Innovative Projects Realized

Explore thousands of successful projects resulting from collaboration between organizations and post-secondary talent.

29670 Completed Projects

2811
AB
4990
BC
801
MB
663
NL
825
SK
8841
ON
9197
QC
95
PE
568
NB
1088
NS

Projects by Category

Single-molecule analytics of RNA/DNA drug constructs interacting with RNA targets and with lipid nanoparticle delivery vehicles

In this project, the interns will develop a new set of tools and techniques to provide new scientific insights into the detailed interactions that occur between drug and target molecules in the human body. Understanding of these interactions is critical to design better, more effective, and more precisely targeted drugs. The problem is that current techniques for investigating molecular interactions make “ensemble measurements” over huge numbers of drug and target molecules and give researchers only an “average” measurement of the interactions. But this average measurement misses many important details of how one individual drug molecule interacts with one individual target molecule, and as drugs become increasingly sophisticated these “single-molecule” insights become critical. The interns will apply a new single-molecule microscopy technique being developed by the Canadian startup ScopeSys to investigate two new kinds of drugs: antisense oligonucleotide drugs, which are constructed from DNA and which target RNA, and nanoparticles, which are nanometer-sized particles that can be used to carry potent drug formulations through the human body.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Peter Zandstra;Sabrina Leslie

Student:

Partner:

ScopeSys Group

Discipline:

Physics

Sector:

Pharmaceuticals; Health and Related Sciences & Technology; Biotechnology

University:

The University of British Columbia

Program:

Accelerate

. Detoxification of hemicellulosic hydrolysate for butanol production

High demands for fossil fuels and increasing concerns over global warming have renewed the interests in bio-butanol production from biomass resources as an alternative liquid fuel. Hemicellulose, as an inexpensive and abundant raw Inaterial, has great potential for being suitable fermentation substrate. A probleln associated with the fermentation of hemicellulosic sugars into butanol is the presence of a broad range of compounds such as weak acids, furfural, HMF (Hydroxymethyl furfural) and phenolic compounds, which are toxic for the fermenting microorganisms and prevent efficient fermentation. Overcoming the ilnpact of these inhibitory compounds is one of the main challenges for butanol production. So, the main objective of this study is to develop an efficient detoxification strategy of hemicelluloses hydrolysates, obtained from pulp mill in order to enhance the production of butanol by fermentation ensure the profitability of this butanol route.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Mario Jolicoeur

Student:

Partner:

FPInnovations (Pointe-Claire, QC);Greenfield Ethanol Inc (Chatham, ON);BioFuelNet;École Polytechnique de Montréal

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

École Polytechnique de Montréal

Program:

Accelerate

Evaluation of value-added lignin-based bioproducts for commercial applications

During the production of pulp, in the pulp and paper manufacturing process, one component of the tree is extracted into the pulping liquid. This component, called lignin, has potential value as an important renewable material for adhesives, fibre, and coatings. The proposed research has the focus on evaluating the pulping liquid for all of its components and transforming the lignin material into prototype materials for forest industries in British Columbia. Namely, lignin will be converted into 1) nonwoven fibre for the production of filtration media, suitable for personal protection equipment, and 2) a key ingredient in polyurethane foams, a key material in rigid building insulation foams. Key to the proposed materials is developing proper formulations for the insulation foams with the industrial lignins along with moving the lab scale spinning to the next production scale to derisk the technology. We hope to substitute fossil based chemicals using these renewable materials in potential new markets.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Scott Renneckar;Shawn Mansfield

Student:

Partner:

Harmac Pacific (Nanaimo Forest Products);West Fraser Mills Ltd. (Quesnel);FPInnovations (Vancouver, BC)

Discipline:

Physics

Sector:

Forestry; Clean Technology; Sustainability & the Environment

University:

The University of British Columbia

Program:

Accelerate

CASI Platform, Environment pillar: Benchmarking the environmental and climate performance of Canadian Agriculture

