Innovative Projects Realized

Identification of plant immunity activators that protect cucumbers from bacterial and viral pathogens for commercial use in the agriculture sector

The Suncor/McMaster partnership is generating a pipeline of novel, green, agricultural chemicals to be applied as crop sprays. The proposed collaboration will expand the application of the sprays to various crop species in both greenhouse and field settings and contribute to the understanding of the mode of action of the active ingredients.

Analysis, design, and implementation of a recommendation engine to suggest charities

The goal of this research is to investigate and build a recommendation system that suggests charities to users based on their previous donations. One of the first successful recommendation systems was Amazon’s “Customers who bought this, also bought…”. This recommendation system focuses mainly on making it easier for users to find relevant information and increasing sales. The main challenge with this research is to investigate the differences between commercially implemented e-commerce recommendation systems and a recommendation system driven by altruistic goals.

Complete destruction of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in water and by-products minimization via a novel Boron-Doped-Diamond anodes electrochemical oxidation

Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are anthropogenic compounds with unique properties and wide applications. The consequence of using such persistent chemicals is widespread contamination reported for groundwater, soil, sediment, and wastewater, especially in industrialized countries such as Canada. The endocrine-disrupting and likely carcinogenic nature of PFAS have resulted in strict regulations on PFAS in drinking water. Future regulations are expected for other environmental matrices, which has spurred studies to develop efficient and cost-effective treatment technologies. Electrochemical oxidation has emerged as one of the most promising advanced oxidation processes, achieving PFAS mineralization with little need or no need for chemical addition. The future commercialization of the treatment technologies requires solutions to key technical issues. This partnership between McGill University and Golder Associates will tackle this issue to expand the treatment options available for PFAS and will benefit a variety of end-users in both industrial and public sectors.

Magnetorheological actuators for active suspensions

In 2016, Magna Corporate has partnered with Exonetik to develop multiple prototypes of active seat suspension which were used for market validation and technical feasibility investigation.
In June 2019, Magna Seating officially launched a research and development program to bring the active seat suspension to production in July 2021.

The objective of this applied research project consists in addressing the problematic of the active seat suspensions with appropriate technical solutions in order raise the maturity level of the prototype to TR9. The
four major research sub-project of this Mitacs program will require design, engineering model development, simulations, testing, and result analysis through an iteration process:

A. MR Clutch Durability Testing
B. Actuator Noise, Vibrations and Harshness (NVH) testing and analysing
C. Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) Testing of the Electronic Controller Unit (ECU)
D. Software Architecture Development as per ISO 26262

Mineral Reserve Weighting With Various Metrics

The partner company, Metals Economics Group, has been acquiring and compiling information and

statistics on the global mining industry for over 30 years. With an increasing pressure on existing

mineral reserves and declining productivity of reserve expansion through exploration and M&A

activity, the reserves have become a target for increased scrutiny. From a comparative standpoint, the

value of a reserve is dependent on a variety of external factors that differ from company to company

and can range from geopolitics to very nature of the deposit and how it would be potentially mined.

The project aims to combine such factors, based on historic data, to determine a weighting factor to

apply to the mineral reserves.

Toward Net Zero Transportation – Validating environmental benefits of Hydrogen Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles

Hydra Energy Corporation Commercial Demonstration Project based in Prince George, British Columbia 12.4 MT/day of waste hydrogen will be captured, purified and transported to an onsite hydrogen refueling station from which Class 8 tractor-trailer truck fleets will refuel daily. Hydra’s demonstration project can provide a significant reduction in fleet greenhouse gas(GHG) emissions, Particulate Matter and other air emissions. The R&D project results will advance the scientific knowledge of hydrogen in internal combustion engines, support the granting of a third party verification/certification of the environmental benefits of Hydra’s technology, and will help to expand the availability of clean energy transportation technologies in and beyond B.C.

