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Prof. Nathwani (Executive Director, WISE) was invited to give a webinar on the topic of Covid-19 crisis leading to a clean energy future. He discussed the three dimensions of energy, environment, and economy in his talk. He also emphasized on four key, interrelated global trends that not only pose a serious threat to the long-term viability of the oil and gas sector in Canada, but also point to clear pathways for alternatives that will sustain a low-carbon energy future: (1) Divestment of fossil fuel securities and disclosures of carbon liability, (2) Decarbonization, (3) Diversification of supply, and (3) Digitalization and electrification to replace existing energy sources.

The CAST-LASG Workshop was a week-long collaboration between the Living Architecture Systems Group and the Centre for Architectural Structures and Technology (CAST) at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, held February 17-22, 2020. The workshop focused on the terminology and form-language of polyhedral and related geometry, culminating in the design and installation of a lightweight architectural scaffold which integrated CAST’s ongoing experiments concerning fabric as form-work for liquid-to-solid casting and shell structures. A new form-making method was advanced during the development of the scaffold installation, by which basic hexagon-to-pentagon geometries were scaled up to produce dramatic changes in surface curvature. The workshop was preceded by preparatory talks and instructional folios as well as an introductory lecture by Prof. Beesley (School of Architecture).

This 1.5 day workshop explored current activity in all geothermal technologies being used or considered in Canada, and generated a short synthesis outlining future pathways to greater adoption of this green energy source. The participants discussed the following topics: technical barriers and the financial viability of enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), growth in the installation of ground source heat pump systems (GSHPs), and co-generation options, i.e. geothermal-electricity-combined-heat-power for different regions of Canada.

Prof. Nathwani (Executive Director, WISE) was invited to attend The Waterloo Symposium on Technology and Society, seeking to promote public discourse in Canada and beyond on the societal challenges and opportunities created by innovations in four primary areas: artificial intelligence, robotics, big data and social media.

Prof. Wu (Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering) described novel techniques pioneered in his lab that combine X-ray and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) to understand 2-dimensional materials such as graphene at the atomic level, then modify them for practical uses. One such use is an artifical leaf that mimics photosynthesis, converting carbon dioxide into methanol and oxygen, rather than glucose and oxygen as occurs in nature. This “leaf” could be used to capture carbon dioxide from high-yield sources such as thermal power plants, and convert it into methanol as an alternative fuel source.

Prof. Nathwani (Executive Director, WISE) was invited to be a keynote speaker at the 4th IEOM NA Conference with participation from more than 50 countries.

Prof. Nathwani (Executive Director, WISE) chaired the session, "Renewable Energy and Management Systems".

The session examined the challenges of climate change and universal energy access, requiring radical scientific and social innovation. To ensure a cost-effective transition to a low-carbon energy economy, critical factors include a creative approach to new distributed energy technologies, energy storage and battery technology advances, SMEs and entrepreneurs, 37 digitalization and smart energy networks, and the role of electrification, including hydrogen.

Prof. Nathwani (Executive Director, WISE) was invited to this by-invitation-only roundtable, governed under Chatham House Rules, which involved a broad spectrum of energy and environment stakeholders in Canada. The event was specifically structured to foster discussion, which would inform (in non-attributable form) an upcoming Conference Board research briefing.

The dialogue at the event was based on three key themes that guided the sessions of the day: Bankability and Finance, International Competitiveness, and Climate Legitimacy. Each session had a thematic speaker who gave an overview of the topic and the key issues, a panel that discussed the topic and offered diverse perspectives and a pathway to an outcome where roundtable participants discussed the topic in a workshop format and provided recommendations.

On June 19th, 2019,  a public event was held, featuring innovation lab participants discussing cleantech entrepreneurship in Africa. This event was also a part of the TrueNorth Festival, the largest annual gathering of tech leaders in Canada's technology triangle.\

The ‘innovation lab’ is a non-traditional workshop format wherein participants focus more on what they want to do next and how they might work together, rather than on sharing past results. Deep discussions in small groups are a feature. These are invite-only events that feature a highly diverse set of participants (expertise, nationality, age, gender, etc.). 

Prof. Ghaddar (Management Sciences) attended the event. She gave a talk on the global optimization approach for binary polynomial programs. In this talk, she presented branch-and-dig, an algorithm to find global solutions for binary polynomial programming problems. She discussed the inequality generating techniques based on lift-and-project relaxations that are developed to speed up the branch-and-bound process and reduce the number of nodes of the tree. Computational results for problems of degree two and degree three were presented to assess the impact of the proposed approach.