Projets novateurs réalisés

Attention and Executive Function Training inChildren with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Many children with ASD experience significant difficulties with attention and executive function. This research will investigate the effects of a direct attention and executive function training intervention in children ages 6 to 12 with ASD (high functioning). Research has shown that it is possible to improve attention and executive functioning in children with various neuropathologies. Participants will complete pre and post testing of their attention, executive function, social, academic, and behavioral functioning. Children will then be randomly assigned to an active treatment (1) or waitlist control group (2). Group 1 will start the intervention immediately, whereas Group 2 will start once Group 1 has finished. Our methodology will allow all participants to receive intervention, while controlling for factors that may be unrelated to the active intervention. The intern will deliver the intervention over 8 to 10 weeks (24, 30 minute sessions).

La fermentation solide de matières organiques résiduelles locales par des mycètes de l’estuaire maritime du Saint-Laurent, une synergie innovante pour la production d’enzymes ligninolytiques.

Les mycotechnologies, c’est-à-dire l’utilisation des souches fongiques dans les secteurs industriels, sont actuellement considérées comme ayant un fort potentiel pour le développement de bio-industries régionales. Dans cette optique, Biopterre et le Cégep de La Pocatière ont proposé la mise en œuvre du Regroupement pour l’innovation fongique (RIF). Cette programmation qui a débuté en 2018 a pour mission de développer et d’intégrer les mycotechnologies dans les produits et procédés industriels. Biopterre possède maintenant une usine pilote en biofermentation solide ainsi que deux bioréacteurs solides de 30 L et 300 L.
Biopterre par ce projet vise à répondre à une volonté du milieu de valoriser davantage les matières résiduelles avec une vision axée sur le développement d’une bioéconomie circulaire durable. Un procédé de biofermentation solide utilisant des souches fongiques isolées de l’estuaire du fleuve Saint-Laurent sera développé pour produire des enzymes lignocellulosiques à partir de matières résiduelles à forte teneur en lignines. Ce type d’enzyme est en forte demande de par le milieu de la recherche et de l’industrie afin de développer ou d’amélioration des procédés industriels.

Enabling Unsophisticated Users to Accurately Identify Chemical Levels from a Computerized Spectrographic Analysis Device

Greenlight Analytical Inc. has developed a highly sophisticated device for spectrographic analysis of a variety of substances. There are various factors that make the application of this analysis complex. First, the results must be able to be used in high stakes situations (e.g. police inspection of suspected contraband, marijuana growers ensuring a product within narrow pharmaceutical limits). In addition, the device must be used in the field, the results of which can lead to multiple variables impacting the analysis and the interpretation of its results.
An example of what can result from these concerns, a Canadian court of law decided that a government inspector could not be relied upon to know and apply the difference between microgram and milligram units. As a result of that decision, evidence in a legal case was disallowed leading to the failed prosecution. For this reason, Greenlight Analytical must rethink the user experience for their device.
In this project, we will create an interface for the device so that users can be highly confident that they both understand the results of a highly advanced chemical analysis and can retrieve those results from permanent storage. TOBECONT’.

Marketing Planner Internship at Cowichan Green Community Projects

I will be working on Cowichan Green Community’s (CGC) two proposed public projects: Garden Education Center and reFRESH Cowichan Marketplace. The Garden Education Center is an organic community farm and it acts as a store where people can buy plants and fresh produce. Its objective is to educate farmers and community members on the importance of locally adapted and open-sourced seeds. There is also a communally tended market garden which aims to make farming into a comfortable, inclusive, and accessible activity. On the other hand, the reFRESH Cowichan Marketplace is a storefront where recovered food is redirected as affordable value-added healthy food products to the community. This is an extension of CGC’s food recovery project. As an intern for CGC, I will have the platform to ensure that, by operating as a social enterprise, the reFRESH Cowichan Marketplace acts as the financial support for sustaining the food recovery project to help achieve the organization’s goals. Collaboration and partnerships with local food producers will not only assist in forming strong relationships, but also in obtaining CGC’s mandate of improving food security, as a well-connected food production supply and distribution chain will ensure food accessibility for Cowichan residents.

Tilting Recreation and Cultural Society (TRACS) Strategy Project

With this partnership, we seek to develop a better understanding of community (custodial) efforts and approaches
to saving place as they are currently being mobilized by rural and remote communities. Rural and remote
communities in Canada currently face rising levels of poverty, unemployment, and deteriorating infrastructure, as
well as educational and healthcare deficits. At the same time, significant economic and demographic shifts are
dramatically impacting how these communities attempt to address these problems. Tilting Recreation and Cultural Society (TRACS) will be analyzed to see how these cultural preserving methods can be preserved and grown, especially considering the ramifications of COVID-19.

