Innovative Projects Realized

Stress Test of a Pilot Passive Methane Oxidation Biosystem

Closed landfills are a source of uncontrolled methane (CH4) emissions negatively add to the impact of greenhouse gas emissions. These methane emissions can continue for decades after biogas extraction systems reach end-of-life. Successful land reclamation projects, such as turning an old landfill into a park, depends on low-maintenance technologies that can cope with these emissions. The goal of this research is to identify operating constraints (temperature, loading rate and water content) for a pilot passive methane oxidation biosystem (PMOB) constructed at the old Kitchener landfill, recently turned into a park (McLennan municipal park). Determining the operating constraints will lead to an effective PMOB that treats the methane emissions presently reach the surface of the Kitchener landfill to an acceptable level. Completion of the project will be instrumental in helping Dillon Consulting Ltd. develop a long-term, durable, strategy to abate methane emissions that could be applied to landfills across Canada.

Seismic Assessment of High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) Lift Stations

Lift stations are an underground utility transporting wastewater from residential or commercial sources to wastewater treatment plants. Lift stations are defined as a post-disaster structure according to national building code of Canada, which are required to remain operational immediately after earthquakes. A wealth of evidence from historical post-earthquake reconnaissance has confirmed the excellent performance of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipelines under earthquakes. However, the application of HDPE to lift stations is relatively new, and the seismic performance of HDPE lift stations remains poorly understood. This project aims to address these research gaps through two-dimensional and three-dimensional numerical simulations of HDPE lift stations subjected to seismic loading. The outcomes of this research will bring tangible benefits to the seismic resilience of wastewater infrastructure in Canada and contribute the scientific knowledge on emergency response planning.

Dynamic actor tracking for Augmented Reality-based filmmaking guidance

Augmented Reality can help in simplifying the filmmaking process by intelligently suggesting shot composition angles for amateur filmmakers to take better shots. In partnership with Rubber Match Productions, researchers will investigate how actors within an AR filmmaking environment can be dynamically tracked to provide real-time guidance to the filmmaker for shot composition. The project will utilize latest advances in artificial intelligence and computer vision to track actors in real-time through videos. Multiple actors will be tracked simultaneously, and Rubber Match’s proprietary “smallest angle principle” will be applied on the actors’ positions for accurate shot composition. The developed technology and accompanying app will provide amateur filmmakers with professional filmmaking guidance at their fingertips. The proposed research will also be expected to make significant contributions in the fields of augmented reality and artificial intelligence. The intersection of these two fields is becoming increasingly important for providing production-level software tools and techniques in digital media and video production

Recycling Strategies for Challenging & Complex Polymer Composite Waste

Carbon Fiber (CF) is one of the world’s most versatile material ever developed. CF has high stiffness and tensile strength, is stronger than steel, lighter than aluminum and it can be molded into any shape. This allows it to be used in aerospace, airplane and automotive manufacturing. This MITACS grant will support the development of new Processes and Technologies needed to recycle CF, its co-mingled materials and other components from hard to process waste streams, with the goal of reducing environmental impact and resource requirements. Managing the full lifecycle of CF from manufacturing to disposal, will require alternative technology to avoid disposal to landfill. CF is an energy and material intensive product to produce, and as we begin to see its relative cost to manufacturing drop, society can expect to see more and more CF produced and used. As those products enter their end of useful life, recycling solutions developed will be commercialized by Everything Recycling Inc.

Integrating expert knowledge and camera tap surveys to assess the impacts of development on terrestrial forest carnivores

Protected areas are important wildlife refuge but carnivores have large ranges and their long-term survival could depend on their ability to exist outside parks and reserves. The intern will use expert knowledge and camera trap surveys to determine the potential for habitat outside protected areas in southwestern British Columbia, Canada to act as habitat linkages for carnivores. This area is subject to increasing development from the recreation industry so identifying the potential impacts for carnivores can help prioritize wildlife management efforts. This project is a partnership with St’at’imc Eco-resources (SER), thus members of the St’at’imc community will directly benefit through increased capacity and employment. SER staff will lead the camera trap survey and will be consulted at all stages of the project, in turn benefiting the project as a whole through the integration of Indigenous perspectives and voices.

