Raylene Mitchell 0:00 Going forward, introducing Indigenous perspectives is important, not only for the survival of Indigenous people, but for the survival of all of us, because we know how to survive, we know how to be resilient, and we know how to design for the upcoming futures, because that's what we've been doing. Chris Yip 0:20 Welcome to Tell Me More: Coffee with Chris Yip, the official podcast of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering at the University of Toronto. Each month, I sit down with someone from our vibrant global community to talk about what places them at the heart of designing bold solutions for a better world. You'll meet alumni, students and professors who are making a difference across a range of fields, including some where you may not expect to find it. My guest today is Raylene Mitchell, a PhD student in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at U of T Engineering. Raylene is a fellow of the Indigenous and Black Engineering Technology Momentum Program, or IBET for short, and under the supervision of U of T Engineering's Professor David Sinton and Professor Michael Ross from Yukon University she is researching energy storage solutions and renewable energy infrastructure in Indigenous communities. Today, I'm looking forward to learning much more about her research and the important questions she is raising in her work. Raylene, welcome to the podcast. Raylene Mitchell 1:17 Thank you for having me. Chris Yip 1:18 Yeah, it's great. I'm looking forward to our chat today. I'm really interested in learning about what your what your project is about. U of T's proud to be one of the founding members of the IBET network so we're really happy that you're a fellow of IBET. It's a tremendous opportunity. All right, we get to start. So you were born in Makkovik, an inuit community off the coast of Labrador. Actually, I've been to Newfoundland. I would love to visit Labrador so I need, I need an invite. And you spent your early years there so yeah, tell me about your community. Raylene Mitchell 1:54 I was born and partly raised in Makkovik, Labrador. It's on the north coast of the province. It's pretty far north. It's one of the five communities in the Nunatsiavut claim area, which is the Inuit government where I'm a member of. So we're, I think we might be the third most northern so the community is very small. I think right now, there might be 300 people there. My dad is from there, and then my mom went to teach – she's from Newfoundland. My mom went to teach up there in the late 80s, and she met my dad and then we lived there for the first, for the first while. So I really had a beginning that was so small and I can remember when we moved to Goose Bay, which is like, one of the bigger towns in Labrador. There's like, I think there might be 7000 people there and yes, and I thought I was in like, the big city, but I go back to Makkovik a lot to visit my family that's still there during, like, fishing season, my dad and I will go salmon fish and things like that. I was so fortunate to grow up in a space like that and to be so connected with my environment, and it's really grown, though, in its capacity so we now have Memorial University, where I got my undergrad. They have a campus, like a full campus now in Goose Bay, which is incredible. So they're growing in so much capacity, and there's so much more research, and also community-led research, and like, local priorities are being met at the institution. It's, it's honestly fantastic and the tourism is also really growing. Before, like, I think it still is, like quite expensive to travel anywhere remote, but there's a big tour spot called the Torngat Mountains, which is a Nunatsiavut claim and it's honestly spectacular. The fjords there spectacular, but no one lives there. They haven't for a while, almost like maybe sometime after contact, but not too long after but it's honestly so beautiful there, and it's truly, truly untouched, like you're really in with nature there. Chris Yip 3:56 Sounds gorgeous. Like I said, I would, I would love to visit Labrador and Goose Bay and just get into that space, because I think it's just pristine country, right? So then the, I'm going to say, I don't know if that's – the draw to the center of the universe, which is Toronto. I'm not sure that's the right way to frame it, but probably not the appropriate way to frame it but so then Toronto, Toronto came calling, in a sense, right? What, what pulled you into U of T and in particular, I mean electrical background, but then you got your mechanical and industrial and you're in Dave Sinton's group. So what was the, what was the pull there? Raylene Mitchell 4:34 So something at my core, which is why I went into engineering, is ensuring that communities have a rightful say and have agency in the projects that go on. I've seen firsthand the projects that went on in Labrador that where communities weren't listened to. They were people use the word, I guess, consulted more, which basically means we bring a proposal and it's yes or no. And so I've seen projects go right, and I've seen projects go wrong, and a lot of the projects were or a lot of the ways that Indigenous people can gain agency and autonomy over themselves is energy, which is what made me want to go into electrical and I've worked on some electrical projects, major industrial level projects since then. And then, when I graduated undergrad, I was contacted by my now co-supervisor, Professor Michael Ross, and he works for the Northern Energy Innovation at YukonU so basically they collaborate with Northern, remote indigenous communities on getting themselves off diesel and onto other energy factors, any energy sources. And we have, we somehow got connected, and I started working for their group remotely, using software to kind of simulate wind turbine models and things like that. And I learned so much about than I think anywhere else, about how you can really intertwine indigenous identity into projects of engineering, because they don't seem to be the same thing at all. And I was talking to Dr. Ross about I want to continue my education, I want to continue on this path because I feel like something that my grandfather always says is that education is something that no one can take from you. And I feel like if I wanted to be someone that were at the tables deciding these projects, more