Innovative Projects Realized

Life skills training and the effect of predator conditioning on the post-release survival and return-to- spawn rates of hatchery-reared Coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch)

One important strategy that is helping to prevent collapse of salmon stocks is the use of hatcheries. Hatchery raised salmon are released into streams to help supplement the wild population. An impediment to hatchery efforts is that for the first two weeks after their release, hatchery-reared salmon often show high rates of mortality due to predators. This is because hatchery-raised fish are naïve to predators, and it takes time to learn about the risk that they pose. This project seeks to identify ways to increase the post-release survival of hatchery-reared Coho salmon. Our goal is to determine if exposing juvenile salmon to predators before release will bolster their survival after they are released. Knowledge of how we can increase post-release survival of Coho salmon can be combined with habitat restoration efforts and allow us to return salmon runs to their historic sustainable levels.

Wearable Human-Body Energy Harvesting and Storage to Power Smart Healthcare Textiles

It might be occurred to all of us to have a wearable healthcare device with endless battery life. Think now this will happen by a cloth equipped with the harvesting units to convert our body motions to electricity. In other words, while we are doing our daily routines, any body movement, such as bending the knee during walking, will be translated into electrical energy, and stored in cloth-based energy storage units. Therefore, any activity of your body will be tracked and used to generate electricity. Now this energy will be stored and utilized as the resource for other wearable devices and sensors. Consequently, you will have access to an endless battery as long as you keep doing your daily activities.

Communauté d’innovation inclusive et trouble du spectre de l’autisme?: Élaboration et expérimentation d’un processus participatif et collaboratif impliquant une diversité de parties prenantes

L’innovation est un élément clé dans le développement d’une société. Elle permet de trouver de nouvelles solutions pouvant répondre plus adéquatement et durablement aux besoins sociaux. C’est dans cette perspective que l’équipe de la Fondation de la Neurodiversité met sur pied le Centre d’innovation pour les enfants autistes. Les données probantes permettent d’observer qu’un travail collaboratif et l’implication des acteurs tôt dans le projet sont des facteurs de réussite. Or, l’inclusion des personnes autistes dans ce contexte représente un double défi. Tout d’abord, assurer la mise en place d’une telle démarche et maintenir l’engagement des parties peuvent présenter des enjeux considérables. Puis, certains déficits du TSA concernant la communication et les interactions sociales peuvent engendrer certains défis quant à leur engagement dans une approche collaborative. À cet effet, la fondation souhaite élaborer un modèle de communauté d’innovation inclusive permettant le partage et la cocréation dans le but de soutenir le processus d’innovation sociale.

Reverse engineering the SARS-CoV2 virus variants for the rational design of anti-COVID-19 therapeutics

The current pandemic is caused by a nasty virus that infects mostly the lungs via a receptor critical for the virus to bind to lung cells. Knowing how the virus binds to its lung receptor will enable us to synthesize small experimental drugs that will be investigated further for interesting therapeutic properties. This proposal focuses on testing how the virus binds to cells, how exactly it happens, and how this can be used to develop drugs for the current and future pandemics.

Maximizing carbon sequestration on ultramafic mine tailings remediation through bioamendments and microbial inoculants

Mining for metals, such as nickel used in steel and batteries, results in a waste product known as tailings. These tailings are the left-over rocks stored in huge piles often hundred of hectares in size and are found throughout Canada. Few plants grow on tailings and they are costly to maintain in order prevent damage to neighbouring ecosystems. Restoration of tailings offers a solution to restore vegetation and ecosystem functioning to areas that provide no ecological benefit. Importantly, as plants grow they remove carbon dioxide from atmosphere and store it in their biomass and in the soil. This project explores the use of organic waste products from the pulp and paper industry and microbial communities from natural systems to maximize natural vegetation growth to return ecosystem functioning to barren tailings and maximize carbon dioxide removal from atmosphere. This will help lower Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change.

Targeting tumour associated macrophages with vaccinia virus to promote anti-tumour immune responses

Virus based therapies represent a powerful new tool in the fight against cancer. However, to ensure their safety and efficacy, we need a better understanding of how these new therapies activate our immune system to help eliminate tumours. These studies include three internships which will: 1) investigate how the vaccinia virus activates immune cells in the tumour, 2) determine how this activation contributes to the therapeutic activity of this virus in treating cancer, and 3) develop new 3D models to investigate the mechanisms by which the physical
features of a tumor determine the effectiveness of these responses. This work will benefit Turnstone Biologics by providing important new insights into how the virus regulates immune cells in the tumour and will provide a variety of tools and systems that can used to test the effects of new candidate treatments on immune function in the tumour.

