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

Torsional Effects on Structural Self-Tapping Screws in Canadian Douglas Fir

With a growing concern to reduce carbon emissions, timber construction has is experiences a rebirth in Canada and abroad. The availably of engineered wood products, innovations in manufacturing, and changes in the building codes are some incentives for timber becoming a materials choice. Connecting these large timber members is done efficiently with the help of structural self-tapping screws. These steel screws, developed in Europe, are capable withstanding relatively high loads due to their unique design. They are rapidly installed without the need for pre-drilling hole with the help of the self-cutting tip on the screw. When inserted into timber, a considerable amount of torsional stresses are produced. The purpose of this study is to understand how these stresses impact the ultimate capacity of the screws. A series of experimental tests will be performed before and after the screws have been inserted into Canadian Douglas Fir under dry and wet conditions.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Colin MacDougall

Student:

Manoah Gutknecht

Partner:

MyTiCon Timber Connectors Inc.

Discipline:

Engineering - civil

Sector:

Construction and infrastructure

University:

Queen's University

Program:

Accelerate

Evaluation of a Multi-Factor Retirement Planning Tool: The Reliability and Validity of the Retireability Score (RS)

Created by senior wealth advisor David Allard, Retireability Score (RS) is an innovative web-based retirement readiness assessment survey that plays an integral part in the retirement planning service operated by the Navigation team of ScotiaWealth. Unlike majority of retirement planning services, which focus exclusively on financial readiness, the RS and its associated program address non-financial aspects of retirement planning that are also important to ensure a satisfying life in retirement. These areas including health, social, and various psychological factors of readiness for retirement. The current project is a scientific evaluation of the RS aiming to improve its content and accuracy. Through analysing existing data on the RS and comparing its content to published scientific literature on well-being in retirement, we will determine whether the RS can accurately measure clients needs for planning in areas that are important to their well-being in retirement. Results from this research will inform future iterations of the RS and help enhance the service quality and cost-effectiveness of the RS program.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Brian O'Connor

Student:

Ran Wei

Partner:

0909709 BC Ltd

Discipline:

Psychology

Sector:

University:

Program:

Accelerate

A new flow cytometry platform to evaluate the efficacy of immunotherapies and vaccines

The development of effective immunotherapies, vaccines and immunomodulatory drugs are the main success stories from the last years in drugs development for cancer, infectious diseases and chronic disorders. We are developing a simple and robust new platform to evaluate the next generation of immunotherapeutics treatments at pre-clinical stage. This platform is called Immune Complex Phagocytic Assessment (ICPA). It aims to test and validate in vitro and in vivo new vaccines, immunotherapies and even immunomodulatory drugs for their capacity to target specific antigens and degrade those in our blood stream by our immune cells. This platform can be applied to amyloid Alzheimer?s disease, AIDS, cancer and bacterial infection, etc. This approach could find implications in future immunotherapies, and could be used to develop new assays and biomarkers to monitor the immunological response to candidate therapeutics.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Stephane Richard

Student:

Xi Lin Chen

Partner:

PAIRimmune Inc

Discipline:

Medicine

Sector:

Pharmaceuticals

University:

McGill University

Program:

Accelerate

Novel Approaches for Practical Machine Learning

Machine learning is a subfield of artificial intelligence that aims at producing computing models from observations (data), with no explicit coding made by humans. Recent advances have illustrated a strong potential of machine learning, with the potential of being a disruptive technology in many domains. For the current project, we are investigating techniques for making practical machine learning. Four main axes are considered: 1) to deal with big unstructured datasets, 2) to learn with a diverse set of representations of the data, 3) to learn from streams of data sensed or produced in real-time, and 4) to develop methods allowing fully automated machine learning with little or no insights from human experts. The internships will allow exploring key technologies that would support the development of applications such as smart cameras, wearable personal devices, and black-box machine learning software. It aims at exploring promising concepts with high commercialization potential.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Christian Gagne

Student:

Mahdieh Abbasi, Vincent Poiré, Julien-Charles Lévesque, Audrey Durand, Zahra Rezaei, Sophie Baillargeon, Ahmed Najjar, Marc-André Gardner, Farkhondeh Kiaee, Olivier Gagnon, Karol Lina Lopez

