Projets novateurs réalisés

Colorimetric test strips for oil/fuel/ethanol mixtures

There is a need for customers to use a simple test method to determine if the fuel blends they are using are of the proper composition for fuel efficiency, environment- friendliness and engine cylinder compatibility. But it is difficult to determine the composition of oil/fuel/ethanol mixtures without detailed and expensive chemical analysis. It is because the different hydrocarbons in oils or in fuels are hard to differentiate by physical change or by simple chemical reactions such as pH change. In order to perform a simple test such as a colorimetric analysis, it may be necessary to find out the additives present in the oils and fuels for detection. There are many colorimetric tests available in the literature for the detection of these additives. However, these tests are all tedious that are not amendable to the simple test format such as the test strip. On the other hand, nanomaterials have been synthesized to test for viscosity and wettability of organic liquids. However, these nanomaterials have not been used to test oil/fuel/ethanol mixtures. Therefore, in this proposal, a series of nanomaterials called inverse opal films will be prepared.

Coastal Convection Modeling

Global warming is a major issue faced by society nowadays and to fight it we need to be able to make global climate projections
with less uncertainty. Despite numerous progresses in theoretical and computational modelling, there are still climatic
phenomena that remain partially unresolved because of the coarseness of the grid resolutions used in global climate and
numerical weather prediction models. Indeed, current do not capture well intense storms and precipitation events that occur in
coastal areas and around many tropical islands, which are known to impact in return the global climate variability and weather
patterns. We propose a simple model that is able to capture the key characteristics of coastal convection and its impact on the
global atmospheric circulation. For that purpose, we will use the multicloud model proposed by Khouider and his collaborators that
represents various cloud types based on a stochastic lattice model. The model has two uniform columns, one for the land and one
for the ocean, that interact with each other. Preliminary runs showed that the model is able to capture features of coastal
convection such the ability of rain systems to propagate from the land to the ocean column and vise-versa.

A Toolkit for Affordability Driven Home Energy Efficiency Retrofits Through Local Improvement Charge Programs

Climate change will cause increasing temperature fluctuations and longer heat waves. This will make home cooling essential, but adding and using cooling can be too expensive for low-income homeowners, including seniors. Incentive programs exist to help people make energy-efficient retrofits to their homes, but they can increase housing costs. This does not work for many low or fixed-income and senior households. The Affordable home energy retrofit toolkit demonstration will explore making energy-efficient retrofits affordable for more households. It will work within Toronto’s existing Home Energy Loan Program to provide innovative retrofits to low-income and senior households. This approach aims to reduce energy costs, improve health and safety, and allow seniors to age in place for longer.

Les mécanismes moléculaires des interactions virus-hôte du virus de la diarrhée épidémique porcine (PEDV)

Nous étudierons les mécanismes moléculaires des interactions virus-hôte du virus de la diarrhée épidémique porcine (PEDV), un
important coronavirus porcin à ARN enveloppé. Ce virus est responsable de graves pertes économiques et constitue le principal
agent pathogène émergent du porc au Canada et dans le monde. Nous proposons d’étudier les mécanismes moléculaires des
interactions hôte-PEDV, car nous pensons que notre compréhension insuffisante de ces interactions entrave le développement
de nouvelles stratégies pour un contrôle efficace du PEDV.
Récemment, l’épidémie de SRAS-CoV-2 a relancé l’intérêt pour l’étude des coronavirus animaux. Il est donc essentiel de
comprendre la biologie des coronavirus porcins afin d’améliorer notre capacité à prédire et à contrôler les futures pandémies.

Development of an intelligent decision model to support the occupational health and safety in the manufacturing industry

CONFORMiT seeks to prevent serious injuries and fatalities and high potential events by providing administrative
control solutions that can enable businesses to manage critical risks within their operations. To accomplish its
main mission, the firm uses its consulting experience in the design of safety programs according to standards; the
design and provision of training; identification and labeling of equipment; management of entrances and exits for
confined spaces; the development of lockout and tagging procedures (LOTO); and the design of compliance audit
schedules.
CONFORMiT’s vision is to digitize the management of risks for humans and the environment, through an intelligent
and comprehensive business solution, that allows the management of Environmental Health & Safety from
strategy to production, scheduling operations plant and maintenances.
This internship project will concentrate on developing a “roadmap” towards an intelligent strategy for integrating
LOTO processes of a production system for its maintenance operations using AI strategies, based on available,
practical data.

