Innovative Projects Realized

Boundless Fitness Marketing and Strategy Intern

Boundless is a small company, in the beginning stages of establishing itself as a go-to destination for functional and sport specific fitness training in the Toronto area. I will get to experience working at a small business and see the challenges entrepreneurs face daily. My job will focus on strategic planning, digital marketing, product management/development and business development. The wide variety of tasks allows me to learn about multiple functional areas of the business, and to be involved in both macro level strategic discussions, as well as detail-oriented project-based work. Not only will my work help them gain in-person membership, I will develop on online training membership program that clients anywhere in the world can sign up for. This is crucial because the in-person training model has been upended due to Covid-19, an especially large challenge compounded by the small size, and relatively young age of the organization. Even before Covid-19, this model presented some challenges. Namely, the difficulty in growing a business when constrained by the size limitations of their facility, and a finite amount of time trainers could spend with clients.

Development of a Fatigue Prediction Model for FiberReinforced Polymer Matrix Composite ComponentsExposed to Elevated Temperatures

The use of composite materials for high temperature aerospace applications requires new studies in
order to better understand the behaviour of these novel materials, and to generate appropriate design
tools. The main goals of this project are to develop a set of numerical tools that will be used to predict
the fatigue behaviour of advanced high temperature composite materials. The first step will be to
complete the development of the tools. Then, the tools will be implemented into existing software
currently used by the industry partner. Finally, the procedures for using the tools will be documented.
The numerical model will be used by the industry partner for the development of new gas turbine
engines that utilize high temperature composite materials. This research is part of a larger
collaborative project and is therefore of considerable interest to the industry partner.

BusPas

BusPas Inc. et ISR Transit veulent innover en développant une plateforme d’applications mobiles utilisant des données pré-mutualisées, intégrant la mobilité 4POINT0 dans la ville intelligente. L’objectif est de permettre aux utilisateurs et aux fournisseurs de services de mobilités de gagner en flexibilité, de limiter les pertes et d’augmenter l’efficience des réseaux de mobilité. Ce type de plateforme technologique se doit de répondre à de nombreuses obligations comme par exemple générer l’adhésion d’un maximum d’écosystèmes, ou encore de permettre à différents acteurs de ces écosystèmes de bénéficier des nouvelles données et promouvoir les applications intersectorielles. C’est la meilleure manière de développer une solution inclusive, à la hauteur des attentes sur le plan de l’efficacité de la mobilité, et permettant un bon partage, une bonne communication entre les acteurs impliqués dans l’écosystème. Par exemple, si la plateforme veut inclure des entreprises sur un territoire avec le potentiel télétravail qui y est lié, elle doit permettre une transmission d’informations efficiente, claire entre les acteurs qui se partagent l’espace publique, permettant justement de se rendre au travail en physique lorsque prévu. Les données qui sont liées aux pratiques de travail sont par exemple un vecteur de fluidification de la mobilité.

Digital Strategy and Sales Project

The Digital Strategy and Sales project will help BizXL Solutions, a boutique management consulting firm, to redefine its strategy for client acquisition. BizXL Solutions is able to help businesses from the COVID-19 impact by redesigning their business processes. The goal of this project is to redefine the company’s strategy to acquire more clients. This will be achieved through creating company-oriented material to communicate the brand’s value proposition. Also, the social media presence of the company will be enhanced. Finally, cold calling and cold emailing will be another task towards achieving the project’s goal.

Workland

Workland est une entreprise qui développe depuis 10 ans des technologies de recrutement de type SaaS qui aide les entreprises à recruter de façon plus efficace à travers l’automatisation des processus. Dans les 12 derniers mois, l’entreprise a constaté un intérêt croissant pour sa technologie ATLAS de la part d’organismes publics et gouvernementaux. Ce résultat est directement relié au fait que Workland a été en mesure d’obtenir comme clientèle de grandes entités dans ces secteurs tels que la Commission scolaire de Montréal (6e plus grand employeur de Montréal), Service Québec, Service Canada, Innovation, Science et Développement Économique Canada, plusieurs villes et tout récemment, la Fédération des Chambres de commerce du Québec pour son projet Un emploi en sol Québécois.

Malgré la pandémie, les demandes d’information de clients issus de ces secteurs ont augmentées de façon significative dans les dernières semaines. De plus, le cycle de vente a passé de 6 à 12 mois, à 4 à 6 semaines.

Business Strategy Internship: Marketing and Communication Strategic Planning

The Edwards School of Business, in partnership with Mitacs, has launched a new summer internship called the “Mitacs Business Strategy Internship” program, to connect our students and faculty with Canadian businesses.

The program will award $10,000 of funding to each interested and eligible student or recent graduate to undertake a four-month project (480 hours) with a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME), or not-for-profit organization. Selected students will analyze opportunities and provide strategic support to help organizations adapt and grow their business during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Experiential learning: Provide students with the opportunity to apply business concepts to real-world decision-making and build students’ skills in problem solving, innovation, and navigating change.

