Innovative Projects Realized

Multicriteria Optimization of Agricultural Machine Operations

Careful operational planning is essential for making agriculture autonomous and sustainable. The movements of agricultural equipment in the farm can be optimized to increase productivity and reduce costs and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The aim of this project is to develop and productize advanced optimization algorithms to determine the best end-to-end machine routes, positions of refill trailers and operating schedule during agricultural operations in a growing season. A route is a path from start to end points that one or more machines take while servicing one or more fields in a farm. It can be optimized based on several criteria such as time, distance, GHG emissions, alignment to field boundary and soil erosion. Refill trailers should be strategically placed in the field to reduce idle times of the machines and all machine activities must be coordinated and scheduled to reduce the operation time window.

Investigating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for tree canopy planning app

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Exploring pathways to net-zero: utilizing advanced energy system modelling to investigate the impact of long duration energy storage on Nova Scotia’s energy transition

Nova Scotia’s investment of Green Fund resources in energy efficiency, solar energy and electric transportation will mitigate carbon emissions immediately. Both the Green Choice Program and renewable energy transmitted via the Maritime Link will significantly decarbonize the electricity grid in the short to medium-term. The initiatives conceived within these programs are cost efficient and low risk.

But scaling up affordable renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies that have been proven in Nova Scotia will not get us all the way to net-zero by 2050. There are still significant knowledge and technology gaps that must be identified and addressed. The Emerging Concepts and Technologies (ECT) Research Program will make R&D investments in two areas:
1. to foster early-stage genesis of novel technologies in Nova Scotia, and
2. to evaluate the suitability of technologies emerging from other jurisdictions for application in Nova Scotia.

To address the most recalcitrant, hard-to-abate emissions in the 2030-2050 period, the ECT Program will identify gaps in carbon-reduction pathways and invest today in the early stage R&D needed to create and implement affordable solutions.

Priority research areas are expected to include subjects listed below, but will also be defined in consultation Nova Scotia Environment and Climate Change (NSECC – the primary funder) and through the application of Net Zero Atlantic’s Energy System (ACES) Model. The model will be used to identify knowledge gaps and provide insights into the relative costs, benefits and challenges of different deep decarbonization options. Initial priority research themes include:
• Fishing and Ferry Fleets
• Nature-Based Solutions for Carbon Sequestration
• Agricultural emissions
• Long-Term Energy Storage
• Direct Air Capture
• Electricity System Challenges Post 2030

Advancing a Hydrogel Vitreous Substitute for Retinal Surgery

Innovation is increasingly necessary to alleviate the systemic strain on healthcare systems around the world. However, despite significant investment in universities and hospitals to support the integration and application of research its application continues to greatly lag research discoveries. Graduate students play an increasing role in addressing this issue. They have the knowledge, motivation, and research expertise required but lack application experience and competencies. Co-curricular opportunities allow students to build and demonstrate their research translation competencies, build their resumes, and expand their professional networks. This will allow them to help drive an organization’s application of the latest research discoveries.

The Innovation Internship Umbrella Program (I2UP) is a co-curricular vehicle that leverages graduate research training to accelerate innovation at partner organizations. HQPs work closely with contextual experts, faculty, and advisors to 1.) identify or validate unmet needs, 2.) develop innovation strategies and conduct applied research, or 3.) to deploy and/or assess the implementation of new healthcare delivery solutions.

The introduction of I2UP across the Temerty Faculty of Medicine will:
• Help students gain real-world work experience, develop career path networks, and build core competencies necessary for innovative thinking.
• Help partner organizations identify talent as well as generate, implement, and assess innovative projects and new interventions.
• Help academics build stronger relationships with hospitals, the community, and the private sector to support knowledge mobilization and application.

Enhancing Wind Farm Design and Development for Harsh Northern Locations

The Great Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland is in a harsh northern climate with excellent wind power potential. The partner organization, St. Anthony Basin Resources Inc (Sabri), has been approved for a Licence to Occupy (LTO) for a location on the Great Northern Peninsula. The purpose of the LTO is to investigate the feasibility of wind power development at the site. In this proposed research, the interns will assist Sabri in the technical activities of monitoring the wind resources at the site and evaluating the technical and economic potential of installing wind turbines at the site. This project has notable alignment with Canada’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan and Rural Economic Development Strategy.

