Projets novateurs réalisés

Establishing river by river, ecologically meaningful temperature triggers for behavioural thermoregulation in juvenile Atlantic salmon

It is well understood that Atlantic salmon will seek thermal refuge once certain temperature thresholds are exceeded, and these thresholds differ with age – this behaviour is termed ‘thermoregulation’. However, the temperatures that induces behavioural thermoregulation are not homogeneous across the range of Atlantic salmon. As our understanding of these processes has grown, it is now evident that (a) we cannot apply a spatially homogenous threshold for behavioural thermoregulation across the range of Atlantic salmon, and (b) even if different thresholds are defined for individual rivers, these are not static; rather they will flux throughout a summer. This project will link hydrological settings to the temperatures that induce this behaviour. This project asks a scientific question, its overarching aim is to guide the development of ecologically meaningful management plans. Ultimately, this new knowledge sets the stage for a reach specific management of the fragile Atlantic salmon populations that remain in eastern Canada.

La consommation énergétique et la culture des usagers québécois de l’électricité : efficacité, flexibilité des pratiques et adoption de nouvelles technologies dans le cadre de la transition énergétique

Une transition vers une consommation de l’énergie électrique plus efficace, flexible ou plus sobre doit notamment être pensée dans la réalité sociale des ménages québécois. Que l’on parle de jeunes parents manquant de temps endettés par un premier achat immobilier ou d’autres ménages, ils doivent être entendus. Leurs trajectoires et leurs aspirations d’établissement, ainsi que leurs manières de se déplacer, d’habiter et de s’approprier des lieux dispersés, expliquent leur propension à adopter ou pas des comportements d’achat et de consommation écoénergétiques. Avec le Laboratoire des technologies de l’énergie d’Hydro-Québec, nous proposons des enquêtes visant à mieux décrire et comprendre les cultures québécoises de la consommation énergétique.

Deep Generative Behavior Modeling

Autonomous cars are one example of a compelling next-generation artificial intelligence technology. In order to safely navigate through the world, cars must plan long-range routes and short-range paths, perceive the world around them, and act according to a safety-first policy that takes into account the intent of agents in their surrounding world. While not strictly AI-complete, the challenge of autonomous driving in urban and unstructured environments is substantial, as-yet unsolved, and of paramount economic importance. This research focuses on the most significant challenges remaining to be solved before it becomes possible to make unrestricted autonomous cars a reality. In particular, this research will focus on theory of mind, inference of driver, pedestrian, and cyclist intent, and robust, computationally efficient solutions to these and other inference problems. The aim of this research will be to build the probabilistic programming software systems and tools that will make it possible to efficiently build models that predict what the various agents near and on the roadway will do up to two to three seconds into the future, or at least long enough to allow for contingencies that ensure that the controlled vehicle behaves safely.

Video Production Project

This project will involve creation of video content enhancing the company’s brand and contributing to the company’s mission of disrupting how professionals work and how they get hired.

DÉVELOPPEMENT JEUNESSE ET COMMUNAUTÉS ETHNIQUES

ENJEU DE SOCIÉTÉ : ON EST TOUS ÉGAUX. JUSQU’À CE QUE LE CANCER DU SANG S’EN MÊLE.

N’importe qui peut recevoir un diagnostic de cancer du sang, mais tous n’ont pas les mêmes chances de s’en sortir. En effet, pour qu’une greffe de cellules fonctionne, le donneur et le receveur doivent être de la même origine ethnique. Et on fait face à un cruel manque de donneurs non blancs.

En ce moment, environ 70 % des donneurs de cellules souches inscrits sont blancs, alors que 88 % de la population mondiale ne l’est pas. Changeons la donne pour toutes les PANDC*, un donneur à la fois. *Personnes autochtones, noires et de couleur

LE PROJET : DÉVELOPPEMENT JEUNESSE ET COMMUNAUTÉS ETHNIQUES

Sensibiliser la cause auprès de cette cible doit être effectué en partie sur les médias sociaux et ce, dans un ton moderne, rassembleur et authentique. De plus, il est important de développer et de tisser des liens avec des jeunes par des jeunes et d’établir des partenariats avec des regroupements de cette cible.

Ce projet innovant aidera certainement la fondation à développer son message porteur à rendre un monde plus juste de manière très concrète en ayant un jeune universitaire qui connaît bien la cible à rejoindre. Par un heureux ou malheureux hasard, l’étudiant identifié à travailler sur le projet connaît bien le don de cellules souches puisque son ami est décédé de la leucémie, faute de trouver un donneur compatible.

MITACS fera une différence concrètement dans la vie des malades!

Caractérisation longitudinale de la composition du lait maternel

Peu de données et d’études sont disponibles sur la composition du lait maternel produit par une mère au-delà de la première année de vie de son bébé. Des données récentes tendent à démontrer que ce lait maternel serait d’intérêt nutritionnel avec un contenu appréciable facteurs immunoprotecteurs. Cependant, la majorité de ces études ont comparé la composition du lait maternel provenant de mères différentes et à divers stades de lactation ce qui amène des variations inter-donneuses importantes. Ainsi, ce projet vise à caractériser, chez une même mère, la composition en macro- et micronutriments de même que le contenu en bactéries de son lait maternel en fonction du temps (jusqu’à 24 mois post-partum) avec une emphase spécifique sur les composés bioactifs. Ce projet permettra d’approfondir et de générer de nouvelles connaissances sur la composition du lait maternel. De plus, selon les résultats obtenus, le lait exprimé au-delà de la première année post-partum, qui n’est pas récolté par Héma-Québec actuellement, pourrait être valorisé pour optimiser la teneur en nutriments et en facteurs immunologiques des lots de lait produits par la banque de lait d’Héma-Québec, une demande formulée par les néonatalogistes du Québec.

