Innovative Projects Realized

Plan stratégique en technologies numériques – Petit Théâtre du Vieux Noranda

Le Petit Théâtre du Vieux Noranda (PTVN) est un OBNL dont le siège social est situé à Rouyn-Noranda en Abitibi-Témiscamingue et qui se définit comme « un lieu de production et de diffusion artistiques qui encourage la rencontre, la créativité et la relève ». Ses activités commerciales comprennent l’organisation de spectacles, la location de salles et d’équipements, un service de bar et un volet de création artistique en arts vivants.

Avec la crise sanitaire de la COVID-19, le PTVN doit actualiser son offre de services pour répondre aux nombreux changements du marché. Depuis 2012, l’organisme a entamé un important virage numérique qui comporte des investissements en infrastructures et l’intégration technologiques aux pratiques de création. Ce virage lui a permis d’élargir son réseau de partenaires et de se positionner comme une référence en intégration technologique dans les arts vivants au Québec. Soucieux du développement de sa communauté de proximité et désireux de poursuivre son essor par les technologies numériques, le PTVN a initié en 2018 un ambitieux projet de hub technocréatif, qui a pris une ampleur accélérée depuis le début de la crise sanitaire.

Mitacs BSI x Sport For Life Society

At Sport for Life, they do not wait for change to happen. They make it happen. They are a nationally recognized not for profit organization that consists of sport and physical literacy experts with the long-term vision necessary to be catalysts for lasting change within the sport and physical activity ecosystem and beyond. By bridging gaps between sectors, creating new collaborations with Canadian institutions, and mobilizing knowledge to communities across the country, they aim to create a future in which absolutely everyone has access to quality sport and physical literacy experiences.The four business plans/marketing plan that I will be competing for the Sport For Life Society would be focused on the following areas of the not for profit organization:
1. Metl – a tool to measure athlete’s perseverance and passion. Angela Duckworth started a worldwide conversation about the importance of GRIT in the success of athletes. Metl provides a way to evaluate and determine one’s level of GRIT.
2. elearning – campus https://sportforlife-sportpourlavie.ca/
3. PLAYBuilder http://getplaybuilder.com/
4. In-person Workshops https://sportforlife-sportpourlavie.ca/
Once completing these 4 business plans for the Sport For Life Society, it will enable the not for profit to determine how they should best invest their funds moving forward.

Baseline inventory of key biophysical and geomorphological features along the Lulu Island foreshore and the potential effects of sea level rise on marsh vegetation communities and restoration efforts

This research focuses on creating and implementing a sampling methodology to collect information on vegetation communities and soils along the Lulu Island foreshore in Steveston, BC. This information will be used to examine how the plant communities of natural marsh areas in this area change based on certain environmental parameters (e.g. elevation, salinity, tidal inundation) and how foreshore marsh areas may be impacted by sea level rise. Researchers and organizations may replicate these methods to monitor changes in the Lulu Island marsh vegetation community over time or project managers and agencies may wish to replicate these methods at restoration and compensation sites to adaptively manage their projects. Baseline data collected may also help to inform organizations conducting restoration in this area (e.g. Raincoast) and may help to guide future restoration efforts.

Intelligent Analysis of Regulatory Documents using Deep Neural Networks

The Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) documents should be deconstructed by experts to create action items to track compliance performance, audits, or for compliance certification. Modifications in the regulations, changes in the site conditions, mergers and acquisitions occur frequently and should be processed by experts. The manual processing of the text documents to extract different components of a regulatory content including tables, cover pages, etc requires a lot of effort, and is time consuming and error prone. The automation of this process helps reducing these drawbacks. The automatic extraction of these components is challenging due to non-standardized text structure and heterogeneous documents. This research project will provide solutions for automatic extraction of different components from EHS documents using machine learning and natural language processing techniques. The results of this project are new algorithms and automation tools and will benefit the ehsAI and Canadian companies in the EHS fields directly. The developed techniques are expected to be applied in other areas such as Software companies.

Infra-Climate Hybrid Bridge Design System

Integral Abutment Bridges (IABs) are unique structures in the sense that they are rigid compared to typical bridges that have bearing connections. Bridges are designed to withstand forces sourcing from its own weight and ongoing traffic as well as temperature forces. As the temperature varies (cyclic in nature), the bridge experiences contraction and expansion forces that result in varying internal stresses within the structure that causes the bridge to wear. As the effects of global warming include an increase in the earth’s temperature, the extent that the bridge moves increases, thus increasing the pressure in the bridge. To visualize how much these bridges are affected, a software simulation is used to help predict their behavior. The developed system is of great importance to all departments of transportation in Canada and worldwide and to practicing engineers who are actively involved in the design and management of IABs.

Technologisation de l’entraînement de boxe et contrôle de l’anxiété: mise en relation des marqueurs biologiques et psychologiques avec l’anxiété et la charge d’entraînement

La boxe est un sport très exigeant sur les plans physique et psychologique de sorte que le boxeur doit posséder des traits de personnalité bien spécifique afin d’accéder au niveau supérieur. Bien que le caractère soit une dimension importante, le combattant aura plusieurs obstacles à confronter lors de sa carrière modifiant ainsi ces réactions à l’approche des combats. L’un des états importants pouvant nuire à la performance est celui de l’anxiété. En effet, une anxiété mal contrôlée peut nuire considérablement à la performance et à la santé de l’athlète. L’objectif de cette étude est de démontrer que l’intégration de nouvelles technologies, de points de contrôle physiologiques lors des camps d’entraînement et d’un entraînement polarisé améliora le contrôle de l’anxiété et la gestion de stress en situation de combats afin d’éviter une diminution des performances.

