Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research

Researcher Martin Hulak died last week at the age of 33, but his pioneering work will live on, say professors who held him in high regard.

Dr. Hulak, a post-doctoral fellow working with Hugh MacIsaac and Melania Cristescu at the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, was found dead outside his Windsor home on Wednesday, August 29. A native of Slovakia, he started working on campus in March 2012.

Before scientists like Galileo contributed to the development of the thermometer in the 17th century, there was no way to accurately measure and record temperature.

So when it comes to climate change, determining with any certainty whether it’s been naturally occurring over the last few hundred thousand years, or if it’s a more recent phenomenon, can be tricky business in the absence of any precise historical data to cite.

Live garden plants like water hyacinth and water lettuce are being sold right across the country despite the fact they represent a clear and unregulated threat to Canada’s aquatic ecosystems, according to a UWindsor biology professor who will appear as an expert on invasive species before a government standing committee in Ottawa on Wednesday.

Forward-thinking municipalities may one day be able to generate revenue from an unavoidable process on which they already spend millions of dollars if a UWindsor scientist can develop a process to create eco-friendly fuel from organic waste.

Subba Rao Chaganti, who works in professor Dan Heath’s lab at the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, is examining a microbial battery which can convert solid municipal waste in to ethanol.