We’re facing a global ecosystem crisis. Within the last 50 years alone, wildlife populations across the world have declined by a shocking 69 percent. But technology, with help from citizen science, is emerging as one of wildlife’s greatest allies. In this episode of Solve for X, we explore how remote sensing, robot boats and DNA analysis could revolutionize wildlife preservation, offering hope for everything from insects to whales.

Featured in this episode: 

• James Snider is the vice president of science, knowledge and innovation at World Wildlife Fund Canada.  
• Elizabeth Clare is an associate professor of biology at York University in Canada. Her research studies biodiversity at all levels, developing novel genetic methods that address some of the biggest challenges in biodiversity science.
• Peter Fretwell is a scientist at the British Antarctic Survey. He’s the principal investigator of the Wildlife From Space Program, studying wildlife using satellite imagery.
• Madeleine Bouvier-Brown is a marine project scientist at Open Ocean Robotics. She handles the deployment of robot boats, retrieving data and analyzing it to deepen our understanding of the oceans.

Further reading:

• Loss of sea ice causes catastrophic breeding failure for emperor penguins
• Adventure on high seas inspired ocean drone
• Global wildlife populations have declined by 69 percent since 1970, WWF report finds
• Scientists can suck animal DNA literally out of thin air
• Caribou are vanishing at an alarming rate. Is it too late to save them?

MaRS helps entrepreneurs looking to scale solutions in climate tech, health and software. We offer targeted support through our Capital and Growth Acceleration programs. To learn more visit us at marsdd.com 

Climate change is putting many of the foods we love at risk. Add in rapid population growth — the planet will be home to 9.7 billion people by 2050 — and it’s clear we need to reimagine how we feed ourselves. As food security expert Leonore Newman says, “we are running short on planet.” But is society ready for replacement proteins and lab-grown meats? Whether it’s cell-grown salmon or chili lime crickets, the plate of the future is going to look a little bit different. In this episode of Solve for X, we discuss the revolution in what we eat — and why it’s as much about technology as it is about safeguarding our planet’s future.

Featured in this episode:

• Lenore Newman, director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley, is an expert in food security and technology and holds a UFV Research Chair in Food and Agriculture Innovation.
• Preeti Simran Sethi teaches sustainable food systems at the University of Gastronomic Sciences. She’s also the author of an award-winning book on agrobiodiversity, Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love.
• Journalist and author Larissa Zimberoff explores the evolving relationship between food and technology in her work. Her book, Technically Food: Inside Silicon Valley’s Mission to Change What We Eat, delves into the transformations in our diets and the startups driving this shift.
• Darren Goldin is a co-founder of Entomo Farms, an insect-based farming company that produces cricket flour, cricket powder and insect protein. He’s also the vice president of farming operations, overseeing the three barns on Entomo’s property.

Further Reading:

• Protein shakeup: Are crickets and lab-grown meat the future of food?
• The foods humans ate into extinction
• How to grow fish from stem cells
• Our global food system is the primary driver of biodiversity loss
• The future of food: What will you be eating in 2050?
• Lab-Grown Meat Approved for Sale: What You Need to Know

MaRS helps entrepreneurs looking to scale solutions in climate tech, health and software. We offer targeted support through our Capital and Growth Acceleration programs. To learn more visit us at marsdd.com 

From Wi-Fi to power stations, roads to pipelines, our infrastructure is stressed. Built for a climate that no longer exists, our systems are failing at an increasing pace. But to fix what’s broken goes beyond structural repair — we also need to address the inequities baked into our infrastructural systems and injustices from past developments. Amid these challenges, we have the chance to reimagine the future of infrastructure for a better world. On this episode of Solve for X, we sit down with Deb Chachra, author of the new book How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World, to rediscover the hidden beauty of infrastructure and how we can harness the collective power these systems bring to our lives. 

Featured in this episode:

• Deb Chachra, professor of engineering at Olin College and author of How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World. Her work spans across multiple disciplines, including engineering education, gender issues, materials science and the intersection of technology and culture.

