About MacSphere

MacSphere is McMaster University's Institutional Repository (IR). The purpose of an IR is to bring together all of a University's research under one umbrella, with an aim to preserve and provide access to that research. The research and scholarly output included in MacSphere has been selected and deposited by the individual university departments and centres on campus.

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Recent Submissions

Stream-Based Intelligent Memory Architectures for High-Performance and Predictable Real-Time Systems
(2026) Abotaleb, Abdelrhman Mohamed Ibrahim Sayed
Emerging cyber-physical platforms such as autonomous vehicles and unmanned aerial systems increasingly integrate high-throughput workloads (e.g., perception and machine learning) with safety-critical real-time control on the same multicore, multi-channel Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM)-based system. While processor cores continue to scale, the memory system remains a major bottleneck: conventional hardware prefetchers and memory controllers are largely oblivious to program structure, leading to poor bandwidth utilization, high energy, and highly variable memory access latency that undermines real-time guarantees. This dissertation proposes a unified Hardware/Software (HW/SW) interface that leverages software-provided information, known prior to execution, to describe future memory access behavior to the hardware. A stream defines the underlying large, array-like data structure over which this access behavior, whether regular or irregular, occurs. Using compact stream descriptors, the software communicates future access sequences to a centralized hardware engine, which tags last-level cache misses and coordinates stream-aware optimizations across the memory hierarchy. Leveraging this interface, the thesis introduces three architectures: First, InterStellar and its multi-channel extension InterStellar 2.0 implement stream-aware DRAM controllers that perform intelligent page management and proactive DRAM-aware batching, substantially improving effective bandwidth and reducing row conflicts. Second, InterStellarRT adapts the same principles to real-time systems by forming analyzable real-time batches and applying a predictable scheduling policy, enabling tight worst-case memory-latency bounds for stream-based memory patterns. Third, COMPASS co-designs a stream-aware last-level cache prefetcher with a stream-aware memory controller, coordinating prefetch issuance with DRAM batching to reduce effective miss latency while sustaining high throughput. Evaluated across a broad set of scientific and high-performance computing workloads, these three architectures deliver substantial performance and energy improvements over state-of-the-art baselines. InterStellarRT, in addition, provides significantly tighter and formally analyzable worst-case latency bounds compared to contemporary real-time memory controllers. Collectively, the contributions demonstrate that stream-based memory intelligence is an effective approach to mitigating the memory-system vibottleneck in modern multicore platforms that integrate cache prefetching mechanisms and multi-channel DRAM subsystems The implementations of InterStellar 2.0, InterStellarRT, and COMPASS are available in the project repository: https://gitlab.com/fanosteam/fanosgem5. Each architecture is provided in a separate branch: 1) InterStellar 2.0 : https://gitlab.com/fanosteam/fanosgem5/-/tree/InterStellar-2.0 2) InterStellarRT https://gitlab.com/fanosteam/fanosgem5/-/tree/InterStellarRT 3) COMPASS https://gitlab.com/fanosteam/fanosgem5/-/tree/COMPASS
Electrochemical Carbon Dioxide Conversion into Multi-Carbon Products on Copper-Based Catalysts: from Materials to Real-World Application
(2026) Amirhossein Kora Rakhsha
In this project, we aim to transform carbon dioxide (CO₂), a key contributor to climate change, into valuable fuels and chemicals such as ethylene and ethanol, through electrocatalysis. By using renewable electricity, we seek to create a carbon-neutral pathway that reduces reliance on fossil fuels. We are particularly interested in fabrication of reliable catalysts (in this case copper-based ones), and understanding their behavior during the electrochemical reaction by using advanced characterization techniques that allow us to monitor them in real time. Ultimately, by connecting this CO₂ conversion process with existing carbon capture technologies, we hope to demonstrate a practical solution that can be scaled up for real-world application.
AI-Driven Cardiorespiratory Signal Processing: Separation, Clustering, and Anomaly Detection
(2025) Torabi, Yasaman
This thesis applies artificial intelligence (AI) to separate, cluster, and analyze cardiorespiratory sounds. We recorded a new dataset and developed several AI models, including generative AI methods based on large language models (LLMs) for guided separation, explainable AI (XAI) techniques to interpret latent representations, variational autoencoders (VAEs) for waveform separation, a chemistry-inspired non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) algorithm for clustering, and a quantum convolutional neural network (QCNN) designed to detect abnormal physiological patterns. The performance of these AI models depends on the quality of the recorded signals. Therefore, this thesis also reviews the biosensing technologies used to capture biomedical data. Together, these studies show how AI and next-generation sensors can support more intelligent diagnostic systems for future healthcare.