Evaluation of human performance using touch screen displays in cockpit environment

Touchscreen technologies are making their way into aircraft flight decks as a means for pilots to view and interact with flight data. However, these touchscreens are often placed at arm’s length from the pilot, and all aircraft can experience turbulence. Even without turbulence, helicopter pilots in particular can be exposed to high levels of vibration caused by rotor movements. These factors may adversely impact touchscreen usability for the flight deck environment. In static conditions, touchscreens have been found to have higher throughput values, a performance measure that combines speed and accuracy (based on Fitts’s Law), compared to other pointing devices that are practical for the cockpit environment. This study provides throughput and error rate values under helicopter vibration conditions, to inform whether these devices still provide adequate performance under these conditions. In addition, a hand support method recommended by the standard SAE ARP60494 was tested, to indicate whether it improves usability under vibration. 24 participants performed a multidirectional selection task, as defined in the standard ISO 9241, using four different target sizes and three different distances between targets. Independent variables were: target size, distance between targets, vibration/no-vibration, hand support/freehand, type of screen, and position of screen. Two of the screens tested were avionic touchscreen prototypes, while the other two were consumer touchscreens. The touchscreens were placed in one of two positions: one representative of the Primary Flight Display (PFD, which is located on the main instrument panel), and the other representative of a Multi-Function Control and Display Unit (MCDU, which is located on the pedestal). This study provides values that quantify the impact of vibration on target-selection performance and error rate, when using a touchscreen. This will help flight deck designers decide whether touchscreens are an appropriate technology for their intended use. It also quantifies the impact of target size, which can be used to develop guidelines for minimum touchscreen target sizes for the flight deck environment. Lastly, it helps inform about the utility of using a simple hand support under vibration.

A chance to grow through Globalink

Indian student Murtaza Saif made deep connections while honing his skills at UBC

As a 4th-year undergraduate student at the Vellore Institute of Technology, Murtaza Saif thought he’d learned a lot already during his degree. So when he found himself examining protein mutations that cause cardiac arrhythmias in a laboratory at the University of British Columbia’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, he knew he’d come a long way from where he once was.

Murtaza, a bioinformatics major, says that while he had related experience with database coding before, the hands-on experience he gained while working with Dr. Filip Van Petegem and his team let him build a valuable new skill-set that he didn’t expect to gain. While building a database for members of the Cardiovascular Research Group, Murtaza was able to assist in analysis of proteins using x-ray crystallography and diffraction data. 

The findings from this, and other studies, could help researchers determine what role these proteins play in the heart’s ability to initiate its own rhythm independent of the nervous system, a condition called a cardiac arrhythmia. Though most arrhythmias are harmless, certain forms of the condition can cause stroke or heart failure in patients with the condition.

For Murtaza, the experience in the laboratory also helped him develop some meaningful connections with his lab partners. After studying together to complete their different projects, the group became good friends – even throwing Murtaza a “farewell” party when he left to go home to India at the end of his Globalink internship. 

With his Globalink cohorts, Murtaza attended “The Data Effect” conference, connecting to the humorous, but educational speech that Christopher Johnson, Leader of Business Intelligence and Advanced Analytics for IBM, presented. They also attended workshops through Mitacs Step, including one on project management which he found particularly useful to his work in the lab. 

