The commitment that RRC Polytech’s Prairie Research Kitchen (PRK) makes to support Manitoba’s vibrant food production industry, provide unique learning experiences to students and give back to the community was recognized last week with a prestigious award. On Thursday evening, Food & Beverage Manitoba hosted its first Harvest Dinner and Awards Ceremony since the pandemic and named PRK its Associate of the Year, proudly sharing the honour with Sobey’s.

The winner of the Associate of the Year award consistently provides exceptional value to Food & Beverage Manitoba members. Using a unique blend of food science and culinary arts, PRK’s team of chefs, researchers and students work together tirelessly to develop creative solutions that support food processors and food service providers. As a Technology Access Centre (TAC) PRK supports businesses through:

• Applied research, including food prototyping, ingredient applications, food process modifications and consumer research trials.
• Technical services such as student recipe development, food photography, trade show support and clinical trial prototypes and products.
• Training on new ingredients as well as cooking or preservation methods emerging in the food and food service industries.

Since its inception in 2014, PRK has worked on over 120 projects with Manitoba and Western Canadian companies developing or refining their products for market and ensuring companies stretch their research dollars by accessing the eligible funding available for product development. PRK encourages companies to consider sustainability in all outputs of their operation – and by working with their clients to upcycle leftover ingredients, PRK has redirected over 500 kg of food to Winnipeg’s most vulnerable through Main Street Project over the past two years.

In addition to training the province’s future food product developers, operators, scientists, chefs, and bakers; developing an Introduction to Research program for students studying Culinary Skills through the School of Indigenous Education; and participating in numerous events, tours and outreach events; PRK team members also made time to sit on various student and industry panels, committees and advisory boards to help shape the future of the sector. 

Congratulations to the multi-disciplinary team at Prairie Research Kitchen for building strong relationships with industry, helping great food products and ideas reach the tables of consumers, and playing a role in creating jobs and economic benefit for all Manitobans.

About Food & Beverage Manitoba

Food & Beverage Manitoba (formerly the Manitoba Food Processors Association) is an industry-led, not-for-profit association launched in 1993 to help the province’s food and beverage industry achieve its full creative and competitive potential. Its mission is to provide members with services and resources that help them navigate opportunities and challenges so they can elevate and strengthen their businesses.

RRC Polytech is once again one of Canada’s top research institutions, as announced last week in Re$earch Infosource’s annual ranking of the country’s top 50 research colleges. The College jumped three spots from last year’s 14^th place position.

RRC Polytech comes in first place in the prairies in the Spotlight on College Research Activity – Medium Tier category, and third place for research partnerships nationwide. The College completed 93 applied research projects in the 2021 fiscal year.

“Partnerships are at the heart of everything we do at RRC Polytech. We work with industry everyday to come up with innovative, sustainable solutions to business problems. Thanks to the support from our partners in the community, industry, and government, we can continue to make positive change here in Manitoba and throughout the country,” says Jamie Wilson, Vice President, Indigenous Strategy, Research and Business Development at RRC Polytech.

“This national recognition reinforces that ground-breaking work doesn’t happen in a silo. It takes a community of creative staff, students, and industry partners to achieve the results that place us so high on this list.”

An ongoing partnership between RRC Polytech’s Prairie Research Kitchen and Prairie Fava, a Glenboro, MB-based food start-up, and Big Mountain Foods, a Vancouver-based innovator of plant-based consumer packaged goods that resulted in an award-winning product is just one example of the innovative collaborations completed in the last year. A recent building airtightness test at Gordon Bell High School completed by RRC Polytech’s Building Efficiency Technology Access Centre (BETAC) that will help the high school reduce energy costs by 50 per cent is another.

“It’s a particular point of pride that many of our applied research successes focus on sustainable initiatives,” continues Wilson. “It’s important we utilize our technology and expertise to not only create impacts in industry, but to work towards a greener economy. I look forward to continuing working with our partners to make a difference in Canada’s applied research scene.”

RRC Polytech’s Research Partnerships & Innovation enterprise has operated out of the College since 2004, providing industry partners with applied research, technical services and training in areas that align with RRC Polytech’s expertise, resources and facilities, and with regional socio-economic demand.

“As Manitoba’s only polytechnic, we are partnering with industry and leading the way in applied research – to be recognized on a global stage is an incredible honour,” says Fred Meier, president & CEO, RRC.

RRC’s applied research is driven by demand and supports many important areas of Manitoba’s economy, while boosting development and opportunity in many emerging areas – from agricultural and culinary research, to manufacturing and aerospace, to applied computer technology and health sciences. Students benefit by working hands-on with industry on projects that solve real-world problems.

The WFCP Awards of Excellence honour higher standards in applied education institutions. WFCP last honoured RRC in 2018 with a Silver award in this category, at a ceremony in Melbourne, Australia.

China’s Wuxi Institute of Technology (WXIT) won Gold in this category, while RRC tied with another Canadian college, College La Cité, for Silver. China’s Jiangsu Agri-animal Husbandry Vocational College (JAHVC) took the Bronze. The awards took place in a virtual ceremony, due to the cancellation of this year’s WFCP World Congress.

“I went into culinary school knowing I didn’t want to work in food services,” she says. “But I didn’t know what else was out there.”

Having worked for her family’s glass business for 10 years before going back to school, Anna had developed a taste for the nine-to-five lifestyle – a schedule the fast-paced service industry doesn’t always allow.

This confusion about her future left her in a bit of a pickle, until she started her co-op work placement with RRC’s Culinary Research team, which operates out of the Prairie Research Kitchen on the 11^th floor of the Paterson GlobalFoods Institute (PGI). Anna credits her co-op placement with determining her career path.

Anna first encountered the Culinary Research team while cooking her way through Culinary School. The team would often pop up in her labs and classrooms – working with instructors and making presentations to students about the work they do with clients in the food development industry.

“When they told us they work on developing recipes and that they were looking for co-op students, I knew right away that’s what I wanted to do,” says Anna.

Now, after successfully completing her co-op placement, Anna has started working full-time with the Research team.

One of her first projects was working on a new consumer food product called Bump – a ground beef/plant protein blend aimed at the flexitarian market – with James Battershill from Juno Food Labs. Anna developed a delicious Bump kofta kebab recipe that’s a hit with the client (and everyone else who’s tasted it).

“Working on the Bump kofta is definitely a highlight for me,” says Anna. “It’s one of the first recipes I worked on, and the client now uses it as a sample. It’s quick, delicious, and shows how versatile the product is.”

Anna’s food photography highlights a pie whipped up in the Prairie Research Kitchen

An avid photographer, Anna started an Instagram account to document what two years of the RRC Culinary Arts program is like. She says one of the most rewarding aspects of her co-op is taking food photos for clients like James, who often end up using them for their own marketing purposes.

Anna’s hard work is now being rewarded, as she was recently named the Co-operative Education Manitoba (CEM) Co-op Student of the Year Award for 2019.

“This award shows how important this industry is,” she says. “It’s up and coming. The Culinary Research program is pretty new at Red River College, so this recognition is huge for the research program.”

She’s also no stranger to winning awards – Anna took home the second-place prize at last year’s Applied Research & Innovation Day for her soy-free tempeh project, which she developed alongside the Culinary Research team. She’ll also graduate at the top of her class at next week’s convocation ceremony and is preparing to apply for the National Co-Op Student Award.

Anna at Applied Research & Innovation Day 2019

Despite her success, Anna is quick to credit the amazing team she worked with for helping her get where she is.

“I really don’t feel like this is my award,” she says. “It’s our award. This wouldn’t have happened without Mavis, Heather, and Kyle from Culinary Research – this showcases our teamwork. I don’t want to take credit, it’s our credit.”

Now her co-op experience has come full circle, as she’s helping to mentor the next wave of Culinary Arts students who are working in the Prairie Research Kitchen. She continues to be an advocate of the co-op process and shares her experience regularly with students.

