Innovative Projects Realized

A Canadian Testbed for SmartCities

The dramatic trend of the first decade of the 21st century in the information technology industry was the

emergence of society?scale systems: online services such as Google, eBay, iTunes, Yahoo!, Twitter, and Facebook

that routinely served millions of simultaneously?connected users. These systems gave rise to entirely new

programming models and systems problems: management of the data center as a single, unified, “warehousescale”

computer, each of which had more raw computing power than existed on the planet as late as 1990;

programming models for loosely?coupled, data?intensive parallel operations; vast, highly?efficient distributed data

stores; the re?emergence of virtualization of time, space, and computing, to permit services to migrate instantly

around the globe, and radically new notions in networking to support the new programming and management

models. The way to explore these issues – networking, sensors, data management, the computational cloud…

Vehicle Occupancy Detection using Thermal Camera and LIDAR

In this project, a vehicle occupancy detection system will be developed for automatic monitoring of HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) and HOT (High Occupancy Toll) lanes. The system makes use of machine vision along with artificial intelligent algorithms, developed based on deep learning, to detect number of passengers in a vehicle in real-time. The developed technology will enable the industry partner to commercialize this solution in Canada and globally for efficient and enforceable monitoring of HOV and HOT lanes. The adopters of this technology will be able to manage their road infrastructures, in particular HOV and HOT lanes, more efficiency. This will result in reduced congestion and significant environmental and economic benefits.

Integrating Climate Change Considerations in Plans and Policies in Durham Region

Durham Region recently created a plan to help guide future decisions about adapting to climate change. The plan shows how extreme future weather is expected to be and identifies many ways that the cities and towns in the region and other agencies that deliver services like water and electricity need to be prepared. Some municipalities and agencies are further ahead than others in having policies and plans to adapt to climate change. Durham’s Natural Environment and Climate Change Workshop Group (NECCWG) has asked York University and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority to review those policies, compare them to what other communities are doing and then recommend the best policies and plans going forward.

Les cours des miracles de Paris : espaces, sociabilités et représentations urbaines (1667-1790)

Les marges sociales, depuis les années 1980, ont constitué un objet d’étude foisonnant. Il est surprenant, dans ce contexte, de constater qu’une étude sérieuse n’a pas été encore entreprise au sujet des cours des Miracles. Motif littéraire que Victor Hugo a développé dans Notre-Dame de Paris, mais qui fut également l’objet d’une large part de la littérature de la gueuserie des 16e et 17e siècles. La cour des Miracles fut apparemment détruite en 1667, première mission du nouveau lieutenant général de police Gabriel Nicolas de La Reynie. Pourtant, aucune histoire sociale, aucune histoire de la criminalité, ni même aucune histoire urbaine ne s’est penchée sur cet espace qui survécut largement aux rafles de La Reynie. La littérature de gueuserie a alimenté un imaginaire collectif des bas-fonds dont les cours des miracles en sont véritablement le cœur. TO BE CONT’D

Improving T-Cell Epitope Prediction in Livestock

Our environment contains microbes that might prove fatal without our immune system. When a microbe breaches one of our body’s physical barriers (e.g. skin), the immune system recognizes key molecular signatures (called epitopes) in the invader and dispatches potent defence cells to the site. The first step, recognizing the threat, is complex, but deciphering the rules of immune recognition allows us to develop better diagnostics and vaccines. We propose to develop a computational tool to predict a specific subset of epitopes, called T-cell epitopes, using artificial intelligence (AI) to decipher the rules of recognition. The AI techniques used to predict epitopes typically require large datasets of actual epitopes, which are lacking for livestock species. We propose to compensate for the paucity of data in livestock by leveraging data from similar species (e.g. human) and using principles from structural biology. TO BE CONT’D

Organic acid photochemistry at the surface of desert dust

Mineral dust can get lifted and transported from remote arid regions into urban areas by winds. These urban areas contain higher concentrations of organic pollutants, including carboxylic acids, due to human activities. The goal of this project is to understand the interactions of two atmospherically abundant carboxylic acids, formic and propionic acid, with mineral dust. By using state-of-the-art instrumentation, I will measure both the loss of carboxylic acids onto real desert dust surfaces and the resultant production of gaseous species; in addition, I will investigate the change in chemical composition of dust particles. The change in chemical composition is important in determining the health effects of particles. As well, the gaseous species being produced can influence other atmospheric processes by mediating reactions and absorbing light. This will ultimately allow my research to significantly improve our understanding of health, climate, and air quality in urban areas.

