Innovative Projects Realized

Surfactant-Enhanced Soil Washing (SESW) of Bunker C Contaminated Soil

Soil washing (SESW) is a remediation process which utilizes surfactants in treating soils and sludges which are contained with one or more contaminants. This process, however, has not been employed on soils that are contaminated with Bunker C; a fuel derivative which is very common contaminant in many industrial areas and seaports due to its wide range use as fuel for ships and as a backup fuel in power plants and mining sites. Bunker C has been found in soils of an old mining site on Avalon Peninsula, NL, during the reconstruction of the mine. This research intends to investigate the optimum conditions for a successful removal of Bunker C from the soil through the SESW process, while testing the efficiency of Ivey-sol non-ionic surfactant during the treatment. 

MiX – Motion Caption (MOCAP)-in-XNA (Xbox New Architecture)

XNA (Xbox New Architecture) allows independent game/digital-media content developers to build, deploy, and publish games on the Xbox360 and PC platforms. The technical objective of this project is to bridge Vicon Motion Capture technology (used to record movement and translate that movement on to a digital model) with XNA to allow the users (special effects directors, game designers, or producers) the ability to see the Real Time Visualization (immediate visual feedback of animations within a digital environment) of Motion Capture data on the PC and Xbox360 platforms using XNA. This technology will enable V7 Entertainment the ability to save on development time and expensive re-recording sessions should the animations come out incorrectly or unusable for high quality video game development. Additionally, such technology is not available for the independent development community who do not necessarily have the resources of an established game studio. This tool will allow V7 Entertainment to be competitive as a game development company in the Xbox360 Live and PC spaces.

Wireless Energy Transfer for Low Power Charging Applications

Wireless energy transfer is the transmission of electrical energy from a power source to an electrical load without interconnecting wires. Wireless energy transmission has distinct advantages over the conventional energy transmission which uses wires and connectors.  The most common form of wireless power transmission is through inductive coupling in which the magnetic field generated by a primary coil is coupled to a secondary coil so that electrical voltage can be induced in the secondary coil. This project will focus on the development of a prototype to achieve high efficiency energy transfer over relatively short distances. The objective is to develop a system for charging batteries in applications involving mobile electronic devices.

Mechanistic Characterization of Shredded Tire Stress Dissipation and Drainage Sublayers in Roads to Mitigate Frost Heave in Canadian Field State Conditions

Annually over a million scrap tires are generated in Saskatchewan which in the past have been disposed of in landfills and streams. At the same time, Saskatchewan has also experienced a drastic increase in truck traffic on roadway infrastructure that is ageing. This has resulted in the need for the construction of new roads and the rehabilitation of existing ones. In addition, significant changes in climatic conditions have also been recorded including high road substructure moisture problems and an increased number of freeze thaw cycles, both of which can cause cracks and ruts on road surfaces. Previous research work adopted the use of shredded tire material as a drainage layer to mitigate frost and moisture problems. Test sections built using this technology performed well in drainage and frost insulation but performed poorly in providing structural support. This research examines the possibility of improving the structural performance of shredded tire road systems through laboratory and field evaluation.

Network Analysis of the Ontario Technology StartUp Innovation Ecosystem

This research is primarily a network analysis with an emphasis on determining geographic and business activity concentrations of connections of the Ontario Technology Start-Up Innovation Ecosystem. It will use cross-border and local investment transaction histories and any available network information (via LinkedIn, C100, Digital Puck, etc.) to create the core social graph. This data may be augmented with a targeted survey or network mapping experiment (i.e. please invite the most important person that you are connected to complete this survey). 

Design and Fabrication of a Mechanical Tarp System

A semi-automatic computer aided system for spine diagnosis

This project aims at developing a computerized system for spine diagnosis. This system will improve the efficiency and efficacy of radiologists to diagnose patients’ spine problems. The development of the system involves devising a set of tailor-made mathematical formulation. These formulation are grounded on the state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms and they are capable of capturing the knowledge required during spine diagnosis. The computerized system employing these mathematical formulations will be able to mimic the human expert to perform basic image-based diagnosis of spine. The system facilitates standardizing the diagnostic procedures and criterion in order to suppress interior intra-observer variability and subsequently benefit disease progress tracking. The spinal image statistics captured by the system will guide radiologists to focus on the problematic regions and as a result, radiologists’ time required for diagnosis will be reduced. These allow diagnosis of more cases based on the same working hours. Processing extra cases also leads to additional incomes to the professionals in the partner organization.

“Tincan” decision support tool for grain crop storage and conditioning activities.

Create an automated “on line” decision tree for crop conditioning that allows predict and control the behavior of key indicators during the grain storage by Identifying the main factors that are related to the drying and storage of grain as well as the relations between those factors.

Evaluating heterogeneous enterprise content environments: a case study of control

This research seeks to address common issues that plague content and information management at small to medium–sized, know ledge–intensive enterprises. By using qualitative research methods and drawing on a theory of control this case study will provide specific, practical, and usable information about inefficiencies and pain points experienced by Algorithmics, in addition to enriching the trade and research literature on enterprise content management, personal information management, and information retrieval. This project will set in place the implementation of applied research to business practices.

Scalability and performance considerations for the Asset Store

This proposed research will be held as part of the implementation of an online marketplace for smart assets, project that will be developed at Side Effects Software .The main objectives of this applied research project will be first, trying to predict the performance requirements. Second, estimating the set of queries that need to be performed. Third, doing an exploratory and deep comparative (Sql versus NonSql databases) study of the different data storage systems and technologies with the aim of selecting the right model for the asset store. The results of this applied research project will be crucial for the success of the smart asset store. With the participation of the intern in the design and implementation of the data core of the system, the company will benefit from both, the intern’s prior expertise in databases and distributed systems, as well as its capacity of research as a masters student.

Modeling foreign exchange interest rate hybrid financial derivatives under a multicurrencymodel with stochastic volatility

The proposed project addresses the main challenge in modeling long-dated (maturities of 30 years or more) foreign exchange (FX) interest rate (IR) hybrid derivatives, namely the strong sensitivity of the products to the skew of the FX volatility smiles via the use of a stochastic process, such as the Heston model. Numerical methods based on a partial differential equation (PDE) approach will be developed for the pricing of these derivatives. The expected benefits of the project to the industrial partner are (i) flexible modeling frameworks for long-dated FX-IR, which can be easily modified for use for other long-dated hybrids, such as equities and commodities, and (ii) highly-efficient PDE-based pricing methods for multi-dimensional financial derivatives.

Economic Fire Design of Buildings

With my research time at Halsall I wish to contribute to a body knowledge that will assist with Halsall’s current needs and future directions. A review of relevant literature on methods and procedures for designing more economical, fire-resistant buildings would serve Halsall by providing them with a reference works with which their design engineers can use to make informed decisions in the choice of how their projects come to fruition. With Halsall already being an industry leader in restoration engineering, a focus on more economical fire-resistant design may help reduce costs on major restoration projects. Halsall’s sustainable design contracts and environmental initiatives may benefit by reducing the amount of building materials used and thus potentially reducing the project’s environmental impact. A furthered understanding of fire resistance may also allow for better response complicated designs in new buildings. All of this could be used by Halsall to establish market advantage over competing firms.