Projets novateurs réalisés

Conveniently Green – Market Development and Expansion – BSI Application

Sales Strategies
• Researching, analyzing, and testing new communication and sales strategies that align appropriately with our target market
• Developing innovative ways to manage our customer relationships efficiently and with a high level of organization by researching customer relationship software in which CG can implement.

Marketing Strategies
• Develop and implement effective social media content and advertisements to drive foot traffic to current retail customers and promote CG products in potential client businesses.
• Research and analyze potential digital marketing campaigns designed to promote CG products through internet platforms (Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and search engine optimization)

New Product Research
• Research new products identified as being correlated with CG’s target market, including identifying suppliers and manufacturers.
• Create forecasting models to predict sales volumes, predicted margins and forecasted revenue.

NLP-empowered Automation for Integrity Assessment in Legal Documents

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a learning-based technique under the general scope of Artificial Intelligence (AI). NLP has shown its benefits in many application, including finance, accounting and auditing. Differing from semantic extraction in social
media, text interpretation for auditing has the legal constraints, which is crucial in determining whether an invoice or a contract is legitimate from the legal perspective. Legal documents can range from a few pages to hundreds of pages, which is time
consuming for domain experts to review. Our goal is to automate such process using NLP techniques and AI algorithms to improve time and accuracy, avoiding manual errors and replacing human procedural checking, and thus releasing the valuable time of auditors to focus on critical issues.

Les meilleures pratiques à portée de main: Soutien au développement d’un programme de formation continue multi-composantes pour et par le Réseau Avant de Craquer

Les proches de personnes ayant un trouble de santé mentale peuvent obtenir du soutien dans les associations de leur communauté. À ce jour, le milieu communautaire n’a pas défini quelles sont les meilleures pratiques spécifiques à leur mandat qui est d’offrir du soutien psychosocial communautaire aux proches en santé mentale et ce, en fonction des nombreuses caractéristiques de la clientèle (âges, liens avec la personne ayant un trouble mental, types de trouble, etc.). De plus, les intervenants de ces associations sont souvent isolés et n’ont pas les ressources pour développer leurs pratiques. Le projet vise à définir les meilleures pratiques de soutien psychosocial communautaire et à développer un programme de formation continue afin de favoriser la qualité et l’amélioration continue des services offerts par ces intervenants. Enfin, le projet contribuera à la reconnaissance de l’importante contribution des organismes communautaires dans le continuum de services en santé mentale.

Design and development of a multi-channel automated Hipot and continuity tester for medical devices

A novel medical device for the treatment of heart arrythmia is designed and built by the partner organization. The medical device must go under certain electrical safety tests in the final inspection. These tests are currently conducted manually by the operators. This stage is a major bottleneck in the production line. On the other hand, the device is certified to be used in Europe and will start a controlled Clinical study in the USA under a PMA filling. Because of this, the partner organization wants the intern to undertake a research project whose objective is to automate electrical safety tests and so decrees the testing time. The main benefit to the company is increased number of devices that pass final inspection, enabling the company to make the supply meet the high demand in the future, and more importantly having more patients being treated by the device.

Proximate mechanisms behind carry-over effects mediated by key reproductive hormones in migratory seabirds

Long-lived animals, including seabirds, must balance investment in current reproduction with investment towards survival and future reproduction to maximize their lifetime fitness. Breeding is a critical stage in birds annual life cycle and requires high energy expenditure. Increased reproductive effort in the current year can therefore lead to costs that will have downstream consequences into subsequent life stages, including migration and overwintering or the next breeding season. Such carry-over effects can have strong impacts on fitness and population dynamics, but mechanisms underlying such seasonal interactions remain unclear. I monitored breeding and migration of an Arctic-breeding seabird, the black-legged kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla), and captured individuals at their return to the colony site to assess the physiological state and reproductive preparedness of individuals as they transition into the next breeding season. We used hormone challenges and collected blood samples to assess levels of the ‘stress hormone’ corticosterone and key reproductive hormones: luteinizing, estrogen and testosterone. Hormones, and endocrine processes, are the mediators linking the individual perception of its environment and its reproductive decisions and success, driving the ability of individuals to cope with environmental stressors.

Hydrogen-bonding naphthalene diimide (NDI) based cathode interlayer for high performance organic solar cells

Considering the continually growing energy demands and concerns about climate change due to anthropogenic CO2 generated from fossil fuels, there has been a global endeavor to transition towards low-carbon renewable energy sources, particularly photovoltaic technologies. Organic solar cells (OSCs) are ideal candidates for low-cost PV technologies thanks to the possibility of large-scale device fabrication by solution printing or coating techniques. Though OSCs cells have achieved remarkable progress in the last few decades, stability and efficiency issues hinder their commercialization. We will address this issue by developing materials called “cathode interlayer materials” which have been shown to enhance solar cell stability and efficiency. Thus, this research will benefit the community and the partner organization by advancing organic photovoltaic technologies toward commercialization.

