Innovative Projects Realized

Accounting Associate Intern

Tutor Teach, a nationwide educational organization, supports students in academics, extracurriculars, self-confidence, and life skills.

As our current intern’s term concludes, we recognize their significant strides in streamlining our accounting processes, but there’s more work to enhance automation and efficiency. In the 2022-23 fiscal year, financial losses underscored the need for improved tracking and monitoring.

Integration between our internal and external accounting systems is pending. We partner with an independent corporate accounting team to reconcile books, review taxes, and scrutinize expenses. The incoming intern will dive into QuickBooks, taxation procedures, book balancing, and reporting, aiming to reduce expenses and improve accuracy.

This internship offers a chance to automate internal accounting, integrate it with external practices, and gain practical accounting skills, making it a valuable opportunity for the chosen candidate.

The Launch of TradesLink Application

The Edmonton Construction Association is preparing to launch a new trades application. TradesLink is a professional social network for the construction industry. The network operates via an app that tradespeople download to their smartphone, where they build a detailed profile that showcases their education, accomplishments, and skills. TradesLink monetizes by charging employers a subscription fee to search and contact the database of tradespeople. An innovative and dynamic startup dedicated to revolutionizing the trades industry. The trades industry is experiencing an unprecedented lack of young people entering the trades professions. An app such as TradesLink is attempting to modernize the industry. Additionally, the ability to build community within the trades is very fragmented. An app such as TradesLink brings tradespeople together socially so they can build community amongst themselves. Finally, professional development for trades is also very fragmented. TradesLink brings these learning areas together so there is a single resource to find the right place to go to improve their skills.

Insect Pests Detection in Stored Grains

The proposed project is to develop a market viable insect pests detection in stored grains system based on the interns novel active microwave sensing technique. This proposal seeks to build upon optimizing the sensing capabilities of the prototype and to coherently develop a functional array of sensors. Building upon these fundamentals the project will extend to large scale testing in grain silos for real-world scenarios. Throughout the project, live-demonstrations will be put in place to focus the development towards end-user functionality designed through feedback and to later compare with any competitors. The benefits to the partner organization would be helping to foster a Canadian-based startup company through their guidance and the future possibility of the work to significantly impact the grain-managing sector in Canada.

Laser assisted cell lysis with continuous treatment setup

In this project, a process improvement will be developed for splitting open cultured algal cells to release nutritional oils contained within. A high-energy pulsed laser will be used to deliver short but intense light bursts to cause the lysis of algal cells. This technology will be applied at the production scale at Mara Renewables in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

AI/ML-Powered Talent Acquisition/Assessment Chatbot (TAC) via harnessing enhanced NLP algorithm

The talent acquisition process is crucial for organizations to meet their business objectives. However, traditional methods often have biases and inefficiencies, such as a shortage of qualified candidates, time-consuming processes, and unconscious biases. The proposed solution, known as “ATAP,” leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms, a Technical Assessment Chatbot (TAC), and data analytics to improve the process of Talent Acquisition. ATAP has the potential to integrate job platforms, automate data assessment, and reduce biases. In particular, AI/ML-based technologies can improve the procedure, providing organizations with valuable insights into potential candidates and obtaining a competitive edge when hiring the right talent. In addition, AI/ML-based technologies can also help to improve Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the hiring process, reducing potential bias in the recruitment and selection process. The main objective of the proposed collaborative research is to integrate the AI/ML-based Chat Assessment feature “TAC” with the data acquisition and management platform. TAC will offer an interactive element that will enable candidates to undergo automated target evaluation and provide real-time feedback that will lead to a comprehensive candidate evaluation process. The solution will promote Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) practices, ensuring EDI considerations are at the forefront of the hiring process while reducing resource consumption, improving hiring timelines, and encouraging digital technology adoption in companies.

Impact of early vaccination during influenza outbreaks

Vaccination is an important preventive measure against influenza infection during both seasonal
epidemics and pandemic outbreaks. This research aims to understand the effect of early vaccination
during influenza outbreaks. The objectives are to measure the effectiveness of early vaccination in
terms of reducing disease burden (e.g., infection, hospitalization). We apply an important
methodology, namely mathematical and computational techniques, to achieve our objectives. The
goal is to evaluate vaccination scenarios that minimize morbidity and/or hospitalization, based on age profiles and other demographic variables of the population. These scenarios will identify an adaptive vaccination that could be adjusted weekly or bi-weekly, based on incidence of disease in different age groups of the population. The results will be used to inform vaccination policies, improve practices, and direct messaging for improving vaccination uptake and prioritization.

