Innovative Projects Realized

New Marketing and Product Channels in the Quick Service Space

Due to increased pressures on the restaurant industry, small operations are facing new challenges. This project will identify market trends and market leaders in those trends in online ordering, delivery, operational improvements and menu improvements to help set up operations innovation initiatives.

Predicting Treatment Response to 1st-Line Pembrolizumab in Highly Expressing PDL1 Advanced NSCLC Patients using Artificial Intelligence Models

Late-stage lung cancer patients with non-small cell lung cancers who demonstrate high levels of PDL1 expression have better outcomes when placed on a combined treatment program of both immunotherapy and chemotherapy. There is a subset of patients that respond well to pembrolizumab, an immunotherapy drug, alone as an initial treatment path, but there are no clinical methods or biomarkers able to identify good candidates for this approach. A preliminary study with a simple discriminating model pipeline identified 10 features from CT scans that can identify which patients would respond well to pembrolizumab. We suppose that we can boost the discriminating ability of these radiological biomarkers through more complex AI model architectures. By following strict and transparent reporting guidelines, we explore the clinical relevance of this model as a tool to assist oncologists in providing personalized cancer care.

Health in HIPPY Homes: Exploring the pathways and barriers to wellbeing of refugee mothers during resettlement and the COVID-19 pandemic, and the role of HIPPY in fostering household health and resilience.

The Health in HIPPY Homes project seeks to explore refugee mothers’ and families’ health during resettlement in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and the various factors that affect their wellbeing during this period. Additionally, we are interested in better understanding the potential impacts that participating in the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) program has on the wellbeing of refugee families during resettlement. Finally, in light of the COVID-19 crisis, the project seeks to understand challenges and resilience factors experienced by refugee HIPPY families during the pandemic, as well as the employment experiences of HIPPY facilitators during this unprecedented and challenging time. Data collection for the HHH project took place from November 2020 to June 2021. The intern will work closely with the Mothers Matter Centre, national facilitators of the HIPPY program in Canada, to conduct data analysis and produce both academic and plain-language reports outlining study findings. Findings will be used to enhance the positive impacts of HIPPY on refugee families, and by healthcare and social service providers to better support refugee families during resettlement in Calgary and Canada more broadly.

Détection et évitement d’obstacles pour un drone nautique autonome avec utilisation d’un échosondeur multifaisceaux

Un embarcation nautique autonome doit pouvoir naviguer en utilisant les données qui lui sont disponibles. Dans la plupart des cas, une telle embarcation utilise seulement un GPS pour connaitre sa position. Toutefois, ceci ne lui permet pas d’éviter les obstacles flottants, et encore moins les obstacles sous l’eau comme les hauts-fonds. Un système de navigation est donc requis pour pouvoir éviter ces obstacles imprévisibles tout en naviguant adéquatement pour la prise de données. Un capteur SONAR et des caméras seront ajoutés à une embarcation nautique servant à prendre des relevés bathymétriques afin de lui permettre de naviguer plus aisément et rapidement sur l’eau sans avoir à se soucier des obstacles.

Growing the Impact Field in Canada with Independent Media

My research seeks to explore the growing field of Impact Producing in Canada. Impact Producing is
defined as the labor of maximizing a documentary film’s potential for social change. This field often
involves creating partnerships between documentary films and existing social movements and the
nonprofit sector. My research will explore the methodologies and development of a 15 ??week impact
producing cohort. This program will train 5 additional people to have the skills and knowledge required
to be Impact Producers. This will contribute to the partner organization’s goal of growing this field in
Canada.

Smart Parking Garage

This study will determine the applied wind loading on the steel structure of the novel Electric Vehicle Automated Parking (EVAP). It will develop proper design guidelines for steel helical piles to support EVAP considering gravitational (self-weight of EVAP and cars) and environmental loads (i.e. wind, snow and earthquake). EVAP is the world’s first integrated parking system offering residents of the “Electric Vehicle Enclave” (EVE), London, fully-automated EV pick-up and parking. This concept will demonstrate novel parking and charging infrastructure for autonomous vehicles and address the lack of high-density EV charging in parking-restricted urban environments. EVAP will autonomously dispatch community-shared EVs to resident’s doorsteps on command, thereby reducing the need for car ownership within the community. EVAP will contribute to annual direct GHG reductions of 201 t CO2e by 2030, which can aid Canada in achieving its goal of reducing green gas emissions. This technology will also be used in the USA, which will further increase its positive impact.

Multivariate random effects model for Integrated measurement of green veneer thickness and roughness

Thickness and surface roughness are the two main veneer quality criteria affecting material recovery, plywood glue bond quality, and glue consumption. At present, on-line green veneer thickness and surface roughness are generally not measured, which causes difficulty in assessing overall veneer quality for a better control of log conditioning and veneer peeling process. In this project, we will investigate the feasibility and operational conditions of a laser-based real-time approach in the pilot plant to jointly measure those two important quality criteria and subsequently develop a statistical model for accurately predicting such two dimensional measurements. A pilot plant test will be conducted at FPInnovations, followed by a production trial in an interior BC plywood mill. The pilot plant test is aimed to assess the operational conditions, gather samples for preliminary data analysis, and get correct sample size for the mill trial. The mill trial is aimed to collect real-time data on green veneer thickness and surface roughness in real production mode. Based on the data acquired, final phase of the project is to develop statistical models to predict overall veneer quality for a better process control. The models will be applicable to all other plywood mills in BC.

