Innovative Projects Realized

Economic Prosperity Collaborative Research Project

This research project is a collaboration between researchers at the Delmore “Buddy” Daye Learning Institute (DBDLI) and Dalhousie University and aims to inform practices and grow knowledge on collaboration, economic prosperity and well-being in the African Nova Scotian (ANS) community. Nyasha Mandeya will be focusing on investigating the collaborative process that went into the creation of the Black Prosperity Index (BPI), while David Kerr will be focusing on research leading to modular curriculum centered around Africentric leadership, economic prosperity, Ubuntu, and governance that would be infused into a specific Dalhousie MBA course, BUSI6995 Building Collaborative Capacity, and help to guide the inclusion of DEI principles in other MBA courses at Dalhousie University. In addition, the curriculum will be managed by DBDLI and shared with community organizations. This project will benefit the DBDLI by filling a gap in the current literature surrounding the collaboration process within ANS communities. This project is consistent with the DBDLI’s key value of making research applicable in academic settings, workplace settings and within the community. A secondary benefit is this collaboration will allow both groups to explore a relationship to engage in future research projects centered around Africentric leadership and sustainability..

Impact of Prescribed fire on Grassland Productivity and Diversity

Prescribed fire is an important tool to maintain the productivity and diversity of grasslands. Remnant grasslands within the jurisdiction of the Meewasin Valley Authority are thought to require fire to both maintain ecosystem integrity and to reduce the danger of wildfire. While there are many individual studies demonstrating the value of prescribed fire in Western Canada, there has been no comprehensive quantitative review and assessment of the evidence. This proposed project will support a post-doctoral fellow in conducting a formal synthesis of existing data of fire effects on grasslands. This research is critical to justifying and supporting the resources put into prescribed fire programs.

Amélioration de la résolution des problèmes en développement de nouveaux produits en bénéficiant de l’ingénierie de la créativité associée à la notion de la valeur

Un client qui est à la recherche d’un produit ou d’un service désire faire la meilleure acquisition possible.
Évidemment, les entreprises déploient beaucoup d’effort pour satisfaire les besoins de ces clients en
créant des produits ou des services qui comportent toutes sortes de fonctionnalités utiles. Ces dernières,
d’un aspect technique, effectuent le travail, cependant, d’un aspect valeur, apportent-elles la valeur
nécessaire et perçue par l’utilisateur?
Même si techniquement la solution choisie semble la meilleure, une autre solution moins intéressante,
toujours techniquement, pourrait offrir à l’utilisateur plus de valeurs. Dans cette recherche, une équipe
de concepteur en développement de produits sera formée à prendre en compte l’aspect valeur dans leurs
designs d’équipement. Ainsi, la réussite de l’entreprise passe par la création de valeurs pour satisfaire
les besoins de ces clients.

Engagement and online communities: Promoting a culture of helping those in need.

Social media are important ways of interaction between people, creating communities that can engage in order to promote relationships. When used by companies for philanthropic purposes, they can promote actions and donations. The purpose of this research is to understand how engagement can be enhanced through social media communities to get people to help each other more often. This project promotes a social impact through the advancement of knowledge through the use of technologies, such as social networks, in the search for creative and relevant solutions to solve the problem of organizations with philanthropic purposes. In addiction, this study promotes interaction between researchers and helps in important research gaps for the development of knowledge. Also promoting the rapprochement of the research groups Observatoire de la Philanthropie at L’Université du Québec with Trois-Rivières in Canada and Information and Media Lab in Brazil at the Federal University of Paraná in Brazil.

« Synthetic Souls » : Extraction et classification de données de joueurs humains

Le but du projet est de développer un pipeline de données qui traite les observations de séances de jeu et les segmente en différents archétypes de joueurs. À titre d’exemple, dans un jeu de rôle, certains joueurs ont un style de jeu offensif, tandis que d’autres ont un style plus défensif. Le premier défi est d’identifier ces différents styles de jeu en utilisant des méthodes d’apprentissage non supervisées. Le deuxième défi est d’identifier les actions et erreurs propres à chaque groupe pour faciliter l’entraînement de bots devant adopter des comportements humains immersifs.

Development of an annular array histotripsy transducer with co-registered ultrasound imaging

This project will focus on the design, fabrication and testing of an annular array-based histotripsy transducer that will improve the combined ultrasound imaging and therapy endoscopic device currently in development at Daxsonics. Histotripsy is a method of focusing high intensity ultrasound waves to liquify tissue and is a promising new method of accurately removing tumors with much less damage to surrounding tissue than current methods. This device will be part of a surgical suite for minimally invasive neurosurgery, enabling removal of tumors with extremely high precision. The current design uses an acoustic lens to focus ultrasound to a fixed point. In this project an annular array will be used to enable the focal depth to be electronically moved, resulting in increased penetration depth and more rapid tissue removal.

