Innovative Projects Realized

Développement et automatisation de produits d’une plateforme de gestion pour les solopreneurs et petites entreprises

Softelo est une entreprise de développement de logiciels informatiques. Notre premier logiciel à ce jour se nomme Billmate et c’est sur Billmate que se concentrera le stagaire.
Billmate est une application web multifonctions combinant Commerce en ligne, un outil de gestion des relations clients (CRM) et un outil de facturation. Notre outil vient centraliser les opérations des solopreneurs et entrepreneurs hybrides sur une plateforme, regroupant la majorité de leurs opérations administratives et transactionnelles quotidiennes au sein d’un seul et même endroit.

Ce projet vise à :
Travailler sur l’implémentation de gestion de courriel dans le CRM de la plateforme Billmate.
Travailler sur l’implémentation de la synchronisation d’événement de calendrier entre un calendrier Billmate et un calendrier Gmail/Outlook.
L’implémentation de la gestion de document dans le profil d’un contact dans le CRM de la plateforme Billmate.

UPEI/STEAM PEI Literacy and Numeracy Outreach Project

High competency in literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving has positive effects on the well-being of citizens and by extension, the economy. While the STEAM PEI does tremendous work with a great many children and adults, there are simply too many people with literacy challenges than cannot be met by the organization. The Mitacs BSI application would plug in and support the initial stage of the partnership and will provide the foundation for a longer-term collaboration with both organizations. Interns will develop and launch training sessions with the partner.

Analyse de la performance économique et environnementale d’une nouvelle pratique d’aménagement clé en main des bandes riveraines en milieu agricole

L’aménagement de larges bandes riveraines végétalisées en bord de champ est une pratique agroenvironnementale qui contribue à réduire les impacts environnementaux causés par les activités agricoles. Par contre, ce retrait de surface cultivée représente une perte de revenu pour un producteur agricole et ceci nuit à une adhésion généralisée à cette nouvelle pratique à l’échelle territoriale et donc à des bénéfices environnementaux escomptés. Ce projet doit permettre d’évaluer les bénéfices économiques et environnementaux générés par divers scénarios d’aménagement de bande riveraine en milieu agricole, incluant notamment des revenus issus de crédits carbone. Un outil supportant une analyse des coûts et bénéfices sera ensuite développé afin de formuler aux parties prenantes des recommandations sur les modes de gestion à privilégier par scénario.

Designing for Urban Agriculture in a smart community

This project will develop appropriate strategies for a “Smart Community” of the future with respect to the integration of food growing and processing spaces into the community. This may range from rooftop greenhouses, residential growing sunspaces, community gardens, food producing building components, etc. As well this proposal will investigate how food production will interact with other essential systems and infrastructure in such a community. This study will be based on a review of ideas that have been suggested in many projects around the world for urban growing, and a distillation of these ideas into a series of approaches or patterns that can be used in a Smart Community undertaken by S2E. This will include information about the community’s potential food production capacity, design implications, and details of the synergies that occur with low energy and water saving design.

Fostering Food Security through Local Cultures: Living Heritage Insights from Rural Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Communities

Current challenges, like climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, have brought new awareness to how we consume, produce, and distribute food. In Saskatchewan, climate change is already impacting the quality and quantity of southern water supplies and strategies used for hunting, gathering, and fishing in northern areas. Amidst these challenges, this project examines whether local tradition and heritage can help revitalize food systems in the post-pandemic period. This project involves a provincial survey, interviews and focus groups in five Saskatchewan communities, and an innovative pollinator “Bioblitz” to understand Saskatchewan residents’ engagement with food and culture. The project examines the potential (and possible pitfalls) of local heritage to help preserve and sustain food systems in times of crisis and change. This project includes a Mitacs intern as a key project team member who will lead an important component of the project—conducting and analyzing interviews with community members.

PandoPartner Summer Internship

To develop improved User Experience and Analytics infrastructure for PandoPartner – a new sponsor tech platform that serves Canada’s sports, entertainment, culture, and cause sectors. Optimizing user experience by utilizing qualitative and quantitative research to inform the development of user guide and product design improvements. Implementing the tracking and oversight of analytics across marketing, sales, and product activity for business improvement and fundraising preparation.

Launch: Ideas – ACB Mental Health App Design

The African Caribbean and Black Mental Healthcare (ACBMH) organization was first established in order to provide individual mental health support to Afro Caribbean and Black (ACB) persons. This project will establish research and create content for the partner organization to use to further execute and develop an application directed towards the mental health of black youth. Additionally, the project will help to provide information through the creation of a culturally informed knowledge map and a literature review.

