Innovative Projects Realized

Investigating microbial degradation under a redox gradient

Evaluating the “Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation” framework: A case study of the Coquitlam River Watershed Roundtable management plan

The Coquitlam River Watershed Roundtable is collaboratively developing a watershed management plan for the lower Coquitlam River, using the “Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation” framework. Developed by the Conservation Measures Partnership (a group of international NGOs), this framework is intended to guide the design and implementation of conservation projects using an integrative approach and an adaptive management cycle. Although the Open Standards framework is being used to develop conservation projects in several settings in North America, it remains unknown whether the framework will successfully achieve the goals of sustainable water resource management and address uncertainty when implemented at the watershed scale by community-based organizations. The purpose of this research is to determine if the application of the “Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation” framework by the Coquitlam River Watershed Roundtable will achieve the goals of the roundtable and the goals of sustainable water resource management. TOBECONT’D

Drought Stress Resilience of European Beech and Norway Spruce

Development of Natural Health Products from Sea Cucumber and Wild Blueberry

More than half of Canadian households have companion animals such as dog or cat. However, cancer has become the leading cause of death in dogs. Currently, available treatments have limitations and compromise the quality of life of dogs. Adored Beast Apothecary wishes to develop unique natural health products to prevent and treat cancers of dogs. The objective of the proposed research project is to develop optimized processes to generate safe and efficacious anti-cancer natural products using a sustainably grown phytoplankton strain. The specific objectives of the project are to identify the natural compounds present in the new product, assess whether the products have antioxidant activity to prevent cancer as well as to treat cancer. The intern (a postdoctoral fellow) will examine both cancer preventive and treatment properties of the new natural health products using cultured mammalian cells. The expected result will become useful for the Adored Beast Apothecary to file a patent application, plan for experiments using animals, and progress with business development plan and commercialization.

The Development of An Enterprise Digital Twin for a Panelized Building manufacture

A DT in the manufacturing field will be used to link the physical and digital worlds, resulting in a virtual replica of a product or process that exposes real-time data and allows for the execution of advanced control schemes. The integration of both physical system and data-based approaches for the construction of the DT can offer an efficient framework across various functionalities of the physical production line. Company will use the developed DT system to connect the information flow in the manufacturing operations regarding the design, estimating, scheduling, production control, inventory management and job costing systems. The application could bring profit to a continuously improved production control and digitalization, emphasizing productivity and efficiency and its interaction with the information and data flow. This DT model, which consists of both hardware and software, can capture, process, transfer, store, and use data to assist companies in achieving their enterprise planning goals.

A computer vision approach for identifying missing welds on prefabricated steel elements

Traditional time-consuming and error-prone methods of quality control of prefabricated elements can be replaced with state-of-the-art approaches. For example, emerging computer vision and deep learning technologies can be employed in the processes to achieve better performance and quality. To detect defaults and missing welds on prefabricated steel products in real-time, this study enhances the performance, robustness, and extensibility of the computer vision-based method previously proposed by our research team. The design and implementation of a high-performance, accurate, and innovative solution, which corresponds to various manufacturing settings will be investigated in this study.

Development of Interactive, Online Quantum Computing Educational Material

In this project, the intern will work closely with the staff of Xanadu, a quantum computing company, to develop educational materials intended for an audience who are comfortable with classical computer programming, but have no prior knowledge or experience with quantum physics or quantum computers. By using interactive, web-based instructional materials, and animated graphics, it is planned to increase the students engagement and learning success. A small study will be carried out to measure the effectiveness of the new educational materials, and identify strengths and areas for improvement.

