Innovative Projects Realized

Development Intern

Our organization remains a leader in the Vancouver real estate development business, however the Covid-19 pandemic required a slow down in our acquisition and development activities. The situation has now changed to allow us to pursue multiple opportunities in acquisition, but we require more hands to help us with the analysis. The intern will work to help us understand the state of the real estate market in Vancouver and the lower mainland doing analysis on key sales activity to help us determine whether to embark on new sales activity. The intern will work to help us understand the viability of projects which have been presented to us as opportunities to understand the risks.

The role of regulatory T cells in blood during acute heart transplant rejection

Patients receive heart transplants as a life-saving measure after heart failure; thus, ensuring the success of the transplant is of utmost importance. Rejection is a primary cause for heart transplant failure, and consequently, patients must take drugs that suppress the immune system to prevent rejection. However, these drugs are highly unspecific and cause serious side effects that can be life-threatening. New immunosuppressive drugs that can prevent transplant rejection while allowing normal immune function can greatly improve care and patient outcomes. One type of immune cells called regulatory T cells (Tregs) can effectively suppress the immune system in a highly specific manner. We believe these cells can be effective in preventing and treating acute rejection. Working toward such a goal, our research plan is to first understand how Tregs behave during rejection. We will track their activities by measuring 46 genes in the blood of heart transplant patients throughout the first year post-operation. These genes provide valuable information on the risk of acute rejection at a given time and on changing Treg responses.

Influencing buyer behavior with Intelligent Marketing and team performance with digital coaching.

The proposed project aims to define and apply a set of AI rules based on customer sentiment, loyalty and purchase behavioral data using data from Drive CX customer experience management platform. The rules would generate “hyper-personalized” marketing offers that result in measurable increases in loyalty and Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV). The deliverable would be a case study that correlates the relationship between personalized marketing offers with positive changes in consumer behavior such as increased engagement, visits and spend.
Drive CX leads the market in dynamically configuring custom branded comment cards on intelligent payment devices in minutes. Our partners include First Data, Global Payments, Ingencio, Clover and Poynt. This project is about taking our brand promise to the next level, by leveraging the correlation between the customer and team experience and engagement and sales and profits with the goal of supporting successful chains in being even more profitable and competitive in a post-covid world.

Bacterial proteolytic function in inflammatory bowel disease

Differences in the composition of bacteria within the gut have been found in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and healthy people. In addition to this, bacterial functional differences may also contribute to inflammation in IBD, but it is difficult to determine whether these changes are cause or the consequence of disease. Proteases, which are enzymes that break down proteins, are produced by bacteria in the gut. Proteases can be inflammatory, and it has been shown that patients with IBD have higher activity of proteases in stool, but whether this activity comes from bacteria is not known. We will investigate whether proteases are increased before the onset of IBD, whether this bacteria contribute to this, and whether they cause inflammation in animal models of colitis. Finally, we will determine whether we can inhibit bacterial proteases using specific probiotics to reduce inflammation. To address these objectives, we will use fecal samples collected from a unique cohort of patients: 1) subjects who are at healthy, but at risk for IBD, and who go on to develop IBD later; 2) these same patients at IBD diagnosis; 3) subjects who are at risk for IBD, but have remained healthy (controls).

Standardization and optimization of saliva sample processing for SARS-CoV-2 detection without nucleic acid purification

The SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, which started in Dec. 2019, has so far not been contained due to unpreparedness and unsuccessful development of antiviral drugs against SARS-CoV-2. In response to this pandemic, we propose development of a diagnostic assay based on saliva samples. We will also standardize virus collection procedure and inactivation steps to reduce the turnaround time of the results. We have the required expertise of working with virology techniques, molecular biology and diagnostic assay development. The goal of our design will be to 1) standardize sample collection buffer; 2) standardize additive which is most effective for inactivation of SARS-CoV2; 3) Standardize isolation buffer to skip the RNA extraction step; 4) Reduce the turn-around time for result.

Implication of adrenergic receptor Beta-3 on cardiac glucose metabolism during Heart Failure

With an estimated number of 37,7 millions people affected worldwide and a high mortality, heart failure (HF) represents a major public health problem. The beta-3 adrenergic receptors (?3AR) are expressed in human cardiac contractile cells. In the past few years, our group and others showed that by reducing oxidative stress ?3AR confer protection against cardiac fibrosis and hypertrophic remodeling, pathophysiological traits associated with the progression of HF.

