Innovative Projects Realized

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

29670 Completed Projects

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

Projects by Category

Effects of Switching Dynamics on Solvent Recovery Efficiency from Shrinking Polymer Microdroplets

Latex particles are widely applied in inkjet printing, painting, coating, lubrication and many other areas. The current process for latex production relies on emulsion formation and separation, requiring the use of organic solvents that are flammable and volatile with negative environmental impact. In their seminal work, Jessop et al reported switchable solvents that can be hydrophilic after protonization by CO2 or other acidic stimuli (such as glycolic or formic acids), and become hydrophobic when the stimuli are removed [1]. Those solvents can be used to dissolve polymer in absence of the stimuli, forming emulsion droplets containing polymer in water. In presence of the stimuli, the solvents are converted to soluble salts that leave the droplets, leading to break up of the emulsion [1]. As such, switchable solvents provide a green and sustainable approach for latex nanoparticle synthesis in an aqueous environment [2,3]. A representative switchable solvent is N,N-Dicyclohexylmethylamine (Figure 1) with CO2 as a popular trigger.
Despite of significance for a broad range of technological applications, it remains challenging to recover switchable solvent from microdroplets containing latex nanoparticles for reuse.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Xuehua Zhang

Student:

Partner:

BC Research Inc.

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Clean Technology; Sustainability & the Environment; Nanotechnology

University:

University of Alberta

Program:

Accelerate

Fashion Foodnotes – Understanding the Social, Environmental and Cultural Implications of the Food-Fashion Nexus

At the center of the research project are the various phenomena connecting food and fashion, such as fashion that is printed with, shaped like or even made of food, as well as collaborations between designers and actors in the food industry. After a tense relationship between food and fashion in the past, this new development can be considered a change in social values – seemingly heralding the end of Kate Moss’ “Nothing-tastes-as-good-as-skinny-feels”-mentality as well as the start of an increasing (environmentally) aware consumer culture. By taking a closer look at the connection of food and fashion the thesis will highlight how gender performance, identity construction and group dynamics have shifted. The insights gained through the dissertation will benefit our understanding of food and fashion from a social, historical and cultural background. In addition, the thesis may help to open a conversation about the underlying attitudes, motivations and beliefs of people in Western society asking for a change towards a more environmentally and humane development in the industries.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Jessalynn Keller

Student:

Partner:

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Education

University:

University of Calgary

Program:

Globalink Research Award

Adaptive operating room (OR) scheduling and control of cardiac surgeries

Operating room scheduling is one of the most important issues at Foothills Medical Centre (FMC), on which the hospital budget and the efficiency of OR management rely. OR
scheduling is difficult in practice and theory because there are many constraints and disturbances. However, cardiac surgeries have special characteristics. Compared with other
types of surgeries, cardiac surgeries usually have more complicated procedures, accordingly resulting longer case times and greater variances, increased interdependency of patients with surgeons, and increased dependency of surgeries on OR staff and anesthetists. These special characteristics make OR scheduling of cardiac surgeries sensitive to disturbances. Thus the general OR scheduling and planning at the hospital is inefficient for cardiac surgeries. Therefore, in our extension Mitacs-Accelerate project, we focus on cardiac surgeries. We need to tailor our former FFPD heuristic for general adaptive OR scheduling and control, by taking into consideration of variances of case times and dependencies of cardiac surgeries.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Barrie Nault

Student:

Partner:

Alberta Health Services

Discipline:

Business

Sector:

Health and Related Sciences & Technology; Public administration; Retail trade

University:

University of Calgary

Program:

Accelerate

Understanding Failed Forensic Science: A Research-Based Radio Documentary Series

This project enhances scholarly and public understandings of how technical scientific knowledge shapes legal outcomes, especially through the process of finding facts. Fact determination is an unregulated yet enormously consequential task for courts. Yet the law of evidence remains widely conceptualized as an essentially rule-bound domain, including in legal pedagogy. Meanwhile, despite judicial efforts at gatekeeping for reliable science, forensic expertise continues to feature in miscarriages of justice. By accessibly highlighting underappreciated stories of expert evidence gone wrong, this project will address critical gaps between legal theory and practice, enrich the research literature with interdisciplinarity, and foster academic progress with vital practical applications. This project also aims to enrich public discourse surrounding these issues in Canada and abroad. To date, little research about how experts and technical scientific knowledge shape the law’s key processes has been effectively mobilized to the public. Our project seeks to reverse this trend by partnering the intern’s disciplinary expertise with Cited Media’s acclaimed knowledge mobilization framework to produce a five-part radio mini-series that will enhance the public’s understanding of critical yet often misunderstood legal processes

