Innovative Projects Realized

Arctic Bifacial Solar Photovoltaics

Northern Canada presents favorable conditions for bifacial solar installations due to typically higher albedo, caused by a high degree of snow cover, and low temperature, which is ideal for PV module efficiency. In addition, many northern and remote Canadian communities, including Iqaluit and Cambridge Bay, rely on diesel power. Bifacial solar presents a clean and potentially cheaper alternative.
This project will pursue novel bifacial solar cell structures with the goal to further improve cell efficiency generally, and specifically to improve cell performance under Arctic conditions. In the course of this project, we will design, fabricate, and test cells optimized for improved efficiency in high latitudes. The cells should be optimized for low temperatures, high air mass (reduced ultraviolet/blue energy, due to high latitudes), and wide acceptance angle on the rear face to absorb ground-reflected and diffuse light.

Impact des changements récents de règlements de chasse sur la dynamique de population de la grande oie des neiges

Dans le but de limiter la croissance impressionnante qu’a connu la population de la grande oie des neiges à la fin du XXe siècle, les autorités concernées ont libéralisé les règlements de chasse pour cette espèce au Canada et aux É.-U. en 1999 et 2009, respectivement. La chasse serait un outil efficace pour limiter la croissance de populations comme la grande oie des neiges où la mortalité à la chasse devrait être additive à la mortalité naturelle. Mon projet déterminera l’impact sur la survie des oies de l’ajout des mesures de gestion spéciales en analysant les données du suivi à long terme de l’Île Bylot, récoltées depuis 1990. Mon séjour à Montpellier visera à élaborer un modèle bayésien de la survie de la grande oie des neiges, ce qui nous permettra de comprendre si la mortalité due à la chasse s’additionne simplement à la mortalité naturelle de cette espèce ou si les interactions entre ces mortalités sont plus complexes.

Carbon cycle modeling

The project will involve running terrestrial biosphere models on JPL’s supercomupters. Specifically, my first task will be focused on modeling the carbon cycle. This cycle describes how carbon circulates through the atmosphere, vegetation and ground. With climate change and rising temperatures, this cycle has been changing. This is why we are interested in modeling it – so as to better understand it and help predict how it will continue to evolve in the future. For my master’s project, I am interested in quantifying the natural carbon fluxes to the atmosphere. At JPL, I will model this, and at ULaval I am developing sensors to measure these directly. I will then be able to compare models with reality. I will focus on carbon (1st) and methane (2nd) emissions.

Eventually, terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs), which model spatial distribution of biomes, vegetation dynamics, biogeochemistry and biophysical processes, can help us answer such important questions as 1) Will the terrestrial biosphere be a net source or sink of carbon in the future? and eventually 2) Can ecological stewardship help mitigate climate change?

Voice pitch control in cochlear implant users

This proposal aims to investigate vocal production by users of Med-El cochlear implants (CI), in response to feedback alteration of their voice pitch. The originality of this proposal is to shift the usual focus of CI research from perception to production. We feel that the history of Med-El research on pitch coding would strongly benefit from this novel perspective because the characteristics that make voice pitch more audible may not necessarily be the same characteristics that are relevant to the speech motor planning areas of the brain. It also has repercussions on music research, since it concerns the ability of CI users to regulate their voice pitch while singing with the distorted feedback they receive from their implant.

Bio-sourced reagents for the flotation of minerals in the mining industry

Many mineral ores are concentrated by froth flotation, a process that often uses toxic chemicals to selectively alter mineral surface properties. With increasing regulatory restrictions, the industry could face a dead end with no alternative reagents that are sufficiently efficient, low cost or environment friendly. It has been previously shown that peptides could selectively bind mineral surfaces. This project therefore aims at the development of alternative flotation bio-reagents by performing i) large-scale screening of peptides libraries; ii) peptide modeling and in-silico optimization integrating hydrophobic/hydrophilic functions into selective sequences identified in (i), in order to favor mineral flotation; iii) constructing expression systems that will present the bio-reagents in the most effective way as well as maximize yield; iv) optimizing a bioprocess to produce the best bio-reagents selected/designed in (i/ii) at their maximum yield. TO BE CONT’D

L’utilisation des cellules dynamiques pour améliorer la performance d’une ligne d’assemblage mixte d’une entreprise réseau et des membres sa chaîne de valeur

Ce projet s’attaque au délai de livraison d’un réseau de fabricants des meubles en bois avec la simulation informatique. L’objectif est de répondre aux deux questions suivantes; ‘et si l’entreprise enlève ou ajoute un tel produit de sa ligne de montage, diminuera-t-elle son temps de passage?’ et ‘et si les fournisseurs changent leurs aménagements, diminueront-t-ils leurs délais internes de livraison?’. Cette technique permet aussi d’étudier différentes méthodes de planification de la production et d’aménagement sans modifier le système concret. Ainsi, elle est moins coûteuse et plus sécuritaire. L’objectif principal est de montrer que la reconfiguration périodique des machines chez les fournisseurs est très bénéfique pour le réseau. Par exemple, si pour une période un fournisseur n’a pas à fabriquer des tables, il peut utiliser l’espace dédié à leurs fabrications pour produire des tables de nuits. TO BE CONT’D

A robotic end-effector for surgical tool handoff

The goal of this research project is to establish a working robotic “hand”, or gripper, that will be able to perform surgical instrument handoff to operating room staff members during surgery. This project will involve a both McGill University and Kinova, the partner organization. Kinova will benefit from this project through increased collaboration with academia, as well as access to medical resources, such as surgical instruments, inquiries with medical professionals, or even observerships within operating rooms.

