Innovative Projects Realized

Operational Excellence at Havelaar

As an Operation Associate, the student will be responsible for several key objectives related Havelaar’s operations in Canada. They include, but are not limited to:
• Developing and executing an office reopening plan during COVID-19
• Overseeing the office renovation
• Managing various purchasing and accounting activities
• Supporting the ongoing recruitment of new talent
• Contributing to additional developmental projects

In short, the student will be helping the company move forward with the next step of its growth process, establishing a solid footprint within Toronto’s electric vehicle research and development community.

Significance of the project
This project is significant to Havelaar. The activities described above will enable Havelaar to continue to grow and realize its potential for commercialization. In the short term, it will help Havelaar safely resume its R&D operations that had been impacted by COVID-19.
There are two notable challenges to the cleantech space, specifically related to electric vehicles. One is the prolonged lead time for research and development, resulting in a long time to market compared to more commoditized tech products. My efforts in executing an office re-opening plan and expanding operations will enable, if not catalyze, this R&D process. Second is the challenge of acquiring and retaining top engineering talent that align with the company’s culture and objectives. I hope my efforts in recruiting will help Havelaar in this regard as well.

NIck Kelly Mount Pearl Chamber of Commerce Application Package

The project that I will be undertaking during this internship will revolve around working with local businesses to provide them with resources to help pivot their position in the market post pandemic. I will be responsible for developing digital media plans as well as other strategies that members of the chamber can use in order to attempt to re position themselves. the partner organization will benefit from this project by brining fresh new minds into the chamber that can provide insight and expertise into the chamber that will aid in the development of these new projects.

Marketing and Sales Project

I plan on creating a system to help with analyzing sales and marketing at R3 Construction. I will be building a system that is easy to use for anyone in my position that will help analyze both aspects of the field. I will be taking down all aspects of sales calls and meetings to see what works and what doesn’t, so I can grow and so that R3 can know how to train and who their ideal customers are. I also plan on launching different marketing campaigns on different social media platforms. I will record the data and see which campaign works best for the industry and which one isn’t worth the time. I will be experimenting with different types of software and tools to determine which is best fit for R3 Construction as well as myself. Building these will benefit R3 by giving it the ability to know which type of customer to focus their time on, and which way is the best way to get their attention.

Marketing and Communications Support

To use new, innovative marketing strategic to increase interest and participation in growth programming for early-stage technology startups. New channels and tools will be explored to increase the KPIs that indicate growth in entrepreneurial activity for Genesis: website traffic, social media engagement, inquiries showing interest from prospective clients (program participants), and completed applications to enter programs.
To complement increased interest, new methods will be researched and implemented to increase quality of applicants, including market research, customer profiling, targeted messaging and advertising, and analysis of performance metrics.
This will greatly benefit Genesis as this will help to increase awareness of program offerings, interest in the programs, and will likely broaden the pool of program participants. With a larger base of program applicants, there is greater likelihood of highly innovative startups that are ready for Evolution and subsequently Enterprise, our later-stage incubation program. Many of NL’s most successful companies completed Enterprise, which creates a thriving technology sector in our province.

Compressor Load Optimization

One of the main issues for automakers in today’s green economy is ensuring their vehicles have the highest fuel economy possible in order to deal with constantly increasing fuel costs. The improved fuel efficiency of vehicles provides money savings for customers, reduced carbon dioxide emissions, less dependency on oil, and lastly increased energy sustainability. The compressor load optimization project aims at improving the efficiency of the refrigerant cycle inside of a vehicle leading to improved fuel economy, reduced emissions, and lastly an extended comfort time in stop/start vehicle. This research project will provide technological innovation for the partner organization, which can be utilized for the benefit of the company on any current or future products. Not only will the partner organization benefit from the technology involved, but also customer benefits that will be induced from the results of this innovative research.

NL Eats Connor Corkum

The project I will be working on at my time at NL Eats will be advertising and creating leads for the food security app that NL Eats is developing. The project will focus on creating interest online for the upcoming launch of the app, as the more eyes on the app, the more people who will use it. This is being done to find the best strategies for NL Eats to put themselves out there as an organization, especially in the post-COVID landscape. NL Eats already has somewhat of an online presence, but it will be my goal to up that presence to a point where our app will be successful within our community.

