Projets novateurs réalisés

UV-CHLORINE ADVANCED OXIDATION FOR WATER TREATMENT

The student will work in a drinking water engineering research laboratory at the University of Toronto to explore an aspect related to the novel use of ultraviolet light and chlorine to destroy hard-to-treat contaminants in drinking water. Previous work by this lab has shown that this form of treatment can be effective, but it is important to determine whether there may be undesirable chemical by-products formed. The student will monitor for the potential formation of these by-products under a range of simulated treatment conditions. This work is therefore an important step in the pathway that may lead to ultraviolet light and chlorine becoming an acceptable method to remove various contaminants from drinking water.

Evaluating options for the experimental design of an integrated green roof and rainwater cistern

Green roof and water cistern technologies are increasingly becoming important components of sustainable building practices and urban water management. However, the two technologies are rarely designed as an integrated system. This goal of this project is develop an experimental design to test the reuse of cistern water for irrigation in green roofs. This experiment will be designed for the new research facilities of the Green Roof Innovation Testing Laboratory at the University of Toronto. We plan to review scientific literature on water reuse in green roofs as well as water quality monitoring equipment and methods. This will allow us to develop different experimental design and budget options. The literature review, technical drawing, and costing of monitoring equipment and lab tests will be compiled into a written report, which will serve as the basis for discussions with potential industry partners when applying for additional government research funding.

Measurement Verification And Modelling of W-Band Imager and Harvester

Beyond the spectrum of visible light lies a window of frequencies called the W-Band which illuminates a world normally unseen to the naked eye and can be the vessel for energy without wires. In order to see this world normally unseen, we have developed a unique circuit topology which has shown signs of truly state-of-the-art performance while consuming zero energy, occupying less area than the head of a sewing needle, and costing less than any of its competitors. Although promise has been shown by this
new device, further investigation is demanded. Under the joint guidance of Professor Voinigescu and Professor Socher, while utilizing University of Toronto’s facilities we hope to unlock the secrets of its inner workings, thereby enabling its integration into larger scale systems.

Dolmen: Towards the programmatic assembly of large-scale distributed systems

Modern distributed applications are becoming increasing large and complex. They often bring together independently developed sub-systems (e.g., for storage, batch processing, streaming, application logic, logging, caching) into large, geo-distributed and heterogeneous architectures. Combining, configuring, and deploying these architectures is a difficult and multifaceted task: individual services have their own requirements, configuration spaces, programming models, distribution logic, which must be carefully tuned to insure the overall performance, resilience, and evolvability of the resulting system.
In this project, the student will provide an assembly-based programming framework for the implementation of complex distributed topologies. Specifically, our aim is to provide a Domain Specific Language (DSL) that exploits self-organizing overlays to map at runtime a developer’s high-level description of a complex distributed topology onto a concrete infrastructure.
The resulting work will be published to an international conference on systems.

Mathematical Modelling of Carbon Dioxide Removal Using Micron-sized Water Droplets in C-3 Module Process

Emission of CO2 from industrial processes contributes to global warming. Numerous technologies have been proposed to reduce the amount of CO2 released to the environment. The C-3 process, in which ~50% of CO2 in flue gas can be captured using small water droplets, shows great promise for low-cost removal of CO2. Enviro Innovate, the owner of C-3 process technology, wants to better understand CO2 capture mechanisms and the influence of operating conditions (e.g., temperature, water droplet size and velocity) on the effectiveness of CO2 removal. The objective of this research is to develop mathematical models (i.e., sets of equations that can be used in a computer program) that Enviro Innovate will use to predict the amount of CO2 removed under different scenarios. The models will account for multiple CO2 capture mechanisms and will be used by Enviro Innovate to aid future process development and optimization.

Trends, opportunities and adaptive strategies in the natural fiber market

As the consumption of cigarettes declines in North America and Europe market, a company that specializes in manufacturing specialty papers is seeking new opportunities with its natural fiber productions. This research intends to identify new market trends and opportunities for natural fibers in the competitive environment; provide a comprehensive analysis in worldwide natural fiber industries; and to develop strategies by applying marketing segmentation strategy and differentiation strategy to respond to the market. This research benefits the partner company as it analyzes market demand for their product. The Partner expects the result of this study to reinforce their vision in the production of advanced materials from crops in the Prairies like Flax and Hemp. TO BE CONT’D

The Benefits of Understanding Information Behaviour and Cognition for Data Mining: A Case Study in France

The pilot project aims to study the relations between information behaviours (searching and retrieving information and also communications) and cognitive process in Rennes, France. Naturalistic observation, daily interaction with the public, and unstructured/semi-structured interviews will enrich knowledge in information behaviour and analyze trend. The expected outcomes include a holistic recognition of the relations among IT products, information behaviour, and cognitive process and how the social and cultural realities may explain some trends and characteristics. Findings will contribute to data mining in terms of better understanding data by understanding human behaviours and better designing in order to organize data. Future research includes an international comparison of information behaviour between France and Canada. Moreover, knowledge and techniques learned from this project can be applied to many areas, such as informing the Canadian governments to understand behaviour in order to more effectively use and manage IT products in the long run.

