Innovative Projects Realized

Ranking Elements of Realism of VR Avatars

In (VR, we can’t see our bodies due to replacing the real world with a virtual one. This leads to disembodiment, which has been shown to impact performance. An avatar, a digital body, can create that embodiment. The proposed research aims to combine the topic of the intern’s master’s thesis, “Investigating Graphical Realism in Mixed Reality and its Correlation with Performance and Presence,” and research conducted by the host institution, “Third-Person Perspective Avatar Embodiment in Augmented Reality: Examining the Proteus Effect on Physical Performance.”

This research will design an experiment that will vary the graphical qualities of an avatar. Participants would be tasked with voting for the avatar they feel has the higher quality, and, similar to the intern’s thesis, the system would apply a ranking to the results. These results would be compared to a participant’s self-reported sense of embodiment for each avatar’s graphical quality. This experiment aims to understand what elements of graphical realism are necessary for embodiment and their impact on embodiment. By combining these research topics, we can better understand the effects of graphical realism on user embodiment in new XR systems. This will inform the intern’s PhD dissertation on graphical elements in XR systems.

Validating chemical candidates for axon regeneration in the rodent visual system

Neurons are like electrical wires that help the brain communicate with itself and other parts of the body. If broken, this ability is impaired, leading to reduced sensation and or motor function. Neurons in the mature mammalian central nervous system (CNS) don’t grow back after injury due to cellular, biochemical and physical barriers. Currently, there are no therapeutics for complete functional recovery from CNS injury, so identifying treatments that target different barriers to regeneration will be important for the development of a novel therapeutic strategy. Collapsin response mediator protein 2 (CRMP2) stabilizes microtubules, which are part of the cell’s cytoskeleton, and promotes their regeneration, but CRMP2 cannot perform this function when it’s phosphorylated. CRMP2 phosphorylation increases after injury, making regeneration more difficult. Excitingly, several candidate chemicals that inhibit CRMP2 phosphorylation have been identified and screened in a zebrafish spinal cord injury model. This project aims to determine which of these chemicals promotes the most effective regeneration in the mouse visual system, which is part of the CNS. This will be accomplished first by applying the chemical to mouse retinal ganglion cells on a plate and later by administering the chemical to a live mouse following optic nerve crush injury.

Simple Receptor Protein Generation

Receptor proteins are important for therapeutics, medicines, diagnostics and biomanufacturing. Generating new proteins is incredibly difficult however machine learning techniques have been developed to assist in evolving proteins. Using these techniques, I plan to create receptor mimics that are smaller and have improved properties. These will benefit many industries such as therapeutics, medicines, diagnostics and biomanufacturing. The Pardee lab at the University of Toronto will gain expertise in machine learning while the Umetsu lab will learn about cell free protein synthesis. The synergistic skill sets of both labs will lead to many future projects together.

Arcana Luminis

As physical materials, water and glass play a key role in defining Vancouver’s unique urban soundscape. In the same way that light is refracted through prisms, so to is sound refracted through water and glass; so to is music, through the prisms of our minds as composers, performers, and as an urban community. Arcana Luminis will foster the creation of new musical instruments utilizing glass and water as a means of acoustic propagation and support new compositions written to explore their potential. Through a development process involving co-partners Redshift Music Society and This Is It, a creative design laboratory, this project will foster and prepare the materials for presentation in an innovative sound-installation performance to occur in 2015. The end goals of the project are both conceptual – to demonstrate how cognitive constructions are transformed by physical materials – and practical, as it will create legacy instruments to be explored and expanded upon by future researchers.

Development of a Customized Analytics Powered Cloud based Operations Management Application for Post Secondary Educational Institutions

This collaborative research initiative between Academy of Learning (AOL)—a prominent Canadian Private Career College offering diploma and certificate programs in healthcare, business, and technology—and WIMTACH-CEDA aims to address AOL’s operational inefficiencies related to data management and decision-making. Currently, AOL’s reliance on disconnected third-party systems for critical functions like student registration, admissions, financial reporting, and compliance tracking results in fragmented data, inefficient workflows, and delays in critical decision-making processes. These limitations restrict AOL’s ability to maintain seamless operations and rapidly respond to administrative demands.
To overcome these challenges, AOL proposes the development of a customized, data-driven Operations Management System in collaboration with WIMTACH-CEDA. This innovative platform will centralize and automate key administrative processes, which are mentioned above. This integrated system will enable seamless connectivity with AOL’s various third-party tools, transforming previously isolated functions into a cohesive, unified framework.
Designed with a focus on scalable cloud architecture, the platform is expected to significantly enhance data accuracy, streamline workflow automation, and support real-time reporting capabilities across AOL’s departments. Through an intuitive, user-friendly interface, the system will empower AOL staff to access reliable, up-to-date data, and improve both internal and external reporting accuracy. This centralization will directly address the inefficiencies currently caused by fragmented systems, allowing AOL to operate more effectively and make data-informed decisions with greater agility.
Focusing on operational efficiency and advanced data integration, this project will support AOL’s mission of delivering high-quality educational services by improving administrative accuracy, timeliness, and responsiveness. With this solution, AOL will be able to manage critical functions more effectively, and respond promptly to institutional needs, setting a new standard in data-driven educational operations. This research project is anticipated to contribute valuable insights to the field of educational technology and offer a replicable model for improving operational efficiency and integration across private career-focused institutions.

