Innovative Projects Realized

COVID Business Strategy

Since COVID-19, our organization has realized that we require significant operational changes to adjust to a work-from-home, digital environment.
Namely, instead of using almost exclusively paper records, we require an accessible cloud-based filing system, relationship management system, and communication hub. Without these, we will most certainly continue to struggle to an increasingly digital world.

BUSAYO AWOSEMO – CEDAR CORE TECHNOLOGIES INC

With the current pandemic situation, the typical presentation of products and services to prospective clients is not possible, traditional “lunch and learn” events are no longer an option, and travel to some job sites is not recommended or it is restricted.

Our company is looking for help in defining a long-term strategy for product marketing.

Sales Development Intern

Our brewery byproduct-based organic plant nutrients have been tested and used by flower greenhouse growers to promote healthy plant growth to tackle grower challenges in crop production such as uneven plant growth and chlorosis leaves. This makes flower greenhouse growers , our first and most ideal customer segment. With the COVID-19 pandemics, flower greenhouse growers were hit hard. Social distancing requirements have led to the cancellation of numerous weddings, funerals, and events which have made flowers a non-essential commodity. Flower greenhouse growers lost at least 60% of their yearly sales because they were not able to sell their flowers on Easter and mother’s day this year.

Nutrienvisus just started its marketing and sales activity at the end of last year. The pandemic is forcing us to modify our marketing and sales activity. Our customer discovery process, supported by field trials at local greenhouses in BC, has concluded that our ideal customer is Chrysanthemum (flower) growers. Flower growers (71%) may recover after the COVID-19 crisis. In parallel with marketing our products to greenhouse flower growers, the internship activity will aid us in exploring new markets, such as the microbial bioremediation industries.

Junior Business Development Analyst

Zennea is a Medical Device company that is creating a breakthrough therapeutic device for treating upper airway resistance syndromes to improve health through sleep. Zennea needs assistance conducting interviews as we need them to iterate on the design, usability of the device, and build on the development cycle for medical devices, but need assistance getting the volume & quality of feedback required. Kamil’s main goal will be to accept/reject as many product/business strategy hypotheses as possible through building relations with various communities. He will create surveys, interviews & focus group scripts, create reports & summaries of findings from primary & secondary research, and create presentations to deliver to the rest of the team.

Sales and Marketing Intern – NTWIST

Sales and Marketing Strategy Intern

Gestion des sédiments de dragage et processus bio-physico-chimiques impliqués

La marina Saurel connait un problème récurrent d’envasement du fait de sa position géographique la confluence du fleuve Saint-Laurent et de la rivière Richelieu. Cette situation conduit fréquemment à des dragages d’urgence, puis au confinement du matériel sédimentaire contaminé. C’est dans la perspective d’affiner la compréhension sur les mécanismes de mobilité géochimique et de spéciation des contaminants associés aux sédiments de dragage, que s’inscrit l’étude proposée. Pour se faire, 240 m3 de sédiments ont été dragués puis répartis équtablement dans six bassins expérimentaux. Ces derniers sont exposés aux différents impondérables qu’impliquent les conditions naturelles réelles. Chacun des bassins est relié à un regard permettant de recueillir l’eau de lixiviation. L’objectif de cet essai est de caractériser la spéciation des métaux et des hydrocarbures, selon l’évolution des conditions physico chimiques. Les possibilités de revalorisation des sédiments excavés, au niveau de sablières en fin de vie de l’entreprise partenaire, seront évaluées.

Development Intern

Our organization remains a leader in the Vancouver real estate development business, however the Covid-19 pandemic required a slow down in our acquisition and development activities. The situation has now changed to allow us to pursue multiple opportunities in acquisition, but we require more hands to help us with the analysis. The intern will work to help us understand the state of the real estate market in Vancouver and the lower mainland doing analysis on key sales activity to help us determine whether to embark on new sales activity. The intern will work to help us understand the viability of projects which have been presented to us as opportunities to understand the risks.

