Innovative Projects Realized

Addressing the Discrimination experienced by Somali Canadians and Racialized LGBTQ Persons in Toronto

Addressing Racism in Toronto’’ is a one-year project to be conducted by Urban Alliance on Race Relations (UARR). The aim of this community-based research venture is to identify issues of access, equity and inclusion for two highly vulnerable and marginalized groups in Toronto: the Somali Canadian community and racialized LGBTQ persons who are homeless. Specifically, we will be hoping to uncover the barriers and challenges these communities face in relation to the following key areas: 1) employment, 2) health, 3) justice, 4) education, 5) housing, and 6) any other areas derived during the research process. We hope that by identifying the key social problems faced by the diverse communities that make up the Greater Toronto area, the Urban Alliance on Race Relations will be able to maximize its role and give voice to some of the most pertinent issues as related to race relations, access and human rights. The proposed research model, which will depend on the collaboration of the research group with various community stake holders, hopes to identify and review the current opportunities, needs, and challenges faced by the aforementioned communities.

Data and Visual Analytics for Prediction of Health Care Utilization Involving Musculoskeletal Disorders in BC

This study will establish the utilization rates of musculoskeletal services, for example, low-back pain, across healthcare systems in BC. To capture the utilization rates of musculoskeletal services, we can detect and establish the current frequency of these services related to the most recent healthcare expenditures. Knowing the utilization and expenditures would allow BC Chiropractor Association to update their allocation of funding with BC Ministry of Health to improve services while mitigating costs during the pandemic. Waves of COVID19 infections impact people’s health and could increase the burden of care and services by musculoskeletal practitioners. Moreover, the COVID19 pandemic increases the number of musculoskeletal disorders, especially lower back pain, arthritis, and other bone and spinal conditions of patients with moderate-to-severe cases in post-intensive care.

Building a global strategy for ERP software implementation

The research project (internship) will be hosted by The Cansbridge Fellowship, a non-profit organization, regarding ERP software implementation and demand generation. As a consultant intern, I am responsible for customer success for ERP software for small and large businesses and demand generation for ERP software on a global level. These objectives will be achieved through client engagements, benchmarking analysis through user surveys, and recommendation reports/presentations. The expected benefit for The Cansbridge Fellowship is support in funding for the fellowship program, which increases the quality of experience the fellow receives. By increasing the quality of experience the fellow receives, Cansbridge fosters a stronger community and internal culture, thus improving its presence and future outreach opportunities. Furthermore, by funding Cansbridge, Mitacs helps the organization reach its mission: to equip students with an entrepreneurial ambition to change large-scale problems.

The Fertility Partners

The Fertility Partners helps leading IVF clinics achieve the best clinic outcomes by providing back-office support through a collaborative synergistic medical-scientific, professional and business environment. By having over 100 years of fertility experience, the team provides clinics with strategic and tactical insights to help achieve the best outcomes and top-tier patient experiences. The opportunity with this internship would be to collect, organize, and interpret data from the network of clinics to create dashboards. There is a large amount of data available at the clinics, but it needs to be organized in an effective way that can be easily communicated to the management teams. For example, meaningful insights will be drawn that will include key information on the operations of the clinics, financial forecasts, and patient treatment/capacity. The dashboards will be used to support the business with real-time business-level decisions, vendor negotiations, and building stakeholder relationships. The Fertility Partners is rapidly expanding, and these innovative dashboards that summarize the key data from the clinics will be vital to the company’s future success and growth.

Support groups gamification and immersive virtual reality

Honest Empathy Innovations Inc. aims to build sustainable mental healthcare solutions with groundbreaking development and innovation in machine learning. We plan to build a next-generation machine learning platform that Canadians can access for their mental health with this project. Our solution is supported by the Canadian Mental Health Association, NEXT Canada, and Yukon Government. Our solution research aims to help folks affected by post-traumatic stress disorder and those who encounter anxiety, depression, and OCD daily. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, By age 40, about 50% of the population will have a mental illness. Two out of three Canadians won’t have access to treatment. This project aims to significantly reduce this statistic by innovating CBT with machine learning.

Project Horizon – Technology Team, Executive Residency Program

Project Horizon is a significant campus redevelopment project being undertaken by SickKids in cooperation with the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care over the next decade in the heart of Toronto’s downtown core.

The redevelopment project for a renewal of clinical care and support areas of the hospital will increase inpatient hospital beds and treatment spaces, increase the capacity for clinical supports and new integration spaces that will connect emerging healthcare technologies and expand on their ability to provide virtual care.

