Projets novateurs réalisés

Exploration of Innovative Digital Consumer Research and Marketing Strategies

This project will analyze the current digital marketing strategy for an online jewelry seller. With this, a better understanding of the current competitive environment of online jewelry retailing will be developed, different customer profiles will be identified, and shopping behaviors will be identified. Finally, the research will examine the impact of online shopping experience on jewelry shopping
behavior. Based on the findings, new digital marketing and branding strategies will be recommended. This project will bring benefits to the organization by providing an external analysis and assessment of the current online marketing practices and improvement opportunities and new strategies to implement; the latter can bring potential improvements in sales and customer satisfaction.

Fiber Optic Temperature Sensors: Phosphor Deposition and Processing Improvements

Photon Control R&D LTD is a Burnaby, British Columbia company that designs and manufactures a wide range of optical sensors & instruments to measure temperature, pressure, position, and flow in the semiconductor, oil and gas, power, life science, and manufacturing industries. The operating principle of many of their products is based on the optical response of phosphor materials and is well suited to applications in harsh environments. Photon Control is currently seeking to improve the lifetime of their optical sensors by improving the quality and methods of deposition of their phosphor materials. Our research group has the infrastructure and expertise required to deposit and to protect these materials in robust thin film form on substrates of various size and shape, in order to address these material deposition challenges. This project will complement our current research efforts and allow Photon Control to achieve performance
improvements in their optical sensor systems, providing extended lifetime in their current applications, as well as extending their range of applications to include high temperature environments, where there is a demonstrated need.

Modeling of Current Collapse and Gate Leakage Phenomena in AlGaN/GaN HEMTs

AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) have emerged as promising candidates for high breakdown, high power output, and high operating temperature applications. However, there are several problems that hinder its practical use such as current collapse and high gate leakage current. Most of available studies use analytical formulas and only analyze a certain aspect. Physical models that can predict both phenomena consistently and describe a larger picture of device behavior are still lacking, which will be addressed in this work. This capability is important in the HEMT structure design, and will make APSYSTM a more competitive tool in the market.

Machine Vision Based System for the Recognition and Counting of Indian Coins

Counting coins, with speed and accuracy, has been a challenging issue for banks and stores. People used to count coins manually before the arrival of coin counting machines. The process of counting coins manually is a very time consuming and tedious job. Moreover, mistakes are likely to occur due to various reasons such as fatigue, eye tiredness and too many coins of nearly same shape and size cause confusion in sorting and counting. Coin sorters are common in North America and can be found in most commercial banks and even some grocery stores. By contrast, they are not available in India, where the number and similarity of the coins make for a very challenging problem. The objective of this project is to determine whether advanced machine vision techniques are able to sort coins from India with acceptable speed and accuracy. If the answer is yes, then the outcome will be used to develop a machine that can recognize and count Indian coins, with Indian banks as the initial market.

Competence Analytics in Gaming

Gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry. Canada has a solid footing in the entertainment angle of the industry. There is a growing trend to customize gaming towards education and training. Albatross Gaming Inc. is interested in such a customization that relies on techniques from competency-based learning analytics. Recognizing the skills and strategies of gamers, at real time, and offering technological guidance to help achieve their personal goals would not only open a new market for the company in the world of gaming but also reinforce Canada’s stature as a leader in advanced gaming technologies. Recent advances in data analytics and sensor technologies have started to influence gaming and game-based learning towards adaptive and personalised environments. This project aims to build industry partner solutions to offer personalised learning/training experiences to gamers by tracking gaming interactions at higher levels of granularity and translating them into opportunities for custom feedback, reflection, and regulation.

Recurrent Neural Networks for Video Similarity Metrics and Video Captioning.

The objective of this project is to develop a system that provides video recommendations to the user based on the content of the video they are currently watching. Existing methods generally create their recommendations based on the title or tags of the video or on the viewing patterns of other users who have watched the same video. However, text based methods are only accurate if the titles and text are correctly spelled, use similar colloquial language, and accurately reflect the important content of the video, which are factors that are not guaranteed. Furthermore, it is often difficult to infer meaningful viewing patterns and determine similar user groups when attempting to create video recommendations based on the viewing behavior patterns of similar users, particularly if the user base is small. Hence, a more accurate system for video recommendations could be created through an artificial intelligence method that is able to autonomously infer what the important content of a video is. The method would then use this “important content” to find other videos that contain similar “important content” in order to create video recommendations for the user as well as describing this “important content” in a natural language sentence.

