Innovative Projects Realized

Digital Main Street (DMS) – Project 2

Covid-19 has impeded many brick-and-mortar businesses, especially the SMEs in Northwest Ontario. The challenging environment calls for change in the business practice to respond to the impact and rejuvenate businesses. Going online is one of the possible solutions supported by technology and market readiness for those businesses. Digital Main Street (DMS), a program and service that helps main street businesses achieve digital transformation, was created by the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas (TABIA) with direct support from the City of Toronto. and co-supported by a group of strategic corporate sponsors, including Google, MasterCard, Rogers, Microsoft and Shopify. The program is built around an online learning platform, structured training programs, and Digital Service Squad, a team of highly trained recent graduates who help main street businesses grow and manage their business through the adoption of digital tools and technology.

Evidence-based product support and the cultivation of a community of learners

While consumers adopt technological solutions based on their perceived usefulness, continued use of those products often depends on the support customers receive as they initially use the product, and when they run into problems or complex uses. Traditional support models (e.g., call centres) are often costly and only somewhat effective. The current proposal outlines research focused primarily on two issues; First, what is the best way to configure information within a support site to allow efficient and rich access to needed information and second, how can crowd-sourcing be best harnessed to create a community of learners that can provide immediate, complex and “human” support without requiring the typical costs. The experiments and “in vivo” research will be conducted within the context of two University of Toronto products licensed to Pearson Education Canada – peerScholar and Cogneeto – but the implications of the work are wide-reaching and timely.

Merging Calculus Learning with Mobile Devices: Calculus Practice App

This project will partner a student intern in graduate mathematics with the development team at Mathtoons Media Inc., an educational technology company in the business of creating mobile learning applications. Learning and academic practice is migrating away from traditional textbooks and webwork and toward mobile devices. The varying physical constraints of these devices post a significant challenge to the creators of mobile digital math practice applications. Questions which cover complex, high level topics within Calculus require significant alteration to fit properly within the scale of a small, handheld device. And yet, emerging research indicates students prefer to practice mathematics on handheld devices. This project will research the steps required to rapidly scale calculus questions to read and deliver well on various handheld devices within an “app experience” while still maintaining proper pedagogy with respect to the choice, sequencing and illustration of these questions. This provides a novel approach to current…

Understanding the Structure of a Shake to Guide Product Development

Enviroshake Inc. markets a very successful product: composite roof shakes. These shakes have the appearance of cedar but outperform cedar roof shakes in lifetime. The current composite roof shake is primarily composed of a mixture of commercial plastics blended with wood fillers. Enviroshake Inc. would like to redefine the binding agent to a lower priced material whilst maintaining or improving upon the performance of the shakes. Research funded by this MITACS Accelerate Grant will be directed towards determining how the binder is structured within the final shake and what materials would serve as suitable alternatives. This information will be used by Enviroshake Inc. to support the development of new products for the roofing industry.

Business Strategy Internship, Lakehead University and Superior Strategies

This research project is being undertaken in partnership with Lakehead University and Superior Strategies, a small private and Indigenous-owned company based in Northwestern Ontario. The outcome of this project seeks to deliver a strategic plan using a research- and solution-based approach to not only address the impacts that COVID-19 has had upon the business, but to discovering opportunities for growth and innovation that may exist within this challenge.

Superior Strategies delivers business consulting, event planning and a variety of training services to client organizations while also running a supplies business related to janitorial, sanitation and medical supplies. Training programs range in the areas of Health and Safety Management Systems to Cultural Awareness, all of which have unfortunately been brought to a halt due to COVID-19. Superior Strategies now faces the challenge of transforming their mode of delivery to a technology-driven process in order to resume services and further, to better align business systems while providing valuable information to aid management in strategic business decisions.

This project will be managed by a student intern with the help of co-supervisors in order to develop skills in the areas of project management, the use of analytical and software toolsTOBECONT.

