Research Commission.
Caroline’s research has been conducted in parallel with a student outreach and training program, the Nunavut Youth Water Operator Training Program, funded by the Nunavut Association of Municipalities (NAM) and designed and implemented by members of the Safe and Sustainable Water Research Group at 91ÑÇÉ«. This program represents a concrete contribution to capacity building among youth in Cambridge Bay and has been a powerful way for our team to give back to the community that has so warmly welcomed and supported Caroline and her research.
This initial offering of the program consisted of two weeks of training provided by 91ÑÇÉ« faculty and graduate students to three high school students in Cambridge Bay. The course covered topics including water safety and the multibarrier treatment approach, applied math and chemistry, WHMIS and laboratory safety, Arctic hydrology, data collection and analysis, and water sampling and testing. The course also included multiple visits to the Cambridge Bay water treatment plant, water sampling from different parts of the water system (source water, treatment plant, cisterns, taps), and informal interactions with water operators and engineers
Two of the students who participated in the program have been hired as research assistants in the Safe and Sustainable Research Group for the summer of 2024. They will be based in Cambridge Bay NU and will be taking water samples in support of Caroline’s research project. All three students will travel to the NAM conference in Iqaluit in November to present their work to mayors and senior administrative officers from across the territory. The Nunavut Youth Water Operator Training Program has also been nominated for an award through Water Canada in the Downstream Category ().
The final highlight was the happy intersection of our trip with a community visit by engineers and operators from Associated Engineering and the Government of Nunavut, who were eager to share their expertise with the students and with us.
Our team is so proud of the work that Caroline has done in Cambridge Bay and we are looking forward to supporting her as she wraps up her PhD research over the next year. Her tireless efforts to build meaningful relationships with water stakeholders in Nunavut has enabled and strengthened our larger Arctic water research program and her work is already making positive impacts on water safety in the North. Our team looks forward to implementing new collaborative research projects in Nunavut related to water distribution and source water characterization and to continue to work with NAM and others to scale up youth water programming in the territory.