Innovative Projects Realized

Emergency Department Learning, Evaluation and Analysis Research Network (ED-LEARN)

Emergency departments (EDs) all over Canada are facing unparalleled challenges. In a time of increasing patient volume and complexity, EDs have also faced extreme staff shortages and access block within many other parts of the system. Delivery of emergency care in our health system is complex. The IWK ED has a long history of innovation and adapting to challenges to deliver consistently excellent care. With a strong foundation in both research and quality improvement coupled with the substantial investment in the new ED building by the IWK Foundation, we have a once in a lifetime opportunity to implement and evaluate change at scale. By doing so, we can maximize the impact of the investment during this time of transformation. The first phase of this work is to understand our current state, including what is known about measuring quality of care in pediatric emergency departments and understanding our current processes and culture that drive service delivery.

Comprendre le rôle et le potentiel du vélo dans la mobilité au Québec (État du vélo 2025)

Vélo Québec publie périodiquement l’État du vélo au Québec et la mise à jour 2025 survient dans un contexte où la pratique cyclable évolue rapidement. De nouvelles données deviennent disponibles, notamment celles des enquêtes Origine-Destination 2023–2025, mais malgré cette richesse, il demeure difficile de comprendre le rôle actuel du vélo dans la mobilité quotidienne, les facteurs qui influencent son usage, son potentiel — notamment comme mode complémentaire au transport en commun — ainsi que les effets des nouvelles infrastructures cyclables. Le problème de recherche consiste donc à caractériser ces dynamiques à partir de données empiriques, afin d’identifier les interventions les plus susceptibles de renforcer la mobilité active au Québec.
Vélo Québec, organisme national de référence en mobilité active, produit depuis 1995 l’État du vélo au Québec, auquel l’équipe universitaire contribue depuis 2010 (Morency et Godefroy, 2011; Morency et al. 2015; Morency et al. 2021). Pour l’édition 2025, l’organisme souhaite enrichir son analyse en intégrant des données récentes et diversifiées, en documentant l’utilisation des systèmes de vélopartage, en évaluant le rôle du vélo comme mode d’accès potentiel au transport en commun, en mesurant les impacts des nouvelles infrastructures cyclables et en réalisant un diagnostic territorial de la couverture et de la qualité des réseaux cyclables. Le principal défi est de transformer ces données hétérogènes en indicateurs robustes, comparables et reproductibles.
Les retombées attendues pour Vélo Québec sont importantes. Le projet fournira des analyses et modélisations inédites, ainsi que des indicateurs améliorés pour l’État du vélo 2025, renforçant la capacité de l’organisme à soutenir les municipalités et le gouvernement dans la planification d’infrastructures cyclables efficaces. Les résultats permettront une meilleure compréhension des déterminants de la pratique cyclable, une évaluation plus fine de l’intermodalité vélo–transport en commun et l’identification de zones prioritaires d’intervention, avec des bénéfices sociaux, environnementaux et économiques.

Comparative Evaluation of Saliva Collection Modalities

This project will evaluate simple methods for collecting and preparing saliva samples for concussion biomarker research. The work will compare different collection approaches to determine which provides more consistent results. All experiments will use artificial saliva, allowing the methods to be tested in a controlled laboratory setting without using human samples. The results will help HeadFirst Inc. establish reliable sample collection procedures to support future research and development of saliva-based concussion diagnostics.

Biocontrol of Urban Bedbugs: Evaluating Fungal Alternatives for Insecticide-Resistant Populations in Winnipeg

This project investigates the resistance of Winnipeg bedbug populations to chemical insecticides and evaluates the effectiveness of locally developed Beauveria bassiana formulations, addressing critical gaps in our understanding of fungal susceptibility and informing the development of targeted, eco-friendly pest control strategies.

