Innovations Realized

Explore thousands of successful projects resulting from collaboration between organizations and post-secondary talent.

13270 Completed Projects

1072
AB
2795
BC
430
MB
106
NF
348
SK
4184
ON
2671
QC
43
PE
209
NB
474
NS

Projects by Category

10%
Computer science
9%
Engineering
1%
Engineering - biomedical
4%
Engineering - chemical / biological

Developing, Implementing, and Evaluating internet-based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Anxiety and Depression

Public health struggles to meet the needs of adults with mental health concerns in a timely manner. Given the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the decreased ability to provide face-to-face therapy and the anticipated increase in mental health difficulties as a result of the pandemic, alternatives need to be made available for Canadians seeking support. This project will evaluate a new internet-based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (iCBT) platform, Tranquility Online, within the context of a global pandemic. Tranquility Online uses iCBT, with the option of an online coach, to help adults manage and treat mild to moderate symptoms of anxiety and depression. A program evaluation will use surveys to assess the effectiveness of having a coach, and examine mental health outcomes using questionnaires. The plan is to share these results through the company website, meetings within the public health sector, and social marketing.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Janine Olthuis

Student:

Jennifer Richards

Partner:

Tranquility Online

Discipline:

Psychology

Sector:

Health care and social assistance

University:

University of New Brunswick

Program:

Accelerate

Work, Family, Life of Police Offices and Their Families During and After a Pandemic – Examination of an Extreme Case

The COVID-19 pandemic is an on-going health crisis which is having a dramatic impact on how people in Canada and around the world live their lives. In response to the rapid spread of the virus, provincial and federal governments have enacted a number of ‘physical distancing’ measures, including closures of publicly-funded schools and all non-essential businesses. This has resulted in unprecedent work/life situations for thousands of Canadians. Police, as an essential frontline service, face particular challenges during this pandemic. They must continue their work on the frontline and risk exposure for themselves and their family to the novel coronavirus. They must balance the requirements of a stressful job (demands which have themselves changed because of the pandemic) with the needs of their children (who are now at home), their partner (who may now be unemployed or working from home) and worries about their elderly family members. We propose to undertake a longitudinal multimethod research study that will examine how police, and their spouses/partners are coping with work, family, and life during the pandemic.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Linda Duxbury;Anita Grace

Student:

Andre Lanctot

Partner:

Canadian Police Association

Discipline:

Other

Sector:

Health care and social assistance

University:

Carleton University

Program:

Accelerate

Adapting to COVID-19: Private Business, Public Infrastructure and the New Normal

The COVID-19 pandemic is placing enormous economic pressure on Canadian workers and employers, and it is unclear what the long-term economic impacts of the crisis will be. This research will produce a model to describe ways in which employers and workers might adapt to, recover from and build long-term resilience to COVID-19 and other natural disasters that disrupt the economy. The research will provide Limestone Analytics an opportunity to deepen its partnerships in Eastern Ontario and establish itself as a reliable industry partner in policy development. This will enable Limestone to pursue new academic relationships with local subject area experts in the fields of crisis response, urban planning, workforce development, transport policy, spatial analysis, and economic recovery and development.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Allen Head

Student:

Frédéric Tremblay

Partner:

Limestone Analytics Inc

Discipline:

Economics

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

Queen's University

Program:

Accelerate

Designing and Evaluating Information Visualization Techniques to Increase Privacy Policy Comprehension in Multi-Device Environments

As Canadians use an increasingly wide variety of applications and digital devices for personal and business use, it becomes difficult to understand, remain up to date, and decide which data they should share with an application or on a website. Most often, users are unaware of what information a website or application uses, how or when their data will be shared, and who it will be shared with. Within this project, we are developing algorithms to extract meaningful data from the long, confusing privacy policies users are often required to read and creating visual methods to show this data to users so that they can make more informed decisions about the use of their data, both within an application and across all of the applications used on their devices. By creating privacy policies that are designed specifically for users, Chatham Labs is seeking to transform the way users interact with their devices and make it easier for them to understand and control how their data is used by others.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Christopher Collins

Student:

Mariana Shimabukuro

Partner:

Chatham Labs

Discipline:

Other

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

Ontario Tech University

Program:

Accelerate

Chemical and biological characterization of the non-tetrahydrocannabinoid profiles of medicinal plants

We propose to perform detailed studies that characterize chemically and biologically and the unaltered ancestral plant species of the Cannabis genus. Chemically, these studies will provide the chemotype profiles for each parental species for a spectrum of non-tetrahydrocannabinoid compounds. Biologically, these studies will provide the pharmacological profiles for each parental species. These data will enable the development of medical cannabis and cannabinoids (the right drug and the right dose) that can then be used for clinical trials (the right person/disease) to ultimately identify the therapeutic role of cannabinoid based pharmaceutics in disease management (the right time).

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Faculty Supervisor:

Paul Li

Student:

Abdul Qudeer Ahmed

Partner:

MedCan

Discipline:

Chemistry

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

Simon Fraser University

Program:

Accelerate

Portable Low-cost Fast Impedance-based Point-of-care Diagnostic Device for COVID-19

COVID-19 has significantly impacted the world. Nucleic acid, CT, and fever tests are standard tests, but they suffer from various limitations. For instance, CT requires large & expensive equipment. The nucleic acid test is not portable and takes at least two days. As sensor technologies get more advanced, a portable, low-cost and fast diagnosis COVID-19 device becomes more desirable. Our proposed impedance-based device takes 2 minutes to check lung infection and takes 20 minutes to obtain antibody results. The benefits to patients are apparent, especially low- and mid-income countries.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Jie Chen

Student:

Jie Zeng;Xiaoxue Jiang

Partner:

Hidaca Inc.