Partner:

E Machine Learning Inc

Discipline:

Engineering - computer / electrical

Sector:

Information and communications technologies

University:

Université Laval

Program:

Accelerate

A life cycle impact assessment methodology based on planetary boundaries

Planetary boundaries can be understood as limits for the Earth’s tolerance towards environmental impacts in the form of, for example, greenhouse gas emissions, water use and the release of nitrogen and phosphorous. This project aims at making planetary boundaries useful to the environmental management within companies. This will happen by developing a method that quantifies environmental impacts of a company in the language of planetary boundaries. The method will allow companies to identify the largest potentials for reducing environmental impacts and to understand what types of impacts (e.g. water use or climate change) that should be of priority in a given case. The partner organisation is expected to benefit by gaining insights on the science behind the method to be developed and by applying the method on their own case study and exploring how the results can be used for internal environmental management and stakeholder (costumers, etc.) communication.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Manuele Margni

Student:

Anders Bjorn

Partner:

Unilever Canada Inc

Discipline:

Mathematics

Sector:

Consumer goods

University:

Polytechnique Montréal

Program:

Accelerate

Long-Term Ecosystem Monitoring of the British Columbia Coast across a Gradient of Human Stressors – Year Two

Proposed developments (pipelines, super-tankers) along the coast of BC have the potential to negatively impact (shell)fisheries. Direct monitoring of fisheries can only detect negative impacts which have already occurred; therefore, indicator species (meiofauna) and environmental variables are monitored to detect disturbances before productivity is impacted. Our project will monitor intertidal ecosystems (numerous species and environmental variables) spanning the entire coast of BC, across a gradient of human impacts, long term. Multivariate models will be created to quantify human impacts, natural forces which structure these ecosystems, and potentially detect disturbances – natural or anthropogenic – before commercial species are impacted. The Hakai Institute will benefit from this research as they strive to protect BC’s coast through long-term monitoring. Our proposed project will elucidate long-term coastal dynamics, protect BC’s coast by detecting potential disturbances, help safeguard fishery productivity, and provide the detailed, long-term data required for crafting effective regulations.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Francis Juanes

Student:

Travis Gerwing

Partner:

Tula Foundation

Discipline:

Biology

Sector:

Environmental industry

University:

University of Victoria

Program:

Elevate

Testing efficacy of bird deterrents for use at wind energy facilities

For this project the intern will place a predator owl deterrent at the base of a wind turbine and hang nest boxes at a distance of at least 200 m from a wind turbine. The expected result of implementing the predator owl and the nest boxes will be a decline in bird mortalities occurring at three wind-energy sites in Nova Scotia. These sites will be monitored for 12 weeks during spring and fall 2016 bird migration periods (May 16th – June 10th & August 15th – October 7th). Data collected during this time will be compared to data collected in 2015 to determine the effectiveness of implementing the owl and nest boxes. This project will benefit the partner organization by obtaining results that can be used to reduce bird mortalities during future wind-energy developments.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Tony Walker

Student:

Katherine Dorey

Partner:

Strum Consulting

Discipline:

Environmental sciences

Sector:

Environmental industry

University:

Dalhousie University

Program:

Accelerate

Rapid Access to CT to Streamline Emergency Care

Since 2011, radiologists at Royal Jubilee Hospital (RJH) and Victoria General Hospital (VGH) have piloted a “Rapid CT” (CT = Computed tomography) program to provide same-day CT scans for patients referred directly by participating community physicians, with the intent of avoiding unnecessary ED (Emergency Department) visits. This research will test the hypothesis that the Rapid CT pilot project has reduced costs by reducing ED visits. This research was commissioned by the BC Radiological Society because it is directly relevant to their interest in understanding and advocating the efficient and cost-effective use of medical imaging in BC. The results will also be relevant to the rest of Canada.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Rebecca Warburton

Student:

Sean Brown

Partner:

British Columbia Radiological Society

Discipline:

Public administration

Sector:

Medical devices

University:

University of Victoria

Program:

