Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a genetic disorder resulting in progressive muscle degeneration. Satellos Bioscience Inc is developing small molecule drugs that target and modulate DMD muscle stem cells to repair the dystrophic muscle. Despite the advantages of DMD animal models, they are not always predictive of human DMD phenotypes, or their response to drug treatments.

Reinforcement learning (RL) is the problem of designing an agent that interacts with its environment and adaptively improves its long-term performance. Many complex real-world industrial decision-making problems can be formulated as an RL problem. RL is at the core of artificial intelligence and has the potential of having a huge impact on our economy and society, perhaps more so than any other area of machine learning.

Improving the design and operation of open pit mines by better understanding and modeling of spatial variation of rock mass properties, can bring economic benefits to the mining industry. The proposed research project aims to develop an innovative large-scale discrete fracture network (DFN) model that is spatially constrained based on the recorded fracture data from geotechnical boreholes and photogrammetric mapping of bench face exposures in an open pit mine in Western Africa.

Mitochondria are critical producers of energy and are the platform for various metabolic reactions that support cellular health. Mitochondria suffer from a variety of damage as a consequence of housing these reactive pathways. In order for cells and organisms to survive this damage, dysfunctional mitochondria are removed from the cell in a process termed mitophagy. The goal of this proposal is to identify probiotics that enhance mitophagy, thereby serving as ideal promoters of health by preserving mitochondrial, cellular and organismal function.

The anthropogenic emissions of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane are the leading cause of global climate change. Furthermore, these emissions are related to the manufacture of fuels and carbon-based products. Solar fuels technology addresses both of these issues. Photocatalysts, nanomaterials engineering to directly use solar energy, can convert carbon dioxide and methane into the same carbon-based consumer products we rely on every day using sunlight. This technology represents an advancement toward a clean and carbon recycling economy.

Medulloblastoma (MB) is the most common childhood brain cancer. Current treatment for these tumors is invasive involving irradiation of the entire brain and spine. Although some types of MB respond well, others have an abysmal prognosis, and the lack of less invasive therapies means that children undergoing treatment suffer from severe developmental defects and reduced quality of life.

Many people in Canada are aging and/or may be living with a disability. These people often have to rely on caregivers, and are limited in what they can do independently. Novalte has developed a SMART technology system that connects to WiFi devices in the home to allow someone living with a disability more independence and control over their home and space. This project will involve creating implementation and knowledge translation frameworks to support a larger research project on the system and help in its rollout to a larger number of users.

Every year in Canada over 1.7 million patients are diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis (UC), and have to go through colonoscopy procedures multiple times for disease detection and treatment monitoring. Trained clinicians use endoscopy facilities and technologies for colonoscopy procedures and unfortunately, the current error rate in disease detection is up to 20%. This project will build a framework that will analyze colonoscopy video streams in real-time, and offers the outcomes to support clinicians to accurately detect UC and monitor patient’s response to treatments.

Sepsis, severe pneumonia and respiratory viruses are key causes of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS)—a detrimental lung condition that results in >3 million ICU admissions/year and can lead to organ failure and death. In Canada, ~18,000 patients with ARDS are admitted to hospital annually and those requiring critical care place an immense burden on hospital resources. Early detection of ARDS is vital for treatment to be effective.

The project will foster high-quality analysis of taxation and other public policies in Canada. We will assemble data on public finances of governments in Canada and, to make them more useful for policy analysis, we will transform the data to make them consistent over time and across geographic units of Canada. We will make the data readily available to researchers, policymakers, journalists, and others through an online open data portal.