Innovative Projects Realized

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.

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.