Innovative Projects Realized

Long-term performance of bituminous geomembranes for waste containment and mining applications

Geomembranes (thin sheets that can be polymeric or bituminous), are used as the liners in waste containment
and mineral extraction facilities to protect the surrounding environment from contaminant migration. Environmental
awareness and high demand for mineral resources increased the demand for geomembranes and have created
economic opportunities for Canadian companies with an estimated revenue of the geomembrane market reaching
$417 million in 2022. This project seeks to understand how bituminous geomembranes will interact with
aggressive field conditions found in geoenvironmental application by examining their long- and short-term
properties. The proposed work aims to reduce the risks associated with the current uncertainty regarding their
performance to provide more effective and reliable groundwater and surface water protection. Partnership with a
leading geosynthetic installer will provide them with a rigorous understanding on the factors that affect the
geomembrane performance in the field to expand existing and develop new markets for their specialized products.

E-Rec Tech Innovation and Test Centre in East Kootenays

Interest in e-recreational activities has increased geometrically in the past 3-4 years, along with related economic opportunities. Electrification of off-road recreation vehicles is happening in all categories, from snowmobiles to motorcycles, watercraft and e-mountain bikes but lacks a collaborative approach between industry, academia and government. KORE’s strategy is to take advantage of this window of opportunity to unite industry and academia and create a Canadian approach to an economic development initiative that will benefit the Kootenays.
An intended outcome of the proposed industry alliance will be to match infrastructure development and deployment with e-recreational vehicle uptake and adoption of this rapidly growing industry.

Visual Analytics for Financial Risk Year Two

The second project also relates to the application of VA to financial systemic risk analytics. The report on the NSF-funded workshop on Next-Generation Community for Financial Cyberinfrastructure for Managing Systemic Risk identifies the need to develop robust simulations and computational models in order to manage systemic risk. Many of these are in the form of financial network analyses which combine network analytics with data visualization. Though there are already many examples of how network analysis and visualization are being used to gain new insights into the behaviour of financial networks in order to better understand financial systemic risk, so far there is no common framework for financial network visualization. Thus, the aim of this research will be to develop a conceptual framework for the visualization of dynamic financial networks as a first exploratory step to development of a technical financial network visualization framework. A Framework would assist a user in determining the display type that would best suit the task at hand using the available data, and in discovering whether there is an available application that would produce that kind of visual display from the data that the user wishes to produce.

Contenu pédagogique en optique quantique

Novatic Solutions inc. cherche à étendre sa notoriété en solutions technopédagogiques, au niveau post-secondaire, en science et ce à l’échelle internationale. Pour ce faire, Novatic compte saisir une opportunité actuellement présente de dans le marché : il existe très peu de contenu rigoureux, vulgarisé et divertissant en mécanique quantique. En effet, d’un côté se trouve les publications scientifiques et les textbooks beaucoup trop arides, et de l’autre, de brèves vidéos YouTube grand publique, qui survolent en moins de 15 minutes des expériences telle que la double fentes de Young, avec un gros côté sensationnel qui invite à tirer des conclusions parfois loufoques. Bref, pour une personne normale et éduquée qui se questionne sur la nature de la réalité, il est très difficile de s’informer réellement sur la mécanique quantique, ses interprétations et ses applications.

Novatic Solutions inc. compte donc développer du contenu technopédagogiques rigoureux et divertissant, sous forme d’un site web interactif gratuit (sous licence Creative Common), regroupant du contenu multimédia (vidéo, images, texte, animations, etc.). Ce site aura pour objectifs de vulgariser les principes de la mécanique quantique au travers d’expériences d’optiques quantiques détaillées.

Mise en place de stratégie de Marketing entrant

Uluumy est une plateforme de formation et de coaching qui aide les professionnel.le.s à améliorer leurs compétences et à se perfectionner à l’ère de l’IA et des transformations numériques.
Le projet consiste à mettre en place une stratégie pour le marketing entrant (inbound marketing) .
Vous aurez à contribuer à créer les fondations du marketing entrant.

Les trois étapes types du markéting entrant sont :
• Attirer de nouveaux visiteurs avec du contenu gratuit : articles, webinaires, cours;
• Engager les utilisateurs et générer un intérêt pour nos offres payantes de cours-cohorte;
• Offrir une expérience utilisateur exceptionnelle à nos clients pour les fidéliser et les convertir en ambassadeurs.

Cette stratégie nous permet de :
• Mieux cerner les besoins des utilisateurs ;
• Réduire les coûts d’acquisition de nouveaux clients.

The Definitive, Needle-Free Heart Scan – A Collaborative Effort Towards the Montreal Cardiac MR Protocol

and quantitative clinical assessment of the cardiovascular system. However, the clinical utility of CMR is impaired by the need for local expertise, the technical complexity, and time requirements required to perform it.
Recently, several new techniques have radically changed the spectrum of CMR applications. The major pivotal change of CMR acquisition techniques has been the introduction of techniques that allow for a simultaneous acquisition of multiple “dimensions”, or the acquisition of images using an endogenous contrast in the human body (Oxygenation – Sensitive CMR), instead of exogenous pharmaceutical agents. Advanced data mining approaches can then extract this information and become familiar with patterns exhibited by different image types, or even recognize which biomarkers are most important in a patient to understand or classify underlying pathology.
This research collaboration will use novel acquisition techniques, image reconstruction, and analysis methodologies to reduce the local expertise and time required to acquire CMR images, and subsequently increase the overall clinical utility of CMR. The partner organizations for this collaboration will be provided a clinical research platform through which to test novel sequences, software tools, or predictive algorithms they have developed.

