Innovative Projects Realized

The inhibitory effect of Aevo Oral Ultrasound Gel on dental bacteria

Dental caries affects the majority of the world’s population and causes tooth decay and loss. Bacteria in the mouth cause this disease. Sugar consumption plays a role in causing these bacteria to make acid that results in dental caries. Studies have shown that a type of sugar alcohol, called xylitol, can help prevent this disease. We will be studying the growth of oral bacteria that cause dental caries. We will examine this growth after applying an oral ultrasound gel (manufactured by SmileSonica Inc) that contains xylitol. If this gel can prevent the growth of these bacteria, then this will help expand the market for SmileSonica Inc.

AI Nétur

This project deals with the development of three applications of Artificial Intelligence and Operations Research aiming at improving the cost, response time and flexibility of production cost assessment, process planning and production at Nétur. Nétur manufactures high precision parts for Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) in the aerospace industry, such as Pratt & Whitney. Data mining and machine learning techniques will be adapted and implemented to support both production cost assessment and process planning. Computer vision will be used to automatically recognize alphanumerical characters and symbols, and design features from 2D engineering drawings. This data, along with known process plans from Nétur, will be used to train models to predict complete or partial process plans from design features. In order to include the human process planner in the loop, this project will adopt an interactive planning system design approach to develop an interactive computer-aided process planning system. Finally, this project will exploit operations research to develop an advanced scheduling tool capable of taking advantage of tool similarities and standardization between jobs, as well as multiple process plans per part. This project will be supervised by 6 professors from Polytechnique Montréal with expertise in manufacturing, machine learning, computer vision and operations research.

Digital Oilfield – An Integrated Approach

Along with the development of Industry 4.0, the Oil and Gas Industry has employed Digital Twins as new way to lower cost, monitor assets, optimize maintenance, and minimize downtime by creating the connection between the physical world and the digital world. The digital oilfield collect enormous amounts of data from sensors, measuring devices, and other sources. The quantity of data is updated frequently and grows dramatically over time. This data must be stored, managed, and analyzed. Data analysis is crucial for the success of digitalization and is required to support data mining and machine learning. Understanding and supporting the evolving role of people in operations is also critical to the successful introduction and sustainability digital technology within a company. This project aims to assess the concept of designing a multi-operational Digital Twin for Offshore Newfoundland.

Marine Icing Investigation

The project is dedicated to developing new models and understanding for predicting marine ice accretion levels on small and medium sized sea vessels. These models are developed using engineering principles and will be used to predict ice loads, loss of vessel stability, and to assist in sizing heat tracing for critical vessel infrastructure. Additionally, we are also striving to develop instrumentation to assist in measuring icing levels such that ship operators can take pre-emptive action. Finally, to help develop best practices for operations in icing conditions, we are studying both anti-icing and de-icing strategies to help vessel operators cope with ice accretion when it cannot be avoided.

projet: Développement d’un prototype de simulation utilisant la réalité virtuellepour la formation des infirmières en traumatologie

Le but du projet est de développer un prototype de simulation d’un patient virtuel permettant aux

étudiantes infirmières de pratiquer des séquences d’action difficilement reproductibles dans la vraie

vie. Différentes recherches seront réalisées en lien avec le développement de cet outil et son

utilisation pour la formation des infirmières. Dans ce stage, le stagiaire travaillera sur la

modélisation et la conception des premiers systèmes vitaux du modèle, soit les systèmes

respiratoires et sanguins. À sa finalisation, le système développé s’apparentera à un jeu vidéo

(serious game) qui permettra aux étudiantes et aux infirmières en exercice, de pratiquer certaines

habiletés dans un contexte sécuritaire et peu coûteux.

Mieux communiquer pour participer: une formation pour les intervenants en loisir

Les jeunes enfants qui éprouvent des difficultés à communiquer ont besoin de la présence d’adultes pour les aider à pratiquer différentes activités et à interagir efficacement avec les autres. Par contre, les intervenants en loisir ne sont pas suffisamment outillés pour réussir à soutenir ces enfants, qui ont des besoins particuliers. De ce fait, ces enfants ne vivent pas d’expériences satisfaisantes sur le plan social puisqu’ils sont en retrait de leurs groupes à cause de leurs difficultés. De même, le travail des intervenants se voit entravé par leur manque de solutions. C’est pourquoi ce projet, visant une pleine participation des enfants aux activités de loisirs, offrira une formation enrichie aux intervenants de loisirs concernés en plus de séances de coaching par des experts du domaine des troubles de la communication.

Élaboration des paramètres de contrôle de qualité pour la productiond’insecte parasitoïde Trichogramma ostriniae

Le projet vise la préparation d’un protocole de contrôle de qualité pour l’insecte parasitoïde

Trichogramma ostriniae. Cet insecte est utilisé comme agent de lutte biologique contre la

pyrale du maïs dans les cultures de maïs sucré frais. L’entreprise Anatis Bioprotection inc.

produit ce parasitoïde et doit donc se pourvoir d’un tel protocole. Dans un premier temps, les

critères de qualité seront établis ensuite, les valeurs associées à une bonne qualité pour

chacun de ces critères seront identifiées pour l’espèce T. ostriniae. Le choix de ces critères

sera basé sur leur pertinence et leur faisabilité. Par exemple, la fécondité des femelles est

parfois calculée durant sept jours alors qu’en milieu naturel, ces dernières ne vivent pas

aussi longtemps, il s’agit donc d’un critère peu pertinent. De plus, si la fécondité des

femelles durant 24 heures est corrélée à celle durant 7 jours, il sera retenu 24 heures pour

faciliter l’évaluation de la qualité des trichogrammes. Les valeurs représentants des

trichogrammes…………………………………..

