Innovative Projects Realized

Managing Geo-Location Data from Long-term Care: Pipeline Development and Administration

Shannex is presently piloting a geo-navigation system in some of its enhanced care homes. It is anticipated this data, once brought in-house, will have data mining capabilities to impose prevention/mitigation tactics on adverse health outcomes and ultimately improve the quality of life of residents. Our present challenge is the existing reporting system is not robust and mainly designed for clinical practice rather than analytical purposes. To best leverage the location data for improving resident care, Shannex requires expertise to develop a means to house this data internally to allow for advanced analytics. Presently, the magnitude of data being collected, and stored, in cloud storage exceeds Shannex’s capacity (by both infrastructure and internal skillset). We require a professional with data engineering skills to create a data pipeline, right-size processing needs/ capabilities, define storage capacities, and access requirements to perform analytics and visualizations for better care planning.

Analyzing team dialogue to enhance collaboration and psychological safety

The proposed research project will be to examine Reticle Venture’s current system and its links to the current literature on psychological safety and team functioning. The overarching goal is to establish content validity of their current system by assessing whether their current framework is measuring what it is supposed to be measuring in line with current research. This will consist of two primary activities. First, an intensive literature review of the psychological safety literature with a focus on understanding how Reticle Venture’s system maps on to the current literature and identifying what is not currently reflected in their system. Second, an assessment of content validity by subject matter experts from the Industrial Organizational Psychology field. SMEs will be recruited and provided definitions of what Reticle Venture’s is trying to measure and the way they are trying to measure it. The expected benefits to the partner organization is an improved system that is research-based that encompasses all of the current standards for psychological safety and team functioning.

Modelisation du comportement des sablles ameliores par vibro-remplacement (renouvellement)

Le projet s’inscrit dans une série d’études portant sur le thème du vibro-remplacement. Il s’agit d’une technique de renforcement des sols consistant à insérer des colonnes de ballast à intervalles réguliers dans un sol de faible portance. Le stagiaire, qui est étudiant à la maîtrise, sera impliqué dans des chantiers de vibroremplacement en vue d’instrumenter le processus et de mesurer la réponse du sol. Les données de terrain seront intégrées dans des modèles numériques visant à reproduire et prédire les phénomènes liés à la technique de vibro-remplacement. La densification et la répartition des contraintes seront au coeur de la campagne de modélisation de l’ensemble sol-colonnes. Le partenariat entre Geopac Inc. et le centre de recherche universitaire permet de mettre en commun des données expérimentales issues des chantiers et l’expertise en modélisation numérique requise pour les interpréter, positionnant ainsi le partenaire industriel en chef de file dans le domaine de l’amélioration des sols.

Lifeguard.org MVP Development

Lifeguard.org (URL: www.joinlifeguard.org) is a unique ESG venture that represents the first ever effort to provide the infrastructure, collaboration tools, and incentives needed to enable and encourage peer-reviewed science, focused on complex public health and environmental issues, on a massive scale. Our vision is to create a world where multi-disciplinary teams of scientists and subject-matter experts collaborate to conduct peer-reviewed scientific research that finds defective or harmful products and by-products and prevents them from ending up in the hands of consumers, being exposed to workers in occupational settings, and harming the environment.

With impressive investment from the reinsurance industry and support from the scientific community, Lifeguard.org has the opportunity to build a web application for our growing waitlist of users across disciplines, geographies, and expertise. This project will enable the efforts of our technical development team to be augmented with additional software development talent, so that we can accelerate our time to market to release our web application.

Stage Comptabilité intégration ERP

Le stagiaire comptabilité et intégration SGI sera responsable de réviser les procédures comptables actuelles, de pousser la réflexion au niveau de l’amélioration des processus en vue d’optimiser l’intégration du nouveau système de gestion intégré et d’assister lors de la migration et l’intégration de ce système dans les opérations de l’entreprise. Il sera impliqué dans la réflexion et le développement et l’implantation des nouveaux tableaux de bord. Finalement, il sera responsable la passation des savoirs et des procédures pour l’impartition des tâches opérationnelles comptables vers un service externe. Le projet aura comme focus l’innovation dans les façons de faire et l’optimisation des processus afin de solidifier la croissance d’EcoloPharm.

Automatic Marine Emergency Towing System

Automatic Marine Emergency Towing System

Solidarity in Belgium. History of its legal implementation between individuals and between territories

This project aims to analyze the evolution of the legal implementation of solidarity between territories and between individuals in Belgium. The main objectives are descriptive and analytical. I will report on and analyze the evolution of the legal implementation of solidarity between individuals and between territories (municipalities, provinces, communities, regions and the federal state) in Belgium. One of my interests is to target the political, social and economic contexts that have been favorable or, on the contrary, unfavorable to the development of interpersonal and interterritorial solidarity. My other concerns are to analyze the legal implementation of so-called solidarity mechanisms, to trace their evolution over time and, finally, to measure their financial importance over time.

