Innovative Projects Realized

Fermeture de l’espace démocratique et réarticulation des luttes sociales : la résilience de communautés de mouvements sociaux face à la désinstitutionnalisation du budget participatif de Porto Alegre (Brésil)

Dans un contexte d’essoufflement des démocraties représentatives, les institutions de participations (IP) citoyennes apparaissent comme des moyens concrets de revitaliser le lien entre citoyens et pouvoirs publics. Le programme de budgets participatifs (BP) est l’une des IP les plus diffusées au monde, implantée aujourd’hui dans plus de 40 pays et présente sur tous les continents. Implanté pour la première fois à Porto Alegre en 1989 et destiné à inclure les citoyens dans la décision des dépenses municipales, le BP est considéré comme un outil de renforcement de la société civile et du lien de confiance entre celle-ci et les décideurs. Bien qu’il soit encore présent sur les 5 continents, le BP est en net déclin dans le pays qui l’a vu émerger : le Brésil. Considéré comme un véritable laboratoire de la démocratie participative dans les années 2000, le Brésil amorce dans les années 2010 une période de rétrécissement de son espace de participation citoyenne, marqué par la fermeture de la majorité des IP brésiliennes. En ce qui concerne le BP, le programme passe de 126 implantations au Brésil en 2008 à moins de 50 en 2020 (Wampler et Goldfrank 2022).

Grant & Sponsorship Research Internship Winter 2023

A key component of the Grant & Sponsorship Research Intern’s (hereinafter referred to as “the intern”) responsibility is to use market research practices to supplement the grant and sponsorship efforts of ASBA. The intern will identify funding opportunities that support the implementation of ASBA’s programs, events and initiatives and submit eligible grant applications for designated projects.

Assessment of the role of Nep1 on learning and memory in Drosophila

Learning and memory is generally thought of as the process by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved in the nervous system. A lot of information is now available about what genes are needed for an organism to remember normally. However, little is known about the genes with the opposite function, i.e. limiting the process of learning and memory (hence, their name, ‘memory suppressor genes’). We do not know the role of these genes for memory, why they exist and do what they do, so research in this area is crucial. The previous efforts have identified several potential Drosophila (fruit fly) memory suppressor genes. One of them is Nep1. Our current aim is to now assess the role of Nep1 on learning and memory in Drosophila. We hope to do so by performing multiple different assays of flies’ memory performance to identify where in the brain it functions, in which phase of memory it functions, and whether Nep1 functions developmentally or in the adult fly to suppress memory. We hypothesize that the role of Nep1 as a novel memory suppressor gene will be reaffirmed as the result of the conducted experiments.

SSE_Frédéric Mérand_FINMETRIX-Yassine Adrou – Rédaction financière

FINMETRIX est une entreprise montréalaise qui soutient les entreprises canadiennes et internationales dans la gestion de leurs risques financiers.
Au sein de l’entreprise, les stagiaires contribueront à l’amélioration de la vulgarisation des enjeux relatifs aux risques des entreprises partenaires. Avec une formation en sciences politiques, un domaine externe à la finance, les stagiaires verront d’un nouvel œil les enjeux et concepts financiers. En s’adressant majoritairement à un public non initié à la finance, les stagiaires apporteront une expérience dans la rédaction et dans la vulgarisation des concepts complexes.

Comparastore – Développement des Affaires

Fondé par 2 étudiants, Comparastore est le premier comparateur d’entrepôts libre-service au Canada. La plateforme étant maintenant fonctionnelle, les utilisateurs peuvent comparer plus de 730 entrepôts, soit environ 9 400 unités d’entreposage, dans plus de 140 villes à travers le Canada. Parmi les entrepôts listés sur la plateforme, certains ont déjà été converti en “partenaire pilote” par Comparastore, mais la majorité des entrepôts sont encore à contacter et à convertir. Plusieurs enjeux sont donc liés au développement des affaires :
1 : Gérer les relations d’affaires existantes avec les partenaires pilotes / Récupérer des informations et valider des hypothèses avec ces derniers
2 : Contacter et convertir de nouveaux entrepôts en partenaires pilotes, afin d’avoir des pilotes dans chaque grande province du Canada.
3 : Établir des partenariats avec différents regroupements communautaires et associations (étudiants ou militaires par exemple) afin de soutenir la stratégie d’acquisition générale de demande/trafic web, de Comparastore.
4 : Comparastore se focalise sur le libre-service, mais réfléchi déjà à son développement dans d’autres marchés connexes (entreposage mobile ; logistique ; et autres). Ces marchés seront passés à l’étude afin d’analyser leur potentiel dans le but de fixer la vision long terme de la compagnie sur les 5 prochaines années.

From Data Cleaning, Design and Migration to Portfolio Construction for Effective Recommendations and Decision Making in the Charity Domain.

Charity donations have long been a feature of society smoothing the differences between rich and poor. In the past these donations were handled manually using a variety of ah hoc means. This continuing project aims at systematizing the donation process by implementing an online system that facilitates the connection between donors and recipients, thus enabling amore efficient donation environment.

