Five issues of critical importance to British Columbia—transportation, electrical grid integration, energy efficient buildings, forestry, and natural gas development—form the basis for five major projects from PICS to be underway May 1.

When UVic engineering professor Dr. Reuven Gordon describes the biomedical engineering technique of listening to and recording the “voice” of proteins, it sounds a lot like a modern take on Horton Hears a Who, Dr. Seuss’s children’s story of an elephant who hears a voice calling from a microscopic dust speck. “Everything small has resonances. Everything has a voice,” Gordon says of the protein molecules measuring a single nanometer in size—the building blocks of life that are a million times smaller than an ant and emit sound at a frequency a million times higher than the human ear can hear.

If getting to the top of your favourite ski hill involves a tow rope this season, you might thank an engineer for the lift—and give a thought to how the profession works to ensure that a safe, smooth ride can be enjoyed by all.

Some people are born leaders, and convocating graduate Tiffany Yu undoubtedly falls into that category. Never one to shy away from a challenge, Yu saw a need in the Faculty of Engineering and set out to create change, becoming heavily involved with the Engineering Student Society (ESS). After attending the National Conference on Women in Engineering, Yu was inspired to create a women in engineering group at UVic. With help from faculty members and fellow ESS members Taylor Entz and Alisa Minderova, Leadership Through Diversity was born.

Researchers all over the world dream of making new discoveries in well-established fields, but engineering grad Ana Zehtabi-Oskuie’s path has gone straight to the edge of an emerging field. While studying Electrical Engineering at the University of Tehran, Zehtabi-Oskuie became intrigued by optical trapping, a method pioneered in 2009 by electrical engineering professor Dr. Reuven Gordon, a team of UVic grad students and Dr. Romain Quidant at the Europe-based Institute of Photonic Sciences.

An energy harvester that converts knee bends into battery power for cell phones; a wireless personal ECG monitor that transmits electrical signals to a remote cardiologist; a smart hard hat that sends data to a safety station; a bracelet that transf…