Projets novateurs réalisés

Corrélation entre la taille des pollinisateurs et la taille des fleurs le long d’un gradient d’urbanisation

Les milieux urbains affectent les communautés de pollinisateurs, de sorte que la présence, l’abondance ou la taille des pollinisateurs peuvent différer des celles dans les milieux naturels. Cette recherche vise à évaluer si les insectes pollinisateurs de l’Impatiente du cap ont une taille différentes dans les villes comparativement aux milieux urbains et de tester si cette variation est corrélée avec la taille des fleurs qu’elles visitent. 16 populations provenant de 4 villes (Toronto, Ottawa, Montréal, Québec) ont été étudiées. Les pollinisateurs ont été capturés et les photos des plantes prises avec échelle. Cette étude consistera à mesure la taille des insectes et des fleurs et de tester si ces deux variables sont corrélées.

Research & Develop Online Tools for Climate Change Mitigation Services in Developing Countries

Through this Mitacs initiative, the Sobey School of Business, Saint Mary’s University, and OEA Technologies, Inc., will cooperatively research and develop online and social media tools that facilitate delivery of professional environmental services in developing countries. OEA Technologies’ specific interests are climate-change related oceanographic services and small-island developing states. “Innovation and diversification are not optional for ocean technology companies”, says Dr. Brian Whitehouse, president of OEA Technologies, Inc. “But you need to do it in an exceedingly cost-effective manner.” OEA Technologies hopes to achieve this objective by teaming with Saint Mary’s faculty and students who specialize in emerging marketing tools. Based in Upper Tantallon, Nova Scotia, the company provides professional services in the marine environmental sector. It won its first small-island developing state contract in 2012, when it designed a marine monitoring and forecasting system for the eastern Caribbean Sea.

Abortion and Feminism in 1930s Mexico

The medical practice, criminal prosecution, and political organizing around abortion is not well studied in early twentieth century Mexico. The catalogue of the Supreme Court of the Federal District of Mexico (TSJDF) indicates the court opened over one hundred cases for the crime in the 1930s and a further 90 cases in the 1940s. However, to date, researchers have only studied a a small number of these. Intriguingly, the court only opened nine cases in the ten years after 1950. The proposed research principally involves tracking down as many more of the abortion cases courts tried in the 1930s and 1940s as possible, both at Mexico’s National Archives and in the country’s centralized newspaper collection, the Hemeroteca Nacional housed at the National University. In addition, the intern researcher will attempt to identify contemporary trends in the pro-and anti-abortion political rhetoric and mobilization.

Évaluations des acteurs interdisciplinaire et intersectoriel du fleuve Saint-Laurent

Les fleuves représentent l’une des plus grandes ressources naturelles, sociales et économiques au monde. Figures emblématiques du cycle de l’eau, les fleuves jouent un rôle de premier plan dans la régularisation du climat, le développement urbain, l’agriculture et les échanges économiques. Par exemple, le fleuve Saint-Laurent draine à lui seul plus d’un quart des réserves d’eau potable, en plus d’être le principal vecteur du développement humain de l’est de l’Amérique du Nord. Or, malgré une multitude de disciplines qui travaillent sur les enjeux liés aux fleuves, il n’existe à l’heure actuelle aucun projet capable d’articuler une planification holistique des régions fluviales.

Afin de répondre au besoin urgent d’une meilleure planification des fleuves à l’échelle mondiale, la Chaire UNESCO en paysage urbain met en place le projet intersectoriel de recherche-création / recherche-action « Fluvialités ». Ce stage servira à évaluer le potentiel de mise en place d’un réseau international de recherche-action et de recherche-création dont l’objectif sera de traduire les savoirs universitaires, culturels et sociaux en des outils d’aménagement durable des fleuves.

Maritime forecasting using machine learning and deep learning

The project contributes to the statistical, machine learning and deep learning fields from different aspects. First, we implement, document, and compare statistical, machine learning and deep learning solution for maritime market forecasting. This is the first attempt to utilize machine learning for this purpose. Moreover, we will present an enhanced explainable method that describes the contribution of the different features in forecasting and also provides explanations for different results. Furthermore, we will design an interpretable and explainable platform that can justify the forecasting results and convince clients to choose Soshianest for their consultation. This goal can approach through calculation and the global set of selected features that will be determined by ranking the features that are generally more important and also using post-hoc models such as LIME and SHAP.

