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I'm really happy for her, but why is she getting all the credit? It doesn't seem like she came up with the idea, she just conducted the experiment given to her. Seems more like a "right place at the right time" accomplishment.
In cases like this I suspect that "Achievement Laundering" is going on.

It's not 100% respectable in this day and age to pass your status on to your offspring so there are various ways you can make it look like your kid created a successful business and sold it to Yahoo! or did some amazing research project, or otherwise accomplished something that they didn't really do.

With a machine that is already being marketed and sold to the mining industry... Seems like the discovery happened quite a long time ago. This is a really bad "news" article for UAlberta to publish for so many reasons.
For as good as Canadian universities are at research, they often are just as poor at commercialization.

Part of the cause is universities wanting to own the IP for themselves (turning off industry partners), and part of it is researchers don't often enough live in the real world of applying said research.

Most academic collateral like this.. is in part easier to understand thru the lens of cash flow: any PR is better than no PR, because it can be used to seek further funding / grants from government and try to push social proof on industry partners.

Read this article again thru the lens of including in a funding request from government... :)

This is a nice experience for the student, whether the ingredients were there already or not. I'm happy for her having the opportunity for experience. Learning about how the world works and how you might want to change it is really important.