Innovative Projects Realized

Systems-level geohazard risk assessment in southwestern British Columbia

Geohazard risk assessments are performed when there is a known threat to humans, critical infrastructure, and the environment from natural hazards. In southwestern BC, these natural hazards include debris flows, debris floods, floods, and wildfires. These hazards are closely related to weather conditions, and with the effects of climate change, we may observe these hazards at higher frequencies and intensities. The proposed research, which will be carried out in partnership with BGC Engineering Inc., aims to integrate assessments done at a larger regional scale and local scale detailed assessments to better understand the risk at a systems level. The results of this research will help groups in communities, transportation (highways & railways), and pipeline sectors better assess and proactively manage impacts of geohazards, such as the November 2021 atmospheric river even that devastated BC.

Effects of pain experience on fixed perceived effort motor tasks

Whilst, perceptions of effort have received increasing attention, the perception of pain has received much less attention despite its inherent role during voluntary activities such as exercise. Pain is defined as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage”. As such, pain is a regular feature of many voluntary tasks that humans undertake. Importantly, there are many crossovers in the underlying ways in which pain and effort perceptions are generated. However, the small number who have investigated the influences of perception of pain on perception of effort, have failed to properly assess pain and effort responses. Therefore, this project will aim to conduct a study which properly assesses the pain and effort phenomena during a voluntary physical task.
The work will factor into the candidate’s doctoral studies and Viva Voce preparation, the host supervisors current NSERC Discovery grant, and the home supervisors research portfolios and future grant applications for collaboration.

Développement d’un jumeau numérique pour ville : cadre stratégique et organisationnel dans le domaine des actifs des infrastructures urbaines

Avec la nouvelle ère numérique, quelques activités de gestion des actifs des infrastructures urbaines sont réorganisées au niveau des villes avec la mise en œuvre d’une panoplie de technologies. Ceci touche aléatoirement quelques activités, il manque une vision systémique et une compréhension holistique des besoins. Il existe un manque de bases théoriques soutenant le déploiement du numérique pour une gestion intégrée des actifs. C’est ainsi que la présente recherche examine comment les villes canadiennes bénéficieront d’une transformation numérique menant à l’intégration des sources d’information et de la mise en œuvre des jumeaux numériques afin de mieux répondre aux besoins des citoyens et de maintenir un bon niveau de service sur le long terme.
Ce projet de recherche vise l’élaboration d’un cadre qui fédère les initiatives de TN. Il est mené en coordination avec les différents départements de la ville (gestion des immeubles, travaux publics, gestion de l’eau, etc.).

Forex data gathering and analysis acceleration and trend prediction

A prototype Forex currency trading system has demonstrated a proof of concept on a static data set. The current project proposes to implement the trading system for real-time applications using the tools of predictive analysis, As data arrives in the trading system it will automatically update the buy/sell recommendations with estimates of probability of success. Multiple predictors will be integrated to make the best possible prediction.

Working for a Member of Parliament: Understanding the Role of Political Staff in the Representation Process

This research project investigates the role of political staffers in Canada’s representative democracy. Working with the leading expert on political representation, Dr. Sarah Childs (University of Edinburgh), this project explores how political staffers contribute to the process of political representation. Political staff are the first, if not only, point of contact for constituents. This project investigates how political staff act as representational mediators —or gatekeepers—of Members of Parliament (MPs) for the public, and how political staffers communicate constituent concerns to the MPs. My previous research found that most political staff are women, therefore the current project focuses on the gendered dimensions of political staffers’ work. Overall, this project aims to improve our understanding of how parliament could be a more equitable workplace for staffers, which in turn will improve the representation process.

Development of a Biocatalytic Process for the Endogenous Biogeneration of Functional Ingredients in Dairy Products: Lactosucrose, Kestose and Levan

Levansucrase (LS) is an enzyme that can catalyse reactions converting sugars, alkyl and phenolic compounds to complex oligosaccharides. In-depth studies are still needed regarding the reactions with alkyl and phenolic compounds which show high potential in increasing their antioxidant properties. In addition, further work is necessary to investigate the ability of LS to produce functional oligosaccharide prebiotics and their phenolated derivatives from high-sugar foods. High lactose milk and chocolate milk are of particular interest due to their high sugar content and interesting phenolic compounds profiles. This project will first explore the different compounds that can undergo an enzymatic reaction with LS. Then the enzyme will be incorporated in high lactose milk and chocolate milk which will result in functional sugar-reduced beverages.

Projet supervisé : Développement de techniques et outils visant l’amélioration de la cyber résilience au sein des entreprises québécoises.

