Innovative Projects Realized

Explore thousands of successful projects resulting from collaboration between organizations and post-secondary talent.

13270 Completed Projects

1072
AB
2795
BC
430
MB
106
NF
348
SK
4184
ON
2671
QC
43
PE
209
NB
474
NS

Projects by Category

10%
Computer science
9%
Engineering
1%
Engineering - biomedical
4%
Engineering - chemical / biological

Clinical Decision Support Software for Prediction of Postoperative Atrial Fibrillation Following Bypass Surgery

 

The problem of accurately predicting the onset of sustained postoperative atrial fibrillation (AF) in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) remains open. Investigators have reported many clinical indices currently associated with postoperative AF following CABG. Contemporary machine learning techniques are well-suited to recognizing underlying trends in 'training' data consisting of several labeled examples, and to using the results to classify new unlabeled data with remarkable sensitivity and specificity. We propose the development of advanced clinical decision support software capable of automatically gathering and analyzing relevant clinical data from patients undergoing CABG in order to provide physicians with objective and non-invasive insights into the likelihood of sustained postoperative AF so that patient morbidity and mortality, as well as healthcare costs, can be significantly reduced by targeting appropriate preventative therapies.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Selim G. Akl

Student:

Geoffrey Seaborn

Partner:

Kingston General Hospital

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

Queen's University

Program:

Accelerate

Regional heterogeneity in lake morphology in Ontario

 

Lake size and shape are important factors determining the function and structure of lake ecosystems. Moreover, Lake morphology is important for both biotic and abiotic processes, including species richness of zooplankton, macrophytes, and fishes. In particular, Ontario has tens of thousands of natural ecosystems that make up a large part of Canada’s dominant share of the Earth’s surface freshwaters and of global freshwater biodiversity. In addition, fish community (e.g. lake trout, walleye, smallmouth bass) in these lakes support human uses having both high economic and social values (e.g. commercial and recreational fishery worth 2 billion dollars annually and subsistence and ceremonial fishers, providing 69kg/person annually). Thus, this intern will develop a comprehensive data base documenting geographical heterogeneity in lake size and shape among 1000 Ontario lakes. This proposed project link the intern at the University of Toronto with Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources to quantitatively examine how lake size and shape differ across Ontario. Insights from this collaboration will identify and classify various lakes into more manageable sets of lakes which will improve management actions and policies in the province of Ontario. 

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Donald A. Jackson

Student:

Jaewoo Kim

Partner:

Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources

Discipline:

Biology

Sector:

Fisheries and wildlife

University:

University of Toronto

Program:

Accelerate

Circulating Tumour Cells and prostate cancer outcome

In Canada, 25,500 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2011, and 4,100 will die of the disease. New approaches are required to predict clinical outcome and personalized management of patients. Drs. Mai and Cayre will combine their two newly developed technologies and work towards obtaining a new solid biomarker that enables the assessment  of a patient’s clinical outcome from the start. With the use of special filters, circulating tumour cells (CTC) will be isolated from prostate cancer patients’ blood. These cells are characterized using three-dimensional (3D) imaging of telomeres (the ends of chromosomes) in the cells’ nuclei. This will be the first time these new technologies are combined to investigate the link between CTCs, their 3D telomeric profiles and clinical outcome of prostate cancer. A much better understanding and personalized management of prostate cancer, which is a major goal of Cancercare Manitoba will be achieved by this project.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Sabine Mai

Student:

Julius Adebayo Awe

Partner:

Carl Zeiss Canada Ltd.

Discipline:

Medicine

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

University of Manitoba

Program:

Accelerate

Business Planning for Social Enterprises

 

As part of the research the intern will be involved in the development of a new business venture based on an operating pilot progamme related to fisheries tracking. There are two objectives. First, detailed research in specific sections of the project’s business plan and secondly, finalizing the business plan for the new venture. Among the goals of this project is to identify some standard practices and policies that can further support the organization’s procedures going forward. The organization will benefit from an international perspective and of course from the knowledge that the intern gained through his MBA programme. Last but not least, during the MBA program the intern had the opportunity of working in several projects on both Sustainability and New Ventures as the professors collaborated and brought some client based projects that could bring not only knowledge but also ideas during the development of a business model and ultimately a new business venture.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. David Hannah

