Innovative Projects Realized

Business Management Automation and Analytics

ResearchNB is a non profit organization whose mandate is to provide research grants and support the research ecosystem in the province of New Brunswick. ResearchNB was incorporated in April 2023, the result of a merger of two legacy non profit organizations, the New Brunswick Health Research Foundation and BioNB. Together these two organizations had close to 50 years of operational history in the province. The merger was Phase 1 of restructuring to the delivery of research grants in New Brunswick. With the merger came the blending of two teams and two corporate cultures. Improvements to operational procedures in order to absorb the increase in resources and reporting requirements are required.
On April 1, 2024 the second phase of this restructuring was initiated with, 3 FTE’s joining the ResearchNB team from the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation.
The challenges from a human resource perspective lie in the merger of 3 corporate cultures, 2 online file systems that have not been merged, a rapidly growing team and an alignment of HR policies and procedures. ResearchNB had been relying on an expensive external consultant to work on some policies and new hires but the organization has outgrown the cost-effectiveness of that solution and is opting to implement an HR software program that can be managed internally by automating many HR processes.

Baseline and best-practice analyses to determine environmental and energy targets

The province of Nova Scotia is currently pursuing the goal of being the most environmentally and economically sustainable province in Canada. The Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation (NSLC) is a major retailer in the province and, with the help of the branding agency Revolve, the NSLC would like to echo the provincial goals within its own corporate mandate. Environmental objectives are best addressed through comprehensive CSR strategies; this research project will establish the environmental targets and the associated management plan to be incorporated into the company’s CSR strategy. The applicant will use primary data to assess the company’s historical (from 2008 onwards) performance regarding previous environmental targets set by the company, while a literature review and analysis of similar companies will be used to determine new environmental goals. An implementation plan regarding how to best attain these goals will also be developed, thus allowing the NSLC to become a leader in corporate social responsibility in the province.

Business user engagement and evaluation for analytics and data reporting

In providing care and services for older adults, Shannex relies on quality data and information to improve our practice. With increasing amounts of data available through innovative business systems, we are striving to mature our data analytics and reporting processes. Improving these process will ensure we can provide the best information to our team members to support them in care planning, strategic decision making, and quality improvement. This internship will support our analytics and innovation team to develop and test innovative processes to engage front end data users. This intern will bring skills in digital innovation to improve data analytics and report evaluation. We will get the right information to teams to improve outcomes for residents and ensure we can run a healthy business.

Optimization of Novel Anodes for Electrochemical Trace Oxygen Sensors

Measurement of trace-levels of dissolved oxygen (DO) is critical to manufacturing processes such as in semiconductor production. Electrochemical sensors are a mature technology for measuring DO, with the classic sensor pairing a silver (Ag) with a lead (Pb) anode. Emerging international regulations that ban the use of Pb due to environmental concerns threaten the continued commercial viability of these sensors. Past collaboration between the applicants identified a viable drop-in substitute for Pb, but subsequent quality-control testing identified two issues with the reformulated sensor that must be resolved prior to commercialization. Namely, sensor readings are systematically lower than those for the classic sensor, and the sensor readings invert when stored under low-O2 conditions for extended periods. This research will resolve these two issues through detailed analysis of the liquids and solids present in the reformulated sensor, enabling ICC to bring the reformulated cell to the market.

Baseline : Identification de segments d’intérêt dans un enregistrement audio

Le projet vise à réduire le temps consacré à administrer l’information produite lors de réunions en utilisant
l’intelligence artificielle pour générer des artéfacts de réunions pertinents pour des utilisateurs. Des algorithmes
intelligents permettront la production automatique de transcriptions et de résumés des réunions en plus de
supporter des recherches thématiques dans l’enregistrement audio de réunion d?une entreprise. Les utilisateurs
pourront s’abonner à des groupes de travail ou à des thèmes et recevoir automatiquement les résumés des
réunions de ces groupes ou des réunions ayant abordé ces thèmes. Le système s’intégrera avec une grande
gamme de services de vidéoconférences déjà existant comme Zoom et Teams.

RubSys: Turbomachinery Rub System Development

There is an ongoing industry challenge to continuously improve gas turbine engine efficiency, decrease fuel consumption, and reduce emissions. Addressing these concerns involves developing advanced architectures, airfoil features, and innovative materials to improve performance, with a key focus on abradable coatings. These coatings play a crucial role in improving turbomachinery performance by acting as a protective barrier between rotating blades and stationary casing. However, the aerospace industry faces a critical challenge in developing and evaluating more efficient abradable materials to meet increasing energy requirements and gas turbine service life. The most effective methodology for evaluating the abradability of such systems relies on high-speed abradable rigs that mimic the rubbing phenomena in engine-like conditions, replicating the blade/abradable interaction. Thus, this project specifically aims to enhance the existing compressor test rig, concentrating on both hardware and software development and rig validation for abradability assessment. Those objectives will provide a controlled environment to analyze blade-to-case rubbing scenarios, mainly focusing on its interaction. To achieve these goals, the internship will involve a comprehensive review of current hardware and software, addressing adaptation challenges through collaborative efforts between Pratt & Whitney Canada (P&WC) and Concordia University, and validating results by benchmarking against standard materials.