Automated Defense Framework for Large-Scale Distributed Applications in Cloud Computing Environments – QC- 293

The advantages of cloud computing have been mainly used from a service perspective. It offers virtually unlimited resources in CPU, memory and bandwidth, under a service agreement scheme, in order to use those resources to provide a service. Operators leverage on this model to achieve economies of scale, by hosting as much customers as possible on that infrastructure. The objective of the Cloud Service Provider (CSP) is to keep those resources as busy as possible taking into account the preservation of Service Level Agreements (SLA) previously negotiated with the customers.
The detected gap is that cloud computing model can be also used for security. That is to say, it uses the flexibility, elasticity and low-cost provided by cloud computing to provide security services to customers. This project will develop a cloud computing based security service to deploy countermeasures when intrusions are detected in order to mitigate risks on cloud services and this way protects the business models of customers.
As an outcome, the services would have higher availability, be less prone to security threats and, have no associated costs regarding paying the consequences of data leaks and bad publicity, which represents losses for the enterprises and degrades their image.

Synamos Inc. – Business Analyst

In the era of COVID 19, businesses survive as long as they reinvent themselves, and change their operating model considering new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Cloud, and Blockchain. Synanos is the first North American startup converting petroleum waste to advanced hydrocarbons. With this internship opportunity, we will expand our industry research and customer discovery to make successful strategic decisions. Our success not only addresses the issue of the oil and battery industry but also can revolutionize the economic model of Alberta, which will significantly benefit Canada’s economy by creating new jobs and developing new technologies. Currently, funding and supporting grants are the biggest challenges for our company that is necessary to further R&D and move towards the expansion and production phase.

Learning priors for data-efficient causal discovery

The inference of causal relationships is a problem of fundamental interest in science. Compared to models that rely on mere correlations, causal models allow us to anticipate the effect of a change in a system. Such causal models have applications ranging from government policy making to personalized medicine. However, learning causal models from data is a challenging task, since it requires large data sets and, in some cases, the conduction of costly or invasive experiments. In this project, we propose a new method to learn causal models using less data. Our approach relies on the inclusion of prior knowledge derived from known causal relationships and meta-information related to the problem of interest. Our work is expected to increase the applicability of such methods in settings where data is scarce (e.g., biological and medical data).

E-Commerce Business Strategy Intern

COVID-19 and on-premise closures required the brand to scale emerging alcohol channels to adapt to changes in the industry and reimage how products are delivered to the end consumers. The overarching objective is to work on the e-retail strategy for Labatt and consolidate best practices related to brand activation, consumer experience, and last-mile strategies. I will be focusing on the total alcohol marketplace for the duration of the four months. The specific deliverables will help address the underlying issues of low e-retail penetration in Canada and identify possible solutions to address these challenges through specific project deliverables. Not only will this help Labatt, but it also ensures a better customer experience for Canadian shoppers, and provides more opportunities both economically and socially. The launch of a successful e-retail platform will enable more economic development and potential new jobs to be created during this difficult time.

Quantifying the effects of water-level drawdowns on lake water quality and biodiversity: A case study of Grand Lac Saint Francois, QC

Grand Lac St. Francois (GLSF) is a large lake in southern Quebec with a high diversity of fish species. There are several existing and emerging anthropogenic pressures at GLSF. One of the pressures of greatest concern is how the large and variable winter water level drawdown (due to operation of the Jules-Allard dam) influences the dynamics of sport fish populations. Other concerns include increases in cyanobacteria abundances and changes in lake trophic state, over-harvesting of sportfishes and invasive species. To address
these concerns, we will conduct a project to answer the following questions:
1. How has water quality and cyanobacterial abundance varied in GLSF over the past ~200 years?
2. Did the construction and operation of the Jules-Allard dam alter the trajectory of water-quality and cyanobacterial abundances?
3. Are the fish and zoobenthos abundances lower in GLSF compared to similar lakes that don’t experience any or the same degree of winter waterlevel drawdown?

Développement de nouvelles stratégies pour le traitement des bactéries résistantes à l’aide d’ionophores

La résistance aux antibiotiques est considérée par l’organisation mondiale de la santé comme une des plus grandes menaces pesant sur la santé mondiale. En effet la capacité de certaines bactéries à s’adapter et à devenir résistante aux traitements précédemment efficaces est effrayante. Le développement de nouvelles méthodes pour traiter ces bactéries résistantes aux antibiotiques est dès lors un domaine de recherche scientifique d’une grande importance. Une des stratégies envisagées est l’utilisation de molécules synthétiques capables de transporter des espèces chargées au travers de membranes lipidiques, de telles molécules sont développées au sein de l’ULB et durant ma thèse.Celles-ci sont capables d’équilibrer la concentration d’une espèce chargée comme un ion entre deux environnements cellulaires, ce qui perturbe donc le fonctionnement de la cellule ciblée. Cette stratégie est actuellement étudiée dans multiples laboratoires de recherche à travers le monde comme le laboratoire d’Andreea Schmitzer du département de chimie à l’université de Montréal. L’objectif de ce projet de recherche est de tester la capacité de plusieurs transporteurs transmembranaires d’ions à empêcher le bon fonctionnement des bactéries résistantes aux antibiotiques comme les Staphylocoques dorés.