Innovative Projects Realized

Explore thousands of successful projects resulting from collaboration between organizations and post-secondary talent.

13270 Completed Projects

1072
AB
2795
BC
430
MB
106
NF
348
SK
4184
ON
2671
QC
43
PE
209
NB
474
NS

Projects by Category

10%
Computer science
9%
Engineering
1%
Engineering - biomedical
4%
Engineering - chemical / biological

How to Say “Spay”: BC SPCA Rural and Semi-Rural Cat Spay/ Neuter Program Messaging Research Project

Canada is currently experiencing a cat overpopulation crisis, fed in large part by the uncontrolled breeding of domestic animals. While homeless and feral cats may add to the problem, much of the population explosion is being driven by unsterilized cats, whose owners have chosen to leave them intact. A single unaltered female cat and her offspring, can produce up to 420,000 cats over a 7- year period, an unneutered male cat can father hundreds of kittens each year of his life. These rising cat numbers represents not only a pressing animal welfare concern but also a serious drain on the resources of local municipal departments and humane societies such as the BC SPCA. This research aims to significantly reduce the problem by persuading more cat owners to fix their cats through a targeted pro-social messaging campaign that will draw on recent work in the fields of consumer behaviour and sustainability marketing. The goal of the research is to develop a messaging toolkit that is able to work across a variety of real-world situations. TO BE CONT’D

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Faculty Supervisor:

Katherine White

Student:

Cluny South

Partner:

British Columbia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

Discipline:

Business

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

University of British Columbia

Program:

Accelerate

Modeling and Analysis of access-control policies (SELinux and/or SMACK)

Access-control policy management is an increasingly hard problem from both the security point of view (is the policy “safe”?) and the functionality point of view (does the system still work as expected?). Even when a policy is considered both safe and functional, each addition, deletion or modification of the policy has the potential to break the baseline. Using existing tools and mechanisms to model and analyze policies to answer specific safety and functionality questions would be very useful to organizations using access-control policies. Identifying and highlighting current gaps in existing tools and technologies for policy analysis, could potentially lead to improvements and/or new tools and technologies.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Amy Felty

Student:

Amir Eaman

Partner:

Irdeto Canada

Discipline:

Engineering - computer / electrical

Sector:

Information and communications technologies

University:

University of Ottawa

Program:

Accelerate

High-rate anaerobic digestion of ozonated waste activated sludge at low temperature

This project will investigate the challenging possibility of operating anaerobic digesters at 20 ºC without the supply of any external heat source by combining anaerobic digestion with sludge ozonation. The hypothesis is that such combination will enable the operation of anaerobic digesters at 20 °C, and achieve higher biosolids reduction, more biogas production, and increased energy gain, than the conventional standalone anaerobic digestion at 35 °C. This will be undertaken by operating anaerobic digesters under different configurations and monitoring their performance. Finally, an optimized version of the technology will be proposed to our industrial partners for possible upscaling. Air Liquide Canada currently commercializes the ASPALSludgeTM system using ozone to reduce excess sludge production from wastewater treatment facilities. The project will benefit both partners by proposing to them a novel technology that will solve the main problems associated with biosolids handling and disposal, and at the same time enhance energy production from anaerobic digesters. Hence, this new technology, if feasible, will provide a promising strategy for wastewater utilities to ensure environmental as well as economic sustainability.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dominic Frigon

Student:

Shameem Jauffur

Partner:

Air Liquide Canada Inc.

Discipline:

Engineering - civil

Sector:

Environmental industry

University:

McGill University

Program:

Accelerate

The use of improved antibody drug conjugates for targeted treatment of bladder cancer

Bladder cancer is the fifth most common form of cancer in Canada, however progress in the development of safer and more effective therapies has been slow. The use of antibody drug conjugates (ADC) is a promising therapeutic option that would allow for targeted killing of cancer cells, if the obstacle of getting the drug inside the cell can be overcome. The proposed research project aims to use iProgen’s Antibody Internalization Domain technology to engineer ADCs targeted to bladder cancer, which can be readily taken into the cell. These improved ADCs will be tested in a number of pre-clinical cancer models, including a cutting-edge model in which human tumours are implanted into mice, creating avatars of the patient’s cancer. iProgen Biotech will benefit from the cell biology expertise of the candidate, the oncology expertise of Dr. Black, and the use of UBC’s infrastructure, including animal facilities, and research equipment and space.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Peter Black

