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

Development of specific inhibitors and activators toassess the role of human Ephrin Receptors in health and disease

Signaling through the Eph family of cell surface receptors is crucial for embryonic development and the maintenance of adult tissues. Given the central role of the 14 Eph receptors in controlling cell fate, it is not surprising that they also play a central role in oncogenesis and other pathological conditions. However, the signaling mechanisms of Eph receptors are extremely complex, and developing an effective therapeutic intervention for a particular disease requires a comprehensive understanding of Eph function. The goal of this project is to generate a collection of synthetic antibody molecules that block and activate every Eph receptor. This toolkit of antibody reagents will allow researchers to identify the best approach for targeting Eph receptors individually or in combination to counteract a particular disease state. This collection of Eph-modulating antibody reagents will expand the existing antibody portfolio of the Centre for the Commercialization of Antibodies and Biologics (CCAB).

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Faculty Supervisor:

Jason Moffat

Student:

Maryna Gorelik

Partner:

University of Toronto

Discipline:

Biochemistry / Molecular biology

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

University of Toronto

Program:

Elevate

Dual inhibition of CA9 and CA12 as effective novel anti-cancer therapy

Hypoxic cells comprise most aggressive and therapy resistant population in the tumors therefore targeting proteins that are essential for hypoxia survival is an effective novel anti-cancer treatment. We have an ability to generate highly specific humanized synthetic antibodies against target of choice. We will generate antibodies against proteins that promote hypoxia survival, test their effect in 2D/3D systems and will move to preclinical/clinical trials upon successful in vitro validation. Partner organization will benefit from our extensive knowledge and expertise in researching hypoxia as the laboratory of Dr. Wouters is a world renowned expert in the field. I have gained a lot of experience in development and analysis of 3D cellular systems during my PhD research that concentrated in stem cell biology. Overall, this fruitful collaboration will lead to development of new line of therapeutics that could help save lives of hundreds of thousands of suffering cancer patients worldwide.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Brad Garry Wouters

Student:

Maria Kondratyev

Partner:

University of Toronto

Discipline:

Medicine

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

University of Toronto

Program:

Elevate

Computational Approaches for Characterizing Non-canonical Tandem Mass Spectra

Extensive research has been conducted for the computational analysis of mass spectrometry based proteomics data, however most of the traditional computational approaches take the assumption that the acquired spectra are generated from the fragmentation of a single precursor and the peptide is simply a linear sequence of amino acid residues. This ubiquitous assumption is impeding the utility of those computational approaches, especially when handling those non-canonical tandem mass spectra. In this project, we aim to develop new computational approaches for the interpretation of two types of non-canonical mass spectra, the mixture tandem mass spectra coming from the concurrent fragmentation of multiple precursors in one sequencing attempt, and the tandem mass spectra resulting from the sequencing of disulfide linkage structures. The software tools or integrated software modules developed in this project will potentially enhance the applications of the software packages and expand the commercial services provided by the partnering company.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Kaizhong Zhang

Student:

Yi Liu

Partner:

Western University

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Medical devices

University:

Western University

Program:

Elevate

Towards the development of a Bayesian prognostic tool of air pollution in Ontario

Air pollution is a major concern in urban centers because not only does affect vulnerable populations, but also impacts the quality of life for urban dwellers. With the new implementation of the Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change to replace the existing Ontario Air Quality Index (AQI), there is an emerging need to forecast future environmental impacts on air quality and assess the achievability of the newly-adopted index. This research will develop a risk-assessment methodological framework to project the trends of AQHI’s pollutant concentrations due to changes in atmospheric conditions resulting from climate change in Ontario. We will use a combination of Global Climate Models (GCMs) and Bayesian inference techniques to provide a novel risk-assessment tool that can effectively support policy analysis by the Provincial and Federal government to combat climate change.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Willam Gough

Student:

Kinson He Yin Leung

Partner:

University of Toronto

Discipline:

Environmental sciences

Sector:

