Innovative Projects Realized

Geospatial Artificial Intelligence Algorithms for Automating Manual Observation Associated with Wheat Production

The grain sector is a key driver of Canada’s economic growth, with more than 20 million tons of wheat exports and over $20 billion in export sales annually. Many activities required for wheat production rely on laborious manual observation, such as post-harvest assessment of wheat kernels and wheat head detection. These manual, subjective tasks can be costly, unreliable, and inaccurate. Regardless, they are essential to the success of farmers, breeders, researchers, and buyers of wheat alike. This project aims to research and develop customized and novel object detection algorithms and geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI) algorithms to automate several manual observations required for wheat production. This project pursues a greater level of automation and precision in agriculture to drive efficiency and productivity, and to establish Canada as a global leader in agricultural automation. The project will reduce manual observational requirements, and increase productivity, profitability, sustainability, and competitiveness for Canada’s agricultural producers.

Optimisation d’un BMS (Battery Management System) pour des applications aéronautiques

La transition énergétique vers des systèmes de propulsions électriques s’accélère. Les batteries sont aujourd’hui des sources d’énergie essentielles aux véhicules y compris les drones. Cependant, la densité énergique limitée des packs de batteries combinée à la forte demande mondiale de cette source d’énergie sont des facteurs qui empêchent le prix de réduire rapidement. Afin d’augmenter l’efficacité globale du pack et sa durée de vie, l’on voit apparaitre de nos jours des packs avec des cellules dont la connectivité est reconfiguration dynamiquement. Cette adaptabilité, si elle est bien effectuée, contribue inévitablement à solliciter les cellules selon leur état de charge et surtout selon leur état de santé.
Ce projet de recherche et développement vise donc à démontrer les gains potentiels d’un pack de batteries au lithium dont l’architecture de connectivité est reconfigurable en temps réel. Il s’agira de démontrer le potentiel d’augmentation de la charge utile du pack tout en préservant sa durée de vie.

Marketing research for nuclear power plant refurbishment & life extension and an Establishment business strategy in targeted region

The sponsor company, Gnest Inc has plenty of experience in the consulting and design of nuclear power plant and specialized specific nuclear power engineering projects. Internship periods for 4 months can help the sponsor company to prepare for new promising fields of nuclear power engineering with specialized plan. The output of internship can help sponsor company to establish short and long term business strategy and enhance the strengths in expected or announced nuclear power plants refurbishment and life extension projects in target countries. To achieve goals the intern carry out market research of refurbishment and life extension of nuclear power, analysis of target countries nuclear power policy, analysis and list up of related projects for sponsor company, establish preparation list for new projects through discussion, business trip and researches. Then the intern finally submit marketing research for nuclear power plant refurbishment & life extension and Business strategy in Asia and South America as final report..

La vie médiatique des communautés citoyennes engagées

Comment une communauté engagée, à petite échelle, peut-elle prendre vie par et à travers les médias? Partout dans le monde des groupes de citoyen·nes engagé·es pour diverses causes font exister leur action à travers des objets médiatiques. Avec des pages Facebook, des comptes Instagram, mais aussi des infolettres, des zines ou des podcasts, ces groupes font connaitre leurs enjeux, rallient des nouveaux·elles membres ou des sympathisant·es, s’informent les uns les autres, militent, partagent, discutent — en d’autres termes, on peut dire que leur existence est médiatique. Au-delà de la simple diffusion d’information, l’appropriation de certains médias par des citoyen·nes peut aussi agir comme activité émancipatrice. Certaines de modalités médiatiques sont très efficaces, mais ne permettent pas nécessairement de rejoindre, de sensibiliser ou de mobiliser tous·tes les citoyen·nes : l’accès aux plateformes numériques, par exemple, se répartit dans les populations au gré de diverses fractures sociales pré-existantes (en termes de revenus, d’âge, de genre, d’origine ethnique ou culturelle, de langue, etc.), et la question de l’accessibilité et de l’inclusivité de ces existences médiatiques se pose donc.

Commercialization of a Cooling System for Shipping of Biological Samples

Tricca Technologies is a spinoff company of the University of Alberta that is making a small cooler system for shipping small numbers of chemicals or biological samples. Currently, biological samples are often shipped using dry ice to ensure they remain cold during transit, this greatly increases shipping costs meaning it is usually only economically viable to ship large numbers of samples at a time. However, with a small, reusable cooler system to send or receive samples the shipping process can become affordable.
Tricca has developed a prototype device for keeping 5-10 biological samples below 4 degrees for over two days. Tricca is seeking a business intern to develop a business plan for commercializing this technology, including competitive analysis, costing, manufacturing options, and a plan for initial sales.

Exploring Ways to Leverage the 2026 Wheelchair Basketball World Championships to Achieve Wheelchair Basketball Canada’s Strategic Objectives

It is well-documented that strategic leveraging of sport events is necessary for long-term positive outcomes to occur. However, leveraging remains challenging in practice as the operational demands of event hosting may be prioritized over ancillary programs and initiatives. Wheelchair Basketball Canada is hosting the 2026 Wheelchair Basketball World Championships and has aligned broader organizational strategic objectives (such as growing sport opportunities for Canadians with disabilities) with hosting the 2026 event. Therefore, the goal of this project is to develop and propose an initial leveraging plan for the 2026 Wheelchair Basketball World Championships so that organizational objectives may be met. This partnership will offer the partner organization additional support for achieving leveraging goals and may provide insight into successful leveraging strategies for future sport event hosting. As sport events are often, at least in part, publicly funded, ensuring that events are used strategically for broader outcomes is essential for sustainable event hosting in Canada.

