Innovative Projects Realized

How Grain Discover’s Blockchain Solution Can Enable Flexibility in the Agriculture Supply Chain in the Age of COVID-19?

The COVID-19 crisis has sharply brought into focus concerns around supply chain reliability and resilience. No supply chain is of greater important to our everyday lives than that of the food supply chain, and despite being a key contributed to the Canadian economy and a flagship component of the Canadian brand, still it suffers from difficulties around tracing the provenance of crops and produce and a generalized opacity. Grain Discovery has proposed the use of blockchain technology to assist the tracking and tracing of crops as they move through the supply chain and has been working with key industry participants towards a production grade implementation of this technology. This project will require the skills set of an MBA/business graduate to work with the key stakeholders to define what characterizes a minimal set of properties to be recorded on a blockchain ledger in order to function as a viable traceability system and add value to all participants on the supply chain.

Blue Moose Media Value Proposition Project

Blue Moose Media’s programs and capacity have been greatly impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. As the company looks to maintain the quality of their workshops and courses in a new, virtual setting, learn to better serve the community’s changing needs, expand to serve more diverse clients, and pivot and grow, they are now looking to learn more about the real value they bring to the community. This project aims to use research done by the intern to provide these answers, and ultimately aid in decision making, and will be an opportunity for the intern to apply skills and take part in an experiential learning opportunity. Likewise, the work of this internship is expected to benefit Blue Moose Media in the following ways:
1. Gain a better understanding of the biggest challenges facing small business capacity to execute their digital marketing;
2. Learn how they can modify our classroom to best fit the Saskatchewan business community’s needs;
3. Provide us with insights into the needs of Small-and-Medium-sized businesses to help us strategically model their curriculum;
4. Gain further knowledge on our target audience segments.
This project is mutually beneficial to the intern and partner organization.

Automatic Real-time Segmentation of SCG Signals

Research has shown that by monitoring the vibration of the heart using a simple sensor mounting on the human chest, the mechanical characteristics of heart can be measured. The purpose of this research is to design and build a remote diagnostic device to be used for heart patients with prior or having symptoms of heart failure diseases. The participant intern role in this project will collaborate with Heart Force Biomedical to design and implement the software that calculates hemodynamics parameters to be used for diagnosis by cardiologists. The outcome of this project is anticipated be extremely beneficial for both academia and the company. By successful completion of this project, multiple publications and patents will help improve the field of cardiac engineering. Furthermore, this device is the first of its kind in capturing the cardiac parameters of heart non-invasively and will be beneficial for biomedical device industry.

Marketing and Business Development Intern

The intern will be working as a Marketing and Business Development intern at a startup called Umbra & Lux Studio. Umbra & Lux manufactures handmade sculptural lighting products using recycled materials and cutting edge environmentally friendly low power LED technologies. Prior to Covid-19, the company depended solely on exhibitions and word of mouth to generate sales. The intern will help create a digital marketing strategy to promote the company, it’s lead designer and various products online. This would include – Optimizing the website for improved user experience, SEO, planning, and executing digital advertising campaigns, content marketing etc.
The digital marketing and sales strategies will enable the development of new distribution channels and build a network of artists who will use Umbra & Lux’s platform technology to showcase their art to Canadian and international markets.

Strategic Business Consultant

This project is a strategic growth plan for Appficiency. The student will evaluate how we can best staff the new projects while considering the training period for new employees. They will also evaluate the scalability of our business model and provide recommendations on how we can introduce new revenue streams into the business. Essentially, the questions we want to answer are “How can we ensure the new employees we hire can start doing delivery work as soon as possible?” and “What revenue streams would give Appficiency significant growth and how do we ensure we can keep up with that growth?”

This will be a significant contribution to our company especially when the lockdown is lifted. We anticipate the demand for ERP Implementations to increase even more after COVID-19 because businesses may have wished they had it during the lockdown but may not have had expendable capital. It is challenging for Appficiency to keep up with the growth and we are unable to focus on the strategic side of the business. Having a student dedicated to a strategic COVID-19 recovery plan will help alleviate the stress of this and help set us up for success in the near future.

Business Strategy Internship – Forever Natural

The project would be to analyse the current online marketplace in the natural health and beauty segment. Define and recommend brand strategy around positioning and points of difference for an online presence. Create an online brand strategy and implementation plan which would include fulfillment recommendations. If time allows, help implement the plan. Urban Spa’s online strategy has been to partner with existing onlines stores. It became apparent during the current covid situation we need to come up with a different direct to consumer online strategy. This could be a significant area of growth for Forever Natural.

The expansion of WES software into Europe by Compusult

The expansion of WES software into Europe by Compusult

Separating mixtures using single-file and dualmodediffusion

POS Bio-Sciences currently performs extractions, fractionations, and purifications on a variety of biobased
materials including food ingredients, health ingredients, nutraceuticals, agricultural materials,
and cosmetics. Access to improved separation techniques will allow POS Bio-Sciences to offer
enhanced solutions to its current client base and potentially provide new services to the
pharmaceutical industry, which has high standards for sample purity. This project will use molecularbased
simulation techniques to develop and optimize a nanofluidic separation technique that uses the
unique properties of single-file and dual-mode diffusion that are observed in highly confined fluid
systems. This new technique has the potential to separate mixtures into samples with a highly narrow
distribution of particle sizes, thus improving on current ultrafiltration methods.

Forever Natural BSI

The project would be to analyse the current online marketplace in the natural health and beauty segment. Define and recommend brand strategy around positioning and points of difference for an online presence. Create an online brand strategy and implementation plan which would include fulfillment recommendations. If time allows, help implement the plan. Urban Spa’s online strategy has been to partner with existing onlines stores. It became apparent during the current covid situation we need to come up with a different direct to consumer online strategy. This could be a significant area of growth for Forever Natural.

HookMotion

L’objectif du projet est de développer et d’implémenter un plan marketing pour HookMotion

JED Lab media

Le projet GRI3 est une solution novatrice de gestion des soins pensée pour les résidences pour aînés, les ressources intermédiaires et les CHSLD privés et publics. C’est un logiciel tout-en-un qui facilite la vie de tous les intervenants, des gestionnaires aux équipes soignantes, en passant par les professionnels de la santé. C’est votre bras droit pour une meilleure efficacité opérationnelle, des suivis plus efficaces et une traçabilité des interventions mieux répertoriée. C’est avoir accès en tout temps à toute l’information, et la chance d’offrir à vos résidents un milieu de vie et des services de qualité optimale

Optimization of Actiflo system for removal of Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC) at Portage La Prairie water treatment plant

Water treatment plants in Manitoba use surface water with high organic content as their source of water supply. Organic carbon reacts with disinfecting chlorine forming potentially carcinogenic disinfection byproducts. Portage la Prairie water treatment plant is an example of typical Manitoba lime/soda water treatment plants facing the challenge of removal of organic carbon. Coagulation and Granular Activated Carbon (GAC) are used in this plant for removal of Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC).
Our previous studies showed that DOC cannot be efficiently removed by these two processes.
In this research we propose to study removal of DOC at the Portage la Prairie water treatment plant. Another goal of this research is to optimize the removal of DOC in the laboratory study by applying different coagulants and ozonation.