Projets novateurs réalisés

Developing power line network modeling method considering wind effects

This project aims to develop and evaluate new geometric modeling algorithms of power line and building objects required for conducting power-line related asset risk analysis in challenging environment considering wind blowing effects. The project also aims to integrate newly developed algorithms into York University’s in-house power line modeling test bed and evaluate their performance using GDI’s extensive inventory data. It’s generally known that modeling accuracy and reliability become greatly degraded under the circumstances when intermediate or strong wind is blown on sites. The wind-adaptive modeling algorithm will enhance the precise identification of a potentially hazardous area based on PL models under challenging environments. The expected benefit to the partner can be summarized as: Efficiency- eliminating the labor intensive rectification of modeling errors caused by wind effects, Accuracy- more accurate clearance quantity threatens PL systems under wind blowing conditions, Productivity- enhancing the updating process of geospatial database in challenging environments.

Brand, Business Plan and Relationship Development for CFRAC

This four-month project with The Centre for Race and Culture (CFRAC) will provide the Intern with hands-on, real-life experience. The Intern will support CFRAC’s business plan development, brand identity, and relationship management. The Intern will work with the Executive Director to advance CFRAC’s social enterprise and innovate its strategy to today’s environment.

The Intern will analyze CFRAC’s strengths and weaknesses within the organization and external opportunities and threats, such as COVID-19. It will be important for the Intern to analyze the various ways COVID-19 affects different races and ethnicities. The Intern will identify ways in which CFRAC can continue to safely educate the community, exploring the virtual world of education. Virtual interactions need to create the same impact and value for the community as in-person interactions. This project will allow the Intern to provide solutions on how to better support the community during this pandemic.

Development of novel immuno-modulatory drugs for severe inflammation and infection (COVID-19)

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered coronavirus. The symptoms can range from mild flu symptoms, such as fever, cough, fatigue, to severe symptoms: shortness of breath, pneumonia or acute lung injury known as acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), leading to multiple organ failure and death. The patients with ARDS often have exaggerated immune responses with enhanced release of inflammatory mediators that cause the damage of the lung structure and reduction of lung function. Panag Pharma Inc. (Panag) and partner Tetra Bio-Pharma (TBP) have developed a drug product PPP003 that can reduce inflammation in experimental sepsis. In current project, we will investigate if the product can reduce lung damage in an experimental ARDS model by reviewing the histological change in the lung. The finding will provide supporting data for a Health Canada new drug application for treatment of ARDS as well as other acute and chronic systemic inflammatory conditions.

Squamish Employment Lands Model User Tool

In 2020, District of Squamish staff created a new Employment Space Demand Model as a key tool to support economic development and land use planning. The goal of this project was to better understand existing and planned supply of employment space throughout the District, and to offer data-driven forecasting for the potential demand for space overtime. The model relies on District data from business licencing, building development and construction, and it also incorporates third-party consumption data, employment and firm forecasts.

The goal of this project is to help make the Model more widely accessible to other staff at the District, evolving the model from its current format as a complex Excel-based tool to a more user-friendly format for staff. The project will involve conducting user-centered research with staff, and undertaking the design and development of a new tool that can make the model and its insights more accessible. (The student researcher would determine the optimal format for the tool, which could consist of a web-based tool / graphical user interface, a simple desktop app, or an improved spreadsheet tool.)

Mitacs Business Strategy Internship (BSI) Partner Application: City of Saskatoon (Digital Transformation Business Analyst Project)

The City of Saskatoon has prioritized development of a digital transformation to a smart city strategy. The intern will function as a business analyst for the city during this digital transformation. The intern will analyze the city’s current strategies to develop a picture of the current goals and objectives along with an understanding of the engagement groups for the city of Saskatoon. After this initial understanding of the city’s needs and goals, the intern will then identify opportunities for how the city can perform this digital transformation while still meeting the goals and including the city’s engagement groups. The city will benefit by having a technologically knowledgeable person help set the parameters and priority of the digital transformation rollout.