This project aims to test the hypothesis that the protective role of ?3AR in reducing oxidative stress is mediated by an increase of the pentose phosphate pathway. This pathway generates NADPH, a molecule used by the cell for detoxification, thus reducing oxidative stress. This hypothesis will be tested in dynamic conditions by metabolic flux analysis (MFA) on cardiac tissues presenting a specific expression of the human ?3AR.

As ?3AR agonists are already used in urology clinical practice, the identification of a new protective mechanism mediated by ?3AR effects on metabolism will offer novel and immediate perspectives in the treatment of HF patients.

Improvement in the dissolving pulp production process

Two interns will collaborate with Neucel Specialty Cellulose (Neucel), which is located in Port Alice, British Columbia. Neucel is one of the leading global manufacturers of dissolving pulp, which has very high alpha-cellulose content (90 percent and over). The mill has identified the big variation in the solids content in its concentrated red liquor fed to the boiler as its priority project to improve the mill operation efficiency. To minimize the variation and stabilize the solids contents within the mill’s target range, the two interns will determine the cause of the red liquor variation, set up an on-line solids content measurement system for three evaporation lines, and build a database to identify and provide practical solutions to the issue so that the recovery boiler performance, as well as the entire operation efficiency, can be improved.

Computational Fluid Dynamics Optimization of Very High Lift Coe?cient Airfoil

The proposed research project’s objective is to perform analysis on airfoil dimensions and configurations for a crosswind power kite system for wind energy generation. The airfoil will be examined through computational methods to determine how well the airfoil will perform. The airfoil configurations will then be optimized to find better designs for airborne wind energy systems. The The partner will benefit from this work as better airfoil designs may be found, along with further understanding of how changes in airfoil configurations effect the behavior. The partner will also be provided with a method for visual feedback of how the airfoil performs through simulation.

COVID Business Strategy

As we recover from the initial shock of Covid 19, we have had to rehire, several employees and recruit several additional people for new positions. Demand from the US and Canada is so high that we need to increase our head count from 180 to 205 -210 people by the end of July to meet our production targets with the potential of reducing head count in the winter through the used of short term employment contracts or temp labor agencies. In all cases, there will be a big push on bringing in people, training them and review / adapt policies to ensure a safe work environment in a Covid 19 world.

AltumView Marketing Strategy

The product has a high potential of growth in the future because of its unique mission. However, the company has been focusing on the product development and introducing the products in senior care homes. The company now wants to introduce the products to direct customers and expand the product presence as well as brand awareness. In order to achieve this, an on-going marketing plan is needed. Starting with Kickstarter project, the company then focuses on promoting its social media accounts, creating advertisements on these accounts are next steps to maintain customer relationship. As a marketing intern for the company, I could help with preparing the materials, by preparing contents and pictures. By starting with scheduling to update the social media accounts of the company two to three times a week, the moderate frequency will help the company slowly get to the cycle of frequent updates. Moreover, the company should take advantages of the advertisement on social media to reach out to more customers. I have never created an advertisement on Facebook before, so I will have to learn and do research for it.

Simulating dynamics of flux qubits with charge and hybrid flux noise

D-Wave Systems has designed processors based on a scalable architecture that aim to implement quantum annealing, an algorithm that can be used to solve a wide variety of optimization problems. A minimal requirement for a device to perform quantum annealing is that it maintains coherence throughout an appreciable fraction of the annealing protocol. In reality, any quantum annealer will be subject to noise, which leads to decoherence in some form. Accurate numerical modelling of environmental noise in quantum annealing is therefore of critical importance to the designing of future architectures, and the study of open quantum dynamics in general. To data, efforts to numerically model quantum annealing in D-Wave devices have ignored the effects of charge noise, focusing only on flux noise. We propose developing an approach that is computationally efficient, numerically exact, and that accounts for the effects due to both charge and hybrid noise.

Understanding the Rise of the Right: A Podcast Series

The surge of radical right wing movements is one of the defining characteristics of this political moment, and it has the potential for the most grave repercussions. To date, little critical research about the ideational foundations of modern far right movements and the danger they pose has been effectively mobilized to the public. Our project seeks to reverse this trend by integrating the intern’s ongoing PhD research into a knowledge mobilization (KMb) framework developed by our industry partner Cited Media Productions (CMP), who produce award- winning research-based radio documentaries of the highest calibre. By participating in our project, the intern will simultaneously advance his original PhD research while maximizing its public impact through a widely distributed five-part radio documentary mini-series produced in collaboration with CMP.