education was the way to go. And then Dr. Ross had the connection with my supervisor, Professor Sinton, because Michael Ross used to go, I think he went here for his undergrad or his master's. They knew each other from that, and we all got connected and Professor Sinton was made aware of, like, my research goals and what I wanted to move forward in, how I wanted to move forward in, like, the energy sphere, and then, boom, boom, boom. That's how I got connected with Professor Sinton, who is a fabulous supervisor. Chris Yip 6:51 Dave's great, tons of energy, right? Raylene Mitchell 6:53 Really, really is. Chris Yip 6:53 Yeah, but you didn't actually start in engineering. Raylene Mitchell 6:58 No [laughs]. Chris Yip 6:59 Well, let's talk about that [laughs]. So yeah, when you went to Newfoundland to come for undergrad, the past, you'd be like, Oh, I'm going to engineering but you didn't so where did you start? Raylene Mitchell 7:12 Um, yeah, that's, yeah, that's exactly right. I didn't start...I was undecided for a while, which I don't know if U of T has that option, but it's literally was on my transcript, "Undecided", I'm pretty sure, and you just take whatever courses you want. It's kind of like a better option to me than taking a year off. I got into the commerce program at Memorial, and so I was in business school, and I didn't really feel a connection to it. I found, so I did know that something that I wanted to accomplish in my career, my academic career, was to help my communities. I was always interested in energy, space, but something for me was missing, and it was the design aspect, I think, and it was super valuable to be able to understand the finances of it all, and even a little bit of like the politics of projects. But as that is, I found to be a big reality, but I wanted to find a deeper explanation into the technologies, and I switched to engineering in my third year of my undergrad. Chris Yip 8:17 That's cool. Raylene Mitchell 8:18 I did not tell my parents. Chris Yip 8:20 That's even cooler. That's even better [laughs]. Raylene Mitchell 8:22 Because, oh my gosh, they were so supportive when I was undecided. And so, yeah, I switched to engineering, and I did engineering, and I realized that I really enjoyed it, and it was something I was going to move forward with. I could tell right from, like, the first class. And so once I was, like, into my discipline of electrical engineering, that's when I decided to tell them, you can stop telling people that I'm in commerce. I'm actually my second year of engineering. But they haven't held it against me. I think, I think they're, they're pretty proud of like, the path that I took and coming here as well, even though it's far away from them. So a little unconventional path to engineering, but one that I don't regret for sure, even though it took a bit longer to get here. Chris Yip 9:07 I really love it when students, when, when people do that, right? Where they kind of go, they kind of come in, and maybe they started a defined path, and then they veer off like the sort of random perturbation that happens during undergrad. I always tell students to embrace it. We often get students coming into undergrad who, "I want to be in engineering", and they actually realize it's not and then we help them pivot into another discipline. And we sort of help people pivot into engineering as well when they realize, hey, I'm in second year commerce, or I'm in third year physics, or, I mean, actually I'm in electrical and I'd really rather be in chemistry. And so it's all about finding that passion, to find that really connection with what you're really fundamentally interested in doing. And like you said, identifying the gap, like the design gap that was in the Commerce program. So you talk about wind turbine and renewable energy, I think this is a terrific segue into, sort of, how's the project going? I have a huge interest in wind in particular, because solar obviously doesn't work well the further north you get, because it kind of gets dark a lot longer. Yeah, unfortunate consequence of where we are but wind energy is there. It's got the same challenges, I think, in terms of, sort of its cyclic but I think that's part of, sort of the CANSTORE. We'll talk about the CANSTORE project but, yeah, how's like, how's the project going? Raylene Mitchell 10:27 Good. So our focus is actually on energy solutions to kind of have energy for those remote communities during the peaks. So like you said, we have solar panels. The NEI works with – up in Yukon – they work with the community, and they just installed some solar panels in the community but the problem is that, like, half of the year it's pretty dark, and that's when we use the most heat. So the only real fit is, let's get an energy storage placement in there. So that's what CANSTORE is kind of all about. It has 12 or 14 labs that are all a part of CANSTORE and I've been a part of the project for now, for about seven or eight months, and I've really impressed with the amount of interdisciplinary actions that all of the labs are taking in terms of, how do we approach novel research. And I kind of have two goals where I'm co-supervised, so in the Sinton role, I'm a computational modeler. So I do modeling of CO to carbon dioxide reduction and turning that into things such as ethanol. So right now, where I'm at the beginning of my PhD is kind of really figuring out what my big path will be in that sphere. That's where I'm at right now but with my other supervisor, Michael Ross, where currently I'm trying to develop a model using multi-objective optimization to determine, so we have a bunch of storage solutions, there's not just one, there's so many different options that we could choose from. So my research right now is trying to determine, how do we measure success? What does success look like to us and based on all the factors of cost, GHG emissions, community buy in, things like that, so that we have a model that's unbiased, that researchers in CCS, in carbon capture and storage, can use to further advance their research on how to scale these projects into something that's usable for communities. Chris Yip 12:21 Interesting connection. So the one side is CO2 conversion into different products, and the other side is the modeling of the kind of a grid and how renewables fit into the grid and how storage solutions fit into that equation. Raylene