Innovative Projects Realized

Evaluating current mental health and substance use services for First Nations communities served by Carrier Sekani Family Services (CSFS)

Carrier Sekani Family Services (CSFS) provides a range of health and social services to First Nations communities in north central British Columbia. Mental health services and supports are a part of the same. This project will assess current services and supports and find other promising models of care for mental health and substance use for Indigenous peoples. We will complete the following activities: a review of literature, interview community leaders, managers, health and social care providers, and individuals with lived experience to better understand what works well in current programs and services, what could be done to improve services and supports, and what gaps need to be addressed. These results will be helpful to CSFS in making changes to services and supports and developing new models of care.

Piece of Mind: arts-based knowledge translation of Parkinson’s disease research and lived experience

academic sphere, and limit interactions with the stakeholder community. This project promotes meaningful collaboration for the co-construction of knowledge around Parkinson’s disease (PD), using the performing arts as an interactive tool for knowledge translation. Piece of Mind brings together researchers, performing artists, and persons affected by PD to create a performance piece based on scientific research and lived experience. We expect the creative process to foster knowledge exchange and empathy between participants, and the resulting performance to engage a wide audience on both an intellectual and emotional level. Our hope is that this research-creation project will 1) facilitate research uptake outside the academic community, and 2) present a more holistic, person-centered view of PD. As a key stakeholder in the Canadian PD community, Parkinson Québec will benefit through direct access to the resulting knowledge translation materials.

Understanding and advancing equity in Canada’s forest sector.

Women, immigrants and Indigenous people are under-represented in Canada’s forest sector, especially in executive and technical positions. Research undertaken as part of a three-year initiative (2018-2021) entitled Gender Equity in Canada’s Forest Sector National Action Plan (spearheaded by the Canadian Institute of Forestry / Institut forestier du Canada, in partnership with the Centre for Social Intelligence) has helped establish a baseline of data on gender representation and equality. This research project seeks to promote equity and understand the barriers and obstacles faced by under-represented groups through the collection and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data. This data will be used to inform policies, programs and actions that support the advancement of gender, diversity and inclusion in the sector.

An optimized relay for interoperating between ledgers

In 2008, Satoshi Nakamato introduced Bitcoin, a peer to peer electronic cash system. Unlike traditional banking system, Bitcoin allows people to transfer their money without need to trust a third party. This goal was achieved using the data structure called blockchain. Since Bitcoin, the idea of blockchain has been widely used in several projects. Depending on requirements of a project, a blockchain was designed to have a certain level of security, privacy, speed and etc. Nowadays, it doesn’t seem like there will be a blockchain to rule them all, therefore, all these different blockchains should be able to communicate with each other. Relay is the strongest solution for this problem which is trustless and can be used for general purposes. In this project, we want to design an optimized and incentive compatible relay with some outstanding features that makes cross chain communication possible. This research will allow Aquanow to contribute to the blockchain communities and create the presence of the company by dedicating R&D in blockchain space.

High Performance Clustered Secure Storage Solution

45 Drives—a Nova Scotia based company—offers a high-density, low-cost data storage solution called the Storinator. While this product has been very successful, clients have indicated they would like a clustered solution which offers similar performance and redundancy, without sacrificing security or drastically increasing the cost. Researchers at the University of New Brunswick have been identified as a good fit for creating a clustered software-architecture in tandem with 45 Drives’ hardware-architecture. This software solution will be created from other software products which release their code for free called Free Open-Source software, or FOSS. The software-architecture must keep data secure, be resilient to failure and perform its tasks quickly.

Traditional Land Use Mapping and Environmental Assessment with Maawandoon

This research will assist First Nation members to monitor First Nations territories, lands and waterways and document Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS). To document cultural aspects of land use and assess the environment through video, maps and workshop teachings. In the process, Elders and Knowledge keepers will honour their cultural traditions of transferring and sharing knowledge to the next generation of leaders and land stewards. This Land Guardian program will bring traditional land use and Indigenous knowledge as key building blocks to build capacity for Indigenous sustainable planning and development activities in First Nations. The ultimate goal is to empower communities by increasing local decision-making. In summary, Indigenous students and other youth will be trained to be the “boots on the ground” and will act as “eye and ears” of the communities. The youth, Elders and students’ observations, combined with traditional and colonial knowledge, will lead to Strategic Planning on their traditional territories.