Student:

George Chatzivasileiou

Partner:

Ecotrust Canada

Discipline:

Business

Sector:

Fisheries and wildlife

University:

Simon Fraser University

Program:

Accelerate

Canadian Bioscience Education Through DNA Barcoding

A Canadian scientific innovation known as DNA barcoding is advancing species identification and discovery through the analysis of short, standard gene regions. This has led to the widespread use of DNA barcoding as a tool for species identification in a diverse array of practical applications, from ecological monitoring to food fraud. Graduate students from the University of Guelph, the intellectual birthplace of barcoding, are engaged in internships with two of Canada’s leading science education NGOs (Earth Rangers and Let’s Talk Science) to bring the bioscience behind DNA barcoding to primary and secondary school students across Canada. The interns are being immersed in state-of-the-art approaches to learning and public engagement while transferring technical knowledge on the practice and theory of barcoding to the partners. Students will benefit through connecting key bioscience concepts with exciting practical applications through state of the art learning modules made accessible on the web.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Robert Hanner

Student:

Multiple

Partner:

Earth Rangers & Let’s Talk Science

Discipline:

Biology

Sector:

Education

University:

University of Guelph

Program:

Accelerate

Modeling Oxygen Behaviour in Point-of-Care pO2 Devices

 

A mathematical model is to be developed that describes how oxygen can move in a point-of-care blood gas sensor. The sensor measures the partial pressure of oxygen in a blood sample. Oxygen can move throughout the cartridge by diffusing through the various materials that make up the cartridge. The extent to which the oxygen can diffuse depends on the properties of the materials that make up the cartridge. Porous materials will allow the oxygen to move more freely, whereas materials with little porous structure will block the oxygen. The mathematical model will be developed using fundamental concepts in chemical engineering, leading to a model that consists of a number of equations that describe how concentrations change both in time, and by location. Special solution strategies will be used to solve the equations, and we will also work to simplify the equations to make them easier to solve and apply. In addition to developing a mathematical model, the project will help enhance the fundamental understanding of how oxygen behaves in the sensor. The model and the associated knowledge will help scientists and engineers in future developments for these medical devices.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Drs. P. James McLellan & Kim McAuley

Student:

Liang Li

Partner:

Abbott Point of Care

Discipline:

Engineering - chemical / biological

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

Queen's University

Program:

Accelerate

Development of an information theory-based mutation detector for a commercial bioinformatics genome server

 

I have recently developed a piece of software that can be used to interpret the effects of DNA sequence differences in human genomes. The analysis produces results that predict disease mutations. Dr. Rogan’s laboratory has developed approaches of visualizing DNA sequence data, which I will incorporate into this software. I will modify the existing visualization software to run Java and integrate this Java code in to my previously developed mutation detection software. This proposal will also improve the performance of the software I developed. This is important because analysis of large numbers of mutations currently takes many hours on a typical computer server, and the user expects these results more quickly. The software currently analyzes variants that alter gene expression. The capabilities of this software will also be  extended to analyze others types of mutations. This software will allow researchers to focus their efforts on confirming only genetic variants that are most clinically relevant. The commercial partner, Cytognomix, has obtained the IP rights to the patented technology and secured a distributor for the software, once it’s complete.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Robert E. Mercer

Student:

Ben Chambers Shirley

Partner:

Cytochroma Inc.

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

Western University

Program:

Accelerate

Neurophysiological risk factors in Adolescent Sexual Offending

 

Sexual offending is a major public health concern in our society, with 21% of those charged with sexual offenses being adolescents between 12 and 19 years. Characteristics of these youth include antisocial attitudes, and problems with self-regulation and intimacy, problems that interfere with learning, social maturation, and appreciating the rights of others. To date, theories of sexual offending have focused primarily on social influences and have largely neglected biological mechanisms, providing incomplete explanations of the phenomena. Partnering with Pathstone Mental Health, the Niagara regional treatment centre for child and adolescent mental health, the aim of this study is to integrate neuroscience measures with clinical research to identify individual variability in adolescent sex offenders that is not measurable at the behavioral level. Results from this study will inform developmental theories of sexual offending, provide greater insight into risk and resilience for committing further offenses, and inform treatment strategies.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Sidney J. Segalowitz

Student:

Michelle Jetha

Partner:

