Innovative Projects Realized

Revalorisation des matières résiduelles par la production de mycomatériaux dans une perspective d’économie circulaire

Des découvertes récentes ont démontré que certaines racines de champignons (mycélium) peuvent être mises à profit dans la production de matériaux ayant le potentiel de remplacer le styromousse, les isolants, le bois pressé, les contreplaquées, le cuir et encore d’avantage par des matériaux de qualité supérieure. Mieux encore, ces matériaux de substitution peuvent être produits à partir de matières résiduelles présentement vouées à l’enfouissement, permettant des matériaux à impact carbone négatif.
L’objectif général du projet est d’étudier la mise en oeuvre des mycomatériaux en tant que bioprocédé d’économie circulaire par l’analyse des divers mécanismes entre la sélection des matières résiduelles, la collaboration des acteurs et les bioprocédés de production. En parallèle, des prototypes de mycomatériaux cultivés à partir des gisements de résidus/ressources d’intérêts seront produits et comparés aux matériaux face auxquels ils offrent une alternative écologique.

The Affect of Fun on the Adoption of Micromobility

This research project aims to understand what factors are driving the increased usage of shared micromobility vehicles – primarily escooters – in city centres. In particular, this research seeks to understand the notion of fun as it influences how people chose to get around within a city. The findings of this inquiry will help cities understand and in turn be better prepared in planning for and in incorporating new modes into transportation strategies. Ultimately, this research intends to help cities become more integrated and better equipped to meet demands around sustainability, congestion, affordability and increased population density. In partnering with Onpoint Strategic Group to complete this research project, the results will help them remain relevant and provide new avenues of revenue in their focus on disruptive technology.

Réinterprétation structurale du gisement de Persévérance, Camp minier de Matagami, Qc

Le Canada est un important producteur de cuivre et de zinc. Ces deux métaux sont exploités pratiquement en continu depuis les années 1950 dans le Camp Minier de Matagami en Abitibi. Le district a produit près de 5 millions de tonnes de zinc à l’aide d’une douzaine de gisements appelés « amas sulfurés ». Ces gisements sont généralement de petite taille et leur découverte est de plus en plus difficile. Les modèles d’exploration sont principalement basés sur la description des mines existantes et les premiers travaux effectués à Persévérance soulèvent un point qui n’était pas intégré dans les modèles classiques utilisés jusqu’alors : le gisement a subi plusieurs déformations. L’étude a donc pour but de comprendre les géométries issues de ces déformations ainsi que des processus qui y ont conduit. Des observations complémentaires ainsi que la réalisation d’un modèle 3D permettraient d’éclaircir cette évolution structurale.

Conception d’un procédé pour évaluer l’avancement de la phase deconstruction des projets de bâtiment afin de détecter et de mitiger tôt dansle processus les déviations.

Les nouvelles technologies émergentes dans la construction, notamment celles liées au BIM et aux simulations 4D à 7D, créent une rupture dans les méthodes de gestion et entrainent des changements majeurs dans la manière de gérer, coordonner, modéliser et planifier les chantiers, de même que la communication des informations. Cependant, lors de la planification, les méthodes traditionnelles d’ordonnancement, notamment le diagramme Gantt/Précédence, sont peu adaptées à cette nouvelle réalité. Orientées uniquement vers une représentation graphique des activités et de leurs contraintes, elles omettent plusieurs aspects essentiels pour la modélisation des opérations de construction, notamment l’emplacement des travaux, la circulation et l’enchaînent des équipes sur le chantier. Le projet de recherche se basera donc sur la Modélisation Chronographique et sa représentation spatio-temporelle des chantiers pour simuler la séquence des opérations de construction, avec comme objectif d’optimiser les échéanciers des travaux en se basant sur un calcul dynamique des taux d’occupation du chantier.

Investigation of techno-economic feasibility and environmental benefits of mine waste heat recovery systems for an underground mine in northern british columbia

Underground mining operations are very energy intensive and could require significant use of fossil fuel burning on site for electrification and heat provision, if situated in off-grid areas. Conventionally, these power plants employ diesel gen-sets that can convert only about 35% of the combustion energy to qualified work and discard about 65% of the energy generated as heat through cooling cycles and exhaust. On the other hand, due to harsh climates associated with Canadian winters, such mines require mine intake air heating (or referred as preconditioning in some literature) for preventing the mine shaft and stationary shaft units from freezing (i.e. liners, transportation equipment, ventilation fans and such). Conventionally, these mines employ large-scale fossil burning stations to generate heat at the mine intake. These systems are mostly natural gas and propane based. This project aims to investigate reutilization of the discarded heat from the power plant at the mine intake to save from fossil burning at the shaft intake burners. Earlier studies suggested that mine waste heat systems can save thousands of dollars from operational expenditures with comparably less carbon emissions.

