Innovative Projects Realized

Les relations d’accompagnement des consultants de la RSE auprès de gestionnaires de PME : une analyse comparative de deux parcours d’intégration

L’état des connaissances sur les pratiques des consultants de la RSE pour accompagner des gestionnaires, les stratégies qu’ils développent pour gérer la complexité liée à ces parcours d’intégration demeure largement parcellaire. Cette recherche vise, d’une part, à caractériser les interventions des consultants auprès de gestionnaires de PME et, d’autre part, à établir comment ils font émerger des pratiques de RSE et gèrent les tensions voire les paradoxes qui peuvent se présenter dans le cadre de ce processus d’institutionnalisation. Cette recherche intervention permettra d’enrichir les pratiques et les stratégies développées par l’équipe du groupe d’expert-conseil ELLIO pour accompagner deux profils de PME, l’une créée avec mission sociétale (B-Corp), et l’autre, en transformation radicale de son modèle d’affaire.

Development of Energy-Efficient Means for Intensifying Mass Transfer Rates in Multiphase Reactors

The proposed project mainly focuses on developing an innovative gas/liquid contacting technology that is of critical importance to a wide range of process industries and environmental-management operations. Successful
development and implementation of this project are expected to:

? Reduce the environmental impact of a variety of operations that are needed to meet human needs and welfare (e.g. water/wastewater treatment, aquaculture, environmental management),
? Strengthen Alpha Tau’s position in the areas such as process intensification, advanced wastewater treatment, mineral processing, biotechnology and green chemistry,
? Expand Alpha Tau’s sustainable business opportunities in new areas (e.g. selective separation processes) and enhance job creation for high-tech personnel.

Applicability and Utility of the PHEMI Secure Clinical and Multiomics Platform for Precision Medicine

Advanced prostate cancer (PCa) manifests as metastasis and metastasis is the leading cause of death for PCa patients. The underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. We hypothesize germline variants may modulate a tumor’s propensity for metastasis. If validated a saliva or blood based test could be developed to predict risk of metastasis. Our objectives are: (1) identify a cohort of high-grade treatment naïve prostate tumors half that metastasized and half that did not following prostatectomy. The cohort of 50 tumors will have a minimum follow-up of 8 years. (2) perform DNA sequencing on the tumor DNA and adjacent normal tissue (germline). (3) identify the proteins expressed in the tumor and adjacent normal tissue. (4) employ computational tools to identify candidate germline and tumour drivers of metastasis. (5) link these to differences in the proteome of the tumor and the tumor microenvironment between non metastatic and metastatic tumors. (6) validate differentially expressed proteins using immunohistochemistry on tumor microarrays and databases. Germline, somatic or proteomic signatures of metastasis will be validated in large independent cohorts. Data security and sharing will be piloted using PHEMI software installed on servers at the VPC.

Screening of bacteriophage receptor on mutant bacterial libraries

Phagelux has developed a cocktail of bacteriophages (bacterial viruses) that treat infections with bacteria resistant to antibiotics. During the curse of treatment, bacteria may become resistant to bacteriophages included in the cocktail. This project aims at determing the bacteria surface markers on which bacteriophages can bind and start their therapeutic function. This will help Phagelux to improve the cocktail by adding other bacteriophages that can bind on other surface not targeted by the bacteriophages included in the existing cocktail. This will enhance the cocktail potency and will be beneficial to patient suffering infections with bacterial resistant to antibiotics.

Optimiser la résilience de la forêt urbaine

Le projet consiste à développer un système et une application web qui permettra aux aménagistes forestiers urbains de choisir la meilleure espèce d’arbre à planter à différents endroits de la ville afin de maximiser les retombées économiques et sociales et la résilience du couvert arboré face aux changements globaux. Nous développerons un système qui regroupera les informations sur les risques climatiques, entomologiques et pathologiques, la distribution géographique des arbres au niveau de chaque rue, la valeur des services que chaque espèce d’arbre produit et la diversité des caractéristiques écologiques des arbres que l’on peut planter. Cet outil permettra de générer rapidement et facilement une liste des meilleures espèces d’arbres à planter pour un endroit précis au niveau de chaque rue, chaque parc et chaque quartier, en fonction des arbres qui y sont déjà afin de maximiser la résilience du couvert arboré contre les futures catastrophes.

Hidden Champion Businesses: The Way to Revitalize the Economy of Newfoundland and Labrador for Post-Covid-19 Era

The effect of a collapse in oil prices coupled with a province-wide lockdown due to the COVID-19 outbreak will have a significant impact on the economic future of NL. A spiking unemployment rate due to job losses in the services and tourism sector will be difficult to mitigate in the short to medium-term; if not handled, it could easily ripen into a larger societal issue in the long-term. The main emphasis of the research will be placed on analyzing Newfoundland and Labrador, seeking to discover some possible hidden champions in these markets as well as some of the key success factors that encourage the growth and success of globally minded hidden champions.

