Innovative Projects Realized

Building more housing with less embodied greenhouse gas

This research has two goals to a) increase our understanding of the quantity of construction materials and embodied GHG used, in current practice, to create new housing in the City of Toronto and b) to identify opportunities to use changes in building and neighbourhood form to create more housing with less total embodied GHG. The focus of this project will be the study of missing middle buildings (e.g triplex, fourplex, attached houses, secondary suites, low rise apartment buildings) and their potential to provide new low embodied GHG housing. Using construction drawings the project will examine where and for what purposes construction materials and embodied GHG are being used in the provision of housing. Comparisons will be made between different types of housing (e.g. single family, missing middle, midrise, high-rise) to identify their relative advantages. Opportunities to use building shape and design will be identified to maximize missing middle sustainability. The results will be used to recommend sustainable building forms to maximize housing while minimizing GHG. Urban housing policy (e.g. zoning) recommendations will be developed based on the analysis.

Synchronization between cloud database andmobile applications

The project will provide FarmAtHand – the partner organization a scalable and secure solution for making applications on multiple mobile platform like iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. With this solution FarmAtHand will benefit by receiving brand new mobile applications on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and websites on which they can implement their farming approach. The above applications and websites can be use simultaneousely by many users from different locations without the risk of confliction.

Contrôle structural, évolution hydrothermale et chronologie de la minéralisation filonienne du secteur de Miguel Auza, ceinture argentifère Mexicaine

Le projet consiste en une étude géologique du gisement filonien polymétallique (Ag-Zn-Pb) de Miguel Auza, situé au Mexique et détenu par Excellon Resources inc. L’objectif principal de l’étude est la construction d’un modèle expliquant la genèse du gisement. Plusieurs méthodes seront appliquées et contribueront à définir l’âge et les conditions de formation du système minéralisé. Le modèle produit permettra d’établir de nouveaux vecteurs pour l’exploration du secteur de Miguel Auza et de la Mesa Central, où se trouve une des plus importantes provinces géologiques argentifères sur la planète. Les connaissances acquises et développées sur ces gisements pourront ensuite être appliquées au Canada. Elles permettront à l’industrie minière canadienne d’augmenter l’efficacité de ses projets à l’international, ainsi que sur son territoire.

Advisor churn prediction in financial institutes

The partner company is a business that provides solutions for financial institutes and wealth management companies. This company has provided services to more than 100 financial firms with a total of 1 trillion Asset Under Management. The financial churn prediction is important for these client companies because leaving financial advisors is likely to lead to losing their clients which might be millions of assets. This project aims to propose a solution that enables financial institutes to predict financial advisors’ churn in the company. This solution utilizes machine learning and will be designed to be explainable for subject matter experts and also protect data privacy.

Évaluation d’implantation du mécanisme de traitement indépendant des plaintes de violence en contexte sportif au Québec

Un nombre important de personnes qui pratiquent un sport ont vécu de la violence dans ce contexte. Récemment, des stratégies de prévention et d’intervention ont été mises en place afin de réduire la violence en contexte sportif. Au Québec, le Réseau Loisir et Sport Québec (RLSQ) coordonne un mécanisme indépendant de traitement des plaintes qui est opérationnel depuis février 2021. Le projet vise à évaluer ce mécanisme dans une perspective d’amélioration continue. D’abord, un comité regroupant des responsables du mécanisme, des chercheurs et des personnes ayant vécu de la violence en contexte sportif créera un modèle qui explique le fonctionnement du mécanisme. Ensuite, nous évaluerons les perceptions du milieu sportif concernant le mécanisme à l’aide d’un sondage en ligne. Finalement, nous documenterons les expériences des personnes qui ont été en contact avec le mécanisme en faisant des entrevues. En intégrant les résultats de ces trois étapes, nous serons en mesure d’identifier les forces du mécanisme et les aspects à améliorer. Cela contribuera à rendre l’expérience sportive plus sécuritaire et agréable au Québec. De plus, les résultats du projet pourront soutenir le développement de mécanismes similaires ailleurs dans le monde.

