Innovative Projects Realized

Jolie Gan – Using Artifical Intelligence (AI) to comparatively analyze social determinants of health affecting market access of cellular agriculture products among rural communities in Canada versus Southeast Asia

An imminent challenge jointly felt in Asia and Canada is the issue of food scarcity, food insecurity, and lack of sustainable food options, particularly in rural communities To mitigate this issue, a number of Asian cellular agriculture companies have developed unique business practices and operating procedures and have created effective alternate market access pathways to reach rural communities in Asia and to offer these communities sustainable food options at accessible and competitive prices, while remaining mindful of structural and cultural considerations.

There are a number of overlapping determinants affecting rural groups in Asia and Canada: many of these identified practices can also be modified and applied in a Canadian context to support the expansion of Canada’s cellular agriculture industry. Through this project, the intern will utilize artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, machine learning, and data synthesis tools, to comparatively analyze and identify social determinants affecting rural access to cellular agriculture products, adopted business practices and methods utilized by Asian cellular agriculture companies to address said determinants, and tailor these learnings to fit the context of the Canadian cellular agriculture innovation sphere. The intern will resume her position with the CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency), following the conclusion of this project, providing guaranteed opportunities for key findings to be presented to and implemented by federal decision-makers. This project holds great promise as a bridge directly linking the tried and true business and innovation practices in Asia to support the growth and development of Canada’s up-and-coming innovation sector.

Développement d’un outil d’aide à la décision basé sur des données industrielles pour l’amélioration du rendement de production de fromage frais

Kraft Heinz Canada est la filiale canadienne de la société Kraft Heinz. L’usine située au cœur de l’île de Montréal fabrique une grande variété de produits de la marque (beurre, fromage, produits laitiers secs, concentrés, etc.). Contrairement aux autres filiales du groupe, basé sur une production univariée, la pluralité du mix produit de l’usine montréalaise offre une certaine flexibilité et robustesse des lignes de production mais complexifie également les processus de gestion et de production. Face à l’engouement des consommateurs pour les produits locaux et la volonté du gouvernement québécois pour une grande autonomie alimentaire depuis la pandémie Covid-19 (Fonds de solidarité FTQ, 2022; Gouvernement du Québec, 2021; Morissette, 2022), l’entreprise veut innover.
Le projet a ainsi pour but de développer un outil d’aide à la décision pour ajuster les paramètres machines dans un processus de transformation agroalimentaire afin de maximiser les rendements de production.

University of Toronto Mississauga Digital Health Technologies Internship

This project will focus on the evolution of data models through the improvement of internal tooling to allow data self-service along with the operationalization of production-grade data pipelines in the field of bioinformatics, due to the immense amount of growth in the volume of data being produced from genome sequencing. With public data repositories that contain molecular, biochemical, metabolic, disease, and taxonomic data now becoming incredibly granular, researchers can increasingly make important decisions on how to better understand diseases. The field of bioinformatics as a whole is critical to solving diseases, and this field is advancing quickly with BenchSci on the forefront of this advancement.

Career Trek

Career Trek is a non-profit organization that seeks to connect kids to opportunities and experiences in a variety of occupations where they can develop life long interests and passions. Through school and post-secondary partnerships Career Trek introduces children in Grades 5-6 to different experiences simulating a variety of possible career paths and opportunities.
I will be working directly with Lori Schmitt in the planning workshops, organizing the locations and sites, helping structure and create different activities, and the daily schedule. I will be documenting the work as it unfolds, and keeping track of the challenges face, how they are overcome, lessons learned, and making recommendations for smoother operations in the future.

Managing environmental impacts of emerging technologies in Canada: electrochemical lithium refining

Several approaches have been developed to reduce GHG emissions, and a portfolio of technologies will likely be needed (IPCC, 2018). We propose to investigate a novel technology that may play a role in Canada’s economy decarbonization: on-site battery-grade lithium refining developed by Mangrove Lithium. However, the environmental impacts are still not clearly reported, which may result in unforeseen environmental burdens if impactful methods are deployed on a large scale. Therefore, estimating the environmental impacts at the early stage of development allows for a deep understanding of the potential burdens and opportunities for mitigation. Lithium demand is forecasted to increase in the near future to electrify several sectors of economy, and this project intends to assess and inform mitigation of the associated environmental impacts.