Optimal Design of passive filters for variable speed drives

This project aims to design new highly compact and highly effective filters for a multi-level power converter based on wide-bandgap (WBG) transistors that integrates an Active Front Ends on the grid-side. Leveraging the high switching speed of WBG, new light weight multi-stage filters suppressing all switching frequency are designed for both the utility and motor side. This filter should feature higher power density, higher efficiency and lower switching losses when compared to traditional LCL ones, and should be applicable in the context of a commercial motor inverter design.

Enhancement of Virtual Synchronous Machine Algorithms with Energy Storage

Modern electric power systems are rapidly adopting renewable energy resources. This positive movement, however, does bring with it major challenges to the way we operate power systems. In particular we may face drastic frequency changes and far-reaching transient phenomena. One way to remedy these is to deploy energy storage systems, such a s batteries, to assist the power system in maintaining its frequency and in releasing and absorbing bursts of power that are required to do so. This internship will look into developing methods for using energy storage in conjunction with power-electronic converters so that local sources/sinks of power available to the converters that assist in maintaining the system’s frequency.

Effect of carboxylated cellulose nanocrystals on the mechanical properties oflatex-based pressure sensitive adhesives

This project proposes the use of carboxylated cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) – developed and manufactured by Anomera Inc. from Canadian forests – as nano-inclusions to tailor a set of properties in latex-based PSA nanocomposites towards enhanced performance. Due to their unique properties, CNCs can significantly enhance the mechanical performance of latex-based PSAs.
Project results are expected to promote the use of Anomera’s CNC material in the adhesives industry, as well as to promote the Canadian forest sector as Canada is considered among the global leaders in the exportation of forest products.

Energy-efficient and latency-bounded adaptive application layer for low power wide area network

To address the diverse requirements of Internet of Thing (IoT) applications, Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networks represent an innovative communication paradigm. Unfortunately, scaling the networks to massive number of devices and managing higher levels of interference are still open issues. Most studies suggest that end devices should adapt their communication parameters. Therefore, the main objective is to design an energy-efficient and latency-bounded adaptive application layer for LPWA network. However, the current project addresses only one subobjective namely system and link level modeling and performance evaluation of long-range wide-area network (LoRaWAN) that uses radio management ploicies to achieve high transmission reliability and low energy consumption. Accordingly, we aim at helping the industrial partner gain insights and competitive knowledge on the effectiveness of these application layer policies on guaranteeing a given data-reliability-profile in a real deployment scenario under backward compatibleness with LoRaWAN adaptive data rate (ADR) mechanism and computational complexity constraints.

Antioxidant Properties of Indigenous Plant Species of Newfoundland and Labrador

This research aims at study antioxidant properties of berry plant species native to
Newfoundland and Labrador. Antioxidants are compounds which are required to alleviate the
harmful effects of free radicals. If the level of free radicals is high in body, they can damage
proteins, lipids, DNA, and other biochemicals in our body. Skin is prone to the harmful effects of
free radicals because it is exposed to UV, smoke, chemicals, etc and hence require antioxidants to
protect its structure. Berry plants are rich sources of wide variety of antioxidants. Furthermore,
research has also shown that plants which thrive on harsh conditions have higher level of
antioxidants. Therefore, we chose to study berry species of Newfoundland and Labrador to
utilize their antioxidant efficiency and we expect high antioxidant levels in these indigenous
plants.
The results from the study will enable the company in developing a range of
cosmeceutical formulation prototypes using the plants showing high antioxidant levels. These
results will also help company…TOBECONT’D

Optimisation de la cédule du programmeCSeries

La place importante du pétrole aujourd’hui amène le constructeur d’avions à développer des
avions consommant de moins en moins avec des performances de plus en plus élevé. C’est
dans cette optique que Bombardier Aéronautique a lancé la fabrication des CSeries, avion de
ligne à faible consommation.
Une saine gestion du programme CSeries est indispensable face aux enjeux concurrentiels
mondiaux. C’est pour cela que Bombardier Aéronautique a ouvert un département
d’optimisation de la cédule du programme CSeries afin d’améliorer les différents processus
qui mèneront aux dates-jalons de 1er vol et ensuite de Mise-en-service. Pour ce faire la
gestion de projet autour de cette conception doit se faire avec la plus grande rigueur et
efficacité et ce sur 4 chantiers différents : la sécurité-de-vol, les tests, la production et la
mise-en-service.