Expert Gestures for Multi-touch Interaction

Modern smartphones and tablets, and many notebook computers rely on multitouch interaction to augment keyboard and mouse input. Multi-touch gestures typically consists of taps and swipes – simple gestures that don’t exploit the full range of technical and human capabilities. In earlier work, we determined that users are willing to learn expert-level gestures, but often find them difficult to discover and challenging to learn without formal training. However, when an expert version of a standard gesture is demonstrated, they are willing to adopt and use it.

Our proposed research explores two questions:
1. How can we make these gestures more discoverable, so that users are aware of them?
2. Once users are aware of them, are expert-gestures more effective at solving common tasks?

We will implement three expert-gestures which are improvements on standard pinch-to-zoom. We will run a controlled study where users need to (a) discoverability and notification mechanisms, to help users discover these gestures, and (b) use these gestures to perform common tasks (e.g. map navigation or drawing) to determine their effectiveness.

A Novel approach for Renal Cell Carcinoma Classification Using Vascular, Morphological and Spatial Information

Kidney cancer is one of the most common malignancies worldwide. The number of patients with kidney cancer is increasing every year due to aging of the population, obesity, diet, and lifestyle. The death rate due to kidney cancer is also increasing despite the introduction of new and advanced detection devices; also these methods are expensive, time consuming, subjective and might result in under/over treatment. We plan to develop cheap, fast and reliable methods to classify normal vs. kidney cancer and cancer sub-types. Our method makes the classification decision based on information from tissue structure and comparison with normal tissue. Success with this work will significantly improve assessing kidney tissue and provide clinically important information about the kidney tissue structure. Moreover, we envision that this method can be generalized to detection of another cancer types.

The prevention of gender-based violence among school-aged adolescents: a nursing educational intervention

The project aims at contributing to the reduction of gender-based violence amongst adolescent boys and girls attending schools in cities such as Hyderabad. To do so, the knowledge, attitudes and practices of community health nurses and school teachers will be explored in relation to gender roles, healthy relationships and gender-based violence. The way they conceive their professional identity regarding these issues will also be adressed. Through selected literature, practices to promote gender equality and healthy relationships will be identified in order to implement a pilot educational intervention by community health nurses working in the school setting of cities such as Hyderabad. The project also hopes to contribute to the larger development of primary health care nursing in India as well as the advancement of the nursing profession by mobilizing the full potential of the nurse clinician through the University of Montreal’s Faculty of Nursing’s 8 competencies framework (2015). The project will be conducted by Sandrine Chauveau-Sauvé, senior undergraduate nursing student and will be co-supervised by Professor Bilkis Vissandjee at University of Montreal and Dr. Varalakshmi Manchana at University of Hyderabad.

Évaluation environnementale d’une approche multifilières dédiée à la valorisation des matières résiduelles organiques

Le projet proposé s’inscrit dans un contexte de préservation de la qualité de l’eau en misant initialement sur une approche préventive basée sur une mise en valeur des rejets altérant les milieux récepteurs plutôt que sur une approche curative (traitement). L’étude portera sur le cas de la municipalité de Miahuatlán (région de Xalapa, Mexique). Le projet vise à établir, dans un premier temps, une cartographie des gisements de matières résiduelles organiques en fonction des différentes classes de générateurs (élevage, laiterie, fromagerie, municipal, etc.). Par la suite, il s’agit d’identifier des filières de valorisation potentiellement applicables (production de fertilisants, énergie, sous-produits industriels) afin d’établir des scénarios soit à filière unique ou multifilières. Ces scénarios seront évalués sur la base d’une analyse multicritère afin d’évaluer leur potentiel à répondre aux enjeux environnementaux (rejets détournés des milieux récepteurs) et socio-économiques (identification de synergies entre acteurs du territoire et création potentiel de valeur économique).

Development of Tar Removal Technologies for Biomass Gasification

Nowadays, the sustainable supply of energy is challenging due to growing concerns over climate change and increasing global demands. This leads to an urgent need for developing sustainable and renewable biofuels and bioenergy. Biomass gasification is a very promising route for bioenergy production. However, syngas from this process normally contains unacceptable level of tar. Tar can cause operational issues in syngas downstream applications. Hence, the elimination of tar has been the biggest obstacle in the successful commercialisation of the biomass gasification technology. The key aspects this study are the determination of the key and optimized design parameters for different tar removal techniques and the performance test of these techniques. In addition, it is expected that this project will deliver a new combined tar removal technology that will be able to effectively remove tar from syngas. TO BE CONT’D