Further Reading:

• It’s time for a radical rethink on Canada’s infrastructure planning
• How changes in building infrastructure can truly combat climate change
• How infrastructure has historically promoted inequality
• New report finds costs of climate change impacts often underestimated
• Three Infrastructure Issues To Solve In 2023

MaRS helps entrepreneurs looking to scale solutions in climate tech, health and software. We offer targeted support through our Capital and Growth Acceleration programs. To learn more visit us at marsdd.com 

The future of the automobile is electric. Yet the surge in electric vehicles raises critical concerns regarding battery creation, disposal and recycling. What will happen once all those cars reach the end of the road? In this episode of Solve for X, we address the environmental footprint of EV batteries, confront the challenges posed by the existing regulatory landscape and highlight opportunities for second-life applications. It turns out that batteries are capable of more than you might expect, and can teach us a lot about how to design for the future.

Featured in this episode:

• Andy Latham is the founder and CEO of Salvage Wire, an auto recycling consultancy based in the United Kingdom. As an automotive engineer and entrepreneur, he teaches auto salvagers how to safely handle EV batteries, aiming to promote advancements in auto recycling globally.
• Jessica Dunn is a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Her research looks at the potential of recycling and repurposing of lithium-ion batteries.
• Claus Eckbo is the owner and director of God’s Pocket Resort, an off-grid scuba lodge in British Columbia that uses repurposed EV batteries for both energy generation and storage.
• Edward Chiang is the co-founder and CEO of Moment Energy. The company’s  innovative solution converts electric vehicle batteries into sustainable energy storage systems for microgrid, commercial and industrial customers.

Further Reading:

• Canada is pouring billions of dollars into the electric vehicle industry
• Cars Are Going Electric. What Happens to the Used Batteries?
• Guiding Principles for EV Battery Recycling Policy
• God’s Pocket Scuba Diving Resort Goes Green with Moment Energy
• How old electric car batteries could power the future

MaRS helps entrepreneurs looking to scale solutions in climate tech, health and software. We offer targeted support through our Capital and Growth Acceleration programs. To learn more visit us at marsdd.com 

Wastewater, the world’s dirty (not so little) secret, consumes nearly 3 percent of the global electricity demand. It’s a staggering statistic, and yet much of what actually happens with wastewater remains a mystery. Treatment plants typically purify water by infusing it with oxygen, creating an environment where bacteria can break down waste. But without proper sensors or data, the method is incredibly energy-intensive. Plus with an influx of unregulated chemicals, our waste streams are becoming more toxic and harder to clean. In this episode of Solve for X, environmental microbiologist Patrick Kiely shares his unusual solution that harnesses the power of bacteria to help solve our wastewater problem. Unpleasant yet fascinating, Kiely’s work offers a glimpse into what it takes to clean our water and why treating wastewater is the next big climate problem. 

Featured in this episode:

• Patrick Kiely is the CEO and founder of SENTRY, a real-time monitoring biosensor system for wastewater treatment. With extensive training in environmental microbiology, his unique knowledge of bacterial growth across diverse environments forms the basis for advanced decision-making in water and wastewater technologies.

Further Reading:

• How tackling wastewater can help corporations achieve climate goals
• Phosphorus saved our way of life — and now threatens to end it
• “Water scarcity on a scale that we haven’t seen before” is coming
• The energy sector should care about wastewater
• Government of Canada backs innovative company pioneering new wastewater treatment technology

MaRS helps entrepreneurs looking to scale solutions in climate tech, health and software. We offer targeted support through our Capital and Growth Acceleration programs. To learn more visit us at marsdd.com 

The next pandemic — it’s a question of when not if. Climate change is shifting the patterns of how and where diseases spread, and our insatiable love of travel means that viruses are now showing up in places they’ve never been before. Forecasting future outbreaks is becoming increasingly complex. But as infectious disease specialist Kamran Khan explains, this is where AI can help. Machine learning algorithms can detect patterns in data, model risk and project outcomes — and unlike humans they can work 24 hours a day. In this episode of Solve for X, host Manjula Selvarajah sits down with Khan to explore the connections between infectious disease and climate change — and how we can best harness the technology to help us prepare.