Student:

Morgan Elizabeth Roberts

Partner:

iProgen

Discipline:

Medicine

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

University of British Columbia

Program:

Elevate

A big data approach to schedule optimization

Workforce scheduling algorithms are used by businesses around the world, including hospitals, factories, and retail stores, to determine when and where employees should come to work. Usually, the needs of organizations change over time, but the scheduling algorithms used in these systems usually do not change. Kronos is an industry leader in scheduling software, and has access to a lot of data reflecting schedule changes in many organizations. This research project leverages big data methods in order to mine this data for interesting patterns, and to provide scheduling algorithms that adapt automatically in response to new requirements. In particular, we aim to learn a model of scheduling user intentions from the data, and use it to infer changes to the schedules provided by Kronos’ software that the user would be likely to desire.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Doina Precup

Student:

Emil Janulewicz

Partner:

Kronos Canadian Systems Inc

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Information and communications technologies

University:

McGill University

Program:

Accelerate

Development of Ex-situ Mechanical Durability Tools and Thermo-mechanical Design Curves for Fuel Cell Membranes

Hydrogen powered polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) are a clean energy technology that generates electricity without harmful emissions at the point of use. Current R&D efforts mainly target to commercialize PEMFCs through cost reduction and durability enhancement. The lifetime of PEMFC is limited by the degradation and failure of the polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM). The proposed research project addresses the mechanical degradation mechanism, a key factor reducing the lifetime of PEMs, by developing in-house ex-situ mechanical durability evaluation tools. The progression of decay in mechanical properties will be characterized over time using the developed mechanical durability protocol without the requirement of a costly in-situ experiment. Furthermore, the thermo-mechanical behaviour of the PEM materials as a function of temperature, relative humidity, and pressure will be investigated. The results will be used to inform strategies for material development, device integration, processing, and operation while reducing product development time and cost.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Erik Kjeang

Student:

Alireza Sadeghi Alavijeh

Partner:

Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation Corp.

Discipline:

Engineering - mechanical

Sector:

Automotive and transportation

University:

Simon Fraser University

Program:

Elevate

Thermodynamic Analysis of Liquefied Natural Gas Refueling Stations and Onboard Fuel Storage Tanks for Mobile Applications

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) has up to 20% CO2 and 90% NOx fewer emissions than diesel; making it a cleaner alternative fuel for mobile applications. LNG has high volumetric energy density and is cost effective ($0.5 cheaper than diesel gallon equivalent). However, LNG is stored at low temperatures (-162ºC) and releases boil-off gas that contributes to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In collaboration with Westport Power Inc., the global leader in natural gas engines, we aim to identify the weaknesses in the LNG distribution chain to reduce the GHG emissions and the LNG delivery cost. This project proposes to use thermodynamic modeling to study the LNG properties across the state-of-the-art LNG refueling stations, refueling process, and onboard fuel storage tanks. The research output will be integrated with Westport’s data and expertise to develop new refueling strategies that minimize the LNG leakage and control the boil-off gas.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Walter Merida

Student:

Amirhossein Sharafianardakani

Partner:

Westport Innovations Inc.

Discipline:

Engineering - mechanical

Sector:

Environmental industry

University:

University of British Columbia

Program:

Elevate

Optical determination of membrane defects and correlation with fuel cell performance and durability

There is a strong push toward producing fuel cells on a commercial scale. This means a greater focus on production speed and yields with a need to understand the unintended features that arise from larger-scale manufacturing processes. This project requires the set up of state-of-the-art, camera-vision, defect detection equipment to find and collect observed membrane features. These features will then be catalogued and tested to determine their impact on membrane durability and whether they affect later processing steps. The samples with possible defects will be tested for electrical resistance, mechanical robustness and resistance to chemical degradation. In addition, the defects themselves will be analyzed in order to understand how they form and how they contribute to failure modes. This understanding is crucial to increasing fuel cell durability at a commercial scale.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Steve Holdcroft

Student:

Graeme McCallum Suppes

Partner:

Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation Corp.

