Innovative Projects Realized

Quel modèle d’affaires et positionnement permettra à NÉOMED de créer de la valeur pour ses partenaires?

Au cours des dix dernières années, les entreprises pharmaceutiques mondiales ont été confrontées à plusieurs problèmes dont celui de la baisse significative de la productivité de la recherche et développement (R&D). En effet, au cours de cette période, les dépenses de R&D de l’industrie ont augmenté dramatiquement tandis que le nombre de nouveaux médicaments approuvés par les agences règlementaires par année a diminué.
Dans ce contexte, les nouvelles modalités stratégiques de la R&D des pharmaceutiques passent par l’innovation en collaborant à l’externe avec un nouveau type d’entreprises comme NÉOMED, CDRD, TI Pharma à titre d’exemple. Ces organisations ont vu le jour très récemment et leur approche vise à aider à transformer les innovations scientifiques précoces des universités, des entreprises biotechnologiques et même celles des entreprises pharmaceutiques en opportunités pour le développement de médicaments pour ces dernières. L’objectif de ce nouveau modèle d’affaires est motivé par le désir de partager les risques, diminuer les coûts de la recherche et d’améliorer la productivité. Ce projet de thèse a pour objectif de revoir le modèle d’affaires de ce nouveau type d’entreprises en identifier les lacunes avant que celles-ci ne soient trop importantes.

Empreinte eau et impact des réservoirs hydroélectriques du nord boréal québécois sur le climat régional

Au Canada, on dénombre plus de deux millions de lacs répartis sur près de 8% de la superficie du pays. En plus d’affecter le climat régional, les lacs et réservoirs de toutes tailles évaporent des quantités substantielles d’eau qui dès lors ne sont plus disponibles pour les gestionnaires de la ressource comme Hydro-Québec. À partir de simulations du Modèle régional canadien du climat, il est proposé d’évaluer l’impact des réservoirs hydroélectriques du nord québécois sur le climat régional et de quantifier l’empreinte eau de ces plans d’eau, soit la quantité d’eau consommée par évaporation. Les retombées attendues sont multiples: meilleure compréhension de l’origine des apports aux réservoirs, portrait plus global de l’empreinte écologique de l’hydroélectricité et meilleure gestion du niveau d’eau dans les réservoirs.

Mic’d Up Iteration and Chatter Development

At Elements Athletics, we’re using technology to make sports safer and more enjoyable for everyone. Our flagship tool, Mic’d Up, uses artificial intelligence to analyze referee audio from games, detecting verbal abuse and helping sports organizations enforce their conduct policies.

Through this Mitacs project, we’ll improve our internal annotation dashboard to streamline audio review and training process. We’ll also launch a new feedback feature, Chatter, which provides referees with insights on tone, clarity, and communication—turning our abuse detection tool into a coaching resource.

Together, these innovations will strengthen referee retention, enhance the player and coach experience, and improve safety across youth and amateur sports. This project also offers valuable hands-on learning for students in AI, software development, and sport technology—helping develop the next generation of Canadian innovators in sport and data-driven innovation.

Multi-device adaptive multimedia communications

PPLCONNECT believes that users should be able to continue their conversations cross-device. Today the user is forced to have multiple identities for the various types of calling services, like VoIP, their Landline and their mobile number. Using the cloud to build a virtual Smartphone PPLCONNECT helps centralize for the user, one place to access and use their real-time communications information. In addition, with the research complete by this project PPLCONNECT will not only let the user be able to centralize these various communications channels for calling in one place PPLCONNECT will also be able to help decide for the users what is the best way to communicate based on Cost, Quality and available network.

An application for patient decision aid for musculoskeletal injuries in Mild Hemophilia

Hemophilia is a genetic bleeding disorder in which the blood flow is impaired from clotting. If you have hemophilia, you may bleed for a longer time than others after an injury. The primary goal of our work is to enable patients with the condition to make effective decisions when injuries occur. For instance, our proposed application will aid the patient to seek either immediate attention from a healthcare provider if the injury is a major one. Moreover, if the injury is not severe, then the patient will be guided to perform some activities that will lead to other decisions as to whether the patient is well or needs some self-assessment. This research puts the partner organization in a strategic position to broaden out their campaigns and services to persons with the condition of mild hemophilia

Modeling and Simulation of an aircraft environmental control system (part of the Integrated Cabin Comfort Analytical Tool)

Among the different sub-systems in an aircraft, the environmental control system is the one responsible for the control of temperature, pressure and humidity in the cabin and is crucial to passenger comfort. This system has around 40 components including heat exchangers, compressors, and turbines. Recirculation at different levels complexifies the modeling and simulation of such a system. The importance of modeling this system lies in the fact that one has to verify that the cabin comfort is assured under various operating conditions. Since it is not possible to have test flights under all these flight conditions, it is better is ensure feasibility by doing extensive simulations. Also, once predictive capability of the model is established, one should be able to predict outcome of certain changes in the system, like changing one valve by another or increasing the capacity of the compressor. Then, this model could become a part of the design process – eventually a design tool – helping the engineering design group to perform its core task of designing the aircraft control system.

