Projets novateurs réalisés

Education, Community Engagement and Unconventional Oil and Gas Development: North East British Columbia

Through directed interviews and exit questionnaires information about baseline education levels associated with academic preparedness and skills training will be analyzed to determine what type of support is lacking in the Natural Gas development. The interviews will take place throughout the Monteny Region of NE British Columbia region to assist with Liquid Natural Gas development. This assessment will focus on what educational resources are currently in place, and assess their ability to meet and deliver program in support of specific skill development, their potential to enhance skills training in partnership with local authorities trough all phases of education K-12 to apprentice and/or colleague/university/certificate training programs. This activity will also identify critical limitations with existing education providers to provide skills training or industry ability to create a long term skills training strategy.

The Paternity Crisis and the Other Side of Turkish Modernity

My research project presents a unique perspective on the Turkish experience of modernity from the side of the discredited, disavowed and repressed, and thus contributes to a better understanding (and to a better identification of the failures) of the modernization in Turkey that predominated much of the twentieth century. It does this through an exploration of paternity crisis that hinges upon the traumatic inception of modernity. The killing of the father lies at the foundation of law which substitutes the abstract principles of equality, liberty, and fraternity for paternal/traditional authority—that resonates with the modern state born of the French Revolution.

GOWL-Edit, un assistant logiciel pour l’édition graphique d’ontologies OWL 2, de requêtes SPARQL et de règles SWRL (Semantic Web Rules Language) dans la syntaxe G-OWL étendue

L’Institut de Recherche en Électricité du Québec (IREQ), qui est le centre de recherche d’Hydro-Québec, a pris le virage des technologies du web sémantique depuis quelques années. L’IREQ doit gérer une quantité énorme d’informations provenant de ses équipements réparties dans tous le Québec. Les chercheurs de l’IREQ ont notamment choisis les technologies du web sémantique afin de faciliter la cueillette et la gestion des informations. Au coeur des technologies de web sémantique réside une pile langagière qui permet de textuellement coder les informations et la sémantique qui s’y rattache. Les chercheurs de l’IREQ souhaiteraient développer une solution afin de faciliter le processus de modélisation de la sémantique des données par la conception d’un langage graphique (G-OWL étendu) et d’un assistant logiciel de modélisation graphique (GOWL-Edit). Techniquement, GOWL-Edit sera en mesure d’assumer l’édition de fichiers dans le format : de l’Ontology Web Language version 2 (OWL 2), du langage de requêtes SPARQL et du langage de règles Semantic Web Rules Language(SWRL). Comme point de départ de la solution, il est envisagé d’exploiter le G-OWL, une syntaxe graphique de l’OWL 2 issus du résultat de l’une de nos recherches antérieures.

Developing an AI-Driven Personalization Framework for Menstrual and Chronic Pain Management

This project lays the foundation for the next stage of development of Juno Technologies’ medical and connected device: integrating artificial intelligence (AI) to provide personalized, adaptive menstrual pain management.

Preclinical characterization of medical marijuana cultivars with therapeutic efficacy and low side-effect liability

Medical marijuana describes the legal use of cannabis plants for treating health-related issues. In Canada, there are currently about 40,000 medical marijuana users, and this number is expected to increase by over 1000% during the next decade. The large majority of patients use medical marijuana for its psychological effects, such as for anxiety, depression, pain and insomnia. There is a concerning lack of knowledge about the effects of different strains (“cultivars”) of medical marijuana, including both therapeutic effects as well as unwanted side-effects. In the present application, we propose to study different cultivars for their therapeutic potential and side-effect liability using preclinical protocols. Working with our Industry partner, we will select their most promising cultivars and test them in a comprehensive behavioral test battery, using state-of-the-art animal models. Cultivars will be extensively screened for anxiolytic and antidepressant properties, while sedating and cognitive side-effects will also be evaluated. The results of these studies are expected to result in the identification of specific cultivars that can be used as promising candidates for downstream clinical trials involving the human patient population and who are often refractory to existing pharmacotherapies

Tailoring Microencapsulation Strategies for New Applications

The application of microencapsulation technology provides for separation between reactives and curatives, allowing 2-part systems such as adhesives, to be formulated and applied with the inherent stability of a 1-part system. Release and subsequent curing can be controlled to occur “on demand”, for example upon the mechanical fastening of a screw, which results in capsule rupture. This is often highly dependent on the careful design of a specific system. With the aim of capitalizing on new product opportunities that are not compatible with the current microencapsulation process, this project will involve a fundamental study of the encapsulation process and the role of materials sets in the properties of the resulting microcapsules. The effects of these material sets as well as processing conditions on the properties of the products including rate of curing, thermal and environmental stability, adhesive strength, and mechanical properties will be studied. This knowledge will lead to a new level of predictability in microcapsule formation, thereby enabling the rational design of microcapsules, which will in turn accelerate the development of new products.

Strategy Marketing Internship

StilwaterAI is a growing startup developing AI assistants to help businesses improve efficiency, decision-making, and productivity. While the company has strong technical capabilities and proven solutions, it faces challenges in reaching its target audience due to limited sales infrastructure, minimal brand visibility, and absence of a clear marketing strategy.
This project is designed to establish a scalable, data-driven sales and marketing framework that goes beyond day-to-day operations. Key focus areas include:
Targeted Marketing Campaigns: Identify high-potential customer personas and launch persona-specific campaigns using LinkedIn, email outreach, and content marketing.
AI-Enhanced Outreach: Implement AI-driven systems to segment audiences, personalize messaging, and automate follow-ups.
Standardized Sales Process: Build repeatable workflows with clear KPIs to improve lead conversion and shorten sales cycles.
Internal AI Assistant: Develop a single AI-powered tool to automate a repetitive internal task (e.g., lead capture, proposal creation, or content brand-conformance).