Winterpixel

Winterpixel Games Inc. is developing Gatherwood Grove, a large-scale multiplayer game that currently relies on an inefficient system where game world data is constantly regenerated and discarded. This project aims to build a new “persistent” storage architecture that allows the game to permanently save world data and player changes, rather than deleting them when players leave an area. By implementing this system, the intern will help Winterpixel reduce server costs and improve stability, enabling the studio to launch a high-quality, evolving game world that can support a massive global player base

Self-Improving Agents with test-time compute for FDA

Current artificial intelligence (AI) agents deployed in enterprise settings make static, one-shot decisions and cannot adapt as context changes or learn from the outcomes of past actions. This research addresses two limitations of enterprise AI agents: (i) the inability to dynamically adjust reasoning effort based on the uncertainty and stakes, and (ii) the inability to improve their decision-making capabilities over time by learning from observations. Both result in agents that are brittle under distributional shift, poorly calibrated in their confidence, and unable to close the loop between prediction and consequence.
ServiceNow aims to build Foresight-Driven Agents (FDA): enterprise AI agents that maintain a dynamic world model of an organization, reason over evolving context, and forecast the consequences of decisions. The specific challenges this project addresses are: (a) how to allocate additional test-time reasoning to highuncertainty, high-stakes decisions, and (b) how to design self-improvement mechanisms that allow the agent to update its world model, recalibrate its confidence, and refine its decision strategies based on delayed and noisy outcome signals.
ServiceNow develops a platform to manage and automate large-scale enterprise processes across diverse industries. In 2020, ServiceNow acquired ElementAI to boost its standing in AI research and the Canadian AI scene, leading to enhanced AI-powered products and platform features. ServiceNow AI Research has made significant contributions to the field of foundation models and has a strong presence in developing AI agents for different domains.
This project will advance ServiceNow’s capacity to deploy agents that more reliable, well-calibrated decisions in dynamic environments. By enabling agents to allocate reasoning effort where it matters most and to improve from experience, the project directly addresses operational efficiency. The resulting research contributions, including open-source benchmarks and publications at top venues, will strengthen the Canadian AI research ecosystem and ServiceNow’s position as a leader in enterprise AI.

ARCHAEOLOGY EXPERT SYSTEM

(1) Overview of the Research Problem
Despite rapid advances in Large Language Models (LLMs), their deployment in professional knowledge-intensive sectors remains constrained by hallucinations and data gravity. LLMs frequently generate plausible but unsupported outputs when applied to specialized corpora, while organizations hold vast quantities of “dark data” embedded in unstructured PDF archives. In archaeology and heritage management, this challenge is amplified by decades of technical reports, stratigraphic records, regulatory interpretations, geospatial metadata, and catalogues comprising several million artifacts dispersed across sites. Standard Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems relying solely on vector databases often struggle with structured, relational, chronological, or geospatially constrained queries [1]. This research proposes a hybrid architectural approach integrating large-scale PDF vectorization, dual (vector and relational) indexing, geospatial metadata integration, and parameter-efficient model alignment to ensure strict factual rounding and traceability.

(2) Partner activities and Challenges
Archéoconsultant operates in professional archaeology and territorial heritage management while also developing and commercializing digital solutions for the archaeological sector in Canada and internationally. The organization manages a substantial archive of domain-specific documentation essential for regulatory guidance, mitigation planning, and environmental impact assessments. The partner seeks to bridge the “trust gap” in AI adoption by developing a domain-constrained knowledge infrastructure capable of delivering verifiable, source-grounded responses while enabling spatially aware and chronologically precise analysis.

(3) Anticipated Social and Economic Benefits
The project converts days of manual research into near-instantaneous, high-precision queries, generating significant economic value by accelerating development timelines and reducing compliance risks for large-scale infrastructure. By exploiting structured data, the system strengthens governance through more transparent, traceable, and evidence-based regulatory decision-making. Ultimately, this scalable framework fosters social impact by enabling proactive cultural heritage protection and positioning the Canadian heritage sector as a leader in responsible, modern AI adoption.

