Innovative Projects Realized

Champions Hockey Development Practicum

Champions Hockey is finding challenges in managing the smooth coordination of program setup, registration, and scheduling while addressing potential conflicts in ice bookings and maintaining seamless operations. Leading on-ice hockey sessions and facilitating activities for participants of varying skill levels require adaptability and strong leadership skills. Balancing administrative tasks, such as email communications, scheduling, and managing social media updates, can be demanding, especially with competing priorities. To address this, they are looking for two Youth Hockey Development Specialist interns who would implement strategies to increase the organization’s visibility.

Processing of Fibreglass Wind Turbine Blade Waste

The wind energy industry is good for the environment, but one aspect is not: lack of recycling of fiberglass from end-of-life wind turbine blades. This projects develops an important step in the recycling process being promoted by FibeCycle. Sorted of recycled fiberglass from the blades is a difficult process that must be performed carefully in order to maximize the benefits from the recycling process. This project scientifically examines and improves this sorting process to maximize recycling output.

Field Tests of Seed Openers and Data Analysis

Openers are the major components of a seeder, and the performance of openers affects the performance of the seeding operation and crop yield. Atom-Jet Industries manufactures hoe type openers, the most popular openers in Western Canada. For the past 20 years, Atom-Jet has been continuously improving the performance of their openers to provide farmers with high precision and long lasting openers. In the proposed project, field tests will be conducted to evaluate the performance of Atom-Jet openers, and to compare the performance of Atom-Jet openers with other openers on the market. Field tests will involve different soil types (sandy, loam, and clay soils) to examine whether those openers will perform the same in these contrasting soil conditions. Field tests will also involve different crop types (canola, wheat, pea, etc.). These crops are contrasting crops in terms of their seed sizes, seeding rate, and seeding depth. Field measurements will be performed on soil disturbance, force/power requirement, and crop response resulting from different openers under different types of soils and crops. The results will be used by Atom-Jet to improve the design of their openers and to market their openers as well.

Production durable de cuir non animal par culture de mycélium

Le projet de HYPHTECH Inc. consiste à développer une alternative écologique au cuir traditionnel en utilisant le mycélium, une partie végétative des champignons. Ce cuir innovant sera fabriqué de manière durable, sans utilisation d’animaux, et pourrait révolutionner l’industrie du textile. En plus de réduire l’empreinte écologique de la production de cuir, ce projet pourrait également offrir des produits plus économiques et accessibles. Les stagiaires impliqués auront l’occasion de participer à un projet à la pointe de la technologie, contribuant à une innovation significative pour l’environnement et l’industrie textile.

Supermassive Black Hole Masses in Lensed Galaxies

The past decade has revolutionized the astronomical observation of black holes. In 2015, the gravitational waves generated by the merger of two black holes were detected, which confirmed the predictions of general relativity and led to a Nobel prize. In 2019, an array of telescopes spread across the globe took the first image of a black hole, and in 2022 this imaging feat was repeated for the black hole at the center of our own galaxy. These advances were made possible by increasingly complex instruments and telescopes; meanwhile, the torrent of data unleashed by this instrumentation has become a testbed for cutting-edge machine learning methodology. Through this Mitacs project, we aim to contribute to this scientific journey by attempting the first-ever mass measurement of a black hole dating to the first billion years of the universe. This measurement will rely on the gravitational effect known as strong lensing, whereby a galaxy’s gravity causes light from a distant galaxy to be deflected, which magnifies the distant galaxy. The machine learning and strong lensing expertise at the University of Montreal will be combined with the dynamical modeling expertise at the University of Oxford; this will forge a lasting interdisciplinary astrophysics collaboration.

