Projets novateurs réalisés

New Policy Directions for Addressing Climate and Labour Precarity in BC

This project will produce original, policy-relevant research on the relationship between climate change and work-related precarity in British Columbia (BC). Existing research focuses on heat-stress risks for outdoor workers (such as in agriculture and construction). The broader impacts of climate hazards – wildfire smoke, flooding and extreme weather – on employment security, working conditions and wellbeing across a wider range of industries – including retail and warehousing, food services, healthcare, and manufacturing – have yet to be documented and analyzed. Moreover, inequities and precarity within the green job sectors are under-researched. This project will analyze how climate and employment vulnerabilities rooted in intersecting vectors of social difference shape experiences and impacts in ways that are not widely understood. It will produce rigorous insights for policymakers on the impacts of climate precarity, advance equity by highlighting those impacts on marginalized workers, and support future policy development at the intersection of climate and employment.

Opérateurs linéaires sur les espaces de Hilbert et simulation d’évolutions quantiques discrètes

Ce projet explore de façon numérique et analytique une question mathématique fondamentale : dans quelles conditions un espace de fonctions discrètes, pondéré selon certaines règles, demeure stable lorsqu’on y applique une opération appelée convolution. Cette opération joue un rôle clé dans plusieurs domaines, notamment en physique quantique, où elle permet de modéliser des phénomènes comme l’évolution des états d’un système.

En s’intéressant aux conditions nécessaires et/ou suffisantes sous lesquelles des pondérations rendent cet espace stable sous la convolution, nous espérons mieux comprendre les structures mathématiques sous-jacentes à certaines théories quantiques.

Le projet combinera des simulations numériques et des outils d’analyse mathématique pour identifier et illustrer ces pondérations. À terme, ces résultats pourraient contribuer à éclairer le développement d’algorithmes quantiques et renforcer les liens entre les mathématiques pures et la physique théorique.

Arc Flash Software Research and Development

This project will help e-WorkSAFE develop a powerful new feature that calculates arc-flash hazards in near real-time, helping companies protect workers from electrical injuries. Right now, e-WorkSAFE’s platform warns users when an arc-flash label might be outdated, but updating these labels is slow and expensive. With help from two recent NBCC graduates, the company will build a smart system that pulls equipment updates from the field, reads electrical diagrams, runs safety calculations, and instantly creates updated safety labels that meet Canadian standards. This will make it easier and safer for clients to keep up with changing electrical systems, reduce risk, and improve compliance—saving time, money, and lives.

A Feasibility Study Examining the Efficacy of Sensory Strategies Education (SENSE) for Treating Posttraumatic Stress Injuries in Public Safety Personnel

Public safety personnel (PSP) (e.g., firefighters, police officers, paramedics)—face a higher risk of developing posttraumatic stress injuries (PTSIs) due to repeated exposure to traumatic events in their work. These injuries can seriously affect daily life, making it harder to maintain relationships, employment productivity, financial security, and overall well-being. A common challenge for people with PTSIs is difficulty managing their body’s response to stress. This can present as hyperarousal (e.g., anxiety, racing heart) or hypoarousal (e.g., feeling numb, or shut down). These reactions can make it hard to participate in traditional therapies that require concentration and emotional engagement. This pilot study will test the effectiveness of Sensory Strategies Education for PTSIs (SENSE-PTSI), a five-week educational program designed to help people better understand and manage these physical and emotional responses. The program provides tools and information to help individuals tolerate a broader range of sensations and function more effectively in daily life. Participants will be randomly assigned to the SENSE-PTSI group or a waitlist group. We will compare PTSD symptoms and quality of life before and after the program. We predict those in the SENSE-PTSI group will show greater improvement, supporting this as a useful, efficient option for PSP with PTSIs.

Custom-Designed Tooling and Fixture Systems for Enhanced Textile Manufacturing via Additive Manufacturing

This project brings together Davey Textile Solutions and the Multifunctional Design and Additive Manufacturing (MDAM) Lab at the University of Alberta to enhance textile production using additive manufacturing technology. Traditional tooling in textile factories is often generic and not optimized for ergonomics or specific tasks. This project addresses these limitations by designing and 3D printing custom mechanical tools using Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) principles.

Researchers will create models of tools that are lightweight, application-specific, and ergonomically optimized. These designs will undergo topology optimization before being manufactured using 3D printers. Following fabrication, the tools will be deployed directly on Davey’s production line, where their operational performance will be evaluated under routine conditions. Operator feedback and production data will guide successive refinements to optimize both function and ergonomics.

Examples of tooling to be developed include guides for trim separation, cleaning devices for hard-to-reach areas, adjustable lamination fixtures, and fan blades. The project will also deliver a DfAM-based design framework to help Davey Textile continue prototyping tools internally beyond the project.

This partnership not only increases the company’s productivity and safety but also demonstrates how academic innovation can deliver real-world solutions for Canadian manufacturing industries.

Refining Risk Prediction Algorithms for Post-Discharge Death Through Edge Case Analysis

In many low-resource communities, children who are treated for serious infections still face a high risk of dying after they leave the hospital. Most of these deaths happen within weeks or months, often due to poverty and poor access to follow-up care. To address this, a team from BC Children’s Hospital and the University of British Columbia developed ‘Smart Discharges’. Smart Discharges helps health workers identify children at the highest risk of dying after discharge and create personalized care plans for them.

