Innovative Projects Realized

District of Squamish Employment Space Policy Design and Innovation

Employment land and space is a strategic area of policy development for the District of Squamish, and a key focus of our Economic Action Plan. As population grows in the District, we’re conducting policy review and analysis to understand the employment space needs of our local sectors, the current capacity for different types of space, and future demand. With these insights, we’re developing data-driven economic models, tools and resources to help ensure we have an appropriate supply of land and space to support future economic growth. Ensuring an increased supply of land and marine-based employment space is a strategic priority for the District of Squamish. Adequate space means that local businesses can expand and new firms can locate in Squamish, translating into more jobs for our resident workforce.

Through zoning and policy, the District can significantly influence the development of employment space in new developments. The District seeks to optimize those new employment spaces to maximize local employment, wage, and employee density, economic diversity, neighbourhood and community vibrancy, and quality of life for residents, including the local workforce. This project seeks to take a variety of existing District of Squamish research and policy assets that have been produced to date, apply a lens of Community Planning best practices relevant to the District of Squamish, and produce an action-oriented report, including a set of guiding principles that will help District staff apply the insights toward optimal future employment space planning going forward.

Vector Medical Internship

Since its’ inception, Vector Medical has been a leader in developing innovative strategies for the IME industry. Our most notable differentiator has been our ability to conduct our assessments via telemedicine across Canada.

The COVID-19 crisis has created a perfect storm in the IME industry. Worker requests for medical leave (i.e. disability claims) have spiked significantly while at the same time, COVID-19 innovations in telemedicine have essentially made in-person IMEs less attractive.

This presents an incredible business opportunity for Vector Medical, as the appetite for telemedicine IMEs is now greater than it has ever been.

There has also been a significant increase in the proportion of disability claims linked to addictions and mental health since the pandemic started. The IME / insurance industry has responded to this crisis by creating various products and services to assist employers in getting people back to work quickly and safely.

We are now far enough into the pandemic that there is sufficient data to conduct a comprehensive market analysis that will uncover the viability and success of these various initiatives and services.

Youth Engagement Project

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, maintaining high levels of student engagement was a difficult task for JA. March break 2020 heralded the most sudden of changes in the span of a few days, putting an end to traditional face-to-face tutoring and in-person events and activities, and heralding remote synchronous and asynchronous digital teaching and learning experiences. This project will explore the minimum viable product for JA Nova Scotia’s youth engagement by evaluating the organization’s digital offerings, mediums, and channels and developing an integrated approach to increasing student participation rates and minimizing program attrition. The project will commence in Janurary 2022 and conclude in June 2022.

Product development for academic and pre-clinical research electrodes II

Neuraura Biotech Inc., (“Neuraura”) is a seed stage Calgary-based company focused on the field of neuroscience / neurotech, formed as a spin-out of the University of Calgary in 2017. Lisa Van de Panne initially worked with Neuraura as part of an Innovate Calgary funded Innovation Studentship. In this role, she performed primary and secondary research to evaluate the use of different materials in neuromodulation devices.
As a result of outstanding performance in this project and following a formal interview process, we engaged Lisa to work part-time for Neuraura between January and May 2021 and secured funding BioTalent Canada to support that role. In May 2021, Lisa commenced a full-time 15 month internship with Neuraura, with two 4-month units funded so far through MITACs BSI program. In the first project, the focus was on designing the depth and hybrid electrodes, then translating them into a set of manufacturable products. She improved on original design concepts through iterative feedback and discussions with stakeholders to refine the value proposition.

Enhancing the Virtual Teaching and Learning Experience

Research has suggested that the future of learning, in some form, is online. However, Covid showed us – by putting more than a billion students into online classrooms – that the current balance between how teachers conventionally teach in a classroom is not fit-for-purpose in the virtual world. Not only is the online environment completely unlike the physical, but the full potential of the virtual environment isn’t even being fully realized through the current way teachers expect to teach. Our mission with this project is to profoundly understand the physical teaching environment and teaching mindset, and to translate that understanding into a virtual classroom experience that rivals or is superior to convetional forms of teaching.

SUV Intern Application

The key objective of this project is to support Planet Hatch, the only Startup Visa incubator in New Brunswick, with process innovation and reduced timelines in serving its clients. In doing so, the interns will be brought on board to study the current process flow and recommend process improvement as well as develop a promotional design in order to promote the program to our audiences around the world.