Validation of PeCOD in Strategic Applications, Freshwater and Wastewater

MANTECH’s has business strategy is to complete direct experimental validation of the PeCOD patented technology in strategic sites in the Western Provices, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. In Manitoba, this includes working with the University of Manitoba at the International Institute of Sustainable Development’s Experimental Lakes Area (IISD-ELA), in Saskatchewan, the Saskatchewan Research Council on the Protection of Freshwaters, in British Columbia, winery wastewater and in Alberta, multi-faceted work. In Alberta, compliance environmental testing is privatized which provides MANTECH the opportunity to experiment in two areas. 1. PeCOD as the new alternative Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) method and as a Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) estimator. The current method for COD requires 3 hours using mercury, dichromate and acid chemicals heated at 150 degrees Celsius for 2 hours. PeCOD compltes the test in 10 minutes utilizing a photocatalytic nanotechnology. The University of Waterloo Institutes of Nanotechnology is working with MANTECH to futher develop the PeCOD nanotechnology. BOD takes 5 days to comple, thus not useful for any impact.

This project will build upopn the University of Waterloo’s research by working with the western provincial and municipal Governments, and third part environmental and soil testing laboratories,to ensure the proposed green method meets their requirequirements for accreditation and reporting.

Sustainable Desktop Program Creation/Renewal

We are looking for two interns to help reproduce a sustainable desktop program intended to track and store client database. Our current program (CMP) will no longer be supported but the program creator is accessible and can assist in supervising/answering questions. The current program contains all the code for the features required for our business. There was discussion about creating a new program that is based off the current program which may involve “translating” the current code. Additionally, importing the information from the current program to the new program would be an additional task that we can provide.

Stratégies d’éthique proactives pour entreprise en I.A. et R.V.

Accompagnement du Beam Me Up pour bien définir, préciser, défendre et solidifier l’aspect éthique dans la gouvernance globale de son entreprise, mais aussi de ses projets dans le domaine de la gériatrie. dont son système intelligent d’assistance à la surveillance d’espaces communs des résidences pour personnes âgées : l’intelligence artificielle et les technologies de détection au service des aînés et du personnel, ainsi qu’évaluer et mettre en place l’accompagnement de ces projets gériatriques, en plus de suggérer pour l’entreprise et l’ensemble de ses projets des autres secteurs, des recommandations générales et évaluer les besoins éthiques généraux. Cela permettra de bien encadrer les inquiétudes éthiques envers l’intelligence artificielle, particulièrement dans les utilisations grands publics, pour en assurer la bienveillance et bonne utilisation avec des informations personnelles.

Fundamental Studies of Aerobic Membrane Bioreactor under Short Sludge Retention Time Conditions for Municipal wastewater treatment

Conventional wastewater treatment processes consume a large amount of energy and produce around 32% of
municipal greenhouse (GHG) emissions. Thus, advanced wastewater treatment technologies with low energy
consumption and GHG emissions are highly desirable for environmental protection. Aerobic membrane bioreactor
(AeMBR) has been widely used for municipal and industrial wastewater purification. However, the AeMBR
technology needs to compete with conventional biological wastewater treatment technologies. To develop an
optimization AeMBR process for full-scale application in wastewater treatment plants, some challenges need to
be overcome. Therefore, this study aims to design a modified AeMBR system with high treatment efficiency, low
energy consumption, and great stability. After this study, the partner organization (SUEZ) can develop a new
AeMBR design manual, expand the market of AeMBR technologies, and develop the next generation of AeMBR
technologies.

Regulation of N-type calcium channel activity by Opioid receptor-like receptor – a novel mechanism to eliminate morphine tolerance

Prolonged morphine treatment is known to cause an up-regulation of ORL1 receptors in the spinal cord (12, 13), which in turn is believed to contribute to the development of morphine tolerance by altering ?-opioid receptor mediate modulation of N-type calcium channels. Indeed, ORL1 antagonists can reverse the development of tolerance, and ORL1 knockout can mediate resistance to tolerance with no changes on the acute analgesic effects of morphine (14, 15). Our lab has shown that ORL1 receptors and Cav2.2 channels form a physical signaling complex that results in tonic G?? inhibition of the channel activity and that this modulation can happen simply by changes in ORL1 receptor density, in an agonist-independent way (16, 17). I hypothesize that the channels that are in a complex with ORL1 receptors, can no longer be inhibited by classical opioids and, thereby contributing to morphine tolerance. Under the Mitacs fellowship, I propose to develop strategies to selectively disrupt the channel-receptor interaction and examine how this will affect the transmission of pain and the tolerance to opioids. I expect to first identify the molecular details of the channel/ receptor interaction site and then, design cell-permeable Tat-peptides to disrupt the interaction in vitro and in vivo.