Featured in this episode:

• Kamran Khan is an infectious disease physician and founder and CEO of BlueDot, a startup that has created a tool that maps the spread of infectious diseases. BlueDot’s AI software uses natural language processing to interpret global health outbreak reports, integrating this data with flight patterns, demographic statistics, and human verification processes to alert and monitor disease risks worldwide.

Further Reading:

• My Prediction: We’re due for another global health emergency
• Over half of known human pathogenic diseases can be aggravated by climate change
• This AI will help us get ahead of the next pandemic
• From Gateways to Sentinels: How Airports Can Use Detection to Control Infection
• An AI Epidemiologist Sent the First Warnings of the Wuhan Virus

MaRS helps entrepreneurs looking to scale solutions in climate tech, health and software. We offer targeted support through our Capital and Growth Acceleration programs. To learn more visit us at marsdd.com 

Scientists are finding that ocean alkalinity enhancement is one of the more promising solutions for permanently storing carbon from the atmosphere. And not only could this emerging technology help with the climate crisis, it could also address another key problem: acidity in the ocean, which is endangering ecosystems. In this premiere episode of the second season of Solve for X: Innovations to Change the World, host Manjula Selvarajah explores how this technology could help and what still needs to be figured out.

Featured in this episode:

• Claudia Benitez-Nelson is an oceanographer who teaches at the University of South Carolina’s School of Earth, Oceans and Environment. Her research focuses on the ocean’s role in sequestration of greenhouse gasses, and the processes that shape the movement of materials from the ocean’s surface to its depths.
• Will Burt is the chief ocean scientist at Planetary Technologies. As a biogeochemist and oceanographer by training, he devises strategies on how we can measure and add alkalinity to the ocean.
• Eddie Halfyard is the co-founder and chief technology officer at Carbon Run. He’s also a research scientist with the Nova Scotia Salmon Association, pursuing freshwater alkalinity enhancement to restore salmon habitats.
• Sara Nawaz is a social scientist who studies the public perception of ocean-based negative emissions technology. She’s also the director of research at the Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy at American University, and is affiliated with UBC and Oxford University.
• Matthew Long, oceanographer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, serves both as co-founder and Executive Director of [C]Worthy. He and his team are developing the tools required for safe and effective ocean-based carbon removal.

Further Reading:

• Using new research techniques scientists find Atlantic salmon are still returning to many Nova Scotia rivers
• Halifax scientists have a plan to capture carbon from the atmosphere using mining materials
• Does ocean acidification alter fish behavior? Fraud allegations create a sea of doubt
• Warning on Mass Extinction of Sea Life: 'An Oh My God Moment'
• Take Care Before Enlisting the Oceans in the Climate Fight

MaRS works closely with ventures to help them scale their innovations. It created the Mission from MaRS initiative to help speed up the adoption of climate solutions. Mission from MaRS thanks its partners, HSBC Bank Canada, Grantham Foundation, RBC Tech for Nature and Peter Gilgan Foundation. Learn more about the program at missionfrommars.ca.

MaRS helps entrepreneurs looking to scale solutions in climate tech, health and software. We offer targeted support through our Capital and Growth Acceleration programs. To learn more visit us at marsdd.com 

Solve for X is your window on the future. Each episode, journalist Manjula Selvarajah goes behind the hype and headlines to make sense of how new technologies are reshaping our world. Can we predict the next pandemic? What if we geoengineer the oceans to stop climate change? Could robots help preserve wildlife? Find answers to these questions and more in the new series of Solve for X.

Solve for X is brought to you by MaRS. All episodes were produced by Ellen Payne Smith. Gab Harpelle is our mix engineer, Lara Torvi and Heather O’Brien are the associate producers. David Paterson is the senior editor. Mack Swain composed the theme song and all the music in our series. Kathryn Hayward is the executive producer.

MaRS helps entrepreneurs looking to scale solutions in climate tech, health and software. We offer targeted support through our Capital and Growth Acceleration programs. We want to hear from you — drop us a line to share your ideas, questions and feedback. Email us at media@marsdd.com, and to learn more visit us at marsdd.com.

MaRS helps entrepreneurs looking to scale solutions in climate tech, health and software. We offer targeted support through our Capital and Growth Acceleration programs. To learn more visit us at marsdd.com