Projets novateurs réalisés

Manipulation of Phytohormonal Production by Methylobacterium extorquens

TerraVerdae Bioworks is working with a type of bacteria that is able to metabolize methanol, converting it into a bioplastic. TerraVerdae is focusing its commercial operations on bioplastic production but is interested in identifying other bioproducts that can also be produced. It is known that this type of bacteria forms a symbiotic relationship with plants, where it feeds off of waste methanol produced by plant cells, converting it into metabolites that help the plant grow. Through this internship, we would like to measure the production of two plant hormones, an auxin and a cytokinin, by TerraVerdae’s bacterial strain. We also intend to explore whether we can increase the production of these hormones by genetically manipulating the expression of two genes that we have targeted. Finally, given that nitrogen is known to influence bioplastic production by the bacteria, we would like to determine how manipulating the amount of nitrogen made available to the bacteria affects hormonal production.

Intergenerational Impacts of Transport Poverty in Canada

The aim of this project is to assess the long-term impacts of transport poverty in Canada using mixed methods approach.
Transport poverty is the combined effect of transport disadvantage (including but not limited to inadequate public transport options, poor public transport accessibility, not owning or having access to car, perception of safety) and various socio- demographic and economic factors that lead of marginalization (e.g. low income, disability, gender identity, ethnicity, access to technology, etc.). Nearly one million people in Canada are at risk of transport poverty, which accounts for 5% of the total population and 40% of low-income population. Studies have found that it intensifies transport-related social exclusion (TRSE)- a condition when lack of affordable and accessible transportation options poses obstacles in accessing essential services and thereby, lowers the ability to participate fully in social, political, economic, and other activities.
Although the short-term impacts of transport poverty are well-studied, there is a lack in understanding how living in transport poverty for a long period of time translates to the activity participation and socio-economic outcomes in later life.

Mobilizing infrastructures and assets for sustainable tourism in UNESCO’s Frontenac Arch Biosphere Reserve

The Frontenac Arch Biosphere (FAB) is a geographic region in southeastern Ontario comprised of unique natural areas, farmland, and rural communities, with a mandate for supporting sustainability. The region and its inhabitants are thus well-positioned to contribute to sustainable tourism, though this potential has not yet been fully realized. In partnership with the Frontenac Arch Biosphere Network (FABN), and in collaboration with the FAB community, this sustainable tourism project will document and map the infrastructures and assets that support sustainable tourism in the FAB so that they can be harnessed by the community and effectively governed by decision-makers. These Infrastructures include the region’s physical assets, such as attractions, accommodations, and trails, as well as non-physical assets, such as the social networks, services, programs, and policies that support sustainable tourism. The outputs of this project will be shared with FABN to contribute to their sustainable tourism programming and may serve as a useful model for other regions seeking to advance local economic development and sustainable tourism initiatives.

Risk-factor-based Portfolio Optimization

Portfolio managers have generally favoured factor models to interpret and arbitrage abnormal alpha. Duncombe and Kay (2018) proposed an analysis, Two Sigma Factor Lens, to address these issues. In addition to these problems, another challenge is how to dynamically incorporate market upturns and downturns into asset allocation under a multi-factor model, which has attracted a great deal of portfolio managers’ attention. In combining OMG’s current analysis, this proposal will extend the Two Sigma Factor Lens approach to a more general and realistic setting with a hidden Markov process to model the dynamic market states. Given the attractive feature of the multi-factor model in the application of business cycle identifications and abundant literature in academic research (factor investment and regimes in business cycle), some strong and practical results are reasonable to be produced from this project and will benefit OMG.

A transformer-based model for credit card fraud detection

Credit card payments are one of the most common transaction methods in our daily life, such as online shopping, e-commerce, and mobile payment. However, with the extensive usage of credit cards, numerous credit card fraud transactions occur every year and cause a huge economic loss. In order to improve the detection performance, this project proposes a transformer-based model to conduct fraud detection. The proposed transformer-based model omits convolutional or recurrent operations and relies solely on attention mechanisms to extract dependencies in the sequence dataset. This project aims to develop a novel and efficient fraud detection approach for the parter financial organization.

Virtual Mental Health Services for At-Risk Populations: Accessible and Free Psychotherapy

Those living with homelessness and in precarious housing situations experience several barriers to accessing psychological care despite often needing support for their mental health. Some of these barriers include lack of funding to pay for services and difficulty physically accessing services. Providing mental health care virtually, can reduce these barriers by making services more accessible and affordable. However, for homeless and precariously housed individuals these services are likely still difficult to access because of lack of technology and private space to receive services. This project seeks to address these challenges by providing access to free virtual therapy in secure places for members of this community in Windsor, Ontario. In completing this project we will, evaluate the benefit of treatment for those who access it and with our research partners, assess the potential for scale-up of this treatment program to other settings.

