Innovative Projects Realized

Explorai

Les droits liés à l’utilisation des données sont un sujet primordial pour tous les clients d’Explorai. Le projet a le potentiel de grandement simplifier la protection de la vie privée pour les compagnies qui désirent utiliser des données pour leurs initiatives d’apprentissage machine. Explorai se placerait ainsi comme un partenaire privilégié capable de développer des modèles d’apprentissage machine sans déplacer l’information confidentielle de ses clients en dehors de ses réseaux. Avec le développement des technologies web (Progressive Web apps, WASM, Edge computing…), les infrastructures actuelles sont de plus en plus compatible avec de tels projets, réduisant le risque d’échec du projet.

Business Strategy Internship: Web Design & E-Commerce

The sector is constantly overwhelmed when catastrophic weather-related flooding occurs. By streamlining the process and empowering homeowners to do the jobs, properly themselves Phoenix can aid in disaster response across the country. Furthermore, in a post-COVID 19 world, cost-conscious consumers have been buying low-cost insurance solutions that don’t come near to covering the losses when groundwater flooding occurs. With the support of the intern, this DIY solution and new business model will permit consumers to stretch out the money they do get from the insurance carriers to cover rebuild by doing the labor of the cleanup and tear-out phase themselves.

Digital Strategy: Business Development and Sales through Improved Customer Engagement

Providing clients with a unique experience has become a necessity for any successful customer engagement strategy. The way people communicate with businesses has been evolving at a rapid pace. Although the traditional means of communication, such as in-person meetings and phone calls, are still in use, other integrated methods of reaching customer support are gaining more popularity. Communicating with prospects and customers using the platform they prefer allows support teams the flexibility to provide assistance wherever and whenever the customer wants. This project focuses on developing and deploying a Conversational AI to improve both operations and customer engagement. Using Conversational AI, we would be able to dramatically improve customer satisfaction, by automatically capturing analytics and providing personalized solutions, and profits, by minimizing the amount of time a customer service agent must spend on the phone solving problems. This project is a partnership between Mitacs, Queen’s University, and BizXL Solutions and will help our industrial partner improve customer acquisition and experience.

Next Letter Inc

Next Letter supports early-stage companies, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders. They accomplish this by providing early-stage (angel) investing, other financings, and strategic consulting specifically geared towards identifying brand positioning, business strategy, and business to consumer messaging. Next Letter supports entrepreneurs, change-makers, and businesses that are thought leaders in their respective niche, working with early-stage ideas or teams that are customer-oriented, dedicated, and deliberate in their pursuit of growth. I will be working with the Next Letter strategy team to devise whether we should be investing in specific start-up companies, as well as aiding in the consulting being done for the startups that we have selected as partners. Over the course of the 16 weeks, there will be numerous clients that Next Letter will be involved with, focusing on the areas of analysis, strategy, and execution. In terms of improving my skill set in this area, Next Letter deals with an incredibly wide berth of clients every quarter. Each client comes to Next Letter with a specific business problem that varies significantly from other clients.

U I/UX Design and implementation for PlaceSpeak:a location~based online community consultationplatform

Organizations can benefit from consulting with citizens to build better and sustainable neighborhoods
in local areas. It is usually challenging to get citizens engaged. Traditionally, techniques used for
engagement involve people participating in public meetings personally. This can be intimidating and
inconvenient for some. PlaceSpeak provides an online environment to advance citizen participation. It
also provides an easier way to inform the citizens about the ongoing projects in their area and to
discuss the project. PlaceSpeak’s goal is to encourage more citizens to get involved in their
communities. For this purpose the user interface (UI) needs to be easy to use to bring a joyful user
experience. The intern aims to analyze and improve the current UI based on UI design principles. At
each state of improvement the UI will be tested to advance further development.

