Innovative Projects Realized

Express Scripting Technology: Scratch for SOTI SNAP and IoT

SOTI has developed a software product called SOTI SNAP that is designed to allow anyone to create an app with no programming or technical knowledge. SOTI SNAP allows users to drag and drop widgets onto a canvas and connect them together to create an app. Apps generated with SOTI SNAP have cross platform capabilities, they can run on Android and iOS based devices. Currently SNAP apps that require programming logic, must use JavaScript, but using JavaScript requires technical skills. SOTI would like to add a visual language capability that is similar to visual block programming frameworks like Scratch and Blockly. This capability would fit well with our zero-code goal, and minimal technical skill requirement for developing apps with SOTI SNAP.

Interfacing Data and Power: Serious Gaming in the Experimental Humanities

As a teaching fellow of the Pelion Summer Lab for Cultural Theory and Experimental Humanities I will be collaborating with scholars in the digital and experimental humanities to co-lead a methodologically-focused, experimental workshop to produce and publicly stage a ‘serious game’ related to this year’s lab theme, Data & Power. Serious games are a genre of applied gaming where entertainment is subservient to a pedagogical motivation. Drawing inspiration from the open source movement and gaming subcultures, this proposed workshop will be user-driven and in part user-designed. Interfacing social theory and practice in and as the elaboration of an interactive gamespace, the experiment aims at involving participants as gamers whose embodied interactions within the gamespace generate real-time data feedback that actively shapes the parameters of that space as a domain of collaborative knowledge production. Conceived through the interfaces and pedagogical genres of online and offline gaming, this research project aims to bridge divisions between public and academic forums and ‘hegemonic’ and ‘peripheral’ sites of knowledge production by engaging members from the public as active players/collaborators rather than as a standing reserve of passive research participants, offering interactive tools with which to understand data as a cultural force in everyday life.

Real VR Hands and Interaction with Virtual Objects

Serving as the most widely-used body part for communication, hand is a very important tool for human to interact with the world. Especially with the continuing development of virtual reality and augmented reality, hand pose information has gradually become an indispensable component for improving users’ experience in interacting with computing devices. Therefore, this project aims at enabling an expressive virtual hand reconstruction to increase immersion and presence in VR experiences. The capacitive sensor that will be utilized in this project is supported by the project partner, Tactual Labs who, by the end of this project, will benefit by having its current innovative capacitive controller more intelligent.

Innovative wastewater treatment flowsheet development for the high strength centrate from food waste processing facility

Centrate from food waste processing facilities contains higher concentrations of organic matters. Those contaminants (especially ammonia nitrogen) remain in the wastewater effluent after anaerobic digestion treatment, which are the great treat to the environment if not properly treated. Other contaminants (biochemical oxygen demand, chemical oxygen demand, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, suspended solids, etc.) also impact the downstream wastewater treatment processes. Many full-scale plants fail to meet all effluent discharge requirement or inability to consistently meet discharge criteria. This research project is to investigate the characteristic of the centrate from food waste processing facility and to develop new, reliable biological centrate treatment flowsheet.

Phase Transformations in the Reduction of Manganese Ores by Methane

Manganese is a critical element in steelmaking – the third most common element after iron and carbon – and has no satisfactory replacement. The conventional process for producing metallic manganese is energy- and carbon-intensive, operating at 1400-1600°C and consuming on the order of 1 tonne of carbon reductant for every 2 tonnes of manganese produced. An alternative strategy based on the reduction of manganese ores by gaseous methane, rather than solid carbon, may allow operation at lower temperatures (1000-1200°C) while also mitigating CO2 emissions. Prior works have demonstrated the viability of this approach at the lab scale and research is ongoing at the University of Toronto to demonstrate the scalability of this technology. Work-to-date has demonstrated that phase transformations during the reduction process, in particular the melting of the Fe-Mn-C product phase, have a significant effect on the rate of reduction. Improved understanding of these transformations will enable optimization and scaling of this process.

SSL Offloading Prototype

SOTI MoblControl is an enterprise mobllity management solution that secures and manages, mobile devices and the mobile data across all endpomts. To ensure end-to-end security, MobiControl encrypts all
communication between the MobiControl Manager and the Deployment Server uslng Secure Socket layer (SSL). The SSL Is a cryptographic protocol that is use widely for secure communication. The process of the encryption and the decryption In the SSL require considerable computation power. Specially in a situation of handling a large number of devices. This can put a significant stain on CPU resources and effect the performance of the system. By isolating SSL computation into a separate process and offloading process to specific hardware, and network components that are optimized specifically for this task, organizations gain grealtar control and ability to optimize the throughput of their system. The research will focus on creating a proof of concept that will potentially support SOTI’s customers in infrastructure saving.

