Innovative Projects Realized

Investigating employees racial bias in the workplace using neurophysiological and behavioral measures

Research in organizational behavior studies suggest that racial discrimination and bias exist in the workplace. Although explicit forms of racism are in decline, new forms of racial discrimination (i.e., implicit and unconscious) continue to compromise the inclusion and diversity in organizations. One of the challenges that HR specialists face is evaluating employees’ unconscious bias. This project offers a multimethod assessment tool to capture explicit and implicit racial discrimination in organizations. Neurophysiological data, including brain activities and facial expressions, are collected while subjects watch a dynamic stimulus to capture their unconscious cognitive and emotional response to various races. This data will be triangulated with the traditional self-perceived measures of racial bias to yield a comprehensive assessment tool of racial discrimination.

Optimal Design and Performance Analysis of Building Level Microgrids with Battery Energy Storage

In order to accelerate the transition of our electricity system to renewable sources, it is important that buildings participate effectively as distributed generators. However, traditional integration methods for solar energy often add complexity to our electricity system. With the rapidly declining costs of battery systems, building-level microgrids are becoming a viable alternative allowing buildings to generate and use renewable energy locally rather than exporting to the grid, enhancing the resilience of energy supply and improving demand profiles. The proposed work is to develop an optimization methodology to minimize the cost of energy provided by a building-level microgrid. The optimization will be applied to a set of case study buildings in order to assess the benefits of the microgrid on building performance measures including greenhouse gas emissions and grid integration indicators. This work contributes important insights to the overall smart building ecosystem being developed by WZMH Architects.

Building capacity in support of wastewater-based epidemiology to aid public health decision-making in southwestern Ontario

Novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an acute respiratory disease induced by SARS-CoV-2. To date >1,000,000 deaths have been reported worldwide. Although testing capacity has expanded, Canada still faces challenges to realizing wider scale testing. A promising alternative to large-scale population testing in Canada may lie literally beneath our feet in our municipal sewer systems. This Mitacs program will measure SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA signal in wastewater system to track the trends in community infections of Windsor-Essex area and expand into London-Middlesex region. Wastewater-based epidemiology will provide an early-warning of re-emergence of infection in a community thus aiding in public health decision-making.

Développement d’un modèle de pronostic pour la maintenance prédictive des éoliennes à partir d’une modélisation hybride basée sur données et sur modèles physiques.

La transition énergétique est un des efforts nécessaires pour ralentir et limiter le réchauffement climatique et ses impacts. La mission de ce projet commun entre l’École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS) et Power Factors est de favoriser l’énergie éolienne par une réduction des coûts d’opération et maintenance de ce type d’énergie. Plus précisément, notre ambition est de mieux comprendre comment les défaillances s’amorcent et évoluent dans les composants des éoliennes. Cela permettrait de bien choisir les moments des inspections et maintenances dans les parcs éoliens, ce qui a deux principaux avantages : la diminution des coûts avec maintenance, puisque ces interventions seraient moins fréquentes et plus pertinentes, et aussi le prolongement de la vie utile des machines, puisque les failles seraient corrigées avant qu’elles deviennent dangereuses. Les aboutissements de ce projet doivent permettre à l’ÉTS de faire avancer l’état de l’art en pronostic des machines et enrichir l’expertise de Power Factors dans la gestion des parcs éoliens, engendrant donc des retombés technologiques, environnementaux, et économiques.

Business Analyst Intern

In the current Covid 19 pandemic, HackHub moved all our HackHub Class programs from Offline learning to Online learning. For the past 4 years, HackHub Classes were well known for programming and design programs in Mandrian speaking communities. Students from the lower mainland received mentorship from our industry experts, built their project base and successfully found full time positions in the tech industry. However, we are facing more competitors after we moved our programs online; competitors from North America which are well-known in the online learning field and competitors from China that we cannot compete with their pricing. We are also dealing with “online overload” from most of our target market as 90% of the HackHub students are university students, with close to100% online learning at most universities, they are reluctant to add more online learning. While we see a decrease of sales from our HackHub Class, we see increased inquiries on our HackHub Event platform. Our tech team recently added multiple new features on our Event platform to make our Event platform more current and better fit Visual Online competition and Hackathon events.

COVID Business Strategy – Lopez

The student will benefit by working with a fast-paced, innovative company that is making a difference in organizations. The student will be in a collaborative environment and will be encouraged to experiment with fresh marketing concepts. The student will also benefit from being immersed in our culture that is committed to growing the leadership capability in each member of our organization.

COVID Business Strategy – Fehr

Research our organization’s current ability to adapt to events such as COVID-19 and options we could take to improve this flexibility (I.e. what is our cross-training status across the organization, how well are we operating and completing tasks digitally, without face-to-face contact, could this be made more efficient)

COVID Business Strategy – Novella

This project will investigate the ways businesses in the tourism, events and convention industry as well as the energy services industry, dealt with or are dealing with the crisis. These are the two hardest hit industries according to the Prime Minister.

COVID Business Strategy – Ogunlana

This project would accelerate the work Rainmaker is doing to create new opportunities for Canadian companies expanding to new markets in order to survive; and recover from the COVID economic impact.

Rainmaker will expand its market knowledge, and by extension become more effective in our support for Canadian companies as they recover from the covid crisis. As we expand our market knowledge of various global markets, we are positioned to advise and support companies as they gain market share abroad.

COVID Business Strategy – Wahab

Blue Monarch Management is a Canadian, privately-owned Management Consulting firm operating in Calgary and Toronto specializing in critical inquiry, strategy and business transformation. At every touch point, our consultants and business development staff reflect on what experience we want our prospects, clients, partners, and team members to have. Blue Monarch Management consultants speak ‘digital’ and excel in building proficiency with the information, systems, and operating technologies in our clients’ industries.

Technology Transfer Services Internship

Technological innovation drives economic growth, improves business efficiency, disseminates knowledge and often lays the foundation for social change. We look to innovation to help us overcome the many challenges that the global community faces. In order to foster innovation, researchers and inventors must have a nurturing environment in which they have pathways to licensing and commercialization opportunities for their creations. Technology licensing is also one of the avenues for transferring knowledge to the community so that social and economic benefit can be realized through new technological advancements. This project will build connections for researchers to intellectual property, technology transfer, and commercialization opportunities.

Africa Trade Desk

The Africa Trade Desk promotes bilateral trade and commerce between Canada and the African continent. This project will help the organization finalize its corporate messaging and promote upcoming summits through social media marketing. The goal of the activates of this project is to increase knowledge of business opportunities between Canada and countries in Africa.