Innovative Projects Realized

Évaluation du comportement et des propriétés mécaniques d’une cornière en carton

Des cornières en carton sont utilisées pour la protection des angles de colis ou de palettes, pendant leurs manutentions (chargement, transport, etc.). Elles jouent un rôle important dans le renforcement de la résistance à l’empilement des cartons. Le projet porte sur une amélioration des propriétés des cornières fabriquées par Abzac. Les différentes tâches seront les suivantes : – Développer une nouvelle résistance à la compression plus compétitive tout en réduisant les matières premières. (Augmentation volume massique de la cornière); – Imaginer, créer, concevoir, définir un test de torsion ; – Optimiser les propriétés mécaniques écrasement, torsion ; – S’assurer de la répétabilité et reproductivité des tests. Abzac Canada Inc.

Deploying electric vehicles in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area: Health and climate benefits and strategy development

In Canada, the transportation sector is the second largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter and a large contributor to air pollution emissions, which can cause significant health impacts. Since electric vehicle (EV) does not generate any exhaust emissions, introducing EVs can bring health and climate co-benefits to society. From a life cycle perspective, this study will evaluate the environmental, health and economic impacts of introducing EVs in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. Based on the impact evaluation, the intern will assist Pollution Probe in creating a generic municipal zero emission vehicle EV deployment framework, as well as an Electric Mobility Strategy tailored to the City of Toronto. The development of this framework and strategy is important, since electric mobility benefits can only be achieved through widespread EV adoption, and comparable studies have not been undertaken in Canada.

Motivating Stakeholder Engagement in a UK-Canada Circular Economy Trade Agreement

Following up on literature gaps identified in a research report entitled ” Understanding the Future of Canada-UK Trade Relationships in a Circular Economy Context” prepared in part by this application’s Academic Supervisors and funded by a SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant, this research project will investigate how to motivate UK stakeholders and increase their engagement in a new trade agreement between Canada and the UK that supports and motivates a circular economy. Based on a recent OECD report, a circular-economy is one that integrates economic, environmental, and social sustainability concepts through a redesigned “closed loop” cyclical use of resources (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2018). With a direct link between international trade and the transition towards a circular economy, better understanding the needs and desires of UK stakeholders in regards to Canadian trade policy could lead to increased support of a circular trade agreement. While no direct surveys or formal interviews will be performed, informal discussions related to specific literature on this subject will take place. The higher the engagement – the more justifiable, effective and successfully negotiated a Canada-UK circular trade agreement could be.

Ellen MacArthur Foundation. (2018). https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy

Advanced Signal Processing and Machine Learning for BLE-based Indoor Localization

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a new emerging paradigm and is rapidly gaining ground in different applications of significant engineering importance including but not limited to smart buildings, and smart public environments. The main enabling factor of this promising paradigm is integration of identification, localization, and navigation technologies with smart hand-held devices equipped with sensing, processing, and communication capabilities. Stringent accuracy requirements along with lower cost, energy efficiency, and high security standards make indoor localization a challenging problem, which in turn calls for in-depth research on alternative and innovative multi-sensor solutions. In particular, the main objective of this research program is development of advanced signal processing and machine learning solutions to micro-locate and track a person within a delimited physical space (e.g. building) using the industrial partner’s Smart Bluetooth locating infrastructure installed within this space.

New Orthogonal Polynomials and their Applications

We propose development and validation of novel mathematical tools which can be

used for information processing for object and/or model identification and detection within

decision support systems (DSS) in various decision frameworks such as situation

assessment and analysis, genetic modeling and analysis, medical imaging, etc. The project

will have two main novel contributions: (1) introducing new families of polynomials and (2) the

discretization of old and new polynomials. Specifically, in the proposed research, symmetries

of n dimensional lattices for defining families of orthogonal functions and orthogonal

polynomials will be exploited in order to be used in n dimensional Fourier analysis in digital

and analog signal processing, as well as in object and pattern recognition methods. The

aforementioned symmetries have been recently linked to knot symmetries and to DNA

properties, [BPP]. The project aims at better in-depth understanding the of these relations which will further lead to fundamental contributions in knot theory and group theory and their

various practical applications……………….

Active learning for automatic generation of narratives from numeric financial and supply chain data

One of the major responsibilities of financial and business analysts is to generate narrative reports summarizing business trends based on time series data. As it stands, this analysis is typically done manually, requiring analysts to pour over huge amounts of data looking to understand trends, and performing ad hoc analyses to establish relationships between data streams. As such, it is currently a high touch process and even with the many analysts currently employed, important trends can go undetected for long periods of time. As in other fields, a push toward automation has the potential to increase efficiency in the financial and business analysis sector, increasing the speed of analysis, decreasing error rates, and freeing analysts from low-level tasks to allow them to focus on high-level synthesis. One of the challenges in automating financial and business analysis tasks is that analysts tend to rely on years of experience and domain specific knowledge to achieve good results. Thus they rely on a “Gestalt” to lead their analysis, which is difficult to replicate using a pure rule-based system. TBC

Projet pilote de maintien à domicile de personnes âgées des Chaudières- Appalaches grâce à des senseurs et à un soutien du système de santé et de la communauté

