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Memorial University

“Memorial University, founded in 1925 in Newfoundland, is focused on extraordinary teaching and learning, outstanding research and scholarship, and public engagement. As one of the top 20 research universities in Canada, Memorial has more than 30 research centers and receives more than $100 million in research funding annually, with greater than $40 million of this funding coming from industry. Memorial and its funding partners have long believed in investing in talented students, which has resulted in more than 1,500 graduate fellowships and approximately 900 PhD students.

Memorial’s vibrant entrepreneurial culture inspires students, faculty and staff to embrace innovation. Memorial and its students have a long history of success in national and international entrepreneurship competitions, with nine of the past 10 years resulting in Memorial being crowned the national champion of the Enactus competition, along with two of these years resulting in the winning of the Enactus World Cup.

Investing in entrepreneurs and contributing to the development of an attractive entrepreneurial ecosystem within Newfoundland and Labrador, Memorial has multiple offices, centers and programs dedicated to supporting entrepreneurship:

Memorial’s Research Innovation Office supports faculty, students and staff with their research and commercialization activities through utilizing funding initiatives, market analysis, industry partnerships, protection of intellectual property, licensing, and new start-up creation. The RIO helps to identify resources and facilitate connections to foster successful research programs and deliver economic impact.

The Memorial Centre for Entrepreneurship helps promote entrepreneurship and the development of new ideas through offering programs, funding, events and resources to inspire and support start-ups.

The Centre for Social Enterprise is a partnership among the Faculty of Business Administration, the School of Music and the School of Social Work, which aims to enhance the quality of the human experience via social enterprise and social innovation.

The Genesis Centre is Memorial’s incubator for technology-based ventures with high-growth potential. The Genesis Centre is one of the top-ranked incubators in Canada and was named Canadian Incubator of the Year in 2011. Since its launch in 1997, Genesis has incubated over 70 start-up companies, raised $90 million in capital, generated $110 million in revenue and created 1,100 jobs.

Memorial’s Entrepreneurship Training Program is a first-in-Canada training program for international graduate students interested in starting a business. The program covers core entrepreneurship themes and skills such as problem solving and design learning, lean start-up, sales, marketing and financial planning. Memorial’s Entrepreneurship Training Program has graduated over 200 students and has received multiple national awards for innovation in student services and career education.”

Research Capabilities

Engineering

  • Automated ocean systems centre (AOSCENT)
    • Automated underwater vehicles
      • Ocean environmental monitoring
      • Scientific survey
      • Resource exploration in the Atlantic and Artic
      • Underwater/Seabed Imaging (sonar and cameras)
      • Water quality
      • Vehicle dynamics testing

Life Sciences

  • Genomics and Proteomics Facility (GaP)
    • Bimolecular Analysis and DNA Sequencing
    • Genomics
      • 4 and 48 – capillary DNA Analyzers: Sequencing and microsatellites, with software to analyze data
      • Bio-Rad gel systems: Bio-Rad Sub-Cell GT (Allow for analysis of up to 96 nucleic acid samples on a single gel)
      • Gel Logic 200 Imaging system: The Kodak Gel imaging system (Visualization, imaging and quantitative measurements of nucleic acid and protein in stained gels)
  • Nanodrop ND-1000
    • A full spectrum (220-750nm) spectrophotometer (Measure concentrations of nucleic acids, protein and cell culture samples with high accuracy and reproducibility)
  • Pall Life Sciences Multi-Well Plate Manifold
    • Used with multi-well filter plates for the clean-up of nucleic acids, 96 samples at a time.
  • PCR Machines
    • 5 96-well PCR machines.
      • Three GeneAmp PCR system 9700’s are specifically designed for amplification of nucleic acids to be analyzed on the ABI DNA Analyzers.
  • Two BioRad C1000 thermal cycler has a gradient feature that saves time by optimizing annealing temperatures in a single run

Medicine

Centre for Health Informatics and Analytics

CHIA’s cloud system runs primarily on two hardware platforms: a NextScale x86 compute platform and an IBM Global Parallel File systems (GPFS). Together they offer the following resources for cloud user. The HPC cluster consists of the following hardware:

  • 1680 Intel x86 cores total – 200 Power8 cores total,
  • 97 Intel servers are 16 cores with 16GB RAM per node
  • 4 Intel servers are 32 cores with 256 GB RAM per node
  • 10 Power systems are 20 cores with 256GB RAM per node
  • 6 PB of storage provided by IBM ESS based Spectrum Scale GPFS
  • 13PB LT06 Tape managed by IBM Spectrum Protect; Core network is provided by 8 Mellanox FDR switches (50Gbps – Total of 368 ports with 298 active connections)
  • Management network is provided by 5 1Gbps switches (Total of 240 ports with 222 active connections)
  • Management network connects to 1 core 10Gbps switch; Backup traffic managed over separate 8Gbps fiber channel network.