Improve customer data warehouse creation

We are seeking someone who can work closely with our founding engineers to enhance the various methods we collect and process data from customers.

Specific tasks will include conducting secondary and primary source research on data sources of interest (data silos). Tasks will also include producing validation that data sources can be ingested from customer data silos, and are securly and accurately stored on our data warehouse solution.

Venture Studio Fellowship

This role is a critical and multi-faceted position. The intern will be an active contributor to the venture-building and studio asset allocation process. At the heart of FutureSight is a four-phase venture lifecycle – which systematically moves opportunities through ideation, validation, formation, and growth stages. New ideas are rigorously screened, market-tested, and validated before a venture is formed. Based on the intern’s strengths, they will rotate between the Studio fellow track or the EIR fellow track. As a Studio Fellow, they will support the studio team on operations, recruitment, capital raise & deployment, and investor relations. As an EIR Fellow, they will support a venture founder in testing business ideas and supporting co-creation activities.

Patient decision aid for musculoskeletal injuries in Mild Hemophilia

Hemophilia is a genetic bleeding disorder in which the blood flow is impaired from clotting. If you have hemophilia, you may bleed for a longer time than others after an injury. The primary goal of our work is to enable patients with the condition to make effective decisions when injuries occur. For instance, our proposed application will aid the patient to seek either immediate attention from a healthcare provider if the injury is a major one. Moreover, if the injury is not severe, then the patient will be guided to perform some activities that will lead to other decisions as to whether the patient is well or needs some self-assessment. This research puts the partner organization in a strategic position to broaden out their campaigns and services to patients with the condition of mild hemophilia

Sustainable Model for Hybrid Events and Transitioning workflow and process tools at Inspiring Communities

Inspiring Communities, a not-for-profit organization based in Nova Scotia, is a recognized systems change leading organization in Atlantic Canada. Their vision is of equitable, thriving communities founded on collaborative relationships, intentional, reflective learning and experimentation. Inspiring Communities builds collaborative relationships to foster positive social change through community-led initiatives and systems partnerships.
Inspiring Communities is an organization in transition. As we move from our start-up phase into our next phase of work we have undertaken processes to review and reorganize our workflows as well as aspects of our structure.We have been working in Google Workspace which made sense when we were a team of five or fewer people with less complex work. We now have increasing complexity in our work and some requirement to better protect our data and records. Additionally, we are not able to effectively manage our data and records through our google drive and work productively. Office 365 is a much better suite of tools for us and we would like support with research, feasibility and executing a move from workspace to 365 if it does indeed address our gaps and challenges.

Évaluation des besoins en capture et analyse de mouvement humain dans le contexte des arts du cirque

Au Québec, le secteur des arts du cirque a été fortement touché par la pandémie. Les industries du divertissement souhaitent créer des spectacles virtuels ou hybrides pour se réinventer. Pour ce faire, il est nécessaire de capture le mouvement des acrobates pour le retranscrire dans un environnement numérique, mais la technologie actuelle avec marqueurs sur le corps, est limitante. Le projet de recherche proposé a pour objectif de vérifier si un système de capture de mouvement sans marqueurs constitué de trois caméras à profondeur ZED2 est adapté pour un contexte des arts du cirque. Des mouvements acrobatiques seront enregistrés avec ce système et avec un système de référence avec marqueurs afin de comparer la précision de cette technologie et de tester ses limites. Les résultats de ce projet permettront de guider l’évolution des industries canadiennes et québécoises des arts et du divertissement à l’ère numérique.

Conversion DC/DC pour le solaire à concentration

L’objectif de mon travail est d’améliorer l’efficacité globale du rendement énergétique dans le domaine de l’installation de l’entreprise Stace, spécialisée dans le CPV (Photovoltaïque à concentration). Pour ce faire, la solution retenue consiste à insérer un étage intermédiaire de conversion DC/DC entre les panneaux CPV (en configuration série) et l’onduleur branché à chaque tracker. L’idée générale est de diminuer la granularité de la conversion pour éviter les panneaux bypassés en cas d’ombrage partiels et les pertes associées à un algorithme de suivi du point de puissance maximale (MPPT) non optimisé à grande échelle. Ces problèmes se sont avérés plus importants dans le cas du CPV, par rapport au PV classique.
L’étage de conversion ajouté étant également une source de pertes, il doit afficher le plus d’efficacité possible, afin d’affiner encore la granularité en mettant autant de convertisseurs DC/DC que possible. C’est dans cette optique qu’une architecture de conversion partielle DC/DC a été choisie. Elle permet d’utiliser un convertisseur nominal plus petit (par rapport à la conversion à pleine puissance), ce qui entraîne une augmentation du rendement (avec un convertisseur à 98% de rendement, et 30% de la puissance traitée, le rendement global de l’étage de conversion est d’environ 99,4%).