Discipline:

Chemistry

Sector:

Automotive and transportation

University:

Simon Fraser University

Program:

Elevate

Enhancing water stress tolerance in soybean through phytoglobin manipulations

The purpose of the project is to generate soybean plants able to tolerate whole plant submergence and waterlogging (soil submergence). This will be achieved by inducing Pgb, a gene normally present in soybean and known to confer tolerance to excessive humidity, through genetic manipulations. Correlative studies between Pgb expression and performance under excessive water conditions will also be conducted in commercial varieties of soybean. Similar studies will be conducted to assess the effect of altered Pgb level to drought stress.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Claudio Stasolla

Student:

Shuanglong Huang

Partner:

Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers

Discipline:

Forestry

Sector:

Environmental industry

University:

University of Manitoba

Program:

Elevate

Implementing a novel infectious disease diagnosis assay to a microfluidic device

Infectious diseases ranging from avian influenza to Ebola virus infection are among the most serious health emergencies in Canada and globally. Current diagnosis methods such as cell culture, ELISA and PCR suffer from inaccuracy, high-cost and lengthy procedures. Therefore, there has been a growing trend to develop new point-of-care diagnostic tools and microfluidic devices are considered as an important enabling technology owing to its advantages in miniaturization, precise fluidic control, low-cost and high-throughput. The proposed project will implement a novel antibody-based infectious disease diagnosis assay to a microfluidic device to improve the assay performance. The postdoc will perform the research in both the academic lab with expertise in microfluidics-based biological/biomedical applications and with the industry partner that is extending its successful machine learning technology to biomedical applications. Such research will facilitate the industry partner’s new business development in biotechnology and the training will uniquely prepare the postdoc for industry-driving R&D.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Francis Lin

Student:

Jiandong Wu

Partner:

Sightline Innovation Inc

Discipline:

Physics / Astronomy

Sector:

Nanotechnologies

University:

University of Manitoba

Program:

Elevate

Experimental and Mathematical Modeling of Flow Instability in Heavy Oil Recovery Processes

This research project with the industry partner Saskatchewan Research Council focuses on the displacement front instability in heavy oil recovery processes such as water flooding, solvent injection and polymer flooding. In those processes, the less viscous displacing fluid usually moves faster than the more viscous displaced heavy oil. This results in an instability that manifests itself in the form of finger-shaped intrusions, and which is viscous fingering (VF). The VF phenomenon tends to greatly reduce sweep efficiency, leaving a large amount of untouched heavy oil underground. Studying the flow instability both experimentally and mathematically can provide a quantitative understanding on the effects of VF on the performance of those heavy oil recovery processes. Also different approaches will be examined to reduce the instability, which would result in enhanced heavy oil recovery. This study will have a great benefit to unlock western Canada’s heavy oil resources in more environmentally sustainable ways.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Fanhua Zeng

Student:

Qingwang Yuan

Partner:

Saskatchewan Research Council

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Energy

University:

University of Regina

Program:

Elevate

Assessment of the neuroprotective effects of a novel natural product derived formulation for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease

“Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that affects approximately 1.5% of the global population over age 65. Current therapeutic interventions for PD are typically limited to attempts to correct the depletion of dopamine once motor symptoms become moderate to severe. Interventions with the potential to improve the cognitive function and quality of life of Parkinson’s patients by modulating non-motor symptoms, as well as interventions with the potential to slow the rate of loss of dopaminergic neurons and to delay symptom emergence remain an unmet need. Neurodyn Life Sciences Inc. has developed a proprietary natural product-derived formulation of three bioactives with demonstrated neurosupportive and neuroprotective activity. The proposed project will continue the pre-clinical study of this novel formulation with the intent of progressing to clinical trials in human subjects with early stage PD.”

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Faculty Supervisor:

Harold Robertson

Student:

Amber Marriott

Partner:

Neurodyn Inc.

Discipline:

Medicine

Sector:

Pharmaceuticals

University:

University of Prince Edward Island

Program:

Elevate

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