Innovative Projects Realized

Diluted mean field spin glass models

I want to master the modern mathematical theory of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick and related spin glass models. The field spin glass models originate in theoretical statistical physics. After learning current results, I plan to start working on some open problems, such as in the setting of the diluted Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model, which is not completely understood today. The Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model was introduced in order to understand unusual magnetic properties of some metal alloys, in which the magnetic spins of the component atoms were not aligned in a regular pattern. Diluted version of this model turns out to be related to various combinatorial optimization problems, and make progress in this direction could lead to application in computer science. I will work with Dmitriy Panchenko, who is a leading researcher in this field.

Investing in our Youth: Community Safety and the Role of the Toronto Police Service in Building Healthy Communities

The objective of the project is to develop a framework that will bring police, community agencies and young people in Toronto?s 14 and 51 Divisions together to create, deliver and evaluate a progressive intervention matrix that includes existing and new initiatives designed to promote positive police-youth relations and thereby enhance impact on community health.

Nonprofit organizations are under tremendous pressure to demonstrate outcomes and “value for money” as resources shrink. While this is challenging even in the context of direct service delivery, it is even more difficult when assessing the outcomes of prevention programs whether in public health or crime prevention. There are numerous tricky technical challenges regarding measuring programs? effectiveness, such as establishing a secure counterfactual, attributing responsibility for observed changes to the measures initiated, identifying short and long-term impacts, identifying substantial side-effects, and attaching numbers to costs and benefits of interventions. Many organizations tend to measure before and……..

Reducing Municipal Water Loss and Energy Consumption through Field-based Analytics, Predictive Modelling and Pressure Management

Water loss through background leakage in water distribution systems is increasingly plaguing municipalities. As the cost of energy to treat and transport water steadily rises, and the scarcity of fresh water in communities becomes more prominent, action to replace deteriorating water infrastructure is critical.
The proposed research aims at providing water utilities a cost-efficient method to measure minimum night flows (an indicator of leakage) and to test whether the application of permanent pressure management systems to reduce leakage, and hence pumping as well as other energy inputs, will yield sufficient benefits; benefits that will warrant their permanent implementation as well as drive awareness on leakage reduction practices and value across the industry.
Ultimately, HydraTek will benefit from this research through strengthen skills and increased presence in the water loss sub-sector of municipal engineering services. TO BE CONT’D

Synthesis of diamond and diamond-like films

This project is geared towards the development of a cost-effective method to fabricate thin films of carbon materials, such as diamond. The idea is to use solution-based methods coupled to electrochemistry to produce the films. Avenues for the deposition of the film on surfaces of arbitrary shapes will also be explored. Carbon based thin films, such as diamond-like films and conductive diamond films, have extraordinary mechanical and electrical properties that can be explored in several applications, including batteries, chemical sensors, protective coating in microelectronic industry and others. The company intends to commercialize this potential new technology by generating a new line of products and services.

Les valeurs et les attitudes durables comme prédicteurs des pratiques en matière de gestion énergétique chez les PM

Les PME sont des acteurs essentiels pour répondre aux défis que posent les enjeux climatiques qui nous confrontent. Elles représentent 99% des entreprises au Québec et génèrent des effets négatifs importants sur l’environnement. C’est pourtant le segment de marché le moins connu en matière de culture et de pratiques énergétiques. C’est donc dans l’intérêt commun (politiques publique, accompagnement) et dans celui du partenaire immédiat, soit l’Institut de Recherche d’Hydro-Québec, que le présent projet consiste à réaliser une enquête auprès de 500 PME québécoises avec pour objectif de mieux cerner les facteurs d’influence déterminants de leur engagement sur la voie de l’efficience énergétique.

The landscape ecology of parasites and prey: habitat selection of Californiabighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis california) in the Okanagan Valley underexposure to Psoroptes ovis mite infestation.

In the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, California bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis california) populations have declined by 60% since 2011, likely due to a new mite infestation, Psoroptes ovis. These mites cause hearing loss and impaired awareness in wild sheep, possibly increasing their vulnerability to predation by cougars (Felis concolour). To assess this risk, data from GPS-collared bighorn sheep between 2014 and 2019 will be compared, in collaboration with the Government of British Columbia. Bighorn sheep are separated by highways, towns, and lakes, preventing transmission of mites from the east to the west side of the valley. Individual sheep survival, population growth and habitat use will be compared to infection status. An Agent Based Model (ABM) of movement-infection will explore the effects of landscape change on disease risk. This research will help wildlife managers understand sheep mortality and disease transmission, critical for conserving sheep populations in the future.

