Innovative Projects Realized

Optimisation de l’exploitation de l’information sur la vulnérabilité des sources d’eau potable

Au Québec, comme dans plusieurs régions et pays, la réglementation en matière de protection des sources d’eau potable se limite à la production d’un rapport de vulnérabilité pour identifier et évaluer les risques associés aux activités présentes dans le territoire. L’objectif général de ce projet est d’élaborer une méthodologie pour exploiter optimalement les données issues des analyses de vulnérabilité des sources d’eau potable des municipalités pour mettre en place des plans de protection. Les objectifs spécifiques sont: (1) de développer une méthodologie automatisée pour l’identification d’actions de protection des sources à partir des données issues des analyses de la vulnérabilité; (2) d’appliquer la méthodologie en question pour la mise en place de plans de protection des sources d’eau potable de surface d’un ensemble de municipalités sélectionnées; et (3) de mettre à l’épreuve les résultats de ces plans de protection, pour des fins de validation, auprès des intervenants municipaux responsables de la protection des sources.

Methods for evaluating the reactivity of supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) for use in concrete

The use of pozzolans as a supplementary cementing material (SCM) to partially replace Portland cement in concrete is well established and can lead to many benefits including improved durability and a lower carbon footprint. The concrete industry needs to find alternative sources of pozzolans to replace fly ash and slag; among the most promising alternatives are natural pozzolans, ground glass and ash “harvested” from landfill sites where fly ash has been dumped for decades. The term “natural pozzolans” covers a very broad range of materials from raw deposits of volcanic ash, pumice and trass (to name a few) to calcined clays and shales; the impact of these materials on the performance of concrete varies widely. Unfortunately, existing standardized tests in the cementitious materials standards (e.g. CSA A3000) are not capable of reliably determining the suitability of pozzolans for use in concrete, and their use can often result in acceptance of unsuitable inert materials with little to no pozzolanic properties. A number of new tests and modifications to existing tests have been proposed but research is required to determine which of these tests are the most reliable and what acceptance limits would be appropriate.

TAVI DFB Laser with a Higher Order Surface-Etched Grating

Optical telecommunication systems are continuously facing new challenges in terms of capacity and cost as a result of everincreasing Internet traffic. The continuing traffic growth imposes challenges associate with increasing complexity and power consumption at the network nodes and data centres, which are expected to handle more and more data. As a result, the latter require innovative approaches facilitating capacity growth at reduced energy consumption. Specifically, there is a demand for improved, more efficient lasers to be implemented with the wavelength-division multiplexing systems at the data centres and network nodes. This project’s main goal is to design a cost-efficient on-chip integrated laser that can act as an optical emitter in data centres.

Assessing Parent and Child Development in the IPALS Program

Families can play an important role in helping prepare their children to learn to read by engaging in activities that support pre-literacy skills. Not all parents are aware of their abilities to help their children however, and this is often especially the case in immigrant families, where cultural practices surrounding education – especially the families role in education – can be different. Decoda Literacy Solutions (DLS) leads community-based programs that help immigrant families learn more about literacy supporting practices they can do in the home, and gives families the knowledge, tools, and confidence to participate in Canadian community and educational institutions like libraries and schools. This study will help DLS evaluate their program by looking at child and family-based outcomes using both standardized measurements and interviews. The goal is to understand the efficacy of the program, in order to help support literacy for all Canadians.

Digital transformation in management of consumer’s over-the-counter medicine cabinet (Solutions Testing and MVP Building)

MED-IBOX is a Vancouver-based software-as-a-service startup in the healthcare industry. We are passionate about developing software tools enhancing the competitiveness of independent pharmacies and bringing more added value to make life healthier and easier.
Founded by an entrepreneur with more than 10 years of experience in distributing healthcare products and supported by Empowered Startups, we are a mission-driven team supporting independent pharmacies to identify key challenges and new opportunities in the context of fierce competition with big pharmacy chains and new trends like personalized medicine, telemedicine.
Our solution of digital transformation in the management of consumer’s over-the-counter (OTC) medicine cabinet allows independent pharmacies to increase customer touchpoints, build services and promote healthcare products around consumers’ needs and their desires for self-care in a digital world.

Investigation of Online Cerebral Indices of Cognitive Restoration by Nature Exposure

Attention is a key process to many daily tasks but it is characterized by limited resources. In many high-stake domains, operators must perform complex tasks for long durations, which deplete attentional resources and promote error making. Yet, previous studies have shown that exposure to nature stimuli can help recovering those resources. The current project aims at investigating the cerebral mechanisms underpinning the restoration of attention by nature stimuli by collecting different measures of attentional fatigue and examining how nature exposure can impact them. This represents a first step toward developing a system capable of determining one’s level of attentional fatigue using different biomarkers and of presenting restorative interventions as a countermeasure to help operators recovering their attentional resources. This project will contribute to expand research on cognitive enhancement and will open new opportunities for Thales to develop user-tailored decision-support systems relevant to aviation, defence, security and transportation use cases.

MacDonald Hallett Oceans Protection Engineering Group Inc. – Customer Discovery

In January 1993 the oil tanker MV BRAER was transiting north of Scotland in the Shetland Islands. The ship was abandoned, adrift, and being blown towards rocky shores. A line could not be secured to the stricken vessel before it grounded and broke up causing a catastrophic oil spill.

