Innovative Projects Realized

Couth Studios Branding Innovation Project

Couth Studios is a fashion-tech startup that leverages AI-driven design and community-driven voting to create unique, sustainable fashion pieces. The brand operates at the intersection of fashion, technology, and sustainability, redefining traditional design processes by integrating data-driven insights and consumer engagement into product development.

Couth Studios is in the early stages of brand development and faces the challenge of establishing a strong, cohesive visual identity across digital platforms, marketing campaigns, and in-person experiences (such as pop-ups). Unlike traditional fashion brands, which have established design systems and marketing structures, Couth Studios must:

Creating an accessible emergency management communications scorecard for public information

The proposed project will synthesize and create a way for city emergency management agencies benchmark their materials for accessibility. Emergency management agencies are responsible for the protecting communities and coordinating planning and emergency response to ensure safety. This makes effective communication, especially with groups considered to be vulnerable during emergencies, highly critical. This project is a partnership between researchers at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning and the City of Vancouver’s Emergency Management Agency. We will summarize key insights from communications research, such as how to reach people with disabilities and cultural and linguistically diverse people effectively. It will create a reusable scorecard that public emergency management agencies can use to benchmark their outreach materials, identify gaps, and strategically plan for future improvement.

Smart Waste Management Use Case – Business Strategy Internship

This project, in partnership with SimplyCast, aims to create a smart waste management solution to help the City of Regina reduce landfill waste and support its sustainability goals. Despite having waste collection schedules and reminders in place, many residents still lack the tools and awareness needed to reduce waste effectively. By using SimplyCast’s no-code automation platform, we plan to build a solution that makes it easier for residents to manage their waste while encouraging environmentally friendly habits. The system will include helpful features like personalized reminders, real-time updates, educational content, and tools that allow communities to compare their progress in reducing waste. These features will make it easier for residents to take action and stay informed. The platform combines automation, communication, and engagement tools in one easy-to-use system, which will be adapted specifically for this use case. The solution will be tested with the City of Regina to make sure it works well for residents and creates real impact. Overall, the project will provide long-term benefits to the partner organization by improving public participation, supporting better decision-making through data, and helping the city move closer to its environmental goals. This innovative approach brings together technology, community engagement, and practical solutions to improve waste management for everyone.

Port of Halifax – Waste Production Analysis Program

The Halifax Port Authority (HPA) is a strategic port manager, with a mission to connect global markets to create value for our customers, partners, visitors, and community. We take a leadership role in developing business for the Port of Halifax in collaboration with our partners and we responsibly manage Port of Halifax assets. At the HPA, sustainability is built into every aspect of our business and operations to ensure a balance of economic vitality, environmental stewardship, and community impacts. By identifying innovative, practical, and holistic projects and practices, we ensure that we meet the needs of the present while contributing to the prosperity of the future.

The HPA is developing a Waste Production Analysis Program (WPAP) that will be systematically implemented across our real estate assets and industrial port facilities. The WPAP aims to provide comprehensive insights into best practice for port waste management, identify deficiencies in our current strategies, and highlight key areas for improvement. This project will support ongoing assessments and refinement of our waste management and analysis practices and will contribute to the reduction of the environmental footprint of the Port of Halifax. Our objectives for this Mitacs project are two-fold: (1) Deepen our understanding of port waste management best practices and our current state, and (2) Develop the WPAP, enabling continuous improvement in the HPA’s waste management and analysis practices.

Optimisation d’un algorithme de recommandation

Pillar Science améliore sa plateforme propulsée par l’IA qui connecte les chercheurs universitaires avec des partenaires industriels pour favoriser l’innovation et le transfert de connaissances. Ce projet vise à améliorer significativement la précision des recommandations pour les entreprises de niche en intégrant des sources de données alternatives. Le stagiaire développera des méthodes pour incorporer de nouvelles sources de données structurées dans les modèles de recommandation existants, mesurant les améliorations de performance et établissant les meilleures pratiques pour les développements futurs. Ce travail comble une lacune critique dans la collaboration académie-industrie, permettant un jumelage plus précis même pour des niches industrielles spécialisées. En optimisant ce système de recommandation, le projet renforcera l’écosystème d’innovation du Canada, aidant les institutions académiques à sécuriser des partenariats industriels tout en permettant aux entreprises—particulièrement les PME—d’accéder à une expertise de pointe qui stimule la compétitivité et la croissance économique.

Natural Speech Edit Classifier

Trebble.fm is building the next generation of AI-powered audio and video editing software for everyday creators.

The primary objective of this project is to implement a practical classifier system that can determine whether a section of an edited audio file sounds natural after text-based editing operations. Our approach will be focused on building a production-ready solution that can be immediately integrated into our existing product.

