Innovative Projects Realized

New Marketing Strategic Plan for Royal Autogroup

Royal Auto Group in Yorkton is developing new and innovative marketing solutions to reach new more diverse demographics in the east-central Saskatchewan region. This project will develop, cost and implement novel and innovative approaches to marketing sales and services to non-traditional markets in a region that has seen significant demographic shifts over the last five years.

Development of Innovative Anaerobic Digestion Technologies for Enhanced Energy Recovery from Cattle Manure

This project explores the use of new anaerobic digestion technologies such as the vacuum-assisted anaerobic digestion as well as innovative pretreatment technologies including the high-shear thermo-alkaline Lystek process and other mechanical, thermal, and chemical pretreatments to enhance the solubilization of the lignocellulose in cattle manure. Enhanced solubilization will result in higher biomethane yields and faster kinetics, resulting in smaller and more efficient farm digesters. The project will develop a new steady-state design model for farm digesters treating lignocelluosic wastes with and without pretreatment. A techno-economic evaluation of the various technologies will be undertaken both to benchmark the process economics as well as identify niche market opportunities for various farm sizes. The partner organization as a leading municipal biosolids treatment engineering consultant in North America, will be able to expand in the emerging agricultural renewable energy market.

Empowering Indigenous Women for Stronger Communities (EIWFSC)’s Platform for Land Based, Indigenous Tourism Opportunities

Empowering Indigenous Women for Stronger Communities (EIWFSC) is a province-wide collaborative of Indigenous women with representation from the four Indigenous groups in the province. Throughout the duration of the project, 45 Indigenous women were trained as Peer Facilitators and have been leading culturally based workshops in their respective communities with a goal to impact positive mental health and end gender-based violence. In November, 2021, EIWFSC became incorporated and has created a social enterprise called Dragonfly Moons. All of the revenue generated through the sales of products and services will go back into community programming to ultimately fulfill the mission of EIWFSC. Our social enterprise has four lines of business – a quarterly subscription box, land based experience packages, workshops & training, & branded e-commerce merchandise. We aspire to educate people on the Indigenous ways of knowing and doing and to tell the authentic story of the Indigenous people of the province in the true spirit of truth and reconciliation.
This project is important to our growth as it aims to create a completely new, innovative platform for Indigenous artists in the province to tell their story and create meaningful connections.

Technology Development of a 1200W Bi-Directional Inverter with Unlimited Current Sharing Capability for Portable Power Station Application

Battery powered Portable Power Station (PPS) becomes popular in recent years because of its multiple benefits to consumers, such as portable, environmentally friendly, no noise, no need for gas. However, the existing PPS suffers from two fundamental limitations: (1) longer re-charging time, such as 5 to 7 hours; and (2) limited power capability. This project will develop a bi-directional inverter that will generate the required AC voltage from Battery. When it operates at rectifier mode, it can charge the battery from 0 to 80% in one hour. Another unique feature is that several PPS units can be connected in parallel to provide multiple times the total output power. It is expected that when the project is finished, a bi-directional 1,200W inverter will be designed and three experienced power electronics designers will be trained. It will significantly improve the competitive advantages of DigiQ Power and allow it to hire more engineers in Ontario.

Development of innovative tools for marine ecological assessment and intertidal habitat restoration Year Two

Contaminated sites assessment and remediation is an area of specialized services provided by Keystone Environmental. The technical challenge facing Keystone Environmental is to develop an innovative approach to provide effective contaminated sites services at rocky intertidal beaches in British Columbia. The rocky beaches of Howe Sound, impacted by effluents from pulp mills and mine acid rock drainage, have been studied and a significant body of historical data has been accumulated. Re-establishment of biodiversity after decrease of the contaminant input was very slow or minimal. The present MITACS Elevate proposal addresses this problem through the development of new tools for (1) interpretation of ecological assessment data, (2) provision of cost-effective methodology for “environmental quality” assessment and (3) providing effective rocky intertidal habitat restoration services. A collaboration between Dr. Christopher. J. Kennedy (SFU) and Keystone Environmental will develop and apply tools for intertidal ecological assessments and habitat restoration to enhance environmental effects monitoring services.

Initiation of the UBC Precast Design Studio through experimental testing of precast concrete shear walls

This Mitacs Accelerate represents the first year of the UBC Precast Design Studio, which is a multi-year partnership between the Canadian Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute (CPCI) and the University of British Columbia (UBC). The Studio will provide students with a hands-on learning experience for the seismic design, construction, and seismic response of precast shear walls. This Mitacs Accelerate will fund the training of four students in the experimental testing of precast concrete walls. Specifically, students will design and test both conventional and ductile precast concrete shear walls and generate novel data on the cyclic response of these walls. It is anticipated that this Mitacs Accelerate project will both advance scientific knowledge and the results can be used directly to set up the Precast Design Studio.

