Innovative Projects Realized

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.

Multimodal Representation Learning for Pregnancy Care

Machine learning for healthcare promises to improve our diagnostic ability, to plot optimal treatment plans, and to smooth clinical operations and lower costs. But, central to these promises is a strong, generalizable numerical representation of a patient’s prior medical history that is reflective of clinical similarity and amenable to modeling. Learning such a representation is difficult as health data, including EHR data, is notoriously messy, sparse, and multimodal (e.g., comprised of many different types of information streams). In this work, I will build a machine learning system capable of learning a suitable representation of a patient, principally by leveraging massively-multitask modeling and structured methods such as graph networks. This representation will be evaluated through its applicability in pregnancy care, specifically through its ability to perform generalizable risk profiling across key outcome measures, such as low birth-weight and pre-term birth, and through its ability to perform patient subtyping.

Integrated computational intelligence for forecasting import and export volumes of commodities

The global seaborne trade is growing rapidly and being supported by shipping, one of the major transportation tools around the world. With the satellite and terrestrial AIS (Automatic Identification System) data, it is possible to track the trajectories of vessels carrying commodities. The capability to accurately forecast the import and export volumes and types of commodities will potentially enable the maximization of business trading profits. This research aims to develop forecasting algorithms to predict the trading in the business with the vessel tracking and cargo inspection data. Integrated with industry data analytic platform, the outcome from this research will enhance Canadian business’ competency in the global market.

Evaluating the influence of water fill level on the retort come-up time, temperature andheat distribution in water immersion/spray retorts

Thermal processing is a major method of food processing and involves heating of foods packaged in

hermetically sealed containers to destroy pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms in the product.

While safety and shelf-stability of thermally processed foods were the primary concerns of consumers

in the past, today the consumer demand higher quality processed products. Rotary autoclaves are

employed for such purposes since they provide more rapid heat transfer and reduce the cook time.

Shorter retort come up times to operating conditions offer better quality retentions since they will

reduce the overall heating time. The purpose of this project is to evaluate the influence of retort water

fill level on the come-up time and temperature/heat distribution during water immersion rotary

autoclaving. The study has the potential to demonstrate alternate processing procedures which may be

beneficial in tenns of reducing the come-up time or improving the temperature and heat distribution

leading to better quality products.

Optimization of Angiotensin II Receptor type 1 Blockers (ARBs) in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases (COPD) is a lung disease that cause a lot of suffering to the Canadian population. To accelerate the drug discovery process, an old blood pressure lowering medication was tested to block the progression of COPD. A patient study showed that the old medication did provide some protective effect to the lung airways of COPD patients. However, we have found that this old medication does not slow down COPD by lowering blood pressure, but rather by acting on a new, unknown target. As expected, we found that this old medication is an ‘average’ mediator of lung protection, and there are other medications in the same class of drugs that may provide better lung protection. We will assess these other medications and will also make some modifications to the structure of the old medication to improve its ability to protect the lung airways of COPD patients. Our innovative proposal to speed up the drug discovery process will benefit COPD patients and the management of their disease.

Airway-On-A-Chip: Development and In Vitro Validation of A Microfluidic Cell Culture Model for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is an inflammatory disorder of the lung, and one that affects 2.6 million Canadians and 380 million people worldwide. Although the disease affects a large population worldwide the therapies used for treatment remain imprecise. With the lack of disease modifying therapies there is a pressing need to discover novel targets to promote new therapeutic discoveries and ultimately improve the care and health outcomes of patients with COPD. To date, the discovery of novel therapeutics has been greatly hindered by outdated cell models and costly animal models. Our group proposes that through collaboration between engineers, pharmacologists, biologists and physicians we can leverage Organs-on-chips (OOC) technology to discover and validate novel COPD therapeutic targets. Organs-on-chips are miniature devices mimicking aspects of the in vivo conditions of human organs. What we propose to do in this project is to build upon a previously developed airway-on-a-chip technology to better mimic the human airways.

AI-Based Automation of the Candidate Recruitment and Management System for TAS

TAS (Techno Aero Services Inc.) is a Canadian recruitment agency specialized in aeronautics, engineering, and technology. At TAS, candidates currently submit resumes to a database through a web interface. These resumes are then manually processed by recruiters before a suitable candidate is matched to a position. Through this laborious manual process, great prospective candidates often get lost in the piles. This project aims to leverage text mining and machine learning techniques to automatically collect information about prospective candidates from their submitted resume and profiles on social and professional networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to provide recruiters with an overall picture of a candidate’s strengths and weaknesses. Both the technical and communication skills of the candidates will be analyzed and summarized. The goal is to provide recruiters with the information they need to judge a candidate on both his mastery of key skills and his ability to fit into the company culture. In addition, we aim to leverage the existing data of the candidates and their employment records to build Business Intelligence (BI) component for the proposed system to predict business trends, support business decisions and to reach and recommend prospective candidates for available jobs in TAS’s job pool.