Innovative Projects Realized

Explore thousands of successful projects resulting from collaboration between organizations and post-secondary talent.

13270 Completed Projects

1072
AB
2795
BC
430
MB
106
NF
348
SK
4184
ON
2671
QC
43
PE
209
NB
474
NS

Projects by Category

10%
Computer science
9%
Engineering
1%
Engineering - biomedical
4%
Engineering - chemical / biological

AMSSA Index

This internship with AMSSA, an affiliation of agencies providing immigrant settlement and multicultural services to communities, will survey and analyze all types of services for immigrants already being offered by AMSSA’s member agencies across BC through their broad-ranging service funder relationships. Generally speaking, each BC immigrant-serving agency holds a small number of “core” BC Ministry of Attorney General Settlement and Adaptation Program service contracts which allow for a basic range of information and referral, volunteer matching and ESL services. However, in addition to their core settlement services, AMSSA’s member agencies have developed service relationships with other federal, provincial, municipal and private funders to deliver additional immigrant services in areas including health, seniors, youth, employment, family counselling, domestic violence, and community capacity development. The purpose of this research is to ‘learn from the front-line’ about the full range of services that have historically been developed at the community level to meet particular newcomer needs.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Grant Charles

Student:

Easter Tocol

Partner:

Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Service Agencies of BC (AMSSA)

Discipline:

Social work

Sector:

Legal

University:

University of British Columbia

Program:

Accelerate

A Rapid Prototyping System for Games

Before any game can begin development, an idea must be conceived and elaborated sufficiently that it can be given a “green light” by the publisher/developer. A running prototype is extremely helpful in obtaining that approval. Depending on the size of the publisher, however, there may be several rounds of pitches as the idea makes its way up through the layers of management meaning the prototype is demonstrated again and again, possibly being modified to meet the needs of different stakeholders. This project with Credo Interactive Inc., specialists in motion-capture and 3D character animation software, aims to develop a flexible web-based prototyping environment to meet this need. The challenge is to develop a prototyping tool which can be used quickly and inexpensively at the same time as providing a realistic representation of the proposed game. There is particular focus on games involving moving human and animal characters.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. John E. Bowes

Student:

Arefe Dalvandi

Partner:

Credo Interactive Inc.

Discipline:

Interactive arts and technology

Sector:

Digital media

University:

Simon Fraser University

Program:

Accelerate

Examining the Relationship Between Subjective Experience and Outcomes in Individuals with Mental Illness and Substance Abuse

The proposed research project will assess psychiatric patients shortly before hospital discharge and then conduct follow-up assessments once a month in the community for three months. Assessment will include data collected from interviews as well as file reviews and will focus on the effect of patient perceptions on therapeutic and adverse outcomes. Specifically, the intern research team will target the degree to which participants perceive their hospital admission and subsequent treatment as forced upon them, how much of a say they feel they have in what happens to them in a hospital and during post-discharge treatment, how fair they perceive their hospitalization and subsequent treatment to be, how forced and threatened they feel, and their perception of their daily quality of life. Analyses will attempt to determine how these perceptions influence adverse and therapeutic outcomes, including measures of substance use, violent perpetration, victimization, medication compliance, treatment adherence, therapeutic alliance symptom severity and return to hospital.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Kevin Douglas

Student:

Elizabeth Nicholson

Partner:

BC Mental Health & Addictions Research Institute

Discipline:

Psychology

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

Simon Fraser University

Program:

Accelerate

Wildfire Risk Assessment for the Southern Gulf Islands

Forest fire risk modeling is a new and rapidly developing approach to managing the threat of wildfire to British Columbia communities. The demand for forest fire risk assessment technology is growing rapidly in British Columbia due to the increasing number and extent of forest fires as well as the rapid expansion of residential housing in rural areas. The Gulf Islands National Park Reserve Fire Risk Assessment Project is developing a model that will identify the areas where fires are most likely to start and most likely to cause damage (both to endangered ecosystems and to human values). It will also serve to answer management questions by showing the impact on risk levels of various management decisions. Once areas of high forest fire risk have been identified, fire prevention and fire suppression resources can be allocated. Custom modeling software will be developed within a GIS software environment to generate the risk ratings.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Ken Lertzman