Environmental industry

University:

Program:

Elevate

A fully customized image sensor for fluorescence imaging in biomedicine

Customized image sensors will be designed by EnviroSen specifically for advanced microscopes used in biomedical imaging. The goal is to develop image sensors with improved efficiency, image resolution and speed compared to existing technologies for novel microscopes for fluorescence lifetime imaging. The McMaster Biophotonics group has recently developed a novel microscope that is capable of detecting fluorescence lifetimes of biological samples with 400 times improvement in image acquisition speed. Although the commercially available image sensors are very advanced, they are still limited when applied to biomedical imaging applications. Thus, the McMaster Biophotonics team and EnviroSen’s technical staff will work closely to develop novel, fully customized image sensors that will overcome many of the technical challenges of biomedical imaging. Once developed, the potential applications of customized image sensors for advanced microscopy will open a new market for EnviroSen and allow McMaster’s Biophotonics team to explore other opportunities in this area.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Qiyin Fang

Student:

Darek Palubiak

Partner:

McMaster University

Discipline:

Engineering - biomedical

Sector:

Environmental industry

University:

McMaster University

Program:

Elevate

Developing a new magnetic sensor for application in biosensing and surveying

Detecting subtle chemical and physical changes occurring at the early stages of chronic disease and many other infectious diseases caused by harmful bacteria is still a challenge, as ultra-sensitive sensors with large signal-to-noise-ratio are required to detect them. We recently explored new ways to enhance the sensitivity of magnetic nano-sensors and theoretically demonstrated that under optimum design conditions, the sensitivity can be improved by up to a thousand – higher than any of the biosensors currently available on the market. This new sensor merges three branches of physics: magnetics, optics, and plasmonics. Due to the tunability of light and magnetic fields, this sensor configuration can detect as small as 100 parts per billion changes in material optical properties. This work would allow GEM Systems to diversify their product development, complementing their ongoing effort in magnetic field sensor development for surveying, mineral, oil and gas exploration, to name a few.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Simone Pisana

Student:

Conrad Rizal

Partner:

York University

Discipline:

Engineering - computer / electrical

Sector:

Information and communications technologies

University:

York University

Program:

Elevate

Design and advancement of Graft Enabled Antibody Therapies (GrEAT)

Membrane proteins such as ion channels, transporters or G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are excellent but difficult drug targets involved in a large number of life-threatening diseases and conditions. These proteins, over-expressed and essential for disease onset and progression, are naturally targeted by toxins from venomous organisms. During evolution, these toxins have been optimized to efficiently target physiologically-relevant proteins involved in ion channel opening or closure, thus incapacitating the prey or defending against predators. We propose to generate synthetic antibody (Ab) libraries that integrate natural toxin-based polypeptides grafted in place of one of the complementarity determining regions as a scaffold. Such libraries will be a formidable resource for discovery and subsequent directed-evolution of graft-enabled antibodies against pharmacologically challenging or previously thought as “undruggable” targets, as well as be a starting point for further biological therapeutic lead development and commercialization, in line with the vision and mission of the partner organization, CCAB.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Jason Moffat

Student:

Valencio Salema

Partner:

University of Toronto

Discipline:

Biochemistry / Molecular biology

Sector:

Pharmaceuticals

University:

University of Toronto

Program:

Elevate

Operational analysis and optimization of the delivery of HIV treatment and care in Vancouver

The continuum of HIV care is highly complex. It includes prevention, testing, patient care, treatment, and support services. This project will help Providence Health Care utilise its limited resources to provide the best treatment and care for people living with HIV in Vancouver. Care for HIV patients includes antiretroviral therapy, treatment of co-morbidities, monitoring clinical markers of disease progression (CD4 count and viral load), and support services to ensure treatment adherence and retention in care. A mathematical model of the continuum of HIV care services will be developed and this model will be used to optimize the allocation of resources across the system to maximize positive health outcomes. Through the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV AIDS, Providence Health Care is responsible for providing treatment services for HIV patients in British Columbia. This project will help Providence Health Care determine the most effective interventions for combatting the HIV epidemic.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Alexander Rutherford