Enhancing physical properties of rubber compounds using reclaimed rubber

Over 250 million scrap tires are generated in North America every year. More than 2% of municipal solid waste is composed of scrap tires or approximately one scrap tire per person in this area. Additionally, approximately three billion tires are stockpiled in landfills, collection sites, and illegal dumps, posing environmental hazards and possible health risks. The material is not only being wasted but is also posing a very dangerous threat throughout the world. It may have been difficult to recycle and reclaim tires due to the difficulty of the process on its own. As such, this research project is an initiative taken by the Nanomaterials and Polymer Nanocomposites Laboratory (NPNL) at the University of British Columbia and Circular Rubber Technologies (CRT) in BC to design a processing and formulation to improve the physical properties of reclaimed rubber (obtained from scrap tire) so it can be reused as the rubber materials.

Student-centered interactive calculus readiness tool: Leveraging university course data through learning analytics

Increased stress, anxiety, and educational disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic have contributed to the reality that many students are entering university-level Calculus with insufficient mathematical preparation and negative attitudes towards learning math. Researchers have also shown that students from traditionally underrepresented groups are at a particularly high-risk of STEM attrition related to these factors. To address the need for proactive, student-centered learning support, this project will use data science to assess the roles of attitude and preparation in student performance; leveraging these results to develop an individualized early intervention. We begin by assessing mathematical preparation and attitudes using the Crowdmark platform, which is also used to collect course data. This will produce a rich dataset ready for analysis, supported by machine learning. The results will then be used to develop a tool to provide each student with an individualized action plan, and give educators detailed feedback about their students.

Assessing detection limits for x-ray absorption spectroscopic analyses

This internship conducted in partnership with the Canadian Light Source (CLS) BioXAS Main Spectroscopy beamline (Saskatoon, SK) is a research project to develop and test a procedure to determine the detection limits (lowest analyzable concentrations) for chemical analyses of samples containing three elements of interest (copper, cobalt, and uranium) over a wide range of concentrations. The intern will also optimize sample preparation and analytical procedures to improve data quality and help beamline users to optimize their sample analyses. The project will provide the BioXAS spectroscopy beamline with standard operating procedures to support efforts to assess analytical improvements on the beamline, improve user experiences, and contribute to efforts to benchmark performance capabilities at other synchrotron facilities. It will also further development of improved analytical facilities at CLS, which is Canada’s only national synchrotron facility, and further efforts to enhance its reputation as a destination for conducting reliable and high-quality analyses globally.

Understanding pediatric COVID-19 immunization rates and its impact on transmission

The COVID-19 vaccination is now widely available for children aged 5 and older, and has been shown to be both safe and effective at preventing serious health outcomes from COVID-19. However, most children in the United States are not vaccinated. In order for public health to identify sub-groups to target immunization campaigns and other efforts towards, they need to know who to target. To this end, we seek to determine what community-level characteristics predict underimmunization in children. Potential important factors include social, economic, and demographic characteristics, and it is these we will primarily explore. Our findings will be published in a peer-reviewed journal alongside an interactive website that provides graphics to better understand these trends.

Knowledge Recombination and Alliance Strategy in Science-based Businesses Year Two

Project Objectives:

1. To identify the best practices in knowledge recombination by comparing science-based multinational corporations and start-up firms.

2. To suggest refinements in alliance strategies for science-based multinational corporations and start-up firms.

3. To uncover processes and organizational structures to productively exploit the confluence of biotechnology and nanotechnology by MNCs.

Motivation for Research:

Successful organizations create new knowledge by recombining knowledge from multiple sources and disciplines (Grant, 1996; Kogut & Zander, 1992). Firms in science-based industries, such as biotechnology for example, create radical new products and processes based on scientific knowledge from multiple disciplines. Biotechnology firms, which originated in the 1980s (Zucker et al., 1998), are now incorporating nanotechnology to create new products and processes with the potential to transform an industry in search of new therapies (Sharp et al., 2011). For example, biotechnology based drugs, which until recently could not cross membrane barriers inside the human body, can now be designed on the nano-scale, leading to a new class of targeted drug delivery therapies, particularly in oncology. Recombining knowledge from diverse disciplines is inherently uncertain and requires large, consistent financial commitments over long periods of time.

Renewable ergonomics: Developing sustainable work practices in the Canadian onshore wind industry

Limited academic literature exists regarding the ergonomic hazards and musculoskeletal disorder risks associated with the daily work tasks of onshore wind turbine technicians. To develop sustainable work practices and work practice tools in the Canadian onshore wind industry, this project will identify, assess, and quantify the ergonomics hazards and musculoskeletal disorder risks associated with three predetermined priority work tasks. The postures and modeled loads of each priority task will be examined in both controlled and real versions of each task using novice and expert participants. From this, the Canadian onshore wind industry can begin to address ergonomic hazards and musculoskeletal risks before discomfort leads to pain and develop practices that support on-going active surveillance of ergonomic hazards and musculoskeletal risks.