Innovative Projects Realized

UDL Digital Process and Marketing Innovation Project

The dental technology field evolves quickly, requiring constant updates to stay competitive. Labs must balance adopting new innovations while ensuring stability in their workflow. Thorough validation and testing must be done to meet clinical standards.
Keeping up with social media marketing trends for a dental lab is challenging due to constantly changing algorithms, high content creation demands, and the need to stay relevant to evolving trends. Balancing educational and promotional content while managing engagement can be time-consuming, especially with growing industry competition. Adapting to new platforms and features requires ongoing learning, and compliance with advertising and patient confidentiality regulations adds complexity. Time and analytical skills are required to track ROI and optimize strategies effectively. Overcoming these challenges requires creativity, consistency, and a well-planned approach to social media management.

This project would provide significant benefits to a dental lab by enhancing both product testing and digital marketing efforts. By assisting in the testing of Carbon Flexible Partial Denture Dual Resin, the work experience student helps improve material evaluation, workflow efficiency, and quality control. Their support in CAD/CAM design, 3D printing, post-processing, and bench testing ensures the lab can accurately assess the durability, flexibility, and overall performance of the material. Additionally, their role in data collection and industry research enables the lab to compare the material against competitors and make informed decisions about its adoption. At the same time, the student’s involvement in social media marketing strengthens the lab’s online presence and brand awareness. By creating content, researching trends, managing engagement, and analyzing performance metrics, they help attract new clients, showcase the lab’s innovations, and keep up with evolving digital marketing strategies. Their fresh perspective and digital expertise allow the lab to stay competitive, improve customer engagement, and build credibility in the industry.

Canadian Equality Consulting, Inc. Summer Intern – Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Strategist

The Summer Strategist Intern will contribute to the development of cutting-edge DEI resources, training materials, and toolkits. This internship is an excellent opportunity to gain hands-on experience in the DEI field, working directly with experts and contributing to impactful projects. The intern will have a strong understanding of diversity, equity, inclusion, intersectionality, and feminist frameworks, as well as an entrepreneurial self-starter disposition.

Expanding and Enhancing Awesense’s Digital Twin Sandbox to Support the Clean Energy Transition

Awesense is a clean tech company on a mission to accelerate the transition to clean energy by simplifying the creation of data-driven applications for a decarbonized, decentralized grid. To enable the complex planning and operational decisions required by distributed energy resources (e.g., solar, wind, batteries, EVs), Awesense developed its Digital Energy Platform. This platform allows utilities, consulting firms, and software vendors to rapidly prototype decision-support analytics without repeatedly integrating data. Utilities integrate once and can then easily add multiple platform-compatible applications.

Because this represents a departure from the traditional, siloed approach utilities have used for analytics, Awesense must make compelling demonstrations of the platform’s capabilities. To that end, they created a sandbox environment with synthetic yet realistic data. Potential clients can explore the platform’s capabilities hands-on, while existing clients can speed up analytics development by testing new solutions before their real data is integrated.

Currently, the sandbox is limited in size and lacks several data features, restricting the range of possible use cases. For this MITACS BSI internship, Awesense is looking for an intern to help expand and enrich this synthetic dataset, and then develop more proof-of-concept use cases on top of it. These enhancements will showcase the full power of the Digital Energy Platform and support broader adoption.

Establishing a secure, scalable integration with Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) and developing a state-of-the-art, clinician-focused user interface for Tenzr Health’s Remote Therapeutic Monitoring (RTM) platform

Tenzr Health is a leading digital health organization specializing in the management of musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions such as arthritis, chronic back pain, and repetitive strain injuries. The company’s innovative Remote Therapeutic Monitoring (RTM) platform utilizes cutting-edge wearable sensor technology, engaging gamified mobile applications, and secure cloud computing to continuously monitor patient progress beyond traditional clinical settings. This proactive approach has led to treatment adherence rates that are 2.6 times higher than industry norms, significantly enhancing patient outcomes.
Tenzr Health now faces a critical challenge in evolving its platform to meet the growing demands of modern healthcare. While the current system is highly effective at capturing and processing patient data, it lacks a sophisticated, user-friendly frontend interface capable of integrating seamlessly with diverse Electronic Medical Records (EMRs). Clinicians, who are essential in interpreting this data for real-time patient care, require a more dynamic and intuitive interface that can translate complex datasets into actionable insights, thereby streamlining clinical workflows and supporting informed decision-making.
By combining the practical expertise of Tenzr Health’s engineers with WIMTACH’s advanced research capabilities in data integration, cloud infrastructure, and cybersecurity, the project aims to extend the RTM platform in two key dimensions that offer an interactive, data-rich user experience that enhances the usability of patient data, ultimately empowering clinicians to deliver more effective and timely care.