Identification of STAT3/5 Advanced Preclinical Candidates

It is estimated that 1 in 2/3 people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. Cancer is a genetic disease characterized by the uncontrolled growth of cells. While treatments are available for many cancers, remission of the disease, side-effects of the medication, and the onset of resistance by the cancer to the drugs being used, contribute to the high fatality rates observed for several cancers. The blood cancers CML and AML are driven by the out-of-control

activity of a protein in cancer cells called STAT5. Inhibition of STAT5 activity has been shown to cause cancer cells to die. The aim of this project is to optimize the properties of potential STAT5 inhibitor drugs develope at University of Toronto Mississauga, to allow them to be taken orally, and negate adverse side effects. This will be achieved in collaboration with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada (LLSC), which aims to eradicate blood-borne cancers.

The Effects of Changing Sound Regimes in the Natural Environment on Marine Mammals in the Arctic: A Decision Support Tool

Marine Mammals depend on sound for survival, whether for communicating with each other or for hunting for food. Human produced (Anthropogenic) sound such as from shipping, military SONAR, coastal development and oil and gas exploration, development and extraction, can all interrupt and disturb marine mammals. As sea ice begins to melt sooner and for longer due to climate change, the Arctic has become more accessible and therefore become targeted by industry for development and expansion. Nunavut, and many other Polar Regions whose waters have remained relatively pristine until recently are all struggling with how to best manage this development and anthropogenic sound, to reduce the negative impacts on marine mammals. This project aims to produce a document that summarizes all relevant research comprehensively, and makes policy recommendations based off of a comparative policy analysis.

Monitoring water table depths at Bauru Aquifer System in a conservation reserve in Aguas de Santa Barbara, Sao Paulo, Brazil

A hydro-climatological network of data collecting stations has already been set up at the Bauru Aquifer System in a conservation area in Águas de Santa Bárbara, Sao Paulo, Brazil by Dr. Rodrigo Manzione of UNESP Ourinhos. The purpose of this internship is to use the data that has already been collected to make predictions about how the water table will react to varying inputs of rainfall, ie. how much water will actually reach the water table with respect to the amount of rainfall. I will use statistical modeling, GIS mapping tools and autoregressive time series models, and expect that from this data we will be able to determine the effect of accumulated rainfall on the behaviour of the aquifer in a given year. By using this approach we expect to be able to separate the effect of atypical rainfall events when estimating groundwater level trends. This research is timely as Brazil experienced one of the driest summers on record last year, while simultaneously demands are increasing for agriculture, industries, and municipalities.

BRAZILIAN POLICY AGENDAS PROJECT

The research project will investigate agenda-setting processes in Brazil. It is intended to contribute to the studies in the field of public policies in Brazil, especially focused on agenda-setting, as well as for the analysis of processes of policy change related to changes in government priorities. This perspective, unprecedented in Brazil, has been developed in different countries, in which researchers have gathered around the same theoretical and methodological framework,
providing an international network of researchers called Comparative Policy Agendas Project . The Brazilian Policy Agendas Project seeks to integrate this network, initially through analysis of three types of documents: Presidential speeches; laws approved by the House of Representatives (at the Federal level) and the main themes of public opinion reflected in the media (newspaper). These documents will enable identification of topics present in the presidential agenda, in the legislature and also in public opinion. Outcomes
include dissemination of the research in academic journals, at conferences, as well as international comparisons in collaboration with the international researchers through the Comparative Policy Agendas Project. TO BE CONT’D

Sustainable production of xylitol from hemicellulose hydrolyzate of Lignocellulosic woody biomass and sugarcane bagasse.

The need for green technologies and depletion of crude oil has led to a search for renewable resources. Forest biomass certainly has the potential for the production of most of fossil based products. In the current project, one of the components of forest biomass, hemicellulose will be used to produce xylitol through fermentation process instead of following the existing non ecofriendly chemical process. Xylitol is basically used as artificial sweetener for diabetics and in
some health products and hence has to follow safe production methods. By employing GRAS (generally regarded as safe) microbes and eco-friendly methods the process will reduce our dependence on crude oil for chemicals in an economical and environmentally friendly manner. Methods to increase the yield using woody biomass like poplar and agricultural residues like sugarcane bagasse will be studied.

Gasification of novel moisture-resistant fuel pellets to synthesis gas and comparison of their performance to those with commercial Power Pellets™

The proposed research deals with the gasification of novel moisture-resistant fuel pellets (developed previously in Dr. Dalai’s Lab) to synthesis gas. For this purpose the gasification process parameter will be optimized to maximize the conversion. Then the results will be scaled-up in a continuous pilot scale gasifier. These results will be compared to those with the commercial one. At the end, the technoeconomic analysis of the process will be analyzed. The partner organization will be benefitted from exploring the commercial feasibility of novel moisture resistant pellets.