Healthcare utilization and preventive care among social housing residents compared to the general population during the COVID19 pandemic in Ontario, Canada: A population-based cohort study
(Frontiers in Public Health, 2026-01) Gina Agarwal; Homa Keshavarz; Ricardo Angeles; Melissa Pirrie; Francine Marzanek; Francis Nguyen; Jasdeep Brar; Michael Paterson; Christie Koester; Mikayla Plishka; Guneet Mahal; Sahar Popal; Manasvi Vanama
Introduction: To examine disparities in influenza vaccination and screening for breast, cervical, and colorectal cancers among adults living in social housing compared to the general population of Ontario, Canada, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A population-based cohort study was conducted using linked administrative health data from Ontario, Canada. We studied individuals aged 18 and older who were alive on January 1, 2020. Social housing sites were identified using the 2023 cycle of the Social Housing of Ontario Registry. The complement cohort comprised adults not residing in social housing. Receipt of influenza vaccination and screening for cervical (Pap test), breast (mammography), and colorectal [fecal immunochemical test (FIT)/fecal occult blood test (FOBT)/sigmoidoscopy/colonoscopy] cancers were analyzed using data from the Ontario Breast Screening Program (OBSP), Ontario Cancer Registry (OCR), Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) Database, and Primary Care Population Database (PCPOP). Age-standardized rates and rate differences between the social housing population and complement cohort were compared for the pre-COVID-19 (2018 and 2019) and COVID-19 (2020 and 2021) periods. Results: The social housing cohort included 297,644 individuals, while the complement cohort had 11,386,078 individuals. The social housing cohort had higher proportions of older adults (≥60 years) and females. Age- and sex-standardized disparities in influenza vaccination (≥1 dose in 2-year period) between social housing residents and the complement cohort widened during the COVID-19 pandemic from −0.30 to −1.84%, with the largest gaps observed among adults aged 80 and older. While age- and sex-standardized disparities in breast and cervical cancer screening narrowed, they remained significant. In contrast, the age- and sex-standardized disparity in colorectal cancer screening increased from −7.42 to −9.69%, particularly among males and older adults aged 60–74. Discussion: Disparities in healthcare utilization and preventive care between social housing residents and the complement cohort persisted or widened during the COVID-19 pandemic, most notably for influenza vaccination and colorectal cancer screening. Narrowing of some screening disparities was primarily attributed to overall declines in screening rates rather than improved access. These findings emphasize the need for targeted, equity-focused public health strategies to improve access to preventive healthcare services for socially and economically disadvantaged populations.
Where Low-income Seniors Receive their Heart Health and Diabetes Information: A Cross-Sectional Survey
(BMC Public Health, 2025-12) Pauneez Sadri; Momina Abbas; Christie Koester; Melissa Pirrie; Ricardo Angeles; Francine Marzanek; Mikayla Plishka; Guneet Mahal; Jasdeep Brar; Sahar Popal; Manasvi Vanama; Gina Agarwal
Background: Older adults (> 55 years), in particular low-income older adults, have lower health literacy than the rest of the Canadian population. Lower health literacy is related to several negative health outcomes such as poor diabetes control and other physical and mental health problems. Canada's rising ageing population requires an age-friendly system that reduces the dependency on the Canadian health care system. This study investigated the Health Information Seeking Behaviour of low-income seniors living in social housing across five Ontario regions to determine how to improve healthcare outcomes and the performance of the Ontario healthcare system. Methods: This cross-sectional study included in-person interviews guided by the Health Awareness and Behaviour Tool (HABiT) survey. Interviews were conducted with older adults from 16 social housing buildings in five Ontario communities between May 2014 and January 2015. Questionnaire responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics and simple logistics regressions. Results: 625 individuals completed the HABiT survey. The majority of participants sought out health information at the doctor's office; 515 participants received health information from a doctor or nurse about keeping their heart healthy and 471 about preventing diabetes. Females were more than twice as likely to receive health information about heart health from family members, media sources, and pharmacists than males. Those aged > 84 years were the least likely to use media sources and were almost three times as likely to contact a doctor or nurse for heart health information compared to middle-aged participants. Adults with higher post-secondary education were more likely to use the Internet as a source of health information compared to high school graduates. Conclusions: Family physicians with older adult patients could better supplement their health assessments by promoting and explaining educational brochures, and ensuring that they address these health topics to better communicate chronic disease prevention.

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