Nisga’a Business Alliance Corporation Industry Research

The Nisga’a Business Alliance Corporation is creating a strategy for economic development activities

within the Nation and requires innovative business research to facilitate this initiative. As such, this

research cluster is comprised of six projects:

• Project 1: Commercial Recreation Tenure Investigation

• Project 2: Harbour Enhancement Feasibility Study

• Project 3: Nisga’a Nation Tourism Market Research Investigation

• Project 4: Nisga’a Economic Assessment

• Project 5: Greenhouse Opportunity Assessment

• Project 6: Shellfish Aquaculture Investigation

Impact of Targeted Rehabilitation Programs on Kinematic Gait Parameters in Lower Limb Amputees

This research project will be a sub-component of a more extensive three year project called Gait Rehabilitation Analysis for Amputee Locomotion (GRAAL). The aim of GRAAL is to improve the rehabilitation and follow up of individuals with lower limb amputations (LLAs). The research project I will take part in will utilize gait analysis as a measurement tool of compensation strategies in participants with LLAs. Kinematic data in slope and step terrains will be gathered and assessed to identify the gait compensation strategies in participants. Furthermore, the results from the analyses conducted will inform the development of a four week targeted rehabilitation program for each participant. The rehabilitation program will be implemented during the project and the research participants will be re-administered a gait analysis after the completion of the program.TO BE CONT’D

Advocates: How citizens engage law to address water governance in Cape Town and Accra

This environmental citizenship study loks at how underserved residents understand and influence laws and governance to solve water problems in their communities. The field work was conducted in Cape Town and Accra, a multi-sited approach which draws from activists and legal professionals to consider a broader range of legal rules (human rights, customary law, local ordances) rather than state law only. The reserach has two main objectives. First, identify the relationship between different forms of water governance and how citizens understand their environmental citizenship (as expressed through rights, responsibilities, and participation). Second, to learn how these choices are understood by the participants to relate to their objectives and to help them improve water access.
The work in France will involve engaging and working with similar researcher to bring additional depth and scope to my project beyond what can be found at my home institution. TO BE CONT’D

Micro-structure and formation history of the ureilite meteorite parent body, a potential lost planet?

Mary Spencer will investigate the mineralogy, microstructure and geochemistry of ureilite meteorites. This study will bring new constraints on the deformation and the shock conditions these meteorites have experienced, and where they initially formed in the Solar System in relation to the Sun and Earth before being transported to the asteroid belt. For this, she will use electron microscopy, electron backscatter diffraction, and Raman spectroscopy at the Université of Toulouse to study their mineralogy and microstructure of minerals such as olivine, enstatite, graphite and diamonds. She will be able to further address the origin and formation processes of the diamonds (solar nebula, shock or high pressure deep in a planetary interior). TO BE CONT’D

La valeur économique du réseau des zecs du Québec : Une analyse de la demande sociale et de la contribution des écosystèmes au bien-être des collectivités

Le Réseau Zec regroupe 63 zecs (Zone d’Exploitation Contrôlée) qui couvrent 48 000km2. Ces territoires sont multi-usages et l’on y pratique des activités récréatives telles la chasse, la pêche et le camping, ainsi que des activités forestières. Elles sont généralement situées sur les terres de l’état puis administrées par des organismes à but non-lucratif qui se chargent de l’aménagement, de l’exploitation et la conservation de la faune, tout en gérant l’accès aux territoires pour les usagers. Afin d’outiller le Réseau Zec et les gestionnaires de zecs dans la gestion de leurs territoires, quatre activités de recherche sont proposées et visent à déterminer la valeur économique et sociale des zecs, ainsi que les meilleures pratiques de développement durables qui pourraient y être implantées.

Molecular Topological Features of Catalytic Reactions

This research targets the apparent contradiction between quantum mechanics (wherein molecules are composed of electrons and nuclei) and the language of chemistry (wherein molecules are composed of atoms and bonds) by developing topological tools for describing the output of quantum mechanics computations in chemical language. Specifically, the topology of various descriptors based on the molecular electron density will be studied, and the changes in topology will be correlated to the changes in molecular structure that accompany multistep catalytic reactions. The focus is on reactions catalyzed by complexes of first-row transition metals with noninnocent ligands because these complexes are especially difficult to model with traditional methods. By understanding how these complexes catalyze reactions, we can design ligands that improve their performance, so that these catalysts based on earth-abundant elements can replace toxic, and expensive, catalysts based on rare earth elements that are currently used in the chemical industry.