Allier la recherche et la formation pour le développement de la permaculture

La Société de développement économique de Percé (SDÉP) est en phase de déploiement d’une école de permaculture et d’innovation agricole dans la communauté de Val d’Espoir. Dans l’optique de développer un curriculum éducatif répondant aux besoins ainsi qu’aux réalités du milieu agricole locales, la SDÉP veut voir à la mise en place d’une communauté de pratique constituée d’acteurs locaux de l’agriculture innovante ainsi que de spécialistes provinciaux de la permaculture. Cette recherche permettra de déceler les besoins, les défis ainsi que les apports possibles des agriculteurs de la région de Percé et des permaculteurs du Québec à l’articulation de la formation, des stages pratiques et de la recherche opérés par l’École de permaculture et d’agriculture innovante de Percé.

Book Recommendation: Improving Collaborative Filtering with Content Information

Collaborative filtering is a product recommendation technique for making automated product suggestions to a user based on the preference information from similar users. Traditional recommendation algorithms drive personalized recommendations using the data from user purchases and ratings. For e-book retailers, besides user purchases and ratings, product features such as book content and metadata also provide valuable information that can be used ‘to improve the recommendation precision and recall. The goal of this project is to improve the recommendation algorithm in the e-book domain by incorporating additional user and product features. Research topics include the application of collaborative filtering, topic modeling and collaborative topic regression as well as experimenting with novel approaches.

Enquête sur l’appropriation culturelle dans le théâtre actuel au Québec: pistes de solutions

L’objectif général du projet est d’apporter un soutien concret aux praticien.ne.s du milieu du théâtre québécois dans l’identification, la prévention et la déconstruction des rapports de domination entre cultures, pouvant parfois surgir lors du processus de création. Par cette recherche, nous voulons améliorer la capacité des artistes à reconnaître les formes et les frontières de l’appropriation culturelle dans la création artistique. Nous voulons outiller et encourager nos créateurs.trices à emprunter des cheminements créatifs respectueux des héritages culturels et patrimoniaux de l’Autre. Nous partagerons avec le milieu un rapport d’étape qui sera présenté publiquement lors de l’ Agora | Diversité culturelle en novembre 2021, pour faire le point sur la recherche en cours. À la fin de la recherche, un rapport-synthèse final qui inclura un outil de médiation numérique, avec des ressources concrètes pour les praticien.ne.s du milieu du théâtre, sera présenté lors d’une table ronde publique, organisée à l’UQAM au printemps 2022.

Developing an Inflammation Intensity Score based on AI analysis of blood biomarkers

With chronic inflammatory diseases such as arthritis affecting the spine, a major clinical problem is that disease can advance over years with unrecognized persisting inflammation. Recently, we discovered that elevated concentration of certain substances in blood considered together, are highly associated with persisting local inflammation. This study will use data gathered from the blood chemistry analysis of 286 spinal arthritis patients followed for up to 12 years. Artificial Intelligence techniques will be used to help discern and analyze the data patterns in ways superior to previous methods. Patterns observed with the highest associations with persistent inflammation will be used to develop a suite of lab tests to assist diagnosis, define intensity of persisting inflammation and patients’ responses to drug therapy. It is envisaged that a successful suite of tests could also be used to assess presence and amount of inflammation in other chronic diseases such as chronic inflammatory bowel disease.

The Beginning of a New Area: Virtual Reality Exhibitions in Metaverses – A partnership between Thompson Landry & Art Collision in Art Gate VR

Create a virtual reality exhibition for the Thompson Landry Gallery & organize social live events in VR.

Digital Marketing Coordinator – SMS project

SMS messaging is a new digital marketing channel that is untapped. Very few companies are using this channel. One would only have to look at his/her mobile phone and one would notice very few SMS text messages that are advertisements.

Coupled with AI chatbot technology, SMS messaging could be a very profitable channel to bring traffic to DTC websites such as MyVega.com and MyVega.ca.

To this end, Vega would like to conduct SMS messaging (with AI chatbot technology) tests throughout a 4-month period. We want to know if SMS messaging with AI chatbot tech are good drivers of revenue. Also, we want to see if we are able to engage our retained customers through SMS + AI.

Furthermore, we want to further test using email automation to further scale up SMS + AI innovations.

The results will be directly tied to the performance of our Shopify eCommerce platform.

A huge treasure trove of data will be analyzed and insights will be gleaned. The conclusion of this 4-month test will be whether to continue or discontinue the SMS + AI chatbot strategy.