Fouling of polymer membranes used in cross-flow energy exchanger cores by aerosol nanoparticles

Fresh air ventilation is necessary to create a healthy indoor living environment. It involves removing stale, moist indoor air and replacing it with fresh outside air. However, energy required for cooling and dehumidifying fresh air accounts for a significant portion (20–40%) of the total energy use in air conditioning. Thus, ‘recycling’ the energy (i.e. heat and moisture recovery) used to condition the indoor air is necessary. Among various technologies for recovering heat and moisture, membranebased Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) is a promising alternative. Recent work has been conducted on developing high efficiency membranes and novel configurations to improve the performance of these systems. However, there is no report demonstrating long-term performance of these systems under real field working conditions, more specifically, the effect of depositing aerosol nanoparticles on the water vapor transport membranes of interest for HVAC applications. This research will provide experimental data that will be used to properly design and specify energy exchanger systems filtration and cleaning for particular applications. dPoint can gain a competitive advantage by providing clients with more fouling-resistant membrane materials and ERV core design data for fouled conditions

Developing New Strategies to Evaluate Capital Construction Project Planning

Construction companies spend significant amounts of resources on front end planning (FEP). The potential to obtain substantial benefits from a strategic implementation of front end planning practices across an entire portfolio have made the evaluation of FEP an important issue for both project leaders and scholars. The opportunity now exists to mine the constituent elements of the index based on historical project data sets to develop methods for planning proactive strategies in capital projects execution. The main objective of this proposal is the development of a new statistical analysis method for examining FEP data to streamline and monitor project resources throughout the project lifecycle. This method would be more broadly applicable for use with further discoveries such as operational excellence management, where health and safety risk reporting is a constant challenge for capital projects.

UV Based Intervention Strategies to Improve the Microbiological Safety and Shelf-life of Sliced Mushrooms

Sliced mushrooms have occasionally been recalled due to the recovery of Listeria monocytogenes from sampled product. As a consequence there is a need to introduce technologies that can reduce the risk of carriage of Listeria on sliced mushrooms. Due to the sensitive nature of mushrooms there are relatively few options in terms of decontamination technologies. Washing tends to result in hydration of mushrooms leading to premature spoilage and hence aqueous free methods are required. The approach in the current study will be to apply Advanced Oxidative Process that is essentially the generation of an oxidative burst of radicals from the UV decomposition of hydrogen peroxide. The method has been demonstrated to work on a lab scale and the project aims to developed large units that are compatible with commercial scale production. Moreover it will be essential to demonstrate that Listeria can be inactivated without negative effects on the sensory characteristics of the mushrooms. The project brings together academia, mushroom growers and engineers.

Chemical reaction mechanisms with eXplainable Machine Learning

Deep learning systems can predict properties of chemical substances but do so in a purely mathematical way. As a consequence, the user does not get any feedback on what are the essential properties a chemical must have to exhibit a certain property. This hampers getting any insight in to the relationship between molecular structure and the properties. In this project, the aim is to transform mathematical vectors that result from deep learning back to molecular properties that chemists understand and can use to their benefit to develop new molecules.

East/West Music: A Comparison of Two Distinct Cultures

The purpose of this project is to investigate aspects music education in China. This will be done by engaging in prolonged observations in secondary schools in Chongqing. The investigator will observe teaching pedagogy, learning context, and identify curricular materials used to educate Chinese secondary students. The data collected will serve to identify similarities and differences between Chinese and Canadian music classrooms in order to propose a platform highlighting what works best in the East/West in an effort to improve the quality of teaching from a cultural perspective

A comparative observational analysis of music education in Chongqing and Ontario.

The purpose of this preliminary investigation is to identify the distinct differences and similarities between music education classes in Chongqing and Ontario. Students that are observed will be those from grade 1-9 (elementary school, and middle school students.) What, where, why, when, and how interactions between student to student, student to teacher, and teacher to student will be observed and recorded for similarities and comparisons to improve upon teaching pedagogies in Ontario schools.