Experimental and Numerical Investigation on Novel Connection System for Cross-Laminated Timber Floors

In the move towards a sustainable built environment, timber structures are experiencing a renaissance in the building industry. Mass timber panels, primarily cross-laminated timber (CLT), are gaining increasing interest from builders and designers due to their lightweight, great dimensional stability, prefabrication, and aesthetic appeal. The CLT floor system resists both gravity loads such as dead and live loads, and lateral loads such as seismic and wind loads. The connections between CLT panels play an important role in efficiently transferring forces between panels and maintaining the integrity of the floor under gravity and lateral loads. The proposed research examines an innovative hybrid adhesive-mechanical fastener connection between CLT panels through laboratory testing and computer modeling. The goal of the proposed research is to facilitate the design of CLT floors, provide new and cost-effective options for connecting CLT panels, and thus, contribute to expanding industry presence and improving the competitiveness of mass timber products in Canada.

Mapping and utilizing deep seabed hydrocarbon seeps offshore Nova Scotia using microbial genomics

Seabed hydrocarbon seeps are environments where petroleum fluids from deep warm sources migrate upwards through marine sediments and up into the water column. These are important biological environments that also have industrial applications. Seeps can be indicative of deep petroleum reserves and are used in oil exploration. They also host microbial communities that are capable of living amidst petroleum and are capable of its biodegradation, potentially offering benefits in terms of oil spill or methane emissions remediation. Genomics is the science of using DNA sequencing to understand living organisms. In this project marine microbial genomics will be employed to map and understand the microbiome at seabed hydrocarbon seeps. This DNA sequencing will underpin bioassays for locating hydrocarbon seeps, which in turn helps to de-risk offshore exploration activities. Genomics of the microbial populations at seeps will also reveal their potential for use in marine environmental remediation technologies.

Investigate the long-term corrosion under insulation and moisture retention behaviors of various thermal insulations with and without moisture removal systems for pipelines and process equipment

Corrosion under insulation (CUI) a prominent material damage mechanisms in the process industries and pipelines which has reportedly caused countless failure events. Absorbed moisture in thermal insulation is the key reason behind CUI which also causes heat dissipation thereby posing the increased carbon footprint and reduced thermal efficiencies. The soaked thermal insulations have always been replaced with new insulation, whereas soaked insulations were disposed in landfills. There had been no known remedy in terms of complete drying of soaked thermal insulations and reduce the frequencies of replacement and disposal. This gap has been addressed by partner organization’s novel IVS (insulation ventilation system) which helps to drying soaked insulations in-situ manner. IVS has Canadian patent (No. CA 3,089,564) and initially trialled for functionality on a multi-kilometer pipeline. This project will help characterize various insulation configurations and understand novel IVS via advanced validation and quantified performance indicators thereby paving its way in the industry.

Automated technical knowledge curation using machine learning

With the growth of the Internet, the amount of scientific data and information available to research teams has been increasing exponentially in the past two decades, which results in significant information overload. Approaches for manual knowledge extraction and curation does not scale up in practice.
The main objective of the project is to create an intelligent knowledge management and resource curation system that allows R&D teams to effectively organize, access, and augment the knowledge they need to carry out their projects. This will enable teams, especially, research groups, and other power users of machine learning, to efficiently navigate the exponentially growing amount of information available to them and help them decide the best directions and approaches to take for every project. The project will create a human-in-the-loop machine learning workflow generation system by innovatively combining various techniques from knowledge graphs, natural language processing, graph neural networks and graph-based reasoning.

The passive transdermal delivery of macromolecules using proline based ionic liquids

The goal of this project is to develop patches/creams which are able to deliver a variety of nucleic acid and gene therapy payloads through the skin, in an effort to develop gene therapy for skin pathologies. To date, the drugs delivered topically are limited to small molecules in small doses, limiting the types of drugs that can be delivered through patches and creams. Patches which are capable of delivering larger molecules often require additional cumbersome applicators or electric devices, which are less feasible in practical application for patients. We wish to develop a plug-and-play gene therapy platform based on proline-ILs, to allow for the delivery of these larger molecules in therapeutic dosages, without needing to re-invent the wheel every time the drug payload is changed. These systems could feasibly replace the need for subcutaneous injections and constant oral administrations of certain medications, and eventually enable the transdermal delivery of gene therapies such as RNA to cure rare skin diseases.

Engineering Interfaces to Enhance Performanc and Longevity of Sustainable Energy Systems

The project plans to develop and optimize functional interfaces in two unique sustainable energy systems, that of biomass combustion as well as CO2 electroreduction. For the biomass combustion part of the project, a large limitation of of biomass combustors is the buildup of soot which in turn impacts heat transfer. The research goals are to first develop and test the textured surfaces which can both attract and capture the soot particles. Then fabricate catalytic coatings on the aforementioned surfaces/textures in order to selectively oxidize the soot byproduct. For the CO2 electroreduction portion of the project, the goal is to convert CO2 to ethanol via electroreduction. In the past and currently, distillation is a primary method to recover ethanol as a byproduct. In this project the first goal is to develop membranes which will be able to selectively absorb ethanol from ethanol-water mixtures. The next goal will be to then test these membranes in a CO2 electroreduction setup in order to recover the absorbed ethanol.