Training of Neural Networks via Gradient Descent and Solvers

In Deep Learning, one of the most important determinants of the performance of a model is the training procedure used. The ideal training method produces a model that is accurate and fast, it should work on models of various sizes and be flexible enough to allow users to specify conditions they want the model to satisfy. This proposal aims to create a DL training algorithm that achieves all of these by using a careful blend of two different methods of training. The two different methods in question -gradient descent and mixed integer linear programming, each have their own strengths and limitations, this work will combine the two in an attempt to create a superior “hybrid system”. A better training algorithm has simple yet powerful applications in the real world. Every single DL system – from financial risk prediction to data analytics would be more accurate, more customizable and all this could be achieved with fewer resources.

Sustainability Scholar- Prioritizing Wildfire Risk Assessments in the City of Edmonton’s Natural Areas

Using the City of Edmonton’s Wildfire Risk Modelling analysis completed by a UofA PhD student in 2021, the Scholar will review the results to further validate and prioritize areas. The project will examine the various risk outcomes specifically for the City of Edmonton’s River Valley and Ravine System, as well as other natural areas, and will build a prioritization structure that will be applied to areas whose assessments returned high risk ratings. Field data collection will be required to validate both the fire risk modelling assessment, and the LiDAR used to build the model. This will include field work collecting forestry data such as tree species and height, as well as fire risk data such as slope and fuel loading. The prioritization structure will then be used to determine fire risk assessment priorities over the next 5 years to aid in building a Wildland-Urban Interface Wildfire Risk Strategy for the City of Edmonton.

Educating the existing and new clients about our innovation through storytelling

The challenge is how to effectively communicate our capabilities. Also, how to utilize and effectively use multimedia channels to educate and engage our audiences. Through this project, we are hoping that using storytelling will breathe emotions into the products and help U Technology revolutionize technical communications and product launching in the LED industry. There is a need to explore the latest in multimedia technology and communication channels to launch highly engaging and useful content.

Broadcast Innovations – Developing the next generation of the COD platform

CKCU has partnered with the Innovation Hub at Carleton University to develop the next generation of its foundational technology platform, COD. The platform allows CKCU to leverage automation and cloud-based technologies to track, monitor and report on content that is played on-air. This function is a critical part of the terrestrial broadcasting industry and enables a fee for content model.

Softabs-designing sugar-free viscoelastic drug delivery capsules for hydrophobic cannabinoid, nutraceutical, and pharmacological delivery across mucosal membranes

Cannabinoids, especially cannabidiol show promise as medicinal agents and are often now proscribed for a variety of indications. One of the major challenges is the lack of a standard dose, and safe ways to ingest. Smoking dried plant material causes harmful particles to enter the lungs, while homemade “edibles” can both vary in their potency and as they must pass through the liver due to digestion, can lead to different levels of cannabidiol entering the blood of different people. Oil tinctures are adsorbed across the mucosal membranes in the mouth, but are foul. The proposed SofTabs are also transmucosal, but are far more palatable, and provide a defined dose in a simple form. In this partnership, SofTab Technologies and the University of Windsor Team are designing and evaluating new and improved formulations of these SofTabs to provide certainty in dose, and a convenient chewable formulation.

CARNA – School of Public Health Student Practicum

On August 19, 2020, the College and Association of Registered Nurses of Alberta’s (College) Provincial Council unanimously voted in favour of a move to a single mandate regulator. This decision is important for Alberta regulation. Pursuing dual mandates (protecting the public and advocating for the profession) can lead to conflicting and contradictory goals. Separating the association from the regulatory mandate will provide clarity and focus to both roles.

With this single mandate, the College is committing to regulatory excellence through operational efficiency and effectiveness by embedding Right-touch Regulation. This way of thinking and decision making will facilitate an efficient and effective regulatory system and register, contributing to public protection and promotion of health and well-being.

The project will conduct organizational wide reviews, by assessing regulatory processes using practices and principles of Right-touch Regulation. Through regulatory function review engagements, the project will help employees increase awareness, knowledge and ability in applying right-touch thinking to activities, processes and decisions.

Since this is leading work within Canadian regulation, the College has engaged Harry Cayton, the founder of Right-touch Regulation, guide, collaborate and support the right-touch organizational review team.