Projets novateurs réalisés

Robot-Assisted Breast Cancer Surgery

Breast cancer affects 1 in 8 women during their lives and is the second-leading cause of female cancer related deaths. The ideal treatment is breast-conservation surgery during its early stage to remove the cancer while conserving healthy parts of the breast. With current resection methods, on average, one out of every three women undergoing breast-conservation surgery needs at least one additional surgery to remove residual tumor that is left behind. Repeat surgery often leads to full mastectomy among other complications, which is a traumatic experience for a patient who expected a curative treatment with breast-conservation. As early stage breast cancer is not palpable or visible, surgeons tend to apply generous “safety margins” around the target tumor and remove a great deal of healthy breast tissue which can lead to more severe breast deformity. We propose integrative development of a unique robotic surgical navigation system, featuring a multimodal image-guided surgical robot to achieve precise resection of the target. Our project seeks to ensure complete resection of the tumor while also reducing the amount of healthy breast tissue removed, thus yielding significant quality of life benefits to patients and a reduction in health care costs.

Formative Evaluation for Exercise is Medicine on Campus in Guadalajara

The proposed research project is a formative evaluation and pilot-test of the implementation of Exercise is Medicine on Campus (EIM-OC)® at the University of Guadalajara (UdeG), Mexico. EIM® is a global initiative that seeks to make physical activity (PA) assessment and PA promotion the standard of care for the prevention, management, and treatment of chronic illnesses. EIM-OC® is the university- and college-focused arm of EIM®, which aims to engage students, faculty, and staff in PA promotion on campus. This initiative is well-established at many Canadian and American campuses. To ensure that EIM® is relevant to the culture and context of Mexican campuses, it is necessary to conduct a formative evaluation to inform the development, implementation and evaluation of EIM-OC® at the UdeG. The proposed research will include an environmental scan of three UdeG campuses, interviews with faculty and staff, and focus groups with students. Findings will be used to implement and pilot test EIM-OC® at one UdeG campus.

Mine Traffic Optimization

The objective of this project is to optimize traffic in open pit and underground mines, in order to safely

maximize production and minimize costs. The intent is that this will be done by causing vehicles to

move at their maximum safe speed while at the same time choreographing mine traffic to give loaded

vehicles the right of way at intersections, and to slow but not stop other traffic at intersections. By using

this approach, production is maximized and fuel costs are minimized, while ensuring the safety of

personnel. This, in turn, will also reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle operations.

Specific project objectives are:

(1) Speed and traffic optimization achieved by in-cab display of the recommended speed for all vehicles

in the mine.

(2) Speed and traffic optimization achieved by automatic control of speed for all vehicles in a mine, with

appropriate safeguards and over-rides.

This will be done by

..TOBECONTINUED

All you shall see of her is perfect man’: Performing Masculinities in John Dryden and William Davenant’s The Tempest

My research project will explore how playwrights John Dryden and William Davenant used their 1667 adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest to establish a normative model for socially acceptable masculinity in response to the rapidly changing gender dynamics of the Restoration stage. My project hypothesizes that Dryden and Davenant used the supernatural island setting of Shakespeare’s Tempest as a space for processing both the growing agency of women in English drama and the new forms of gendered performance that were taking place during the Restoration. I will be working at King’s College London, where I will be able to carry out archival research at the nearby British Library. By completing this project, I will be able to demonstrate how Dryden and Davenant used their adaptation of The Tempest as an attempt to establish a normative model for socially acceptable masculinity and authentic “maleness”.

Material selection and surface coating of coker valves

Coking is one of the most corrosive and abrasive environments in the refinery with a

temperature of over 1000 F under high pressure condition. The function of the coker valve is

to transport the fuel from heavy crude oil. Therefore these coker valves used more subject to

failure than other valves used. It is crucial to design a valve which would offer more

sustainability in the environment described above. The main research focus is to develop a

suitable material and coating for this coker valve which will be more corrosion resistive and

applicable at high temperature. This design will have to consider not only the properties of the

valves as they are made, but also cycling tests are to be taken during the testing procedures.

The work will include three major aspects, namely metallurgy/material selection, testing

procedures and Finite Element Analysis for computational simulation

Monitoring and Suppression of Smallmouth Bass in Cultus Lake, BC

The goal of the project is to mitigate the impacts to valuable salmonids from invasive smallmouth bass (SMB) in Cultus Lake through suppression and monitoring. The project will benefit both the sport fishing industry and endangered species, by suppressing predation from SMB and controlling further imbalances in predator-prey relationships. We will use methods such as nest destruction, gut content analysis, and acoustic telemetry to learn about the fish’s ecology and the most effective way to suppress the population. The partner organization (Pacific Salmon Foundation) aims to support conservation, restoration, and enhancement of Pacific salmon and their ecosystems, so by helping suppress the bass population, they will be directly addressing goals in their strategic plan.