Spence Neighborhood Association

The main areas of focus for this project will be EOS, Youth and Families, and CED. With a new all-season greenhouse set for construction in late August 2020, SNA intends to hire youth in the community to operate the facility and develop a social enterprise that will provide food security, job training, and revenue to support future SNA projects.

From this project, SNA would like to have a document that outlines the feasibility of a potential social enterprise that will meld these departments in several ways.

Peg City Car Co-op – Private Fleet Management Project

My Partner organization- Peg City Car Co-op operates a carsharing service locally in Winnipeg.

The goal of the project is to establish a business case for the Peg City Car Co-op to achieve their goal of working with the City of Winnipeg to manage part of the city’s fleet of non-specialized vehicles. The project is divided into four stages. The first stage is to conduct a literature review on the history, variants and benefits of carsharing. This will help me know more about the industry and how it came to be. In the second stage where I will reach out to various other carsharing organizations that have already reached Fleet management agreements or worked with Municipalities. This questionnaire will help to know the challenges faced by those organizations, and the outcomes achieved, which will be documented in the stage two literature review. After establishing precedents, in the third stage, I will engage with the Winnipeg Fleet Management Agency (WFM) to know their needs and how the Co-op could help them. The final stage will consist of preparing a business case outlining the costs, benefits and challenges to overcome, including a set of steps to bring the plan to action.

Schedulability Analysis of Real-Time Systems Using Metaheuristic Search and Machine Learning

Schedulability analysis aims at determining whether task executions complete before their specified deadlines. It is an important activity in developing real-time systems. However, in practice, engineers have had difficulties applying existing techniques mainly because the working assumptions of existing methods are often not valid in their systems. Specifically, uncertainties in real-time systems and hybrid scheduling policies that combine standard scheduling policies have not been fully studied in the literature. This project develops an approach that analyzes the schedulability problem of real-time systems by accounting for such uncertainties and complex scheduling policies applied in practice. Our approach combines a metaheuristic search algorithm for generating worst-case scheduling scenarios with a machine learning technique for inferring a probability of deadline misses. To evaluate the practical usefulness of our work, we apply our approach to real systems developed by our industry partner, BlackBerry.

Quantitative, and qualitative evaluation of the Halo Ai stress reduction music application

The main objective of this research project is to evaluate and analyze the effect of music in well-being and state of flow of the human participants. First, we intend to design a set of scenarios, in which we collect qualitative and quantitative data via micro-phenomenology and biofeedback techniques. Then we analyze the collected data to support or reject hypotheses, such as: (1) A single use of Halo AI reduces user stress levels, and (2) repeated use of Halo Ai amplifies this effect. Finally, we will write a report in the form of a publishable research paper and document the process and the results.

Ontario Back To Play Research Project

The expected research seeks to understand the current state of youth sport offerings in Ontario, Canada. Through a survey of youth (ages 6-29), parents and organizations involved with sport in Ontario, the back to play survey aims to understand the current state of youth sport in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Access to opportunity, whether or not youth are comfortable engaging or reengaging in sport, and whether social or economic factors such as race, income or geography influence how or who is return to play, will be explored. The survey itself will include both quantitative and qualitative items for analysis, with key findings to be shared publicly and to inform future research, policy, funding strategy.

Exploring perceptions on the QUIT smartcase to guide continued development of this digitally enhanced technology for reducing and quitting dependence on e-cigarettes.

There is growing evidence that e-cigarettes, also known as vaping, have led to an upsurge health risk to young people in Canada, including long-term harm to brain development and respiratory health. Due to such adverse effects, more and more young people indicate a desire to quit. However, such desires often become unsuccessful due to the lack of resources available to assist young people in reducing and quitting e-cigarettes.
The objective of this research project is to explore young people’s perceptions of the “QUIT smartcase” for reducing and stop using e-cigarettes. The QUIT smartcase prototype consists of a case wherein a user puts their pack of cigarettes or e-cigarette into the case and schedule time for when the case can be opened to access them. A user study will be conducted to explore the usefulness of the QUIT smartcase prototype and generate recommendations to design fully functional QUIT smartcase for a gradual reduction of e-cigarette.

Perception de la ville de Val d’Or par les femmes autochtones

Mon projet de recherche se concentre sur la perception de la ville de Montréal qu’ont les femmes autochtones. Je vais, au travers de ma problématique, essayer de saisir en quoi cette perception de la ville est liée aux rapports de domination, et plus particulièrement les violences subies. A travers plusieurs sous-questions et à l’aide du cadre théorique de la géographie de la peur, je vais tenter de comprendre comment les femmes autochtones perçoivent la ville de Montréal, comment cet espace est vécu et s’il existe une localisation privilégiée pour ces femmes, c’est-à-dire des quartiers qu’elles préfèrent fréquenter ou loger.
A l’aide d’une méthodologie basée en partie sur des entretiens compréhensifs en compagnie de femmes autochtones vivant à Montréal et de l’observation, je vais chercher à répondre à ma problématique de départ.