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Recent Submissions

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    Roadway Illumination Level Assessment for Driver Safety and Comfort: A Multimodal Human Factors Evaluation of Visual Behavior, Physiological Arousal, and Driving Performance in a High-Fidelity Driving Simulator
    (University of Waterloo, 2026-04-16) Abdalla, Shene
    Nighttime driving remains a major road safety concern because reduced illumination can impair visibility, delay hazard detection, and increase visual strain. Although roadway lighting is intended to improve safety, greater brightness does not always produce better driving conditions. Excessive illumination may introduce glare, discomfort, and unnecessary energy use without meaningfully improving driver response. This thesis investigates how different nighttime illuminance levels influence driver safety and comfort by examining their relationship with multimodal safety-related measures, with the aim of identifying the illumination level that best supports visual detection, driving performance, physiological stability, and perceived visibility, comfort, and safety. A controlled mixed-design experiment was led in a high-fidelity virtual driving simulator using a replicated real-world street environment under three nighttime illuminance levels, low, medium, and high, established in accordance with roadway lighting standards. Thirty licensed drivers participated in the study, equally divided between younger adults aged 20 to 45 years and older adults aged 65 years and above. Driver response was evaluated using a multimodal framework integrating eye-tracking (Time to First Fixation (TTFF), Dwell Time), simulator-based driving measures (PRT, Speed, Hazard-related Deceleration), physiological markers (Heart Rate (HR), Electrodermal Activity (EDA)), subjective ratings of perceived visibility, comfort, and safety, and qualitative feedback. The results showed a clear relationship between illuminance level and driver response. Low illuminance was associated with delayed visual detection, slower hazard response, higher physiological arousal, and poorer ratings of visibility, comfort, and safety. Increasing illuminance from low to medium improved TTFF and PRT, enhanced perceived visibility and comfort, and supported greater physiological stability, whereas increasing illuminance from medium to high produced little additional benefit and occasionally introduced glare-related discomfort. Older adults showed higher physiological arousal and more conservative braking behavior than younger adults, but both age groups followed the same overall pattern across illuminance levels. Overall, the findings show that effective nighttime roadway lighting is not achieved by maximizing brightness, but by selecting an illumination level that supports visual effectiveness, driver response, comfort, and physiological stability. Among the conditions examined, medium illuminance provided the most favorable overall balance for safer and more efficient driving. These findings provide practical guidance for roadway lighting design and planning by suggesting that moderate illumination may offer the most effective balance between safety, comfort, and physiological stability.
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    Personality, Individuality, and the Social Lives of Bats
    (University of Waterloo, 2026-04-16) Ryan, Caleb
    Individual animals are unique and often differ substantially in their behaviour. Explaining how and why behavioural variation persists among individuals is central to behavioural ecology and requires methods that can capture both stability and uncertainty in complex data. In this thesis, I use a modelling approach to estimate the repeatability of behaviours observed from subjective assessments, standardized personality assays, and long-term monitoring of social interactions in the wild. Using bats as a study system, I investigate the extent of individual behavioural variation, how consistent differences contribute to sociality, and how individuality persists over evolutionary time. In Chapter 2, “Conserving cryptic complexity: Bats with broker roles structure the maternity societies of an endangered bat species”, I examine how individuals with distinct social roles contribute to the cohesion of Little Brown Bat (Myotis lucifugus) maternity colonies. I use a permutation-based network analysis to determine the positions of individuals in the social network across multiple years. My results reveal that a small subset of individuals can consistently act as brokers, meaning they bridge otherwise disconnected roost-area subgroups and maintain population-level social cohesion. Given that the same phenomenon is observed in two separate maternity societies of different sizes, this result suggests that these individualized social roles may be a feature of little brown bat sociality. Further, these results simulate how the loss of a small number of individuals from bat populations post-white-nose syndrome could have devastating impacts on social cohesion. This highlights the need to protect surviving individuals that persist on the landscape following population collapse. In Chapter 3, “Experimentally quantified personality traits are consistent across multiple years yet cannot explain observed differences in the social behaviour of bats on the landscape”, I test whether consistent individual differences in social behaviour among Little Brown Bats are linked to personality. Here I combine Bayesian social relations models of network structure with Bayesian hierarchical models of personality test scores to statistically propagate uncertainty from both social network estimates and behavioural assays into a joint analysis. I find strong evidence that behavioural tendencies are repeatable within individuals across multiple years. This finding is consistent with the concept of personality. However, assayed personality traits do not predict individual differences in social network positions, despite the repeatability of both. These findings suggest that personality and social network position, though both individually consistent, may be shaped by different processes. In Chapter 4, “Statistically upset: Fear response as a species-typical behaviour among neotropical bats”, I extend my behavioural comparison to apply a subjective personality assay to quantify fear-response behaviour in >3400 individuals from 55 Neotropical bat species across four countries. Using Bayesian hierarchical and phylogenetic mixed models, I investigate the sources of among-individual behavioural variation across species at multiple levels. I find that fear-response exhibits weak phylogenetic signal, with closely related species often differing markedly. I also find that species-typical fear-responses remain consistently distinct across geographic regions, suggesting that fear-response is a result of species-level differences and not shared environmental factors. None of the explanations for variation in fear-response investigated yielded positive results. That is, neither individual physiology nor species’ ecological and social traits explained the observed variation. Finally, I show that consistent individual differences are detectable across species, suggesting that species-level divergence in fear-response may arise through the accumulation of within-species individuality.