NorWest Community Health Centres

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed how services at NorWest are delivered.
To decrease the risk of transmitting the virus to either patients or health care workers within their practice, providers are, when possible, converting in-person visits to telemedicine visits.
Many patients are also avoiding visits because they do not want to leave their homes and risk exposure.
Other services, such as foot care and walk in clinic had their service volumes considerably reduced due to a lack of PPEs or other alternatives to properly mitigate COVID-19 risks.
The Pandemic has also influenced both provider and patient behaviors bringing relevant impact on their mental health and wellbeing.
Having a business student intern would be important for NorWest to help implementing a project that would map priority risk mitigation processes and improve health, safety and wellness initiatives for staff who are working from home due to the Pandemic or working onsite in activities related to Covid-19 including primary care services.

BSI | Nugget.ai

We’re looking for someone that likes to figure things out! Your mission will be to test and execute activities that increasingly connect users and companies in our platform through marketing and business development techniques. Example activities include but are not limited to: developing and executing innovative ways to launch new task-based challenges (on social media platforms, with targeted ads, etc.); testing different methods of reaching out to new users; collaborating closely with the nugget.ai interdisciplinary team to determine the best content framing to maximize engagement.

Social-emotional development in early childcare programs

The Teaching Pyramid Model (TPM) was designed as a promotion, prevention, and intervention framework to support the social, emotional, and behavioral development of young children. Successful implementation of the TPM in ELC programs requires staff capacity (e.g., professional development, refresher courses for staff, performance feedback, staff support and family engagement (e.g., providing families with training to teach their children SE skills at home, enhancing parent-staff relationships). The objectives of this project is twofold: (1) to follow the behaviour of children enrolled in Early Learning Care (ELC) programs that have implemented the TPM to explore how it increases child social, emotional, and behavioral skills, and (2) to explore how quality implementation of the TPM intervention (staff capacity and family engagement strategies) will help support staff and families to promote SE skills during early childhood. This research will contribute to ongoing scholarship on early years prevention and intervention of SE problems…

Digital Main Street (DMS) Project 1

Covid-19 has impeded many brick-and-mortar businesses, especially the SMEs in Northwest Ontario. The challenging environment calls for change in the business practice to respond to the impact and rejuvenate businesses. Going online is one of the possible solutions supported by technology and market readiness for those businesses. Digital Main Street (DMS), a program and service that helps main street businesses achieve digital transformation, was created by the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas (TABIA) with direct support from the City of Toronto. and co-supported by a group of strategic corporate sponsors, including Google, MasterCard, Rogers, Microsoft and Shopify. The program is built around an online learning platform, structured training programs, and Digital Service Squad, a team of highly trained recent graduates who help main street businesses grow and manage their business through the adoption of digital tools and technology.

Hardbacon

Hardbacon s’apprête à lancer un nouveau produit afin de répondre au contexte d’incertitude économique créé par la pandémie du Covid-19.
Non seulement les Canadiens sont plus soucieux que jamais de payer moins de frais sur leurs services financiers, mais la plupart des entreprises offrant des comparateurs ont mis fin à leurs programmes d’affiliation en rai-son de la pandémie.
Hardbacon lancera donc au courant des prochaines semaines un comparateur de comptes de banque, de robots-conseillers, de courtiers en ligne, et de CPG.

Marketing/Business Development Intern

The successful candidate will work in a highly entrepreneurial environment and join a small cross-functional powerful team with a mission of bringing SmartICE innovations to the north. They will work closely with the SmartICE Executive Director, the Marketing/Business Development Intern will assist with development of our business and sustainability plans, creation of promotional and communications materials such as newsletters, social media posts and training materials, etc. As well, due to COVID-19, SmartICE is pivoting the way we communicate to accommodate the inability to travel to northern communities. New communication
strategies are currently being considered and developed and this role will feed into this process.

Design and Analysis of a Path Planning Algorithm in the Context of Sawing and Grinding Manipulation Tasks

The research project to be undertaken involves the development of a path planner algorithm, given a set of inputs (geometry of a circular saw and a grinding wheel), to produce tool paths (5 axis positions and start and end points for the cut). This algorithm must take into account both single and dual head cutting operations. It will be used to ensure the in-tolerance final dimensions of the sharpened saw. In order to achieve the final goal, the intern will be provided with all the necessary geometry of the machine and the saws to be sharpened.