Brain and Mind Laboratory Research

Mind reading emotional states of the participants will be done using FMRI machines and self report. The participants will be exposed to various stimuli to trigger an emotional response. These emotional responses will be examined using FMRI machines as well as the self report in order to help classify and locate area’s of the brain associated with each of the 14 human emotions. Social cognition is also being examined in attempt to determine if social situations and perception effect the emotions experienced. This proposal is extending on research that my host supervisor and the Brain and Mind lab at Aalto University have already conducted on the neural basis of social cognition.

Building Fog Applications for Smart City: a Coordination Approach

The project deploys and try out a coordination model and platform that helps developers to build smart city applications that run in large scale, dynamic fog computing infrastructure. Fog computing is a computing infrastructure that involves devices across the edge network such as smart phones, smart cars, the access network such as Wi-Fi routers, modems and the cloud servers. The coordination model being evaluated takes into account the physical context of the computing elements, such as the location of a car and provides context-dependent primitives that can be used to express the application logic. The project involves the setup, provision and deployment of smart city devices on smart city infrastructure, such as lamp posts or traffic elements. Several application scenarios are developed using the computing infrastructure. The coordination model and platform are evaluated based on packet delivery ratio and the coverage of participating devices in one application.

PET/MRI Imaging Development for Pre-clinical Neuroimaging Applications

The field of nuclear medicine relies on positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) scanners to visualize molecular processes in normal and disease states in the living human. These imaging technologies have significant potential to enhance our ability to diagnose disease, develop appropriate disease-modifying treatments and for non-invasive monitoring of these therapies.
Canadian medical device company Cubresa Inc., has developed and commercialized new PET/MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) technologies for use in pre-clinical (small animal) imaging research. These high-performance scanners provide exceptional detail and permit rapid evaluation of emerging disease diagnostics and therapies that can be more readily translated to use in humans. Characterizing the performance, validation and optimizing the capabilities of this PET/MRI technology in a variety of brain imaging applications will ultimately accelerate Cubresa’s product development, generate tools/approaches that have potential to be patented/licensed and help position them as major players in the global medical device market.

RESPOND (Resource Efficient Smart Packet Optical Network Design): A Novel Packet-Optical Design and Optimization Framework for Next Generation Networks

The focus of the project is to develop an packet-optical network resource optimization model that minimizes the total network cost across IP-optical platform while meeting the following requirements: (i) Offers full protection from any network node and link level failure. (ii) Ability to handle large scale networks and traffic demand (i.e., network scalability). (iii) Meets end-to-end latency requirement. (iv) Provides efficient link utilization across the packet-optical networks. (v) Ability to forecast network capacity augment requirement. (vi) Provides machine-user interactivity during the run time. (vii) Ability to improve the performance of the software (i.e., model) over time.

Design and evaluation of Child Health Index of Life with Disabilities(CHILD) asperceived by children with severe developmental disabilities

Cerebral Palsy(CP) is a brain developmental disorder and a major cause of chronic childhood

disability. It affects about 2 to 2.5 children per 1000 live births. Children with CP have varying

symptoms affecting communication, health and specially mobility depending on the severity

of the disorder. Children with severe CP usually have very limited mobility and are non-verbal

but have normal or above average levels of intelligence though mental retardation is

sometimes associated with them. To improve their quality of life often health

interventions(corrective measures) in terms of surgery or assistive devices are administered

to them which may be useful from the surgeon’s perspective. There is no evidence whether it

actually is useful for the child. At present there is a questionnaire which evaluates the

effectiveness of the intervention from the caregiver’s perspective as majority of children with

severe CP are unable to communicate. The proposed project aims at developing an

interactive audiovisual interface which enables the child to answer the questionnaire…….

Image-based Visual Analytics for Estimating Particle Size Distribution and Permeability of Drill Core

Accurately estimating permeability is critical for being able to properly predict fluid flow in an oil reservoir. Typical approaches, such as estimating permeability using well production data or in the lab using core samples are impractical or expensive in the Alberta Oil Sands. An alternative approach is to infer permeability from particle size distribution that is measured using core samples. However, collecting these samples in the large number of appraisal wells in the Oil Sands is time consuming and expensive. In this project we are proposing to estimate permeability directly from images of drill core using visual analytics techniques that are available in computer science domain. We collaborate closely with our industry partner, Suncor, and will use an extensive dataset from the McMurray oil sands. Research outcomes will include determining the lowest-cost images to use and contributions to fundamental research in visual analytics applied to reservoir engineering and geoscience.