Student:

Matthew Tutsch

Partner:

Parks Canada

Discipline:

Resources and environmental management

Sector:

Forestry

University:

Simon Fraser University

Program:

Accelerate

Differentiating Sources of Contaminants in Two Lakes in Northern Ontario

The intern will measure the concentrations of organic contaminants (PAHs) and inorganic contaminants (metals) in cores from two lakes in Northern Ontario. One lake has an adjacent industrial site while the second lake represents a control site with no associated industry. Comparison between the lakes will determine whether contaminants previously measured were associated with the industry or are a result of non-point source atmospheric deposition in the region. This project will apply high resolution sampling over discrete depth intervals in order to differentiate between long range atmospheric and local point source deposition. Such high resolution sampling is not currently available from commercially available analytical approaches. This project will directly address the source of contaminants to this site and thereby benefit ENVIRON Canada Inc., an environmental and health sciences consultancy. Further, this new methodology will be applicable to constrain the sources of contaminants in similar environments and therefore to more effective investigation and remediation of environmental contaminants by the industrial partner at other sites.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Greg Slater

Student:

Andrew Benson

Partner:

ENVIRON (EC) Canada Inc.

Discipline:

Geography / Geology / Earth science

Sector:

Environmental industry

University:

McMaster University

Program:

Accelerate

Development of Cognitive Mapping Analysis Tool

Cognitive Mapping or CM – sometimes called Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping- is a process by which an individual, group of individual, or groups of individuals can identify a central topic and over prolonged discussion, identify the various factors which relate to that topic. CM has been recently applied to explore issues in First Nations communities by researchers at the University of Ottawa to, for example, explore factors associated with diabetes (diet, lifestyle, education, etc) and to weigh these various factors associated with the central theme as strongly or weakly, positively or negatively. The information can then be collated and analyzed to ‘rank’ the primary and secondary factors which are most important in relation to the central issues. Different groups of participants (e.g. youth, elders, police, health care professions, etc) identify different factors. The different perspectives between these groups helps identify disconnects in understanding. The CM process has been successfully used to fully explore issues within a First Nations community to help direct funding, programs or resources by governing bodies. However, the analysis by which CM is undertaken (i.e. taking the results of a workshop and ranking the various factors) is not well defined and currently exists in a format – a series of interrelated spreadsheets – which are not easily accessible outside of the University of Ottawa. This internship with SolAero Ltd., a health risk consulting firm, seeks to develop an accessible mathematical model which can be easily applied as a tool to obtain and evaluate process results from workshops planned to be undertaken in First Nations communities in northern Alberta.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. John H. Dennis

Student:

Jia Shen

Partner:

SolAero Ltd.

Discipline:

Mathematics

Sector:

Aerospace and defense

University:

University of Calgary

Program:

Accelerate

Compendium of Design Strategies for Healing Environments

Evidence-based research has provided a body of evidence which links improved patient outcomes with building features such as courtyards, views of nature and access to daylight. While the quantitative data produced by such studies makes a strong case to decision-makers for the inclusion of such features into healthcare facilities, the design of healing environments requires more than a checklist of desirable features. This internship with Stantec Architecture aims to develop a compendium of design strategies which provide specific architectural techniques for the creation of a built environment which fosters both personal healing and urban-ecological regeneration. Design principles and techniques will be extracted from several exemplary healing environments, then applied, tested and refined. The compendium will be accompanied by drawings and diagrams to communicate in architectural terms the specific strategies which lead to powerful and transformative healing environments.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Ray Cole

Student:

Selena Schroeder

Partner:

Stantec Architecture

Discipline:

Architecture and design

Sector:

Construction and infrastructure

University:

University of British Columbia

Program:

Accelerate

Characterization of Rock Features in the Ore Sorting Industry

Underground pre-concentration is an efficient stage in reducing the cost of mining operations. During this operation, extracted rocks are monitored underground and most of the waste rock is rejected while the ore is kept. In this project, image processing and pattern recognition algorithms will be employed to characterize different types of ores as well as rocks. This system will be part of a machine vision system that will be used for sorting ores from waste rocks in an underground preconcentration in a mine. The system uses a camera to take pictures of rocks as they slide on a conveyor belt. The system then uses features describing the color of rocks to categorize them into the correct category (e.g., ore / waste rock). The successful performance of this pattern recognition system will result in a significant amount of cost saving as well as reducing negative impacts on the environment.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Rabab K. Ward