However, it was his personal growth and the deep connections that he made through Globalink that made his experience truly memorable: 

“As an undergraduate student, Mitacs Globalink was a God-send. I never expected that I'd go to Canada for a 3-month project and meet such nice people and become so close to them, and I never expected that I would learn so much academically and personally in such little time. But now that I reflect on my summer in Canada through Mitacs Globalink, I have taken with me so many sweet memories that I will always cherish for life. “

Projet de recherche applique dans la gestion de marketing

Statistical Modelling and Analysis of Complex Traits in Human Populations

Systematic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (SIRS) is an inflammatory response to a variety of severe clinical conditions such as infection, shock or trauma. An example of SIRS is sepsis, a systematic inflammatory response to infection. Sepsis is the most common diagnosis and cause of death among critically ill patients from intensive care units, occurring in about 1% of all hospitalized patients. SIRS is a complex genetic disorder involving a number of genes that act in conjunction with lifestyle and environmental factors to increase an individual's risk of developing the illness. Increasingly, researchers studying complex disorders are turning to genetic markers called single nucleotide polymorphisms (or SNPs) to assist in locating susceptibility mutations. Haplotypes, the combinations of genetic variants inherited together from a parent, may affect susceptibility either directly by influencing regulation and/or function of susceptibility genes, or indirectly through associations with unobserved genetic variants that confer susceptibility. Due to the limitations of current cost-effective genotyping technology, however, haplotypes are not observed unambiguously in all subjects. The team modelled and analysed the associations between SNP haplotypes and treatment outcomes in critically-ill sepsis patients. The SNPs investigated were in four genes thought to play a role in the inflammatory process. Currently, the popular practice for haplotype analyses is to substitute a best guess for the haplotypes, and ignore the extra source of variation due to the uncertainty in these guesses. However, ignoring this extra variation can lead to potential errors in interpretation of the scientific results. This project will serve as a guide for future analyses undertaken by iCAPTURE that account for haplotype uncertainty in a statistically valid way.

Security of Routing Protocols

Alcatel, a leader in fixed and mobile broadband networks, applications and services, was interested in increasing the security of routers which are at the core of the Internet. It is generally acknowledged by experts that abusing routing protocols presents an easy way for launching attacks on the Internet infrastructure, and that a single misbehaving router can completely disrupt routing protocols and cause disaster. The intern and research team proposed a new security extension for BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) named Pretty Secure BGP (psBGP). (BGP, an Internet standard, is the only inter-domain routing protocol running on the Internet.) In contrast to the centralized hierarchical trust model used by most existing BGP security proposals, psBGP makes use of a distributed trust model for verifying IP address “ownership'', by corroborating information from multiple, ideally independent sources. The design of psBGP was based on the way in which human beings acquire trust in the truth of information when a natural authority for the truth of the information is not available. psBGP does not assume that there is a trusted authority on the Internet which fully understands which IP address blocks are assigned to which organizations. Through this collaborative research, both the intern and Alcatel researchers greatly improved their understanding of BGP security, which in turn is expected to help improve Alcatel's research capability in network security.

Portfolio Management and Energy Options

The partner company, ENMAX Energy Corporation, is a leading electricity and natural gas supplier in Alberta. Modern techniques from stochastic processes and numerical analysis are widely used in energy risk management and trading. The intern research project involved the development of an optimal portfolio of products in the energy industry as well as the study of the pricing of new forms of contracts for energy products. In addition, stochastic dynamic programming techniques were applied to investigate optimal portfolios.

Optimal Sequencing of Surgery/Chemotherapy in Ovarian Cancer treatment

Detecting ovarian cancer is, in general, difficult because of the lack of effective screening tests. If the disease is discovered when confined to the ovaries, surgery alone is curative in more than 90% of patients – however, in most patients, diagnosis only occurs after dissemination beyond the ovaries. In these cases, a combined treatment of surgery and chemotherapy is necessary. Unfortunately prognosis is grim and median survival is only 3 years despite treatment. Although there have been a wide variety of studies carried out on ovarian cancer, the answers to several key questions related to the optimal sequencing and scheduling of chemotherapy and surgery are far from resolved. Mathematical modelling had been used little in this regard. The research team developed simple mathematical models to incorporate tumour growth as well as the effects of chemotherapeutic treatments and surgical interventions in ovarian cancer. They considered the problem of the optimal sequencing of surgery and chemotherapy. It is expected that these models may prove useful for other types of cancer. The research carried out has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Theoretical Biology and it will be interesting to see how the model predictions compare with a clinical trial currently in progress.