Innovative Projects Realized

Treatment of Statistical Data in the Aircraft DeicingIndustry

Every year, all planes must be deiced prior to airbourne when outside temperatures hit the cold seasons (fall to spring), in order to ensure a safe takeoff. Currently, trends in the deicing industry are still leaning towards having all operation informations logged down on paper slits. This approach is consuming in terms of time, material and cost, given that it can be done more efficiently with today’s advanced technology. Wiseleap Solutions Inc. is a firm specialized in application development and analytics solutions that has developed an application to respond to this business need: Deicing Manager is an online tool that streamlines the capture, storage and analysis of all information needed to manage deicing operations. However, in order to measure the advantages its technological product brings, Wiseleap must not only identify the advantages of the product like unabling paperless operations, but also needs to quantify all cost and time savings generated by it in terms of decrease in deicing fluid waste used, human error reduction, increased quality control, etc. The project research intern is mandated to bring in his/her knowledge and expertise in statistical data analysis to respond to this problematic Wiseleap is faced with.

Seleste UVic

Seleste is developing an app to integrate with our smart glasses hardware. For this project we need interns to help us develop this app which includes two major components. First is the React Native app where interns will develop features like user authentication and improving our database structure. There will also be a big focus on our interface which will be unique from most since our users are visually impaired and it is incredibly important to create an interface that is simple, accessible and easy-to-use with a screen reader. Throughout this summer we are developing many features for the app and will also require a project manager whose in charge of managing the successful completion of these features and making changes to the requirements and implementation as needed. This is needed to make sure we are developing features that are useful for our customers and that we are on-track in development. The second part of the app is developing our innovative data transfer infrastructure where interns will optimize our video-stream where data is sent from the glasses to the phone over Wi-Fi and then from the phone to the guide using LTE.

Forecasting and optimizing staffing at an expanding family medicine clinic

The objective of the internship would be to forecast staffing and optimize staffing. Having the right number and type of staff, and making sure they have the optimal mix of skills and training would prevent over expenditure on human resources, and also make sure that services run smoothly as the scale of operations increases

Pitting behavior of a novel stainless steel for additive manufacturing

The last twenty years have seen whirlwind advancement in production of metallic parts via additive manufacturing (AM). This technology has surpassed its origins in manufacturing titanium parts; additive manufacturing is now applicable to a vast range of alloys, including stainless steels. The principal advantage of constructing parts layer by layer is to afford the capacity to produce geometries that cannot be generated by material removal processes. An additional benefit of additive manufacturing is rapid, low-volume production without any tooling investment.
The production of parts that incorporate internal cooling channels is greatly facilitated by the relaxed constraints on achievable geometries that are afforded by additive manufacturing. With additive manufacturing, fine channels may readily be integrated into monolithic designs. Naturally, applying such capability does imply new challenges. Formally, what corrosion behaviors in aqueous media are exhibited by new additive manufacturing alloys? Indeed, the emergence of additive manufacturing as a competing technology has required the development of novel alloys. The limited information available on the chemical and mechanical behaviors of these new alloys introduces uncertainty regarding the durability of these materials in corrosive environments.
The proposed research project is to study the corrosive deterioration of a new stainless steel.

Exciton-Induced Aggregation in Novel Guest Emitters for wet-coated OLEDs

The promise of low-cost fabrication via “wet” processes, such as inkjet printing, in manufacturing flat panel displays and solid-state lighting has long been one of the main motivations behind the pursuit of Organic Light-Emitting Devices (OLEDs). The vast majority of OLEDs in commercial products are still fabricated by costly “dry” vacuum-deposition methods however. A primary reason is the significantly lower electroluminescence (EL) stability of devices made by wet-coating in comparison to their vacuum-deposited counterparts. Recent work at the University of Waterloo (UW) has revealed that the stability gap is caused by molecular aggregation driven by exciton-polaron interactions during electrical stress; a previously unknown phenomenon that is now understood to play a major role in OLED EL loss over time and to affect wet-coated materials more readily. More recent work has shown that the phenomenon affects the guest emitters in OLED host-guest systems highlighting the necessity of adopting new molecular architectures and design strategies in developing these materials.

The goal of the project is to develop and fabricate optimized OLED architectures for testing these novel emitters and using electrical electroluminescence and photoluminescence measurements to study and compare their photophysical and electroluminescence properties and their dependence on the fabrication method.