Cold Garden Beverage Company – Marketing and Events Intern

Cold Garden’s strategy to combat the negative revenue impacts of Covid-19 restrictions is to develop creative alternatives to generate event revenue while increasing brand exposure. We. believe this differentiating strategy will provide the company with a competitive advantage in the tight craft brewing market space. Cold Garden is forecasting that the current Covid-19 restrictions will be in place for an extended period of time. As such, this will have a significant impact on businesses that rely on events with large gatherings. We feel that the intern’s development of creative events, within the parameters of the Covid-19 guidelines, will provide revenue generating opportunities and while increasing our brand awareness. Further, these events will help shape the benchmark in the industry for safely operating events in our current environment.

Project Management Intern

This internship is focused around operations strategy and project management. Consilium is growing in both the number of product offerings as well as headcount and is in need of a more robust set of systems and processes for managing the overall growth and product development. The student will be involved with improving existing processes, implementing new processes, and implementing new tools/frameworks for monitoring efficiency.
This internship will also relate to external, communication, initiation, execution, monitoring and controlling, and closure structure for the company. These processes will help the company efficiently utilize its resources, satisfy their stakeholders, and generate business value. Using an Agile model, the company will be able to alter and tailor these processes as per their/the stakeholder’s/client’s requirements.

Improving Laparoscopic training using mobiledevices and interactive media with AugmentedReality (AR) technology

Ultimately, the goal of this project is to develop an innovative mobile training platform that provides residents and surgeons-in-training introductory exposure to laparoscopy (MIS – minimally-invasive surgery) with improved interactive endoscopic media and Augmented Reality capabilities, than existing mobile applications. As a result, we hope to bridge the gap that exists in training and skillstransfer by increasing both exposure and as result, adding to the number of skilled practitioners specializing in laparoscopy, while improving the quality of patient care.

Prediction of distortions and residual stresses during intensive quench of long Forged steel bar

Water quench of steels consists to cool heated steel by sudden immersion in water.

During the quench of large steel components, the part experiences a fast drop in temperature at the surface while the center is still hot. This huge difference in temperature within the part triggers material heterogeneities that induces shape change or even initiate cracks in severe cases.

Unfortunately, the forging companies couldn’t always avoid this failures caused by the above process. The estimation of the contribution of all phenomena involved during the quench of large dimension is still missing.

The purpose of this project is to build a customized knowledge during water quench of a specific product (long round high strength steel) used as turbine shafts in specific conditions in order to be transferred to the company at the end of the project.

The second objective is to build a predictive tool that allows engineers to predict the failures (shape change) during the quench process.

Having such knowledge transfer with the predictive abilities, the forging industries could reduce trial and error and use this process more economically to minimize distortions and control the properties.

Development of a quantitative framework for methane emissions from soil gas migration issues in the oil and gas sector

The proposed research project will develop quantitative gas migration testing techniques and regulatory thresholds that address the complex nature of the multiple interacting variables that can confuse gas migration investigations. The study will focus on the development of in-situ field measurement technologies and instrumentation to characterize the variables that impact soil gas and isotope signatures for different environmental conditions.

Improvement and validation of the integrity of a novel commercial software for utility pole design

The conventional utility pole design methodologies used a decade or so ago produced poles that would be considered “safe” but in most cases they were not cost-effective solutions. This is because the resulting poles were usually over-designed, mainly due to several simplifying assumptions and incorporation of various rules-of-thumbs in the design procedures. Such design practices were, however, challenged by various regulators and legal/public agencies. In response to the contested situation, in 1994, the industrial partner (Sonideft Inc.) developed a robust and user-friendly design software based on solid engineering fundamentals, commercially known as “Quick Pole”. However, there are two immediate sets of efforts required to complement this effective software: (i) further scrutiny and testing of the options and results produced by the software by comparing its results against those obtained through two different commercially used finite element (FE) software; and (ii) addition of a new module to the software, so it could design poles using today’s lightweight and environmentally resistive fiber-reinforced composite materials.

Marketing Intern-Moose Hide Campaign Development Society

The Moose Hide Campaign is working to end violence towards women and children, especially Indigenous women and children, by creating an impact on the grassroots level. The project aims to engage the Canadian population by developing an online training module to help them understand and create awareness about violence against women and children and inspire them to become part of the solution. The organization has seen through various sources that domestic violence rates have increased significantly during COVID-19, establishing an even greater sense of urgency for such projects to be implemented (Job Description Proposal, 2020).

The internship would focus on conducting market research, creating a business plan for the social enterprise element to the training sales, and developing marketing materials for the online training module across Canada. The project would not just involve designing and implementing the marketing strategies but would also include aspects of creating marketing materials to gain an enhanced impact.