Antiviral Activity of the Proprietary Samples

Blue-O Technology Inc has identified five proprietary samples that may have antiviral activity, either in prevention or treatment of viral infections. The intern will determine the activity range and toxicity of each proprietary samples in mammalian cells and a mouse model. Once this has been determined, each proprietary sample will be tested for its ability to prevent or treat human immunodeficiency virus, herpes simplex virus, coxsackievirus, influenza and dengue virus. Upon completion of this project the partner organization will be able to further develop and test any of the efficacious proprietary samples for clinical use

A Usability Study of Teacher Help: Classroom Management

The goal of the proposed research project is to evaluate the usability of a new module for an existing eLearning program for classroom teachers called Teacher Help. The new module is designed to provide training in evidence-based classroom management strategies to decrease disruptive classroom behaviour. Participants will be classroom teachers (n =20) and other stakeholders (e.g., school psychologists, parents, behaviour specialists; n = 20), who will access the program and rate the usability of the module after completing each of the six sessions in the new module, and at the end of the program. Participants will be rating the module using a questionnaire based on Morville’s User Experience Framework, which will assess their perception of the module’s accessibility, credibility, desirability, findability, usability, usefulness, and value. The partner organization will benefit from the proposed project’s novelty and by the elucidation of stakeholder perceptions of behavioural eLearning programs for teachers.

International Marketing Strategy Development

The primary question to answer is broad: how can we identify, target, and convert potential customers in Canada, the US, and Mexico in a sustainable way? Our strategy must be designed to consider operational and resource constraints. The first objective would be to develop and execute a digital marketing communication strategy in an Agile way. This would include activities related to planning and strategy development, as well as executing the planned activities. The second objective would be to develop a database of potential partnerships and funding opportunities that could support business development and R&D activities. The question to answer is: how can we increase and leverage resources to enable sustainable, long-term business growth?

Developing a robust digital marketing communication strategy is both important and urgent as we establish our international business development strategy and launch of our new product at the end of 2020. The proposed project could have a significant, immediate impact, as well as support the sustainable, long-term growth of our company.

IT Support

With Covid-19’s impact on Reliance Foundry, we had to stop sponsorships on recruitment and lost a great candidate for role we were originally considering to expand in sales. We also stopped spending various other activities to save additional costs for our company. Our company has lost 30% of sales in the month of May compared to last May’s sales.
We had many plans to continue the growth of our company, and having a student help us out during the summer time or longer will support our goal to grow our company and help us bounce back to healthy state we were originally in.”
IT Role:
• Help in developing new IoT products.
• Research competitive product offerings from other vendors.
• Make recommendations on which features to prioritize in future product development.
• Make wireframe and software design plans to ensure all customer required features are included.
• Develop the basics of a cloud-based decision log where meeting minutes on product development is kept

Evaluation of microbolometer-based imager for wildfire radiometric imaging

Monitoring of wildland fires through infra-red remote sensing has become increasing of interest to the wildland fire management community, and quality scientific analysis of the capabilities of such sensors is critical if they are to be used in any operational way. In 2019 a joint burning experiment was carried out over several days. In 2019 a collaboration between the Canadian Forest Service, Institut national d’optique (INO), and the University of Toronto saw the ignition and monitoring of a series of experimental fires in the field at a CFS field research station. During these experiments, a series fires were observed using conventional cooled infrared imagers alongside a novel imager built by INO. This study conducts spatial and temporal analysis of coincident infrared data to assess the performance of the INO system for the application of wildfire imaging and radiometry.

Mitacs/Smith-Brick Labs Inc. Summer Internship

The Brick Labs Inc. have identified two new services that we will introduce in the next 4 months. The first is the Learning Continuity Program (LCP) which begins in September and is currently available for registration. It basically can be described as contracted 3rd party homeschooling for elementary students. The second will be our virtual educational and entertainment programs. We had great success with these programs over the last 3 months and believe that there will be a growing demand in the months ahead. In terms of the objectives, the Marketing Intern will create an executable marketing strategy and checklist for each of the programs using the material and ideas already assembled. The LCP marketing strategy to be completed within 10 days of starting and the Virtual Programs plan to be completed by week 8 of the internship. The basis of these plans should form a framework for future plan development. Each plan should include a checklist with Action, OPI, and Due Date. The intern will assist with the completion of each action item. The Learning Continuity Program (LCP) will open new business opportunities for Brick Labs.

Multi-host firmware for TCicontroller

C-Therm Technologies’ TCi Thermal Analyzer, measures quickly and non-destructively
the thermal properties of liquids, powders, pastes and solids with very low conductivity
and up to 120 W/mK. The TCi controller currently communicates with a single PC host
using a limited resource 8 bit microcontroller. In this project we will investigate the
firmware changes needed to accommodate a second tablet computer connected via a
USB dock and/or a WIFI link