The role of regulatory T cells in blood during acute heart transplant rejection

Patients receive heart transplants as a life-saving measure after heart failure; thus, ensuring the success of the transplant is of utmost importance. Rejection is a primary cause for heart transplant failure, and consequently, patients must take drugs that suppress the immune system to prevent rejection. However, these drugs are highly unspecific and cause serious side effects that can be life-threatening. New immunosuppressive drugs that can prevent transplant rejection while allowing normal immune function can greatly improve care and patient outcomes. One type of immune cells called regulatory T cells (Tregs) can effectively suppress the immune system in a highly specific manner. We believe these cells can be effective in preventing and treating acute rejection. Working toward such a goal, our research plan is to first understand how Tregs behave during rejection. We will track their activities by measuring 46 genes in the blood of heart transplant patients throughout the first year post-operation. These genes provide valuable information on the risk of acute rejection at a given time and on changing Treg responses.

Influencing buyer behavior with Intelligent Marketing and team performance with digital coaching.

The proposed project aims to define and apply a set of AI rules based on customer sentiment, loyalty and purchase behavioral data using data from Drive CX customer experience management platform. The rules would generate “hyper-personalized” marketing offers that result in measurable increases in loyalty and Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV). The deliverable would be a case study that correlates the relationship between personalized marketing offers with positive changes in consumer behavior such as increased engagement, visits and spend.
Drive CX leads the market in dynamically configuring custom branded comment cards on intelligent payment devices in minutes. Our partners include First Data, Global Payments, Ingencio, Clover and Poynt. This project is about taking our brand promise to the next level, by leveraging the correlation between the customer and team experience and engagement and sales and profits with the goal of supporting successful chains in being even more profitable and competitive in a post-covid world.

Bacterial proteolytic function in inflammatory bowel disease

Differences in the composition of bacteria within the gut have been found in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and healthy people. In addition to this, bacterial functional differences may also contribute to inflammation in IBD, but it is difficult to determine whether these changes are cause or the consequence of disease. Proteases, which are enzymes that break down proteins, are produced by bacteria in the gut. Proteases can be inflammatory, and it has been shown that patients with IBD have higher activity of proteases in stool, but whether this activity comes from bacteria is not known. We will investigate whether proteases are increased before the onset of IBD, whether this bacteria contribute to this, and whether they cause inflammation in animal models of colitis. Finally, we will determine whether we can inhibit bacterial proteases using specific probiotics to reduce inflammation. To address these objectives, we will use fecal samples collected from a unique cohort of patients: 1) subjects who are at healthy, but at risk for IBD, and who go on to develop IBD later; 2) these same patients at IBD diagnosis; 3) subjects who are at risk for IBD, but have remained healthy (controls).

Standardization and optimization of saliva sample processing for SARS-CoV-2 detection without nucleic acid purification

The SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, which started in Dec. 2019, has so far not been contained due to unpreparedness and unsuccessful development of antiviral drugs against SARS-CoV-2. In response to this pandemic, we propose development of a diagnostic assay based on saliva samples. We will also standardize virus collection procedure and inactivation steps to reduce the turnaround time of the results. We have the required expertise of working with virology techniques, molecular biology and diagnostic assay development. The goal of our design will be to 1) standardize sample collection buffer; 2) standardize additive which is most effective for inactivation of SARS-CoV2; 3) Standardize isolation buffer to skip the RNA extraction step; 4) Reduce the turn-around time for result.

Implication of adrenergic receptor Beta-3 on cardiac glucose metabolism during Heart Failure

With an estimated number of 37,7 millions people affected worldwide and a high mortality, heart failure (HF) represents a major public health problem. The beta-3 adrenergic receptors (?3AR) are expressed in human cardiac contractile cells. In the past few years, our group and others showed that by reducing oxidative stress ?3AR confer protection against cardiac fibrosis and hypertrophic remodeling, pathophysiological traits associated with the progression of HF.

This project aims to test the hypothesis that the protective role of ?3AR in reducing oxidative stress is mediated by an increase of the pentose phosphate pathway. This pathway generates NADPH, a molecule used by the cell for detoxification, thus reducing oxidative stress. This hypothesis will be tested in dynamic conditions by metabolic flux analysis (MFA) on cardiac tissues presenting a specific expression of the human ?3AR.

As ?3AR agonists are already used in urology clinical practice, the identification of a new protective mechanism mediated by ?3AR effects on metabolism will offer novel and immediate perspectives in the treatment of HF patients.