Ocean Sciences

  • Fish Evolutionary Ecology Research
    • Lab Services
      • Conceptual design, feasibility and budgeting.
      • Full design and documentation of all aspects of aquatic systems and related facilities and infrastructure.
      • Full design and documentation of life support systems and husbandry support areas.
      • Design and documentation of artificial environments.
      • Design and documentation of aquarium specialized lighting.
      • Construction services (design/construct if required).
      • Design checks and reviews.
      • System testing.
    • Field Services
      • maintains a variety of Scuba gear for cold-water year-round diving
      • benthic trawls and drags, seines, plankton nets, niskin bottles, CTD, underwater video camera and a portable air compressor and generator.
      • 4 m zodiac
      • 7 m Boston Whaler
      • 5 ton multi-purpose vehicle with aeration and recirculating seawater holding tanks (2500 L) suitable for transporting live specimens long distance
  • Dr. Joe Brown Aquatic Research Center
    • Hatchery
    • Brood stock
    • First Feeding
    • Live Feed
    • Seawater conditioning system
  • Seal Lab
    • 3 Harp Seals (Phagophilus groenlandicus)
    • Studies involving senescence, perception, diet, behavior and physiology.
  • Ocean Image and Data Analysis facility
    • Digital microscopy cameras
    • Analysis software for morphometric measurement
    • High performance compute tools for rapid numerical data analysis
    • Visualization and imagery manipulation
  • Aquatic Research Cluster (ARC)
    • Molecular Biology and Functional Genomics Research Services
      • Applied Biosystems QuantStudio 6 Flex Real-Time PCR System (384-well)
  • Lipid and Amino Acid Research Services
    • Iatroscan MK-6 for total lipid determination
    • Agilent 6890 GC FID for fatty acid quantification
    • Varian CP-3800 GC FID for amino acid and sterol analysis
    • Agilent 7890 GC FID for method development
  • Elemental analysis Research Services
  • Perkin Elmer 2400 Series II CHN analyzer for the quantification of carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen in particulate samples
  • Shimadzu TOC/TN analyzer for the measurement of non-purgeable organic carbon and total nitrogen in seawater samples
  • Cold-Ocean Deep-Sea Research Facility
  • Histology Suite
    • Tissue processor (Shandon Excelsior ES Tissue Processor allows for xylene-free tissue processing)
    • HistoStar Embedding Workstation (Brightly illuminated work surfaces with 5 liter paraffin capacity, cold plate area for 72 base molds, and specimen holding area)
    • Microm™ HM 525 Cryostat (Semi-electronic cryostat with stepper motor)
    • HM 355S Automatic Microtome (Designed for all applications using paraffin and hard specimens)
    • Varistain 24-4 Automatic Slide Stainer (Single load, coupled loads and continuous throughput. Precise programming from minutes to seconds)
  • Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM)
    • Phenom Pro SEM (Magnification range 20-100000x, 17 nm resolution, full colour navigation camera 20-120x magnification, pro Suite software which includes: automated fibre measurement, 3D image construction, automated image collection and mapping, temperature controlled sample holder (-25 °C to +50 °C), motorized tilt rotation sample holder, integrated elemental identification (EDS) detector)
  • Aquabiolabs Multi-Tank Systems
    • Highly flexible multi-tank systems that can be located in or outside of containment (Water can be chilled down to 2°C, hypoxia: dissolved oxygen maintained down to 1 mg/L, creation of temperature shocks: rapid increase or decrease in water temperature, close systems for controlled feeding and parasitology studies: Filtration down to 1 µm for bio-containment studies, open system to allow natural sea-water and plankton to enter the system)
  • Optical Microscopy and Flow Cytometry
    • Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorter (FACS) – A BD Special Order based on the Aria platform. Capable of 4-way sorting of cells, viruses and other small organisms based on scatter and fluorophore detection gates. 8 Colour cell sorter, temperature controlled sort collection chamber (4 – 42°C) that can accommodate Eppendorf tubes to 384 well plates, blue (488nm) and red (633nm) lasers, four nozzle sizes (70, 85, 100 and 130 um).
    • Ti-E confocal microscope (A1 confocal system with epifluorescence, motorized stage, incubation chamber, anti-vibration table, high-end objectives, perfect focus system, resonance scanning, software imaging and data analysis, 4 laser selections: 405, 488, 561 and 640nm)
    • Zeiss Axio Scan.Z1 (Bright field and florescence slide scanner that can automatically digitize up to 100 slides in one run at 10x, 20x or 40x magnification)
    • Eclipse Ti-S inverted microscope (Bright field, Phase contrast, Fluorescence microscopy, Live cell imaging, digital camera, UV/Dapi, GFP, Texas Red)
    • SMZ745Y Steromicroscope (0.67 to 5x zoom, tabletop boom stand, 2 MP USB color digital camera)
    • SMZ1500 Steromicroscope (0.75 to 11.25x zoom, transmited light stand with oblique coherent contrast, camera port)
    • Eclipse Ci-L (phase contrast, dark field and simple polarizing microscopy)
    • Eclipse TS100-F inverted microscope (LED illumination, phase contrast)
  • Deep Sea Research Lab
    • IPOCAMP pressurized vessel (we have two IPOCAMP vessels, which are ship mountable and can be used to study deep-sea life at pressures up to 300 bars (equivalent to 3000 m depth). Flow through from filtered seawater lines, chambers are 19 L; 20 cm diameter, 60 cm height, temperatures from 2 to 100 °C, 12 L / hour flow, endoscope with camera, monitor and recorder as well as fibre optic light guides)
    • PICCEL / PRISM (the PICCEL system consists of two quick open reactors for the culture of minute organisms (cells, embryos) under pressure and flow-through conditions via a manual pump and a regulation line. The quick opening pressure vessels feature rapid cyclic operation with an O-ring seal. The system also includes a PRISM-type cell for microscopic observation of specimens while still held under pressure. It is possible to carry out different operations (renewal of water, sampling) without depressurizing the reactors. Volume: 50 ml, inside diameter: 30 mm, inside length: 80 mm under the cover, maximum allowable working pressure: 300 bars @ 100°C)
  • Bio-Containment Labs
    • Disease Challenge and Necropsy Labs (two rooms housing holding tanks with adjoining necropsy rooms for disease challenge studies. Heated and cooled seawater or freshwater available to each of the tanks. Programmable lighting systems, adjoining necropsy room with stainless steel counters and cabinetry, pass-through specimen box)
    • Containment Dry Labs (connected to the disease challenge / necropsy rooms and is fully equipped for cell or tissue culture studies. Two large class II biosafety cabinets (BSC), fume hood, two temperature controlled (4-40 °C) CO2 incubators for pathogen research or tissue culture, various centrifuges, ultralow freezer, liquid nitrogen dewar, benchtop autoclave)
    • Waste-water Treatment (effluent pit containing drum filters, swirl separator and settling tank, sand filtration tanks, final effluent UV treatment)
  • Aquatic Health Assays
    • We offer research support with assays for use in Environmental Effects Monitoring (EEM), fate and effects studies, aquaculture research and other areas where toxic, pharmaceutical or other health impacts may be seen. These tests are of use to the oil and gas, mineral exploration, environmental and fisheries and aquaculture fields.
    • Haematology (blood smears and differential white blood cell (WBC) counts, imbalances in WBC counts of neutrophils, thrombocytes and lymphocytes)
    • Pathology (Pathological assessments that can be used for clinical evaluation)
    • Mixed Function Oxygenase (MFO) (measurement of metabolic activities in response to endogenous and exogenous compounds. Measurement of EROD (ethoxyresorufin-o-deethylase) activity)
    • Phagocytosis assay (In vitro measurement of the phagocytic ability that can be used to assess the impacts of pharmaceuticals, feed, or environmental toxins)
    • Oxidative burst assay (The oxidative burst response of phagocytic cells produces superoxide anions as part of an immune response. Can be used to measure response to disease and/or pharmaceuticals)

