Innovative Projects Realized

“Minimally invasive mechanical circulatory support scientific data acquisition”

Heart failure is a prevalent disease affecting 250,000 people in North America alone. This disease can be treated by the transplant of a donor organ, but insufficient donor organs have led to the development of mechanical circulatory support which now provide a reliable alternate treatment option for patients. Unfortunately, many patients that could be helped by a mechanical circulatory support are deemed ineligible due to the invasive, open- heart surgery that is required to install such devices. Puzzle Medical Inc. is researching a novel pump design that can deployed non-invasively to increase the availability of mechanical circulatory support to high risk patients. An important consideration for the development of this device is to have a high quality in-vitro and in-vivo study by gathering a lot of data from test benches and animal trial. These data will be gathered and compared to in-vivo (pigs) study in the next 5 months while testing their deployment/retrieval mechanism in a real live body.

Describing the electronic structure of reactive copper(II) arylnitroso complexes

The efficiency of many chemical reactions is improved by addition of metal-based catalysts to the solution, however, the best of these catalysts are often based on some of the scarcest elements on the periodic table. The high costs of obtaining these elements makes catalysts based on ore Earth-abundant elements, but these base metals often do not stabilize the same charges as the rarer noble metals, making them unable to catalyze the same reactions. One strategy to enhance these metals’ reactivity is to modify their surrounding ligands so that they, too, can exchange electrons. These ligands are known as redox non-innocent. The arylnitroso function has three stable charges, making it a highly malleable redox non-innocent function, but this property also makes its complexes difficult to characterize. The goal of this project is to use quantum computation and spectroscopy to better understand this new class of arylnitroso complexes.

Multiphase and multiphysics CFD modeling of a gasifier and a 3 phase reactor forEnerkem technology

Thanks to its technological platform, Enerkem provides a green and sustainable solution to

address the challenges of oil dependence and waste disposal. The solution put forward is

biofueis production from municipal solid waste. The heart of this technology is based on

processes demanding high control of complex physics including fluid flow and thermochemical

reactions. Seeking to improve understanding and performance of two key units, a

gasifier and a catalytiC reactor, the current research project will perform modeling based on

CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) method. Navier-Stokes equations will be coupled with

granular eulerian and lagrangian model to account for multiphase flow. Additionally, heat

transfer and chemical reaction will be considered. These simulations will be conducted on

supercomputers and results will be to optimize the process.

Fostering Indigenous Small-scale fisheries for Health, Economy and food Security in Cree communities of northern Quebec (FISHES)

Northern fisheries are facing major changes and reducing the negative impacts is crucial for communities tied to the fisheries for their food security and culture. The identification of regions important for subsistence, commercial and recreational harvesting and whether they comprise genetically distinct groups of populations is a key requirement for adaptive co?management of harvest. Our team is comprised of researchers and Indigenous collaborators that combine the expertise for implementing knowledge at the interface between genomics and fisheries management. In this component of a recently funded Genome Canada LSARP, we will define genetically distinct populations in three of the most important species for the Cree (in terms of subsistence and tourism) (Brook Trout, Walleye, Lake Trout), quantify the contributions to mixed?stock harvests in two species (Brook Trout, Walleye), and assess the genomic impact of overharvesting in Walleye in southern Mistassini Lake. Through partnered research with the Cree, we will co?produce evidence to foster sustainable fisheries, food security, and social well?being. Our research will also support the development of sustainable fisheries in Cree territories and environmental protection for key fish species of Cree fisheries.

Advancement of Hyperimmune candidates against select pathogens from the Antibody Therapeutics Business Unit’s Lead Generation Program

At Emergent BioSolutions our vision is to “Protect and Enhance Life”. The Antibody Therapeutics Business Unit focuses on applying immunotherapies to prevent and treat human infectious diseases. This includes finding effective strategies to meet existing and emerging threats to public health and intentional biothreats. As part of these efforts the Lead Generation Program was created to address bacterial, viral and fungal pathogens. MiTacs interns will play a role in these efforts by further strengthening ties between academia and industry, applying new methods and innovations, alongside proven technologies to advance lead candidates towards clinical evaluation and licensure.

Development of safe storage guidelines for Canadian Flax

Shelf-life and quality of agricultural commodities is directly affected by their storage conditions. Therefore, producers and managers of grains and oilseeds relay on safe storage guidelines of the stored commodity to preserve the quality of these products. These guidelines are developed for specific commodities and are made available by producer groups and technical organizations to the agricultural community. Most of these storage guidelines were developed for different crops several decades ago and are archived in ASABE Standard D245.5 (Moisture Relationships of Plantbased Agricultural Products). However, plant breeding has since resulted in grains and oilseeds of different functional/agronomic characteristics, which directly affects their equilibrium moisture content (EMC) value, a parameter that governs storage life/quality. Our recent work with soybeans has established how important it is to update the safe-storage guidelines for the new varieties of grains and oilseeds. Recognizing the importance of this work and a lack of updated storage guidelines on flax, Saskatchewan Flax Development Commission (SaskFlax) has moved to update this information on flax grown in the Canadian Prairies.