À partir de l’année 2021, le Québec sera considéré comme une « société âgée ». Le vieillissement à domicile devient une solution adaptée. Dans de nombreux pays d’Europe, cette solution donne de bons résultats, avec une meilleure qualité de vie aux personnes âgées et coûte moins cher. En 2000, la Commission Clair avait aussi recommandé d’accroitre l’offre et l’intensité des services à domicile. Le présent projet de recherche va être mis en œuvre avec 5 à 6 personnes âgées volontaires, de 75 ans et plus, de la région de Chaudière-Appalaches. Ils seront suivis pour leurs activités, les soins et services dont ils bénéficient, pendant une période de 9 mois. Les plus fragiles auront des senseurs pour des alertes. Une évaluation sera faite à la fin du projet en se référant aux modèles de Buurtzorg et des microsystèmes cliniques pour apprécier les retombées.

NLP Sales Assistant

The goal of this project that will be conducted in collaboration with Heyday is to create a technology that uses a given messaging platform (e.g. Facebook Messenger, web chat widget) that allows users to communicate easily and smoothly with their preferred brands or retailers. This technology should allow the automation of answers and interaction between users and retailers. The technology that we would like to develop will be based on advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning techniques. These techniques shall allow the performance of the existing approaches which have a small success rate especially when dealing with complex situations that involve for instance users asking their questions simultaneously in two different languages (e.g. English and French) or using regionalized languages. The project will have unique benefits for both Heyday and the intern. For Heyday, it will allow the improvement of their success rate which is now around 60%. Concerning the intern, this project will help him to improve his knowledge about recent advanced NLP and machine learning techniques as well as working with real data in a real-life challenging problem.

Testing of a Collar-Mounted Airbag to Protect Against Neck Injuries and Concussions

Hockey parents are worried about rising concussion rates. Currently no sports equipment protects against concussions. Hockey players aged under 18, must wear a neck guard for protection against skate blade cuts. Recently, a redesigned hockey neck guard, using an impact sensor and airbag technology was conceptualized. We want to test whether airbag inflation upon direct or indirect hit to the head/face/neck/upper body, can simulate “neck bracing,” and reduce neck injuries and concussion risk caused by whiplash or rotational movement of the head/neck. These latter movements often cause more severe concussions than those from direct hits to the head. In this project, Strathum Solutions Inc. will benefit from York University’s technical expertise to begin the initial phase of research towards proof-of-concept testing. This project will focus on the electronics system, specifically, to verify the previously designed sensor system, and develop and implement falls/hits algorithm into the microcontroller.

Analysis of sleep and circadian rhythms in Alzheimer’s disease

I will be developing analysis tools for studying sleep and circadian rhythms in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This project is a continuation of the project I worked on last summer at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and is a sub-study of a clinical trial that aims to evaluate the optimal dose of an oral food supplement that is high in medium-chain triglycerides in patients suffering from mild-moderate AD. My work is focused on protocol development and data analysis using the Clocklab software to analyze actigraphy data and MATLAB to analyze EEG data collected during sleep in the home environment.

The overarching project has two key goals. Firstly, it is investigating the tolerability and effectiveness of a novel treatment for AD. There are currently no disease modifying treatments available for AD, so there is a desperate need to develop novel therapeutics that can help alleviate symptoms and delay the onset of cognitive impairment. Secondly, AD is associated with a disruption of the sleep-wake cycle. This research will help further our understanding of the specific sleep disturbances experienced by patients, compared to healthy elderly control participants.

Winthrop Pickard Bell: Digital Archives at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany and Mount Allison University, Canada

This project consists of archival work on the lecture notes taken by Winthrop Pickard Bell at Universität Göttingen in the beginning of the twentieth-century. Bell was a Canadian philosopher who taught at Harvard University in the 1920’s after completing his doctorate with Edmund Husserl, a prominent German philosopher, at Universität Göttingen. Bell took meticulous notes from lectures given by Husserl as well as by other philosophers at the university. For this project, I will pick a set of lecture notes to work on and begin to transform them into something of substantial academic merit. I will be involved in digitization, adding meta-data, adding scholarly commentary, pinpointing references from Bell’s original notes and, because of my background knowledge of German, translating. One set of lecture notes to be worked on is particularly important: a seminar taught by Husserl on the logic of Lotze, another German philosopher. In an upcoming edition of “Husserl Studies,” a journal concerned with the work of Husserl, a summary of the Lotze seminar will be published. Because of this, there will be great scholarly interest in having the seminar published in full. I hope to have made a significant contribution to this end. TBC

Transformative approaches to sustainability in small and medium enterprises

This research involves observing and evaluating sustainability experiments in the small business community, which will contribute to a database that will integrate knowledge from previous research created at the university. The web-based repository will highlight case studies of transformative sustainability entrepreneurship endeavors and supporting legal, political and governance arrangements. The research will focus on the potential for low-carbon technological and social innovations to scale up, influencing the behavior of businesses operating in various sectors, and located in diverse communities. The database will allow for information sharing across researchers, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and municipal governments. Creating the database will involve organizing and documenting an abundance of existing models and cases of transformational sustainability entrepreneurship. Since sustainability transitions require the active participation of various actors, partnerships are central to widespread success. Initial site visits to SMEs and communities to build partnerships will take place.