Innovative Projects Realized

En quoi et comment un accélérateur agroalimentaire peut favoriser la synergie et la collaboration entre les entrepreneurs agricoles sur un territoire donné ?

L’agriculture et l’agrotourisme sont déterminants pour la MRC Rouville. Cependant, les entrepreneurs du secteur agricole et agroalimentaire font face à un double défi : d’une part, transformer et valoriser leurs productions dans un marché en constante évolution ; d’autre part, établir des liens durables avec leurs pairs et les acteurs de la filière. Or, l’isolement et le manque d’occasions de collaboration freinent l’innovation et la croissance. Le projet cherche donc à comprendre comment un accélérateur agroalimentaire peut constituer un cadre privilégié pour stimuler l’échange de savoir-faire, la mutualisation de ressources et l’émergence de synergies entre agriculteurs.

Optimizing Cross-Clinic Operational Systems for Scalable Mental Health Delivery at BrainStim Health

BrainStim Health is launching a new clinic in the Greater Vancouver Area that will specialize in timely, high-quality autism assessments for youth. This Mitacs Accelerate project supports the development of operational systems that will enable efficient, accessible, and scalable service delivery across the new site and future expansion efforts. The intern, Sumana Soma, a UBC Sauder BCom student, will work closely with BrainStim’s leadership and clinical staff to evaluate current processes, help design standardized intake and assessment workflows, and prototype tools that improve coordination and client experience.
The project will involve stakeholder interviews, process mapping, and pilot testing of operational improvements, using a service design approach. The goal is to reduce wait times, streamline intake, and ensure a consistent experience for families seeking neurodevelopmental services.
This work will directly benefit BrainStim Health by enhancing productivity and readiness for growth, and more broadly contribute to improved access to autism assessments in Canada. It also offers the intern applied learning in health systems innovation, preparing them for future work in healthcare strategy and operations.

Assessing socio-ecological benefits of small-scale urban greening projects

The organization, GRAME (Groupe de recommandations et d’actions pour un meilleur environnement), is a Montreal-based environmental NGO leading participatory greening projects through its VIVRE (Ville Inclusive, Verte, Résiliente et Équitable) initiative. GRAME aims to mitigate climate vulnerability and environmental injustices in marginalized neighbourhoods by reducing urban heat islands, enhancing biodiversity, improving stormwater management, and increasing community cohesion. However, despite years of impactful interventions, GRAME lacks a robust, scalable protocol to assess the environmental and social outcomes of its projects in a structured, evidence-based manner. This is emblematic of a larger problem, where despite significant implementation of greening interventions in urban environments, social and ecological outcomes of such projects are typically assumed rather than assessed. This project investigates how participatory urban greening interventions affect both environmental resilience and the social well-being of vulnerable urban populations. Specifically, it asks: What measurable environmental and social impacts result from GRAME’s VIVRE interventions, and how can they be evaluated and improved?

BoneWheel: Effects of a bone-specific exercise and nutrition intervention on energy balance parameters in wheelchair users

People who use wheelchairs are at higher risk for weak bones because they aren’t putting pressure on their bones—something the body needs to keep bones healthy. When bones become fragile, even small accidents can lead to fractures, which may cause serious complications like infections, pain, longer hospital stays, and even depression. Unfortunately, many wheelchair users don’t get enough physical activity or the right nutrients to keep their bones strong.

To tackle this issue, a team of researchers in Norway led a study called BoneWheel. In this study, people who use wheelchairs took part in a 24-week program that combined strength training with nutrition advice. The goal was to see if this combination could improve bone health and physical and mental well-being.

During her internship, Canadian graduate student Sarah Craven will join the Norwegian team to assess how participants’ diets, nutrient levels, and body composition changed over the course of the program. She’ll also examine whether participants were at risk of eating too little to support their health. Sarah’s work will help show whether combining exercise and nutrition support can make a difference for bone health in wheelchair users and help develop practical recommendations to better support this population.

Evaluating the Impacts of Climate Change and Seawater Intrusion on Arsenic Mobilization in Coastal Aquifers

Many rural communities in the maritime Provinces rely on groundwater for drinking water supply. There is concern that the groundwater in these areas may become contaminated with naturally occurring arsenic as the climate changes. Climate change effects including rising sea levels, longer summer droughts, and more intense storms may alter the geochemical conditions in the subsurface and cause arsenic to be released into the groundwater. The objective of this project is to develop and test an advanced numerical model capable of simulating the retention and release of arsenic in coastal aquifers as climate climates. This collaboration between the University of Western Ontario (Canada) and Carl von Ossietzky Universitat Oldenburg (Germany) will combine the strengths of both institutions to develop and test a model that will provide insight into when and where arsenic may become a potential threat for local groundwater supply. The model will help scientists, engineers and policy makers to develop best practices and guide policy changes that protect drinking water and support climate adaptation strategies for coastal communities. This project will strengthen international collaboration between the two universities by enhancing research, training, and knowledge exchange, while promoting long-term international cooperation in climate change adaptation.