OneCup AI Business Marketing and Strategy Internship

OneCup AI created an artificial intelligence pipeline featuring BETSY, our AI rancher. BETSY is the leader in the accurate visual identification of livestock using only computer vision. This technology is on the leading edge, which makes it unique in an otherwise very traditional industry, how we position our product in the market is imperative to gain market share. We launched an Early Adopter program in April of 2021, with intentions to begin shipping hardware to customers over the summer months. The global chip shortage delayed our launch as we utilize IoT technology to overcome some communication issues between the cameras and the cloud. Our admin team will be focussing on product marketing and encouraging new customers to try our service. Looking into all the options for marketing that we can utilize to reach our sales goals for 2022. We will also be working closely with our clients to fine- tune the user interface through customer feedback and interviews. Working with our development team, we will develop a work plan to update the user interface to reflect user input.

Développer une stratégie de commercialisation d’une fintech qui rend plus accessible des subventions pour les personnes handicapées

Terry vise a aider les personnes vivant avec un handicap à bénéficier des subventions disponible avec le régime enregistré d’épargne-invalidité (REEI). Avec notre technologie, nous facilitons le processus d’ouverture ce régime canadien. Ce régime donne plus de 90 000$ de subvention du gouvernement mais il est estimé que seulement 30% des Canadiens admissible en bénéficient.
La principale raison est que plus de 70% des Canadiens admissibles ont jamais entendu parler du REEI ou ne sont pas très bien informé sur le régime.
Ce projet aidera donc à rejoindre et trouver des façons adéquates dans le but d’éduquer notre clientèle cible.

EERS – Optimizing market viability of advanced in-ear technologies

EERS Global conceives and develops advanced in-ear technologies to accelerate the go-to-market phase of game-changing products such as advanced hearing protection & communication devices. A big challenge for EERS is to understand the trends in the newly labelled hearable industry, to build a bridge between these trends and its own research initiatives, and to commercialize its intellectual properties. This project aims at helping EERS identify target original equipment manufacturers using or interested in in-ear devices/technologies and to find potential business partners.

Improve client user experience to increase access to industry technical findings in intellectual property.

In 20 years, CEATI has accumulated a large volume of highly detailed and industry leading intellectual property in the form of topic-specific technical reports and benchmarking studies. We would like to modernize the portfolio of content and diversify the ‘form factors’ to improve the usability of the key technical findings (training presentations, implementation guides, etc.) in a digital environemnt. We will be modernizing our client facing portal in parallel to enhance the CEATI user experience through improved user experience.

The objective of the project is to provide an updated client Web platform with a robust set of standardized content forms that maximize our clients’ ability to find and implement the best practices outlined in our research.

What is the innovation or incremental innovation to be developed (i.e., business model, product or process development/improvement, service delivery, etc.)?

1. Updated product design to help find and deliver the right engineering answers for our clients.
2. Improved service delivery, by designing experience based off key client behaviors and desired outcomes.

Applications of Tensor Neural Networks to pricing early-exercise options

An early-exercise option is a financial agreement which grants one party the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an underlying asset at a pre-agreed price at a series of pre-determined times. The problem of pricing an option is of great practical importance and is typically addressed using computationally expensive numerical simulation methods. We will apply cutting edge Deep Learning techniques to address this fundamental problem. Once trained, the models we develop will be able to solve the option pricing problem in a fraction of the time taken by industry-standard classical approaches. The main contribution of our work will be to leverage Tensor Networks to alleviate the computational cost of training the models in the first place. The partner will benefit from this project by developing their software stack to tackle this commercially valuable problem.

User Traces and Adaptive App Management, within there-implementation of the FarmAtHand App

We will research ways of tracking user behavior on a mobile application, as well as being able to remotely update the application without having to update program code. Hence allowing customizations per user, and the ability to make the change at any time. The partner organization FarmAtHand will benefit by receiving a brand new mobile application with many improvements and added features.

Standardizing processes for customer support experience

RetinaLogik Biotech Inc. is a social enterprise based out of Calgary, Alberta. We believe everyone deserves access to quality vision care: With RetinaLogik software, life-changing eye exams can be delivered on intelligent and portable devices at a fraction of the cost. As we approach our launch, we see this as excellent timing to bring on additional support to help us in mapping out our complete customer experience journey.