Online Group Coaching Program Development Assistant

Northern Star Counselling and Coaching Inc. is developing a new online group coaching program aimed at providing structured, engaging, and impactful coaching experiences for participants. The primary challenge is designing a well-researched, high-quality program that effectively engages users while ensuring a smooth enrollment and onboarding process. To achieve this, the organization needs to identify best practices in online coaching, optimize session structure, and integrate effective engagement strategies. Additionally, a strong marketing and outreach strategy is required to attract the right audience, establish partnerships, and ensure a successful program launch. This project goes beyond routine operations by laying the groundwork for a scalable, research-backed coaching model, ensuring long-term sustainability and impact. The ideal candidate should have expertise in program research and development, curriculum design, digital marketing, audience analysis, and virtual coaching tools to contribute to both the content and promotional success of the program.

Business Process & Automation Consultant and IT & Training Systems Consultant

Flow Cleaning Services is a growing company focused on delivering high-quality commercial and residential cleaning solutions. As the business expands, operational inefficiencies, lack of process automation, and IT system limitations create challenges in maintaining productivity, service consistency, and scalability. Many internal processes, including workflow management, customer relationship tracking, and employee training, are not fully optimized, leading to redundancies, security risks, and manual inefficiencies. Additionally, the company’s digital infrastructure, including its network setup, password management, and training systems, requires standardization and security improvements to support a larger workforce, both in-office and remotely. To remain competitive and improve internal operations, Flow Cleaning Services must implement automation, process optimization, and IT enhancements that will increase efficiency and allow for seamless business growth.

Determining the half-life of prophylaxis treatment using population pharmacokinetics

Hemophilia is a rare blood coagulation disorder caused by a deficiency or deformity in one of 12 primary clotting factors. Hemophiliacs experience insufficient healing and prolonged bleeding either from trauma or unprompted bleeding. We are able to maintain a level of the deficient factors in a patient through direct and immediate infusion of a drug into the blood. To determine the frequency of injections and the appropriate dosage, we need to consider how long a drug will stay in a child’s body. Tailoring prescriptions for each patient often requires the withdrawal of 11 blood samples over a period of only 24 to 72 hours – a taxing assessment for both clinicians and patients, particularly for children. Our objectives of this study are to predict the half-life of drugs for children with hemophilia (using only 2 or 3 blood samples) and to evaluate the variability in dose requirements among children to determine a target minimum safe level of the drug concentration in one’s body.

Business Strategy Internship Application

We are making a waste heat recovery device for class 8 heavy-duty vehicles targeted towards cold chain. The device will recycle the energy wasted by the diesel engine of Semi Trucks and convert it to electricity to power the refrigeration unit. Currently, competitors are trying to create fully electric refrigeration units with big batteries that will be charged at distribution hubs. We are building a system with a small battery backup that is constantly charged by the waste heat recovery system.

Development of one-pot chemoenzymatic cascade hydrazone transformations

Modern synthetic chemistry, and in effect the production of pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals, still relies heavily on molecular transformations that inherently generate metal waste. In the CJ Li lab at McGill, we developed a “hydrazone” strategy that does the same transformation while generating only benign by-products (nitrogen and water). To expand the utility of this technology, we aim to integrate it into chemoenzymatic processes—combining enzymes with our approach to access molecules that either were previously inaccessible or require harsher conditions. To achieve this, we are teaming up with a world-leader in biocatalysis and protein engineering, Prof. Uwe Bornscheuer of Greifswald University (Germany). Through this international collaboration, not only will we leverage the synergy between technologies from both labs but also strengthen ties between our institutions.

SK Soccer Legacy Project

The Saskatoon Soccer Centre has formed a committee called the “SK Soccer Legacy Project.” The committee exists to create a living, breathing, organic preservation of the history of Saskatoon soccer of past, present and future generations.
The Saskatoon Soccer Centre Inc. is partnering with the University of Saskatchewan History Department’s CoLab – Centre for Community-Engaged and Collaborative Historical Research (CoLab) to review and document its history. The intern will collection, document and preserve this history, creating a database of archival documents and training videos on how to use the collection.

Machine Learning developer and technical business interns working within cross-functional teams to develop and commercialize AI-powered solutions in the Public Services sector (2)

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Development of a simple and inexpensive method to quantify surface contamination on metals

Metallic parts are used in combination with oil or grease in many applicaitons, for example in car engines or hinges. To re-use them, the surface of the metal needs to be cleaned. Current technology makes use of solvents to remove the contamination. Although very effective, this method is polluting. Our industry partner (Walter Surface Technologies) has developed a new technology with very low environmental impact. They wish to test the effectiveness of their technology by measuring the amount of contaminant left on metal surfaces after cleaning with their products. However there are no current methods to determine surface cleanliness quickly and inexpensively. We propose here a new method based on dyes, which will allow for a fast, easy and cheap test of the level of cleanliness of any metal. Since there is no current standard to determine metal surface cleanliness, this method is likely to be of interest not only to Walter but to many other industries. Walter would like to commercialize this method should the project bring to the expected outcome