Student:

Benny Wai

Partner:

Providence Health Care

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Pharmaceuticals

University:

Simon Fraser University

Program:

Accelerate

Activity recognition using physical layer information from wireless communications infrastructure

Sensing technologies require the deployment and maintenance of complex and large infrastructures. This research proposal is focused on people’s activity recognition technologies though existing WiFi infrastructures. The information gathered by this technology can be applied to different industries like home automation, security, etc. In the future, this technology will powered applications in the home automation industry as the one described next. Mary comes home and leaves her cellphone on the couch. As the system recognizes her, no alarm is activated. Given the time of the day and her habits, the platform understands that she wants to prepare dinner. Cooking is a defined profile for her so the kitchen starts to react based on her presence and activity profile (turning on lights, changing temperature, turning on cooking music). If Mary wants to sleep, the system gathers the necessary information again and changes the whole environment. This project is bringing a new technology to the partner organization and the Canadian Industry.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Doina Precup

Student:

Negar Ghourchian

Partner:

TandemLaunch Technologies Inc.

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Information and communications technologies

University:

McGill University

Program:

Accelerate

Conversational Response Generation with Linguistic Context and Emotional Context

The objective of this project is to develop methodologies for automatically generating responses in a natural language to converse with humans. Responses directly generated from the question-answer database are inflexible and cannot meet users’ needs. On one hand, the responses should take into account the previous utterances that can keep a conversation more active. On the other hand, the responses should be appropriate for the emotions conveyed in a conversation that can make a conversion more user-friendly. Hence, a more flexible generating system for conversational responses could be created through an artificial intelligence method that is able to incorporate the two types of context information. This research will allow RSVP Technologies Inc., which is currently supporting mostly the tourism market, to expand their dialog system product into a new, broader market.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Mark Giesbrecht

Student:

Zhifei Zhang

Partner:

University of Waterloo

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Education

University:

University of Waterloo

Program:

Elevate

Internet of Smarter Things: A Data-driven Perspective

All over the world, sensors, smart objects, and other devices are connecting through the reach and power of the Internet. And they are dynamically generating, analyzing, and communicating intelligence to increase operational efficiency, power new business models, and improve quality of life. Connecting the unconnected is the Internet of Things (IoT). The project would focus on researching IoT technologies in a selected segment of the IoT spectrum of possible devices and applications. Specifically, we propose to investigate IoT from the perspective of an embedded database system, which is a main product of Empress Software. The infusion of technology in this project developed with York University will make the Empress Software more state of the art and make Empress more competitive in the embedded market. This market accounts for the majority of Empress revenue.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Parke Godfrey

Student:

Nikolay Yakovets

Partner:

York University

Discipline:

Engineering - computer / electrical

Sector:

Medical devices

University:

York University

Program:

Elevate

Characterization of the colloidal properties of concentrated casein micelles and improvement of the functionality of concentrated milk products using membrane filtration

The project aims at obtaining new ingredients from concentrated milk, and understanding how changes in their physical and chemical properties may affect their functionality. Membrane filtration processes are widespread in the dairy industry and they are all based on physical separation of the components because of their size. During these processes, the protein particles in milk become concentrated and the physical properties and composition of the concentrates will change. We are proposing to study how such systems may be stabilized and used as ingredients in the dairy industry. This project will be carried out in partnership with Gay Lea Foods Co-Operative Ltd, the largest cooperative in Ontario, with more than 1200 farmers. In the project, we will study how to concentrate fresh milk and obtain ingredients easier to transport with tailored functionality. The design of liquid ingredients will allow Ontario to compete against powder imports.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Arthur Hill

Student:

Zhengtao Zhao

Partner:

University of Guelph

Discipline:

Food science

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

University of Guelph

Program:

Elevate

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