Innovation Anthology #566:

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Winner in the Youth category at the 2013 Emerald Awards for Environmental Excellence is Kelcie Miller-Anderson.

At the age of 15, this young scientist from Calgary discovered a novel way to clean up oil sands tailings ponds.

Her inspiration was the ubiquitous dandelion.

KELCIE MILLER-ANDERSON: So what happened for me was I saw dandelions. And I saw one in particular growing through the asphalt in an alley behind my house. And it really led me to think, well, what allows dandelions to really grow everywhere?
And so I did a lot research and I found that it’s actually a fungi that allows that and enables them to grow almost anywhere. Back then when I was 15, my research started out with extracting this fungi from dandelions roots and applying it to soybean plants so that you could then apply it to a method of phyto-remediation. So plant based remediation in the tailings pond.
And from there it went into developing a method that ended up being oyster mushrooms. So using the fungi on its own.

With help from Syncrude and Alberta Innovates, Kelcie conducted her research in her parents’ basement. And her discovery breaks down tailings in three weeks.

Thanks today to Syncrude.

I’M CHERYL CROUCHER

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Syncrude

Program Date: 2013-06-18