One goal of biofabrication is to incorporate living cells into artificial scaffolds in order to repair damaged tissues or organs. Although there are many studies on various biofabrication techniques, the maintenance of cell viability during the biofabrication process and cell proliferation after the process is still a challenging issue. Construction of scaffolds using hydrogels composed of natural materials can avoid exposure of cells to harsh chemicals or temperature extremes but can still entail exposure to nonphysiological conditions, causing cell damage or even death. This paper presents an experimental investigation into the influence on Schwann cell survival and proliferation of calcium used for ionic crosslinking of alginate hydrogel during the biofabrication process. The experimental results obtained show the viability and proliferation capacity of cells, either suspended in cell culture medium or encapsulated in hydrogel, and vary with the calcium concentration and the time period of cells exposed to the calcium environment. The experimental results also show the alginate concentration and cell density, that have profound influence on cell survival and proliferation, and solution viscosity as well. This study suggests the incorporation of living cells in calcium-crosslinked hydrogel in the biofabrication process can be regulated for controlled cell survival and proliferation.

Mixtures of alginate and hydroxyapatite (HA) are promising materials for biomedical applications such as the fabrication of tissue scaffolds. In this paper, the flow behavior of alginate/HA mixtures was investigated and determined to be dependent on the concentration of both alginate and HA, and temperature. The relationships were mathematically established and verified with experimental results. As applied to the tissue scaffold fabrication, the flow rate of the biomaterial solution was predicted from the established flow behavior and verified by experiments. On this basis, the moving speed of the needle was determined and used in the tissue scaffold fabrication. The results obtained show that the knowledge of the flow behavior is essential to the fabrication of tissue scaffolds with an interconnected microstructure.

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With the rise of an innovation-based, technology-centric economy over the past two decades, there has been a shift in the market, enabling technological entrepreneurs to build business ventures that have realized accelerated growth and reached considerable scale. This “new economy” has created a need for individuals with a balanced skill set accompanying both business acumen, and technological innovation of complex systems.  In esponse to this need, post-secondary engineering education institutions are teaching more business and entrepreneurship content.  In Canada, most of the major post-secondary engineering education institutions offer some form of entrepreneurial education. However, approaches and programs offered by respective institutions vary in their approach to teaching engineering entrepreneurship, yielding a variety of different program implementations. There is, thus, a strong need to develop a Community of Practice focusing on engineering entrepreneurship education in Canada to foster a more rigorous and collaborative effort to evolve entrepreneurial teaching and learning.  This paper is a first attempt to document and interpret the current state of a select number of Canadian Engineering Entrepreneurship Education programs. The founding members of the Canadian Engineering Education Association’s (CEEA) Engineering Entrepreneurship and technology innovation (EETI) Special Interest Group (SIG) have collaboratively collected information regarding the current practice of Engineering Entrepreneurship education within their affiliated institutions. This paper examines the Institutional Context, Strategy, Business Infrastructure, as well as the programs employed for Teaching and Learning at both the Undergraduate and Graduate levels. Our goal is to present a snapshot of the current practice for which entrepreneurship education is delivered at the institutions for which the founding members of the EETI SIG reside, as well as, discuss how entrepreneurship intersects with the other areas of engineering education, for example, design, the maker space movement, and professionalism, as well as, many of the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board’s twelve graduate attributes.

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