Détermination des marqueurs de performance chez les nageurs

Le projet vise à relancer la natation au Québec en identifiant les marqueurs de performance en natation. Cela permettra de créer un guide de développement et des protocoles de tests pour suivre les athlètes sur le long terme. Les marqueurs de performance en natation peuvent être divisés en deux catégories principales: les marqueurs physiologiques et les marqueurs techniques. En identifiant ces marqueurs de performance, il sera possible de créer un guide de développement qui aidera les nageurs à améliorer leur performance en natation. Ce guide de développement comprendra des protocoles de tests qui permettront de suivre les athlètes sur le long terme et de mesurer leur progression. En utilisant ces protocoles de tests, les entraîneurs pourront aider les nageurs à dissocier le temps de leur progression et à se baser sur différentes métriques et critères techniques.

Improvement of Quality and Efficacy of Natural HealthProducts & Dietary Supplement

The overall goal of this project is for the University science team at the University of Ottawa and University of New Brunswick to develop high quality Echinacea products for Canadian and world markets in collaboration with Amway Canada. One objective involves phytochemical and pharmacological selection and propagation of elite Echinacea from the historic Echinacea germplasm available at Amway’s Trout Lake Farm. A second objective is to develop evidence based marketing information on the improved Echinacea

Efficient computational methods for generating differentially private synthetic tabular data

Generating synthetic data is important for a number of machine learning problems at Mastercard especially in the areas of additional data generation for imbalanced problems, data sharing etc. The data is mostly tabular in nature and a number of techniques exist for generating tabular data in the literature. However most of these techniques do not work on large datasets or fail to generate differentially private datasets. We already have done some work in this regard (see https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-92310-5_60 ). However, the problem is not “solved” yet as it is difficult to generate differentially private datasets from large training sets and metrics like machine learning efficacy can be abysmally lower. The intern would be asked to work upon improving the current algorithms available in the literature both from privacy and accuracy standpoint.

Switchable ionophoric systems comprising macrocyclic ligands, methods, and uses of the same for trapping and releasing alkali metal ions

A substantial proportion of the lithium used in energy storage and numerous other applications is extracted from naturally occurring continental brines. The recycling of the lithium-ion batteries, which are experiencing a sharp increase in demand, also involves extraction of lithium from solutions containing other battery metals. The proposed research targets the development of sorbents for selective lithium extraction from water-based solutions. These sorbents will consist of lithiumtailored ion traps affixed on polymer support and are meant to provide a more economical and sustainable alternative to the slow, land-intensive solar evaporation that has been the industry standard for decades. Targeted are robust materials that can accommodate a diverse chemical composition of the lithium-containing solution, are highly selective to lithium, have a high sorption capacity, and allow for a fast, easily controlled sorption – desorption process.

The effect of low intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) daily therapy duration on the rate of orthodontic tooth movement.

Low intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) therapy when used in conjunction with clear aligner orthodontic treatment has been shown in clinical studies literature to accelerate orthodontic tooth movement, reduce orthodontically induced tooth root resorption, and shorten the overall duration of orthodontic treatment. In-market use of LIPUS technology as an adjunct the clear aligners has grown significantly over the past several years, and several potential therapy and usability optimizations have been suggested by clinicians and patients.
The proposed project will prepare the clinical trial protocol, related forms and approvals, and initiate the collection of clinical data to determine and quantify such potential optimizations and quantify their statistical and clinical significance. If the project results are positive, then this can help increase the LIPUS technology adoption in the market.

Development and Evaluation of the AI Clinical Buddy System

The overarching project involves designing, testing and evaluating a platform that uses AI and data-driven approaches to improve recruitment, adherence, engagement and monitoring of clinical trials. The specific projects to be undertaken by the interns involve 1) identifying evidence-based behaviour-change techniques that will then be programmed into an AI-driven adherence assistant and evaluated and 2) developing and implementing an implementation-effectiveness evaluation of the platform.

Oil spill recovery using novel polymer sponge adsorption and nano/micro bubble gas flotation

The general objective of this project is to comprehensively investigate the oil adsorption performance of a novel polymer sponge sorbent and understand how the new sorbent and its combination with other technologies can be used for oil spill response. With the increasing need and interests from marine oil spill response organizations for novel technologies that offer fast and low-cost oil spill recovery, Bridges Environmental Solutions Inc. and UNBC propose this collaboration project, which aims to promote the development of the next-generation oil spill response technology. In this project, the intern will design and conduct a series of experiments to investigate the oil recovery performance of the polymer sponge and its integration with an environmentally friendly method through nano/micro bubble gas flotation. The collaboration will help the industrial partner understand the oil adsorption performance of their product and how to apply the product to the oil spill response operations. It will also enable the partner to identify the strengths and limitations for their ongoing modification and development of the next-generation sponge product.