Innovative Projects Realized

Blue Economy Assessment Framework for Atlantic Canada

The Blue Economy is the proposed sustainable version of the regular ocean economy, with tremendous amounts of funding being provided by provincial and federal government agencies to support the industry. Supported research shows that there are challenges with recruiting youth to the industry, especially underrepresented youth and geographically underrepresented youth. The lack of framework and criteria to determine which organizations and industries could be considered sustainable enough to be in the Blue Economy is a contributing challenge. The Students on Ice (SOI) Foundation, as the lead on a larger initiative under the Ocean Supercluster called Blue Futures Pathways, aims to support the knowledge mobilization of research within the Sustainable Blue Economy and to engage youth aged 14-30, with career paths, and relevant topics related to careers in this sub-sector of the Sustainable Blue Economy. In the development of a blue economy assessment framework, this collaboration will help SOI build a network of organizations that meet the criteria for the sustainable blue economy so that they may successfully connect youth to career opportunities in the SBE.

Mercator AI – Project Fit Innovation

Scope of work: Develop and implement data science models to identify construction projects relevant to our clients, before they go up for bid. Apply machine learning algorithms to public and proprietary datasets to recommend contract opportunities at as early stage as possible in the building process. Develop and implement logic to be applied to this problem in a technology startup environment.

Duties: Work with front end, and back end software developers, solutions architects, data engineers, and other data scientists to develop recommendation systems from public and private data sets. Meet with clients to determine needs, provide a functional decomposition of the problem set. Use the functional decomposition to assign work tasks and priority to actionable metrics.

Skill Set: Experience with developing and implementing machine learning models in python. Data science certificate, and/or MSc in Engineering or related field. Experience with product management and deconstructing client needs into actionable items an asset.

Assessment and Implementation of a new Club licensing and accreditation system

Across Canada, the amateur sport system continues to face mounting criticism and dissatisfaction with the traditional delivery of sport participation opportunities. As result, many young Canadian athletes are abandoning the sport system in favour of opportunities offered by private enterprises. Thus, the sport system has subsequently been fractured due to a decreasing number of participants, a decline in qualified coaches, unbalanced competition, and the overall decline of the capacities of local amateur sport clubs. Over the past five years, the popularity and participation in basketball has grown an unprecedented amount. To effectively manage and maintain this growth, Canada Basketball has committed to modernizing the amateur basketball system and a central focus of these efforts is the creation and implementation of a new club licensing program. The internship will involve conducting an environment scan, interviews, and survey of key stakeholders to inform the club licensing strategy. The results will also inform the marketing strategy for this initiative to encourage community-based basketball clubs to enhance their professionalism by developing operational standards and improving their accountability on program delivery.

Verdant Networks Inc. Importer Modules

This project is focused on the development of import modules to bring publicly available corporate communications within the Cometrics database. This project will help deliver consistent and correct ESG Theme information to subscribers and partners.

Knowledge generation based on cloud-native technology data sources

Peritus.ai, a leading company in community knowledge for developer success, offers a search engine specialized in technical questions about cloud native technologies, and analytics to help vendors augment the health and efficiency of their online community. With the academic partners from Polytechnique Montreal, Peritus.ai wants to leverage public data from technical forum questions and answers, community discussions, technical documents, etc., and to explore new AI/data techniques to extract and structure knowledge and related technical expertise.

Development of an intelligent ball bearing with self-sensing and self-powering capabilities

Bearings are typically located in the heart of all rotating applications, with rotational speeds, forces, and vibrations impacting them somehow. Due to various reasons, such as fatigue, bearings encounter abrupt operation failure that damages surrounding components. In some applications, such as wind turbines and high-speed trains, it is expensive to replace the bearing and other damaged parts, despite the threat to humans’ lives. Since condition monitoring requires expensive sensors, many small industries still use conventional methods like run-to-break. They let the system fail and then do the maintenance or use preventive maintenance to check the system regularly at constant intervals.
Our proposed intelligent bearing will significantly change how maintenance can be executed. Specifically, the adoption of Industrial Internet of Things-based smart bearings can self-diagnose impending faults and failures using sensors integrated into the bearings themselves. This intelligent bearing is different from traditional solutions for condition monitoring, which usually involve a standalone sensor mounted near the bearing. Instead, the sensor is integrated inside the bearing structure to measure bearing speed, direction, and strain distribution.

