Projets novateurs réalisés

An Engaged Community for Shared Learning: Internships Contribute to Capacity Building in Northern Saskatchewan

The International Centre for Northern Governance and Development (ICNGD) was created to help focus attention on opportunities for building capacity in northern Saskatchewan. An overarching goal was to establish local to global relationships with the Circumpolar North in support of education, research and economic prosperity. The university, industry and northern communities work together to help students learn in an environment that is context based, relevant education and research in support of the north. The research mission is advanced through graduate learner training in community based, partner orientated internships. Learners are exposed to innovative leaders in industry and community development through initiatives such as internships designed to conduct community based projects. Most important to the design of the internship model is the potential for project outcomes to not only address social determinants but to inspire youth within the communities to further their education.

Development and Demonstration Engine Technology for Class 8 Heavy Duty Trucks Fueled by Waste Hydrogen

Hydra Energy Corporation Commercial Demonstration Project will be based in Prince George, British Columbia 12.4 MT/day of waste hydrogen will be captured, purified and transported to an onsite hydrogen refueling station from which (at least) 53 Class 8 tractor-trailer trucks will refuel daily. Hydra’s demonstration project can provide a significant reduction in fleet greenhouse gas(GHG) emissions, Particulate Matter and other air emissions. Hydra is currently testing the first prototype dual-fuel hydrogen/diesel heavy-duty class 8 truck in North America. And, in collaboration with the University of British Columbia (UBC) is conducting thorough experimental investigation of the potential fuel efficiency improvements and emissions reductions that may be realized by fueling an internal combustion engine with hydrogen and diesel fuel at various. The R&D project results will advance the scientific knowledge of hydrogen in internal combustion engines, and will help to expand the availability of clean energy transportation technologies in and beyond B.C.

Diagnostic Screening for Conscious Awareness in Brain Injury and Disease: Developing the Visual Component

Presently medical personnel do not have adequate tools to assess disorders of conscious awareness after severe brain injury if the patients have difficulty speaking & moving. These people are frequently deemed unresponsive when they may be “in there” but unable to respond. Our research team has developed a rapidly administerable, portable system that measures brain waves in response to sounds & spoken sentences. Once diagnosis has been established, personnel are more equipped to make decisions regarding a patient’s candidacy for rehabilitation. Further, the test is repeatable so changes in patient function can be measured over time. Although this was a breakthrough, the team realized that many patients could not be tested with the auditory protocol because they could not hear, did not speak English beforehand or may have aphasia (difficulty understanding/formulating language). To address this shortcoming, my research involves developing visual stimuli to assess these patients & provide a more thorough clinical picture. Military personnel are at significant risk for severe combat associated brain injuries. This diagnostic & monitoring tool will be useful to soldiers, veterans & civilians alike. It has remarkable clinical relevance & fills a critical void in health care.

Automatic 3D reconstruction of Indoor Environments from Consumer-graded Cameras

With the increase demand of 3D models in urban environment, automatic indoor modeling has attracted more attention for human trajectory identification, facility management and indoor navigation. To reconstruct indoor models quickly and reliably, this project will propose a new indoor reconstruction method to automatically generate indoor semantic building models through building ground maps and images from consumer-graded cameras. The image of building ground maps will be over-segmented and later semantically classified as ceilings, walls and other indoor elements. The 3D models of indoor elements will be later reconstructed from extracted geometric information and semantic labeling. Finally, multiple images from consumer-graded cameras will be registered with the generated model. The advantage of this proposed method is that it fully combines semantic information from building ground maps and texture from multiple images. Therefore, it will automatically reconstruct indoor models with lower cost.

Comparative analysis of reliability-surrogate measures using an ensemble of realistic water distribution networks

To evaluate the reliability of a water distribution system, surrogate measures are commonly used because of its easy computation and intuitive behavior. Some recent researchers have acknowledge the need to identify correlations between these indexes in order to select the ones that may be measuring similar properties of the networks and therefore are not adding further knowledge on how to make the systems more reliable. In order to evaluate these correlations between reliability-surrogate indexes assuring both appropriate conditions for the evaluation of flow-related indexes, and statistical significance of the found correlations, it is needed a set of realistic case studies. The research proposal is to use an ensemble of systems developed by the student in early stages of his PhD program to evaluate the correlations of the reliability-surrogate indexes using a fast and tested design algorithm as the one developed by the host supervisor. The result would be a series of correlations between indexes that may lead to recommendations on which ones are representative of the reliable behavior of a system. This results and recommendations are planned to be included in a publication for an international conference of water distribution systems (e.g. CCWI, WDSA, HIC).

Restoring native grassland function in urban environment; implications for soil-plant relations

Fescue prairie has reduced in Western Canada, because of human activities including housing development and land clearing. Urban development can impact natural ecosystems by eliminating the majority of native species, thus changing the richness and composition of the species. Strategic restoration efforts may reduce the effects of urban expansion on native ecosystem by protecting natural habitat and re-establishing modified habitat. Larch Park is an Edmonton residential development area, to which land reclamation and restoration ecology have been applied to rebuild native ecosystems (grassland) instead of turf grasses to reduce the impacts of urbanization. By rebuilding soils and planting native communities in Larch Park we believe that ecosystem function and wildlife habitat will improve to something more similar to natural grassland with less maintenance costs including watering, fertilization and weed invasion resistance.