Micro/Nanobubble-Enhanced Cold Plasma Activation of Water

The project will develop a highly efficient technology for producing plasma-activated water (PAW) with low energy consumption. Expected outcomes of the project will enable high throughput production of PAW to meet the urgent need for green and sustainable technology in agriculture and food. PAW generated in large quantities will be at low cost without using chemicals in the formulation or leaving toxic by-products to the users or the environment. A suite of analytic techniques will be explored to understand the fundamental physiochemical properties of PAW that underlie the desirable activity. The activation efficiency will be significantly improved by micro/nanobubbles so that the power input from solar panel will be sufficient for high throughput production of PAW on-site. PAW application for improved growth of plants will be demonstrated in greenhouse. The project will create an excellent opportunity for training highly qualified personnel through partnership with the industry.

Analysis of the Effectiveness of Rapid Re-Housing Strategies for Achieving Youth Housing Stability

Research has repeatedly shown that increasing housing stability for vulnerable individuals consistently improves other outcomes in their lives. Choices For Youth (CFY) is a leader in the province of NL in providing comprehensive supports to vulnerable youth experiencing homelessness in order to secure better outcomes for housing, employment, and other health factors. This research aims to analyze different housing strategies employed by CFY (emergency/shelter, supportive, and affordable) to identify trends in long-term stability achieved after these interventions. As part of National Housing Strategy, the Government of Canada and the Government of NL are engaged with provincial partners, including CFY, in research on Rapid Housing Initiatives. This research aims to measure the advantages and limitations of diverse housing strategies in order to better inform policy and programming that effectively and efficiently addresses the needs of vulnerable youth experiencing homelessness and lead to better long-term economic and health outcomes.

Building A Shared Measurement Tool for Measuring Belonging in the Community

An important part of positive well-being is that one feels loved and supported through mutually caring and respectful relationships, whether from friends, family, companions, mentors, or others that may be in the community (UNICEF Canada, 2019). That is, wellbeing is intimately related to a feeling of belonging. As such, improving one’s sense of belonging is often a target of community programs. However, in order to know whether programs are having their desired impact, there needs to be an effective means of measuring belonging. The project represents a collaboration between non-profits in Waterloo Region, led by Marillac Place, and researchers at the University of Waterloo with the objective to develop tools for the shared measurement of belonging across different community programs in order to examine program impact in an evidence-based manner. This project will contribute broadly to research on belonging and benefit the partner organization and their collaborators more effectively serve their community.

Etudes de l’occupation de Tac1b dans le génome de Candida auris avec ChEC-seq

Candida auris est une nouvelle espèce de Candida découverte depuis 2009, qui s’est propagée dans six continents, causant des épidémies nosocomiales de candidoses invasives. La mortalité élevée et la transmissibilité rendent C. auris un pathogène fongique dangereux pour la santé publique. De plus, C. auris peut développer des résistances à toutes les classes d’antifongiques (azoles, echinocandins, polyènes). La plupart des isolats de C. auris sont particulièrement résistants au fluconazole (un des azoles), utilisé contre les candidoses invasives. Donc c’est important d’élucider les mécanismes de la résistance aux azole chez C. auris.
Notre groupe de recherche a identifié un facteur de transcription Tac1b, qui régule la résistance aux azole chez C. auris. Par contre, comment Tac1b contrôle la résistance n’est pas clair. Avec ce projet, nous allons investiguer l’interaction physique de Tac1b dans le génome de C. auris avec la méthode ChEC-seq, et ainsi les gènes contrôlés par Tac1b et les voies en aval de Tac1b vont être trouvés. Ces découverts pourront permettre d’identifier les nouveaux mécanismes de la résistance aux azoles chez C. auris et aussi les nouvelles cibles thérapeutiques pour les traitements antifongiques.

Development of sustainable technologies to derive fuel chemicals and other functional materials from renewable biomass

Waste generation rates are rising, as the results of the increased world’s population. Increased global concern over environmental issues led to a strong interest in developing sustainable technologies that derive fuels and chemicals from renewable feedstock. Renewable biomass materials, as lignocellulosic waste, are attractive since they contain large amounts of renewable carbon and biochemicals with potential applications for a wide range of industries. They are well suited for producing biochemicals and materials replacing fossil fuel derived products.
Biofuels as ethanol have many advantages over fossil fuels, as they are renewable. The addition of even a mild percentage of ethanol to gasoline requires no engine modification and enhances engine efficiency while lowering fuel consumption and toxic emission for both gasoline and diesel engines. Ethanol is the main ingredient in hand sanitizer and other chemical/ biomedical industries, thus the production of ethanol is critical especially for public health concerns as observed in the current case of the Covid-19 outbreak