Sustainable Shipping – A roadmap to zero emission ambitions

Tackling climate change is a complex task, one that depends on transformation of different sectors. Maritime shipping is the transmission belt of the global economy and continues to account for the majority of imports and exports. It is recognized as an energy-efficient mode of transportation compared to road and air transport. Yet, maritime transport has increased by 250% over the past 40 years, resulting in the sector contributing to 3% of total annual man-made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These emissions are expected to increase by 150%–250% by 2050 in business-as-usual scenarios, causing serious human health and environmental harm. More stringent global regulations have recently been introduced to mitigate emissions from ships. Maritime shipping is now expected to adopt innovative solutions to lower its impact on climate change. One alternative is to change fuels (i.e., a shift from the existing use of fossil fuels to clean fuels). Fuel choice is, however, uncertain, raising the critical question of which fuel is the preferable future marine transportation fuel. My research concerns improving knowledge and tools for effective corporate sustainability through collaborative decision-making.

Capturing expert model in crisis managementusing SYnRGY

SYnRGY is a computational tool designed to support command and control operations in the context
of crisis management. Although SYnRGY has been designed from a user-centered perspective, some
degree of training is required to bring novice users up to a level of competence required to use the
system. The objective of the current proposal is to capture the expert model of crisis management and
design a prototype intelligent tutoring system based on that model. The objective will be achieved in
three phases. The purpose of the first phase is to develop a realistic crisis management scenario. The
second phase will involve human in-the-Ioop simulation with experts. The objective of this phase is to
capture experts’ knowledge in a formal model. Finally, the third phase is devoted to integrating the
expert’s model in a prototype intelligent tutoring system. Thales is confident that this project will
contribute to improve efficiency of training for crisis management in general and for SYnRGY
specifically.

A Sustainability Evaluation of Post-harvest Fisheries Opportunities for First Nations in Nova Scotia

Many First Nation communities are now exploring and developing post-harvest livelihood activities related to the purchase, transformation, and sale of catch from band harvesters. This research will assess post-harvest businesses currently operating within NS Mi’kmaq communities, and new livelihood opportunities currently being considered by Mi’kmaq Band Councils and entrepreneurs. This assessment will focus on the overall sustainability of the fishery operations, including social, economic, environmental, and cultural factors, among others. The aim of this work is to determine what post-harvest activities are currently being explored and help in weighing the potential positive and negative implications on the economy, environment, culture, and other aspects of NS Mi’kmaq communities. This work is significant as it will assist NS Mi’kmaq communities in further developing post-harvest livelihood activities to support new business developments and sustainable livelihoods.

Examining the effectiveness of a feminist framed transformational leadership development program for young female coaches in university/college athletics

The project aims to examine the effectiveness of a leadership development program to increase competence and confidence of Female Apprentice Coaches to lead in sport in the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association. Th leadership development program looks to increase knowledge and practice of effective leadership skills while addressing common barriers women face in sport and sport leadership. The process also engages key sport leaders in the FAC environment including respective mentor coaches and athletic directors. The program has the capacity to be a successful tool to help the CCAA recruit and retain female head coaches in its national championship sports. The research also has the potential to drive organizational change in university sport programs to support effective leadership development for FACs and current female student-athletes.

Designing Asymmetric structures to Generate Oblique Surf Waves in Rivers

Recreational river waves are gaining more and more popularity, but there is not enough academic research to support them and a few companies around the globe can artificially create them by adjustable structures in rivers. Surf Anywhere, the Calgary-based partner organization in this research, is one of those few companies which has completed and is working on many wave projects in Canada, USA and Europe. Our team investigated, and tried to provide a technical instruction for design of adjustable wave structure that can generate wave in every river condition and on a horizontal bed (unlike common technologies, this does not need a drop!). In previous season of this research, a symmetric structure was investigated (through computer simulations) to generate perpendicular waves. In this season, the asymmetric arrangement of the structure would be investigated (through physical modeling in a hydraulic laboratory) to create oblique complex waves resembling more to attractive ocean waves. The ultimate purpose of this research is to facilitate design of ideal structures that could provide most attractive and safe waves with minimum cost.

Reconfigurable Legged Robot for Structural Inspection with Confined Spaces

This project is motivated by the demands for automation of industrial structure inspection. An autonomous re-configurable robot system is proposed to facilitate the inspection of structures with confined spaces, like airframes or ship hulls. The robot will be able to realize various types of legged locomotion by means of configuration changes. The general objective of this project is to develop a legged robot system that is fully autonomous and adaptable to the structures under operation. We believe that the proposed system will have significant potentials for commercial applications as a lot of industries are calling for an autonomous robotic inspection. Therefore, the partner organizations are driving new technology in Canada.