Developing power line network modeling method considering wind effects

This project aims to develop and evaluate new geometric modeling algorithms of power line and building objects required for conducting power-line related asset risk analysis in challenging environment considering wind blowing effects. The project also aims to integrate newly developed algorithms into York University’s in-house power line modeling test bed and evaluate their performance using GDI’s extensive inventory data. It’s generally known that modeling accuracy and reliability become greatly degraded under the circumstances when intermediate or strong wind is blown on sites. The wind-adaptive modeling algorithm will enhance the precise identification of a potentially hazardous area based on PL models under challenging environments. The expected benefit to the partner can be summarized as: Efficiency- eliminating the labor intensive rectification of modeling errors caused by wind effects, Accuracy- more accurate clearance quantity threatens PL systems under wind blowing conditions, Productivity- enhancing the updating process of geospatial database in challenging environments.

Brand, Business Plan and Relationship Development for CFRAC

This four-month project with The Centre for Race and Culture (CFRAC) will provide the Intern with hands-on, real-life experience. The Intern will support CFRAC’s business plan development, brand identity, and relationship management. The Intern will work with the Executive Director to advance CFRAC’s social enterprise and innovate its strategy to today’s environment.

The Intern will analyze CFRAC’s strengths and weaknesses within the organization and external opportunities and threats, such as COVID-19. It will be important for the Intern to analyze the various ways COVID-19 affects different races and ethnicities. The Intern will identify ways in which CFRAC can continue to safely educate the community, exploring the virtual world of education. Virtual interactions need to create the same impact and value for the community as in-person interactions. This project will allow the Intern to provide solutions on how to better support the community during this pandemic.

Development of novel immuno-modulatory drugs for severe inflammation and infection (COVID-19)

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered coronavirus. The symptoms can range from mild flu symptoms, such as fever, cough, fatigue, to severe symptoms: shortness of breath, pneumonia or acute lung injury known as acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), leading to multiple organ failure and death. The patients with ARDS often have exaggerated immune responses with enhanced release of inflammatory mediators that cause the damage of the lung structure and reduction of lung function. Panag Pharma Inc. (Panag) and partner Tetra Bio-Pharma (TBP) have developed a drug product PPP003 that can reduce inflammation in experimental sepsis. In current project, we will investigate if the product can reduce lung damage in an experimental ARDS model by reviewing the histological change in the lung. The finding will provide supporting data for a Health Canada new drug application for treatment of ARDS as well as other acute and chronic systemic inflammatory conditions.

Squamish Employment Lands Model User Tool

In 2020, District of Squamish staff created a new Employment Space Demand Model as a key tool to support economic development and land use planning. The goal of this project was to better understand existing and planned supply of employment space throughout the District, and to offer data-driven forecasting for the potential demand for space overtime. The model relies on District data from business licencing, building development and construction, and it also incorporates third-party consumption data, employment and firm forecasts.

The goal of this project is to help make the Model more widely accessible to other staff at the District, evolving the model from its current format as a complex Excel-based tool to a more user-friendly format for staff. The project will involve conducting user-centered research with staff, and undertaking the design and development of a new tool that can make the model and its insights more accessible. (The student researcher would determine the optimal format for the tool, which could consist of a web-based tool / graphical user interface, a simple desktop app, or an improved spreadsheet tool.)

Mitacs Business Strategy Internship (BSI) Partner Application: City of Saskatoon (Digital Transformation Business Analyst Project)

The City of Saskatoon has prioritized development of a digital transformation to a smart city strategy. The intern will function as a business analyst for the city during this digital transformation. The intern will analyze the city’s current strategies to develop a picture of the current goals and objectives along with an understanding of the engagement groups for the city of Saskatoon. After this initial understanding of the city’s needs and goals, the intern will then identify opportunities for how the city can perform this digital transformation while still meeting the goals and including the city’s engagement groups. The city will benefit by having a technologically knowledgeable person help set the parameters and priority of the digital transformation rollout.

Machine learning for the extraction and classification of medical data from unstructured medical documents

This project addresses challenging needs of medicolegal report writers. Subject matter experts who provide expert witness testimony in the form of a medicolegal report, are asked to review thousands of pages of documents from a variety of sources to formulate their opinions. Report Mate’s goal is to develop an online platform aimed at medical report writing experts to manage large amounts of document data and help synthesize it into a chronological, searchable database to facilitate the creation of expert witness reports. One of the major challenges in synthesizing a cohesive report from this vast quantity of information is to be able to identify key pieces of information in large unstructured medicolegal documents. This project aims to use recent advances in deep learning and Natural Language Processing, to identify and classify individual medical reports and provide a classification of the type of the report.