As part of Project Horizon, a digital strategy and roadmap report was developed which described an ambitious digital vision for SickKids. To ensure that all Information, Communication, Automation, Technology solutions and investments identified by the digital strategy report have both qualitative and quantitative business value, the Project Horizon Technology Team would like to hire a student to help develop business cases and technology assessments to support the digital strategy report and vision.

Clinique MultiSens-L’intelligence artificielle au service des lecteurs en difficultés d’apprentissage

L’innovation sociale proposée consiste à apporter aux jeunes ayant des difficultés un soutien à la compréhension et à l’effort cognitif en lecture en appliquant la technologie FROG-(FRee yOur coGnition) à une nouvelle bibliothèque de livres numériques d’auteurs québécois. Aucun outil technologique équivalent n’est actuellement offert au Québec. Le présent projet vise à adapter cette application technologique innovante en français québécois et en anglais et ainsi permettre une avancée considérable pour tous les élèves normaux lecteurs ainsi que pour ceux présentant des difficultés d’apprentissage.

Modèles neuro-inspirés de la prise de décision collective

Les humains ont une capacité exceptionnelle à collaborer sur une grande variété de tâches. Pour y parvenir, ils doivent être capables de prendre des décisions collectives : décider où se déplacer ensemble, quelle stratégie ils vont utiliser, etc. Actuellement, nous ne savons pas très bien comment nos cerveaux sont capables de se coordonner entre eux pour prendre ces décisions collectives. Dans ce projet, nous allons modéliser la dynamique cérébrale des personnes qui prennent des décisions collectives. En ajustant ces modèles et en les comparant avec des données obtenues pendant des expériences psychologiques, nous voulons découvrir comment concevoir des systèmes artificiels, tels que des essaims de robots, qui soient également capables de prendre des décisions collectives dans de nombreuses situations. Ces essaims de robots pourraient alors nous aider à accomplir de nombreuses tâches importantes, comme la lutte contre les incendies.

Étude de l’effet immunomodulateur et anti-inflammatoire des molécules bioactives dérivées de l’huile essentielle de Ptychotis Verticilla dans le cadre de l’arthrose

L’arthrose est le type d’arthrite le plus courant et une cause importante d’invalidité dans le monde. Avec une population canadienne croissante et vieillissante, la prévalence et le fardeau de l’incapacité devraient augmenter. Heureusement, le risque de développer de l’arthrose peut être réduit et bien qu’il n’y ait pas de remède connu, beaucoup peut être fait pour réduire ses impacts. Récemment, un intérêt croissant a été observé pour l’utilisation des plantes médicinales dans le traitement ou la prévention de l’arthrose. Les composants bioactifs dérivés de ces plantes peuvent constituer une source alternative et précieuse pour le développement de médicaments sûre et efficace contre arthrose. Le ciblage des voies de signalisation inflammatoires associées à l’arthrose par l’utilisation de médicaments à base de plantes doit faire l’objet d’une attention particulière. Dans ce sens, il est donc intéressant d’étudier l’effet thérapeutique des molécules bioactives (Thymol et Carvacrol) dérivées de l’huile essentielle de Ptychotis Verticillata dans le cadre de l’arthrose en explorant leurs capacités à moduler les réponses immunologiques et inflammatoires liées à cette pathologie.

Truth and Reconciliation Through Treaty Implementation: Developing a Business/Social Enterprise Plan

This project works with the Saskatchewan Indigenous Cultural Centre to build upon tools and methodologies for organizations to make progress toward truth and reconciliation. This project will develop a business or social enterprise plan to scale up the existing truth and reconciliation work to meet growing demand from the community, seeking the objectives of accessibility and sustainability.

Development of clinical best practice guidelines for the treatment of allied health conditions

The proposed research project will involve the completion of a systematic literature review of published studies addressing clinical best practices for the treatment of health conditions in the social work field. Products of the research study will include a library of comprehensive clinical guidelines for practitioners to follow, which can serve as the foundation for subsequent individualized treatment for clients.
The clinical guidelines will be published within the Curv Health app, enabling the partner organization access to the highest quality research evidence for therapeutic approaches.

Build and improve image embedding models of cellular phenotypes

The over-arching goal of the project is to explore the use of several recently developed self-supervised image representation learning methods in an attempt to improve performance across several biologically relevant benchmarking tasks at Recursion. At recursion, deep-learning based models are used to generate feature embeddings for our imaging data and these embeddings to generate downstream biological insights for drug programs. A large proportion of our in-house data is unlabeled, and we’re exploring the use of novel self-supervised representation learning models to improve our existing image embedding models. The end objective is to improve the ability to extract high-value insights from the data generated, typically called ‘maps of biology’, and lead to scientific breakthroughs by our disease biology scientists.