Innovative Projects Realized

Business Strategy Intern

AME Learning Inc. (AME) is a 20-year old leader in providing Accounting and Financial Literacy Education in higher education. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, AME Learning must adjust its strategic direction to place more emphasis on revenue generation and growth beyond the higher education market and into the online eBusiness Learner space. Specifically, AME Learning has plans to relaunch “Accounting 101” and “Finance for Non-Financial Managers” online courses through direct marketing as well as through e-distribution partnerships with online course aggregators (resellers), corporate training, and direct-to-consumer learners. This project’s final deliverable is a revised strategic plan and pitch deck, including Go-To-Market plan, 3-year sales projections, ROI and other financial projections.

Manitoba Social Investment Fund

Wakopa Financial, along with other social enterprise ecosystem players, is looking to create a Social Finance Fund specifically for Manitoba. The fund could consist of loans, equity investments, simple agreements for future equity (SAFE), revenue-sharing agreements and other financial instruments to help finance socially oriented businesses, co-ops and non-profits. I will be helping create the necessary documents to start such a fund, with the help of ecosystem players, by answering some of these questions:
Re: Investments
1. What are the types of projects/investments that would be eligible?
2. What types of investment tools can be used? Eg. Debt, Equity,
3. What is the projected volume and size of eligible investment projects?
Re: Investors
1. Who might be potential investors, what would their size of investment be, and what would their expectations be for ROI? How will the SFI reach these investors?
2. What other Impact Investment funds could the new entity considered to complement the Federal Funds?
3. What is the estimated dollar value of the funds that the new entity could reasonably expect to attract? Local – Manitoba National – Canada
4. How can the Community Enterprise Development Tax Credit be used?
Re: Operating Expenses
1. What are the estimated costs to maintain an SFI in Manitoba?
2. What is the minimum level of investment dollars from the Federal Social Finance Fund and/or all investments that would be required to cover the set-up costs and jump-start the SFI?

Impact Evaluation and Developmental Evaluation Planning with a Community- Based Not-for-Profit Organisation Focussed on Poverty Reduction

The purpose of this project is to assist a community non-profit organisation to build a comprehensive plan to evaluate its poverty reduction initiatives and activities. The agency partners with other non-profit agencies as well as with government partners, other stakeholders, and persons with lived/living experience. The purpose of the project is also to develop a set of common/shared measures of progress amongst several agencies as a demonstration project that will be evaluated to determine its utility across agencies and potentially within government to enhance collaboration and improve reporting.

BIM (Building Information Modelling) and Supply Chain Planning inConstruction

In this project, we will consider construction supply chain management SCM within the context of BIM. The objective is to provide an automated BIM-based platform for construction supply chain planning. Using automatic data extraction from a BIM file, we will develop sophisticated supply chain optimization models that fit the reality of construction projects. Here, the critical decisions for CSC planning (strategic, tactical) are conducted in the early phase of planning based on data provided by BIM. In this way, it is possible to interact with the designer very rapidly for revisions, and finally, provide more precise estimation for budget and project schedule. The innovation of our approach is that CSCM will be easily integrated into the design phase, offering the possibility to increase collaboration between designers and construction supply chain stockholders, which is one of the critical challenges in managing complex projects in construction.

Identifying leading safety culture improvement practices to drive innovation to assist in the prevention of workplace injuries

When safety critical organizations develop safety culture improvement strategies they are rarely shared widely outside the organization as there is limited benefit in sharing with others. In contrast to healthcare there is not a tradition of publishing safety improvements in journals or professional magazines. When innovations are shared externally, the description is often sanitized and does not contain then challenges encountered and missteps. In addition, consultancy companies provide a large proportion of the widely shared safety innovations, as they wish to promote their services. Since many safety critical companies struggle with similar challenges in promoting a positive safety culture, it is likely that they are independently developing solutions to the same problems. Phase 1 of this research will address this gap by conducting a series of case studies on safety culture improvement initiatives. These case studies will provide insight into how safety critical companies are trying to improve safety culture. This information will assist organizations in identifying strategies to improve.
Safety leadership is key driver of safety culture, as leaders set the tone for safety. While organizations commit significant resources to safety leadership training, there is less evidence of its effectiveness.