Development of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Tool for Municipal Fleets

The City of Surrey has about 500 vehicles in its municipal fleet, ranging from light-duty passenger vehicles to heavy-duty commercial vehicles or trucks. Because of increasing political and public pressure to reduce carbon footprint from municipal fleets, the City is interested in finding viable low-carbon alternative fuel vehicles to their conventional gasoline and diesel vehicles. In this regard, the City wants to undertake a holistic and pragmatic approach to evaluate low-carbon alternative fuel vehicles that can meet or exceed their end goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from fleet vehicles by 20% by the year 2020. The proposed research aims to develop a unique customized lifecycle analysis modeling tool to assess alternative and conventional fuel vehicles, and provide unbiased info based on which vehicle procurement decisions can be made.

Les dynamiques du jeu de rôle dans les jeux vidéo émergents

Dans le but d’offrir des expériences narratives toujours plus enrichissantes, Ubisoft Montréal en partenariat avec Nicolas Galipeau de l’Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue développeront un prototype de jeu poussant les limites de la narration en jeu vidéo. En développant un nouveau système d’intelligence artificielle répondant aux actions du joueur, ils créeront conjointement un prototype de jeu où l’histoire est avant tout celle déterminée par les actions du joueur. Ce nouveau système de narratif émergent permettra d’améliorer grandement l’immersion et l’engagement des joueurs au sein des mondes développés dans le futur par Ubisoft.
Ils créeront un jeu où l’histoire est celle déterminée par les actions du joueur. Ce nouveau système permettra d’enrichir l’expérience narrative des prochains opus des célèbres franchises d’Ubisoft et d’offrir davantage de contrôle au joueur sur son expérience de jeu. TO BE CONT’D

Female piety and sacred space in Israel/Palestine: Jewish prayer at the Western Wall

This project involves an ethnographic investigation of the ongoing confrontations at the Western Wall in Jerusalem regarding Jewish women’s practices of worship. Through fieldwork and theoretical study, the aim is to examine contrasting spiritual practices and the processes by which religious and legal change is enacted. I hypothesize that prayer, for those engaged in this struggle, is a fundamental recognition of unpredictability and human vulnerability, and at the same time, it is a powerful method to assert different ideals of gendered behaviour and shape Israeli state policy.
The study will focus on a comparison between the practices of feminist and ultra-orthodox activists. The ethnographic method will allow me to identify the role of prayer in these women’s lives, how they express female religious identities, and how women’s worship and sacred space are viewed and managed by the Israeli government as well as religious and legal authorities.

Sputtered Silver-Dielectric Structures for Memristor Devices

Memristor, as the name suggests is a contraction of “memory resistor”, a novel device that was proposed almost fifty years but only realized recently for the first time. Memristor, the missing link in the manifold of circuit elements, is expected to usher a wave of innovative integrations in electronics and yield novel functionalities. Memristors would supplement and enhance transistors through integration of memory and logic functionalities and potentially revive analog information processing in computing architectures. Further, since the biological equivalent of a memristor is a neuron, it is also proposed that device architectures with similar structures as a neural synapse can also perform as a memristor.
We have recently discovered that sputter deposition of a dielectric aluminum nitride (AlN) layer on top of a sputtered silver layer can induce the formation of silver nanoparticles that extend a few hundred nanometers into the AlN layer –a basis for a novel memristor.
Accordingly, we propose a collaborative project between University of Toronto and University of Manchester. The Advanced Photovoltaics-Photonics and Devices research group at UofT will synthesize the devices with memristor architectures, and the Photon Science Institute at UofM will provide advanced electrical and optical characterization and circuit modeling of the various device architectures.

Modeling stable and unstable detonations with boundary layer induced flow divergence

The phenomenon of near-limit detonation propagation, where detonations have been experimentally observed to propagate at average speeds smaller than the ideal Chapman-Jouguet (CJ) detonation speeds, has attracted extensive efforts on determining the influencing mechanisms through application of simple models for predicting such velocity deficits. Despite the large number of attempts to experimentally investigate the dynamics of detonations in the presence of losses due to boundary layers, there have been no attempts at incorporating boundary layer loses into simulation. Due to the fact that information extracted from experiments can be very limited, owing to the high speed nature of detonations, and their corresponding time scales, it is necessary to develop the relevant simulation strategy to aid in the analysis of such critical-limit detonation waves, and to determine the influencing mechanisms. On the other hand, existing simulations just focus on the ideal CJ detonations instead of the real detonations with losses. Therefore, it would be significant to develop a numerical strategy for appropriately simulating such non-ideal detonations by considering the boundary layer induced losses.