Innovative Projects Realized

The student will help develop a database to link the “ingredients approach” costs with the published data on actual program costs from the field.  The student and supervisor will undertake analysis of the relationship between the two sets of costs using statistical software.  The goal is to develop a publishable article on the topic, and to present preliminary findings to interested parties in international organizations (WHO and World Bank) as well as those involved in related international research projects (e.g. funded by Gates Organization).

Software testing and debugging take up between 30 and 50% of the development cost in embedded systems. Despite this large percentage and the associated enormous costs, only little attention has been devoted to debugging of embedded real-time systems. Apart from in-circuit emulators for standalone systems, ad-hoc methods such as blinking lights to indicate errors and morsing error codes via beepers are still widespread debugging methods.

One way to debug systems is by creating application traces at run time by instrumenting the software. The instrumented mechanism, however, must preserve the logical correctness and respect the timing and resource bounds of the application. In our research, we investigate mechanisms for instrumenting and debugging real-time embedded software that satisfies a specified set of constraints.

Two possible student roles are available:

Theory role: We will investigate new instrumentation techniques at the level of control-flow graphs and timing diagrams and evaluate the resulting algorithms (complexity, correctness, soundness). We will further compare the new algorithms with the existing algorithms (language inclusion, counter-examples).

In this project we analyze how a government healthcare provider should negotiate a risk-sharing contract with pharmaceutical drug manufacturers. The objective of the study is to examine how a government healthcare payer should set the terms of pay-for-performance contracts with multiple drug or pharmaceutical manufacturers. The study builds on existing work by Mahjoub, Odegaard, and Zaric (2010), that considers the simplest case when there is only one manufacturer. The main parameters of the contract we seek to model are the evaluation period and percentage of sales that the manufacturer would have to reimburse to the healthcare payer. Due to deriving meaningful tractable results with analytical models, the study will focus on computational game theory and simulation. In other words the study will center on testing different contract policies using computer simulation to evaluate what types of contract, from the health care payer’s perspective, are optimal and robust to adverse outcomes.

The main role for the student involves model building and analysis. Model building involves specifying, for instance, the dynamics between the manufacturers and the healthcare payer, the drugs’ performance and evaluation, disease(s) progression in the population, the metrics to track, etc. Model analysis includes model validation, interpretation of the results, summarizing results, preparing graphs, etc. The student will be responsible for implementing (coding) the model in a computer programming/simulation environment. Additional tasks include literature review and research previous work that has been done. The student is also expected to summarize the model and results and actively participate in drafting a formal research paper and PowerPoint presentation.

Water resources worldwide have recently appeared as vulnerable to climate change that may both reduce water supply and increase water demand, leading to frequent and/or severe water shortages. Water resources in Canada are also at risk posed by climate change. Sustainable water resources management plays a vital role in reducing the vulnerability of the water resources to these challenges.

The objectives of the proposed research are to downscale the future climate change outputs generated from different RCMs and adapt them to the watershed in consideration (Big Creek Watershed in this case), to assess the impacts of future climate change on hydrologic regime and to evaluate the uncertainties in water resources availability for future climate change scenarios.

Outcome of this research, although proposed to be developed for agricultural section, it is expected to contribute to Canada’s water resources sectors, such as agriculture, navigation/transport, hydropower, municipalities/communities, ecosystems/environment to develop a sustainable management system under future climate change condition.

The student will learn to use the state-of-the-art instrumentation available in the laboratory, learn the details of the mathematical tools used as part of the research, learn to analyse data using several state-of-the-art tools and write a report and also participate in completion of a journal article.

Our overall project objective is to determine factors to optimize removal of nutrients and organic micropollutants (e.g., pesticides, and pharmaceuticals and personal care products aka “drugs”) in rural municipal sewage lagoons, through manipulative experiments with bench-scale and field-scale constructed wetlands.  This work will provide sound science on how best to remove such contaminants from wastewaters prior to release to receiving waters, and would enhance the quality and sustainability of water for the people of Manitoba.