Novel one-dimensional linkers for advanced inorganic polymers

Modern society heavily relies upon synthetic polymers, mainly based on carbon-based backbones and thus linked to a fossil-based industry. Polymers with non-carbon elements in there main chain are rather uncommon. Only polysiloxanes, known as silicones and polyphosphazenes have industrial and societal relevance. This project aims to investigate whether novel one-dimensional P,N-based polymers can be accessed using bisiminophosphoranes, a class of compounds that is unknown. Bringing together the expertise of the Hering-Junghans group in the isolation of highly reactive phosphorus species, with the Chitnis labs experience in the construction of novel P,N-materials the introduction of novel P,N- and P,B-based polymers with potential applications in sensing technologies and heterobimetallic catalysis.

Developing a web-based 3D content platform as a Service (PaaS) by improving network capacities and implementing technological solutions to improve 3D capacities

With the recent emergence of the Metaverse, we observe an exponential omnipresence of 3D content in all technological fields, generating ever-large data sets on multiple different devices and a multiplication of user needs. Providing remote computing power, especially 3D rendering, represents a major technological challenge for many fields. However, real-time experiences and collaboration – which are two essential pillars of 3D’s potential – are not available at scale. Our project aims to build the first true real-time 3D rendering platform as a service. We are convinced this transformative technology will impact and change the way people interact and create with 3D. Providing a 3D engine as-a-service, enabling developers to seamlessly build 3D experiences, instantly accessible by all users on any device, at any time, would empower 3D content access for any types of application domains.

Development of an system for in-flight system identification of fixed-wing UAV.

Small unmanned aerial vehicles are increasingly being used in a wide range of surveillance applications, such as wildlife or crop monitoring. A key limitation restricting broader application is their limited endurance. This project deals with the determination of the flight characteristics of small unmanned aerial vehicles used for aerial observation. A better understanding of those characteristics can be used in the optimization of flight profiles to exploit energy in the ambient air, thus reducing the use of onboard energy and extending flight duration. The expected benefit to Shearwater Aerospace will be to enhance the competiveness of their software offerings which aim to allow users to improve their flight planning capabilities.

Examining the Potential Pitfalls of Using ChatGPT in Situational Judgment Tests

Selecting the ideal employee or trainee can be a difficult task. A situational judgement test (SJTs) is one type of test that can help identify the best applicants. However, due to the open-ended nature of such a test, test-takers may be able to use online tools or resources like ChatGPT to cheat and fake their answers. Currently, little to no research has looked at how ChatGPT may affect SJTs as the use of ChatGPT in everyday life is new to many people. The proposed project aims to examine these potential affects, as well as potential tools to identify those who may have cheated. This will benefit both Acuity Insights by providing a starting point to identify those who fake using ChatGPT, and more generally provide much needed insights into the affects of using ChatGPT in open-ended selection tests, such as SJTs.

Characterization and Improvement of Interfacial Properties of Cathode Materials forRechargeable Hybrid Aqueous Batteries Year Two

A new aqueous rechargeable battery combining an intercalation cathode with a metal anode has been developed recently. The energy density for a prototype battery is comparable or superior to commercial 2 V rechargeable batteries. There is a need to further improve the cycle performance and to reduce self-discharge effects of this battery. In this proposed research, novel surface improvements will be applied to the cathode material to improve the overall electrochemical performance of the battery and to improve the stability of the cathode material. The combined performance attributes of this new rechargeable aqueous battery indicate that it constitutes a viable alternative to commercial lead-acid system and is suitable for large scale energy storage application. POSITEC Group Canada, based in Toronto, is the receptor of this research results. This knowledge will be employed in the ongoing battery scale up efforts to improve the design of the aqueous rechargeable battery.

Modélisation technico-économique électrique et hydrogène pancanadienne

De plus en plus de stratégies nationales de développement hydrogène voient le jour, et dans ce cadre, Artelys participe à un projet de recherche porté par un consortium international dont il fait partie « Hydrogen and Climate Partnership » (H2CLIP). Le projet vise à modéliser et étudier le future de l’économie de l’hydrogène, et plus particulièrement les échanges possibles entre le Canada et l’Allemagne au regard des objectifs économiques, écologiques et de sécurité d’approvisionnement.
Le stage qui s’inscrit dans ce projet R&D s’articule en deux parties. La première partie consiste à participer au développement du modèle électrique canadien déjà existant dans le logiciel Artelys Crystal. La deuxième partie consiste à modéliser des actifs de production d’hydrogène dans le même logiciel en s’appuyant sur une revue de littérature de l’état de l’art des technologies reliées à l’hydrogène.

Modern LLVM mapping of sequential code to task-/data-flow models

The high-level goal is to develop technology to enable more C++ applications to run well on many-core architectures such as recent AMD CPUs, GPUs, and combinations thereof (APUs). We expect to improve the capabilities of compilers like clang/LLVM to identify task-level parallelization opportunities that are not able to be identified today.