Physical Sciences

  • Centre for Chemical Analysis, Research and Training (C-CART)
    • Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)
    • X-Ray Crystallography (XRD)
    • Mass Spectrometry
    • Materials Characterization
    • Optical Spectroscopy
  • Computing, Simulation and Landmark Visualization Facility (CSLV)
    • Computing engines for imaging
    • Modeling and simulation
    • Large format plotters.
  • Micro Analysis Facility (MAF)
    • Scanning electron microscope with Mineral Liberation Analyser (SEM-MLA)
      • High-resolution imaging
      • Energy-dispersive x-ray analysis (EDX)
      • Electron backscattered electron diffraction (EBSD)
    • In-situ micro beam chemical analysis
    • Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometer (SIMS)
    • Laser ablation ICP Mass Spectrometer (LA-ICP-MS)
      • Age dating of minerals and other materials such as environmental and archaeological samples
    • R&D projects on ore characterization for metallurgy and advanced mineral exploration
  • The Earth Resources Research and Analysis Facility (TERRA)
    • Chemical and physical analyses utilizing a large variety of instrumentations
      • ICP-MS
      • Electron microprobe micro-analyzer (EPMA)
      • Stable isotope lab
      • Thermal ionization mass spectrometer (TIMS)
      • X-ray diffractometer facility (XRD)
      • X-ray fluorescence (XRF)

Cryogenics

  • Cryogenics Facility (Cryo-F: Produces and provide nitrogen and helium to Memorial research)

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