Strategic Sport Development: Assisting Wheelchair Basketball Canada to develop strategies to attract new participants to their sport

Wheelchair Basketball Canada is the national governing body for wheelchair basketball in Canada (Wheelchair Basketball Canada, 2022). Wheelchair Basketball Canada has developed a new strategic plan that include grassroots development as a strategic pillar. Specifically, and in support of a wider need to improve awareness and access to sport opportunities for people with disabilities (Misener & Darcy, 2014), Wheelchair Basketball Canada has developed strategic objectives around the “Awareness” and “First Contact” stages of their long-term athlete development (LTAD) model (Wheelchair Basketball Canada, n.d.). Participation in these introductory stages had become stagnant, and an emphasis within this strategic pillar is to diversify target markets to reach new audiences. Thus, this project will help Wheelchair Basketball Canada innovate their marketing practices to: (1) understand the target markets currently reached by existing marketing practices, (2) identify new target markets, and (3) develop strategies and tactics for reaching these new target markets.

CP Market Entry Business Strategy

This project aims at developing a business strategy that will help Cozii to better understand its target market within the property management industry, develop and implement product improvements that will make it compete favourably in the market, and implement new strategies to establish new partnerships and achieve target sales.

HUB Cycling Bike Friendly Buildings (BFB) Consulting – Sales Strategic Plan

The organization is HUB Cycling and this project is specifically for their Bike Friendly Building (BFB) Consulting Services Department. HUB Cycling engaged a Capilano University Business student in 2021 to develop a marketing strategy to attract more BFB Consulting clients, which is being implemented in 2022. There is an anticipated significant increase in clients that will come from this marketing campaign. As a next step, HUB Cycling is partnering with CapU again to hire a student researcher who has specialized in sales funnel development to organize the sales systems while developing a robust strategic sales and business development plan.

About HUB Cycling’s Bike Friendly Buildings Consulting Program:
HUB Cycling operates a quickly developing new service related to our mandate: Bike Friendly Building (BFB) Consulting Services. BFB Consulting provides guidance to developers and managers to create buildings that are well prepared to meet the growing interest in cycling, and the increasing number and diversity of bikes in Metro Vancouver. Building developers and managers have been seeking out HUB Cycling’s fee-for-service guidance on developing excellent cycling facilities and policies, in response to a burgeoning “amenities war” to attract building tenants/ buyers.

Website Optimization and product design of the Cansbridge Fellowship Website

The Cansbridge Fellowship provides a chance for a select group of Canada’s most ambitious students to join an international network of innovators who are learning and innovating on a global scale. This project is based on the Cansbridge Fellowship’s desire to explore designing innovative medical devices to help improve diagnostic methods used in the industry today. The main focus of the innovation project is to bring stroke diagnosis to the point of first response by altering the outcome and cost. There is a huge market opportunity for this space since currently, there is no device available for use that solves this issue. The purpose of this project is to make the current website more user-friendly by redesigning the site navigation, upgrading the user interface/visual design, and updating content. Only one intern will be in charge of this project. The focus of the website optimization will be to Improve the internal linking structure, simplify navigation, improving visual design and user interface and doing market research on the audience. The timeline for this project is 4 months and includes 3 main phases including the foundational stage (primarily research), the build stage and the final stage (presentation and documentation).

Project Management among multidisciplinary Teams: coordination mechanisms and community of practice

As part of their strategic plan execution, WADA has recently created a Strategic Management Office (SMO) to strengthen the project management capabilities of multidisciplinary teams and to ensure a sustainable alignment between the organization’s strategic plan and the priorities embedded in the teams’ activities.
As the organization is implementing its project management framework, a first challenge is arising to identify the proper coordination mechanisms to allow the staff of 19 different teams to focus their efforts on the organization’s strategic priorities, while ensuring interdisciplinary collaboration and organizational effectiveness. A second challenge is the design and development of the community of practice value proposition for project managers among WADA’s 19 different teams.

This project will help WADA address the specific challenges by exploring 1) the different coordination mechanisms options and assess which one would fit better with the organization’s needs and 2) the best practices ensuring that the community of practice will become dynamic and self-sustaining.

Validation of the diagnostic accuracy of a realtime fecal peR test to identify Angiostrongylus vasorum infection

French Heartworm is a very real threat to the health of domesticated and wild dogs in Newfoundland. The purpose of this research project is to validate the sensitivity and specificity of a newly developed fecal test for this parasite. This will be done by collecting fecal and heart/lung samples from deceased dogs and wild canids (ie. coyotes, foxes). The results of running the fecal samples through this test alone are inconclusive. However, we examine the heart and lungs to accurately identify a positively infected animal, which gives us a confident diagnosis to compare the fecal test results to. Validating any new test for the purpose of commercialization is crucial. The company should know that it is reliable, beneficial and the limit of its sensitivity. Also, because we are investigating results for domestic dogs and wild canids, it is important to know that the fecal test has many applications.