Innovative Projects Realized

EarlyDetect, a cloud based mental health screening tool – phase 2

The Chokka Center for Integrative Health is dedicated to develop an innovative and integrative approach to help patients achieve optimal mental health. Mental illness is the leading cause of disability in the world. Diagnosing mental health syndromes have proved challenging for clinicians. But it is essential to screen and diagnosis early to achieve symptom remission and achieve full functional recovery. Recognizing the need for an effective assessment tool to foster early detection of mental health disorders, Phase I of our Mitacs project (IT28160) is to launch a preliminary EarlyDetect (ED) system. However, the Phase I implementation of the risk scoring algorithm on ED is a hybrid method heavily relying on expert input information. We propose this Phase II because we believe that there is still room for automation and performance improvement by building a comprehensive machine-learning-based scoring engine integrated with a cloud based API.
ED will improve health outcomes of numerous Canadian patients, improve wait times to receive appropriate treatment, as well as benefit Canada economically by promoting health care efficiency. It will also advance Canada technologically in pace with other international peers on precision mental health applications.

Virage vert au sein du milieu scolaire

Un des enjeux du Collège Charles-Lemoyne identifié dans son plan stratégique est de réduire son empreinte environnementale. Le Collège désire réduire son empreinte environnementale autant par les gestes posés par les élèves que ceux du personnel et développer des comportements éco-responsables durables. Le Collège souhaite instaurer de bonnes pratiques à long terme et être un acteur de changement pour avoir des impacts significatifs et positifs en termes de développement durable et tendre vers un futur meilleur.

Acrylic Robotics Robotic Development Internship

Acrylic Robotics is a robotics startup based in Montreal, on a mission to use technology to make fine art accessible to the general public. To make fine art accessible, this project focuses on the implementation of a larger robotic arm to recreate artists’ artworks at scale. The intern will be responsible for the development of painting functionality for a new robotic arm, refinement of the robotic painting output, and pilot testing of the robotic system with both internal and external clients.

Étude de marché pour un réseau de test de télécommunication quantique

Étude de marché pour un réseau de test de communication quantique

Numana pilote un projet de 3,75M$ financé par le ministère de l’Économie et de l’Innovation du Québec et Bell Canada, en collaboration avec la zone d’innovation quantique de Sherbrooke.

Ce projet consiste à offrir un accès public d’une infrastructure en communication quantiques, constituée d’une boucle de 15 km de six fibres optiques, à l’intention de l’industrie et aux chercheurs afin de leur permettre de tester des équipements de communications quantiques plus performants ainsi que des protocoles de communication plus sécuritaires.

Dans des laboratoires se trouveront des équipements de communication quantiques qui permettront à des chercheurs, des fabricants d’équipements de communication quantiques, de faire des tests en toute sécurité.

Dans le but d’assurer un succès commercial au projet, Numana a besoin de connaître :
• La quantité et les coordonnées de tous les fabricants d’équipements quantiques qui seraient intéressés à venir effectuer des tests;
• Les coordonnées des autres réseaux de communication quantiques à travers le monde;
• La configuration de leur réseau, quels équipements et services ils proposent, combien ils facturent, combien de temps durent les tests;
• Les arguments de vente nous devons utiliser.

Epilepsy Pre-Evaluation Space (EPES)

The aim of the EPES (Epilepsy Pre-Evaluation Space) is to create an immersive tool to better understand spatiotemporal phenomena inside epilepsy patients’ brains, by creating a 4D spatial-temporal visualization of electrical activity. Used for pre-surgical evaluation of epilepsy patients suited for surgical resection of the brain region, where seizures onset zone lies. EPES provides an immersive environment with 3D interaction and visualization through virtual reality (VR). It integrates acquired data consisting of the MRI brain scans, the iEEG channels recorded by the intracranial electrodes, and the locations of the electrodes in the brain onset and end of seizures in individual iEEG channels. The objective of the Globalink research project is to add an automated identification of the iEEG electrodes seen on the MRI data. The work includes in which part, and which position the electrodes are implanted in the brain, as well as identifying the number of intracranial contact points at each electrode.

La science des données au service des athlètes olympiques canadiennes de water polo : développement de profils de performance

Ce projet proposé par l’Institut national du sport du Québec (INS Québec), en collaboration avec l’équipe nationale féminine de Water Polo Canada, a comme principal objectif d’exploiter les données d’entraînement, de tests physiques et les résultats de compétition, collectés au cours des 10 dernières années, auprès de 202 athlètes. Nous exploiterons les modèles et techniques avancés en statistique afin de décrire des profils d’athlètes, de déceler des tendances temporelles, liées par exemple aux cycles olympiques, de décrire la progression d’une carrière de joueuse d’élite, ainsi que de cibler les tests les plus révélateurs et pertinents afin de mieux utiliser les ressources à la disposition de l’INS Québec et Water Polo Canada. L’analyse des données permettra à l’équipe nationale canadienne de water polo de raffiner ses techniques d’entraînement et de préparation en vue des prochains Jeux Olympiques en s’appuyant sur les données récoltées par les experts qui encadrent l’équipe depuis plus d’une décennie.

