Innovative Projects Realized

JanAlta Internship

I have been offered an intership at Janalta as Business Development Consultant with following roles and responsibilities.
Refine inside sales strategy and system, including email outreach, follow up communications from non-responders, passing on meetings to Partnerships Manager.
o Research unique business categories and other market opportunities that could appeal to JanAlta audience
o Think of creative new ways to reach out to unresponsive verticals
o A/B testing outreach methods
?Optimize various areas of direct sales
?Identify new inbound sales strategies
?Audit and improve of JanAlta sales processes
?Research unique, high impact networking opportunities
?Audit and optimize 2021 pricing for all products and sites
?Sales communication across all channels
?Research and identify customer segments for each site

Novel Liposomal Formulation of OCZ103

Oncozyme is looking to improve its lead oncology product candidate OCZ103 by incorporating it in nanometer-scale lipid particles known as liposomes. Liposomes have already demonstrated their usefulness in transporting anti-cancer drugs and improving the efficacy and safety aspects of drugs. Liposomal formulation development requires a highly skilled individual both technically and theoretically. The intern who will work on this project will put her skills to work in an industrially oriented formulation development project, where theory counts, but where results must be presented and experiments prepared with a pharmaceutical regulatory aspect in mind. The intern will be in touch with the industrial expectations, while the partner will profit from the intern’s know-how guided by its supervisor.

Marketing Intern

The intern will assist Goh Ballet Academy with marketing strategies to engage the community and build awareness surrounding dance and its benefits. Given current circumstances, much of the work will centre around digital marketing and social media promotion, including but not limited to sustainable social media calendars, content creation, and sales conversion reporting. Through these activities, we want to advocate for the importance of the arts in our community, and hope that increased media attention will allow dance to be a sustained art form in the future.

David Chan – ChatterBlock

This internship will help us explore a new revenue stream and help us reorganize our business.

Anomaly Detection in Aviation Safety Data

The aviation safety is the vital component in global air transport system. As the accidents are the results of complex interactions of various risks and contributing factors, the key to avoid accidents will be proactively identifying such risks and contributing factors and mitigating them beforehand. To support the risk identification, IATA, International Air Transport Association has been collected extensive operation safety data, including accident reports, incident reports and flight data. The project aims to build anomaly detection models that examine the data automatically to help finding potential risks.

Prediction of biological age based on DNA-Methylation patterns

DNA methylation is a biological process that involves the chemical modification of DNA with methyl groups at specific regions of a chromosome. DNA methylation and demethylation change the processes associated with turning on and off genes. Changes in DNA methylation patterns can be influences by environmental forces which are recorded at the molecular level and give rise to the “epigenetic clock”. In collaboration with UltraSpec Lab, a Canadian BCbased
company, we propose to develop a new method to predict an individual’s “biological” age based on changes recorded in their epigenetic clock. We hypothesize that a difference between chronological and biological age (determined from the epigentic clock) will be predictive of early onset age-related diseases. Our biological age predictor will be determined using a blood sample and can be incorporated by clinicians as part of a standard annual
checkup. This test in combination, with other health measures can be used to determine an individual’s overall health and will allow clinicians initiate early disease intervention with the goal to reducing death rates and medical costs. Our biological age predictor will be validated by our partner company (UltraSpec Lab) and commercialized in Canada.

AI Based Video Assessment of Walking Speed (Gait)

Aging adults want to age in place in their homes to remain in their community of friends, family and activities. This independence for many depends on the support of family care givers such as spouses or adult children that may live separately or work outside the home. The use of ambient sensors in the home can provide an extra level of knowledge about well-being. Specifically, video cameras have the potential to provide a great wealth of information but do so at the expense of privacy. Project partner AltumView, makes a unique video camera with built in Artificial Intelligence (AI) that detects and automatically removes people replacing them with a stick figure. This camera has the potential for use in well-being assessment without intruding on privacy. This project will specifically explore the potential for the assessment of walking speed (gait speed) as one measure of physical well-being.