Towards Sustainable Nowcasting: Exploring Lightweight Models for Local Precipitation Forecasting

This project focuses on investigating more efficient and simplified approaches for very short-term precipitation forecasting, known as nowcasting. The goal is to evaluate and adapt lightweight machine learning models that can deliver accurate predictions using fewer computational resources. By reviewing existing models, testing their performance, and exploring ways to simplify their architecture without losing accuracy, the project aims to create practical solutions that can be used even in regions with limited infrastructure. This work is particularly relevant in the face of increasing extreme weather events linked to climate change. It will support both institutions by promoting international collaboration, strengthening expertise in climate data modeling, and generating results that can contribute to disaster prevention and urban resilience. The project also aligns with global sustainability goals, such as climate action and innovation in infrastructure, and enhances Canada’s leadership in developing accessible, data-driven solutions for environmental challenges.

Augmenting NVD-based Attack Path Generation with New Factors for Cloud Environments

To quantitatively assess the security level of a cloud environment, a common method is to construct an attack graph which tracks a potentail attacker’s moves through interconnected computing systems by exploiting vulnerabilities of each system, one after another. The state-of-the-art automatic attack graph generation suffers from two limitations: 1) low quality or inconsistency of vulnerability descriptions (as the generation relies on the description text in an automated manner for scalability), leading to inaccurate attack paths, and 2) the vertical layer of VMs/containers not reflected in the attack paths (as traditional approaches only consider horizontal network links between nodes, not exploits from a hosted environment to a hosting environment). Our project will address the two limitations by 1) using machine learning and specifically large language models to process multiple sources of vulnerability information/description (e.g., the IBM and Redhat reports) so that more accurate attack paths can be generated, and 2) reclassifying vulnerabilities into horizontal exploits and vertical exploits to take into account the hosted and hosting relationship, and constructing 2-dimensional attack graphs.

Director, Ethics Bowl Canada Student Department

The purpose of this project is to provide an Intern with the resources, structure, and support necessary to expand the Ethics Bowl Canada Student Department, a place in which alumni of the activity gain professional development experience, volunteer experience, and exposure to non profit governance. The Intern will be responsible for recruiting students, creating a strategic framework and leading projects which advance that framework.

Benefit Agreement Opportunities for the Newfoundland Start-Up Community

The goal of this research is to explore opportunities for the Newfoundland and Labrador government to optimize BAs with oil and gas companies in a manner that feeds the development of entrepreneurship and innovation throughout the province. IVC Consulting Inc. is a Newfoundland-based consulting group that helps clients find innovative, valuable and creative ways to improve their business. IVC often works with resource sector businesses to identify opportunities to increase their competitive advantage and public profile in the local market. IVC is interested in the opportunity to optimize the use of benefit agreements for its natural resource clients.

L’impact de la conversion des monographies de produit au format XML sur les petites et moyennes entreprises pharmaceutiques – Étude de cas : Mantra Pharma

Ce projet vise à analyser l’impact de l’obligation réglementaire imposée par Santé Canada concernant la soumission des monographies de produit au format XML, en se concentrant sur une entreprise de taille moyenne : Mantra Pharma.

Le projet analysera les processus actuels utilisé chez Mantra pour répondre à cette exigence, identifiera les obstacles rencontrés (techniques, humains, organisationnels) et proposera des pistes concrètes pour optimiser la transition. Il combinera l’analyse documentaire, l’examen des outils utilisés et des échanges avec les membres de l’équipe réglementaire.

Les résultats attendus incluent un rapport interne sur les impacts de la conversion XML, des recommandations pratiques pour améliorer l’efficacité et réduire les délais de soumission. Ce projet contribuera à améliorer la conformité réglementaire de Mantra tout en soutenant sa capacité à répondre aux exigences de Santé Canada.

Automating Web Application Security Testing for Enhanced Efficiency and Coverage

Forward Security is a cybersecurity firm focused on helping clients identify and mitigate application-level vulnerabilities. One of their current innovation priorities is improving the efficiency and accuracy of manual security testing practices by leveraging automation, particularly in alignment with the OWASP Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS), a globally recognized framework for secure software development and verification. Traditionally, application security assessments—especially those using tools like Burp Suite and OWASP ZAP require significant manual effort to validate controls across ASVS categories. This creates operational bottlenecks and inconsistencies, especially as testing scales across multiple projects or teams. The challenge is to build intelligent automation tools that integrate seamlessly into existing security workflows while providing reliable, standards-aligned assessments. This is not part of the organization’s core product development or day-to-day consulting operations, but rather a strategic enhancement aimed at increasing internal capability and possibly contributing back to the security community. To solve this challenge, the partner organization requires an intern with a rare combination of technical skills: understanding of application security, familiarity with the OWASP ASVS, hands-on experience with the Burp Suite API, and the ability to write extensible, production-grade code in Java and/or Python.

Novel Graphene and Catalyst Materials

This project will work on the development of a plasma process for synthesis of carbon nanomaterials. The effort will focus on design of the entire core components to allow very low carrier gas flow rates. The low gas consumption was identified as the highest cost factor in the manufacture of graphene, fullerenes and nanotubes (using catalysts). These materials are used batteries, polymer additives, healthcare, agriculture and photovoltaic applications. This parameter space has limited review in literature. The properties of the synthesized nanomaterials, extractable fullerenes and the possibility of direct in situ recovery by sublimation will be made. The expected advantage of this approach is: i) lower carrier gas consumption, ii) more efficient energy utilization, iii) improved product recovery and iv) overall production costs reduced by an order of magnitude. Working with an established industrial partner will also validate commercialization opportunities.