Development of healthy food products by combining proteins and dietary fibers from oats and pulse

The milling oats in Canada are good sources of both dietary fibers and plant proteins. Currently the majority of Canadian oats is used as animal feed. Finding new sources of plant proteins and fibers or valorizing the existing ones is necessity to obtain sustainable and healthy food products. Even though oat lacks some essential amino acids, foods produced with mixtures of oat and pulse proteins provide a high value and balanced diet. The overall objective of this research is to develop high quality protein and dietary fiber ingredients from oat and pulse, and then develop new techniques to combine these ingredients to prepare fat replacers for dairy and dairy substitute products and texturized vegetable protein for meat analogue applications. This research will provide opportunities to add value to oats and pulses. The food development will provide consumers with healthy food choices to lower the risks of chronic disease.

Feasibility Study of Incineration of Municipal Solid Waste in Churchill

Churchill is experiencing different types of challenges. Because of the remoteness of this place, the communication and transportation systems are very costly and challenging. Managing municipal solid waste manage is another emerging problem for Churchill community. The current waste management system in the town of Churchill is very costly, and environmentally unfriendly. Town of Churchill is evaluating the viability of a more environmentally friendly and cost-effective solution for the future solid waste management for the community. The project will use highly efficient incinerator which will burn appropriate type of waste and will reduced amount of greenhouse gas compared to the existing system. Moreover, the project will help to decrease the utilization of large areas for landfill and transportation cost during waste handling, and recover the energy from the waste that can be used for heating of the town’s water system and buildings. The study will assist to set up an environmentally and economically viable solid waste management system (incineration unit) in the town of Churchill municipality.

Data management on future hardware and cloud environments

Data management systems are the backbone of the modern society powering many impactful applications. As data volume and the need for fast data processing continue to grow, it is paramount for data management software to evolve and provide high performance. This in turn must be done by co-designing data management software with the underlying hardware and deployment environments. Recently, ultra-fast networking technology gave rise to disaggregated data center (DDC) environment which provide many unique challenges in building and deploying data management systems. In this project, we are bridging the gap between the database world and the DDC environment. We aim to propose platform/API to set the appropriate standard for the field in building data intensive application on DDC.

Smart ELISA Protocol Development and Implementation using Somru Intelli.R Automation Systems

Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) it is an immunochemical test that utilizes an enzyme (a protein that facilitates a biochemical reaction) and an antibody or antigen (immunologic molecules) to detect and quantify specific substances in a biological solution. The development of an ELISA protocol presents several challenges, however. For example, ELISA technology currently is developed largely on a “trial and error” basis, rather than being executed systematically, and is not capable of performing large numbers of assays in a timely and cost-effective manner. To improve ELISA development by increasing automation and implementing informed decision-making, we propose to: 1) develop an intelligent knowledge-based decision support system (DSS) to drive efficient new protocol development for novel ELISA-based molecular identification, and; 2) integrate the DSS with an intelligent robot-based experimental apparatus (the Somru Intelli.R automation system) to create an efficient and reliable automated platform for assay-specific investigations of new drugs and vaccines.

Développement des connaissances en droit de la cybersécurité et protection des renseignements personnels

Le droit peine à se développer pour répondre aux enjeux multiples et diversifiés que pose le développement rapide des enjeux et des moyens mobilisés par la cybercriminalité et la protection des renseignements personnels.
Dans ce contexte, les stages envisagés visent à tirer avantage de l’expertise de pointe développée par l’organisme partenaire pour développer un programme de recherche de pointe pour les stagiaires sur les problématiques émergentes dans les domaines du droit de la cybersécurité et de la protection des renseignements personnels.
Les connaissances développées permettront à l’organisme partenaire de mieux répondre aux besoins évolutifs de ses clients et de contribuer à former des experts du domaine. Cet ambitieux programme permettra également de faire avancer les connaissances dans ces domaines par la diffusion des résultats de recherche.

Synthesis of 2,2?-bipyridinediol ligands

Our project list is the field of organic chemistry, where the synthesis of small molecules, having potential biological activities, is a paramount objective. Also, the essence of the project lies in new effective green iron catalysts for enantioselective reactions, which is one of the most important tasks of modern organic chemistry to save the environment. This project will allow to reduce the cost of organic synthesis and make it less harmful to the environment. As a result, catalysts based on C2-symmetric 2,2?-bipyridinediol ligands and iron salts will be designed. These iron-derived catalysts will allow replacing metal catalysts based on toxic and expensive noble metals as Pd, Rh, Ru, Ir. The newly designed chiral iron complexes will be tested in a selection of benchmark reactions.