Improving Community Care Outcomes with Data Analytics

Practicare aims to leverage technology to improve community care outcomes through a holistic lens of worker and organizational excellence. The company plans to directly tackle the #1 problem articulated by both care organizations and the clients that they support: the availability, skill, and turnover of care workers; and the direct impact this has on community care outcomes. Improving the care worker issues requires a rethinking of the processes and success-measures combined with the effective use of technology and data analytics throughout the care worker lifecycle – from recruitment, onboarding, and skill development through to worker engagement, retention and attrition.

Available technologies to support the processes and workflows typically focus on organizational efficiency, however, they often operate in silos or with loose connections and typically have disparate data systems with duplication and/or inaccurate information. While historical data is sometimes aggregated and summarized when sufficient data quality exists to provide a snapshot of the past; little attention has been placed on the insights available through data analytics and artificial intelligence, or on the collection of important information to help understand and influence care outcomes.

CAUDS Coalition Project

The intern will work on a project to develop a coalition of cross-sector community leaders in a mental health-care setting. The project will contribute to new solutions to community challenges in Canada surrounding the pharmacological treatment of alcohol use disorder. The intern will train in research skills, interdisciplinary teamwork, and community-based research methodologies. The intern will support long-term relationships among academia, industry, and communities, and establish new ones.

Design and development of a benchtop ophthalmic device for the treatment of vitreous floaters.

PulseMedica is developing a medical device platform to treat vitreoretinal eye diseases that affect over 500 million people worldwide. Our device consists of a state-of-the-art 3D imaging and surgical platform that allows for comprehensive patient treatment including machine learning based disease detection, surgical planning, surgical treatment, and post-surgery evaluation.

This device uses multiple laser-based imaging modalities to provide real-time 3D data about the posterior chamber of the eye. The imaging systems are then used to precisely guide light from a treatment laser to a target location. Both imaging systems, as well as the treatment laser delivery system are complex optical systems that take much time, effort, and expertise to design and build.

PulseMedica has decided to pursue vitreous floaters as its beachhead market. Vitreous floaters is a widespread eye condition that has a large unmet clinical need. Approximately 76% of the adult population has vitreous floaters and for 5% of people, vitreous floaters cause severe impairment. What makes this clinical indication a lucrative market opportunity is that, currently, there aren’t any widely accepted treatment options.

Enhancing software developer and user productivity

This project will investigate how software developers work with structured information. It will use information about that interaction to improve tools needed by developers. It will assess whether those tools improve the productivity of software developers. The project will also compare the access patterns of users of business intelligence applications to those of developers to determine if tools useful for developers might apply to more general knowledge workers. SAP may benefit from improved productivity of its developers and may benefit from ideas and knowledge to improve the applications it builds and deploys.

Quantification of anti-SARS-CoV-2 spike RBD IgG antibody and SARS-CoV-2 virus

The project is focused on designing and developing a novel point of care analytical device using functional magnetic microparticles that can quantitatively determine the concentration of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody and SARS-CoV-2 viruses in human saliva and serum. This approach will allow mass testing in the general population to assess past or current infection. Furthermore, it can guide decision-making regarding the optimal time to deliver subsequent vaccine doses and booster shots. The device will give enough information about immunity grown among the general population due to vaccination or prior infection to the virus. A proper market research will allow deciding the next step of commercialization.

A Lipo-Polymeric Approach to Breast Cancer Gene Therapy

Nucleic acid-based therapies such as DNA and siRNA has equipped us with the freedom to customize in our
battle against specific cancers and other diseases. Especially the non-viral approach to deliver the therapeutic
nucleic acids in a clinical setting provides a safer alternative to the viral gene therapy systems. However, to
achieve a clinically relevant outcome using non-viral systems, it requires the design and development of powerful
delivery vehicles capable to delivering multiple payloads to the disease cells while leaving the healthy cells
unaffected. Given the specificity of the TRAIL protein against cancer cells, this project will develop a platform for
long-term expression of TRAIL protein through the delivery of TRAIL DNA using a safe non-viral system and test
them in cell culture and animal disease models and aim for a clinical outcome.

Apprentissage automatique pour la résolution de problèmes de planification de rendez-vous dans des tournées de véhicules

La planification de rdv à domicile (infirmières ou pour rdv de techniciens) est complexe. Elle nécessite des compétences géographiques et une connaissance métier de répartiteur. Ce processus prend énormément de ressources. Ce projet vise donc projet à concevoir une méthode de suggestion d’horaire de rendez-vous sans avoir à réoptimiser de lourds emplois du temps.