Innovative Projects Realized

Development of Persona Models for Banking Customers

In this research we will identify current types of customer, taking into account people who prefer to use a variety of platforms and different preferences in terms of how actively they manage their money. . We will carry out focus groups and interpret the results of a survey in terms of their implications for a set of factors that differentiate between banking customers. Using the factor scores obtained in a survey we will segment into meaningful groups (personas). A focus group will seek to validate the persona model inferred from the data analysis of the survey, and based on the focus groups and survey we will identify a revised set of key factors that underlie banking and investment preferences. The development of an up-to-date Persona model of customers will help TD target its offerings to different customer groups and will also assist it in designing user research activities.

Community dynamics in restored salt marshes

Salt marshes are important coastal ecosystems that provide many services. Due to their high soil fertility, they have a long history of being converted to farmland. There is now growing interest in restoring salt marshes to protect against coastal erosion, mitigate sea level rise, and provide increased habitat for birds, fish, etc. Ducks Unlimited Canada and partners initiated a large salt marsh restoration project in 2009-2010 in Aulac, NB, Canada, and are planning new restoration initiatives, with goals of reverting farmland to salt marsh and assessing effectiveness of restoration methods. The intern will quantify patterns and rates of restoration of biological communities, at a critical point in the restoration process when the foundational plant species has spread throughout the restoration sites, other halophytic plants are starting to colonize the sites, and the old protective dike has eroded, leaving the young marshes to face stronger erosional forces. This process needs to be fully understood for our region where winter disturbance is substantial, because dike removal and associated shoreline management are becoming more common in Maritime Canada, largely due to the high costs associated with dike maintenance. TBC

The Binary Fluid Ejector- a novel thermal-driven heat pump for low-energy distillation

There are two common technologies that use thermal energy directly to produce cooling – absorption

chillers and steam ejectors. Both are old technologies that suffer from serious limitations. MRT is

developing a novel Binary Fluid Ejector that can overcome the limitations of prior art to produce a heat

pump that can economically harness renewable thermal energy, including waste heat, to do useful

work such as air conditioning, process chilling, or distillation/desalination. MRT constructs & tests a

demonstration distillation system of a type applicable for treatment of waste and process effected water

currently generated by Oil Sands Mining and SAGD operations. The specific research to be performed

by the Candidate is to conduct modeling work necessary to design and optimize the precursor ejector

prototypes required for concept validation prior to comprehensive design and construction of the

demonstration system

Applying Low-Field, Bench-Top NMR Technology for the Rapid, On-Site Analysis of Critical Metrics in Wine Grapes and Wine

Vineyards, as with many other agriculture-based industries, often deal with time-sensitive decisions regarding how to manage their grapes to ensure the production of high-quality crops. Similarly, wineries need information quickly during fermentation to help guide winemaker interventions. Existing methods of obtaining the information needed by grape growers and winemakers is often time-intensive to collect. This research project seeks to apply new analytical technology to develop methods that can be used in the field so that critical information can be relayed to grape growers and winemakers quickly. Supra Research and Development hopes to build a stronger connection with the wine industry in the Okanagan valley of British Columbia, to not only grow our business, but also to provide the wine industry with the analytical tools they need to compete in the global marketplace.

Prototype testing of a liquid cooling system for electric vehicle inverters

Thermal management of power electronic devices in an electric vehicle inverter is a critical factor influencing cost, size, efficiency and reliability of the system. Liquid cooling is a viable option; however, for peak power operation, the existing liquid cooling system must be optimized. A new impinging-jet-based liquid cooling system with enhanced heat transfer was designed and developed at the University of Windsor in collaboration with MAGNA International. Initial evaluations have shown that the new system has significant advantages over existing liquid cooling systems. However, comprehensive experimental testing must be carried out before this technology is commercialized. Therefore, a prototype of the new cooling system will be built and comprehensively tested. The objective of this proposal is to evaluate the performance of the new impinging-jet-based liquid cooling system at different driving load conditions. This would enable the way towards commercialization of this technology and for more efficient and reliable electric vehicles.

Layout Drawing Digitalization and Generation

The layout drawing is the popular format in the Oil & Gas industry to illustrate the design of layouts and the internal equipment. The complex drawings contain primary shapes, indicative lines and textual annotations. So far the expert knowledge is still required to understand, modify and create such documents. The proposed project is to develop a system with interface for the layout drawing digitalization and generation problem. We aim to extract the symbols, construct the structures and infer the relations from the documents, then learn the common patterns among large amount of these documents to enable the automatic generation. It will reduce the tedious human work in decision making, maintenance and visualization processes in the industry.

