Innovative Projects Realized

Étude de l’effet des caractéristiques situationnelles, de la motivation et du choix des prédicteurs sur la prédiction de l’efficacité au travail

Les avancées technologiques et scientifiques ont mis de nouvelles méthodes et théories à la disposition des spécialistes de la sélection du personnel et de la prédiction des comportements au travail. Cependant, plusieurs de ces méthodes et modèles théoriques n’ont jamais été vérifiés empiriquement dans le cadre d’activités réelles de sélection du personnel. Ce projet vise à pallier partiellement ce manque en étudiant la validité prédictive de divers prédicteurs (personnalité, médias sociaux, capital psychologique) lorsque qu’un modèle récent de prédiction du comportement est appliqué. Pour ce faire, 400 travailleurs âgés de 18 ans et plus complèteront une batterie de test en contexte de sélection. Après au moins 6 mois en poste, les superviseurs des participants évalueront leurs comportements au travail à l’aide d’échelles psychométriques. Ce projet de recherche permettra à la firme partenaire de bonifier ses pratiques de sélection du personnel et d’offrir des processus à l’avant-garde des connaissances scientifiques et des outils technologiques.

Colonoscopy Video Analysis Framework

Every year in Canada over 1.7 million patients are diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis (UC), and have to go through colonoscopy procedures multiple times for disease detection and treatment monitoring. Trained clinicians use endoscopy facilities and technologies for colonoscopy procedures and unfortunately, the current error rate in disease detection is up to 20%. This project will build a framework that will analyze colonoscopy video streams in real-time, and offers the outcomes to support clinicians to accurately detect UC and monitor patient’s response to treatments.

Development of see-through near-eye display using embedded concave micromirror array for augmented reality applications

Near-eye displays (NEDs) are small displays that are positioned closed to the eye, which conveniently places visual information in the line of sight of a user. NEDs need to be compact and lightweight as they are typically worn on the head, taking the form of glasses or goggles. In this research, we design and build a thin and transparent NED. The proposed NED uses a high fill-factor embedded concave micromirror array (ECMMA), and light field principles for virtual image formation. We optimize our NED design using optical simulation software Zemax Opticstudio, and build a prototype using a transparent microdisplay and a custom-fabricated ECMMA.

Modeling structural damage in Arctic tanker accidents

The overall aim of the research is to develop a decision support system to quickly estimate the oil outflow from a damaged tanker in a collision or grounding accident, in Arctic conditions. The work in this project focuses on modeling the accidental damage size for representative tankers operating in the Canadian Arctic, when these experience a collision or grounding. Structural peculiarities of Arctic tankers are considered, as well as cold climate effects e.g. on the materials in the ship structure. First, a detailed Finite Element model is set up and runs are made for a range of impact scenarios, and resulting damage sizes obtained. Then, a simplified model is developed based on those model results, which can run faster. Ultimately, this model will be linked to an oil outflow model, and integrated in a decision support system for oil pollution preparedness and response authorities.

Modeling accidental oil outflows from shipping accidents

The overall aim of the research is to develop a decision support system to quickly estimate the oil outflow from a damaged tanker in a collision or grounding accident, in Arctic conditions. The work in this Mitacs project focuses on a part of this overall objective: modeling the dynamic oil outflow from a damaged tanker. Representative tankers operating in the Canadian Arctic, damaged in a collision or grounding accident, are in focus. The effect of wave conditions and cold climate effects on the viscosity of the oil are considered. First, a detailed Computational Fluid Dynamics model is set up and runs are made for a range of impact scenarios, which can account for external wave dynamics and a range of oil viscosities. This results in a number of time sequences of the volume of oil flowing out from a damaged tanker. Then, a simplified model is developed based on those model results, which can run fast. Ultimately, this model will be linked to a structural damage model for collision and grounding accidents in Arctic conditions, and integrated in a decision support system for oil pollution preparedness and response authorities.

A Clinical Proteomic Test for Patient Care

There are 2.6 million Canadians with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). COPD is a disease characterized by progressive loss of lung function that leads to shortness of breath, poor quality of life, reduced productivity, emergency visits, hospitalizations and mortality. The World Health Organization estimates that COPD will be the 3rd leading cause of death worldwide by 2030, accounting for more than 7 million deaths/year and 11,000 deaths/year in Canada. COPD patients frequently experience ‘lung attacks’, during which breathlessness, coughing, and sputum production dramatically increase, leading to urgent clinic visits, emergency admissions and hospitalizations. Lung attacks cost the Canadian health care system nearly $3 billion each year in direct expenditures. There are no blood tests to confirm a lung attack and because of this sometimes the doctors can make the wrong diagnosis, which leads to wrong therapies. In this project, we will develop a blood test to help doctors make the right diagnosis of lung attacks.

