Innovative Projects Realized

Vers l’élaboration d’une plateforme collaborative de création et de partage de connaissances dans un contexte de crise sanitaire (ex. pandémie) et environnementale (ex. catastrophes naturelles) en services préhospitaliers et hospitaliers.

Notre intention est de réaliser les travaux préalables à l’élaboration d’une plateforme collaborative de création de partage et la mise en application des nouvelles connaissances générées dans un contexte de crise sanitaire et/ou environnementale mettant l’accent sur les services préhospitaliers. Ces travaux sont à la fois théoriques en répertoriant les connaissances actuelles sur l’utilisation des applications d’écriture collaborative dans un contexte de crise. Ils sont également empiriques en analysant les stratégies actuelles de transmission des connaissances cliniques et administratives dans un tel contexte et en établissant les besoins et les attentes permettant la co-construction de ladite plateforme. Le projet apportera des avantages économiques significatifs pour Dessercom en termes de productivité et de performance en participant à la conception des directives beaucoup mieux adaptées à la réalité terrain à l’intérieur de laquelle les paramédics se doivent intervenir et en évitant les transferts inutiles des usagers d’un territoire à l’autre.

Maternal Augmentation and Digital Empowerment Initiative in Tanzania (MADE-IT)

Shortages of skilled healthcare professionals and unequal distribution of healthcare professionals throughout the country are two key challenges causing unexpectedly high number of preventable maternal deaths in Tanzania. Hence, developing innovative solutions that take fewer resources but have a wider impact on Tanzanian midwifery education system is crucial to avert these deaths. Canadian Network for International Surgery (CNIS), with 25 years of midwifery teaching skills in Africa has developed a project called “Maternal Augmentation Digital Empowerment Initiative in Tanzania”- the main goal of the project is to examine the effectiveness of digital midwifery education compared to the traditional classroom based education in developing skilled nurses and midwives. If equally effective, the digital approach would be superior in that it is substantially less resource-demanding to teach a greater number of students; in addition, if demonstrated successful in Tanzania, this approach can be widely scaled in other countries with a similar context.

Self-Sustainable Wireless Sensors and Base-Stations Powered by Leaky-Energy Recycling and Harvesting from High Voltage Power Lines

The increasing complexity of large power distribution networks (PDN) has suggested that real-time monitoring systems (CMS) become crucial for both daily operation and emerging research. Future smart grids are expected to be assisted by but also operate for a vast number of sensor and actuator nodes. Such sensor/actuator nodes will demand a more consistent and reliable power supply in order to perform operation-monitoring tasks as well as collaborative edge computing and wireless communication functions such as 5G or even smart in-situ autonomous repairs of the power grids. Considering that the leaky electromagnetic (EM) fields from high-voltage power transmission lines (PTL) are an abundant source of energy, the harvesting of this otherwise unused energy presents itself as a strong candidate for an alternative powering for self-sustainable wireless sensor networks (WSN) and communication devices.

Validation of Giatec Corrosion Detection Device on a Full-Scale Reinforced Concrete Bridge Deck

The project is designed to verify the performance of Giatec iCORTM hand-held device for non-destructive assessment of deteriorations in concrete structures caused by corrosion. Various laboratory experiments will be conducted using iCORTM at the University of Ottawa on a corroded concrete testing slab. The results will be validates against those obtained by accurate corrosion assessment methods which are destructive, time-consuming and expensive. The successful completion of this project with result in the final development of an accurate non-destructive device for corrosion assessment of concrete structures such as bridges, pipelines, and parking garages. This will position Giatec as a leading-edge company in area of advanced concrete testing technologies in the world.

Route planning and optimization of metal waste collection and transport

The growing amounts of metal waste being transported and recycled is a challenging problem. This research project aims to build efficient daily vehicle routes of the reverse logistics problem and collecting metal waste form different points in order to minimize total costs under multiple operational constraints. The reverse logistics vehicle routing problem which combines a pick-up problem with additional constraints such as loading pick-up sequences, time-windows, multi-trips, heterogeneous internal fleet, and the classical vehicle routing problem (VRP). An efficient heuristic will be developed to construct routes and assign the supply sources to truck routes to solve large and real-size instances in a reasonable amount of time.

Setup for Success: Improving pathways for talent retention

There is a perceived talent supply and demand gap in Nova Scotia’s ICT and digital tech sector and recruitment is at top of mind for employers. Hiring new employees can be time consuming and costly, however a well-planned onboarding program can increase the proficiency of a new hire and increase retention rates. The objective of the proposed research is to (1) examine best practices for employee onboarding and (2) investigate current practices within the tech sector. To answer these questions, we will conduct a literature review and deploy an industry-wide survey. Results from this research will be used to inform an online tool that can be leveraged by companies to develop or strengthen their own onboarding program and increase the retention rates of talent within the province’s tech sector.