Accelerate

Predictive Analytics and Applications for Clinical Support in Orthopaedics

Nova Scotia is one of the oldest demographics in Canada, with increasing rates of total knee arthroplasty (TKA), yet the identification of high-risk surgical TKA candidates prior to surgery at a patient-level remains inconclusive, limiting our ability to improve care management. The objective of this research is to explore Nova Scotia’s rich and comprehensive research and clinical databases related to osteoarthritis and TKA, and identify linkages between patient-specific factors, treatment options, and health outcomes, through personalized medicine analytical modeling. The proposed result will be the development of a decisions support toolsets capable of aligning patient and surgeon expectations, identifying patients that might benefit from an altered treatment strategy, and improving patient outcomes, overall. The project will be conducted in collaboration with Dalhousie University and T4G Limited, to develop a viable clinical decision support tool with various applications in orthopaedics, and scalability amongst diverse clinical practices.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Janie Wilson

Student:

Kathryn Young

Partner:

T4G Ltd

Discipline:

Engineering - biomedical

Sector:

Medical devices

University:

Dalhousie University

Program:

Accelerate

Study the effect of magnetic liner on ball milling efficiency utilizing DEM modelling

HMR-Canada has introduced magnetic liners for grinding mills that will improve the mill performance and efficiency. Mill liners have two main functions. First they protect the mill shell from wear and deliver energy to the material by lifting the material in a trajectory that creates the energy needed to break the rocks.
Magnetic liners in specific add other functions to the liners. They attract scats and magnetic minerals that form a renewable protective layer, which would increase life span of liners and shell, easier and faster to install. Magnetic liners have been introduced before, but their design and shape were never optimised.
In this project the effect of the magnetic liner profile, the shape of the layer formed by the scats and magnetic minerals as well as the mill speed, on the charge trajectory, force distribution and energy spectra will be studied. The tool that will be used for this study is Discrete Element Modeling.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Bern Klein

Student:

Reem Roufail

Partner:

HMR Technology Canada Ltd

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Mining and quarrying

University:

University of British Columbia

Program:

Accelerate

Searching for quantum speedup in quantum annealers

As computer chips approach the nanometer-scale size, it is becoming increasingly clear that the next revolution in computing technologies will be enabled by quantum computing. A pioneer in quantum technologies aimed at quantum computing, the Canadian company D-wave Systems has developed quantum annealing processors consisting of superconducting circuit that can be used as efficient devices for solving high-dimensional optimization or sampling problems. The same problems can be solved using conventional computers and it is not yet clear if quantum annealers offer quantum speedup. The main goal of this project will be to explore if and how the quantum nature of the D-wave devices can be exploited for solving computationally demanding problems with quantum speed-up. As one particular application, we will explore the possibility of using quantum annealers to provide efficient samples from a quantum Boltzmann distribution, which can be used for training a quantum Boltzmann machine. A quantum Boltzmann machine could form the basis for a new machine-learning approach analogous to those based on artificial neural networks, but with the possibility of quantum advantages.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Roman Krems

Student:

Hossein Sadeghi

Partner:

D-Wave Systems Inc.

Discipline:

Chemistry

Sector:

Information and communications technologies

University:

University of British Columbia

Program:

Accelerate

Optimization of the stem/gate connection of industrial valves– experimentation and modeling

Velan Inc. in Montreal, Quebec is one of the world leaders in design and manufacturing of industrial steel valves for applications in chemical, oil and gas, military, mining, and nuclear industries. Velan wishes to optimize its valve design in terms of maximum strength and minimum weight according to latest standard requirements. To achieve that, its existing analytical and finite element method (FEM) models should be improved by taking into account large deformation and contact analysis to accurately predict the failure point of stem and gate. The results of improved models will be validated by a series of destructive pull testing on an in-house test setup and the best-practice models will be recognized in a design loop. The efficiency of new developed models will be evaluated by design and testing of a new optimized stem/gate connection. The successful conclusion of this project will provide Velan with an improved understanding of failure mechanisms of its products. Furthermore, the developed state-of-the-art models will enable Velan to redesign a broader spectrum of the valves and prevent time consuming and expensive destructive testing.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Daniel Therriault

Student:

Mohammadhadi Mahdavi

Partner:

Velan Inc

Discipline:

Engineering - mechanical

Sector:

Oil and gas

University:

Program:

Accelerate

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