Fast approximate simulation of complex structures and contact in immersive virtual environments

In the proposed project, we will develop a key piece of

technology that will significantly improve interactive simulations of scenarios involving complex

multi-body contact. For instance, the simUlation of human or robotic hand grasping of an

object involves complicated chains of compliant joints combined with distributed contacts.

Multi-legged robots and vehicles in general are similar. Simulating these kinds of systems is

tricky because they result in large systems of equations that can require large computational

effort to solve, and, additionally, special attention must be paid to the setting of parameters to

ensure stable simUlations. The proposed key piece of technology will significantly simplify the

resolution of these kinds of systems, allowing much more complex immersive environments to

be simulated while meeting real-time requirements.

Development of Emergency Response Technologies and Eco-Rehabilitation Framework for Brine Spills

Brine water produced in the mineral extraction process can cause heavy damage to soil and biota when the brine water is spilled during storage and transportation. The damage from spilled brine water can spread rapidly and last for decades, affecting groundwater, ecological security, and human health. In addition, the value of the damaged land will be impacted by this chain reaction and can inflict a huge economic loss to a mining enterprise in land transaction. This project is an opportunity to develop and apply suitable and cost-effective on-site emergency response technologies using an eco-rehabilitation framework for successfully resolving brine spill problems.

Design and Prototyping of a Power Logger for Power Quality Monitoring

Power characteristics of CAE equipment are regularly requested by the customers (some customers are penalized by their service providers for poor power factor, etc.), but there are presently no quick and safe means of logging power at the main power distribution and motion control cabinets. The goal of the power logger, to be designed and prototyped, is to capture hours/days of data for quick upload to laptop for analysis.

Private SQL interface for encrypted data

Querying databases without a layer of privacy protection might lead to serious privacy issues. Such issues include access patterns and communication volume patterns. By combining the state-of-the-art privacy standard (differential privacy) and encryption in provides resilience to a host of attacks on remote databases, including data reconstruction attacks. However, there is still research work needed in building a private access system on top of an encrypted database. In this work, we explore the use of a plethora of privacy preserving data publishing (PPDP) techniques with different definitions and guarantees to build a private access system. We aim at exploring two main questions: i) How and if the privacy guarantees deteriorate when a user asks different queries and combines the outputs or when multiple users collude, and ii) How the functionality is affected by each PPDP technique, e.g., can the system still support joins between two anonymized tables.

Development of Novel Selective Estrogen Receptor Modulators

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women worldwide. Estrogen, a sex hormone in women plays a key role in the proliferation of cancer cells especially in post-menopausal women. Selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs) like tamoxifen and raloxifene are the most efficient drugs for treatment of breast cancer. These drugs bind to estrogen receptors (ER? or ER? subtypes) in as much as the same manner as estrogen does. However, these drugs are often accompanied by severe side effects. The proposed investigation aims at developing and evaluating new estrogen antagonists. The designed molecules are based on the structure of estrogen itself and are thus expected to show promising bioactivity. We plan to synthesize and bioevaluate a series of rationally designed SERMs, in collaboration of Paraza Pharma Inc. Over the period of 8-months, ~12 rationally designed SERMs will be synthesized, purified and characterized at Acadia University and bioevaluated at Paraza Pharma, Inc.

Plant level implementation of a model for real time tracking and control of composition changes to steel, slag and inclusions during ladle processing – Part 2

The Ladle Metallurgy Furnace is used for adjustment of chemical composition and temperature, and control of tiny particles called “inclusions”. Controlling inclusions is carried out by adding calcium to modify the solid alumina or magnesium aluminate inclusions to less harmful liquid inclusions.
During ladle process, reaction of top slag, steel and inclusions occur simultaneously. Therefore, establishing a model to describe ladle process is indeed a challenge. The author developed a model to predict the chemical composition changes in molten steel, slag, and evolution of inclusions in the ladle during Ca treatment. The result of calculations was found to agree well with industrial heat data. The objective is to calibrate the model for the ladle used in the KOBM stream at ArcelorMittal Dofasco.