Projets novateurs réalisés

Acceleration of improvement in health and production of mink through genomics and machine learning

The project will examine of population genomics, application of genomic selection, and identification of genes underlying economically important traits which are vital steps for the development of selection program. Consequently, this will have an impact on the economic viability of mink producers due to targeted genomic breeding strategies and the use of biomarker-assisted selection. Such a selection over a period will significantly lower the cost of pelt production and hence increase efficiency. The selection for disease resistance (such as Aleutian Diseases) will also create the mink with better resilience. The project will generate results that can be directly implemented in the breeding programs of North American mink industry. These tools will enable the mink breeders to more effectively incorporate feed efficiency, health and reproduction traits as breeding objectives in their programs. Farmers will save money, while the international competitiveness of North America’s mink industry will increase. The environmental footprint of the mink industry will also be reduced because lower manure waste will be produced by more feed efficient or higher prolific animals.

An Automated Manhole Extraction Algorithm from 3D Point Cloud Utilizing a New LiDAR-based Mobile Mapping System

Traditional surveying procedures are labor and cost intensive. Mapping features like manholes require traffic disturbance, add risk to the field crew personal and the community members. The proposed project utilize a newly developed unique LiDAR-based mapping system. The developed 3D mapping system has a substantial cost reduction compared to the commercially available, which also tend to be bulky, expensive and out of the reach of many end-users. The newly developed system generate three-dimensional (3D) maps which are essential in traditional and new applications, such as smart cities, autonomous vehicles and augmented reality. This project proposes and validate an automated manhole extraction algorithm that allow mapping of manholes using the new LiDAR-system and quantify the advantages of this research compared to the traditional surveying procedures.

Evaluation of Online Urban Futures Survey for Metro Vancouver

This project will expand upon the underlying research conducted with the 2012 Urban Futures Survey of Greater Vancouver. The intern will evaluate a survey that was the third similar survey approximately 20 years apart to inform planning policies in the Metro Vancouver region. The last survey, in 2012, used an online consultation platform instead of the previous face-to-face and/or telephone methods. This technology utilized was the PlaceSpeak public participation GIS, which authenticated respondents online to their physical address. The resulted survey produced a large amount of data that needs to be analyzed and interpreted. The intern will draw conclusions and possibly find new groups that might find the gathered data useful. Also, the intern will examine the survey methodology and in particular the sample size and confidence levels required for contemporary online survey techniques. At the end of the internship, a bulletin is to be produced and publicized, summarizing the findings of the survey and also generate an OpEd essay and other materials for publication in local newspapers and professional journals.

Understanding the Bighorn Sheep Decline in Southern Interior BC: An Investigation of Grassland Health and Secwépemc Traditional Ecological Knowledge.

This project focuses on a herd of wild bighorn sheep on Kamloops Lake in the Secwépemc Territory of southern interior BC. The first goal of the project is to monitor lamb survival and assess habitat conditions for the Kamloops Lake herd over two years. The second goal of the project is to document Secwépemc Traditional Ecological Knowledge about the Kamloops Lake herd to strengthen our understanding of the herd’s history and ecology. The results of our study will help our partners to develop strategies on how to protect bighorn sheep and their habitat. To carry out the study, we will monitor the Kamloops Lake herd and determine the proportion of lambs that survive to the age at which they are independent from their mothers. We will also assess the health of the grasslands within the home range and identify impacts and ways to restore habitat.

Shaping AI-Driven Digital Transformation Strategy in HealthCare: The Case of Organ Donation and Transplant Digital Ecosystem Development

BI Expertise is developing a solution that leverages artificial intelligence technologies to improve organ donation. Due to the devolution of powers in Canada, organ donation is managed at the provincial level. In addition, information systems for organ donation are heterogenous between provinces. There is hence relatively little cooperation currently between provinces for interprovincial organ donation. The solution will open the way to providing donated organs in one province to potential recipients in different jurisdictions. But before this is possible, there are technical, legal, regulatory, cultural and ethical challenges that need to be addressed.
The current project will focus on the provinces of Quebec and Ontario and has the following objectives:
– Cartography the major stakeholders who would be involved in the development of an organ donation ecosystem between Quebec and Ontario, and map the regulatory framework(s) pertaining to the coordination of organ donation in and between the two provinces;
– Identify and describe the key regulatory, legal, ethical, and cultural challenges that can impede the development of the AI-based ecosystem for organ donation between Quebec and Ontario provinces;

WADA Strategic Project Management: Ops plan optimization and KPIs targets

Internship Unit #1: Strategic Project Management: Ops plan optimization and KPIs targets

Since WADA is implementing its project management framework, the organization faces challenges in the coordination between the operational plan and the budget exercises to allow optimal resources allocation towards high impact projects that are involving at different level the 19 different expertise existing in the Agency.

A second challenge is the development and improvement of the Strategic Key performance indicators (KPIs) targets that are linked to WADA’S strategic plan priorities. While a first KPIs baseline has been developed in 2022, the Agency will have to improve its data collection and analysis methods and establish KPIs targets that are ambitious, achievable, and relevant for the anti-doping system. Developing those KPIs target will require strategic sessions among different groups of expertise. This BSI project will help WADA address the specific challenges by exploring 1) the areas of improvement for the operational plan exercise, and 2) the approach to best establish KPIs target.