British Settler Constitution-Writing, Racialized Geopolitics, and Ideas of Global Order, c. 1865-1935

This project revisits Canadian and imperial history, seeking to understand the relationship between constitutions, settler colonialism, and globalization, which shaped and continues to shape Canada and the world. Understanding them in this era of populism and nationalist governments is particularly urgent. Constitutions remain central to liberal democratic self-understanding and critically reexamining their spread among British settler colonies is crucial to understanding the problems we are facing today. Brexit, the devolution of authority in the United Kingdom, provincial separation movements in Western Canada and Quebec are excellent reasons to revisit questions of federalism, constitutions, and sovereignty. However, even more pressing are the legitimate concerns of Indigenous nations in Canada and around the world. It is more important than ever to understand ideas, institutions, and process at the core of liberal democracy and to understand their connections to racism and settler colonialism. In doing so, this project contributes to ongoing policy and governance debates about decolonization and globalization. These are some of the biggest problems facing Canada today and understanding how they came to be is crucial to imagining new and innovative futures.

Développement d’une méthodologie originale d’analyse organique

La source LDTD-APCI ou source d thermo d6sorption par photodiode laser (Laser

Diode Thermal D6sorption – Atmospheric Pressure Chemical lonization) est un appareil

unique, developpe r6cemment par la compagnie Phytronix lnc de Qu6bec. Cette source

d’ionisation particulidrement douce coupl6e avec un spectromdtre de masse de haute

r6solution permet de simplifier I’appareillage analytique courant de type LC-MS ou GCMS

en remplagant les techniques chromatographiques par une s6paration des ions

parents dans le spectromdtre de masse. Les b6n6fices sont 6normes en termes de

rapidite d’analyse, de suret6 d’identification en particulier de compos6s organiques, et

de quantification.

Dans le projet propos6 ici nous proposons avec le soutien financier de la compagnie

Phytronix et celui du CRIBIQ de ddvelopper une s6rie de m6thodes analytiques bas6es

sur la source LDTD-APCI et sp6cifiques pour les nombreux produits organiques

inexplor6s obtenus dans un projet d’envergue intitul6 “Biodi6sel et autres bioproduits

d6riv6s des micro-algues”.

Edge Streaming for 360-degree Videos

360-degree video streaming is one key element of many Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) applications. The computing and networking demands pose great challenges for mobile devices and mobile networks, especially if a mobile device is the video source. The deployment of mobile edge computing offloads computing and networking demands on mobile devices and alleviates bandwidth demand in mobile networks. This project proposes a new streaming mechanism for 360-degree videos for AR/VR applications by leveraging the advantages of edge computing and Software Defined Networking (SDN, a new networking paradigm for Quality-of-Service guarantee). The new mechanism will effectively reduce computing and networking demand on mobile devices and the stress in mobile networks. The success development of this project will reduce the operation costs of AR/VR applications for service providers and enhance the Quality-of-Experience for users. The research findings will inspire design of resource-efficient and highly-responsive immersive AR/VR applications in mobile networks.

Vertical section development and multi-well modelling – Part 1

In the last decade optimization is expanded in many applications from food production to sophisticated applications such as engine fuel efficiency. In the proposed package, it is tried to apply optimization techniques along with physics based analytical and semi-analytical methodologies to create a compelling framework which can help thermal-process based oil industry to reduce their GHG and also better evaluate their CAPEX. Many SAGD projects are overspent on their facilities due to under prediction or overprediction of their oil production expectations. this package will help operators to predict their expectations and improve their predictions as more inputs are provided such 4D seismic, temperature and pressure observation wells, production data, and geological characterization.

Evaluating participatory plant breeding programs in Canada and their effectiveness as a strategy for climate change adaptation

Participatory plant breeding (PPB), which pairs farmers’ knowledge with the skills of formal plant breeders, is increasingly being recognized as an effective approach to develop better varieties for organic farming systems because it uses the environmental conditions of working organic farms as selection environments and incorporates farmers’ needs and observations in the selection criteria. PPB has been beneficial already in many developing nations to improve farmers’ capacity to adapt to stressful conditions, as well as build farmers’ sovereignty over their enterprise. As these benefits of PPB are becoming increasingly realized in the developed nations in Europe and North America, this project will investigate the integration of this unique crop breeding model in a Canadian context. Partnering with SeedChange, this project will interview farmers directly involved in PPB programs across Canada to gain an understanding of the regional challenges that organic farmers face when breeding for successful varieties. The research will ask how this approach can produce conditions better suited to adapt agriculture to the impacts of climate change.

Investigation of the Role of Host Proteins in the HIV-1 Envelope

While efficacious treatments are available for HIV, they require lifelong adherence and can have harmful effects over time. Therefore, developing novel treatments and a preventative vaccine remain critical. While most vaccine attempts to date have been largely unsuccessful, identifying new targets on the virus, may provide novel avenues for HIV vaccines and therapies. Integrin alpha 4 beta 7 (?4?7) is a cellular protein that is highly abundant within the external HIV envelope that has been shown to facilitate trafficking of virus to their target cells in an animal model. This protein is also known to play several roles in HIV infection. My projects aims to determine what mechanisms are in place that allow ?4?7 and (other cellular proteins) to partition into the HIV envelope which may in turn provide new information on how the virus is able to hijack other human proteins to increase its infectivity.