Innovative Projects Realized

Developing point of care diagnostic tools to improve patient outcome – Understanding the need for point of care pathogen detection

Spectra’s first technology allows for police to analyze drugs at the scene of a crime, meaning they know what they are dealing with immediately, versus standard one to three-month turnaround times from current lab testing processes. Public health can also use the tech at supervised consumption sites to help those who use drugs make informed decisions on what they are consuming. This drug analysis information can then be sent to a centralized database, allowing for the monitoring of street drugs both locally and nationally. To help accelerate development, Spectra is competing in Health Canada’s Drug Checking Technology Challenge, where they are one of three finalists and have received ~$190K in funding to date.

Beyond drug analysis, Spectra is has recently begun working on the development of future offerings, specifically for pathogen detection. The overarching theme of this project is to lead new vertical market research/business development efforts. As Spectra is early in the developments of their second product, this work can inform the technical team of what specific application(s) this work should be tailored toward, while allowing the business team to focus on selling the existing drug analysis product.

Structure-Property Based Design of Novel Composite Proton Exchange Membranes

Composite proton exchange membranes (PEM) with tuned microstructure, and novel proton conductors have been highlighted as promising alternatives to conventional PEMs, which suffer from high-humidity and low-temperature requirements. However, the exact structures and thus proton and water transport in these materials are poorly understood. High performance polymeric membranes with 2D material additives mixed into the framework have been successfully fabricated and studied using neutron scattering techniques. A related composite structure composed of a 2D material single layer will be produced using interfacial chemical assembly, as well as a novel ionic liquid intercalated graphene composite, at the University of Waterloo. Structural investigation of these three composite types, at specified hydration and temperature, will be conducted at the University of Calgary. Correlation with previous investigation will unveil the mechanisms of water uptake, phase separation and proton conduction in the mixed composites. Moreover, optimal composite architecture and additive loading will be established to direct the design of future membranes.

Wild bee pollinator habitat restoration through dietary breadth, nutrition and microbiome characterization across Canada

Wild bees are vital to our parks, gardens, greenspaces and ecosystem services, but we know surprisingly little about their habitat requirements and dietary breadth. In this proposal, we will characterize wild bee nutrition including their health and microbiomes across Canada. The postdoc will learn skills in bioinformatics, science writing and science communication. The W. Garfield Weston Foundation will benefit from furthering their mission to facilitate transformative research on the microbiome that will improve the health of Canadians. With these data, we will determine preferred floral resources and hubs of healthy bacteria to promote habitat restoration and wild bee conservation. We will focus on urban centres to have maximal benefit for the >80% of Canadians living in cities. Taken together these data will provide invaluable open-access resources for bee nutrition, sustainability and long term city planning and conservation efforts.

Species traits as clues for who will win or lose: Large mammal responses to landscape change

Resource extraction has caused extensive landscape change that impacts wildlife. This is especially true in Alberta, Canada, where forestry, oil and gas and similar industries stretch across the province. While these industries are known to negatively affect some wildlife species, other species benefit from the features that these industries introduce, such as roads. In consequence, wildlife communities in human-modified landscapes consist of ‘winner’ and ‘loser’ species. Though this pattern is consistent across the province, the mechanisms that cause mammal species to experience either positive or negative impacts are unclear, which makes conservation difficult. However, ecological theory suggests that species’ characteristics, such as diet, determine how they respond. Using motion-activated camera traps to survey wildlife, this project will examine whether species’ characteristics explain whether species ‘win’ or ‘lose’ in human-modified landscapes. This will provide a better understanding of how landscape change impacts wildlife, which will also help wildlife and economically important industries coexist.

Parking Utilization Assessment Using Deep Learning

Analyzing parking behavior and usage in large open-concept retail centers enables owners and managers to better understand how their parking facility is being used. Most large, open-concept shopping centers are experiencing a parking oversupply problem. Current parking allocation is inefficient and contributes to urban sprawl, large concrete pads that trap solar heat and a waste of valuable real estate resources. Parking studies are generally conducted on foot using a combination of manual tallying or with ground level cameras used to collect imagery of ingress / egress traffic. These techniques are labor intensive and error prone. In this research, we aim to employ artificial intelligence techniques to automate and scale this process. We will use drones to capture aerial imagery of parking facilities, pre-process images, design a human intelligence task for annotation of the acquired images and develop a deep learning-based vehicle detection method to assess parking utilization across multiple observations.