Scalable Fault Detection, Diagnosis, and Situational Awareness for Modern High-volume Data Pipelines

Globally, industries are seeking to develop new products and services from the large-scale data sets they hold. As these systems move from prototypes into fully operational 24/7/265 commercial solutions additional services must be provided to detect and address system faults and failure as they arise. Within classical engineering plants, e.g., those of the telecommunications, petrochemical, transportation, etc. industries, these tasks are performed by fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) and situation awareness solutions. This Accelerate project will design and implement a prototype FDD and situation awareness solution for this emerging high-volume data pipeline industry. The solution will be tested and operationally assessed for two industry-held high-volume data pipelines, one in the telecommunications industry and one in the cyber-security industry.

Application of artificial intelligence for modeling driving behavior supported with real time trajectory development

The proposed research work is aimed at developing trajectory data on a real-time basis. On successful completion of the project, a real-time image processing framework will be available for developing innumerable trajectory datasets over the study sections. These datasets can enormously boost current driving behavior studies and facilitate Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAV) research. Along with this, the trajectory database can be a potent source in understanding different traffic stream aspects, such as stability, safety, and attention. Later, the research work will also test AI concepts in modeling driving behavior. In addition, the potential of AI in simulating driving behavior will be assessed. Such driving behavior simulation has a huge potential in addressing the limitations of conventional behavioral models, like expressing stochastic driving behavior, assuming non-uniformity, finally improving the precision in modeling. Besides, in the present project, it is planned to carry the traffic flow modeling using Artificial Intelligence (AI), on successful modeling this can act as frame work in understanding traffic flow characteristics with AI.

Conceptual Design for Aircraft with Complex Aerodynamics

The proposed project is part of a larger effort to develop more suitable conceptual design methodologies for aircraft that account for the complex aerodynamic interactions of novel concepts, for example as present with distributed propulsion concepts. For the project an advanced aerodynamic code will be integrated in an existing larger design methodology. The advantages will be improved quality in the predictions with fewer computational required resources. The benefit will be new aircraft design that can better address our aviation needs while having reduced environmental impacts.

Characterization of the lateral hypothalamic neural outputs using camera-based multi-fiber photometry

Understanding how brain processes information is the one of the most intriguing questions that modern neuroscience faces. This project is aimed to characterize how the lateral hypothalamus process information to downstream brain targets to guide proper behavioral responses. This brain area is well-known to regulate key aspects of the behavior. But how does it process information to control behavior? To answer this question, we use and develop a state-of-the-art technique called fiber photometry. This approach allows to measure neuronal activity of specific neural pathways deep in the brain of a free-moving animal performing different behavioral tasks. In this program, in collaboration with the partner organization, we will use the Doric Lenses fiber photometry system, and improved it to democratize its uses for the needs of researches studying brain functionality.

Active Learning for Fish School Recognition in Echograms in the Bay of Fundy

OERA use hydroacoustic echosounder surveys to evaluate the impact on marine life of tidal turbines in the Bay of Fundy. OERA use Echoview software to read in the raw sensor data (e.g. voltages) and convert it to a visual representation. Echoview contains some algorithms to detect the bottom of the ocean. However, the Fundy data is very noisy from several sources including air bubbles, “entrained air” pushed below the surface of the water, and irregular surfaces on the bottom of the ocean. In order to analyze the survey data, manual pre-processing is currently required to annotate the data. This manual process delays the turnaround, potential consistency and provides opportunity for inconsistency.
This project will train a machine learning model to detect and filter noise in the hydroacoustic sensor data, allowing OERA to improve the accuracy, consistency and manual effort required to pre-process its data. By identifying “bad regions” in hydroacoustic data collected near underwater turbines in the Bay of Fundy with a model to automatically extract these regions from future survey data, OERA will be able to apply greater speed, consistency and accuracy to data processing to prepare for rigorous analysis.

EMR Clinical Decision-Making Application for Hamilton Health Sciences ChronicPain Centres

The proposed internship will provide an opportunity to observe and evaluate the implementation

process of an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) application. It is an opportunity for an eHealth

student to evaluate from many different viewpoints: programming and software development in

response to requests for clinical and academic deliverables; training and introduction process for

business support personnel and clinical personnel; melding of the EMR in to the clinical flow of

patients, utility as a pre-screening tool to facilitate clinical decision-making for triage and scheduling;

performance of the EMR clinically and from an academic standpoint