Research Projects

2025-26

Project 1: Clothing and Personal Protection for Members of the Canadian Armed Forces: Physical Properties and Performance Implications

The goal of this work is to better understand the comfort, health, safety, and performance implications of in-service and prototype Canadian Armed Forces individual clothing and protective equipment. Assessment procedures may include biophysical testing of the heat transfer properties of clothing and protection, human physiological testing under controlled laboratory conditions, and physical performance evaluations.

Team Members:

Lani Campbell

Master’s Student

Hangfei Duan

PhD Student

Celine Balay

PhD Student

Nadia Abdollahi

Master’s Student

Lisa Masini

PhD Student

Project 2: Visual Comfort for Augmented Reality Applications

The visual appearance of augmented reality (AR) content can greatly affect their effectiveness and user experience (e.g., comfort by causing eye strain). By combining research on human factors and visual perception, this project will explore the visual design of virtual content shown on AR glasses in-situ. Students are invited to consider different elements pertaining to visual comfort (such as legibility, luminance and color contrasts, eye strain) and how they may be optimized and maintained across physical environments and user tasks.

Team Members:

Amir Hossein Khalili

Master’s Student

Samin Muhammad Hassan

Master’s Student

Cori Calkins

PhD Student

Hamza Anwar

Master’s Student

Razieh Larizadeh

Master’s Student

Bahare Mazinani

PhD Student

2024-25

Project 1: Identification and Analysis of Physically Measurable Human Physiology Factors that Influences Comfort

Any comfort prediction model relies on a combination of input parameters fed into an algorithm to estimate a human comfort vote. In this proposed project, researchers will complete a multi-level study to identify and evaluate measurable factors that shape individual perceptions of physical comfort. From the perspective of the human, what are the sensory inputs that feed the brain, and ultimately shape the overall comfort perception? After sensory inputs are identified, they will be individually studied for how they can be measured on humans, and what existing technologies are currently in use to replicate or mimic the sensor input. This project forms the foundation for ongoing and future projects designing physical sensors for manikins, understanding the sensory inputs to the brain, and ultimately developing advanced predictive comfort models that are rooted in underlying human physiological factors.

Team Members: