Innovative Projects Realized

Improved and Expanded Strategic Marketing Plan for Royal Auto Group

Royal Auto Group needs to expand their market and create a new more diverse client base for their products and services. The intern, Randi will develop new marketing strategies and implement plans for media campaigns, ad buys and work with staff to market to clients in the region.

Hailey Logan – Ayrshire

Ayrshire is an investment management firm focused principally on real estate investing in Alberta. We own retail, office and residential properties in multiple markets. Recently we have seen a shift in investment demand associated with new acquisition and developments of multifamily apartment housing in Western Canada. Recently Ayrshire received federal funding through CHMC Rental Construction Financing Program to build affordable housing units for a project located in the Beverly community in Edmonton. Given it’s strong performance and impact investing nature, Ayrhsire has undergone research to raise capital for an Impact investing fund focused on core needs housing to service Canadian’s through affordable housing, seniors housing, student housing, accessible needs housing, etc. Given subsidy programs and available puclic private partnerships opportunities emerging in Western Canadian urban centres, there are strong tailwinds and an opportunistic time to be investing in multifamily developents that have measurable social impacts. We are needing an intern to help gather economic and financial data to help identify markets where Ayrshire’s investment thesis is supported. This research may be specific to some opportunities in our deal pipeline but will generally be focused on relative fundamentals important to real property markets.

Deneschuk Homes: Software installation and implementation

The intern will work with Deneschuk Homes and the academic supervisor to Implement new software for the business. This software will improve the work flow process in the contruction of custom build ready-to-move houses for customers and for the organization. The intern will also develop staff training and evaluation modules in the use of the new software to ensure that all employees in the organization are able to use the new software to the best of it’s capability.

Full body suit for ergonomic risk assessment

The cost of musculoskeletal disorders in Canada overpasses the $25 billion dollars every year, this amount can be significantly reduced by proving good quality ergonomic assessments and training. The main reason that not all companies invest on ergonomic assessments and/or training is due to the high costs that this entails. This project aims to reduce the cost of ergonomic assessments and trainings by completely automating the process. The research project is focused on designing and developing a computer software that can receive the signal from different inertial sensors and compute and display the body joint angles, and an ergonomic risk score (i.e., REBA) in an automatic way.

Wartime Policy Making and Governance: Ukraine and Canada Higher Education Alliance

Involving some of the smartest students in Ukraine, the research project and partnership will enrich the Master of Global Affairs and Master of Public Policy programs at the Munk School. KSE students will provide Munk community a window into the Ukrainian policymaking process as well as a more general understanding of governance during conflict, Simultaneously, student presentations to senior Canadian officials will offer the Canadian government an in-depth perspective into key policy questions facing Ukraine. This will improve Canadian government capacity to assist Ukraine.
The KSE-Munk students — will examine different models of policymaking in wartime and identity appropriate models for the Ukrainian context. For their final output students will make policy proposals and write up a 10-page policy brief.

Computational Optimal Transport

In the last 30 years, the theory of optimal transportation (OT) has emerged as a fertile field of inquiry, and a diverse tool for exploring applications within and beyond mathematics, in such diverse fields as economics, meteorology, geometry, fluid mechanics and engineering. More recently, thanks to many applications in finance, economics, quantum chemistry, machine learning and statistics, the OT theory for finitely many marginals has achieved important results and is growing considerably.

Despite the enormous amount of progress in the mathematical and scientific literature, computational and statistical challenges in the theory still prevent Optimal Transport to be the method of choices in scientific discovery. Unfortunately, several Multi-marginal OT problems of interest suffer from the so-called curse of dimensionality — their computational complexity scales exponentially in the number N of marginals and are NP-hard. In contrast to the N=2 marginals theory, many analytical and geometrical aspects of MOT problems are far from being fully understood.

Design and Optimization of Helical Coil Suspension Using ANSYS

Due to global trends changing from conventional vehicles(Gasoline) to electric vehicles. In electric vehicles every manufacture company want to reduce the mass of vehicles and my research is on Design Optimization of Helical Coil Suspension using ANSYS in this improving design of suspension system using advanced optimization techniques like response surface method and by using advanced lightweight materials i.e. metal matrix composites.At the end of research we can generate fix model for different vechiles like if commercial vechiles where carry load is more important than comfort or personal vechilces where comfort of vechiles is more important than load and this model we can easily sell to various automobile companies according to their need.

Circular Economy Communications – District of Squamish – Sept 2022

The District of Squamish (District) declared a climate emergency in 2019 and set the target to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 45% by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. In support of this declaration, the District launched a Circular Economy (CE) Roadmap in 2021.

There is a global groundswell of collaboration recognizing the CE as a collective response to global crises – including interconnected issues of climate change, inequity, food security, resource depletion, consumption, and waste.

A CE aims to keep products, components, and materials at their highest utility or value. It aims to decouple economic development from the consumption of raw materials (the linear model) by describing an alternative approach in which economic growth is generated, and jobs are created, while simultaneously reducing environmental impacts.

A CE relies on a systems solution framework. A key challenge faced in initiating and implementing a CE is how to effectively impact the ‘system’ in a coordinated way.
This project aims to address this system change challenge by applying a communications strategy to the social change end goals identified in the project.

Autonomous Cognitive Examination: A Validation Study

Timely diagnosis of dementia is a public health challenge within Canada. It is hoped that machine-learning empowered cognitive examinations might improve Canada’s response to the dementia population. This study proposed the validation of an automated cognitive examination, the Autonomous Cognitive Examination, which uses machine learning to evaluate users to evaluate previously difficult to assess inputs such as complex images or speech. By validating this examination, it will be possible to utilize this Autonomous Cognitive Examination on a large scale, allowing storage of cognitive examination responses to train machine learning algorithms upon, thereby increasing the sensitivity of the test to dementia and even creating diagnostic algorithms for dementia subtypes. The expected benefit to the partner organization is the development of a new industrial partner which will act to develop and administer this cognitive examination.

SSE_ADNANEBELOUT-IUSMM-SARAHBÉGINTREMBLAY – Projet innovateur en optimisation du processus de dotation des cadres à l’hôpital de l’Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal (IUSMM)

Projet innovateur en optimisation du processus de dotation des cadres à l’Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal (IUSMM). Au Québec, le marché du travail traverse une importante pénurie de main-d’œuvre depuis la pandémie de la COVID-19. Cette dernière touche également les cadres. Il s’agit donc d’un défi de taille pour la dotation des cadres à l’IUSMM. Ce problème peut compromettre la qualité des soins de santé dispensés à la population canadienne. En effet, une présence suffisante de cadres est nécessaire pour assurer la coordination des équipes et l’administration de soins de santé de qualité aux Canadiens. En optimisant le processus de dotation des cadres, j’assure qu’il y a un nombre suffisant de cadres à ces fins.

Commercialization strategies for academic drug discovery projects: From bench to start-up

Translation of scientific bench-top discoveries into a commercial enterprise can be one of the hardest transitions for academic groups. Additionally, there are very few therapeutic options for neurodegenerative diseases, and a great need exists for the development of new drug candidates to treat diseases, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Our proposal seeks to continue with the development of new neurodegenerative therapeutics, while simultaneously analyzing and developing commercialization strategies for the translation of drug discoveries into start-up enterprises. Specifically, our proposal seeks to continue with the development of our new ALS therapeutics, using animal models of the disease, while also devising a commercialization strategy for translation of the intellectual property generated as part of this project.

Design and fabrication of metamaterial energy absorber, generator, vibration isolator

Our main aim is to design and fabricate lightweight mechanical structures to show high energy absorption capacity with as low as initial reaction forces, electricity generation via embedding smart materials (piezo patches), and isolate external dynamic excitations. The designed mechanical structures could be applied in the automobile and motorcycle industries. In a car crash, the designed mechanical structures could absorb a significant amount of kinetic energy with low initial reaction forces simultaneously, that could provide safety for the passengers. Also, the structures can be placed beneath the drivers’ seats, to isolate vibration during driving and generate electricity. In addition, the multi-functional structures can be embedded into the cyclist’s helmet, to avoid brain injuries during cycling. By fulfilling those objectives mentioned above, the humans’ safety could be guaranteed during driving or cycling.