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Faculty Supervisor:

Emma Cunliffe

Student:

Partner:

Cited Media

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Information and cultural industries

University:

The University of British Columbia

Program:

Accelerate

Prioritization and Optimization of the Sewer Flushing Program for Municipal Wastewater Collection Systems

The objective of the study is to develop an algorithm to streamline and automate the decision making process for implementing the municipal wastewater collection flushing program. Traditionally, a municipal flushing program, or pipe cleaning, is based on a time-cycle approach. This means that all sewer pipes in the network are treated the same, ignoring variables, such as the pipe physical attributes, site conditions, use and service are ignored. The driving paradigm for this project is to switch from a quantity-focused practice toward a quality-focused approach. This project will develop an innovative computer-based tool to optimize the preventive maintenance of sewer pipes through flushing. Flushing is characterized by injecting pressured water inside the pipes to flush the grease, debris and deposits before blockage and failures occur. This computerized tool will assist municipalities applying an evidence-based, risk-informed asset management strategy. The strategy will focus on decision making to optimize and implement the flushing program and the modelling of the process with existing GIS applications. Aspects outside the scope of this project include condition assessment and modelling of pipe deterioration.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Arnold Yuan

Student:

Partner:

Town of Georgina

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Public administration

University:

Toronto Metropolitan University

Program:

Accelerate

Integration sound considerations into the Montreal nightlife policy

Noise affects everyone, and our cities try to limit noise impacts through effective policy. We focus on the issue of night noise, where the needs of different people can vary widely between wanting quiet for sleeping and for the great nightlife that cities are known for. This collaboration between the City of Montreal and the Sounds in the City research team uses Montreal as a living laboratory to develop new tools and methods to take sound into account when developing and evaluating a new nightlife policy. The project focuses on participatory approaches to integrate the perspectives of different city users on night noise into a coherent nightlife strategy and policy. Building upon a review of regulations and best practices, the project will support the implementation of the new nightlife policy with a sound dimension. We will first determine an auditory diagnosis of the current situation in Montreal in relation to sound and noise aspects, and then develop pilot projects to evaluate innovative approaches for nightlife policy and management.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Catherine Guastavino

Student:

Partner:

Ville de Montréal

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Public Service, Policy, and Governance; Sustainability & the Environment; Tourism

University:

McGill University

Program:

Accelerate

Caractérisation génétique d’algues rouges et brunes du golfe du Saint-Laurent pour l’industrie alimentaire et cosmétique

1) l’identification moléculaire d’espèces d’algues rouge Porphyra ainsi que d’algues brunes, Laminaria digitata
Mérinov, le Centre de recherche appliquée en pêches et en aquaculture et l’École des pêches et de l’aquaculture du Québec appuie le développement de l’industrie des algues dans l’est du Canada depuis 15 ans. Merinov travaille actuellement sur la culture de différentes espèces d’algues dont Laminaria digitata et Porphyra pour approvisionner les entreprises locales de transformation d’algues et de cosmétiques mais ne possède pas l’expertise pour la caractérisation génétique. Cette identification sera très importante pour l’entreprise ‘Un océan de Saveurs’. Ce projet de systématique profitera également aux cueilleurs d’algues de Gaspé qui commercialisent la laminaire digitée ainsi des espèces de Porphyra sp. En effet, ils pourront certifier l’identification de l’espèce Porphyra sp vendue à leurs clients.