Social and Economic Governance in Alberta’s Seniors and Community Housing Sector

Enacting Environmental and Social Governance (ESG) policies is of growing interest and concern in many industries, and social and affordable housing is no exception. Currently, the social and affordable housing sector in Canada (otherwise known as the seniors and community housing sector) is undergoing a period of great change. With all levels of government taking a vested interest in housing policy, there is a greater desire in many jurisdictions, including Alberta, for the seniors and community housing sector to undergo business transformation. This internship would be focused on assisting the Alberta Seniors and Community Housing Association (ASCHA), in crafting appropriate, fulsome, and timely ESG policy to shape their future decisions surrounding alternative forms of funding.

The Role of Sport and Physical Activity in the Recovery of Youth Mental Health Following COVID-19 Restrictions

The purpose of this research is to understand the role that community sport programming plays in enhancing northern and urban youth physical and mental health as sport returns from COVID-19 restrictions. Specifically, the research will longitudinally track changes to social identity, mental health, and physical activity among 300 children and youth (6-14 years old). The participants will be enrolled in comparable sport-based programs at MLSE LaunchPad in Toronto and YMCA Northeastern Ontario (North Bay and Sudbury). Given the negative implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on activity levels and mental health of children and youth, innovative strategies are urgently needed to monitor and understand how the return of sport participation can be vital for the promotion of mental health and physical activity. Enhanced social identity can help foster a sense of ‘us’ within a community sport organization, which can be a key driver of greater mental health and physical activity.

BetterPaws AI Data

BetterPaws has goals to create a community of pet lovers who are passionate about pet health and wellness. BetterPaws wants to provide tools and services to pet lovers to ensure their pet’s overall well-being. With this in mind, BetterPaws is developing AI models that will be used to launch services for our community. This project will help develop the data models that can be used to build the AI algorithm. The AI algorithm will be able to predict certain cancer tendencies in pets. There will also be a focus on marketing framework and strategies to reach our target market of pet lovers.

Flexural bending analysis of mycelium structural beams

The main goal of this project is to improve the sustainability of building materials. To work towards this goal, the
research project turns towards biology as a source of inspiration for the next generation of building materials.
Natural fibres (i.e. hemp, straw, agricultural residues) have great potential in the building industry, but currently
still need to use fossil-fuel based binding agents. This project will research the capacity for mycelium as an
alternative binding agent for natural fibre construction materials. The intern will complete bending moment capacity
and compressive strength of mycelium beams and stub-columns and analyze results to evaluate their significance
Tooketree Passive Homes focuses on building homes that help to mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon
in each building. Tooketree is anxious to sequester more carbon in each building in a way that is not dependent
on the heavy use of our forest products or fossil-fuel-based binding agents.Identifying a viable new building such
as mycelium is directly related to the goals of Tooketree.

Stratégies nutritionnelles alternatives pour favoriser la santé métabolique des poulets nourris avec des régimes à faible teneur en protéines brutes

L’objectif général de ce projet est de réduire les apports en protéine brute (PB) en optimisant son utilisation par les animaux, en ajustant, aussi précisément que possible, les apports aux besoins des animaux afin d’éviter une réduction des performances lors de la baisse de PB. Cela permettra de réduire les rejets d’azote, mais pourrait également améliorer la santé des animaux et favoriser la réduction de l’utilisation d’antibiotiques et donc la durabilité de ces productions. Deux objectifs seront développés: 1) étudier l’effet de la baisse de protéines chez les poulets en croissance en termes de performances et de santé et 2) étudier la réponse des porcelets et des porcs en croissance à la valine en fonction des autres acides aminés à chaîne ramifiée par méta-analyse et essai in vivo. La réalisation de ces objectifs se fera par la formation de deux étudiants postdoctoraux et d’un étudiant à la maîtrise.

Intelligent sensing devices for automatized non-invasive breath-based diagnosis

There is a permanent demand for technological advances in the automotive sector that allow the timely detection of drivers under the influence of alcohol. Although there are technologies to estimate alcohol in blood such as breathalyzers with a mouthpiece, the suspect individual needs to breathe through the mouthpiece as enough to reach the sensor threshold. This is inconvenient for people. Tools to reliably assess the state of sobriety of the individual behind the wheel and timely identify alcoholized ones are still missing. This project aims to build the prototype hardware of a digital multisensory system for automated non-invasive analysis of exhaled breath to detect volatile organic compounds (VOC) signature of alcoholized person. The prototype will be based on an array
of commercial volatile sensors. The prototype hardware developed in the project will be integrated with intelligent data processing software developed by AntiSense to build the intelligent breath analyzer. The intelligent breath analyzer is designed to predict alcoholized state of the person trained on data generated from the multisensory array. As use case, the technology is intended to enable cars to sense by smell when a driver is under influence of alcohol.