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    The examination of bacteriophage M13-based miniphagemids as a platform for the delivery of genetic material for neuronal applications
    (University of Waterloo, 2026-04-16) St Jean, Jesse
    M13-derived vectors have been shown to deliver foreign genetic material in vitro as well as bypass the blood-brain barrier, offering a promising approach to gene therapy applications that target the brain. Miniphagemid particles combine the capsid architecture of M13, which enables cellular targeting through peptide display, with a minimized genetic sequence, creating a highly modular vector. Despite the potential of these particles, their novelty and unique biology have limited the examination of their interaction with neuronal cells. This thesis examines the tailoring of miniphagemid particles to neuronal applications though neuropeptide display and transcriptional control. The outlined changes did not result in a significant increase in transfection efficiency in neuronal cells, instead revealing the unsuitability of the promoter used and ssDNA. Although, the specific application to neuronal cultures was unsuccessful, the use of a novel characterization method in miniphagemid particle analysis, specifically multi-angle dynamic light scattering, illustrated a substantial issue in current production methods; highlighting the current overreliance on functional quantification methods and supporting multi-angle dynamic light scattering as a physical method to determine miniphagemid particle purity.
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    Seeing past the clutter: what stuff really matters?
    (University of Waterloo, 2026-03-27) Robichaud, Danielle
    The stuff in our lives is inescapable. Objects, souvenirs, and the items that signal who we are to the world carry deep meaning to us making the process of figuring out what to do with it all a daunting challenge. Drawing on lived experience navigating the death of a parent, the relocation of another, and the professional training of an archivist, this talk will explore the complicated relationship we all have with stuff and the need to get comfortable with letting it go by focusing on what really matters.
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    Effects of Heat Treatment on the Temperature Coefficient of Resistivity of Laser Fabricated NiCr Flexible Sensors
    (University of Waterloo, 2026-04-15) Almomani, Hashem
    Advancements in automation, flexible electronics and embedded sensing systems has increased the demand for specifically designed and customizable sensors. This includes thin film resistive sensors with customizable electrical properties and long-term stability. Nickel chromium (NiCr) alloys are widely used in resistive sensors due to their chemical stability, high resistivity, and low temperature coefficient of resistivity (TCR); however, controlling TCR remains a challenge in novel sensor fabrication methods, such as laser ablation. Laser ablation offers a promising alternative to conventional lithography-based fabrication due to its low process complexity, rapid prototyping capabilities, and compatibility with flexible substrates. In this work, NiCr thin films were heat treated over a range of temperatures and hold times to modify their electrical and microstructural properties. Following heat treatment, the thin film samples were hot pressed between two polyimide sheets and patterned into flexible resistive sensors using UV laser ablation. The laser fabrication process was optimized through investigation of processing parameters, including laser power, number of passes, and environmental factors. The influence of these parameters on feature geometry, resistance control, and fabrication repeatability was evaluated, and laser fabricated sensors were benchmarked against commercially manufactured resistive sensors. Heat treatment was found to significantly reduce the magnitude of TCR, while improving resistance stability. Microstructural and compositional changes were characterized using scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy, and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The results indicate that surface compositional changes and oxidation influence electrical properties more than bulk changes in thin films. These findings demonstrate that pre-fabrication heat treatment is an effective strategy for tailoring the TCR of laser fabricating NiCr thin film sensors for flexible sensor applications.