Distortion-Aware Neural Networks for Robust Image Segmentation from Wide Angle Sensors

THIS IS A GENERIC TEXT PUT IN PLACE AS THERE WAS NO PROJECT OVERVIEW

Story Recommender

An abundance of choice presents users of many online and mobile platforms. Sorting through this to find desirable content is a challenge for users. To assist with this challenge and increase user interaction it is common to implement a recommendation system that can predict what kind of content a user will or will not be interested in. Wattpad uses such a recommendation system to connect users with stories. The research project will seek to identify relevant factors which can be used to improve the quality of recommendations given thereby building a stronger reader community. With millions of titles available to users, having a robust and trustworthy recommendation system is seen as crucial to Wattpad’s business.

Open-Source Software for Causal Transportability Analysis

Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) are considered the gold standard due to their excellent internal validity results and are a vital tool for evidence-informed global health policymaking. However, the external validity, which results from the uniqueness of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in healthcare, culture, and demography, significantly hampers the value of RCTs in these regions. This dilemma can be addressed with a causal inference framework called Transportability analysis, which accounts for effect modifiers that differ between the study population and target population and aim to achieve the extension (transportation) of RCT findings.
Our primary objective is to develop a software package based on R language to adopt a subgroup analysis method called Network meta-interpolation (NMI) to impute the missing values in the cells for the original study and/or target study with aggregate data. With the enriched data, we will consider various indirect treatment comparisons (ITC) to assess effect modifications in meta-analyses of aggregate data.
Our secondary objective is to complete an interactive web interface so future researchers and policymakers can use the proposed model easily during decision-making.

Zome constructibility and the omnitruncated dodecaplex

On January 25th 2019, Benoit Charbonneau and a team of volunteers attempted to construct a three-dimensional shadow of the omnitruncated dodecaplex, a four-dimensional geometric shape, built using Zometool pieces. Over the course of 14 hours, volunteers built and supported the prototype structure, which was ultimately disassembled as it could not support its own weight.

Building up on previous work of Prof Charbonneau and Spencer Whitehead, the intern will work with Prof Charbonneau to study polytopes in higher dimensions and their projections, and when projections are Zome constructible. When they are and are quite large, like the omnitruncated dodecaplex, one would need to determine how to break up the construction so that the model supports itself and doesn’t collapse. During this project, the intern will study complex geometrical structures, implement the library for their modelling, and analyze physical forces so that the constructed model is stable.

Processus d’Influence de l’IA en art (PriiArt)

La diffusion à grande échelle des IA génératives (GenIA) a levé les barrières à l’entrée de l’art. Alors que certains artistes s’opposent à l’usage des GenAI en art d’autres les considèrent plutôt comme des outils permettant d’optimiser voire d’augmenter leurs capacités créatives. Ces tensions sont donc constitutives de ce qu’est le processus de création : À quel degré une agentivité humaine doit être maintenue pour considérer une oeuvre comme humaine, voire artistique? Quelle part du processus artistique est évacuée si une partie est déléguée à une machine qui n’a ni pas de « conscience » des matériaux qu’elle combine? En somme, comment les outils et les technologies basés sur l’IA influencent-ils le processus de création en art? En partant d’une perspective dynamique et processuelle de la création artistique, cette recherche a pour objectifs : 1) de relever les modalités d’interaction entre les artistes et les IA et leurs influences sur le processus créatif; 2) d’explorer ces influences dans les relations dynamiques entre les acteurs, les productions, les actions, les auditoires et les ressources disponibles.

Créativité et protagonisme Jupaú : Stratégies contemporaines de lutte et de résistance au sein d’un monde non-autochtone

Pour la communauté Jupaú, située au Brésil dans l’État de Rondônia, le recul de la frontière de l’Amazonie au profit d’acteurs allochtones locaux, nationaux ou internationaux est une réalité qui définit leur quotidien, aussi bien en termes de destruction environnementale qu’en termes de bris des relations qui y sont entretenues. Par la reprise du narratif de leur existence, des mouvements politiques naissent et insufflent un espoir vers une réconciliation, un respect mutuel et une ouverture d’esprit. Mon projet de recherche vise à comprendre les stratégies déployées et les processus de construction, de sélection et de vulgarisation du discours politique pour un public d’une ontologie autre chez les Jupaú, à témoigner de la créativité discursive au coeur des revendications territoriales autochtones, à approfondir nos connaissances sur les relations entre les entités animales et de la nature qui sont mobilisées dans ces discours et à comprendre comment cette diplomatie ontologique s’inscrit dans un contexte de survivance et de revendication de l’altérité et par quels moyens elle tente de construire des ponts entre des mondes profondément différents.