Accélérer la mise en œuvre et la maintenance des pratiques quant à la protection des renseignements personnels en organisation et assurer l’accès aux techniques d’anonymisation respectant les normes de confidentialité et sécurité.
À la lumière des nouvelles réglementations et normes sur la confidentialité des données personnelles, Videns Analytics est en constant progrès pour mettre à disposition des organisations des solutions innovantes afin d’accélérer et fortifier leurs pratiques de gestion et de gouvernance de renseignements personnels. De nos jours, le volume de données croît exponentiellement, d’où la difficulté des entreprises de répondre à cette croissance d’information et la multiplicité de ses sources, et ce, avec un nombre de ressources limitées.
Afin de répondre à cette problématique, les outils détection des renseignements personnels permettraient de balayer un grand volume de données et de documents et localiser les données potentiellement à risque qu’elles soient connues ou inconnues de l’organisation.
Pour ce faire, l’objectif du projet supervisé sera d’expérimenter à échelle restreinte les fonctionnalités d’un ou des outils de détection des renseignements personnels sous forme de preuves de concept.

Preclinical testing for potential quick-to-clinic pharmacotherapies for obstructive sleep apnea

My project aims to discover a treatment for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a disease that affects one billion people in the world. OSA is a serious chronic disorder that happens when a person’s breathing is intermittently interrupted during sleep. This is caused by an obstruction in the airways when muscles in the back of the throat relax too much, blocking respiration. OSA leads to other associated complications like high blood pressure, increased risk of heart attack, stroke and diabetes.
Currently, the main treatment for OSA is CPAP, a machine that causes discomfort and anxiety. The treatments available at present are not very effective and high-priced. There are no drugs approved to treat OSA, evidencing that more studies are necessary and urgent.
Therefore, this project aims to test three drug candidates for OSA treatment that focus on the carotid bodies (the main oxygen sensor of the body) nd downstream pathways. As carotid bodies are hyper-activated in OSA, this new therapy is aimed at reducing carotid body sensitivity, and with that, we expect that it will reduce those exaggerated responses, abating OSA.

Aquila International Sales & Digital Marketing

Resuming operations following COVID, Aquila needs a to hire a candidate familiar with digital marketing to implement and continue the work of a Digital Strategy developed in March 2022. This project will help us with the development and implementation of a sales plan for our tours in the fall offered to cruise passengers. In this project, depending on the candidate’s skills and expertise, they will also help us on the training side of the business with the development of sales and training PowerPoints. This will create an opportunity for an MBA intern to see an international tourism company that has thrived for 40 years in Saint John.

Inventory management implementation

This project will help an early-stage startuo in the health tech space move from small-scale manufacturing and fulfillment to more sophisticated solutions for inventory management, logistics, and fulfillment.

Analysis and Compression of Expressive Dance Animations for Zoetropes

Many animations and videos have high frame rates — meaning many still frames are shown to the viewer per second — in order to give the viewer motion information needed to parse the video. For example, expressive dancing sequences are usually shown in high frame rates because they contain large motions, and often a human emotion or intention. A zoetrope is an animation device with a very low frame rate. By placing a few still frames around a small cylinder, and spinning it in front of a viewer, these few frames can appear to be animated. In order to accurately represent high quality dancing animations in a zoetrope (or another low frame rate application, like compressing the video to use less computer space), choosing specific frames of the original animation to keep is a nontrivial problem. Capturing and preserving certain features in the animation are important and requires analysis of the 3D animation data to determine what exactly needs to be preserved to effectively downsample a given animation.

BIPOC Leadership Energies

The BIPOC Leadership Energies (BLE) project will create a strategy for generating leadership networks and career advancement pathways for emerging female-identified and/or non-binary BIPOC leaders. The framework will outline goals, structure, resources and implementation steps to build and sustain multi-year inter-organizational coaching networks for BIPOC staff. BLE is a collaboration between 5 community service agencies. Through this project TNC and their Partner Organizations will build agency capacity to retain BIPOC staff and ensure agency service models are informed by staff with the diversity of lived experience that directly relate to the diverse community members they serve.

This project brings together emerging leaders of colour with TNC and its partner organizations to explore alternative, nontraditional understandings and enactments of leadership, and to design a peer networking, mentoring and coaching strategy that can expand their pathways to leadership and sustain their contribution to the organizations and communities they support. This work will be stewarded by Professor Vidya Shah (Education, York University) whose subject matter expertise is in anti-racist and decolonizing approaches to leadership.