Innovative Projects Realized

Luxury Transport Inc-Marketing & SEO Specialist-Khaled

This project is implemented with the scope of developing specific marketing strategies and promote further business development for Luxury Transport Inc., a company that offers Vancouver shuttles and Whistler transfers for individuals and group transportation. The Marketing & SEO Specialist intern will engage in a project that involves a market search specific to our industry, web content creation (including blog articles), and also developing a strategy for our social media platforms management (including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn). The intern will lead a SEO analysis using Google Adwords and will compile the reports resulted from this analysis. The project lead will collaborate with the Marketing Manager and will contribute original ideas in support of our business development and expansion.

Implementations of state-of-the-art quantum error-correcting codes and decoders for simulations of fault-tolerant logical operations

Quantum computers encode information with qubits. Unfortunately, qubits are subject to error. Those are physical qubits, and one will need many physical qubits to create an error-free qubit, also called a logical qubit. In this project, the university and industry researchers will work together to understand if the error rate of a logical quantum circuit will be arbitrarily suppressed by increasing the number of physical qubits. One of the key challenges is to simulate large enough systems necessitating scalable implementations of representation of quantum error-correcting codes and decoders. This project will explore new ways to reduce the error rate of qubits and contribute to achieving the fault-tolerant regime (error-corrected qubits) of Xanadu’s quantum computers.

Learning Personal Traits, Value, Skill Representations for Improved Matching of Jobs, Talent, and Courses

COVID, remote work, remote learning and the accelerated adoption of technology globally has shifted the ways of how we live, learn, and our future lifestyles going forward. The 90% of society face challenges of how best to simplify their navigation and access to knowledge – those who may not have high value networks, and the means and resources to identify and access ways to upskill, reskill, or retrain to enter or re-enter the future workforce. The unprecedented need to be able to navigate of knowledge in career development is currently the greatest challenge to Jobseekers, Employers and Educators. No longer can a jobseeker just rely on just applying to an HR recruitment site or relying on the traditional mode of learning delivery and content. Skill gaps in the workforce are continuing to grow as technology acceleration exceeds the pace of traditional learning deliver models. In attempting to resolve this barrier, this project aims to develop latent representation learning models to improve the job-talent, job-course, and talent-course matching for FutureCite, a site offering one-stop services for empowering and connecting people to careers, companies, courses, and inspiring stories. The proposed models would leverage information provided by stakeholders, including answers of talents.

Modelling a distributed array EM system

This project is developing new tools to explore for mineral deposits buried in locations where they are difficult to identify using traditional techniques. The tools are based on electronic devices that are relatively inexpensive to produce so that multiple devices can be used and hence the quality of the data will improve. This will make the mineral resources easier to identify. The mineral resources will be required for the green and low-carbon economy.

Development of a point-of-care medical instrument for detection of COVID-19 virus in saliva

Fourien Inc. is developing a diagnostic medical instrument for rapid and low-cost detection of COVID-19 virus using saliva samples from early-stage infections. The custom-built vibrometer instrument will use micro-sensors to detect the RNA of the virus. There is a need to develop optimized and sensitive modules of optics, electronics and mechanics that are critical for the instrument to work. The intern will use her prior academic experience to bring creative solutions to industry problems. The successful completion of this research project will enable Fourien to commercialize the virus detection technology in clinics, labs, and pharmacies. It will also well position Canada to export the technology to the rest of the world.

Sustainable purification, functional characterization, and performance assessment of novel biosurfactants

Surfactants are versatile ingredients found in major chemical industries, health care, home care, personal care, pharmaceuticals, medicines, to name just a few. The majority of these commercial sectors, however, utilize chemical surfactants. These fossil-derived surfactants not only consume our planet’s finite oil reserves but also contribute negatively to the health of marine environments in turn affecting our ecosystems or worse, entering the human food chain through aquatic species.

The pandemic-induced demand for the usage of safe, mild-to-skin, eco-friendly detergent systems is driving industrial pressure to limit the use of conventional fossil-based systems and move towards the biobased and microbially derived alternatives. The proposed project therefore will involve the research and development of structural and physio-chemical properties of novel biosurfactants created from new microbial strains. Apart from the molecular structure that can be elucidated using analytical techniques, physico-chemical surfactant properties will be investigated to further the understanding of these biosurfactants and their potential applications. By understanding the properties of Dispersa’s biosurfactants, it will unlock a wider outlook on the applications that can be targeted using these molecules.

