Innovative Projects Realized

Design An Impact Diverting Helmet

The aim of this proposal is to study head impact and improve the design of helmets. Prior to design a helmet with better shock diverting system, it is important to test the existing helmets to understand their pros and cons. These experiments are also beneficial for comparing the results of the new design with the other designs. The conventional helmets have an outer shell which is fixed relative to the liner. In the proposed design, a shield is mounted on the top of the rigid outer shell. The shield holds the outer shell firmly in place but when a shock exceeds a defined limit it is able to move accordingly relative to the outer shell.  The design is effective in most of the situations to reduce the severity of the shock load and reduce the risk of injury of the brain and neck. Due to the partnership with Innovata Lab, the probability of success in generating and transferring new knowledge and technologies in helmet design is significantly enhanced.

BC angel investment environment

Mr. Ilkin Ilyaszade is a UBC MBA Student working on business case / investor survey during his internship with Rocket Builders management consulting company in Vancouver BC. As part of this project, Ilkin will be responsible for the design and execution of a comprehensive qualitative survey of the angel investment community involved in the tax incentives governed by the SBVCA. The project shall result in a business case to be presented at the QCC conference and to be used in business schools. It is expected that the survey data and the work on the business case will provide recommendations to improve the tax incentive scheme to benefit the BC economic development. Rocket Builders as a consultancy catering to the BC start-up companies (predominantly in the technology sector), stands to benefit indirectly, from the overall increase of activity in this area.

Determining effective management decision support from work system models

The project involves applying a conceptual modeling method called R²M, Role and Request Modeling.  The innovative method, and its supporting software (R²M-ST), was developed at the University of British Columbia.  R²M assists business analysts to accurately capture organizational roles, interactions, services and IT resources as described by business process owners and abstract the information that can be used by decision makers.  The method has been tested in complex small to medium sized enterprises (SME) at the Sauder School of Business.  The next step is to organize and analyze the data from the R²M-ST and determine the information that is most useful to managers for their decision-making roles.  The intern will add needed resources on the project to interview business process stakeholders, model their descriptions, resolve problems identified with the method and refine the R²M-ST. 

Detection of emamectin benzoate (SLICE) in non-target spot prawn (pandalus platyceros) and determination of biological effects

Light Environment and Understory Response to Riparian Restoration of Lyell Island, Haida Gwaii

Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site, with Parks Canada, are undertaking a riparian restoration project on Lyell Island, Haida Gwaii.  On this island, Haida First Nation protests against old growth logging in 1984 led to the creation of Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve. The project will restore salmon habitat and enhance biodiversity values on Lyell Island that have been degraded from a century of logging and understory suppression from deer browsing.  Large, tall stumps left from logging provide a place for understory plant communities that are out of the reach from deer.  My research will measure the response of light environments and plant communities to restoration treatments.  This knowledge will serve to inform future research and may provide valuable insight to the restoration initiatives happening on Haida Gwaii and specifically in Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site.  

More Efficient Interaction Design for Radiologist Picture Archive and Communication System (PACS) Workstations

Radiologists require highly optimized computer workstation software to efficiently perform their diagnostic workflow. McKesson Medical Imaging Group’s PACS system has evolved over two decades of workflow enhancements. However, mouse and keyboard human- computer interaction remains a fundamental limitation for radiologists to fully engage with the data. This project will provide results based on experimental studies investigating the question of: if new multi-touch interaction techniques, such as the iPad, can be used to provide radiologist with more efficient and effective medical imaging solution. This will constitute a significant improvement over traditional mouse and keyboard techniques.

Impact on an Aging Workforce on Extended Health and Dental Benefits

Effective January 1^st 2008 amendments were introduced to the BC Human Rights Code to extend the protection against age discrimination to those aged 65 and over. The amended Code effectively eliminated mandatory retirement age in BC. Even though the legislation continues to allow age-based distinctions under bona fide group or employee insurance plans; employers want to extend their benefit programs to those employees 65 and over that want to stay in the workforce. This will have an impact on the overall cost of benefit plans since most of the benefits offered by employers have higher morbidity and mortality at older ages. The objective of this project is to estimate the cost of providing certain benefits to these employees.

Time-aware Collaborative Filtering for eBay Auctions

Recommender systems are in wide use today by major companies (e.g. Amazon, Netflix and Google) to automatically direct their users to content that they would be interested without the tedium of sifting through the large selection of content available today.  This project is interested in performing an analysis and implementation of a recommender system for the popular auction site eBay.  The system should be capable of taking into consideration both what to recommend and when to recommend it; it will also need to be highly scalable as we will be using a large dataset from Advanced E-commerce Research Systems (AERS).  When completed, the project should provide AERS with at least a proof-of-concept for a recommender system that could be used to develop an operational system for eBay recommendations as well as provide analytics for eBay researchers.

Assessing the Effects of Climate Change on Wildlife Habitat in Boreal Forest Reclamation

Climate change is becoming a factor to be accounted for in forest planning, especially in reclamation activities where the objective is to create a self-sustaining forest ecosystem in areas degraded by human activities, such as open-pit mining activities in northern Alberta Oil Sands. Oil Sands will produce up to 50% of Canadian oil demand in the following years, but when the mining activity ends, large areas of land are deprived of vegetation. Mining companies have the legal requirement to re-establish a functional forest ecosystem suitable for wildlife habitat. However, as trees need long times to growth and create a fully functional forest ecosystem, oil sands reclamation plans should account for the possible ecological effects of future climate change. Specifically, in this project a forest growth model (FORECAST) is combined with a climate/water stress simulator (ForWaDy) and with equations linking historical tree growth and climate conditions to simulate the amount of habitat available for a series of wildlife species that could be created in the reclaimed forests under different climate scenarios. 

Methods and Approaches in ‘One Health’ Surveillance – Water Colifrom/E.Coli Provincial Study Phase 2

Well water test results for the presence of total coliform and E. coli. were obtained from the Alberta Provincial Laboratory for Public Health (ProvLab) and analyzed to gain a better understanding of spatial water quality and the role of temporal environmental features in the well contamination process. Phase 1 of this research investigated (i) seasonal patterns in the relationship between test results and precipitation; and (ii) spatial and temporal clustering patterns in test results and precipitation. This project (Phase 2 of this research) focuses on (i) further describing the positive rates of total coliforms and E. coli., (ii) adding factors such as specific well attributes, animal density in surrounding areas, climatologic and soil factors into the analysis, and (iii) creating maps for use in policy and planning by water quality stakeholders in the province of Alberta and (iv) discussion of implications for the “One Health” concept to such analyses.

Creating a dynamic digital platform for a building information modelling (BIM) system towards the redevelopment of Batawa Ontario

This research project represents the next phase in a partnership project between Carleton University and the Batawa Development Corporation to redevelop 1,500 acres of land in Batawa, Ontario, as a model community and an international example of social responsibility and environmental stewardship. Interns will consolidate research to date on innovative forms and applications of building information modelling and utilize the infrastructure at the Carleton Immersive Media Studio to develop a dynamic digital platform and an integrated system to coordinate current and future projects.

Characterization of NanoSOI NEMS electrostatic actuators