The project will create better processes and enhance the overall program delivery for WADA and relevant World Anti-Doping Code stakeholders. As a result, economies of scale can be realized in terms of implementing better practices in allocating resources.

Sales & Marketing Lean Process Analysis, Implementation & Optimization

The overall project we intend the co-op student to engage in, aside from day-to-day duties assigned, will be twofold. The first to aid in the development of our Capital Schedule Dashboard Project. The goal of this is to improve the processes surrounding our equipment receiving procedure when our machinery products arrive from the factory to ensure their specs are aligned with what the company expects, and all damages incurred on the product are noted and catalogued. The second will be to aid in the reduction of wait time for step 6 of our sales stage (prep completion of a product and delivery of said product to customer) using LEAN principles.

Identification des métabolites secondaires d’intérêts provenant de cultures énergétiques et extraction en continu à l’aide d’émulsions ultrasoniques

L’approvisionnement en biomasse est un aspect crucial de la production de biocarburants de première et éventuellement de seconde génération. La disponibilité de la matière première, pour l’industrie des biocarburants de première génération, est régie par le marché et ainsi le maïs par exemple génère des ventes jusqu’à 2000 $ par hectare de terres pour les agriculteurs. La valeur de ces cultures est donc très importante pour la production à grande échelle et devient la référence pour les entités oeuvrant à sa croissance. Au niveau de la conversion, les biocarburants de seconde génération, en contraste avec l’éthanol grain par exemple, devront miser sur des technologies plus complexes que la première génération dans l’optique de générer le même produit (l’éthanol), une commodité de faible valeur (2,61 USD/juillet 2013). Ainsi il s’avère essentiel de tirer un maximum de valeur de la biomasse lignocellulosique, de miser sur une valorisation optimale de son contenu carboné. TO BE CONT’D

Designing and engineering scalable lipid-based drug delivery systems to improve the delivery and bioactivity of cannabinoids

It is clear that Cannabis has therapeutic activity. The evidence comes from a long history of use for managing disease symptoms including pain, inflammation and anxiety. However, there is a paucity of scientifically rigorous research exploring the specific activity of Cannabinoids in the body under both normal and disease states. With the legalization of Cannabis in Canada, we have a unique opportunity to delve into robust research programs to enhance our understanding of the pharmaceutical properties of Cannabinoids. It is essential to gain a fulsome understanding of the components of Cannabis and their specific mechanisms of action in order to harness the therapeutic potential of the plant in the treatment of a wide variety of physiological conditions including inflammation, pain and anxiety. To do this work, it is necessary to identify the chemical entities that are medically useful and examine the structure and function in isolation while at the same time designing chemical formulations that will optimize delivery and absorption of the active agent to make it therapeutically available.

Content Creation- Videography

Navigate Startup House is a non-profit organization located in Sydney, Nova Scotia. We are dedicated to supporting entrepreneurship in all its forms on Cape Breton Island. Our events and programming foster meaningful relationships that are supportive and inspiring, building an impactful entrepreneur-led community.

At Navigate, our community of entrepreneurs has plenty to share to make the entrepreneurial journey easier. We help start-ups succeed by providing co-working space for growing companies and the ability to tap into a mentor network of experts in the fields of business and technology. We work with regional, national, and global organizations to provide high-quality event programming, including lunch and learns; workshops; pitch competitions; and networking events.

The identified challenge and therefore opportunity is in helping the resident companies create video content that is capable of sharing their companies ability, promoting clearly to the target audiences, as well as identifying appropriate areas to advertise the video content to capture the target audience. These organizations would not otherwise have the ability to promote their offerings through videography, and therefor would miss out on these opportunities.

A Holistic Assessment Approach to Support Teachers in Inclusive Classrooms

The number of students requiring special education support in middle and high schools across Canada continue to rise, but teachers are challenged in implementing accommodations within students’ individual education plans due to large class sizes, limited time and lack of resources. Therefore, the objective of this project is to develop a prototype of a holistic assessment technology application which involves the collaboration of students, parents and teachers to minimize the time required to identify students’ needs, design effective instructional strategies aligned to learner profiles, and increase student engagement and motivation to learn. The client discovery will determine the demand for the product as well as the most critical components of the process within the product. It will determine how effective teachers and students perceive the product will be in helping them meet the needs of all students; and receive the educational support they need respectively.

CADSIM Plus simulator, evolutionary algorithms, rule based expert system, neural network.

In industries, chemical processes involve different plants running in parallel with different production rates under the strict constraints on available resources. Therefore, events like shutdown of one or more plants, operating plants with different production grades with flexible run length time, equipment utilization rates of different plants etc. are vital to be studied, scheduled, and optimized. CADSIM Plus is a popular software which simulates different chemical processes in industries and thus ensures an effective production in practice. The software is used by more than 220 companies and organizations all over the world. The objective of this project is to investigate and develop efficient optimization methods that can be integrated with CADSIM Plus for chemical process production line scheduling. The task of chemical process production line scheduling is a complex operation and cannot be modeled directly by simple mathematical equations. Therefore, optimizing the product line scheduling as well as CADSIM Plus yields a non-trivial optimization problem and requires robust techniques to solve.