Innovative Projects Realized

Creating an inclusive culture: Building tech workplaces that work

Digital Nova Scotia is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to growing and developing Nova Scotia’s digital technologies industry by facilitating connections, providing professional development and capacity-building opportunities, and promoting the digital sector. Digital Nova Scotia supports the tech sector as it continues to grow, evolve, and thrive. As part of this work, Digital Nova Scotia aims to support greater diversity and inclusion in Nova Scotia’s tech sector. Workplaces with diverse, equitable, and inclusive teams experience increased productivity, higher employee retention rates, and overall superior performance in comparison to competitors.
The two major challenges facing the tech sector in Nova Scotia are:
1. Nova Scotia struggles to identify the cultural change factors needed in the tech sector to recruit, hire, and retain equity deserving groups.
2. Nova Scotia struggles to implement effective cultural change to remove barriers to recruiting, hiring, retaining equity deserving groups.

The research being conducted in this internship will help Digital Nova Scotia identify approaches and techniques being conducted in other jurisdictions and industries. It will also identify an approach for conducting a larger study of factors that contribute to the attraction and retention of diverse technical talent, ideally supported by a Mitacs Accelerate grant. This information will ultimately help cultivate a competitive advantage in our region’s tech sector and help Nova Scotia grow its ICT industries.

Net zero summer internship

TAS has set an ambitious goal of reaching net zero by 2045 with one ground up development and one repositioning asset to be net zero by 2030. This is a unique opportunity to work alongside our project delivery team supporting, innovating, and strategizing pathways for TAS to reach our Net Zero impact goals across the portfolio. The following roles require a mix of innovative, data driven, out-of-the-box thinking supported by the ability to support rigorous technical analysis.

Intern #1: The summer VDA intern will play a key role in working towards developing a costed, embodied-carbon virtual library of building assemblies to help drive low impact development.

Intern #2: The summer NZP intern plays a key role in working towards developing a net zero carbon project strategy – integrating acquisition, product design, procurement, construction and delivery.

Innovation Through Customer Insights and Service Development

We-Watch is a for-profit, social enterprise that has created a mobile platform to report public safety incidents and collect evidence on these incidents from users near the location of the incident. We-Watch has partnered with West Queen West BIA, Downtown Toronto to conduct its first pilot project for their mobile application. During this pilot, the business owners of the BIA will have exclusive access to this mobile platform for 4 months. This project will involve running the pilot launch to uncover insights about the application usage patterns and behavior of the end customers, which will help design the future builds of the application and make improvisations on the identified bottlenecks. The project will also help explore other sales opportunities for the application, by looking at other target audiences such as industrial settings, homeowner associations etc.

Collective community gardening for food security and integration of African immigrants in Edmonton, Alberta

Cultural food insecurity, which is the inability to acquire, afford, and eat the traditional foods of one’s ethnic origin is a form of food insecurity that disproportionately affects new immigrant, especially the Black identifying Canadians. However, research that explores alternative ways to diversity Canadian food systems to accommodate new immigrants and to allow for smooth transition and integration of African immigrants are limited. The current project aims to address this knowledge gap by exploring the barriers and facilitators of use of collective community gardens in providing spaces for production of culturally familiar foods and in supporting the integration of new African immigrants in Edmonton, Alberta. In collaboration with Sinkunia Community Development Organization (SCDO), we will conduct a qualitative and quantitative study to investigate the barriers and facilitators of engagement to community gardening and the most preferred culturally familiar vegetables and fruits. This project will be an initial step towards the diversification of Canadian food system by contributing to creation of knowledge on the most preferred cultural vegetables and fruits.

An Intelligent Method for Bearing Anomaly Detection

Anomaly detection of machinery is a crucial aspect of predictive maintenance. It involves monitoring specific parameters related to the machinery’s condition to identify significant changes that indicate a potential fault. Bearings, which are important components in rotary machinery, are responsible for over 40 percent of rotary machinery failures. Consequently, researchers have been focusing on detecting anomalies in bearings. While there are various methods available for bearing anomaly detection, most of them require high engineering expertise to detect faults. Alternatively, techniques solely based on machine learning models are not always reliable and accurate. Additionally, detecting weak faults accurately has been challenging due to the complexity of bearing vibration signals. As a result, there is a lack of an intelligent method that can automatically and precisely detect faults. In this project, our goal is to develop an intelligent anomaly detection model, and conduct multiple validation tests using various datasets, including three public datasets, one lab dataset generated by the applicants, and industrial data from our partner organization to achieve an accurate, reliable, and robust model.

Monitoring Volume changes and IgA protein in complex biological mixture of vaginal discharge as a real-time ovulation detection

The female body goes through various hormonal changes at each phase of the menstrual cycle every month. These hormonal changes result in detectable biophysical changes, such as skin temperature variations. Moreover, the chances of pregnancy are noticeably higher during the ovulation phase which is a 4-5 days window. Our product, will have sensors inside it to non-invasively monitor these biophysical changes from the surface of the body and determine which phase the user is in with high accuracy. As the result, women can use this personalized information to increase or decrease their chance of pregnancy in a non-hormonal, non-invasive, personalized and accurate, reusable, and easy-to-use manner. This project seeks to prove the feasibility of developing this wearable device and the accuracy of the sensors in taking the parameters.