Videns Analytics : Séries temporelles en trésorerie corporative

Videns Analytics aide leurs partenaires à exploiter efficacement leurs données par le développement d’outils informatiques. Ils aident essentiellement leurs partenaires dans la transformation numérique. Grâce à l’expertise de Videns Analytics, les avancées technologiques peuvent être transférées durablement vers des partenaires québécois.
Aujourd’hui, la plupart des entreprises, notamment au Québec, utilisent des outils simplistes (p. ex. fichier Excel) pour la gestion de leur trésorerie. La trésorerie corporative est un flux continue d’information où son analyse est répétitive, laborieuse et onéreuse. Videns Analytics souhaite s’attaquer à cette situation et développer une nouvelle approche d’exploitation de données dans le domaine de la gestion de la trésorerie corporative. Il s’agit d’une phase initiale d’expérimentation d’approches basée sur les récentes avancées en apprentissage machine et en exploitation de données. Les retombées de cette recherche mèneront à 1) une solution innovante pour automatiser des tâches reliées à la gestion de la trésorerie et 2) au développement d’un modèle prédictif pour anticiper les flux de trésorerie futurs. Tout cela dans l’objectif d’offrir au partenaire une gestion efficace de sa trésorerie et une meilleure connaissance des périodes de vulnérabilité anticipée.

Exploring the transformational potential of regenerative tourism in Southern Ontario

Tourism growth has led to unsustainable and careless practices. An emergent response disrupting such carelessness is regenerative tourism. Regenerative tourism is a transformational approach exploring ways to co-create benefits with local communities and their ecosystems while providing authentic experiences for visitors. While interest in regenerative tourism is growing there are limited studies exploring the benefits for communities in Canada. In response to this gap the aim of this study is to gain new insights about the processes required to engage, co-create, and co-design tourism with communities in Southern Ontario. Considering regenerative tourism in Ontario is particularly important given concerns regarding overtourism and easing of pandemic restrictions. The goal of the project is to explore opportunities for making regenerative tourism impacts with communities to promote flourishing communities and authentic experiences for visitors. Best practices will be shared, as well as educational resources to support other communities pursuing regenerative pathways.

Projects allocation and advanced scheduling of concurrent construction projects

This project proposes multi-criteria decision-making and mathematical programming (optimization) techniques to design an integrated decision-making tool to assist organizations in managing this complex process and achieving more efficiency. For the first problem, allocating project managers, we develop a multi-criteria decision-making method that will offer the possibility to optimize the usage of PMs’ time considering the specific constraint and the knowledge necessary for the projects. In the second problem, scheduling and supply chain coordination for construction projects, we will consider a portfolio of different concurrent projects and the objective to minimize the total logistics costs. We will formulate this problem as a mixed-integer linear programming model. The integration of logistics decisions with scheduling brings a second level of complexity (NP-hard), and it is important to develop heuristics solution approaches for solving real industrial problems.

SARIT micromobility vehicle

The interns in this project will use their skills in researching parts and products that can be used to achieve the subprojects that we set out to create on the micro-mobility car. In some areas the students may use the machine shop and equipment found in the engineering building on York University campus to create parts. Lastly, the car will have to be tested for insurance and the received data collected to find an insurance suited for the car.

Evaluation of Hemp Seed Products to Ameliorate Fatty Liver Disease and Reduce Cannibalism in Laying Hens

Laying hens need a reliable source of protein and energy for egg production and maintenance that does not induce fatty liver disease (FLD). As egg production moves in the direction of group housing scenarios, more management techniques, including nutritional management, that reduce losses due to feather pecking and cannibalism will also be required. Hemp has anti-inflammatory properties that may prevent FLD. It has anti-microbial properties that may positively affect the gut microbiome of chickens. This may be of interest for hens not housed in conventional cages, thus more susceptible to pathogens. Hemp contains omega-3 fatty acids and CBD, which could positively affect the fatty acid profile of eggs. CBD also has a calming effect in animals and may reduce the incidence of feather pecking and cannibalism in laying hens housed in alternative housing conditions.
The project will include two feeding trials. One trial will be conducted in conventional cage housing to measure the effects of hemp by-products inclusion on fatty liver disease and the potential benefits to the current laying industry. The second trial will be held in an alternative housing system which will meet the requirements of the future Canadian industry after the removal of all conventional cages by 2036.