Sustainability framework for early-stage entrepreneurships

This project will explore the measures of sustainability described by Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) measures; find the key measures that venture capital investors review to make their investment decisions and create a framework to integrate sustainability measures within the early-stage entrepreneurship. This will not only promote the sustainability of the entrepreneurial venture but will […]

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Community Grocery Store Model Feasibility Study: Towards Equitable and Culturally Appropriate Food Security in Rexdale

In partnership with the Rexdale Community Hub (RCH), this project involves undertaking a locally-informed feasibility study to assess the viability of a ‘Community Grocery Store’ model that provides affordable, accessible, culturally appropriate food in Rexdale (a Neighbourhood Improvement Area in Toronto). The intern will help train community-members to co-create and implement focus groups and interviews […]

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Reducing Road Mortality of a Species at Risk Using Movement Informed Wildlife Ecopassage

The jurisdiction of the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) covers densely urbanized areas, agricultural land, and natural features including forest, wetlands, and valley corridors. Connectivity between natural habitats is important for species resilience and maintaining biodiversity. When natural habitat areas are disconnected, they become fragmented. Fragmentation is especially problematic where it interrupts movement corridors […]

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Indigenous Guardians and Natural Climate Solutions: Elevating Youth Voices and Mobilizing Knowledge

In recent years, increasing attention has been directed to “natural climate solutions” (NCS). In practice, Indigenous Peoples have been implementing NCS for millennia through sustainable land stewardship. Recent collaborative research with Wahkohtowin Development GP Inc. explored the question: what opportunities could NCS enable, including and beyond carbon sequestration, if rooted in Indigenous guardianship? The exploratory […]

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Improving environmental effects biomonitoring in freshwater ecosystems: A comparison of morphology-based and DNA-based approaches

Federal Canadian regulations of the Fisheries Act require operating mines and pulp mills to undertake biodiversity monitoring every three years to assess potential environmental effects. Different groups of organisms have differential sensitivity to pollutants and other environmental factors, so communities (e.g., invertebrates) provide a rich source of information about the system’s health Identifying invertebrates using […]

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An Intersectional Analysis of the Impacts of Precarious Public Sector Employment on Women

This research project will examine how precarious work conditions (e.g., casual, temporary, contract-based, and normally poorly paid work) impact women workers, particularly those who are historically marginalized, including racialized women, Indigenous women, women with disabilities, and GLBTTQ women. It will also examine the impacts of precarious employment on women as users of public programs and […]

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A framework to enhance deep learning systems’ trustworthiness against Out of Distribution examples

In the past decade, deep learning models have demonstrated their highest performance for a variety of tasks. These models outperformed classical machine learning models and even humans in terms of performance and accuracy. However, previous research indicated that these models are vulnerable to out-of-distribution and adversarial inputs. Ideally, these inputs should be rejected by the […]

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Targeting Radiation-Induced CXCL12/CXCR4 Signaling and the Immune Microenvironment to Improve the Radio-Curability of Human Cancer

Medical images were collected from cervical tumors from mice undergoing cancer treatment using radiation to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors. The purpose is to discover new biological molecules and observe the immune system reacts during radiation treatment. These images will be analyzed by MATLAB, which is a computer platform. MATLAB will perform a couple […]

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Developing innovative techniques for identifying critical habitat and mitigating threats to endangered salamanders

Jefferson Salamander (Ambystoma jeffersonianum) and co-occuring occurring unisexual Ambystomids (Ambystoma laterale – (2) jeffersonianum) are endangered species in Canada. Many populations in Canada are experiencing going threats and pressures from habitat loss and fragmentation due to surrounding land uses which include residential areas, agricultural fields, and road networks. This project will focus on locating and […]

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Pathway to comparative data analytics

Linamar uses sensors and gauges to monitor machine performance in factories across the world. However, the infrastructure to fully exploit such data to improve productivity and performance is currently limited as there is no integrated environment available to uniformly collect, manipulate and analyze the data. The primary objective of this project is to create an […]

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