Création d’un modèle théorique du bien-être psychologique et d’un plan de développement d’un jeu sérieux (Shaman)

Ce projet de recherche repose sur la collaboration entre des chercheurs en psychologie et une entreprise spécialisée dans la création de jeux vidéo. Le but de ce partenariat est de développer un jeu sérieux (application mobile) dont l’objectif est de favoriser le bien-être psychologique et la croissance personnelle des joueurs. Plus précisément, ce jeu vidéo, nommé Shaman, proposera des activités ludiques diversifiées qui contribueront au développement de la connaissance de soi ou de la capacité d’introspection par exemple. Pour y arriver, le jeu sera aussi un moyen d’amasser des données psychométriques valides concernant certaines variables psychologiques, d’offrir une rétroaction interprétée et vulgarisée au joueur par rapport à ces variables et de proposer des activités de développement personnel efficaces et engageantes. Cette collaboration permettra d’offrir au public un jeu vidéo qui reposera sur des connaissances scientifiques et données récentes, ainsi que sur les meilleures pratiques professionnelles des domaines de la psychologie, de la psychométrie et du jeu vidéo.

Production and Characterization of Lead-203 for Radiotheranostic Molecular Imaging

With the high prevalence of cancer in the Canadian population, the need for rapid, personalized diagnostic tests is as evident as ever. Nuclear imaging allows for the visualization and diagnosis of diseases, including cancer, by detecting the emitted radiation from an administered disease-seeking molecule that has been labeled with a radioactive isotope (radiotracer). Lead-203 (203Pb) is a radioactive isotope compatible with single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), a proven imaging technique. Although 203Pb has been previously produced, the poor chemical purity of the isotope has hindered radiopharmaceutical advancement. This proposal aims to establish an automated manufacturing method to produce 203Pb in collaboration with our industry partner, ARTMS Inc., which will commercialize this technology to make this high-purity isotope available for use by nuclear medicine researchers and physicians on an international basis to improve cancer diagnostic techniques.

Moderniser les pratiques d’évaluation : la technologie au service de l’interdisciplinarité et du bien-être des enfants

Le présent projet innove en développant et en implantant un système d’évaluation de la fluidité graphique. En faisant appel aux technologies de l’information et à l’intelligence artificielle, le système d’évaluation permettra la saisie, l’analyse et l’interprétation de résultats d’évaluations conduites auprès d’enfants en milieu clinique. Pour ce faire, une version exploitable du Five-Point Test (e-5PT; Strauss & Knapp, 1982) sera développée et validée auprès d’une population âgée de 8 à 11 ans. Ensuite, la complémentarité de cet outil par rapport aux mesures standards (ex. questionnaires) utilisées dans les écoles sera examinée, afin d’aider les professionnels scolaires à mieux cibler et orienter leurs interventions auprès des enfants. Le test numérique e-5PT pourra servir à implanter des services de téléneuropsychologie au Canada et permettre une évaluation à distance (Brearly et al., 2017).

Going Beyond RGB-Based Machine Learning Datasets for Digital Agricultural Applications

This project represents the next innovative leap by the TerraByte research group at UWinnipeg and the Enterprise Machine Intelligence and Learning Initiative (EMILI). The focus main thrust of this work is to generate data that will enable machine learning approaches to digital agricultural applications. The data generated from this project includes multispectral, hyperspectral, and 3D data. This data is fundamental to developing machine learning algorithms that require thousands to missions of examples in order to “learn” to perform specific tasks. The main applications that will be driving the data collection in this project are identifying weeds from prairie cash crops (called plant classification), recognizing specific plant traits and characteristics (called phenotyping) and identifying sickly plants (called disease detection). The benefits of this work are immense and include bringing impactful increases in agricultural production and global food security, which is especially important in a post-pandemic era.

Developing metal nanoparticle surfaces and the combination of polyionic liquids with nanoparticles as antimicrobial coatings

SARS-CoV-2 has emphasized the need for antimicrobial defenses in our environment. We need to minimize the risk of microbe transfer between people via touching a common surface. This project, led by the University of Windsor and Ontario coatings companies Tessonics and ONTech Rapid Coatings, combines three different strategies to develop a persistent antiviral coating that can be applied to surfaces and that will destroy the virions on contact. It will be safe for human contact, and comfortable to the touch. It could be applied to door handles in public buildings, handles on gas pumps, keypads on payment systems, elevator buttons, electrical switches and other surfaces that are awkward to disinfect constantly and are touched by many people. This is especially useful in public shared spaces such as airports and at large utility companies.