Creating sustainable Food Systems for Local Food in Newfoundland and Labrador

We will be gathering, analyzing and sharing publically detailed information about the current state of food production at the community level and examining the potential for rebuilding food security based on local production and distribution. We have already begun interviews across the province to gather the relevant data. During this internship, interview data will be analyzed, extended through further enquiry and used to define the potential for innovative approaches to local food production and distribution. We plan to use Nvivo and GIS (Geographic Information Systems) mapping for qualitative analysis of data. This work will involve creation of a database derived from interview responses, a second round of data gathering and analysis followed by public engagement to share the results. Through this work, we hope to generate a cohesive picture of key components needed to rebuild food security across our province.

Pre-concentration of Mount Polley copper ore

A previous feasibility study performed at UBC on the Mount Polly samples showed that dense media separation gave copper recoveries of 95.8% at a specific gravity of 2.9. The purpose of this research project is to confirm the applicability of dense media separation for Mount Polley ore pre-concentration. A lab test will be performed as a part of this project to determine the optimal particle size for pre-concentration. The mineralogical properties of the ore will be examined to explain why dense media separation would or would not be applicable to sorting the ore. Testing will be conducted to further assess X-ray Flouresence, Optical Sorting and Microwave-Infrared Temperature sensing systems. Results of the DMS and sensing systems will be compared

The development of a nutrition and exercise toolkit for patients with primary biliary cholangitis (PBC)

Primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) is an autoimmune liver disease that is associated with multiple symptoms, including fatigue, pruritus, bone disease, emotional distress and impaired health related quality of life. There is evidence to support the important role of exercise and nutrition in improving symptoms and reducing disease-related complications in people with PBC. Working together with the PBC society, we will develop a PBC nutrition and exercise toolkit consisting of practical tips about nutrition and exercise. This material will be incorporated on the PBC website and provided to new members joining the PBC patient association.

Marketing Strategy Internship

This project involves developing strategies and actionable recommendations to support CP Business Solutions Inc. in transitioning its client base. As part of its long-term growth strategy, CP Business Solutions Inc. aims to work with medium and large enterprises and organizations.

To achieve its goal, CP Business Solutions Inc. has selected a number of possible clients for which it may deliver recommendations and solutions focused on marketing strategy and document development. Since CP is currently at full capacity with existing clients, the organization must consider ways to deliver strategic projects and grow revenue within its existing clients by providing high-value services.

Designing of a rehabilitation task for virtual reality combined to a robotic training to improve arm motor recovery in chronic stroke survivors

Individuals that survive a stroke are left with long-term movement impairment at the affected arm that negatively
impact their performance in daily activities. Robotic arm devices and virtual reality can help improve recovery
following a stroke, and the optimal VR game needs to be challenging, adaptable and reflecting as closely as
possible reality to support participants’ engagement and positive training response. However, VR games
commercially available are often not tailored to meet the specific needs of individuals with a stroke. Hence, the
goal of this project is to design a virtual reality game that will closely reproduce real-life daily tasks (e.g. grocery
shopping task) with an adaptable environment that will make possible training of individuals with various levels of
motor impairment at the arm. Overall, this project will allow improving training therapy and support recovery poststroke.

Management practices for growing a forest in a post-mining industrial landscape

Coal-fired power companies in Alberta need to conduct afforestation of thousands of hectares of previously mined lands, as the province transitions from coal-fired to gas-fired power plants. Identification of management practices that address soil building, erosion control and manage ruderal vegetation concurrently is critical to facilitate reclamation efforts. This study will implement an integrated set of beneficial management practices (BMPs) and provide a basis for quantifying the value of these practices for facilitating soil building, erosion control, and weed management in former mine sites. We will test these management practices with three field studies of similar environmental conditions at two different coal mines (Genesee and SunHills) owned by Capital Power and TransAlta Corp., respectively, in the Parkland region of Alberta. The management practice changes developed will benefit our industrial partners

Financial Modeling based on Sentiment Analysis and Natural Language Processing

Financial variables modelling plays an essential role in computational finance and risk management. Recent research has shown that public sentiment and other information expressed in the natural text such as news articles are important factors correlated with financial variables. The main purpose of this project is to better model financial variables such as market indices and credit spreads. To achieve this, we plan to develop different machine learning models that allow the modelling of these different financial variables based on cutting-edge sentiment analysis and other advanced natural language processing algorithms applied to public online texts. This internship project with its industry partner, a financial risk management software provider, plans to investigate comprehensive financial modelling techniques that incorporate natural language processing techniques such as sentiment analysis. The intern will work specifically on developing and tuning different machine learning models to better explain and predict the dynamics of financial variables interested.