Workers Rights Toolkit Design

Alberta Workers Association for Research and Education (AWARE)is a non-profit organization that focuses on raising awareness through research and education on issues related to non-unionized workers and workers with precarious immigration status. We create educational materials and facilitate programs pertaining to workers’ rights education, precarious workers’ challenges, and unemployment.
For years, AWARE has seen the need to empower newcomers by providing educational resources. Many of our community members have expressed “We did not know how the Canadian system is.” “It would have been helpful to have information when we first came to Canada, so we could have avoided exploitation” “Having information easily accessible in multiple languages is needed”. So, with this research project, the intern will be able to make a useful and accessible information toolkit about labour rights in Alberta with Spanish translation.
There is a growing population of temporary workers in Canada. Many come to Alberta because of its strong economy. In 2021, the 775,000 temporary foreign workers in Canada represented a 92 percent increase from 2015 and a 600 percent increase from 2000 (Globe and Mail). There has also been a significant increase in international students on temporary resident permits, with over 800,000 students in 2022 which has been a 30% increase (Pie News 2022), for example, there has been an increase of 300,000 students entering Canada during 2019 to 2022.
This project will benefit our community by sharing knowledge and building AWARE capacity to better serve Edmonton, as well as building community collaboration with other organizations.

Commercialisation des services et solutions municipales hors Québec

Activis souhaite mettre en marché ses solutions auprès des organismes municipaux du Canada et aux États-Unis. Le stage vise à définir et mettre en place une stratégie de prospection et d’acquisition de clients (organismes municipaux) sur la côte Est des États-Unis et en Ontario.

Road and Impervious Surface Contaminant Runoff Risks and Effects in Freshwater Pacific Salmon Streams

Urban streams are commonly unsuitable for salmon. One reason is pollution that rainfall washes from roads into waterways. For instance, coho salmon are very sensitive to a car tire additive present in road dust. It has killed adults before they spawn and likely affects young salmon too. This problem has been described in the US Pacific Northwest, but its extent in Western Canada is not well known. We propose a scientific research project in metropolitan Vancouver, British Columbia to evaluate which types of roadway pollutants may enter streams at harmful amounts, when and where that happens following rainfall, and study the ways in which it affects fish health. We will use submerged sensors, measure contaminants in water samples, and make biological measurements on young coho placed in streams in cages. The work will include avenues for citizen science participation. The project will be conducted through a partnership between university faculty and Raincoast Conservation Foundation, a conservation science organization. The research will support Raincoast’s mission by answering the above questions for government natural resource managers, community stakeholders, engineers, and local First Nations through a combination of data for scientists and information for the public.

Town of Vermilion IT and Innovation

The Town of Vermilion is an urban municipality located 200km east of Edmonton, with approximately 3,900 residents and a staff of approximately 100 positions including seasonal and casual (eg: fire fighters.) As a small municipality with limited resources our systems are in need of modernization, and innovation in any area is of great benefit to our organization and the taxpayers. The Town of Vermilion has an out of date local network, building security and ERP system. The out of date local network complicates working remotely. Building security is an issue with a metal key based system as keys are often copied without approval or not
returned. One facility has been converted to FOBs however more facilities need to be converted, and we need an intern to be physically present to help coordinate between our contractors.

Diffusion Language Models for Conditional Code Generation

Have you heard about DALL·E 2, Midjourney or Stable Diffusion? Or perhaps you were fooled by the picture of the pope in a puffy white coat, or by some other deepfake memes involving stars and/or politicians? Well, good or bad, these feats are made possible by a technology called generative diffusion models. Although they are mostly known for generating visually stunning images, these models can basically learn to generate any kind of document, as long as we have enough such documents to teach them with. It turns out that there is a great deal of computer code on the internet, and that the BigCode project has already done the hard work of curating it in a responsible manner. We will thus train diffusion models that can write computer code, taking advantages of special properties of diffusion models to coerce them in doing what we want them to do.

Controlling wetting and ionic transport in graphene-ionic liquid-based supercapacitors

Supercapacitors are energy storage devices that can be charged and discharged much faster than batteries while also being more reliable and exhibiting nearly indefinite cycle-life. Graphene-based materials which are a single layer of carbon atoms, exhibit the highest surface area of any material and have the potential to form the ideal supercapacitor electrodes, if we could figure out a way to ensure all the single layers are accessible to the electrolyte. The proposed research aims to better understand a newly developed approach to spontaneously assemble graphene electrodes separated by ionic liquids – a high voltage electrolyte used in supercapacitors. Using ion bombardment, we will study how drilling holes in the graphene improve ionic transport and will reveal how the ionic liquid distributes in the composite. The knowledge gained will be used to engineer improved supercapacitors.