Innovative Projects Realized

Building Community Resiliency: Youth Mental Health Resource Map and Educator Training

In the 2018-2019 New Brunswick Student Wellness Survey half of the students between grades 6 to 12 reported symptoms of anxiety or depression. In that survey, 30% of youth reported they felt like they needed to see someone for their mental health, and of that 30%, only 10% had access. One barrier for students is not knowing where to go. One of the first points of contact for students as educators in the school system. With the dissolution of the Helping Tree and other such resource guides, Educators have decreased navigation portals. With the supply teacher deficit, educators have less and less time to devote outside of immediate curriculum teaching. This project aims are creating a sustainable resource navigation tool that will also provide viable links to the curriculum.

Greater Fredericton Social Innovation’s (GFSI) mandate is to provide social planning to advance comprehensive community strategies guided by research, analysis, and community-defined goals. GFSI is a network of concerned organizations, agencies, and individuals working cooperatively and collaboratively through community stewardship. GFSI, in partnering with The UNB Compass program and Regional Steering Committees, will be able to increase its regional outreach and partner on three community-based projects this year.

OneCup AI Business Product Development Internship

OneCup AI has created an artificial intelligence pipeline featuring BETSY, our AI rancher. BETSY is the leader in the accurate visual identification of livestock using only computer vision. This technology is on the leading edge, which makes it unique in an otherwise very traditional industry, how we develop our product in the market is imperative to gain market share and build trust with producers. We launched an Early Adopter program in April of 2021, and a full commercial launch in Canada in the fall of 2022. We will continue to work closely with our customers to fine-tune the user interface as well as future model creation. Working with our development team, we will develop a timeline to develop and launch additional features and models.

Commercialization of agrifood waste conversion innovation

The circular economy is an important component of sustainability in this present economy. This project requires the intern to develop a commercialization plan for an innovative technology-driven process of extracting proteins and nutrients from organic waste generated by food and beverage manufacturers. The partner organization possesses intellectual know-how and process expertise in converting organic waste to useful byproducts for downstream use and industrial consumption. This commercialization plan will have a graduate intern specializing in a Masters of Science in the Management of Innovation, Commercialization and Entrepreneurship to use Agile project management methodology to create an innovation acceptance plan for suppliers and customers of this process in the context of theory and principles of innovation commercialization. The innovation and its commercialization will make a significant impact on the Canadian economy and sustainability goals implicit in the circular economy.

Applying Natural Language Processing to Explore the Development of Automated Scoring and Feedback Models for Multi-Speaker Science Discussions

Many components of education, including those to support teacher and student learning, are now online and fully digital. But to make productive use of these data sources, the field needs to have a better understanding of what teachers and students do and how they respond to online assessments designed to build and measure complex constructs. This need is especially critical in teacher education where innovative online assessments have become more prominent within teacher licensure and within teacher education settings to support teacher learning. In this project, the intern will identify and investigate meaningful patterns from data generated from teachers facilitating science discussions with student avatars in a simulated classroom to develop and refine automated scoring and feedback models for multi-speaker discussions. The intern will benefit directly by expanding and applying his NLP expertise to examine approaches for supporting teacher learning, as well as collaborating with researchers at ETS.

Evaluation of viral sensitizer technology for improving influenza vaccine in an egg-basedmanufacturing process Year Two

Vaccination remains the most effective preventative measure for influenza infection. Seasonal influenza epidemics and the emergence of pandemic strains have increased the global demand for influenza vaccines, putting significant pressure on vaccine manufacturers. However, current vaccine manufacturing strategies rely primarily upon production in eggs, an age-old method that needs to be significantly improved. Recently, research from our lab identified a panel of novel compounds termed viral sensitizers (VSes) that increased virus production up to 1000 fold in cultured cells. We hypothesize that VSes can enhance the production of influenza vaccines in eggs. Supported by Mitacs, we propose to work in partnership with Sanofi Pasteur (Toronto, Ontario), to: 1) demonstrate the applicability of VSes for the manufacture of influenza virus vaccines in eggs, and 2) assess the molecular mechanisms leading to VSe-mediated enhancement of influenza vaccine production.

Building Security Controls Catalogue for SMEs

Fraud prevention tools play a critical role in real estate transactions. Even though digital fraudsters employ all newly available tools to find loopholes in the existing technological ecosystem, the information systems involved in real estate transactions typically lag behind in terms of digital identity verification and management. In order to facilitate industry adoption of the novel fraud prevention tools, companies that are using such tools must be assured that adequate information security and privacy control mechanisms are embedded into them. The main objective of this research cooperation between Concordia University of Edmonton (CUE) and Treefort Technologies is to define a catalog of the tools and techniques that can be used to ensure proper security baseline for the software tools that are used in the real estate transactions.