Student Exploration Advancement: Comprehensive Design and Development of Data-Integrated Learning Pathways to Facilitate Personalized Navigation and Enhance Career Exploration for Student Success

The “Student Exploration Advancements” project aims to enhance the student experience on Xello, a popular platform that helps students explore careers and plan their educational paths. By improving features like student feed content, career and school exploration, and data-driven insights, the project will make it easier and more engaging for students to discover relevant information about their future options. Partnering with WIMTACH will provide Xello with support in areas such as user experience design, data integration, and A/B testing, allowing the platform to offer more personalized, interactive, and impactful tools. This transformation will lead to a more streamlined and intuitive experience, significantly boosting user engagement and satisfaction. As a result, Xello is likely to see increased adoption rates among schools and districts, leading to higher subscription revenue and stronger partnerships with educational institutions. The enhancements will also position Xello as a frontrunner in the college and career readiness market, differentiating it from competitors. By empowering students to make informed decisions about their futures, the project helps cultivate a more skilled workforce that meets the demands of the evolving job market. Additionally, it will bridge the gap between education and employment, ensuring that students are better prepared for the careers of tomorrow and benefiting the economy as a whole.

Intelligent Revenue Management: Automated Insights for the Transportation Industry with applied machine learning.

Business Case / Problem:
The travel industry is increasingly competitive, requiring innovative approaches to pricing, distribution, and strategic planning. This business case proposes an development of a machine learning (ML), or equivalent module to specifically analyze two types of telemetry data: pricing, booking across multiple distribution channels. By leveraging this data, the module will provide actionable insights for dynamic pricing models, automated channel rule management, and performance summaries, driving revenue optimization and competitive advantage. With this data our goal is to produce curated insights informing our customers and enabling rule based decision making in real-time.
Without such ML and data mining, study of this volume of data is impossible without slow and complex human involvement.

Opportunity:
Our platform’s wealth of historical pricing and booking data is a goldmine for optimizing revenue strategies in the travel sector. The opportunity lies in harnessing this data to:

Solution:
Refine dynamic pricing models, ensuring competitive and attractive pricing for users.
Automate distribution channel management, optimizing channel performance and profitability.
Generate comprehensive implementation summaries, providing clear insights into the effectiveness of adopted strategies on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis.

Hyper Hippo Vector Art Asset Tool

Existing AI image tools are set up to work primarily with images in a pixel-based format (e.g. with a jpeg, png, or gif file representation). However, most games make use of vector art. The important unique aspect of vector art is that it can scale up or down as needed without a loss of resolution, which is not true for pixel-based formats. In this work, we will collaborate with artists at Hyper Hippo Entertainment to develop a variant of existing AI models within a tool that can take in sketches and return vector art. This will allow the artists to more quickly create and iterate on the vector art they need.

Design Journey Dashboard: A Web Tool to Support Teaching Design Thinking

Design skills are increasingly recognized as a core competency for software professionals. Unfortunately, these skills are difficult to teach because design requires freedom and open-ended thinking, but new designers require a structured process to keep them from being overwhelmed by possibilities. Students need clearly communicated expectations and an easy way of tracking responsibilities to keep their team on track. Teachers need the capabilities of monitoring progress and giving timely feedback. This project will realize a vision for a Design Journey Dashboard specifically designed to give project teams and their teachers an overview of the process in a Web App. STaBL Foundation will use this tool to support Design Thinking workshops and summer camps allowing it to scale up its teaching of design within an outreach program which currently introduces thousands of children to coding in Canada and around the world.

One strategy recommended for making software education pathways more attractive to women students is to connect it to real-world social, health and environmental problems. Building design into coding outreach will allow us to make this connection. For example, we have used screening for Parkinson’s Disease as an experiential learning challenge in summer camps.

Improving health and healthcare for adults with neurodevelopmental disabilities

CAMH is Canada’s largest mental health hospital and is also one of the world’s leading research centres in the field of mental health. The organization conducts groundbreaking research, provides training to health care professionals and scientists, develops health promotion and prevention strategies, and advocates for public policy change. More specifically, the Azrieli Adult Neurodevelopmental Centre, aims to recognize the mental health issues experienced by, and the brain health of, adults with neurodevelopmental disabilities (NDD) and their families through research, clinical innovation, education and training, and knowledge exchange. Currently, there is limited information on effective models of care to support the mental health of individuals with neurodevelopmental disabilities and their families and how to effectively educate individuals, families and providers on strategies to improve their mental health. This project will help to improve the health and healthcare of people with NDD and their families though: (1) collecting and analyzing data to better understand the healthcare needs and service use experiences of people with NDD and their families; (2) evaluating and refining virtual programming to improve the health of people with NDD and their families; (3) using innovative strategies to share health knowledge with people with NDD and their families and evaluate which strategies are most effective.

Cytotoxicity analysis of novel monoclonal antibodies targeting SSAT-1

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide with approximately 8 million deaths in 2010. Most cancer treatments lack specificity and affect the whole body, with toxic effects on both cancerous and normal cells. The cytotoxic effect of a new therapy developed by Biomark Technologies, Inc. targeting cancer cells will be assessed. Biomark Technologies Inc. has found that the expression levels of the gene coding for the protein SSAT 1 is upregulated in cancer cells. The inhibition of this protein is detrimental for the survival of cancer cells, making it an attractive target for cancer treatment. In this proposal we aim to determine the cytotoxic effects in cancer cells when the target is neutralized

Technology and AI innovation implementation through Co-op partnership to improve company and client efficiency and productivity

Marketing Kitchen Inc. is developing a comprehensive Project Management Console to streamline workflows, improve communication across departments, and enhance client interactions through automation and real-time project tracking.