Optimisation et intégration d’un nouveau procédé Organosolv

Le modèle de bioraffinerie moléculaire intégrée vise à identifier des technologies propres et viables économiquement afin de valoriser les matières lignocellulosiques par famille de molécules : extractibles dans le cas des écorces, cellulose, hémicellulose et lignine. C’est dans ce contexte que l’entreprise fait appel au CÉPROCQ pour que dernier l’aide à optimiser et intégrer un nouveau procédé Organosolv breveté. Ce projet s’attachera à lever plusieurs incertitudes pour que ce nouveau procédé Organosolv soit viable et applicable à l’échelle industrielle : i) rendre le prétraitement plus efficace, particulièrement pour les résineux, ii) valoriser la fraction hémicellulose et identifier des voies viables de conversion en xylose et xylitol; iii) valoriser la lignine et étudier la faisabilité de sa conversion en fibres de carbone

Employing Data Mining and Visualization Strategies for the Analysis of Well-being Indicators

In this project, an online, interactive map visualization tool will be built to illustrate trends of community well-being indicators across Nova Scotia using the 2019 Quality of Life survey as the primary source of information. The goal is to empower residents and decision-makers to understand unique well-being patterns and socio-economic trends in communities, providing an invaluable resource for planners, researchers, and policymakers, and even allow Nova Scotians to make informed decisions on where to live. The Engage team does not have the personnel resources or expertise required to build such a visualization tool and collaborating with experts in this field will make this possible.

Building Service Providers’ Capacity for Research

This project will use mixed methods to evaluate the current research capacity and needs of staff at the Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia. Based on the needs identified, the intern will develop training modules and other resources. The intern will also identify promising practices for building research capacity of the community sector, and will share these findings with other service providers and academics. This project will build the capacity of staff at ISANS to co-create, access, use and share research. More broadly, the project will contribute to the knowledge base on building settlement agencies’ capacity to engage in research in Canada.

Application of Topology Optimization for Efficient Composite and Additively Manufactured Structures

Additive manufacturing offers new opportunities for designing high performance composite structures. However, sophisticated numerical approaches are required to tackle the complex task of designing structures which take full advantage of additive manufacturing capabilities. The proposed research project aims to apply topology optimization, a numerical approach capable of determining the best shape of a structure, to develop a design process producing optimal composite sandwich structures which include a 3D printed core. Using high performance computing, relevant structures to the field of aircraft interiors will be optimized in 3D. A post-treatment procedure of the topology optimization results will be implemented to allow further processing of the structures with other software and to prepare for manufacturing. Selected structures will be fabricated and experimentally tested to showcase the advantages of the numerical design approach. The industrial partner will benefit of an advanced design process that will further their manufacturing capabilities and possibly open new business opportunities.

Reducing Debt Sentences: Evaluating the Use of Human Rights Discourse by the Canadian Federation of Students in Support of Universal Higher Education

As affordable post-secondary education is a growing problem in Canada, centralized student advocacy groups like the Canadian Federation of Students – Manitoba (CFS-MB) are working to advocate for universally accessible higher education to ensure every Canadian has the equal opportunity to pursue advanced studies. This research will review universal higher education as a human right within the Canadian context and investigate how student activists conceptualize their work in relation to human rights, including if activists and organizations fighting for universal higher education would see value in incorporating human rights into their work. CFS-MB have identified research as a gap in their organizational needs, and this partnership will be of great benefit as it will allow them to obtain original research that will inform their advocacy work, and allow them to disseminate the findings to their student members.

Automating Asset Management Solution for Electric Utilities’ Industrial Control Systems: An Integrated Approach

Increasing visibility into asset inventory and gaining situational awareness in industrial control system (ICS) environment are of critical importance for electric utilities to effectively manage cybersecurity risks. In this project, we aim to investigate the solution design for electric utilities to automate asset management in an ICS, addressing the unique challenges such as device heterogeneity and legacy technology. Moreover, we aim to augment this solution by consolidating information from operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) to improve situational awareness for electric utilities. By reviewing the substation devices and existing security systems in BC Hydro’s environment, we aim to tailor the solution for BC Hydro that aligns with its cybersecurity and risk management requirements.

Characterization of the lateral hypothalamic neural outputs using camera-based multi-fiber photometry, part 2

Understanding how brain processes information is the one of the most intriguing questions that modern neuroscience faces. This project is aimed to characterize how the lateral hypothalamus process information to downstream brain targets to guide proper behavioral responses. This brain area is well-known to regulate key aspects of the behavior. But how does it process information to control behavior? To answer this question, we use and develop a state-of-the-art technique called fiber photometry. This approach allows to measure neuronal activity of specific neural pathways deep in the brain of a free-moving animal performing different behavioral tasks. In this program, in collaboration with the partner organization, we will use the Doric Lenses fiber photometry system, and improved it to democratize its uses for the needs of researches studying brain functionality.