Assay development for point-of-care COVID-19 antibody detection

A key requirement for returning to societal and economic normality is the evaluation and surveillanceof SARS-CoV-2 infection and immunity. The proposed technologies described herein, enable a safe and effectivediagnostic test that can quickly provide an easily interpreted result for SARS-CoV-2 immunity, all without complicated equipment, expensive reagents, or high-level biosafety containment facilities. Such a system would allow for rapid testing in decentralized labs or at point-of-care providing quick data information on antibody responses produced by infection or vaccination. This data will be invaluable for assessing the most efficacious SARS-CoV-2 vaccine(s) for use in population-wide vaccination booster campaigns against currently circulating strains, and will also guide future public health mitigation strategies to reduce the spread of viral transmission.

Optimizing Wireless Data Communication for Implantable Medical Devices

The research project aims to develop a portable, wireless interface for implantable medical devices that monitor brain activity in patients with conditions such as epilepsy and motor disorders. This new software will allow for continuous, unrestricted measurement of brain activity, enabling doctors to collect high-quality data in patients’ natural environments. The interface will wirelessly transmit the recorded data to external storage locations when in proximity to a base station, while a proprietary time series compression algorithm will optimize data management and storage. This innovative solution has the potential to improve current neuromodulation treatments and enhance our understanding of neurological conditions.

Building a privacy-preserving federated recommender system for mobile devices

Lerna AI helps app developers to better understand their users and optimize their campaigns. The company’s mobile library optimizes the timing of user engagement, for example by identifying when the right moment is to send an up-selling notification. This is achieved by seamlessly deploying privacy-preserving federated learning on the mobile phone in order to learn from enriched first-party data that never leaves the device.
The project aims at enhancing Lerna AI’s underlying ML algorithms by introducing a recommender system and content-based optimization. This project will primarily assist Lerna AI in improving its predictive capability, i.e. more accurately identify what time and which content are more likely to better engage each individual user. By extension, the project is expected to augment the campaign conversion rates and return on investment for Lerna AI’s own clients.

Kanonhkwa’tsheranákere, Where the Medicines Are: Creating an Indigenous biocultural atlas and ethnobotanical field guide grounded in decolonial methodologies

This landmark project was built by Dr. Jessica Dolan with leadership at the Indigenous organization Plenty
Canada, and the Conservation Through Reconciliation Partnership team at University of Guelph. Working closely
in collaboration with Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabeg educators and culture-bearers, the team is combining
plant biology surveys in the Greenbelt region of Southern Ontario, with historical and contemporary linguistic
and cultural research on the ethnobotany of native plants, for food, medicine, craft and utility. The team is
creating a digital atlas of ethnobotanical surveys of the Greenbelt area, and writing a field guide to
Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabeg in Southern Ontario. The project includes significant Kanienke’ha and
Anishinaabemowin resources, to support linguistic revitalization in tandem with place-based learning. The goal
is to create rigorous work that is publicly accessible as tools for learning among youth and adults, alike, that will
aid in equitable collaborative relationships in environmental conservation and cultural revitalization.

AI Based Script Builder for Web Payments

To conduct research and provide a feasible solution to create an AI-based script builder to automate the company’s pay-by-web transaction process. The pay-by-web transaction process includes many steps. These are steps such as extracting data from different sources and monitoring email inboxes as well as verifying payment information. The process also involves identifying the correct supplier websites and submission of the complete payment transaction. The project aims to provide an AI script that automates this process to make it more streamlined and efficient. If the project is successful, it will provide great business value to the company and its customers.

Assessing Global Adoption of the Central Banking Digital Currency

Central Banking Digital Currency (CBDC) is a digitalized version of cash. It seeks to preserve all the properties and characteristics of the monetary unit, the most famous of which are: a store of value, a medium of exchange, and a unit of account.
Using machine learning techniques, the student will answer questions about how quickly it is possible to implement CBDC, whether it will be successful and predict the transition from a state of disinterest to the active use of this type of currency.
Identification of factors that can help in the implementation of the project, as well as the introduction and acceptance of Central Banking Digital Currency, in Canada, will be carried out. Drawing up recommendations that can be improved and considered at the state level, the project itself can contribute to the accelerated implementation of technology, as well as direct interaction with the state apparatus.