Although the existence of deep-sea coral reefs has been known for centuries, it is only in the last decade that interest and understanding of these ecosystems have increased. There is a growing concern about the diversity and magnitude of anthropogenic (human) threats to these fragile habitats. Bottom trawling poses by far the largest threat. These corals are in need of protection, but a lack of basic information on the distribution and extent of deep sea corals in BC is constraining managers’ ability provide this protection.

This project with Koolhaus Games, an electronic game developer, aims to use state-of-the-art natural language processing technology as part of a novel and innovative social networking and social gaming engine. Social networking games are popular, particularly among children, and the team hopes to use natural language processing technology to provide a transparent, multi-lingual interface for communication between children from various countries who speak different languages.

This project involves working with Translink - the Greater Vancouver transit authority, covering buses, skytrain, seabus, trains, and ferries - to conduct initial research to examine the viability of an automated public bicycle system similar in scale and design to systems recently initiated in Paris, Lyon and Oslo.

There are certain features of skin lesions or moles that are indicative of cancer. Texture (spatial variation of colour/intensity) or patterns is known to be one of these features. This research seeks to quantify this textural information in order to improve the performance of methods to automatically diagnose melanoma. Currently, dermatologists are very proficient at interpreting this textural information, and easily outperform automated techniques.

Motion Capture (mocap) is a very powerful technology that allows one to digitize natural motion and use it in many areas. Currently, mocap is expensive and intrusive. The core of this project is to develop a pipeline for semi-automatic extraction of 3D motion data from ordinary video sequences. Besides being able to avoid many of the expensive and time consuming aspects of traditional motion capture, the intern will be able to extract motion data in a non-intrusive fashion from readily obtainable video data.

Point Grey Research Inc. is a worldwide leader in the development of advanced digital camera technology products. Point Grey designs, manufactures and distributes IEEE-1394 (FireWire) cameras, stereo vision cameras and spherical digital video cameras to a broad spectrum of industries. To take fully advantage of the advanced digital camera technology and reduce the extra cost in data transmission between cameras and servers, it is preferred that most image processing tasks could be done on-camera.

This internship is the first in a series of four which Kinexus is undertaking with ACCELERATE BC which will support its overall ambitious goal of creating high resolution maps of internal cell communication networks that are gender, age, tissue and disease-specific. These maps will be needed for identifying disease diagnostic biomarkers that are phospho-sites and drug targets that are kinases. The dividends of these efforts will be improved diagnostics and therapeutics for personalized medicine delivery.

It is estimated that one third of the world’s population is infected by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. With the emergence of drug resistant tuberculosis, the World Health Organization has declared tuberculosis a global health emergency. UDP-galactopyranose mutase, an enzyme essential for tuberculosis bacterial growth and infection, will be studied by a protocol which combines advanced NMR and computational modeling techniques.

Nokia is interested in research of both in-body (implanted) antennas and antennas in close proximity to the human body. Nokia is particularly interested in making positive use of the electromagnetic coupling between the antenna and the human body, know as positive body effects. The internship research will focus on fundamental antennas, electric and magnetic dipoles in lossy matter, with a goal to show, quantitatively, that the magnetic dipole is better suited to implanted applications.

The proposed project combines structural biochemistry with high-performance molecular simulations to generate valuable insight into the development of the next generation of ligands that can be used to develop vaccines. The collaboration between the academic and industry partner creates an ideal opportunity to combine theoretical and experimental approaches for better lead generation and development of scientific knowledge. Zymeworks will have an opportunity to validate its ZymeCAD™ platform for pharmaceutical applications.