The MacDonald Hallett Oceans Protection Engineering Group Inc. is a high-tech ocean engineering start-up poised to resolve the situation described above. For ships that are ABANDONED, or if they are adrift and are otherwise unable to manually rig a towline, our novel, remotely activated and automatically deployed Emergency Towing System (ETS) will permit a ship to be taken safely in tow, thereby saving life at sea, preventing loss of ship and cargo, and avoiding an environmental disaster with huge liabilities.

Note autonomous shipping is becoming more and more prevalent; such ships are, by definition, abandoned.

With funding support from Innovacorp at the Centre for Oceans Ventures and Entrepreneurship (COVE), and NRC, MHOPEG engaged with Dr. Mae Seto, Faculty of Engineering, Dalhousie University, to advance two significant milestones of the proposed Automatic Emergency Towing System (AETS). The system will be fabricated, integrated and tested by early April 2022.

The system will be further marinized and ruggedized through a Mitacs project with Dalhousie University over the period May – Dec 2022.

With this Mitacs project running concurrently with the above it is intended to address the business development requirements of the MacDonald Hallett Automatic Marine Emergency Towing System to design/establish a business development infrastructure.

Implementation of an Emotional Imaging Composer

The Emotional Imaging Composer is a system that translates bio-signals into responsive environments in real-time. The sensors capture emotional profiles, reading physiological signals to effectively map a person’s emotional state. These signals are then processed to generate a fluid collage of aural and visual images which, when projected into an environment created to receive them, creates a rich, external manifestation of the person’s internal emotional experience.

Assisting Girls & Women Raise Venture Capital

Canada, less than 4% of venture capital funds are invested in women-led companies. It is considered to be the largest tangible gender gap – period.
Investoready is an online program of support for girls and women seeking to raise venture capital finance. Investoready is a learning, practice and feedback Console for women to assess their abilities in the all-important Question and Answer (Q&A) sessions with investors. The Q&A period of investor meetings is where the decision to provide finance will be ascertained. These girls and women are generally technology entrepreneurs, those who have innovations that are scaleable. As a highly science-backed program founded on world-renowned research, the viability and efficacy of Investoready’s training sessions and Console have already been validated with incubators, accelerators, entrepreneurship centres and venture capitalists. The project will involve a team of 4 students who will collaborate on the technology and programming launch, developing, deploying, collecting feedback from the first cohort of 80 participants, and integrating aspects of client feedback into the product.

Étude du potentiel de valorisation d’huiles pyrolytiques de résidus de bois de conifères pour la production d’extraits riches en composés phénoliques antioxydants.

Dans le contexte de crise climatique et de montée des prix des matières premières issues du pétrole, il est urgent de trouver des voies alternatives de production via des procédés utilisant les ressources non fossiles, renouvelables et abondantes telles que les résidus de bois de l’industrie forestière. Ces résidus sont actuellement valorisés par un procédé de combustion thermique (pyrolyse) pour faire du charbon végétal. Un sous-produit (encore non valorisé) de ce processus est l’huile pyrolytique qui contient un grand nombre de molécules utilisées dans l’industrie chimique dont notamment les composés phénoliques. Ces composés sont connus pour leur propriété antioxydante. L’entreprise Elkem Métal traite les résidus de bois des scieries par pyrolyse pour faire du charbon végétal utilisé dans la fabrication de leurs ferroalliages. Elle souhaite valoriser l’huile pyrolytique en mettant au point un processus d’extraction pour obtenir des extraits riches en composés phénoliques antioxydants qui pourraient être utilisé comme additif pour la préservation de différents fluides (lubrifiants, fluides de transformateur, etc.) et ainsi fournir l’industrie chimique en produits issus de sources écologiques. Ce processus d’optimisation nécessite à chaque étape une analyse de la composition chimique des extraits, expertise qui sera fournie par le Centre de Valorisation des Bioproduits de Chicoutimi

New Test Methods for Validation of Electric Traction Motor Control and Monitoring Techniques

Electric machine condition monitoring and control techniques are being widely investigated for electric vehicle applications, which are essential to ensure high performance, efficiency, and reliability in electric traction drive system. However, the testing and validation of these techniques are challenging and have not received enough attention. Thus, the research project aims to propose new testing methodologies for validation of electric machine condition monitoring and control techniques to fill this knowledge gap in electric machine field. The proposed research project is original and innovative. Potential research outcomes will be utilized by partner organization to validate their electric machine control and monitoring techniques and further enhance the system efficiency and reliability of their electric traction drive products.

Climate change design adaptation for the next generation of Canada’s masonry systems

In 2018, the results of a Climate Change Adaptation Standards Inventory Analysis conducted by CSA indicated cavity-wall design as requiring urgent climate change adaptation provisions. Distress in cavity-walls is often attributed to excessive differential movements governed by the drying shrinkage of inner loadbearing concrete masonry members, projected to increase with climate change, producing cracks in outer clay brick veneer and compromising durability – test data are, however, still scarce, preventing climate-adapted and evidence-based design of modern cavity-wall systems from being developed. The proposed project, conducted in partnership with the Canada Masonry Design Centre (CMDC) and the Canadian Concrete Masonry Producers Association (CCMPA) – recognized leaders and references for masonry producers and designers in Canada – is the first attempt to characterize experimentally in a comprehensive and coherent manner the cavity-wall components commonly employed in Canada under both environmental and structural loading conditions, whose results will be used to calibrate numerical models and assess the suitability of evidence-based climate-adapted design options.