Innovative Projects Realized

Operations & Communications Lead – MVP Development

Lifeguard.org (URL: www.joinlifeguard.org) is a unique ESG venture that represents the first ever effort to provide the infrastructure, collaboration tools, and incentives needed to enable and encourage peer-reviewed science, focused on complex public health and environmental issues, on a massive scale. Our vision is to create a world where multi-disciplinary teams of scientists and subject-matter experts collaborate to conduct peer-reviewed scientific research that finds defective or harmful products and by-products and prevents them from ending up in the hands of consumers, being exposed to workers in occupational settings, and harming the environment.

With impressive investment from the reinsurance industry and support from the scientific community, Lifeguard.org has the opportunity to build a web application for our growing waitlist of users across disciplines, geographies, and expertise. This project will enable the efforts of our technical development team to be augmented with additional operations and communications talent, so that we can accelerate our time to market to release our web application.

Observations of atmospheric stability and threedimensionalturbulence for wind energy developmentapplications

In 2012, wind energy in Canada grew by nearly 20% and wind is expected to supply 20% of Canada’s electricity by 2025. Accurate measurement of the wind resource is essential for future wind energy development but current wind resource assessment practices do not adequately measure atmospheric turbulence or stability. These variables affect average windn speeds, wind energy turbine performance, and energy production. The research proposed here will deploy advanced instrumentation (a 3-d sonic anemometer) to provide highresolution measurements of 3-d atmospheric turbulence and stability. These measurements have potential to improve wind speed models and reduce uncertainties in energy production estimates at a proposed wind energy production site in British Columbia.

Immersive experience with object recognition at the Museum of fine arts

To discover how art connects us to our cultural heritage is to understand the world and our place in it. Our content platform, Cilia, is designed to allow visitors to use artificial intelligence (A.I.) based object recognition in order to obtain content about an artwork or artifact. A prototype has been successfully tested with visitors, during this Mitacs we will develop an artwork recognition engine that can work in a web browser to enhance its accessibility and portability.

Tastet – Optimisation des processus

Tastet est une plateforme de recommandations de bonnes adresses ainsi qu’un média spécialisé. Nous faisons rayonner la culture gastronomique du Québec et la soutenons tous les jours. Aucun restaurant, café ou bar ne paie pour apparaître sur notre site, par souci d’intégrité et de transparence. Nous devons donc optimiser nos processus afin de pouvoir nous implanter dans d’autres villes. Avec la situation extrêmement précaire des restaurants en raison de la pandémie, ainsi que le milieu des médias qui est également en grande difficulté, comme la fermeture du Magazine Voir l’année dernière en a tristement témoigné, il est impératif pour Tastet d’améliorer ses processus afin de satisfaire les attentes commerciales de ses partenaires et ainsi poursuivre sa mission d’expansion.

Exploring the Facilitators and Barriers to using Food Industry-Initiated Knowledge Translation Activities among Registered Dietitians: A Qualitative Study

Research continues to suggest that there is a strong association between literacy and health. Health literacy requires writing and reading skills, as well as general health knowledge. Unfortunately, printed patient education materials are often written at higher reading levels with technical and/or dense texts that are not easily understood by people with low literacy levels.
Working with the Canadian Sugar Institute (CSI), this project aims to assess nutrition education tools that center on the topic of “sugar and health”. We will conduct a mixed-methods study that uses validated surveys to assess the acceptability of a selection of nutrition education tools. Interested registered dietitians (n=35-45) will be recruited to participate in focus group discussions where barriers and facilitators to using the tools in practice will be explored. Data analysis will determine how to modify the tools which will translate into a “resource checklist”. Results from this study will inform the creation of a series of recommendations to CSI on how to improve their resources.

Gestion sécuritaire des données d’une solution de maintenance préventive utilisant des capteurs intelligents

Nous sommes une jeune entreprise québécoise qui offre une solution de capteur assistant la maintenance prédictive. Le projet vise à développer des capteurs spécialisés et les mettre en application pour le suivi d’équipement des manufacturiers alimentaires. Grace à la capacité des capteurs d’utiliser l’intelligence artificielle pour l’auto-apprentissage, nous nous démarquons de nos compétiteurs par la simplification significative dans l’installation et l’utilisation du système.

De-Palletizer for Stacked Rubber Strands (“Wig-Wag”)

In this project, we will solve a challenging material handling problem encountered by our industry partner in a labour-intensive step of their production process, which will help compensate for current and future personnel shortages and enable expansion of production. The main challenges in this project include object detection, grasping and manipulation of heavy material, and integration into an existing production process that is currently heavily dependent on manual labour and expertise.