A Modified Fully Haptics-Enabled Master-Slave Teleoperated Setup for Minimally Invasive Surgery

This project is aimed at providing the sense of touch (haptics) in Robotics-Assisted
Minimally Invasive Surgery (RAMIS). In our previous work, we developed a 7-DOF
haptics-enabled master-slave teleoperation setup at CSTAR (Canadian Surgical
Technologies and Advanced Robotics) for RAMIS. This setup is a research platform for
two important applications: endoscopic suturing and tumor localization in soft-tissue
palpation. However, the developed system has some restrictions in the master console
preventing us from take full advantage of the setup such as limited orientational
workspace for suturing applications and the lack of direct reflection of palpation force
for soft-tissue palpation. To improve the performance of our master-slave teleoperated
setup, this project focuses on replacing the current haptic interfaces with those
capable of satisfying these requirements. The haptic interface chosen for this project
is W5D from Entact robotics Inc. This device will be equipped with a scissor action
pincer and a finger pad force display device to provide fully intuitive haptics-enabled
master console for our robotics platform.

User-Friendly Design Charts for Optimizing the Evaluation and Repair of Concrete Beams using Fiber Reinforced Polymer

There is an urging need to enhance the market competitiveness of the fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) material as an alternative to conventional steel and concrete materials in building retrofit projects in Canada due to the reduced life-cycle cost of the former. Optimizing the design of FRP reinforcement is a key element toward increasing the market share of FRP products. The objective of this project is to employ statistical techniques to optimize the number and layout of FRP layers required to strength deficient concrete beams. The optimization will be conducted to achieve a minimum safety level deemed acceptable by the North American codes and standards. User-friendly design chats will be produced covering a wide spectrum of beam retrofit applications.

Development of learning enhancement tools using Maple™ and Maple T.A.™ toenhance in-class and online instruction and testing in the physical, mathematical and social sciences

Maplesoft markets Maple, the world’s premier symbolic mathematics processor, used

extensively in education, research, and industry, and Maple T.A. (Testing and

Assessment) a powerful online testing environment. The proposed project focuses on

development of and research on educational applications of the software. Course

content will be developed using Maple and Maple T.A. for core university courses in

the physical and social sciences, and senior high school mathematics courses.

Maplesoft will use this to increase the immediate utility of its products to its academic

clients. The efficacy of the content will be investigated through student achievement

and attitudinal surveys, and the results published in journals of educational research.

This work will be of benefit in Canada and internationally by improving the delivery of

course content in educational institutions. In addition, the published research will

enhance Maplesoft and Canada’s international profile and influence in educational

technologies.

Design and development of a big data analytics system to accommodate dynamic risk modeling of emergency responder delays at active rail crossings

In this project, we design and develop a big data analytics system, which is expected to support the advancement in the state-of-the-art in modeling the dynamic risks associated to emergency responders being delayed at active rail crossings. The model will be used to show risk within cities and support prescribed solutions to mitigate the impacts. Specifically, we design and develop a model to evaluate the risk of emergency responders being exposed to active crossings in terms of lost travel time. We also design and develop a state-of-the-art big data management system for efficient computation on generating and regenerating the models at a city level based on thousands of rail crossing blockage events, thousands of emergency response calls, with numerous potential origins and destinations is essential to evaluate the risk factors in varying scenarios.

Process for Advanced Management and Technologies of Aircraft End of Life

Recycling complex products, typical to aeronautic industry, require a highly enhancement in Canadian

engineering knowledge, The project will study the best ways to part-out, dismantle and recycle aircraft

and helicopter at the end of their life with the objective of increasing their value by recovering, reusing

or recycling subassemblies; parts and material. An experimental platfonn will be selected and/or build

for the purposes of this research program, This project deals also with legal and regulation issue, the

design of logistics networks, with Life-Cycle Assessment (LeA) and a redesign approach draft for

future developments.

Network-wide bicycle monitoring

Bicycle and pedestrian counts are important data for the planning and design of safe roads. However, these data need to be inspected for quality, a time-consuming task. Part of this project is to make this project simpler, quicker and more accurate. Installing pedestrian and bicycle counters across an entire city road network is not financially viable. Therefore, a good option is to estimate counts at the network scale, using knowledge from a handful of pedestrian and bicycle counters (strategically placed) and trip data from users who willingly share their position from their smartphones.
Eco-Counter, the partner organization, is a world leader is the development of automated pedestrian and cyclist counting systems. The company is expanding into data services and requires additional tools and methods to help their clients (transportation agencies) manage and visualize their data. This project will help Eco-Counter achieve this objective.