Developing machine learning methods for seafloor habitat mapping utilizing high-resolution synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) data sets.

Remote sensing technologies have changed the way we are able to map and understand our planet. For ocean floor mapping, acoustic remote sensing technologies are the only effective methods for broadscale mapping of the seabed. Acoustic mapping technologies have advanced tremendously over the past two decades, and continue to improve, offering increasingly higher data resolution through more cost-effective field acquisition approaches. Relatively new acoustic remote sensing techniques, such as Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS), are now capable of mapping the seafloor environment down to 3cm horizontal resolution, with potentially game-changing applications in understanding the seafloor environment and ecosystem processes. However, with increasing resolution and wider adoption of these tools, data volumes continue to increase, posing big data challenges for processing. Data analysis can be labour intensive, forming bottlenecks in the data processing workflow. This project will develop new machine learning/deep learning/AI methods for processing SAS data sets. A variety of machine learning approaches will be tested and evaluated to generate seafloor thematic maps (e.g. surficial geology, predicted species distribution maps) through integration of the seafloor acoustic data with ground-validation information from subsea photographs and video.

A multimodal neuroimaging database under complex naturalistic stimuli

The goal of this partnership is to develop tools for multi-modal neuroimaging acquisition and analysis. Specifically, we propose to develop a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) coil array to allow for sensitive functional MRI (fMRI) detection and minimal interferences to concurrently recorded electroencephalography (EEG). This setup will be used to record brain responses to complex and naturalistic stimuli, such as movie clips and musical pieces. Cutting-edge machine learning algorithms will be developed to extract features and to identify how behaviours, brain activity, and the exogenous inputs correlate to each other. This project is expected to positively impact Canada scientifically, clinically, and commercially by promoting the neuroimaging research, facilitating translational psychiatric as well as neurological research, and leading to spin-off companies in medical device and informatics, respectively.

Genes to affordable medicines – Stream 3-C

The Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) is a not-for-profit public-private partnership research organization that aims to accelerate the discovery of new medicines through open science. This Mitacs cluster will bring together SGC’s industry and academic collaborators to work together towards new and affordable medicines for challenging diseases. Sixty-three post-doctoral fellows will spend 2-3 years developing open source tools and knowledge for previously understudied proteins, thereby unlocking new areas of biology and identifying new opportunities for drug discovery. SGC’s spin-offs, the M4 companies, will be the vehicles to translate this knowledge into new medicines for rare and challenging diseases that have been excluded from traditional pharma company programs. The M4 companies are committed to open science and sharing, and to affordable pricing to ensure patients can access the new drugs.

Marine Additive Manufacturing Centre of Excellence

The proposed NBIF RIF project will establish a UNB Marine Additive Manufacturing Centre of Excellence (MAMCE) in Atlantic Canada. The focus of the centre is the marine and defence sectors with vision for global marine technology trend for 2030, which includes additive manufacturing, and advanced materials. MAMCE’s mission is to accelerate the adoption of metal additive manufacturing (AM) technology in the Atlantic Region, mainly New Brunswick, through research, workforce training, and commercialization. As a capacity building project, the MAMCE will bring infrastructure, expertise and knowhow to the Atlantic region. One of the key challenges facing AM adoption is knowledge and expertise. The establishment of the MAMCE and related research activities will build a strong foundation for manufacturers in the Atlantic region to exploit the benefits of additive manufacturing. The technology is already disrupting the traditional manufacturing paradigm, and regional companies will have the opportunity to be leaders in the field.

Big Questions, Young Thinkers: Using Arts and Philosophy to Help Children Navigate Life’s Existential Challenges

This project brings together researchers from Canada and Switzerland to pilot a school-based intervention designed to support the mental well-being of elementary school-aged children. The intervention combines art-making and philosophical group discussions to create a safe space where children can explore the existential questions they naturally ask themselves — about life, death, meaning, and relationships. Over nine weeks, the Canadian research team will deliver the program to students at a Swiss elementary school in Bienne, while collecting data through questionnaires and interviews to assess how children experience and perceive the program. This collaboration benefits both institutions: the Canadian team gains access to an international population, allowing them to test whether an intervention developed in Québec translates effectively across cultural contexts, while the Swiss partners build the knowledge and capacity needed to lead future phases of the project independently within Swiss schools.

Exploring the regulatory and functional landscape of FOXG1 in 3D chromatin architecture