The material to be handled in this process is a thick, wide rubber strand that arrives at the station in a folded pile on a palette, called wig-wag, with one irregularly-shaped free end exposed at the top of the stack. This project requires the successful detection, grasping, movement, and insertion of the irregular free end of the wig-wag into an existing machine to continue the production process. There are several key challenges in this project related to the detection and handling of the wig-wag.

First, the shape, position, and orientation of the free end of the wig-wag must be detected, which will require either the modification of an earlier production step to include labelling or advanced optical sensing (e.g., laser, infrared, video) to sense it directly.

Printing Ideas: Prototyping Interior Design Solutions with 3D Printers

This research attempts to find the best 3D printing technology and 3D printing material (filament) that matches with a local urban community’s demand for customized interior design solutions, including furniture, tailored walls, personalized partitions, lamps and decorative elements. By investigating proper hardware and technology for public use, this research will foster the culture of creativity and will help communities find 3D printable solutions to improve the quality of their built environment. The partner company can use this research to establish a 3D printer center that is capable to respond to the local community’s demand in building customized and affordable interior design solutions.

Toronto Recognition Audit”: Examining Representation in the Public Realm

Toronto City Council received a petition signed by close to 14,000 individuals calling for Dundas Street to be renamed, citing its namesake Henry Dundas’ role in delaying the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The petition has led to a broader review of how the City commemorates public figures and events in place names, monuments, and other civic assets. This project is known as the “Recognition Review” and seeks to understand who or what is represented in the public realm in Toronto; uncover how systemic racism may be embedded in monuments and the naming of civic properties; and inform strategies to create public spaces that are more welcoming, inclusive, and reflective of Toronto’s rich diversity, culture and heritage. It is not clear what voices are not well represented in our monuments and memorials which means our collective history might be misinformed.
The proposed project sets out to undertake a “Recognition Audit” to better understand the histories that are represented in Toronto’s monuments, street and place names. Researchers will examine a mix of primary and secondary sources to identify and classify themes represented in the public realm along with gaps in representation.

The Center of Change

The research project proposed will be used to improve the financial feasibility of an urban agricultural greenhouse. The first objective of this project is to create a business model that will supplement revenue to a greenhouse by offering mental health services. The second objective of this project is to test and assess the performance of a smart climate control system prototype that fuses climate sensor data with infra-red imagery of crops. By assessing the performance of this prototype, future adoption of integrated automated climate control systems will be possible to further minimize operational costs of a greenhouse and improve crop quality and yield. Indoor agriculture and mental health are two sectors in industry that are expected to grow in demand over the next decade. By participating in this program the entrepreneur will benefit North Forge by bringing a new business concept to market adoption in North America and further supporting research and development in new indoor agricultural technologies.

Innovation Management: Decision mapping in the production and management of Danby Appliances

Danby Appliances specializes in the design, production, and distribution of small appliances. With the intention of improving efficiency relating to their product development and product management processes, Danby Appliances has communicated adaptive decision making and mitigating supply chain management uncertainty as areas of significant interest. Utilizing qualitative methods, process mapping, and strategy charts, recommendations will be developed to benefit Danby Appliances contributing to their competitive advantage. The development of recommendations through both theoretical and practical analysis will provide Danby Appliances with a unique perspective in their pursuit of innovative solutions.

Define the best omega-3 fatty acid to fight prostate cancer

Prostate cancer is the more common cancer affected men in developed countries. Epidemiological data suggest that omega-3 fatty acids may prevent prostate cancer initiation and progression. However, these data do not decipher which omega-3 fatty acid presents the more potent anticancer properties. SCF Pharma has developed pure and highly bioavailable omega-3 fatty acids monoglycerides. Interestingly, data from SCF Pharma showed that these pure monoglycerides form of fatty acids can reduce the growth and the proliferation rate of prostate cancer cells in culture. It also appears that these anti cancer properties may be different according to the fatty acid. In term of public health, these data are of interest, but the effect of these fatty acids on non-cancerous prostate cells remains to be determined. Dr V. Fradet’s lab has developed a model of non-cancerous prostate cells derived from prostatectomy specimen. Based on this model, we aim to determine the omega-3 fatty acid with the highest anti cancer properties on prostate cancer cells without side effect on normal prostate cells.