Support the Business Community: Edwards interns will support businesses who need additional assistance in modifying their business operations to adapt to the new economic reality

Community building: Build and strengthen connections and collaborations between the business community and expand students’ networks

Simpl-phi Wellness

Simpl-phi Wellness is a small company based in Nanaimo who has both retail and service under one roof. The company is unique and challenging as it consists of two distinct businesses: the Best Choice Quality Used Books and Simpl-phi Wellness, a therapy center. As the business got affected due to COVID19, it forced the owner to increase their online presence and also improve the user experience.The skills that I have recently learned during my MBA courses include participating in comprehensive marketing research, analysis, development of strategies, and planning projects. I want to use these skills to drive some real-time results and create a positive impact on the company. This marketing internship will help me to accelerate my career in the field of digital marketing and enhance my skills of research and attention to detail while creating a website or social media presence.

Scalability of an Autonomous Trading Platform

This project will build on the work previously completed in the MITACS project done by Dr. Michael
Bauer, Omid Mola and Cyborg Trading Systems (CTS) – Integration of an Autonomous Trading
Platform. The previous project formed the foundation of developing an autonomic system in an
algorithmic trading application. The initial project was successful in determining that an autonomic
system could be implemented by utilizing CTS’s proprietary framework. An initial prototype system
was developed which issues a notification with a change of state in the system when certain
conditions occur based on the policies developed. CTS’ algorithmic trading environment is a
dynamically changing, real-time and fault tolerant system due to the nature of the application. As a
result of the environment, there are a vast number of variables and policies as well as hardware that
must be considered in developing an autonomic system for this application.

Sensorless Control of Brushless DC Motors at Low Speeds

Accelerated Systems is a leader in the design and implementation of control systems for electric vehicles; especially vehicles driven by permanent-magnet brushless DC (BLDC) motors. One of the key technological challenges in the use of BLDC motors is that traditional control, especially at low speeds, requires external sensors to determine the rotor position. These external sensors then become an added cost and maintenance challenge. In this project, we will investigate novel control strategies that infer the rotor position from measurements of motor voltages and currents only. A successful design will provide Accelerated Sytems with a unique technological advantage that will allow them to become the premier global supplier of controls for BLDC motors in electric vehicle applications.

Developing genomic and transcriptomic tools for analysis of cannabinoid producing yeast strains

The therapeutic potential of cannabinoids is well established. The study of these molecules is primarily based on their availability from the cannabis plant (Cannabis sativa). In addition to common cannabinoids, there are dozens of rare cannabinoids produced in C. sativa with potential therapeutic benefits that cannot be fully evaluated because of their scarcity. Thus, there is a need for alternative production methods for these molecules. Willow Analytics is developing yeast strains that are capable of producing two rare cannabinoids that cannot be practically sourced from cannabis plants. Part of our development cycle is the analysis of the biological sequences of successive yeast strains. We currently have a bottleneck in building the computational pipelines for the analysis of our yeast strains and cannabis plants. This project will focus on building fully-automated pipelines for yeast data processing, designed specifically for development of strain engineering.

Redesigning the organization of the future: an investigation and experimentation of new impact-driven business and operational models.

Groundswell, a Toronto-based design consultancy, is seeking to understand, study and experiment with new non-hierarchical organization structures. In partnership with UofT’s Business Design Initiative research team, they will investigate and experiment with the redesign of for-purpose and value-driven organizations to better respond to today’s economic climate described as volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous or VUCA. They will engage in a series of generative design sessions and prototype new organizational and operational models that prioritize equity, inclusion, and impact over growth and profit-making, for themselves and the clients they serve. This project is significant in generating new knowledge and new models of non-hierarchical organizational structures and processes that will be piloted by Groundswell, resulting in potentially new innovation-service blueprints and/or offerings (aka product, process or service innovation). In addition to applying BDM to their organization, Groundswell has agreed to co-author an instructional case study for use at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

Modeling the phenotypic effects of neuromodulatory agents on human neuronal cells using cerebral organoids

Emerging therapeutic agents that function through the brain’s neurotransmitter systems have recently shown robust benefits in a number of otherwise challenging to treat neurological conditions including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. The long-term changes that these agents induce within neural tissue is still however unclear. This MITSCS program aims to to use expertise in tissue bioengineering models to explore the molecular changes that modulation of these pathways induces in neuronal cells. By growing and analyzing artificial humanoid brain tissue in the presence and absence of various relevant neuromodulatory agents, scientists will help us better understand their downstream and long-term molecular changes. These insights are expected to help provide a stronger understanding of how these novel neurotransmitter pathways improve brain function, will help improve their safety, and guide new indication for use of this emerging drug classes for other difficult to manage neurological disorders.