Machine learning for the extraction and classification of medical data from unstructured medical documents

This project addresses challenging needs of medicolegal report writers. Subject matter experts who provide expert witness testimony in the form of a medicolegal report, are asked to review thousands of pages of documents from a variety of sources to formulate their opinions. Report Mate’s goal is to develop an online platform aimed at medical report writing experts to manage large amounts of document data and help synthesize it into a chronological, searchable database to facilitate the creation of expert witness reports. One of the major challenges in synthesizing a cohesive report from this vast quantity of information is to be able to identify key pieces of information in large unstructured medicolegal documents. This project aims to use recent advances in deep learning and Natural Language Processing, to identify and classify individual medical reports and provide a classification of the type of the report.

Transformation numérique du processus d’affaires de Darspec

Le stage a pour objectif d’effectuer la transformation numérique du processus d’affaires de Darspec.
Le stage sera réalisé par Mathieu Devar et supervisé par Sylvain Boudrias (Darspec) et Mohammad Jahazi (ÉTS).

BSI at Planetary Hydrogen and Review of Clean-Tech Supply Chains

At the end of 2020, the Government of Canada released its Healthy Environment and Healthy Economy plan. One of the aims of this plan is to support Canadian companies in the transition to a clean economy. The framework of action items laid out in this plan has significant implications for Canadian business (i.e. tax credits, access to funding, and more). The goal of this internship is to: 1) identify the potential implications of the plan on Planetary Hydrogen
2) identify opportunities for Planetary Hydrogen to strengthen its business model under the framework proposed by the plan, and 3) scanning the literature and best industry practices on clean-tech supply chains.

Genus Capital Management – ESG/Fintech Analyst

Like many businesses, we are investing in strategy and technology to market to, sell to, onboard, and service prospects and clients in a remote and digital reality.
For investment services this will include expanded social media and content strategies, communication techniques such as webinar/podcast, fintech implementation to replace paper forms and ID verification, better advisor and client dashboards, and more. Much of this was underway pre-COVID, but the pandemic has accelerated adoption and acceptance of the work. It has also significantly increased the importance.

Finning International – Global Tax & Financial Reporting Intern

There is increased pressure on Finance to produce reports and financial information quickly to support decision making and risk mitigation. The Credit and Collections team and Global Financial Reporting Transformation teams are working in partnership to support this priority through the deployment of a comprehensive credit and collections system. An intern would support this initiative by working with end Finance users to understand business requirements, and assist in the development, testing, and deployment of this solution.

Automatic Tagging for Document Retrieval in Corporate Environments

Knowledge-intensive industries accumulate content at a rate and volume that is impossible for humans to manually organize and retrieve. A typical search engine based on keywords is not effective, because the user must provide the exact words contained in the text of the document or description of an entity and cannot filter search results based on the implicit context of the search. The search capabilities of the search engine can be extended by content metadata in the form of tags. However, manually adding metadata to each content element has prohibitive cost. Oris4 is a product that aims to provide easy access to corporate content by automatically extracting the required metadata for search. The proposed project aims to apply recent research results in automatic tagging of documents in large corpora towards substantially enhancing the quality of metadata in Oris4 and thereby making it a more competitive product in the marketplace.

Ocean Allies 3

The Ocean Allies project has a total value of more than $420,000 where the Ocean Supercluster will provide $250,000 with the balance of funding coming from project partners. Led by Pisces Research Project Management Inc together with partners Upswing Solutions, Huntsman Marine Science Centre, Assembly of First Nations, BioNB, Centre for Ocean Ventures and Entrepreneurship (COVE), Irving Shipbuilding, Nova Scotia Business Inc, Ocean Technology Council of Nova Scotia, Ocean Frontier Institute, OceansAdvance, PanGeo Subsea, Synapse, Mitacs, and Ulnooweg, this project is designed to access, engage, and support a diverse ocean economy through targeted strategic activities.