Discipline:

Sector:

University:

University of Alberta

Program:

Accelerate

Gas-Diversion Detection Techniques using Guided Wave Ultrasonic Testing

Detection of natural gas diversion in residential pipelines is important for public safety. To maintain utilities companies’ reputation and customer satisfaction, such diversion must be detected in a nonintrusive manner, without digging or using endoscope cameras. Thus, it is important to develop techniques for residential gas pipeline diagnosis using an external small device that can detect a diversion if it exists, and determine its location. The goal of this project is to develop non-intrusive diversion detection and localization techniques using ultrasound signals and signal processing.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Anas Chaaban

Student:

Mohanad Obeed;Saifur Rahman

Partner:

FortisBC

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Other

University:

Program:

Accelerate

Assessment and Validation of a Controlled Indentation Probe for Intraoperative Measures of Bone Quality and Humeral Implant Stability

This research seeks to finalize the design of an indentation tool to help shoulder surgeons determine bone density more accurately during joint replacements. Bone density is an important characteristic used to select the type and size of implant needed; and is also related to how stable an implant remains after surgery. Unfortunately, there aren’t tools currently available to shoulder surgeons for determining bone density objectively during surgery. Through a collaboration between Exactech, a shoulder implant manufacturer, and researchers from Western University’s Biomedical Engineering department, an indentation tool design has undergone preliminary testing, and will now be further refined for human tissue by measuring how well the tool’s results relate to bone density and primary implant stability. This collaboration provides researchers with access to commercially available implants for testing and a faster path to market to ensure the proposed tool can eventually be used by surgeons across Canada and beyond.

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Faculty Supervisor:

G. Daniel G. Langohr

Student:

Jacob Mackenzie Reeves

Partner:

Exactech, Inc.

Discipline:

Engineering - mechanical

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

Western University

Program:

Using atomistic simulations to better understand the performance of materials in various space environments

Space environments provide many challenges in terms of material performance. Simulations can assist us to understand more. This project focuses on researching and developing a tool that can be used by industry to assess the performance of materials and predict the mechanical properties after specific environment and damage scenarios.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Sam Nakhla

Student:

Liam Morrissey

Partner:

NuGen Consulting Inc.

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

Memorial University of Newfoundland

Program:

Data-Centric Approaches for Vertical Agriculture

This project addresses one of the challenges confronting Vertical Agriculture (VA): the acquisition of added-value data, their analysis and their transmission to enable VA to provide a steady production while minimizing its environmental impacts, manage its yield and allow for a better understanding of its inter-related component. As a starting point, strawberry production is looked at with its cluster partner NovaFarming. The approach proposed of identifying the data required from which knowledge can be generated to enhance the overall performance of the VA installation. This includes collecting data to be analyzed and proposing data-centric approaches to act upon in the VA enclosures.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Danielle Monfet;Frank Ferrie;Chadi Assi

Student:

Gilbert Larochelle Martin;Michael Smith;Elie El Haber

Partner:

Nova Farming Inc

Discipline:

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

Program:

Accelerate

Corrosion assessment of pyrolysis/hydrothermal liquefaction bio-oils: effects of upgrading treatments by catalytic hydro-de-oxygenation (HDO) in supercritical methanol/ethanol

Bio-oil derived from fast pyrolysis and hydrothermal liquefaction of lignocellulosic biomass usually contains a high oxygen content (30-50%), leading to a relatively low heating value, high viscosity and poor stability. Moreover, the presence of organic acids in crude bio-oil results in low pH value and hence corrosion of the reactor materials (steel or alloys). To date, a wide range of bio-oil upgrading techniques have been developed, especially hydro-de-oxygenation (HDO), widely employed to remove oxygen of the crude bio-oil via water formation. By far, not much research has been done on the reactor materials corrosion during HDO upgrading. In this research, upgrading of the crude bio-oil by HDO in supercritical methanol or ethanol will be investigated, not only to develop cost-effective processes for producing high-quality bio-fuels, but to explore corrosion mechanism of metallic alloy materials during bio-oil HDO or in contact with the crude and upgraded bio-oils.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Charles Chunbao Xu

Student:

Mingyuan Zhang

Partner:

Western Maple Bio Resources Inc

Discipline:

Engineering - chemical / biological

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

Western University

Program:

Accelerate

Real world testing of online cognitive training and rehabilitation programs

With an aging population on the rise, the prevalence of cognitive decline is expected to increase substantially. Goal Management Training® (GMT) and the Memory and Aging Program® (MAP) are cognitive interventions that have been studied extensively and applied clinically to address these needs. Although previous research has demonstrated efficacy of the in-person versions of both MAP and GMT, significant barriers exist in the utilization of these programs. In light of these challenges, online versions of MAP and GMT have recently been developed. The current project aims to evaluate if online versions of MAP and GMT are successful at improving cognitive functioning, knowledge about normal cognitive aging, engagement in lifestyle behaviours/strategies to mitigate cognitive changes and reducing intention to seek unnecessary medical attention for memory-related concerns. Findings will be used for knowledge dissemination and will aid in the commercialization of these evidence-based online cognitive interventions.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Alexandra J. Fiocco

Student:

Danielle D'Amico

Partner:

Cogniciti

Discipline:

Psychology

Sector:

Health care and social assistance

University:

Ryerson University

Program:

Accelerate