“The co-op program is the reason for my career path,” she says. “This award, my success – this all has to do with my co-op and working with Culinary Research.”

The event also demonstrated the future is bright for women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) – as women researchers took home the first, second, and third place prizes, as well as the people’s choice award. Here’s a look at their award-winning projects:

First Place:

Natural Language Processing – Chatbot

Student: Victoria McNab
School: Business and Applied Arts
Referred by: Randall Peters, Instructor – Business Information Technology

“This project aims to process millions of historical chat records, to develop an industry specific, assistive chatbot trained on this data using an offline environment, with no access to cloud computing resources. Rapid RTC provides online chat services to their customers, along with receptionist support. My goal is to use machine learning, and Natural Language Processing techniques to help the receptionists build better customer relationships by extracting the topics being discussed and analyzing the sentiment of the discussions. Using unsupervised machine learning, I applied the Latent Dirichlet Allocation algorithm to model the topics being discussed. In parallel, I applied statistical analysis techniques to manually determine topics, which gave me a result set to evaluate models against.”

Second Place:

Manitoba Soy-Free Tempeh

Student: Anna Borys
School/Program/Class: Culinary Arts
Referred by: Mavis McRae – Culinary Research and Innovation

“Tempeh is traditionally made from hulled soy beans, the purpose of the project is to create a non-soy tempeh, using a different source of pulses. Initially, we used traditional methods to making a yellow pea tempeh, however resulted in substandard product. To get a product that more closely resembles a more traditional tempeh, we altered cooking and culture variables. Although no clients were initially incorporated into this project, the work is applicable to companies such as Manitoba Pulse and Soy Growers Association, Best Cooking Pulses, AGT, or Prairie Fava. Further work to optimize product to commercial standards would be required.”

Third Place:

Acid-based Cleaning Solution for Animal Barns and Related Areas

Student(s): Erum Naz
School/Program/Class: Health Sciences and Community Services
Referred by: Said Hassan, Instructor

“This project involved developing an acid based cleaning solution for use in animal barns and related areas. This project was conducted for our client Precision Chemicals a Manitoba company which is primarily in the business of developing innovative solutions to farming problems. Precision Chemicals markets an alkaline barn cleaning solution, Bioshredder. However, the company wanted to also market an acid base solution. This project started by investigating various emulsifying and foaming agents. The project then proceeded by making various formulations and trying them in simulated real life environment. Eventually a product meeting the client’s specifications was developed and is being tried in the field.”

People’s Choice:

Reducing Post-Stroke Depression

Student(s): Samantha Eveleigh
School/Program/Class: Research and Scholarship in Nursing
Referred by: Meagan Chorney, Patrick Griffith

“Depression after stroke is considered a primary complication and can lead to decreased health outcomes. Despite this, there are limited studies that describe the individual’s experience with depression. With my lived experience of surviving a hemorrhagic stroke at the age of 18, my hope is to bridge the gap of knowledge and bring alive what is learned in theory.

Recovery from a stroke reveals depression in both immediate and long-term phases that may require intervention that could be led by nurses. Support to manage symptoms of depression can be led by nurses who are specialized in neurosurgery by leading a follow up after discharge either by telephone or by face-to-face interactions.”

The top three winners were all NSERC-supported projects, while Victoria McNab’s Natural Language Processing Chatbot also received support through IRAP.

“We’re honoured to receive this award from WFCP. It’s a wonderful celebration of the outstanding work our staff and students do every day,” said RRC President & CEO Paul Vogt. “As RPI enters its 15^thyear of operation, this award is a great way to both recognize the achievements we’ve made and to motivate us to continue reaching for greatness.”

The WFCP Awards of Excellence honour higher standards in applied education institutions. WFCP last honoured RRC in 2014 with a bronze award at a ceremony in Beijing, China.

“This award is another significant achievement for Applied Research at Red River College,” said Ray Hoemsen, director of Research Partnerships & Innovation at RRC. “For nearly 15 years we’ve been dedicated to working with partners to meet the needs of our community and to support community-based economic development. Receiving global recognition for these partnerships speaks to the outstanding quality of the research initiatives that happen at the College.”