Tools for monitoring the establishment and impacts of two biological control agents on introduced Phragmites australis in Ontario

Introduced Phragmites australis (common reed) is one of the most invasive plants in North America. The weed reduces native plant and animal diversity, disrupts ecosystem processes, and poses a threat to the native North American subspecies of common reed, P. australis ssp. americanus. Conventional methods for controlling introduced P. australis such as herbicides, cutting, and burning are prohibitively expensive, harmful to non-target species, and have seen little success. In partnership with Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC), we aim to develop tools to implement and monitor the success of a biological control program for introduced P. australis in Ontario. Our first objective is to monitor the establishment and impacts of two recently introduced biological control agents on introduced P. australis. Our second objective is to use newly developed monitoring tools, including pheromone traps and UAV drone technology, to assess release methods and identify optimal release conditions for the two agents. The proposed research will aid DUC and other Ontario land managers in the conservation of Ontario wetlands, and provide site-specific direction for the incorporation of biological control into P. australis management programs.

Business Development Associate Intern

Leading the development of a corporate sales strategy for foodiepages, helping to build relationships with companies who are looking for support with corporate gifting (this includes gifts for employees, clients and partners). This project involves a combination of strategic analysis, marketing, and sales.

The role of health institutions in driving industry sponsored research and innovation

There is evidence to suggest that health institutions across Canada are expanding their research and innovation programs and partnerships with industry. The goal of this Mitacs project is to explore the role that a health institution engaging in research and education can play in promoting technology transfer and the commercialization of intellectual property. The research team intends to investigate what IP policy initiatives and tools that NSH, as a higher education related organization, can use to further foster research and innovation in the local economy through technology transfer and intellectual property commercialization.

Emergenetics Canada Marketing Strategy

This project will require the intern to identify new marketing opportunities and consumer preferences to support campaign creations. Additionally, they will set specific marketing objectives that align with the overall company direction goals. The intern will also develop and maintain digital campaigns to increase web traffic, conversion rate, and customer touchpoints within this research project. They will track and measure marketing outcomes, including marketing activities, response, leads, sales, retention, and ROI. They will also be responsible for forecasting market trends, generating innovative ideas to promote our brand and products, developing a marketing plan, and building brand awareness across Canada.

IMU-based motor variability metrics in para-swimming

Recent advances in wearable technology have allowed for a developed understanding of how swimmers move, by collecting acceleration data of the swimmers. Current advances can provide information on how each side of the body responds differently to fatigue and can automatically detect which type of stroke is being completed. However, how swimmers accelerate up and down in the water, and how their body rotates has not been explored in detail for para-swimmers. Additionally, advanced signal analyses can provide information on the underlying detail of these signals, which can become altered when fatigued.
The purpose of this project is to create an automatic workflow to capture and process this acceleration data, calculating metrics that provide us with a new understanding of how fatigue affects para-swimmers.

Biomechanical analysis of the pelvic floor and pessary devices using colpodynamic imaging and finite element modeling

Pelvic floor disorders, such as pelvic organ prolapse (POP), negatively affects millions of women each year. POP is the descent of the vagina resulting in symptoms of vaginal bulging, pelvic pressure or heaviness, pain, and incontinence. A nonsurgical
option for POP symptom relief is the use of pessaries, removable vaginal prosthetics; however, current pessary designs can be cumbersome resulting in ineffective use. Recently, COSM Medical has developed GynethoticsTM, which uses a predictive model to identify an optimal patient-specific pessary design. This model is informed by demographic data, anatomic measurements, and colpodynamic imaging (CDI) data, which combines 3D ultrasound with biomechanical analysis of the pelvic floor. The goal of this project is to analyze the detailed CDI data collected by COSM Medical to better understand the female pelvic floor biomechanics. This analysis combined with computational modelling of current pessary designs will result in improved pessary design and use.