Pathstone Mental Health

Discipline:

Psychology

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

Brock University

Program:

Accelerate

Optimization of Digital Pathology Storage and Retrieval Strategy

 

One of the major obstacles that hinders the adaption of the digital pathology solutions is the inadequate performance and network overload for pathology image storage and retrieval. A common technical problem is the limited bandwidth of the network and the delayed  transmission speed of digital images to the viewing station. There is an urgent need for a substantial improvement in balancing the network bandwidth, image quality and image data for the region of the interest in the whole slide image. In this project, we propose a descriptive framework to specify user requirements and digital pathology usage context. We propose to formalize a set of explicit routing rules as a base strategy for directing how digital pathology images shall be stored, accessed and archived. This rule set is adaptive to the patterns of usage, network constraints and pathologist’s working habits.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Helen Chen

Student:

Saravana Rajan

Partner:

Agfa Healthcare

Discipline:

Medicine

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

University of Waterloo

Program:

Accelerate

Airline crew scheduling

 

In airline crew scheduling a pilot is assigned a series flights to operate. This series is called a pairing. These pairings need to cover all flights which the airline intends to operate and conform to a set of complex rules and regulations. If these pairings are not designed properly the airline will face high costs associated with having to reposition pilots, pay for overnight stays and per diems away from base. The proposed research aims to improve on current pairing optimization methods. Pairing optimization is a huge combinatorial problem. The crew costs of an airline are the second highest operating cost to an airline next to fuel. For large airlines these costs can reach billions of dollars. Given the magnitude of these costs the ability to improve existing crew pairing software translates into the ability to save airlines millions of dollars in operating expenditures. These savings are the source of a major competitive advantage in the flight operations software market. The importance of the ability to offer major savings to airlines is only magnified in today’s aviation industry, where profit margins are razor thin and competition from low-fare carries is fierce.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Samir Elhedhli

Student:

Multiple

Partner:

Navtech Inc.

Discipline:

Business

Sector:

Aerospace and defense

University:

University of Waterloo

Program:

Accelerate

Alternative Methodologies for Travel Time Studies

 

 

Travel time information is used by many jurisdictions to assess the future directions and strategic improvement requirements of specific segments of provincial highways and justify, prioritize, and program new operational and capital work projects and monitor the results after completion. The Ministry of Transportation Ontario (MTO) conducts Travel Time Studies for a series of provincial highways and arterials every two years. MTO currently uses probe vehicles equipped with GPS data loggers to collect travel time information. Recent developments within wireless technologies have provided the opportunity to obtain travel time information for a large geographic area with minimal costs. However, the accuracy, reliability, and robustness of these technologies have not been fully investigated. The main goal of this study is to evaluate various technologies that are commercially available for the Province of Ontario and recommend the preferred technologies for the future Travel Time Studies. The results of this research will assist different jurisdictions including the Province of Ontario to potentially have better information for larger geographic areas of their network at lower costs.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Lina Kattan

Student:

Reza Omrani

Partner:

CIMA Canada

Discipline:

Engineering - civil

Sector:

Automotive and transportation

University:

University of Calgary

Program:

Accelerate

A Longitudinal Comparison of Aripiprazole Vs. Higher Metabolic Risk Antipsychotic Drugs on Adiposity using MRI

Antipsychotic medication is associated with a constellation of metabolic abnormalities, including weight gain, an imbalance between glucose and insulin actions, and higher than normal lipid content. In particular, adolescent psychiatric patients are at increased risk for Type II Diabetes and cardiovascular disease when undergoing therapeutic treatment. Current analysis indicates that antipsychotic drugs have differing effects on body weight gain and fat content. Our aim is to conduct the first-ever study to quantify changes in both whole-body fat and liver-fat accumulation after the administration of several different antipsychotic drugs in children and adolescents. By utilizing sophisticated imaging techniques, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), we will gain insight into antipsychotic drug-induced fat accumulation and distribution. The results of this study will provide important information about the potential hidden harmful effects associated with several drugs and identify optimal treatment strategies that may guide future clinical studies with adolescent patients.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Alasdair Barr

Student:

Heidi Boyda

Partner:

BC Mental Health & Addictions Services

Discipline:

Medicine

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

University of British Columbia

Program:

Accelerate

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