Innovative Projects Realized

Data Farms’ Crop Monitoring Unit Design & Development

Data Farms is a precision agriculture internet of things (IoT) company using sensors to monitor crops in real-time. We help farmers use resources more efficiently, saving fuel and fertilizer costs, and optimize indoor and greenhouse environments to improve crop yield. Custom alerts allow farmers to react fast when conditions change to avoid crop loss and crop failure. This project will enable Data Farms to design and produce outdoor crop monitoring units for a proof of concept project, partnering with farmers in NL with the plan to expand to other markets in Canada. Canada’s harsh environment increases the risk of crop loss and crop failure. Real-time environmental and soil monitoring allows farmers to react fast when conditions change, and improve resilience in the changing climate.

Maria Edison – Strengthening International Canadian Trade Relations for Sourcing and Innovating Critical Technology and Advanced Manufacturing Processes through Market Research

The intern will conduct a multidisciplinary market research project on international critical technology and advanced manufacturing techniques, with the goal of identifying viable strategic partnerships for Canada. They will create documents, presentations, and brochures for various technologies to spread awareness of commercial opportunities and encourage sector growth in Canada. In partnership with the Cansbridge Fellowship (partner organization) and Dr. Brent McKnight (academic supervisor), they will identify viable strategic partnerships for Canada by considering commercial needs and alignment with Canadian policy goals. The academic supervisor will provide a breadth of knowledge on strategy and strategic partnerships, while the partner organization will provide mentorship and a global alumni network to support multidisciplinary research across industries. The direct benefit to the partner organization is achieving their mission of promoting global collaboration and attracting Canada’s global-minded youth to the program. This will be achieved through additional social media marketing and making the market research accessible to all.

Production of Sustainable Aviation Fuel and other renewable transport fuels via a modified Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis Technology

Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is a description increasingly used to refer to aviation turbine fuel (jet fuel) that is produced from renewable and sustainable resources. The use of SAF for commercial air transport holds the promise of reducing the fossil fuel footprint of this industry. However, in North America it is at present not legal to commercially operate an aircraft with 100% SAF. The purpose of this project is to produce fully formulated synthetic jet fuel in sufficient quantity for it to be submitted for qualification under ASTM D4054, which describes the standard practice for qualification and approval of new aviation turbine fuels and fuel additives. For this purpose, batches of kerosene must be produced and pre-qualified to the amount of 300 L (80 gal) that can be submitted for qualification under ASTM D4054 for tier 2 testing. Specifically, the fuel process must reflect the process description for which the fuel is qualified. Due to the importance of having 100% SAF qualified, this project leads investment in a demonstration scale facility. The conversion steps involved in the process include acid catalysis, metal catalysis, and bifunctional metal-and-acid catalysis. Separation will be by distillation.

Kerem Topal Ismail Oglou – Leveraging AI and Data Analytics to Minimize Waste Generation in the Fashion Industry and Drive Sustainability.

During the internship, the intern will focus on three primary objectives related to the commercialization of sustainable solutions for the fashion industry:

Conducting a comprehensive business market analysis on retail/consumer goods industry standards for demand forecasting.
Extracting, cleaning, categorizing, and analyzing historical sales data to drive insights into consumer purchasing behavior and seasonality.
Assisting the engineering team in creating and improving an AI model to predict better consumer demand and production volume needs.

The intern will combine their passion for data analytics, sustainability, and technical skills to research demand forecasting techniques, analyze the company’s data, and visualize patterns to identify increased or decreased demand periods. This analysis will help determine overproduction periods and estimate waste generation that could have been avoided with better forecasting.
The intern will also collaborate with the engineering team to improve an AI model that predicted consumer demand and required production volumes more accurately. This model will help the fashion company minimize overproduction, waste generation, and become more sustainable.
Throughout the internship, the intern will benefit from the guidance of their academic supervisor and the partner organization, gaining valuable experience and expanding their professional network. They will develop problem-solving, communication, and project management, enhancing their career prospects.

Bubbles & Balms Manufacturing Facility Expansion Strategy

Develop a strategic plan for the development of a manufacturing facility.

Western Valley: Building Resilience In Youth

The Western Valley region is embarking on several projects to improve social and health outcomes for youth, families, and communities. The Western Valley Drug and Alcohol Steering Committee and the Woodstock Planet Youth Local Action Coalition are collaborative groups that work toward universal and primary prevention of drug and alcohol initiation, harm reduction, treatment, and enforcement. Planet Youth program is an evidence-informed, international program based on the Icelandic Prevention Model that aims to decrease the likelihood of substance use among youth. Woodstock will be one of four pilot sites in New Brunswick. This project will significantly benefit from interns’ expertise and skills. In alignment with the Regional Steering Committees, the Multicultural Association of Carleton County (MACC) focuses on Youth language development and engagement program development and implementation with their clients. MACC is a rural Immigrant Service Organization (ISO) and a privately incorporated company with a non-profit designation.

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.

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.