Innovative Projects Realized

Vesicle transport in hydrogel environments

High-rate laser surface texturing of 3D injection molds

Impact of a novel enriched supplement on the oral microbiota of dogs.

Periodontal diseases are the most important condition diagnosed in dogs’ mouth. Bacterial biofilm, also called dental plaque is the first step on the development of periodontal diseases and nearly 100% of dogs will develop dental plaques if routine removal is not regularly performed. The oral microbiota has been recently implicated in the development of dental plaques in dogs. The objective of this study is to evaluate the consequences of a supplement product containing natural substances with antimicrobial properties on the oral microbiota of dogs. To do so, 14 healthy dogs will be used. Dogs will be randomly divided in two groups: treatment (n=10) and control (n=4). The supplement will be given orally twice per day to a total of approximately 10% of the daily energy requirements of the dogs, as per nutritional recommendations. Samples of the mouth microbiota will be collected by rubbing a sterile swab on the surface of their teeth for 30 seconds. Samples will be collected on days 0 (baseline), 3, 7 14 and 31.

Implementation of the online Language Use Inventory (LUI) for developmental surveillance of children’s early language development by family physicians.

In Canada. guidelines call for the identification of language impairment in children before 3 years of age to enable early intervention. A family doctor is often the first person with whom a family raises such a concern. The proposed research uses the Language Use Inventory (LUI), an empirically-validated standardized 20 minute questionnaire assessing 2- and 3-year-olds’ language development. A family doctor could have a concerned parent complete the LUI online at home. The doctor would receive the results and recommendations regarding further in-depth assessment and/or monitoring to discuss subsequently with the family. Via an implementation study, this research aims to identify the best workflow in a family practice to avoid barriers to, and facilitate, the use of the LUI and support its value to doctors and families. This research will broaden how the LUI is currently used by speech-language professionals and researchers to include developmental surveillance by family doctors.

Effective enrichments for piglets: effects of early enrichment on development and reduction of damaging behaviours

Information on effective environmental enrichments for young pigs is needed to promote pig health and welfare and to support Canadian producers in meeting the Code of Practice requirement for enrichment provision. Most environmental enrichment studies have focused on market pigs as they are prone to damaging behaviours such as tail biting. However, studies suggest that early provision of enrichment may be more important for reducing negative behaviours in later life as piglets will learn to direct their’ exploratory behaviour towards the environment rather than pen mates. This project will identify practical, inexpensive, and biologically relevant enrichment materials for nursery pigs, and examine the long term effects of early enrichment. Individual and group measures will be used to evaluate enrichment interaction, behavioural traits, growth and the occurrence of damaging behaviours. The results will guide pig producers in implementing effective enrichment protocol and improve the sustainability of pork production.

Development of Mass Spectrometry Methods for Global Tissue Metabolome Analysis

Metabolomics is a rapidly growing field involved in detecting and characterizing all the metabolites present in a biological system such as blood, urine, cells and tissues. Metabolomics has been increasingly used in many different areas of applications, including the discovery of metabolite biomarkers for early diagnosis or prognosis of diseases, holistic study of biological systems (often in combination with genomics and proteomics), developing improved strains of crops or plants for increasing yields with higher tolerance to cold and resistance to drought or insect pests, etc. This project focuses on the development of advanced mass spectrometry methods for tissue metabolomics. The developed methods will be implemented in the Metabolomics Innovation Centre to enhance analytical services to researchers in Canada and elsewhere for metabolomics studies. It will also benefit the industry partner, Nova Medical Testing Inc., in metabolomics product offerings.

Develop an AI-powered and reagent-free optical sensor to continuously monitor nitrogen in agricultural watersheds

The project will develop and validate a reagent-free UV-Vis absorption-based sensor for the direct, real-time quantification of nitrogen in agricultural watersheds. AUG’s machine learning-based multiple regression models will also be developed to process the real-time UV-Vis absorption spectral data and enhance sensor performance suitable for continuous field operation. This project will lead to an innovative AI-powered reagent-free sensor that will advance Canada’s water treatment and monitoring facilities’, research institutions and private sectors in the fields’ capacity in water nutrient analysis.

Active Learning Strategies for Time-series

Acquiring labelled data for training supervised learning models is a barrier to a wider adoption of machine learning strategies in several industries. The data annotation task is generally complex and time-consuming. In this project, we will use raw unlabeled data generated by fiber sensors to reduce the burden of labelling data with problems within the fiber industry.

Analyzing gamma-ray spectra and mapping them to corresponding isotopes

This research project aims to program a hand-held spectrometer to identify and analyze gamma radiation peaks emitted from isotopes. Based on the detected peaks, the device will identify the specific isotope from the gamma ray that was emitted. The partner organization will be able to commercialize such a device to be used in different areas such as nuclear safety, threat detection, medical imaging, radioactive clean-up, as well as any sectors of industry that deal with the identification and handling of radioactive isotopes. The small size of such spectrometers will make them ideal for use in the field as well as the lab.

A music expert visual assistant

Modern music providers offer multiple services such as artist recommendations, browsing, playlist generation etc. Users interact with these services using graphical interfaces on computers and mobile devices. There are applications that need voice-only interactions such as smart watches or when the user’s hands and eyes are occupied. Virtual assistants, such as Siri by Apple and Alexa by Amazon, are commercial examples of voice driven assistants. The proposed research investigates the development of a virtual assistant that is designed for meaningful music service interactions. In addition to basic music playback commands the assistant will engage in music-specific dialogs supported by a knowledge base of music facts, automatic music content analysis, and effective speech recognition using domain-specific constraints. This work is an example of integrative artificial intelligence and a human-in-the loop system. Our goal is to achieve complex and meaningful interactions within the constrained but semantically rich domain of music listening.

Internship in Mucosal Immunology and Epithelial Biology

Hyperpolarization of 13C ethyl pyruvate by parahydrogen-induced polarization