The World as Sacrament: the Eucharistic Ontology of Maximos Confessor

My proposed project consists in completing the final chapters of my doctoral dissertation: The World as Sacrament: The Eucharistic Ontology of Maximos Confessor. In essence, I argue that Maximos’ insistence that all things are created from God (ek theou) according to (kata) the Logos offers a powerful example of sacramental ontology – that is, a vision of creation as derived from, and thus imbued with, the creative and sustaining divine energy. Insofar as this ontology is rooted in Christ the Logos through whom all things were made and who is immanent in the world as its constitutive logoi, Maximos’ ontology is not merely sacramental, but specifically eucharistic. The World is a ‘cosmic liturgy’ – a reciprocal interplay between God’s free gift of His own supraessential Being to the world, and the world’s offering back of that gift in gratitude (eucharistia). My aim for this mitacs exchange is to complete the final chapters of my dissertation under the supervision of Dr Brandon Gallaher who, as an established Orthodox theologian, can oversee the final stages of my dissertation.

Neuroanatomical changes following chronic post-stroke therapy using novel assistive devices

Presently we do not know the extent to which different types of therapies can assist those who are in the chronic phase of stroke recovery. Technologically innovative rehabilitation devices are now becoming available to clinicians, and often employ video game-like scenarios to motivate the patient to move. However, there is a lack of evidence documenting a) the benefits of enhanced therapy using gaming-like devices, and b) the underlying neuroplastic changes promoted by the use of these devices. Here we will measure behavioural and neuroanatomical changes associated with an enhanced rehabilitation program (gaming-device plus standard therapy) in chronic upper-limb stroke patients. This study will provide important data concerning both the capacity for neuroplasticity in chronic stroke patients, and the effectiveness of enhanced, technology-assisted devices on functional recovery. The provision of evidence-based therapeutic practice represents important knowledge translation for those living with disability brought about by stroke.

Hierarchical Bayesian Optimization in Neurostimulation

Neuroprostheses interfacing with brain and spinal tissue are in rapid development and are being applied to clinical treatment of paralysis after spinal cord injury stroke and other neurological disorders.
We have developed a versatile intelligent neuroprosthetic agent, a Gaussian Process (GP)-based Bayesian Optimization (BO) approach. We have further laid the theoretical groundwork to cover larger input spaces with a hierarchical GP.

Within this project, Julien will design a fully-hierarchical GP-BO, whereby multi-dimensional GP (i.e., a space of complex, multi-electrode stimulation patterns) rely on models preliminarily fitted in lower dimension (single-electrode). Beyond our previous work, the additional concept proposed here is that knowledge learnt during searches performed in the high-dimensional space is propagated back to the base low-dimensional components to update the building blocks of the hierarchical structure.

Enzyme-like nanoparticles for preventing lipid oxidation: implications for increasing asphalt lifetime

In Ontario, 95% of its paved roads in the province are paved with asphalt or asphalt surface treated. Due to severe weather conditions, the lifetime of asphalt roads is relatively short and regular maintenance is required. The annual cost of maintenance is estimated to be around 2.14 billion dollars. This project aims to explore nanotechnology to increase the lifetime of asphalt roads by exploring nanomaterials with anti-oxidation activities. Liposomes will be used as a model system for the initial studies and asphalt doped liposomes and finally asphalt will be tested. The partner organization will benefit from this project by learning the effect of some representative nanomaterials for asphalt improvement, which has an enormous potential economic benefit.

Improving Monitoring and Decision-making with Uncertain Sensor Data

Terrestrial contaminated sites – such as abandoned oilfields, chemical spill sites, or former industrial zones – are a major environmental problem in Canada and around the world. Environmental Material Science has created new environmental monitoring equipment that generates high-resolution spatially and temporally explicit data on environmental quality. The data must be visualized and then used to make decisions regarding if site remediation needs to occur, or if occurring, if site remediation should stop. Such environmental management decisions need to explicitly and transparently community data uncertainty and variability in the decision-making process. Data visualization techniques in the environmental sciences that allow non-expert stakeholders to interpret complex data streams do not exist, with existing techniques designed to be used by experts, who then report to stakeholders. The intent of this research project is to develop data visualization approaches that can be used by non-expert stakeholders to aid in their decision making process on environmental site management.