Point of care ultrasound in rural British Columbia: An investigation of quality and effect on clinical management decisions

Health care providers perform ultrasound exams to see a patient’s internal physiology (e.g., organs). Point of care ultrasound (PoCUS) refers to ultrasound exams performed at the bedside by a physician not specialized in imaging. PoCUS use by general practitioners is increasing, including in rural British Columbia (BC). Rural PoCUS has the potential to improve the quality of health services for rural patients by bringing care closer to home. It also has the potential to help rural physicians better manage and treat their patients, resulting in improved patient outcomes and reduced costs. This study will examine how well rural GPs in BC perform PoCUS and the effect of PoCUS use on their patient management decisions.

Evaluating the Evidence-Base for Internet-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (iCBT) for Substance Use Treatment in Canada

The intent of this research project is to make iCBT technologies safer, and evidenced based for the Canadian populations. Many available products on the market have not been tested or evaluated for safety and whether or not they are effective in helping people self-manage their mental health needs is unknown. The research and interviews from this project aim to answer these unknown questions.

Visualizing the Performance of Scientific Applications Executing with Space-Time Domain Decomposition

Today’s high performance computers offer the possibility of computing complex large scale computational fluid dynamics simulations in a reasonable time. In practice, exploting the thousands of computing cores to achieve the desired solution time is very challenging. These challenges include finding enough work to keep all these cores busy, and assigning work to different parts of the computing platform that can include different types of multicore processors and manycore graphics processors. A promising approach involves simultaneously computing different time intervals in the simulation, using what is called the parareal algorithm. Careful monitoring of the performance of the computation is required in order to fine tune the implementation of this algorithm so that it produces the desired benefit. This project will investigate the development and use of a visualization tool to allow effective use of the parareal algorithm on current high performance computers. This will enable Envenio to achieve significant performance gains on large-scale real world fluid dynamics problems.

Kinetic-based supramolecular discrimination of clinically significant analytes

Supramolecular chemists have constructed macrocyclic structures called “hosts” that can selectively encapsulate a small molecule “guest.” Selective recognition is instrumental when trying to take host-guest chemistry to the real world. Drug detection, reversal, and delivery are growing applications for host-guest chemistry. However, things become complicated in biological systems due to the presence of salts that can perturb binding. Consequently, most hosts have poor performance in biofluids. Ultra-high affinity hosts whose binding strength is seemingly unaffected by salts overcome this limitation. However, they tend to be promiscuous and have similar binding strength to similar guests, making selective recognition challenging. This project aims to show that selective recognition can be achieved for an ultra-high affinity host in biofluids. By looking at the kinetics (speed) rather than the thermodynamics (strength) we hope to provide fundamental knowledge of kinetic discrimination of these promiscuous hosts. An ultra-high affinity host that can operate in biofluids and be utilized for analyte distinction would have vast applications in healthcare.

Development of Novel Methods for the Automated Extraction of Lipid-Soluble Compounds Year One

Current analytical methods for the extraction of lipid-soluble compounds (fatty acids, cholesterol, antibiotics, pesticides, vitamins) are costly and time-consuming. Recently, we have assessed a novel patent-pending “kit” method for extracting fatty acids and cholesterol from food and tissues with great success. We propose to continue testing this method for extraction of lipid-soluble vitamins, pesticides and antibiotics for the continued sale of kits to potential research laboratories. As a postdoctoral fellow I will continue to have the opportunity to fully engage myself in this project, which is something that Certo Labs has not had the resources to do prior to my first year of the fellowship. This will continue to be of great benefit to Certo Labs as I can continue to develop and assess the utility of our extraction kit on numerous lipid-soluble compounds. Following testing, we now have the capability and resources to package kits and for sale online to end-users

TrypScore Deeplinking Integration

Incorporated in 2019, Medidas Digital created TrypScore, a mobile application designed to positively impact driving behaviour and help reduce the 1.35 million fatalities and 50 million serious injuries caused by vehicle collisions across the world each year. Unlike User-Based Insurance and telematics monitoring systems, TrypScore uses gamification, incentivization and engagement to put drivers at the centre of the behaviour improvement process. Anonymized and aggregated data is collected by the mobile technology and visualized in web-based applications to enhance the value to the partners in our mission. Geospatial technology is used to provide consumer intelligence data alongside proximity-based marketing for our corporate partners who provide rewards for our drivers. Driver behaviour scoring technology is used to heat map concentrated areas of driver risk to inform municipalities, safety organizations and researchers on behaviour patterns and positive or negative change through proactive measures.

This project will focus on the optimization of deep-linking processes to analyze how the user is finding the technology and then analyze how the user engages with the mobile and web-based applications. The completion of this project will ensure that the applications are being downloaded or logged into efficiently and designed for maximum engagement, thus enhancing its value as a positive behaviour-change tool. This project has great importance as the information related to when and how users are downloading the technology or how they are engaging with the technology will have a direct effect on the company’s mission of reducing collisions and saving lives.