Analysis of angled nozzle spray profiles and their suitability in site-specific applications.

Spot application of pesticide has economic and environmental benefits. To enable a real-time spraying, the timing of actuation after detecting the pest should be precise to enable hitting the target. One issue in spraying using wide booms is the need to place cameras on the boom itself to avoid possible costly mechanical modifications. As such, the short distance between the sensor (camera) and actuator (nozzle valves) requires nearly instantaneous detection and actuation which is not possible with the current state-of-the-art technology. During the internship, we plan to test and validate new angled nozzle tips that allow the sprayer to spray backwards to gain time that will allow the camera to detect the pest and send a signal to the nozzle valve. Also, we plan to test the spraying pattern while the valve is opening to verify the possibility of including the transitional period of valve opening in the spraying time.

Navigating Canada’s food system: The experiences of racialized immigrants in Edmonton, Alberta

This research project will examine the experiences of racialized newcomers living in Edmonton, Alberta, who are living in food insecurity, a state where people have inadequate amounts and/or inappropriate types of food. Current research has studied food security more broadly; however, risk is higher among certain groups including individuals who are Black, Indigenous, or persons of colour. By engaging with culturally diverse people, this study will show and raise awareness of how their higher food insecurity risks require different solutions to meet their food needs. The partner organization, Multicultural Health Brokers, will benefit from this partnership, because they will be able to use the findings to help teach the public of how food insecurity is caused. It will also help in teaching people ways they can help to address cultural food security.

Performance of Green Concrete Incorporating Recycled Face Masks

Over the past two years, the COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has been the main global public concern affecting human health. A tremendous amount of personal protective equipment has been produced and used by the health service and every human. Hence, proper medical waste management becomes a critical problem which must be solved with a minimal environmental impact. On top of used protective equipment, face-covering masks were used extensively, forming a new non-biodegradable
waste stream that poses a considerable environmental risk to the ecosystem if not correctly disposed of. Thus, this waste must be recycled in an eco-friendly manner on an urgent basis. Hence, the proposed project aims to develop a new environmentally friendly recycling technique using waste generated during mask production in creating sustainable green concrete elements. Hence, the materials-structural design concept will be adopted, providing a full idea about potential construction applications for these new green materials while reducing environmental impact.

Industry-focused Best Practices: hPSC Biomanufacturing Training Practicum for Advanced Therapies Workforce Development

The Canadian Advanced Therapies Training Institute (CATTI), launched through a partnership between CellCAN and CCRM, is a centre of training excellence that is developing and scaling e-learning and on-site GMP training programs for efficient and rapid upskilling of the workforce required in Canada and internationally. Within the scope of this project, a Lab Technician/Research Analyst (intern) is required to to assist with the setup of the CATTI Training Lab, through equipment setup and maintenance, SOP creation, cell culture preparation, and receiving consumables and equipment and updating inventory. The intern will further assist in the development of complementary modules and courses structured around the CATTI virtual e-learning curriculum (currently available internationally) and practicum, to be delivered starting Summer 2023.

Optimization of Electrical Drivetrain in Agricultural Application

This project will investigate the timely problem of electrification of heavy-duty agricultural equipment and their various implements. Electrification of these critical pieces of equipment, either fully or partially, is poised to yield significant benefits such as improved efficiency, better reliability, and lower cost of operation. In order to design an electrified version of a complex systems such as an agricultural equipment, extensive studies need to be conducted to determine the existing and envisioned power flow paths and to evaluate the benefits that electrification will introduce in terms of cost, efficiency, and operation. In collaboration with a leading manufacturer of agricultural equipment, this project aims to take a concrete step towards better designs of electrified drive trains for heavy-duty farming machinery.

Implémentation de normes éthiques en intelligence artificielle

L’objectif du projet de recherche est d’implémenter des principes éthiques en intelligence artificielle à partir des travaux de recherches doctoraux de l’étudiant, qui portent sur l’apport de la philosophie de la technique à l’éthique de l’intelligence artificielle, et plus précisément sur l’étude de la notion de responsabilité appliquée à la civilisation technologique et à la société de l’innovation. Il s’agira notamment d’approfondir la Déclaration de Montréal pour un développement responsable de l’intelligence artificielle, notamment sur le volet de la responsabilité. Le travail de recherche alliera une recherche théorique avec une approche pratique, via des entretiens avec les membres de l’écosystème de l’intelligence artificielle, aussi bien dans le secteur public que privé. Il s’agira donc d’approfondir les aspects liés à la responsabilité dans le développement et la gouvernance de l’intelligence artificielle. Une présentation des résultats est attendue, sous la forme d’un événement ouvert aux spécialistes et au public.