The 2024/2025 granting period marked the first time the TLCERF awarded a $15,000 grant, in addition to a second $10,000 grant. The Foundation would like to celebrate the achievements of the 2024 grant recipients and recognise all the work they have accomplished over their funding period. Below is a recap of grant recipients’ research activities and accomplishments for the past year. We wish Deborah and Shane the best of luck with the remainder of their research and look forward to catching up with them again in the future!
Deborah Braide – Development and optimization of a conceptual design for a plant converting CO2 into clean aviation fuels
Polytechnique Montréal (PhD, Materials Engineering)
- Deborah has successfully optimized ultrasound-assisted synthesis parameters for zeolite A membranes, resulting in a peer-reviewed publication in the Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering (2025). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213343725048778
- Deborah’s work was also presented at the 2025 Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference (CSChE 2025). Deborah participated as both an attendee and volunteer at the 34th North American Membrane Society Annual Meeting (NAMS 2025), engaging with global researchers and receiving valuable feedback that is shaping ongoing experimental design.
- Deborah was awarded the 2025 Hydro-Québec Excellence Scholarship and the 2025 Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) Council on Women in Energy & Environmental Leadership (CWEEL) Scholarship.
- Deborah has supervised 2 international interns and 1 master’s student, supporting them to conduct research and experimental work.
- Current efforts are focused on synthesizing and testing zeolite membranes under varying separation conditions, with the goal of improving efficiency in carbon dioxide (CO₂) conversion processes.
- Deborah is hoping to complete her PhD in 2026 and pursue a career at the intersection of sustainable energy technology, commercialization, and advisory, contributing to the global clean energy transition.
Shane Orgnero – Engineering Synthetic Microbial Consortia for Carbon-Efficient Waste to Chemicals Production
University of Toronto (PhD, Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry)
- Shane has successfully demonstrated internal carbon recycling in microbial consortia that convert food-waste analogue chemicals to medium-chain fatty acids in addition to demonstrating “multi-flow” carbon utilization strategies that integrate both food-waste and gas-waste conversion.
- Final works are underway to demonstrate alternative chemical flow routes; the current strategy utilizes acetate, and current experiments seek to better utilize acetate as well as to expand CO2 capture to ethanol. This is in addition to a final demonstration in bioreactors.
- The microbial tri-culture work was presented at the ECI Conference “Biochemical and Molecular Engineering XXIII” in Dublin, in 2024, and is expected to be submitted for publication in summer of 2026.
- Elsewhere, the antimicrobial project is progressing well, with targets and antimicrobial peptides selected, and genetic constructs for the peptides designed. Current work utilizes cell-free protein production to examine the efficacy of the peptides to prevent the growth of contaminating strains.
- Shane is enjoying mentoring fellow graduate students in the toxic protein/genetic engineering, and is leading efforts to expand this work with Canadian Industry partners via joint grant applications
- Shane hopes to complete his PhD in the summer of 2027, and is hoping to find a job where he can help to drive synthetic biology towards both profitability but also sustainability, through both scientific work but also personal leadership.