AerOsol-Cloud Interactions: the Role of orgAnic compounds and particle Size in CLoud droplEt activation (ORASCLE)

Aerosol particles and their interactions with clouds are one of the largest sources of uncertainty in global climate change. Many aerosols that activate into cloud droplets form from gas-phase reactions of semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs). Surfactants are a special class of compounds in aerosol particles which partition to the surface of a particle or an interface between distinct phases within a particle. Surfactants can simultaneously modify the conditions under which a particle will activate into a cloud droplet and the gas-to-particle partitioning of other SVOCs. The goal of this project is to conduct chamber experiments using state-of-the-art techniques and instruments to constrain the interactions between SVOCs and surfactants present at the surface of aerosol particles. The results of these experiments will be used to improve and validate highly detailed theoretical models of aerosol-cloud interactions that I have developed as part of my thesis work at McGill.

Sustainable Engineering Design Audit (SEDA) Part II: Investigations in implementing environmental accounting at engineering companies in major Canadian cities; tracking, decision making, limited compl

Sustainability continues to be one the most critical issues of the 21st Century. Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) are a popular research topics as academia looks to promote sustainability within industry. Small to mid-sized Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) firms in Canada remain outside the capable bounds of the expensive and complex tools and consultation required to develop their organizations strategic framework to include, track and innovative with sustainability measures. The purpose of the proposed research is to determine the effectiveness of the Sustainability Engineering Design Audit (SEDA) at implementing sustainability parameters into the decision making process of these firms. SEDA is a software tool that seeks to meet these needs by offering a streamlined LCA in the feasibility phase of an engineering project providing data on environmental parameters to engineering decision makers. The research will address this issue through four focus points:
– Streamlining the LCA process for EPC projects; minimizing complexity while maintaining a significant level of accuracy
– Determine the level of impact various environmental parameters have on the outcome of the decision process
– Finding the most effective way to present the user interface that minimizes userexperienced complexity

Évaluation archéologique du secteur Micosas-lac à Jim du Parc régional des Grandes-Rivières du lac Saint-Jean pour fins récréotouristiques

Alors qu’à l’échelle nationale il est connu qu’il faille dorénavant tenir compte des préoccupations des Premières Nations en regard de leur présence sur le territoire depuis des milliers d’années, le projet du Parc régional des Grandes rivières constitue un pas déterminant dans cette reconnaissance à l’échelle régionale. En effet, la mission du Parc qui vise à présenter les richesses du territoire et l’harmonisation des activités humaines et du territoire naturel s’inscrit directement dans la vision que promeuvent les Premières Nations depuis des siècles. À partir des informations recueillies, l’organisme partenaire sera non seulement en mesure de proposer une offre tenant compte de la présence des Premières Nations sur cette portion du territoire du Parc, mais également s’assurera que les projets d’infrastructures tiennent compte du patrimoine archéologique du lieu.

Development of an improved generative adversarial network method for data augmentation and its application in environmental and financial domains

Using simplified language understandable to a layperson; provide a general, one-paragraph description of the proposed research project to be undertaken by the intern(s) as well as the expected benefit to the partner organization. (100 – 150 words) This project aims to increase image datasets by not doing experiments or collecting physical checks. Instead, the image data augmentation is implemented by generative adversarial networks (GANs), generating new images from original images using different algorithms. GANs have a generator and a discriminator. The generator generates new images from random inputs, and the discriminator calculates the loss between new images and original images. The weights of networks will be adjusted through back-propagation and to reach minimal loss between new and original images. The results can benefit the partner organization in augmentation check images to free the model’s performance from the limitation of datasets.

Inspection Interval Optimization for Aerial Distribution Systems in Electrical Distribution Networks

EPCOR Distribution and Transmission Inc., an electric utility based in Edmonton is looking to figure out the inspection intervals on its distribution assets. In the case of pole-mounted transformers and wood poles, fixed interval inspection performed by EDTI might not detect potential risks immediately. Also, it often resulted in the decision of no action required. Therefore, this project aims to investigate the inspection data and develop a reliability model to explore the optimal inspection intervals for the aerial distribution system. Furthermore, the result will help EPCOR Distribution and Transmission Inc. reduce the inspection costs and gain a template model to plan their future inspections for the aerial distribution system.

Automatisation des processus d’acquisition de clients, de signature des contrats et de gestion de projet

Améliorations des processus interne et automatisation des taches dans l’acquisition de clients et la gestion de projet afin d’amener des gains d’efficacité dans les modelés opérationnels des processus et lors de prestation de service et de suivi de projet