A statistical method for competing risk survival analysis with clustered big data

Over the last few years, the data revolution occurred with the emergence of “Big data”. In medical field, the term big data refers to large databases in terms of patients and/or information from varied sources. Nevertheless, heterogeneity is encountered in this kind of data. Indeed, data arise from different medical centers. Furthermore, we can’t perform traditional statistical methods on these large databases: major problem are multicollinearity and overfitting. Lots of regularization methods have been proposed in order to adapt classical methods. Mittal et al. have challenged to adapt survival analysis methods to these emerging data sets. Survival analyses consist in modelling time to event in presence of censoring (unobserved event). One of the main assumption of the most popular survival model is the non-informative censoring which means that censoring is independent of the event time. TO BE CONT’D

Product Recommendation and Decision Making Tool

Tools and interactions that reduce the confusion of the online shopper and help her with decision making are very important for improving the shopping experience. Optemo provides a suite of intelligent e-commerce solutions for retailers, with the goal of creating an enjoyable user experience and increasing the conversion rate and customer satisfaction of retailers. The goal of this internship is to improve the user experience by taking the browsing history of customer into account, in order to infer her product preferences and present her with products she is likely to be interested in. To accomplish this, the intern will browse relevant techniques in the literature and implement either an appropriate existing method or a hybrid method.

Étude de l’interaction entre CHOP et HIF en réponse à l’hypoxie dans les cellules épithéliales alvéolaires

La fibrose pulmonaire idiopathique (FPI) est caractérisée par un remodelage des voies aériennes lié à des agressions répétées des cellules épithéliales alvéolaires (CEA). Ces CEA subissent une mort cellulaire programmée. Chez les patients atteints de FPI, des marqueurs du stress du réticulum endoplasmique (RE) et de l’hypoxie sont présents, tels les facteurs de transcription CHOP et HIF-1a respectivement. Ce projet a pour objectif d’étayer le lien entre les voies de signalisation hypoxiques et l’induction du stress du RE en s’intéressant particulièrement à l’interaction protéique CHOP/HIF.
En collaboration avec le Centre de Recherche du Centre Hospitalité Universitaire de Montréal, des cellules épithéliales alvéolaires seront isolées des poumons d’humains et de rats. Dans des CEA placées en condition normoxique et hypoxique, la localisation de CHOP et HIF sera évaluée par immunocytochimie.
Par stratégie siRNA, l’implication de CHOP dans la mort cellulaire programmée sera également évaluée par dosage de la caspase 3 clivée.

Indentification de patterns d’apprentissage dans le Hyve-3D

Ce projet de recherche vise à enrichir les connaissances sur les processus de conception et d’apprentissage de la conception en architecture, dans le cadre des sessions de revue dans le Hyve-3D, une plateforme immersive favorisant l’idéation et la co-conception. Le studio de projet est une pierre angulaire de l’apprentissage de la conception architecturale pour les étudiants. Chaque semaine, les étudiants présentent leur projet d’architecture (comme un ensemble de logements, un centre culturel ou une station balnéaire) à leurs enseignants, des architectes professionnels. Lors de ce moment de discussion, des problèmes de conception sont soulevés parfois résolus, des alternatives sont proposées, des valeurs architecturales sont défendues. L’étudiant construit ces connaissances sur la conception architecturale en expérimentant la conception, guidé par son instructeur. TO BE CONT’D

Le recours à la jurisprudence de la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme par la Cour suprême du Canada (1982-…) : apport d’une recherche empirique

Touchant tous les aspects de la vie humaine, la globalisation n’aurait pas oublié d’épargner le travail juridictionnel. Une littérature juridique importante a effectivement émergé depuis les années 2000 avançant la thèse d’une communauté globale des juridictions. Affirmant la fin du caractère strictement national du droit, ces écrits soutiennent que les juges exerceraient désormais leurs fonctions sans considération de frontières, voire élaboreraient une jurisprudence transnationale, en particulier dans le domaine des droits de la personne.

La recherche entend nuancer de concert avec d’autres travaux ces discours doctrinaux qui malheureusement ne s’appuient que sur très peu de données empiriques. Or il semblerait bien que des analyses tant quantitatives que qualitatives de phénomènes de circulation des solutions juridiques démontrent que même les juges canadiens, souvent vantés pour leur cosmopolitisme, n’échappent pas à un usage cosmétique, voire opportuniste de l’argument de droit comparé. C’est en tout cas ce que nous entendons démontrer par l’étude empirique du recours à la jurisprudence de la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme par la Cour suprême du Canada.

Enhancing Newcomers Integration: Mapping of Social Networks within Toronto East Local Immigration Partnership. A Pilot Project.

The purpose of this project is to explore the dynamics within the Toronto East Local Immigration Partnership (LIP) by creating visual representations of the interconnections between the members involved in the Partnership. This research aims to use social network analysis to assess the relationships within the Partnership in order to identify individuals that are centrally located in the network as well as who is on the periphery. By visualizing the members’ location within the network, the Toronto East LIP will be able to enhance its collaboration, communication flows and overall effectiveness, which will hopefully improve, in turn, the current service delivery of immigration services. Ideally, these improvements should also facilitate the social and economic inclusion of newly arrived immigrants. Since this particular research project is a pilot project, Meta Strategies hopes it has the potential of being replicated in all the other local LIPs across Toronto and even Ontario.