Community-informed interventions to reduce air pollutant emissions in near-port neighbourhoods

Strathcona, a neighbourhood in Vancouver, experiences higher air pollution than many other parts of the region as it sits next to major freight routes and industrial areas. Studies have found persistently high levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a pollutant linked to traffic and fuel combustion that can harm human health. While the problem is well documented, it is less clear which actions could reduce pollution most effectively in the next few years. Pollution in Strathcona comes from several sources, including heavy-duty trucks, trains, ships, and nearby industry. Responsibility for these sources is spread across multiple levels of government and other decision-makers, making it challenging to design and implement solutions. This project works in partnership with the Strathcona Residents Association to identify practical, near-term actions that could lower pollution. Through analyzing documents, emissions modelling, and stakeholder input, the project will prioritize strategies that are both effective and realistic, helping the community focus its advocacy on measures most likely to improve local air quality and health.

Access to Health Care for Uninsured Migrants – Strategies for Community Advocacy

This project examines how uninsured migrant parents of babies born in Canada, and their supporters, navigate barriers to registering newborns for provincial health cards. “Uninsured migrants” refers to people who are ineligible for public insurance and lack private coverage or have insufficient coverage. Research shows that hospitals may refuse to register newborns when the mother is uninsured, and many parents avoid seeking care due to fears about exposing their immigration status (Bernhard, Young, & Goldring, 2025; Cheff & Bates, 2018). As a result, some newborns miss essential early care, and families face high out-of-pocket costs or delay care (Gagnon, 2026).
The Immigrant Workers Centre (IWC), a Montreal-based organization supporting workers with precarious immigration status, has identified growing challenges related to pregnancy, post-natal care, and newborn health card registration. In partnership with the McGill School of Social Work, this project will conduct a literature and policy review (Quebec and Ontario), interviews with 6 uninsured parents and 14 service providers, and develop an adaptable inventory of effective advocacy strategies to support cross-provincial learning and action.

Solis Medical Clinic – Strengthening Service-Line Positioning and Digital Marketing for Multidisciplinary Care

This project will help Solis Medical Clinic improve how it communicates its services and reaches new patients by strengthening its marketing systems, service-line messaging, and patient-education materials. The proposal notes that many prospective patients are unaware of the clinic’s full range of treatments and that Solis currently relies on “fragmented communication channels, limited analytics, and inconsistent messaging across service categories.” The intern will conduct market research, refine service descriptions, improve digital marketing pathways, and build educational tools that help patients better understand their care options. These improvements will support clinic growth, increase patient awareness, and enhance access to multidisciplinary pain and wellness services.

Smart City Modeling with Agent-Based and Discrete-Event Simulation

This project will develop and compare two simulation approaches for a Hamburg smart-city scenario and package the workflow so it can be reused for similar modelling in Ottawa. I will build (1) an agent-based model using the MARS framework (C#) with layered/GIS-style representations where agents move and interact based on their surroundings, and (2) a comparable discrete-event/DEVS model using Cadmium/DEVSsim for the same scenario.

The goal is to understand how modelling assumptions and “layer” design affect outputs and how each approach supports decision-making for urban mobility and infrastructure planning. I will run aligned experiments in both models and evaluate results using consistent metrics such as flow/throughput, congestion proxies, travel-time distributions, and spatial density patterns. Python will be used for data processing, visualization, and reporting.

Deliverables: two working models (MARS + DEVS), a set of experiment scripts, a short comparative report, and a brief “setup/adaptation guide” to help apply the same workflow to Ottawa.

Unlock the power of open data in commercial insurance (Desjardins)

In commercial insurance, businesses are constantly changing and keeping up is no small task. As their activities grow or evolve, their exposure to risk and insurance needs change. Outdated or incomplete information about the customer can lead to poor customer experience and unfair pricing. While regularly reaching out to clients could help keep their information up to date, this approach would be costly and potentially disruptive to their experience.
By using external open data sources that are frequently updated by different organizations, municipalities and government bodies, we aim to find ways to validate our internal information about business owners, and use it in our processes and even find trends and patterns in those data that can translate to growth opportunities within the insurance market.