Two other Canadian institutions were honoured in the same category – Niagara College was awarded the gold, while Mohawk College took the bronze.

RRC concentrates on four major areas of Applied Research: Advanced Design & Manufacturing, Clean Technology, Digital Technology, and Health, Nutrition & Social Sciences. This award recognizes RRC students, faculty, and staff for several notable projects, including the development of an all-electric transit bus now being sold across North America, delivery of the Science of Early Child Development, and the engagement of International Business students from more than 30 countries to produce Business and Market Intelligence reports for Canadian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The College continues to expand to support market needs in applied research. A new Culinary Research Centre that will empower researchers, faculty and students to collaborate with industry to create new products is currently under construction, while a vehicle test facility called the MotiveLab – that features a climatic chamber that reaches temperature highs of +50 C or lows of –40 C, no matter the outdoor temperature – is set to open at the Notre Dame Campus later this year.

Imagine a world where your vehicle drives itself, connects to the Internet, and charges just like your phone.

That’s how Joel Turner, a student in Red River College’s Electronic Engineering Technology program, describes the concept that won his group first place in the 2018 Electric Mobility Canada Kia Student Competition.

This is the first time an RRC team has won the competition, and the second time the College has entered.

“The benefits to our team’s solution are countless. The best of them are reduced air pollution, reduced vehicle maintenance cost, and better learning by having available data,” says Turner, who worked on the project with teammates from RRC’s Electronics Engineering Technology, Electrical Engineering Technology, Mechanical Engineering Technology and Business Administration programs.

Since 2012, the competition has tasked student groups with finding and presenting solutions that will advance the electric vehicle industry. This year’s competition asked what technological breakthrough will be a game-changer for e-mobility within five years, and why this will have a major impact on e-mobility at large.

The RRC team’s solution combines 5G (fifth-generation wireless technology) and new battery technology to connect the three current megatrends in transportation e-mobility: autonomous vehicles, electric vehicles and connected/shared vehicles. The vision points to an almost Jetsons-like world where vehicles are connected to each other and their surroundings to create a safer, more energy efficient driving environment.

“When we started this project the students already had background knowledge, so we challenged them to look further and see what technology we can use to enable 5G,” says Chris Basilio, Research Coordinator for the Vehicle Technology & Energy Centre (VTEC) at RRC, who assisted the students with their proposal.

“They were able to look at existing 4G infrastructure and what could happen if it were updated to 5G.”

Turner said the competition allowed him to use the knowledge he learned in class — specifically, how wireless communications are implemented and how networks are built and operated — while also helping him form a better understanding of what his instructors are teaching through applied learning.

“For the students, the competition can be an eye opener on what they will be doing when they graduate,” says Basilio. “They have the opportunity to see what’s out there in the industry, enrich their presentation skills and learn how to work with people who come from different areas of expertise.”

As part of their win, the team received a $2,000 prize from Kia Canada and had their solution shared at the 2018 Electric Vehicle Conference & Trade Show in Ottawa. The team took part in the competition with support from VTEC members Jeongsoo Bae, Bin Yang, Mike Oh and Jojo Delos Reyes.

Shown above: Garam Park (student), Jairuz Agang-Ang (student), Joel Turner (student), Xinzhi Liu (student), Seokmin Mike Oh (coach), Bin Yang (coach), Chris Basilio (coach/integrator).

Not shown: Students Keith-Daniel Cross, Ari Robinson and Justin Schroeder.

Participating in international competitions like this helps the College to continue building relationships and partnerships with other institutions from across the world. Students and instructors are given the opportunity to share knowledge and bring home new information and systems, allowing RRC to remain a leader in industry training.
The Nursing program at Red River College is a 32-month degree program including a senior practicum of 450 hours. The program is offered at RRC’s Notre Dame Campus, Portage la Prairie Campus and Winkler Campus. According to the latest RRC graduate report, 92 per cent of RRC Nursing grads are employed in their field.