Student:

Mehdad Fatourechi

Partner:

BC Mining Research Limited

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Mining and quarrying

University:

University of British Columbia

Program:

Accelerate

Blind People in the Workplace: Examining the Barriers to Meaningful Employment of Blind Canadians

The project with the Canadian Federation of the Blind, an organization working to establish positive and productive roles for blind people in Canada, will include the researching, development and implementation of a mixed-methods survey providing accurate statistics on the employment of blind people in the Greater Victoria area and narratives on their experiences in seeking and attaining meaningful employment. A quantitative survey will gather demographic information, including gender, age, race and ethnicity, educational level, income status, number of years employed or unemployed and the type of work undertaken by respondents. In addition to this, the survey will include questions regarding any job-related support services accessed, barriers to employment such as a lack of subsidized specialized equipment, and an assessment of level of travel skills and level of ability to read and write Braille. A follow-up sub-sample of respondents will be asked open-ended, quantitative interview questions in order to gather data about their experiences of seeking and maintaining employment, as well as what barriers they have faced in trying to join the workforce. After the research team has collected this quantitative random sample and qualitative sub-sample, they will analyze both sets of data and produce a comprehensive report of the findings.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Cecilia Benoit

Student:

Kate Vallance

Partner:

Canadian Federation of the Blind

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Service industry

University:

University of Victoria

Program:

Accelerate

Warehouse and Distribution Network Optimization

The project is aimed at the development of mathematical models and algorithms to optimize the supply chain network configuration for Dainty Foods, a food processing, packaging and storage company. The partner wants to optimize their current supply chain network through the management of their internal warehouse space and how it relates to external warehousing and cross-docking.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Guoqing Zhang

Student:

Sarina Turner

Partner:

Dainty Foods

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

University of Windsor

Program:

Accelerate

The Identification of Development Opportunities Involving Historic Properties

The research will analyze and investigate the range of development opportunities in historic buildings within a two hour radius of Kitchener/Waterloo, Ontario that have become vacant in the last few years as a result of economic and social restructuring. It will help to preserve sites of cultural significance in the province which is in support of a number of principles in the Ontario Heritage Act (2005). Some possible research questions are: should municipalities have special policies for these buildings? What role can Municipal Heritage Committees play in promoting these developments? How can the Heritage Places Initiative at the Federal and Provincial level develop a program to better facilitate these projects? The research will provide the JG Group, an group of companies that provide creative design, management, and construction services for building projects, with a target list of suitable buildings in various communities in Southern Ontario where they could bring their expertise (adaptive reuse) to develop profitable projects. The JG Group could also act as brokers in putting together feasible projects and partnering to develop these vacant commercial and industrial sites.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Robert Shipley

Student:

Copeland A. Stupart

Partner:

JG Group of Companies

Discipline:

Urban studies

Sector:

University:

University of Waterloo

Program:

Accelerate

The Effect of Plant Condition on Bumble Bee Pollination in Greenhouse Tomato

The intern will collaborate with MGS Horticultural, a major supplier of fertilizer and pest management controls, to study the relationship between scent and pollination success in commercial greenhouses. Previous (unpublished) research has suggested that scent is an integral component of pollination in greenhouse tomato, and that scent can be affected by growth conditions within a greenhouse. The research proposed will attempt to not only confirm this, but use it in developing a course of action for tomato crops which are experiencing a deficit of pollination. With the assistance of MGS, the intern will collect scent from commercial tomato greenhouses and attempt to confirm that pollination of greenhouse tomato is truly dependant on tomato scent. If successful, MGS horticultural would benefit through being better able to advise their customers on what they can do to encourage pollination in their greenhouse tomato crops.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Peter Kevan

Student:

Andrew Morse

Partner:

MGS Horticultural Inc.

Discipline:

Biology

Sector:

Agriculture

University:

University of Guelph

Program:

Accelerate

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