By 2050, agri-food systems must produce enough to feed 9 to billion people, while reversing trends of environmental degradation caused in part by agriculture production. This is no small task, and underscores why countless sustainable agriculture standards, certifications, initiatives and platforms have emerged to encourage and measure the impacts of sustainable agriculture practices. While these approaches to encourage, measure and verify sustainability have merit, they can also cause confusion and overwhelm producers and actors along agri-food value chains as they decide what approach best aligns with their sustainability goals and can be integrated within their operation. The Canadian Agri-food Sustainability Initiative (CASI), a one-stop online sustainability platform, aims to mitigate this confusion and duplication, and ensure Canadian producers can effectively record and communicate their performance on sustainability benchmarks. This Accelerate Mitacs Internship will contribute to the development of CASI by conducting an environmental scan that will inform the development of the environmental sustainability pillar, facilitate engagement with key stakeholders, and contributing to the dissemination on the progress of the CASI platform.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Ben Bradshaw

Student:

Partner:

Wilton Consulting Group

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

University of Guelph

Program:

Accelerate

A techno-economic framework to determine the potential of photovoltaic integrated blinds for buildings

A new solar electricity system is being developed here by Solaires Entreprises Inc. founded in Victoria, BC. The novel fabrication method and materials reduces the cost of solar cells by up to 50%. The new price point of the cells allows us to make solar energy profitable in Canada as well as incorporate solar cells where previously this was not possible. One new product that is being developed is PVblindsTM, a type of venetian blinds that will generate electricity while blocking out the direct sunlight. During this project, we will investigate the profitability of the PVblindsTM by determining the direct sunlight for several buildings in the greater Vancouver region and comparing the system cost to energy savings using simulations. Furthermore, our project will determine how these new cells perform under real conditions through experiments. And lastly, we will compare the performance of this new system to existing solar energy technologies.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Ralph Evins

Student:

Partner:

Solaires

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Manufacturing; Professional, scientific and technical services; Utilities

University:

University of Victoria

Program:

Accelerate

Technologies for Living Independently: A Technology Case Study on Remote Patient Monitoring

The population age distribution is undergoing an “inversion” and the dependency ratio, i.e., the proportion of older adults who are not working over the number of adults who are working, is increasing. This has an effect on a society’s ability to deliver community-care services and the underlying national economic capacity to pay for their needs. Advances in ICT (information and communications technologies) promise to provide support for affordable systems of care that enable human resources to be used more effectively. The use of these technologies to support community-based care is complex and demands an approach fundamentally different from ICT in acute care. In acute care settings, highly trained clinical professionals deliver care in special-purpose clinical settings, and manage the related information in Electronic Health Records.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Martin Ferguson-Pell;Eleni Stroulia;Lili Liu

Student:

Partner:

TELUS Health Space

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

University of Alberta

Program:

Accelerate

Economic and technical feasibility assessment of decarbonizing British Columbia’s building, transport and industrial sectors with electrification and power-to-gas transitions

This project investigates substitution of fossil fuels with electricity from renewable sources for the purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in British Columbia. Burning natural gas, gasoline, diesel and other petroleum products heats our buildings, drives out cars, and powers our industries. Electricity generated from hydro, wind, and solar power can provide those same services, but producing sufficient electricity from variable sources at the right time remains challenging. Converting electricity to gases like hydrogen or methane can be cost-effective to store electricity and deliver energy using gas infrastructure. This project will use mathematical modelling to determine costs, locations, operation and types of power plants, transmission lines, and gas production facilities needed to achieve significant greenhouse gas emission reductions by the year 2050.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Andrew Rowe;Peter Wild

Student:

Partner:

FortisBC Energy Inc

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Utilities

University:

University of Victoria

Program:

Accelerate

Catalysing Network Change: Exploring Practical Tools to Spark Food Network Action

Food systems organizations work brings together planners, community organizers, public health professionals, food producers, distributors and other food champions to transform food systems through direct action in communities, and collective action across organizations and regions. Many regions across Ontario have identified a fundamental challenge: moving from collaboration to action within their region. This includes the challenges of engaging policy-makers; finding ways to identify and include relevant, absent voices; creating a space where uncomfortable conversations can lead to constructive engagement; and agreeing on a specific area of focus in a food system rife with issues, among organizations whose mandates target not only food but health, climate change, poverty and social justice, among others. This project will help to provide pathways to action by collecting and assessing the merits of different approaches used with success in other regions to move from strategy to action.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Charles Levkoe

Student:

Partner:

Sustain Ontario

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Other services (except public administration)

University:

Lakehead University

Program:

Accelerate

COVID-19, Women’s Mental Health and Therapeutic Recreation in Yukon Territory.

The impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of women is currently unknown in Yukon Territory. Women have experienced unemployment, domestic violence and greater caregiving responsibilities because of COVID-19. It is important to support women’s mental health during the pandemic. Therapeutic Recreation is a healthcare profession that uses leisure and recreation to improve health and wellbeing. Therapeutic Recreation provides positive leisure experiences that can reduce the impacts of C19 on women’s mental health. This project aims to support women’s mental health during COVID-19 in Yukon Territory. Women ages 18+ and Recreation Therapists will take part in interviews talking about their mental health. We will share the results with the Canadian Mental Health Association, Yukon Government, academic audiences and educational institutions to help women during COVID-19.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Tara-Leigh McHugh

Student:

Partner:

Canadian Mental Health Association (Yukon)

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Health and Related Sciences & Technology; Public Service, Policy, and Governance; COVID-19 related Research and Solutions

University:

University of Alberta

Program:

Accelerate

Integration of Hybrid Distributed Resources in Three Different Systems With and Without Global Adjustment

The use of hybrid distributed energy resources (HDERs) has grown rapidly during the last decade as a way to reduce the stress placed on the utility grid by society’s ever-expanding power consumption. They consist of fossil fuel generators, battery energy storage systems, and renewable energy systems and can be designed to interact with the grid in various system architectures to supply end-user loads. It is important to size and integrate HDERs appropriately so that they can meet load demands, while still being cost-effective. The proposed project, which will be a collaboration between researchers from Western University and AVL Manufacturing in Hamilton ON, will be concerned with the design of new HDERs and will focus on three HDER architectures. These new HDERs will be commercialized by AVL and promise to make AVL an industry leader in HDER system technology.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Gerry Moschopoulos

Student:

Partner:

AVL Manufacturing Inc

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

The University of Western Ontario

Program:

Accelerate

Environmentally friendly adhesion promoter compositions for multilayer coating applications

In the first year of the proposed project, we will explore and optimize the application of environmentally friendly solvents for organosilane adhesion promoters that are used in the production of HSS by Canusa-CPS. In the second year, the shelf-life and lifetime of such products will be investigated using accelerated testing procedures. The results of the proposed research project will be beneficial to Canusa-CPS for the development of environmentally friendly adhesion promoters and lay the groundwork for new testing methods that predict the lifetime of HSS products. The proposed research will also create unique opportunities for the training of highly qualified personnel by exposing them to real-world technical and industrial challenges.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Hamed Shahsavan

Student:

Partner:

SFL Canusa Canada Ltd.

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

University of Waterloo

Program:

Accelerate

Consuming Social Media Services on Heterogeneous Devices

Social media integration into enterprise-oriented workflows is gaining widespread adoption due to factors such as crowdsourcing and inter-organization collaborations. The partner organization has an existing system that is working for helping Saskatchewan businesses grow by bringing educated youth into the province. Their system is for providing opportunities for people all around the world to live and work in Saskatchewan. Our work will be to re-develop the existing infrastructure in a way that it can be integrated with social media with user generated content. Further, the improved system will be cross-platform independent and can be deployed in a desktop and mobile environments. The partner organization IIBC will have the results generated by the research. This research could allow the partner organization to broaden out their offerings of products to different mobile devices and better satisfy their customer’s needs

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Faculty Supervisor:

Ralph Deters

Student:

Partner:

International Immigration and Business Consulting

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

University of Saskatchewan

Program:

Accelerate

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