Innovative Projects Realized

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.

Modélisation des trajectoires de piétons à partir d’images captées par des caméras fixes de circulation

Ce projet vise à produire des simulations réalistes de comportements de piétons dans des environnements virtuels 3D. Dans ce genre d’environnements, qui peuvent être produits et visualisés par des moteurs graphiques tels que Unity et Unreel, les comportement de piétons peut être simulé et visualisé à travers des avatars. Dans ce projet, nous faisons l’hypothèse que les comportements des piétons peuvent être modélisés et reproduits dans des environnements simulés afin d’améliorer le niveau de réalisme du comportement des avatars. À cette fin, nous utiliserons les flux vidéo de caméras installées dans le réseau routier et appliquerons des algorithmes de poursuite visuelle afin de capturer les déplacements individuels de piétons. Les déplacements individuels seront par la suite utilisés comme trajectoires de démonstration, qui seront modélisées par des algorithmes d’apprentissage par renforcement afin de pouvoir les reproduire en simulation.

Imaging grain quality with AI

In order to define the quality of grain, Canada uses grain grades. Samples are taken to identify characteristics such as damage caused by insects, moisture, or temperature. Grain sampling is time-consuming and costly because it requires a person to take samples from grain flowing from an auger or combine at regular time intervals and deliver this to a lab for testing.

This project is part of our effort to advance the grain grading tools available to farmers and allow them to market their grains with confidence. The overall solution comprises several technology development initiatives that will be combined into a final product. Current research in machine vision tools show a high degree of effectiveness for the examining individual grain kernels.

Displaying the grain on a clear background or in an array has been repeatedly shown to differentiate types of grains, to identify specific wheat varieties, to count damaged kernels, and to identify quality factors like vitreousness. While effective in this environment, machine vision tools are challenged by the high throughput, in-field application that we require. In particular, machine vision struggles with identifying individual kernels when kernels are viewed in a mass.

Corrrélations et interdépendances des indicateurs de flux patients et de soins

Le projet sur la corrélation et sur l’inter-dépendance des indicateurs vise à accroitre la connaissance du CHUM dans l’inter-relation entre les principaux indicateurs de flux du patient et donc à anticiper les impacts d’un projet pour l’ensemble de l’organisation. Par exemple, lorsque j’améliore la durée de séjour de certaines catégories de patients dans une unité, est-ce que je génère des réhospitalisations ou des retours aux urgences ? A quelle hauteur ?

Intégration des sciences du sports et de la recherche académique dans l’amélioration des performances sportives en gymnastique. Une première application pour le trampoline.

Ce projet a pour objectif d’intégrer des technologies et de développer un réseau interdisciplinaire d’experts au sein de la Fédération de Gymnastique du Québec (FGQ) en collaboration avec l’Institut National du Sport (INS) afin d’améliorer le temps de vol chez les athlètes de haut niveau en Sports de Trampoline (STR) via une approche scientifique. Une recension des écrits et l’élaboration de protocoles utilisant différents outils technologiques tels que le DXA, les semelles de pression et l’ergomètre isocinétique permettront aux stagiaires, une fois la collecte et l’analyse de données effectuées, de proposer des interventions qui seront mis en application à l’aide des acteurs de l’INS et la formation des entraineurs de STR. Ces interventions mèneront les trampolinistes vers l’atteinte de leur plein potentiel et résultera en une meilleure représentation québécoise lors des compétitions internationales et un impact positif sur le plan économique du secteur STR.

Assistive Software for Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Angiography

Due to the unpredictable location of coronary artery bypass grafts (CABG), angiography for CABG patients costs catheterization labs additional time, poses an added risk to patients, and incurs extra costs, therefore using additional resources at Sunnybrook Hospital and at a national scale. The development of an assistive software product that helps cardiologists find free graft ostia in the aorta aims to combat this problem. By employing artificial intelligence, the location of bypass grafts can be predicted through software that helps guide cardiologists during the procedure. This solution will reduce the time required for CABG angiography procedures, reduce costs associated with treating CABG angiography patients and decrease the risk for CABG angiography patients at Sunnybrook Hospital.

Improving and scaling up cycling infrastructure under pandemic urbanism

In response to the present Covid-19 pandemic and the need to decarbonize the transport sector, city leaders and communities are rethinking past assumptions regarding transport planning and infrastructural development and have renewed interest in promoting cycling as a sustainable transport mode. Infrastructural interventions that improve safety and comfort and widen access to cycling are necessary to ‘mainstream’ cycling and make it more inclusive, but face difficulties in changing car-centric infrastructures and mobility behaviours. In order to understand the contested and contingent nature of this process of change, more attention is needed to the interplay of design, planning and policy-making decisions. With this aim, this research project compares the politics and practices of cycling infrastructure development in the Greater Manchester and Greater Toronto areas, which coincide in featuring contexts of entrenched motorization, currently deficient infrastructural conditions for cycling, and limited institutional and political capacity for effective change.

Novel Microbial Tools and Tactics for Cutworm Control in Wine Grapes

Andermatt Canada Inc. will partner with the Institute for Sustainable Horticulture (ISH) at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, NSERC and MITACS for a 3- year research project to explore the most efficacious and sustainable strategy for the management of winter climbing cutworms in vinegars in BC. Four promising categories of cool-adapted biocontrol tools will be employed to develop the management strategy for the complex of winter climbing cutworms in vineyards in the Okanagan Valley. Using a group of beneficial microorganisms with different modes of action to better control of winter climbing cutworms is novel and if successful, will contribute to replacing chemical insecticides with an environmentally safe alternative. Andermatt Canada plans to register the new bioinsecticide(s) in Canada and make it available to agricultural producers to manage climbing cutworms while lowering the cost of agricultural production, producing safer healthier crops, and protecting the environment. This research will ultimately assist the Canadian bioproducts producer to develop new, environmentally friendly pest management products for the Canadian market, become a leader in the Canadian bioinsecticide market, train
TBDs, new grads, and technicians, and contribute to the advancement of “green” technologies.