Development of data pipelines to support a regular reporting format for epidemiological insights and disease trends

Globally, there have been challenges in pulling together data, analyses, epidemiological insights, and unusual infection disease trends into comprehensive and regular reporting, that support pharmaceutical and life sciences organizations with timely intelligence for decision making. BlueDot has the knowledge and expertise to bring together these insights in a highly visual, easily understandable regular reporting format, by leveraging proprietary and publicly available data. However, there are challenges in scaling across diseases and locations to meet the growing demand for this content, as well as limited resourcing to improve upon processes, analyses, and methods to deepen our insights and improve efficiency.
This project has several challenges and opportunities that an intern with subject matter expertise and experience with relevant data can help with and learn from. BlueDot has started to develop a foundation for the regular reporting project, and an intern can help by expanding capacity to scale up. They can be helpful every step of the way – from determining usability of new data sources for communication of disease trends, to supporting data engineers in building data pipelines, to thinking about how the data can be used for generating actionable insights, to producing these regular reports with support from senior team members.

McLeod Lake Moose Enhancement Project

This project is intended to provide information regarding the potential impacts and benefits to wildlife habitat resulting from varying forestry harvest practices, with an emphasis on moose, by studying the short term differences among plant species, soil moisture, light, and wildlife use.

Evaluer la menace des limaces exotiques aux plantes herbacées du mont Saint-Bruno

La propagation d’espèces exotiques envahissantes constitue une cause principale de la perte de la biodiversité et les extinctions causées par ces dernières sont dix fois plus importantes que celles causées par les espèces indigènes à l’échelle planétaire. La présence du complexe de la limace exotique européenne, Arion subfuscus s.l., a été confirmé dans les écosystèmes forestiers du mont Saint-Bruno, une colline montérégienne qui abrite une biodiversité exceptionnelle y compris plusieurs espèces de plantes herbacées à statut précaire. Cette étude vise à évaluer l’ampleur de son invasion, la menace de son activité d’herbivorie sur les plantes herbacées à statut et de tester son interaction éventuelle avec d’autres plantes exotiques envahissantes. Le but est d’aider le partenaire, la Fondation du Mont-Saint-Bruno, à optimiser leurs efforts de conservation des plantes herbacées à statut face à cette nouvelle menace.

Designing for Circularity: Exploring Recyclability in Packaging Choices

This research examines how producers make decisions regarding recyclable packaging, considering their internal capabilities, external influences, and sustainability impacts. The aim is to create a decision-making framework that assists producers in adopting recyclable packaging while meeting regulatory requirements and consumer expectations. Packaging, particularly plastic waste, presents significant environmental challenges. Producers face complex decisions in packaging design, balancing recyclability against cost, functionality, regulatory compliance, and consumer expectations. Circular Materials, a national not-for-profit organization, is committed to promoting the circular economy in Canada by establishing efficient recycling programs. This research utilizes a mixed-methods approach, collecting data through surveys and semi-structured interviews with packaging designers, operations managers, and supply chain executives. This will provide both quantitative and qualitative data on decision-making criteria, perceived obstacles, and attitudes toward regulations and consumer demand. The study aims to develop, for Circular Materials, a framework that identifies key factors influencing recyclability decisions, offers recommendations for overcoming barriers to adopting recyclable packaging, and provides insights on facilitating transitions to circular packaging.

Exploring a Multi-modal Audio Foundational Model

Boson AI is an early-stage startup of 30 scientists. They are building large language tools for interaction and entertainment. They are seeking interns from the University of Toronto to join them in their Toronto office. The intern will work on modeling and training LLMs, understanding and interpreting model behavior and aligning models to human values. The company will provide comprehensive guidance and resource support during the internship.
During this project, the partner wants to build an AI model to understand and speak in a natural and emotionally competent manner. Humans often prefer voice communication over text. This has to do with the immediacy of the response and the amount of emotional nuance and subtext that can be conveyed beyond the actual words. Details are only obtainable through the audio (tone, laughter, pauses, volume, etc.), and humans are very good at picking this up. Computers are typically less good at this.
The project is expected to bring significant social and economic benefits by enhancing AI’s ability to understand and express emotions naturally in speech. This advancement will improve human-AI interactions, making virtual assistants, customer service bots, and social robots more engaging and intuitive.

Aston Dynamics Canada EBS project

Aston Dynamics Canada Limited (Aston Dynamics) is working on improving electro-hydraulic braking (EHB) systems for electric and heavy-duty vehicles. The company has already made significant progress in solving key issues like slow braking response, reliability, and limited braking force. They’ve developed and tested prototypes that show better braking control and efficiency, especially for electric vehicles, trailers, RVs, and agricultural vehicles. As the project continues, the focus will be on enhancing the system’s electronics, testing it in real-world conditions, and preparing it for commercial use. This project will help Aston Dynamics lead the way in making braking technology safer and more reliable, benefiting the partner organization by offering advanced, efficient, and industry-leading EHB systems.