Prioritizing salmonid connectivity through the removal of barriers in a highly urbanized landscape

Systematic conservation planning tools allow us to use data on species distributions, habitat quality, and cost to and identify optimal areas to invest conservation and restoration resources. These tools can be particularly helpful in highly contested biodiverse landscapes where pressures from growing populations and economic development compete with conservation objectives. The Lower Fraser River represents an ideal location for the application of systematic conservation planning, it is home to Canada’s third largest population centre, and acts as the conduit for 56 Federally managed conservation units of pacific salmon, 16 of which spawn directly in the Lower Fraser. In support of Raincoast Conservation Foundation’s “Vision for Salmon in the Lower Fraser”, we intend to map historical salmon habitat, and apply the Marxan spatial analysis tool to identify priority areas for restoration. Historical baselines can quantify this “Vision” and Marxan can help chart a path towards achieving it.

CardiAI Point-of-Care Device for High-Caliber and Rapid Diagnosis of Biomarkers from Blood of Patients for Early Heart Failure Detection

The aim of this research and development project is to design and develop a bedside point-of-care device to be equipped with the CardiAI’s machine learning technology for heart failure management. Our POC system will include disposable cardiac biomarker strips and an electronic reader. Once implemented, it will be connected to the AI platform that will continuously collects patients’ health information from patient’s daily manual log, electronic medical record, and remotely monitor the patient’s quality of life (QoL) and their medication adherence, thus helping patients manage their condition better.

Développement d’outils pour le pilotage de la production fromagère artisanale du Québec à l’ère de l’industrie 4.0

La recherche proposée vise à améliorer le rendement des PME fromagères québécoises. Des modèles de pilotage et de valorisation des données d’exploitation seront développés pour la prise de décisions basés sur des données probantes en temps réel. Cette recherche permettra de développer un modèle d’exploitation des fromageries, commun et optimisé, qui inclura l’identification de différents indicateurs de performance (KPI) adaptés au secteur industriel fromager. Elle s’appuiera sur une analyse et une définition des éléments nécessaires au développement d’une plateforme de pilotage des exploitations fromagères. Un outil sera développé pour permettre l’échange et le traitement de données, pour le pilotage de la chaîne de valeur (comprenant la chaîne logistique pour les fromageries, les producteurs, et le transport), afin de maximiser la productivité, les profits, identifier l’impact des prises de décisions et en mesurer les impacts financiers

Optimizing meta-parameters for quantum machine learning

Variational quantum circuits allow to do machine learning on near-term quantum hardware. The success of the algorithms strongly depends on the choices made during the model design. These choices can be quantified and are called meta-parameters. Examples are the number and type of quantum gates in the circuit, the number of layers of circuit template, the choice of training data, the optimization algorithm, and the optimization strategy. Francisco will be studying these in the context of the compression and classification of quantum data and will try to propose a best practice. This research fits in a larger project about detecting quantum phase transitions in spin chains. The expected outcomes are twofold: we will advance the knowledge of efficent algorithms in quantum machine learning and we will gain understanding of the quantum phases encoded in the wave function of our test system.

Opportunities for climate change adaptation: comparative research on Indigenous fisher communities in the Canadian Arctic and Eastern Sri Lanka

The aim of the study is to examine the opportunities for adaptation to climate change in rural fisheries communities. Rural Indigenous fisher populations in particular have been identified as being uniquely sensitive to the effects of climate change, reflecting their often-close relationship to the environment and their dependence on natural resources for their livelihoods, culture, and well-being. This applies to both the Indigenous fisher populations of the ‘Inuit’ communities in the Canadian Arctic and the ‘Vedda’ communities in eastern Sri Lanka. Field data were collected from both locations using a series of face-to-face interviews and participant observation to understand how people experience and respond to climate change impacts. TO BE CONT’D

Modelling of Ecosystem Services Provided by Agriculture in Hungary

The aim of this project is to evaluate non-marketed ecosystem services that arise in Hungarian agriculture when producing market outputs by implementing and calibrating the Biome-BGCMuSo 4.0 ecosystem model adapted to the Hungarian setting (AgroMo), and by developing econometric models for evaluating the impact of rural development support schemes in facilitating the provision of environmental public goods and ecosystem services. Following an extensive review of theoretical and methodological literature in 2019, this multiannual project is modelling specific agricultural ecosystem services utilizing the various databases at Research Institute of Agricultural Economics (AKI’s) disposal and evaluating rural development measures relevant to the study. The visiting student will participate in filtering the database of agri-environmental measures and in preparing and running econometric models and scenarios. TO BE CONT’D