Mitchell 12:33 Yeah, so with the CO2 sides, so carbon dioxide comes in the atmosphere, and the lab is currently trying to create the best way for that CO2 to be converted into, is so it's like fuel synthesis or or products that we could the community could sell for profit, or things like that. Going into a PhD, I didn't know what really what to look for. So I'm coming from an undergrad where you were told what to do all the time, exactly and I think it took me a second to kind of get to the point where I can kind of come up with my own questions, and that where nobody knows the answer. So I think that's the part where I'm at right now, where I know the questions that I want to answer, and it's just, how am I going to get there and get there in the next four years. Chris Yip 13:25 I was, I was impressed when you said it's taking me a second. And I'm like, wow, that's boy. That's pretty good [laughs]. Raylene Mitchell 13:32 That's pretty good [laughs]. Chris Yip 13:38 What's interesting I'm finding is that, especially in your space we got energy policy, storage, renewables, it really brings in this lens of policy, right? And understand how public policy plays in governance and how you get community engagement so that's part of your biggest projects, right is how you get the communities to embrace these new technologies and make the investments. Do you find that really challenging, those kind of those conversations? Raylene Mitchell 14:06 I wouldn't say anything is really difficult. I think that when we have really good people on this project, that they, we are serving the public, and something my supervisor always says that there's no wrong answer, and it's not so much about communities embracing as it is about they're leading this project, and we serve them like. For example, we're going up this week, and it's more about the community system so it's not about like my professor does this, I think every year, different communities kind of teach them about energy systems and the community. It's not really about showing them the answer. It's kind of like grad school. It's kind of like, there's a problem and we could solve it together, rather than here's a problem set and you give us the answer. So it is about the community engagement pieces, and it's different everywhere. Like I said, there's people on the project that work with governance structures, and each government structure changes the way that you interact with the community as well. And it changes like how community buy in is affected and how information is disseminated. It changes a lot of different things. So community engagement is something that a lot of projects need to work on, and we definitely aren't like we do this research to make sure that what we're doing gives the community the most agency and the most autonomy that they have over their energy sources, and that, for example, that's not that's kind of for them to decide. We just give them the information. For example, some energy storage projects where it's like, should they have ownership or should they not want ownership? Because there's, there's risks that come with ownership, so or how much is cost a factor for them versus ownership. So we want to ensure that we just give the information as well as possible, and we use our expertise as unbiased as possible to give those, those answers. Chris Yip 16:08 I think you previously mentioned sort of that Indigenous and First Nations folks are engineers at their core, right? And so I don't know, can you, can you expand on that? Raylene Mitchell 16:18 Yeah, we've been adapting to climate change. We've been adapting to everything for thousands of years. And I think, UN came out with a statement that said that Indigenous people control or take care of, I think, 85% of the land. So we have been cultivating, adapting, changing for thousands of years. We were naval architects, we've been designing canoes, you know what I mean? So like, there is a piece of there is a very colonial piece of engineering, and having your bachelor's degree and or having a PhD, and what that means, but we have to include Indigenous perspectives, because those are the people that have been resilient across everything that's been thrown at them, and have still become successful within the land and within creating a lifestyle. Think of I always talk about this with my dad. You think of like the way that he grew up. So he grew up like he was born in the 40s, so like he has lived off the land, and he watched his dad build qamutiiks and things like that, and he never went to carpentry school. Like, think about the fact that we used to live in igloos. Like, yeah, I would like to see a couple engineers try to build an igloo [laughs]. Chris Yip 17:31 Done! It's a totally valid challenge. Raylene Mitchell 17:35 Yeah, yeah. I can't do it. I tried. I'm a let my dad. But yeah, so we are engineers at our core, and we design at our core, and we adapt and we serve the public, and I think, like serve our community. So I think going forward, introducing indigenous perspectives is important, not only for the survival of indigenous people, but for the survival of all of us, because we know how to survive, we know how to be resilient, and we know how to design for the upcoming futures, because that's what we've been doing. Chris Yip 18:08 It's a wonderful perspective, right? I think that we've created, "we", in the broadest context of created this sort of artifice of like, well, you need a four year degree to be called yourself an engineer and all this sort of stuff and it's actually no, there's a lot of knowledge that you can, you can pick up and learn from, like you said, from, from Indigenous teachings about design and functional design, resilient design, very much sustainable design, right? That I think at some level, we've we've lost by becoming so highly technical. Thank you so much. This was a wonderful conversation. Raylene Mitchell 18:47 No, I had fun. Thank you so much for having me. I love every chance I get to talk about this project and my research. Chris Yip 19:01 Thanks again for listening to Tell Me More: Coffee with Chris Yip, if you want to catch up on past episodes and to make sure you don't miss the next one, please subscribe. We're on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and more, just look for Coffee with Chris Yip. 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