Innovative Projects Realized

Micro Action Impact Measurement Index for the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (aka Project MAI-MI)

In a historic United Nations (UN) summit, world leaders adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a universal call to action to address the global challenges we face by the year 2030, including those related to poverty, inequity, environmental degradation, prosperity, and peace and justice. Together, the UN and their partners have underscored the importance of evidence-based and transparent long-term pathways, in which sound metrics and data are critical for turning the SDGs into practical tools for problem solving, tracking progress and accountability.

The proposed research will employ statistical and machine learning tools to bridge the gap of mapping individual actions (micro-level) against the SDGs and targets (macro-level). The resulting innovation is expected to support emerging Corporate Social Responsibility principles and practices for Canadian companies and help them be more competitive through operational efficiency gains and enhancing their employer brand with transparent impact reporting.

Personalizing gamification strategies to improve young adult life skills training

By making life skills education more game-like, we propose to help young adults improve valuable life skills and feel empowered in their choices.
There is a growing body of evidence to show that adding game elements into non-game contexts, a persuasive strategy known as gamification, is effective at improving students’ motivation and skill learning.
In this project we will match young adult mobile gameplay preferences with game design elements in order to teach life skills in a fun and engaging way that maximizes the motivational power of gamification.
This project is an important first step in the design of a mobile life coaching game that empowers young adults through playful learning.

Fluoride Removal from Brine Solutions

NORAM Engineering and Constructors have a technology called salt splitting. This technology is used to produce caustic soda and sulfuric acid. However, the presence of fluoride in this technology can cause the breakdown of the coating on the titanium anode, which can cause premature anode failure. As replacing these titanium anodes can incur significant costs, purification in this technology to reduce its fluoride concentration is imperative. This project therefore seeks to obtain the fundamental understandings of this mechanism on the fluoride removal by using ion exchange resin, and potentially mitigate this technical challenge.

Physiotherapy balls with pressure sensor

Today, physiotherapy balls or physioballs play an essential role in treating disability or body damages such as neck, waist, knee and so on. Despite their wide range of applications and importance, it is difficult to monitor the damaged member and propose continuous treatment in the presence of a physiotherapist or physician. This causes several problems and costs for the patient. Therefore, a new generation of physiotherapy balls will be created in this project. The idea is to perform exercises and monitoring without the need and/or the presence of a doctor or physiotherapist. This can be of great help for the restoration of a damaged muscle/member or to get a history of the continuous treatment.

Application of advanced analytics in PEM fuel cell development and engineering

This project is a collaboration between Triptech Engineering and Software Services LTD and Laboratory for Alternative Energy Conversion (LAEC) at SFU to develop data analytics solutions for PEM fuel cell industry. The fuel cell industry is suffering from component/system failure and coping with analysis of tremendous amounts of data. Knowledge extraction from this complex data is necessary to predict key factors of component/system failure and enhance the reliability and lifetime of fuel cells. Data analytics has superior diagnostics/prognostics capabilities and is revolutionizing various fields of science and engineering by detecting unseen patterns and new knowledge hidden in massive databases of these disciplines. This project aims to exploit the power of data analytics to develop data solutions for the fuel cell industry.

Learning Partnership for Community Development and MinoBimaadiziwin in Brokenhead Ojibway Nation

Post-secondary education, if community-led and projects-based, has the potential to transform education, food and housing policy, as well as build capacity locally in Brokenhead First Nation compared to two First Nations lacking road access. This partnership will explore optimal solutions to resolve development challenges through applied adult education, particularly applied to housing, food and community development. By conducting participatory action research we will collaborate to leapfrog Indigenous development and post-secondary education from colonially imposed to self-determined and community-led educational development. Students evaluation of programming and surveys of workplace integration.

Probiotics for Animal Health – neonatal and pre-weaned calf

This project aims to develop a novel collection of probiotics for animal health, specifically newborn and pre-weaned calves. Probiotics are a safe and sustainable way of ensuring the health of animals in the agricultural industry. The probiotics will be designed to decrease the morbidity and mortality rates in pre-weaned calves, and to increase the long-term health of the animal, which will directly affect production (both beef and dairy). DoseBiome is a new start-up in the microbiome health sector, and this project will help the company increase their probiotic portfolio to develop a variety of probiotics with clinical benefits.

Visualization of lipid and protein deposition on contact lenses in a sophisticated in vitro eye-blink model

Contact lens discomfort is one of the primary reasons that cause people to stop wearing them. The discomfort may be due to the buildup of tear film components on the lenses during lens wear. The purpose of this project is to understand where most of the tear film components are depositing on the lens, such as the back or front of the lens. These findings will help researchers and companies develop better and more comfortable contact lens materials in the future.

CardiAI Point-of-Care Device for High-Caliber and Rapid Diagnosis of Biomarkers from Blood of Patients for Early Heart Failure Detection

The aim of this research and development project is to design and develop a bedside point-of-care device to be equipped with the CardiAI’s machine learning technology for heart failure management. Our POC system will include disposable cardiac biomarker strips and an electronic reader. Once implemented, it will be connected to the AI platform that will continuously collects patients’ health information from patient’s daily manual log, electronic medical record, and remotely monitor the patient’s quality of life (QoL) and their medication adherence, thus helping patients manage their condition better.

3d density estimation using normalizing flows and its application to 3d reconstruction in cryo-EM

Generative models enable the researchers to address multiple problems spanning from noise removal to generating novel samples with properties of the domain. Generative models are commonly studied for images and in this project the idea will be expanded to 3D structures or volumes. Single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is a technique to estimate accurate 3D structures of biological molecules which is used by practitioners in fields like precision medicine. This allows them to design drugs that could cure patients with rare diseases and avoid side effects. A trained generative model on previously estimated molecular density models, would enable rapid improvement in resolution of estimated densities of limited resolution. The outcome of this research project will be provided as a ready-made tool that improves the resolution of estimated densities in its input. Through this collaboration, Borealis AI would push forward 3D generative methods research and its application to density estimation.

Enhancing Water Balance Criteria to Protect Wetlands from Urban Stormwater and Climate Change

Wetlands are important habitats for many plant and animal species, and also provide valuable ecosystem services to society such as improving water quality and releasing groundwater into streams. While wetlands are often protected from development through the land use planning process in Ontario, development and land use change near wetlands can still alter the amount and timing of water flowing into and out of a wetland. This in turn can have negative effects on the plants and animals in the wetland and on the wetland’s ability to provide ecosystem services, even where the wetland itself is theoretically protected. This project will help refine existing guidelines and tools used by staff at Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) and Credit Valley Conservation (CVC) to ensure that the design of new urban areas allows protected wetlands to continue to provide habitat and ecosystem services by maintaining the amount and timing of water reaching the wetland. The knowledge generated through this project will also be used to explore how climate change may affect wetlands in the Toronto region.

Community Building for New Housing Co-operatives: Innovating to address scale, inclusion, and contemporary living

Due to the lack of investment from the Federal and Provincial governments for affordable housing and the low number of housing cooperatives formed in the last 30 years the co-op housing model is outdated. In response to a need for affordable housing in Vancouver, BC the Community Land Trust (CLT) has recently opened two newly built housing cooperatives. This research project aims to identify tools and best practices to foster a sense of belonging, ownership, and community in newly formed housing co-ops with members from mixed socio-economic backgrounds. This project is intended to specifically support the Fraserview and Railyard housing cooperatives while adding to the body of research regarding community connection and social cohesion in multi-unit buildings and alternative housing options.