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Faculty Supervisor:

France Dufresne

Student:

Partner:

Merinov (Gaspé, QC)

Discipline:

Earth science

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

Université du Québec à Rimouski

Program:

Accelerate

Development of a UV-LED air purifier for indoor air

Indoor air is contaminated by a variety of chemical and microbial contaminants. These contaminants can be effectively removed or inactivated using a process known as photocatalysis. In this method, a photocatalyst is chemically activated using ultraviolet (UV) radiation and readily degrade the contaminants when coming in contact with them. The application of newly emerged ultraviolet light-emitting diodes (UV-LEDs) as the radiation source for photocatalytic air purification is investigated in this project. A UV-LED-based air purifier concept is developed, and the engineering design is optimized using simulation tools. Then, a prototype with an optimal design is fabricated and is experimentally tested for removing several chemical and microbial contaminants. The outcome of this work is important for improving the indoor air quality by removing chemical and microbial pollutants in the air.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Charles Haynes;Fariborz Taghipour

Student:

Partner:

Watersprint Holdings Limited

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

The University of British Columbia

Program:

Accelerate

Automatic Tracking, Localization, and Action Recognition of Hockey Players, Using Broadcast Videos (Phase 2)

Automatic analysis of sport videos is an attractive research area in computer vision that is driving the sport analytics towards a more technological edge. By automatically analyzing sport videos, lots of information could be drawn that benefits the teams, coaches, referees, players and even the fans, such as: extracting strategy of the game, technique and performance of each individual player, performance of the referee in a competition, and etc. This area of research, although attracted many researchers in the computer vision community, is still in its infancy. This project focuses on automatic analysis of the broadcast hockey videos. Explicitly, in this project as the second phase of a hockey video analytics project, precise tracking and localization of the players on the ice-rink will be performed and 2D pose of the players and goalie will be extracted and will be used for recognizing the action type that is performed by each player and goalie.

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Faculty Supervisor:

David Clausi;Alexander Wong;John Zelek;Mohammad Javad Shafiee

Student:

Partner:

Stathletes

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Information and cultural industries

University:

University of Waterloo

Program:

Accelerate

Strategic Management – Transitioning from the Red Ocean to the Blue Ocean: A Case Study of Blueprint Residential Property Management Company

This research is intended to assess Blueprint Residential Property Management Company’s current organizational structure, business processes, system infrastructures, policies, leadership skills, and employees to determine areas of change and realignment to move the organization to a leading-edge service company. The research is also intended to factor in opportunities that need to be tapped into due to the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic and recent Bill-20 legislation passed by the Government of Alberta. Finally, we will be supporting the organization when deploying some of the identified systems to be replaced to ensure there is employee adoption of these systems.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Ajnesh Prasad

Student:

Partner:

Blueprint Residential Property Management Company

Discipline:

Business

Sector:

Real estate and rental and leasing

University:

Royal Roads University

Program:

Accelerate

Evidence-driven strategies for successful schooling outcomes of learners of African descent in Nova Scotia

Research has identified that a gap exists in the academic achievement of Nova Scotian students of African descent as compared to their peers. Taking an Africentric approach, this research aims to understand how schools, families, and communities can collaborate to provide an enabling environment for learning so that Nova Scotian students of African descent succeed in school. This research will also identify the opportunities and challenges associated with the development and implementation of policies that support such partnerships, and the ability of educators to understand the cultural nuances of the African culture. Furthermore, this research also proposes to identify the learning patterns amongst students that ensure successful schooling outcomes. Identification of such learning patterns will provide a basis for data-driven policy decision-making and implementation in Nova Scotian public schools.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Pawan Lingras;Joyline Makani

Student:

Partner:

Delmore “Buddy” Daye Learning Institute

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Education; Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

Saint Mary's University

Program:

Accelerate

In Vitro Simulation of Neck Fracture, Wear, Corrosion and Distraction in Modular Total Hip Replacements

Reports of in vivo total hip replacement failures have raised concerns over their load bearing capacity, safety, reliability and service life particularly as hip arthroplasty is being extended to
even younger patients. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure continual patient monitoring and develop proper testing standards. This study focuses on investigating retrievals and in vitro
test samples with the objective of ensuring accurate simulation of in vivo conditions in a lab setting. Both currently used neck materials, Ti6Al4V and CoCrMo will be investigated.
Fatigue life, corrosion and wear damage as well as distraction forces will be studied. Optical and scanning electron microscopy will be used to analyze damage and fracture features
allowing direct comparison between retrievals and in vitro test samples on one hand, and Ti6Al4V and CoCrMo necks on the other hand. The study will serve as benchmark to test and improve implant performance and life through modification of implantation technique

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Faculty Supervisor:

Michel Nganbe

Student:

Partner:

The Ottawa Hospital;University of Ottawa

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Education; Health and Related Sciences & Technology

University:

University of Ottawa

Program:

Accelerate

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