Development of a High Efficiency LC-FAIMS-MS/MS Solution for Enhanced Lipidomic Analysis

Accurate and sensitive analysis of lipids is a challenge for the medical and nutritional fields. In this proposal, we describe a new method for their analysis using a technique seldom applied to these problems. We propose to make a number of modifications to existing instrumentation to facilitate this; in partnership with Dalhousie and the Atlantic Cancer Research Institute, an MASc student will lead the evaluation of several prototypes to optimize the analysis of complex lipid mixtures. In demonstrating its utility in this application, we will expand the user group of this novel platform and we anticipate this having a substantial impact on the commercial value and uptake of this technology in the scientific community.

Semantic Matching Applied to Relationship Matching

The on-line dating industry currently has over 1400 different sites, including known sites such as eHarmony, Match.com and LavaLife, however, research indicates a general dissatisfaction in the quality of relationship matches generated by these sites. The research proposal will investigate the use of new semantic technologies in providing a higher quality matching service. The commercial partner, Atwood Technology Inc., is expecting to leverage this technology to gain a competitive edge over the existing competition.

Continuous calibration, interpolation and predictive analytics using Machine Learning

The company provides devices to measure quality of curing light used in dental procedures. These devices produce high volume and high velocity data. This data is then used to forecast a future state and to make a well informed business/operation decision according to an expected future state. One of the challenges in application of such technology is to improve prediction accuracy of the forecast. The company has developed prediction models based on physical chemistry that have been very useful to both the vendors and dentists. This project will design a generalized framework based on machine learning and artificial intelligence methodologies to improve prediction accuracy that will ultimately result in reduced operating costs and higher yields in dental procedures.

Hydrogen-diesel dual fuel engines for heavy-duty commercial vehicles: modelling and analysis

Modern commercial trucks are crucial for economic activity. The diesel engines in these vehicles emit about 8% of all CO2 emissions in Canada. To reduce the environmental impact of current trucks, Hydra Energy Inc. is developing an approach to replace some of the diesel fuel with excess hydrogen generated in industrial processes. To maximize the benefits of this approach, Hydra and SFU are working together to develop a model of the vehicle system. Using the model, the team will study how the vehicle will behave under different uses and will find ways to increase the amount of hydrogen used. The model will be added to SFU’s FleetLCA life cycle tool to quantify the total environmental benefits of the Hydra system.

False Data Injection Attacks on AC Power System State Estimation Using Cosimulation

The secure and reliable operation of an electric power grid is critical to national security. Power grid components such as the state estimator used to monitor the operating state of a power system are subject to cyber-attacks. Previous works show that an intruder can compromise the state estimation by injecting the pre-designed false data into meters without being detected if the detailed knowledge of a transmission grid is known. In this project, we show that the FDIA on AC state estimation can even be successfully launched using phasor measurement units (PMU) data without knowing the topology and line parameters of a power grid. The designed FDIA attack will be implemented using a cosimulation platform (with both power system simulator and communication network
simulator) to evaluate its impacts on power systems. The project will provide a better understanding about the attack behaviors on generic AC state estimation and important guidance regarding the design of mitigation measures to ensure the secure operation of power systems.

Marketing Intern

At Florists Supply, the intern will be working on two marketing-related projects. The first project will be to develop a marketing initiative around Florists supplies 85th anniversary. Here, the intern, with help from the partner, the organization will create a streamlined marketing strategy for this project, which the intern is to implement. The intern then will develop content related to the 85th anniversary, which may require research and interviews. Once the content is created, the intern will post it through mediums such as website blogs and social media. The second similar project will have the intern develop content related to its Fairtrade initiative and implementing it through those same channels. The expected benefits of the partner organization, Florist supply, are increased brand awareness and increased brand attachment, which can boost sales and engagement with the brand.

COVID Sports Solutions

Project Overview.
The COVID Sports Solutions project links Vancouver based Econic with an Emily Carr Universtiy MDes graduate student to support research and development of patent pending mask and droplet guard products targeted for use in sport. Work planned for this project include: review of existing designs; exploratory market research; SWOT analysis; iterative design development; raw material sourcing; communication with manufacturers; packaging design. Work connected to sales, marketing and logistics may also be touched upon.

Goals of this Mitacs Internship Opportunity:
• Provide the student with the opportunity to apply research skills and theories to real-world context
• Support Global Sports communities in their efforts to provide a safe return to play environment
• Build and strengthen connections and collaborations between the external partner and Emily Carr University.
• Build student’s skills (communication, problem solving, innovation, resilience, managing complexity, navigating change) and apply their education through an experiential learning opportunity
• Provide new and broadened training and career opportunities for the student by expanding their network with faculty, external partners and community