Machine Learning Aided Detection of Brain Aneurysms

Intracranial aneurysms are relatively common, occurring in 2-5% of the general population. Rupture of the aneurysm can result in a stroke with a devastating 30-day mortality of 45%. Further, severe medical conditions are possible in which up to one third of patients may die before reaching the hospital and one third will become severely debilitated. Aneurysms are, however, difficult to find on magnetic resonance and computed tomography angiography scans (MRA and CTA scans) – especially when small or located close to the bone. Through the use of the existing knowledge and expertise of the neurovascular team at Toronto Western Hospital, as well as their database of CTA and MRA scans, the aim of this project is to improve on efforts in this field through the development of an artificial intelligence and machine learning method for the detection of intracranial aneurysms with a diagnostic accuracy approaching that of trained neuroradiologists. As unspecialized general radiologists read most neuroimaging exams due to a lack of specialized physicians in remote and rural areas, a long-term goal is to use results from this work to build a tool for the support of imaging review by non-specialists in emergency situations.

Automated Retail Area Cluster Detection

The main objective of this project is to develop a retail cluster detection algorithm and improve the accuracy of the identification. The final deliverable will be an algorithm that runs through Google dataflow that will be able to ingest a month of users’ location breadcrumbs and output user-location clusters. The output of the algorithm will be a unique cluster identifier that will be used in the visit algorithm for visit identification. Besides latitude and longitude data, the project will have access to altitude information. This can be useful for determining clusters in multi-level locations (such as malls).This algorithm will help recognizing the customer visiting pattern observed based on user ID and allow accurate profiling for weather related content or advertisement targeting for enhanced user experience

Communication network modeling for simulation of wide-area control and protection applications in power systems

Computer simulation is a widely used tool for design and analysis of various aspects of modern power systems.

One area where simulation has been invaluable is the study of protection systems used to avoid catastrophic

failures and blackouts, by rapidly detecting and shutting down faulty equipment in the system. High-speed data

networks are becoming an integral part of the modern power grid, which uses computer-based monitoring, and

protection systems. However, relying on data networks presents a unique set of challenges in terms of ensuring

reliable and timely exchange of information between measurement units, computers, and protection equipment.

Therefore any comprehensive study of a power system protection scheme must also include an analysis of the

impact of the of the data network. At present, software tools are not available for realistic simulation of datanetworks

within widely used power-system simulation software such as PSCAD. The goal of the proposed

research is to develop a set of data-network simulation models, which can…………………..

Hybrid RNA sequencing of Douglas-firs exposed to simulations of future extreme climate events

Douglas-fir is one of the most economically important tree species in Canada and it is at risk of maladaptation to local environment due to climate change. Thus, the aim of my project is to understand the adaptation of Douglas-fir to future extreme climatic events. Our group at Ensminger Lab at University of Toronto monitored the performance and survival of four different Douglas-fir genotypes under simulations of future drought and heat events. During the experiment, we also collected samples for long- and short-read gene sequencing. In collaboration with Jill Wegrzyn, one of the world’s leading conifer genome researcher, we will create novel hybrid gene sequencing assemblies. We will also develop new algorithms to identify genes that confer improved performance in Douglas-fir under extreme climatic stress. This work will improve our understanding of plant responses to climate stressors and provide genomic tools for the identification of Douglas-fir genotypes that are adapted to perform better in a future climate. Ultimately, these tools can be used to inform tree improvement programs, and forest management practices and conservations.

Rheological and microstructural properties of micellar solutions

Surfactant solutions are of immense scientific and technological interest. They can self-assemble into wide variety of interesting and highly dynamic nanostructures including spherical, cylindrical, vesicle, worm-like or lamellar type. Micellar solutions typically contain surfactants and salts that are dissolved in water. Beyond a critical micelle concentration, the addition of salt or surfactant transforms spherical micelles to isolated rod-like micelles (in dilute regime) that at sufficiently high concentrations of salt and surfactant (in the semi-dilute regime), form entangled worm-like micelles. The projects aim at understanding the relationship between the microstructure-process-property for micellar solutions that have a broad range of applications such as detergents, paints, and lubricants. The project will be performed through employing rheological characterizations. The expected outcomes are the detailed models describing the change in the rheological properties and microstructures in the micellar solutions as a function of processing parameters such as temperatures and shear rates.

Evaluating the effectiveness of a multimodal intensive episodic treatment centre for youth Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) victims: The Be Brave Ranch

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is an all too prevalent form of childhood trauma worldwide. Nearly 1 in 5 women and 1 in 10 men experience some form of abuse in their childhood. CSA has been linked to numerous long-term effects: PTSD, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, eating disorders, sexual dysfunction, suicidal ideation, and cognitive impairment. Growing awareness of the problem has led more individuals to seek professional treatment. At present, there is no gold-standard for CSA treatment, particularly in youth. The Little Warriors Be Brave Ranch in Alberta, Canada is an innovative multimodal residential treatment program for children and adolescents with histories of CSA. We will gather mental health data from children and adolescents to measure symptom progression over time. We will also collect information from their caregivers, to gain better insight into the effects of treatment on them. Our goal is to develop a comprehensive framework for CSA treatment programs.