Understanding and designing the female pelvic anatomy, a measuring device and an intravaginal device using 3-dimensional modeling techniques and Artificial Intelligence

Pelvic Organ Prolapse (POP) is a condition 1 in every 10 women is diagnosed with. The current non-surgical treatment for POP is an intravaginal device called pessary which has a 40% failure rate as its shape is not fitted to the female anatomy. Poor pessary design and performance arises from the limited data that is studied on the pelvic anatomy. The current research project will study available imaging data using Machine Learning algorithms to facilitate and automate the process for assessing and treating POP. The obtained outcome will be used to design a pessary that can be customized for each patient. This information will be incorporated in the POP assessments that FemTherapeutics perform in a clinical setting for an improved prolapse treatment.

Feasibility of the Get A-Head® App for Clinical Psychology Research and Training in Emotion Focused Family Therapy

Due to COVID-19, adoption of and investment in technological solutions for remote mental health services (teletherapy) is rapidly increasing. While the evidence-base for teletherapy for individuals is robust, teletherapy research with families has been limited. Further, uptake of teletherapy by clinical training programs has been slow and knowledge about the feasibility of using these interfaces for remote live supervision has not yet been established. This pilot study will assess the feasibility of training student-clinicians in the delivery of Emotion Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) through the Get A-Head® app. This study will follow two families over the course of 12 weeks (two weeks pre-intervention, eight weeks of the EFFT intervention, and two weeks post-intervention). The process and results of the study are expected to generate critical feedback and preliminary results about the feasibility of using the Get A-Head® app as a tool for providing family therapy and training student-clinicians.

Détection des Deltas P en plongée sous-marine aux abords desbarrages hydro-électriques à partir de l’Effet Doppler

Les interventions des plongeurs-scaphandriers aux abords des barrages hydro-électriques nécessitent la plus grande vigilance afin d’assurer leur sécurité. Au-delà des difficultés ordinaires rencontrées en plongée, les interventions aux abords de ces structures présentent de réels risques de courants puissants et très localisés dus au phénomène de Delta P (différence de pression). Celui-ci est capable d’emporter et de plaquer le plongeur contre la paroi du barrage. Une fois pris au piège, il lui est quasiment impossible de s’en sortir seul, ce qui en fait la principale cause de décès dans ce secteur. Le projet consiste à étudier l’application des nouvelles technologies récentes utilisé en océanographie (Effet Doppler) dans la détection des courants dangereux afin de sécuriser les interventions des plongeurs-scaphandriers.

Dans l’éventualité où la technologie s’avère applicable, le savoir obtenu favoriserait le développement et le maintien de l’expertise chez IMAR. Ceci devrait conduire à un développement de produit avec un partenaire.

Système aéroporté sans pilote de détection de cibles humaines dans l’eau

Le projet de détection et de reconnaissance de personnes sur une étendue d’eau permettra de minimiser les pertes humaines en intervenant le plus rapidement possible lors d’une situation d’urgence. Le temps de survie d’une personne à l’eau est très limité, sous certaines conditions quelques minutes et il varie en fonction du port de ceinture ou costume de flottaison, de la température de l’eau et de la condition physique de la personne. Il est donc crucial de retrouver rapidement les personnes dans une telle situation. Le projet vise à utiliser un appareil sans pilote muni d’une caméra très haute résolution embarquée et dans laquelle un algorithme permettra la détection et l’identification de cibles humaines à la mer comme au niveau terrestre. L’optimisation et la planification de l’itinéraire de vols et des zones de balayage est également une composante majeure du projet.

Disaster Recovery and Cloud Bursting as a Cloud Service

Cloud computing has revolutionized the way organizations consume computing power as a service.
Infrastructure as a Service allows a company to move away from purchasing computing, networking,
and storage resources to purchasing from a service provider in a public cloud. This project will
research and develop off-site encrypted virtual machine storage and disaster recovery planning solution
built using public cloud infrastructure. The solution offers Recovery as a Service that medium-sized
enterprises utilize primarily for the ability to backup and restore virtual machines for server and virtual
desktop images. The research and development team will working closely with company expert in the
area of cloud computing to advance this research topic and implementation of the solution.
We are developing a solution in the area of cloud computing disaster recovery and off-site encrypted
file storage for hybrid clouds in an enterprise environment. A full analysis will be conducted on
applying cloud computing platform and infrastructure in enterprise IT and the impact of…TOBECONT’D…

Putting the science of literacy into the hands of Canadians

Ensuring high levels of literacy for all children is now more important than ever. However, the Canadian landscape of literacy is quickly changing. For instance, Canadian families come from increasingly multilingual and multicultural backgrounds and the use of technology and digital media in literacy is growing rapidly. In this Mitacs project, we have partnered with Canadian Children’s Literacy Foundation to answer important questions as to how parents can best support the development of their children’s reading skills. In particular, our project focuses on a deep evaluation of scientific evidence to illuminate key ways in which parents’ reading related knowledge shapes early literacy experiences in the home and impacts children’s reading achievement, both as they read on paper and in digital formats. We will mobilize this knowledge into bite-sized scientific briefings that will be disseminated broadly by the Canadian Children’s Literacy Foundation through their social media channels and wide community networks.