Sentiers de randonnée : Attentes et besoins des personnes en situation de handicap

Ce projet de recherche mené avec notre partenaire, l’Association Québécoise pour le Loisir des Personnes Handicapées vise à développer une classification de l’accessibilité de sentiers naturels (urbain) en partant d’indicateurs qualitatifs (motivation, attentes, besoins, satisfaction, équilibre défi-compétence, etc.) et quantitatifs (capacité fonctionnelle, force, endurance, etc.). Le présent projet se structure, d’une part, autour d’une démarche de recherche dans une perspective complémentaire afin de documenter l’influence de la qualité de l’expérience sur l’adoption de la pratique de randonnée en sentiers naturels. D’autre part, ce projet vise aussi à documenter la satisfaction de personnes en situation de handicap suite à une expérience de plein air en fonction notamment de l’équilibre défi-compétence selon les aspirations des participants. L’apport de ce projet est considérable considérant l’influence de la qualité de l’expérience pour susciter l’adoption d’une pratique pérenne de la randonnée pédestre et de la marche et ainsi contribuer à l’intégration d’un mode de vie plus actif propice à leur santé physique et mentale des personnes en situation de handicap.

Valorization of protein-rich liquid waste from tunicate cellulose extraction into biofertilizer

Presently, tunicates pose a serious challenge for the mussel aquaculture industry in PEI and Atlantic Provinces, which leads to a dramatic increase in the cost of production for both growers and processors. Although tunicate can be applied as the feedstock for the preparation of cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs), an abundant amount of protein-rich liquid stream is often generated. To optimize the tunicate cellulose extraction process and improve the overall economy, this protein-rich liquid stream must be collected and valorized. Therefore, in this project, the liquid by-product obtained from cellulose extraction from tunicate will be used as the raw materials to prepare value-added biofertilizer, which helps ameliorate the problem caused by the tunicate, especially clubbed tunicate, in PEI and surrounding provinces.

Employee Engagement Research

The internship project investigates the market feasibility of a new service/product offering and the existing organizational capacity to enable such a change to occur. Assist with the strategy and business plan development for what form this offering should take shape, either as an intrapreneurial initiative or a separate entity. The project will also adapt and advance lean startup methodologies (e.g. Lean Launch Pad) and design thinking for comparative scenario analysis and strategic planning.

Climate Investment Impact AI Model

The internship project will contribute to Baastel’s overall ambition to use AI modelling techniques in the monitoring and evaluation of international development projects, specifically in its climate change and disaster risk reduction practice. Baastel’s objective is to increase the amount of public and private funds available for climate change mitigation investments, in order to help advance Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations, and to meet the commitments made by different countries to the reduction of Greenhouse Gas (GhG) emissions. With an increasing number of climate change projects, and the need for urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts, Baastel is developing a decision-support model that can aid in identifying successful investments in a less time-consuming and more accurate manner.

Establishing the value of a new virtual reality preparation process for non-sedated pediatric medical imaging preparation

This project is part of a larger hospital initiative to use innovative technology for patient education and involves establishing business cases for the use of novel digital health technologies in pediatric hospitals. The work will involve implementing evidence-informed strategies to address pediatric patient safety and develop new and applicable knowledge to enhance the productivity of services at BC Children’s Hospital. Benefits will be broadly impactful to society, as it will enable us to build on our preliminary research results and build business cases for implementing new technologies in clinical operations. At our hospital, there is potential to significantly improve patient safety and patient experience while simultaneously increasing access to services through operational efficiency, as well as reducing costs to the health care system and to our patient families.

Real-time AI-based Anomaly Detection of 5G Network Latency

LatenceTech offers a cloud analytics and monetization solution for cellular networks with a special focus on ultra-low latency connectivity. Using SAAS and AI, our solution helps mobile operators, telecom vendors and advanced industries to track, predict and secure the new benefits of 5G cellular technology.
This project consists in creating ML Models to perform near real-time anomaly detection of the response time (latency) of 5G cellular technology. This will enable LatenceTech’s solution to send warnings and alerts to management systems so that our customers, mobile operators, can take actions and resolve network issues. Furthermore, notifications of latency anomalies could be sent directly to connected applications (e.g. robotaxis, teleoperation of equipment, telemedicine, etc.) to warn them of current issues related to latency and allowing such application to switch to a “Safe Mode” thus preventing impacts on service quality or security.

Utilisation par un intégrateur-système d’outils d’optimisation afin d’améliorer l’allocation des bois entre industriels

Le processus de planification des approvisionnements dans le secteur forestier est souvent effectué manuellement, basé sur les expériences et les intuitions des planificateurs. Cependant, cette méthode limite la quantité de variables, d’objectifs et de contraintes dont il est possible de tenir compte. La grande diversité des paires origine-destination et des produits, le morcellement du territoire et les contraintes temporelles portent à croire que des outils et méthodes issus de la recherche opérationnelle permettraient des gains de performance. Cette recherche vise à l’exploration des outils technologiques et des méthodes avancées d’optimisation et de simulation afin de favoriser l’allocation des bois. Le partenariat entre des chercheurs universitaires et une entreprise d’intégration forestière de la région de Chaudière-Appalaches permettra d’évaluer la mise en œuvre d’une telle approche. À la conclusion de l’étude, il est attendu que le temps nécessaire à réaliser la planification sera réduit et que la valeur générer par les plans sera meilleure. Il est aussi attendu que l’entreprise partenaire pourra reproduire la méthodologie développée.