Optimisation de deux unités de traitement pour la dénitrification de la fraction liquide de l’effluent de biométhanisation

Les impacts environnementaux des traitements biologiques, comme la digestion anaérobie des déchets ménagers, peuvent être réduits par l’ajout d’unités de traitement subséquent. Dans ce sens, la dénitrification de l’effluent liquide de digestion anaérobie est un bon moyen de réduire les émissions gazeuses lors d’épandage ou de traitement conventionnel des eaux. Le traitement permet de récupérer l’azote sous différentes formes qui permettent sa valorisation ou son élimination de façon moins dommageable pour l’environnement. L’entreprise partenaire pourra dès lors établir son expertise pour les futures usines de digestion anaérobie qui seront installées au Québec et ailleurs dans le monde. Cette expertise qui d’un côté est bonne pour l-environnement pourrait aussi permettre de reduire la facture des explotants, reliee a la disposition finale des differents effluents provenant de ce type d’installation biologique.

Mitochondrial-targeted therapies to improve Duchenne muscular dystrophy outcomes

Steroid drugs and creatine are treatments for muscle weakness in people with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Steroid drugs can also cause problems like weakening mitochondria which are the energy producing parts of muscle cells. Duchenne also makes it harder for mitochondria to use creatine for energy. This means that both treatments may not be doing the best job possible if they are also weakening mitochondria.
We discovered that two specific drugs can offset the poor metabolism that may prevent steroid drugs and creatine from helping people as much as possible. This means that these new drugs might help the other drugs work better in people with Duchenne.
This study will determine if these new drugs help muscle cells from people with Duchenne produce more energy. We will also test these drugs in mice with this disease.
We believe the results of this study will help create new drugs that will improve current treatments. If true, this could mean that people with Duchenne will have a better quality of life.

Monocular 3D Object Reconstruction in Autonomous Driving

3D object reconstruction is a crucial task for autonomous driving. Many important fields in autonomous driving such as prediction, planning, and motion control generally require a faithful representation of the 3D space around the ego vehicle. Reliable and accurate 3D reconstruction with one RGB video alone in autonomous driving is the goal of this project. This project will present a reliable and accurate method for perspective projection reconstruction of rigid and non-rigid objects from single-view and realistic videos. This method will overcome all of the limitations arising from the usage of orthographic camera model and the complexity and non-linearity issues of the perspective projection equation. Unlike traditional structure-from-motion methods, which have been studied only on synthetic datasets and controlled lab environments that require some prior constraints or estimations (such as manually segmented objects, limited rotations and occlusions, and full-length trajectories); this method will be used in realistic video sequences.

Protein profiling of blood samples of patients with mild traumatic brain injury

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) and sports-related concussion have complex and variable neuronal pathophysiology. Despite extensive attempts for discovery and identification of protein biomarkers in the blood of concussion patients, the success of proteins markers is limited due to the heterogeneity and complexity of concussion. There are still no reliable protein biomarkers that can accurately diagnose sport-related concussion and to distinguish complicated and uncomplicated concussion. This project aims to perform quantitative mass spectrometry-based protein profiling for the discovery of diagnostic protein biomarkers of complicated and uncomplicated concussion patients. The project will represent a significant advancement in the health and quality of the life of patients diagnosed with concussion. The outcome of this project including the discovery biomarkers and protocols of testing biosamples will benefit the partner by providing IPs to explore partnerships with molecular diagnostic players for developing point-of-care devices for rapid detection of one or multiple mTBI protein biomarkers.

Temporal Interference Stimulation in the Rhesus Macaque

Deep brain stimulation is a treatment method for Parkinson’s Disease, involving implanting an electrode deep into the brain. This procedure has a small but serious risk of complications such as hemorrhage and infection. However, a new stimulation technique, called temporal interference stimulation, may circumvent these risks, and allow for non-invasive deep brain stimulation. Temporal interference stimulation can selectively target deep brain structures in the mouse, however whether it will work in larger animals is currently unknown. This project aims to test whether temporal interference stimulation will be able to activate deep brain structures in a larger animal that is more similar to humans. The findings will provide insights into whether temporal interference stimulation will be a feasible approach for deep brain stimulation in humans. The research findings and resulting articles from this research project will help PSSO with communicating results to the community and attract new donors.

CTRS Solutions-Sales & Marketing Internship-Colby

CTRS is a market intelligence agency doing work throughout North America. It is also a certified B Corporation that gives more than 5% of its billable hours as pro bono contributions to eligible non-profits such as the Downie Wenjack Fund and Food Banks of BC. Our pro bono community work is far-ranging in portfolios such as homelessness, immigrant services, sexual violence, education, services for children, community economic development and entrepreneurship. We take environmental stewardship very seriously, and we are a living wage employer.
The intern will be working directly with the two Managing Partners of CTRS and will have weekly video touchpoints with both managers, the rest of the team, and will be supported while completing assignments. The intern will be supporting the implementation of a new but established marketing strategy and will develop marketing content to build awareness of CTRS’ service offerings. The project will include creating marketing content, to be distributed via LinkedIn primarily, but may also be posted on our website or other social media channels. The project involves a great deal of using and developing negotiation skills, superior communication skills as well as working in a team that is innovative in this specific market.