Le rôle et l’adoption de variables normatives techniques dans l’application de la convention de l’UNESCO pour la diversité des expressions culturelles en contexte numérique

Notre recherche portera sur l’importance de l’adoption de variables normatives techniques dans l’application de la convention de 2005 de l’UNESCO pour la diversité des expressions culturelles en contexte numérique. Actuellement, plusieurs gouvernements réfléchissent à la régulation et à la promotion de la découvrabilité des produits culturels en ligne afin de réduire les barrières à leur accès. Nos travaux permettront de définir et d’identifier ce qu’est un contenu culturel d’expression originale en langue française pour nous permettre d’en mesurer la présence et l’accès dans les environnements numériques.

Factors influencing cubic phase purity in nonpolar GaN LED structures

This proposal aims to develop materials which have the potential to drastically reduce the energy consumption in large data centers by replacing existing copper interconnects with much more efficient optical interconnects. Gallium nitride (GaN) is a material that is responsible for the current revolution in lighting technology allowing full spectrum light emission over all visible colors with very high efficiency. The currently used form of GaN is based on a hexagonal crystal structure which limits its ability to switch data quickly. Another form of GaN with a cubic crystal structure is inherently superior in principle, but poses challenges due to the fact that it is not the most stable crystal structure. In this proposal we aim to solve these problems by careful application of crystal growth models combined with advanced fabrication techniques and material characterization tools. The proposed funding should enable the demonstration of the first high efficiency devices based on this novel for of GaN.

Runtime user-space-based protection of containers against unpatched vulnerabilities

Mobile networks are critical infrastructure and essential in our daily lives. Containerization is the go-to solution for deploying mobile services over cloud managed by third parties. Containerized applications might suffer from unpatched software vulnerabilities resulting in impact on the security and privacy of the end users and the operations, potentially leading to financial and reputation losses. This can be exasperated by the fact that time between vulnerability discovery and patching can be counted in weeks and more often in months, leaving a large attack time window to the perform more damage. The main objective of this project is to develop and demonstrate a runtime and non-disruptive tenant-level scalable and efficient solution to temporarily patch vulnerable containerized applications. The main benefit is to offer telecom operators an efficient solution for handling unpatched vulnerabilities to support their service continuing while avoiding security risks and damages related to vulnerabilities exploits. This will allow economical benefits to both the telecom vendor (who will be able to develop security patch) and the operators, who can provide secure mobile networks solution while waiting for the official patch.

Hydrodynamic perception in pinnipeds

Research Consortium: Advanced Computational Methods for Geophysical Electromagnetics Modeling, Inversion and Integration

Electromagnetic (EM) methods are commonly used for geophysical exploration in various applications such as mineral exploration, hydrocarbon detection, management of fresh and salt water and CO2 and reservoir monitoring. While in the past, EM methods suffered from expensive data collection, new systems now collect massive amounts of data over space and time, and new instrumentation allows for higher quality and accuracy of the data. In particular, the research proposed here will enable the processing of large-scale geophysical data and provide exploration companies with additional tools to reduce the risk of exploration.

Accessible Transportation Services: Customer Travel Satisfaction

Canada’s population is rapidly ageing. One sector that is important to older adults’ quality of life is transportation. Indeed, the lack of safe, reliable, and accessible transportation can be a barrier to healthy ageing and increases people’s risk of social isolation. For many older adults, driving is no longer an option, and fixed-route public transports is not accessible. Recognizing this need, many North American cities have created paratransit programs, which provide individualized rides to certain segments of the population that are scheduled ahead of time. In Hamilton, the Hamilton Street Railway (HSR) runs two programs for people with disabilities, both of which fall under their Accessible Transportation Services (ATS): DARTS, a bookable, door-to-door, accessible, shared ride service) and the taxi script program (subsidized taxi fares). Paratransit services, however, are understudied, and within this small body of work even fewer studies have considered users’ experiences. Given this, this research will explore paratransit users’ travel satisfaction through a mixed methods analysis of a survey distributed to ATS customers in Hamilton, Ontario. Results will shed light on how to enhance paratransit user satisfaction in Hamilton and beyond.

Synthesis of Novel Coumarin Derivatives with Anti-Neuroinflammatory Activity