Expertise required: Marketing strategy, persona development, lead generation, CRM integration, and AI workflow development.

Optimisation numérique du site web de L’Interval

L’Interval est une coopérative de plein air située dans les Laurentides qui propose divers types d’hébergement (chalets, gîtes, auberge, terrains de camping) et de nombreuses activités en nature. Bien que très appréciée par ses visiteurs, l’organisation reste peu connue en ligne et son taux d’occupation varie fortement selon les saisons. Ce projet vise à accroître la visibilité de L’Interval et à faciliter les réservations en modernisant son site web. Les efforts porteront sur l’optimisation du référencement naturel, afin que l’organisation apparaisse plus facilement dans les moteurs de recherche, et sur l’amélioration de l’expérience utilisateur, pour simplifier la navigation et le parcours de réservation. Ces améliorations permettront d’attirer davantage de visiteurs, de fidéliser la clientèle et de soutenir la mission sociale de L’Interval, qui est de rendre l’accès au plein air plus inclusif et accessible pour tous.

Improving efficiency and complexity of reporting for epidemiological insights and disease trends

Globally, there have been challenges in pulling together data, analyses, epidemiological insights, and unusual infection disease trends into comprehensive and regular reporting, that support pharmaceutical and life sciences organizations with timely intelligence for decision making. BlueDot has the knowledge and expertise to bring together these insights in a highly visual, easily understandable regular reporting format, by leveraging proprietary and publicly available data. However, there are challenges in scaling across diseases and locations to meet the growing demand for this content, as well as limited resourcing to improve upon processes, analyses, and methods to deepen our insights and improve efficiency.
Through the previous MITACS project, BlueDot began developing the infrastructure for the regular reporting format, by automating data pipelines and repeatable analyses and processes; in this project the interns will be helping with continuing to build out automated repeatable analyses across diseases and locations and incorporate more complex analyses to meet the variety of needs of our clients.
This project has several challenges and opportunities that interns with subject matter expertise and experience with relevant data can help with and learn from. BlueDot has started to develop a foundation for the regular reporting project, and the epidemic intelligence team has previously greatly benefitted from student support. They can be helpful every step of the way – determining usability of new data sources for communication of disease trends, thinking about how the data can be used for generating actionable insights, producing these regular reports with support from senior team members, including more complex analyses, and improving the overall processes for report generation and automation.

Security Investigation and Solutions to Online Advertising Fraud Problems

The market share of online advertising, also known as Internet advertising, has been increasing dramatically in recent years. On the other hand, malicious behaviors, such as click fraud, have degraded the effectiveness of online advertising. Via fraud clicks, a considerable amount of revenues have been lost to fraud conductors. For instance, based on a report published by PricewaterhouseCoopers, click fraud accounts for as much as 36% of all advertising clicks, which costs defrauded advertisers hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Due to the complexity of advertising networks, it is challenging to combat the online advertising fraud problems. To understand the technical landscape, this proposal will first conduct systematic research to investigate the problems. Following that, the proposed research will develop a fraud detection scheme and integrate the fraud detection and partner organization’s leading software protection technologies. With these new technologies, the partner organization will be able to develop new products and services which go toward enhancing the security of online advertising.

Linguistic Cues for the Extraction and Synthesis of Speech in Extreme Noise

Malaspina Labs Inc. develops algorithms for enhancing speech in extremely noisy audio signals for real-time applications such as hearing aids and mobile devices. Many classical approaches to speech enhancement are not applicable to these domains because of severe hardware and psychoacoustics constraints such as far-field, single microphone use cases (no beamforming), <=10 millisecond latency between input and output (1/10th the time of a blink of an eye) due to bone conduction acoustic feedback, <=40 MIPs CPU processing requirements (1/100th of the processing power of a smartphone) due to battery life constraints, and <=100 Kilobyte algorithm memory requirements (1 millionth of the memory of a current generation smartphone) due to target device memory constraints. The proposed project aims to extend Malaspina’s proprietary algorithms by exploiting linguistic cues to infer or constrain the detection of speech components in extreme noise while respecting the constraints of the target devices.

Revitalisation socio-territoriale en contexte nordique (suite)

Le projet se poursuivra cet hiver dans la municipalité de Baie-Johan-Beetz, une petite communauté nordique d’environ 80 habitant·e·s située sur la Côte-Nord du Québec. Comme plusieurs villages éloignés, elle fait face à des défis importants : centralisation des services, pénurie de logements, vieillissement de la population et difficultés à attirer de nouveaux résident·e·s.
Depuis quelques années, la municipalité travaille à revitaliser son territoire grâce à différentes initiatives comme le développement résidentiel, le marketing territorial et des projets portés par la communauté. Toutefois, un manque de ressources humaines rend difficile le suivi et la mise en œuvre de ces projets.

Ce deuxième stage permettra de poursuivre le travail engagé à l’automne, en continuant de soutenir l’équipe municipale dans ses tâches quotidiennes (gestion du site web, archives, communication, etc.) tout en approfondissant l’analyse des projets de revitalisation. Cette nouvelle étape visera aussi à identifier des idées ou des partenaires inspirants ailleurs pour aider la municipalité à faire avancer certains dossiers.

Pour la municipalité, le stage représente un appui concret et un regard extérieur utile. Pour la stagiaire, c’est une occasion de renforcer ses compétences en géographie, en développement local et en collaboration avec un milieu nordique.