            Our specific geographic focus is the communities of Morden and Winkler (combined population ca. 18,000), in southern Manitoba. The Dead Horse Creek system can be considered representative not only of wastewater treatment technologies of small communities in Manitoba and the Canadian Prairies, but also of nutrient and pollutant contributions to Lake Winnipeg from rural areas.  Thus, an understanding of the inter-play of factors potentially affecting function of the proposed wetlands is crucial to their optimal operations, and will provide insights into applying such environmental technologies to other systems to enhance water quality.

            The Globalink student will have the opportunity to work with a large (17 people in 2010) and unique multi-investigator, multi-institution, multi-organization, multi-disciplinary team tackling the issue of nutrient and micropollutant remediation by innovative water treatment technologies.  The student will play a crucial role in constructing a chemical mass balance in the manipulative field-scale microcosms.  Extensive field sampling at the site (1.5 hours southwest of Winnipeg) will be done to characterize the existing chemical compostion in the sewage lagoons of Morden and Winkler, which represent baseline conditions (i.e., the treatment available given currently-existing infrastructure and technology).

For the past decade, I have been researching new types of biofilters for treatment of livestock odours.  Although I anticipate the fabrication of a prototype biofilter by April 2011, I do not expect the design team to have time to evaluate the functioning of the biofilter.  It is my intention to recruit a student during the summer of 2011 to experimentally evaluate the design to ensure that the design flaw has been rectified.  I already have the necessary instrumentation to experimentally evaluate the functioning of the biofilter.  Furthermore, the design team has been instructed to consider the experimental evaluation in their design (i.e., they have been instructed to consider the placement of moisture sensors in the biofilter). 

The purpose of this project, therefore, is to conduct an experiment to evaluate the functioning of the biofilter.  Following collection of the data, the student will be expected to analyze the results and, time permitting, prepare a publication for submission to a refereed journal describing the biofilter and its evaluation.  The CSBE/SCGAB Annual Conference is being hosted in Winnipeg in July 2011.  The student would have opportunity to attend this Conference and present the results of this research and development project. The experimental evaluation will consist of data collection, data analysis, and preparation of a manuscript for presentation at the 2011 CSBE/SCGAB Annual Conference in Winnipeg (and ultimately for publication in a peer-reviewed journal such as Canadian Biosystems Engineering).

Wind Power Generation is one of the major sources for clean energy around the world in the industrialized countries or regions.  It is well known that the WPG has the following characteristics: the input is uncertain; the volatility is high with jumps and lags; the correlation between its output and demand is most likely zero; WPG usually locates at a remote node in the transmission network. The proposed research will help to answer how profitable a WPG could be in a day-ahead market when its bidding strategy is optimal. The answer will also be a key reference in making supportive regulation for this new industry.

The problem will be considered both with strategy and without strategy. When the problem is considered with strategy, we explicitly model other competitor’s behavior. When the problem is considered without strategy, we model the clearing price as a random variable following its historic pattern. For both approaches, we will explicitly model demand constraints and other physical constraints for the segmented 24-hour market. Scenario generation will be an important part of the project, where a set of scenarios representing the future wind pattern will be created and used in the optimization model. 

The student shall actively involve in modeling of the problem, discuss the critical component of the model, tradeoffs between different factors in the model. The student will also help on collecting data for the model. Though it might be challenging, the student is expected to make contribution in the optimal algorithm design phase as well. The student will receive mini-lectures on stochastic programming and real option theory, which is expected to be the major tools in solving the optimization model.

The overall objective of the proposed project is to conduct long‐term performance analysis and evaluation of major renewable energy and advanced mechanical systems installed in the two TRCA‐BILD Archetype Sustainable houses located at Kortright Centre in Woodbridge. Ontario. The facility will be served as an education, demonstration, training, and research infrastructure for sustainable housing technologies in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in partnerships with Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA), Building Industry and Land Development (BILD) Association, and many other partners. This will entail 1) development of the overall flexible and expandable monitoring system, 2) identification and ratification of potential design and operational problems through detailed equipment and monitoring system commission processes, 3)

conduct long‐term performance monitoring and data collection, 4) development and validation of building energy simulation modules to be used in future Hot2000/3000 software, and 4) analysis and evaluation of long‐term system performance for each major equipment and a house as a whole. This is the second year of the expected three year research internship project with the TRCA‐BILD Archetype House facility.