Edge Response of Understorey Plants, Lichenivorous Gastropods and Their Grazing Impact on At-Risk Lichens in Mixedwood Swamps

Clearcut logging and acid deposition affect plants, lichens and slugs (lichen consumers) and may facilitate the introduction and spread of alien invasive slugs, which can increase grazing pressures on at-risk lichens. The main research goal of this project is to improve our understanding of how clearcutting practices affect herbs and slugs and facilitate both the introduction of alien slugs and increased grazing on endangered lichens. We will: (i) identify slugs that feed on at-risk lichens in swamps; (ii) determine whether slug communities change with distance from the clearcut edges; and (iii) determine how these communities relate to acidity levels on bark. Such information will allow estimating the extension of clearcut impacts and will aid forest managers to define strategies and remediation methods for the conservation of at-risk lichens.

Decision Making Tool for Pipelines Risk Assessment with Multi-hazards (Corrosion and Geo-Hazard) Consideration

The oil & gas industry is vital to the economy of British Columbia (BC) and Canada. The BC Oil and Gas Commission (BCOGC) regulates more than 40 thousand km of pipelines that transport a variety of refined and unrefined products. The reliability of the pipelines is often compromised due to natural ageing and deterioration processes, coupled with exposure to natural hazards (e.g. earthquake, geotechnical failure, climate change) and human induced hazards (e.g. accidental hits, vandalism). Metal loss (e.g. due to corrosion) and geotechnical failure (loss of integrity due to geotechnical effect) accounts for over 50% of failure incidents. Understanding performance of the different pipelines and their interaction with the environment (as the failures can manifest as leaks and spills) is important to support decisions about risk mitigation, future development, investments and maintenance policies – all of which are important so that pipeline operations can be made more efficient and reliable. The focus of the research work is in developing risk-based models for the assessment of the interactions between corrosion and seismic induced geotechnical damage and their effects on the mechanism of pipeline failure.

Numerical and theoretical investigation of blow-up in various fluid models

The global regularity problem for smooth solutions to the incompressible Euler and Navier-Stokes equations is a major open problem in the analysis partial differential equations and in mathematical physics. In recent years, there have been several significant advances in our understanding of the global regularity problem for the Euler equations both numerically and analytically. Particularly, the Boussinesq system is based on Euler equation and is used to describe the propagation of surface water waves with small amplitude. Some previous results show that the Boussinesq system has local strong solutions which have finite energy but will become singular (or blow-up) in finite time in some specific domain. We will explore the stability and boundary behavior of scale-invariant solutions to Boussinesq system which is possible to write explicitly. Beside, the question that the blow-up property persists or not if the domain (for blow-up solutions ) changes. At last, we hope to calculate the ‘blow-up rate’ at least numerically. For the beta-plane model, basically it is the Euler equation with rotation. We would like to extent the time of existence of the solution when the initial data is small in a periodic domain.

Polymères biocompatibles pour des formulations d’agents thérapeutiques à administration orale. PhaseII : comprimés monolithiques pour la livraison au niveau du côlon

Pour délivrer des médicaments, les formulations solides à administration orale sont préférées

par les patients et l’industrie pharmaceutique. De plus, les excipients sont préférablement des

polymères biocompatibles d’origine naturelle. Les propriétés spécifiques des excipients (solubilité,

susceptibilité aux enzymes gastro-intestinales) peuvent rendre difficile l’utilisation d’un seul polymère

pour la livraison de l’actif à chaque segment du tractus gastrointestinal (estomac, intestin grêle, côlon).

Par contre, l’association dans la même formulation de polymères ayant des caractères acide-base (pKa)

et des sensibilités différentes aux actions des divers enzymes digestives permet un meilleur contrôle de

la libération de l’actif. Notre projet sur la livraison de la catalase au côlon (Phase I) a déjà révélé que

l’association de deux biopolymères est plus avantageuse que l’utilisation individuelle. Le présent

projet (Phase II) aborde les propriétés de ces matrices et de leur association, ainsi que le mécanisme de

libération pour améliorer le ciblage des actifs. Ce projet sera réalisé avec Axcan Pharma, société

fortement impliquée dans le développement de………………………..

Microalgae for the production of plant specialized metabolites of interest – Phase 2

Algae-C is a company specialized in algal biomass production. It enables on-site production of algae for a wide variety of sectors (aquaculture, nutraceutical, cosmetic and biofuel). To date, many fuels, pharmaceuticals and cosmetic products are extracted from plants. These valuable plant natural products (PNPs) are often produced in low quantities in plants and extraction methods can be long and expensive. Thus, there is much interest in metabolic engineering for developing microbial platforms to produce specific PNPs. Microalgae are well-known systems for plant biology and genetic engineering and are interesting and suitable hosts for the reconstitution of complex plant pathways. Algae-C wishes to translate metabolic engineering research into industrial processes. This project aims to optimized microalgae platforms for the production of valuable PNPs. These ventures are motivated by consumer demand for products that are environmentally friendly, less expensive, and possess properties similar or superior with those generated by PNPs.