In Uganda, Smart Discharges has been introduced in 19 hospitals. The system uses health data collected at hospital admission to predict risk, but researchers believe it could be improved. This project will explore “edge cases,” or children who died even though they were predicted to be low-risk, using artificial intelligence and machine learning to find other risk factors.

These findings may also help improve healthcare in rural and remote areas of British Columbia, where children often face worse health outcomes and long, difficult journeys to access specialized care. The project could lead to better care planning and use of resources. It also helps attract passionate health professionals to the province through meaningful global health experiences.

Facilitating Open Scholarship Pragmatics, In a Rapidly-Evolving Knowledge Landscape

Digital technologies and practices—including social networking—are now pervasive and have been adopted society-wide. This creates new possibilities for engagement and interaction among academic professionals, research partners, collaborators, stakeholders, students, and additional members of the public. Academic organizations like the not-for-profit Iter Canada are leaders in facilitating the engagement of Canadian scholarship in global conversation. This project focuses on continuing to advance the research, analysis, and engagement of the Canadian Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) Commons: an open, digital platform for research collaboration and sharing – working in theoretical and pragmatic terms to understand how best to leverage digital research infrastructures to advance open, social scholarship in ways that speak to the needs of humanities and social sciences communities.

Quantum Sensing using spin defects in hexagonal boron nitride nanosheets

This project explores how special features called “spin defects” in a two-dimensional material known as hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) can be used for quantum sensing. Quantum sensors can detect very small changes in magnetic or electric fields, and this research will help determine if h-BN is a good material for building them. The goal is to better understand how these tiny defects behave and how they could support future quantum technologies.

Applied Industrial Alarm Analytics for Safer and Smarter Process Operations

This project aims to improve alarm systems in industrial facilities to help plant operators respond more effectively during abnormal situations by developing advanced, data-driven solutions. While alarm systems are designed to notify operators of abnormalities or equipment failures, in practice, operators often face an overwhelming number of alarms, many of which are unnecessary or repetitive. This alarm overload can delay critical responses and increase the risk of safety incidents and operational disruptions. As industrial organizations place greater emphasis on sustainable Environmental, Health, and Safety (EH&S) performance and corporate responsibility, improving alarm systems becomes essential. Achieving EH&S goals can lead to substantial economic benefits by preventing costly shutdowns, equipment damage, and process failures. Building on the progress made during the first phase of this research, the current phase will continue to analyze alarm and process data to: (1) improve alarm configurations, (2) identify the causes of alarm overload, and (3) develop intelligent tools and techniques to reduce nuisance alarms and support operator decision-making. The partner organization, Parkland Refinery, will benefit from enhanced safety, fewer unplanned interruptions, and improved environmental compliance. More broadly, the project supports Canadian industry by training skilled personnel and contributing to safer, more sustainable operations.

Development of a Production Schedule Application

Despite having world-class print technology, our current method for scheduling production jobs remains largely manual, using spreadsheets, verbal communication, and siloed documentation. This leads to inefficiencies in forecasting, lack of visibility across teams, missed opportunities for optimization, and inconsistent job tracking. With increasing job volumes and the complexity of multi-machine workflows, Marketing Kitchen needs a smarter, centralized production scheduling system.

The challenge is to digitize a previously manual, experience-based scheduling process and introduce intelligent controls that work across a diverse range of equipment, print modes, and variable production scenarios. This requires translating real-world, floor-level knowledge into configurable and scalable logic structures, while also ensuring the system is intuitive, secure, and extensible.

The proposed initiative is the first phase in developing a full-stack digital application—built with Next.js/React frontend and Node.js backend—to streamline scheduling, improve visibility, and introduce logic-based estimation and automation into our production environment. This project is crucial not only for operational efficiency but also for preparing the groundwork for future integrations with downstream automation and analytics systems.

Measuring the effects of habitat restoration & abundance supplementation on Atlantic Salmon populations

The Kouchibouguac and Kouchibouguacis Rivers located in Kent County, New Brunswick, Canada had wild Atlantic Salmon populations that supported both a commercial and recreational fishery. Further, Indigenous peoples traditionally had a subsistence fishery for food and ceremonial purposes. Today, these fisheries are closed or severely restricted. Efforts are being made to increase the abundance of the remaining populations in these two rivers by improving habitat and by artificially incubating eggs in-stream. The purpose of this research is to determine the effects on abundance as a result of these restoration interventions.

Pointing System For the GigaBIT Balloon-borne Telescope

The GigaBIT experiment is a telescope with the resolution of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, but with a much larger field of view. When GigaBIT is flown on a several month long mission on a stratospheric balloon, GigaBIT will be the most capable telescope in the world for multi-color visible light observations.

The Interns will work with StarSpec Technologies to design and build the high-precision pointing system required to ensure sharp images while hanging from a balloon in the stratosphere. Their internship will provide a wide range of experiences, including software development, simulation, mechanical design, control system design, and instrument building.