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

Understanding and reducing the impacts of COVID-19 on personal support workers in an Ontario long-term care home

The impact of COVID-19 on long-term care, a sector previously struggling with critical challenges of recruitment and retention, has been devastating. The core working group, personal support workers, has been particularly impacted. Studies with other providers such as nurses have demonstrated stress and burnout during past pandemics as well as the negative influences on staff turnover. However, how personal support workers have experienced this pandemic and how this will impact existing human resource challenges is unknown. This participatory action study aims to understand this experience, identify these impacts, and facilitate action on a strategy aimed at reducing the influence of COVID-19 on this precarious workforce. The study findings will assist the partner organization to identify key challenges and strategies to address recruitment and retention, especially at this crucial time.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Jeannette Lindenbach

Student:

Mireille Fortin-Ukrainetz

Partner:

Finlandia Village

Discipline:

Other

Sector:

Health care and social assistance

University:

Laurentian University

Program:

Accelerate

Mitigating the social consequences of COVID-19 in a retirement residence

Part of the foundation of retirement residences is that older adults can benefit from living close to each other and the services they desire. Under social distancing rules, this assumption is challenged. Finlandia Village, like many other organisations needs to study this situation to work out how to adapt marketing, strategy, and new developments. In this project we will have two interns working at Finlandia Village. They will talk with residents about how their connections with friends and family have been affected by COVID-19 and social distancing measures. One intern will focus on finding out how any changes have impacted their sense of wellbeing. The other will focus on helping residents adapt to using videoconferencing and internet hosted games to reconnect. The results will help Finlandia Village work with their residents to improve their wellbeing in this difficult time.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Bruce Oddson

Student:

Halana Barbosa;Sarah Colton

Partner:

Finlandia Village

Discipline:

Kinesiology

Sector:

Health care and social assistance

University:

Laurentian University

Program:

Accelerate

Signal in the network: Measuring public opinion without polls

The project objective is to develop a method for measuring public opinion using social media data. Presently the ability to derive externally valid inferences from social media data is impeded by issues such as sample bias and data structure. By applying recent innovations in machine learning to account for such issues, this project aims to develop a robust, reliable and inexpensive means by which to continuously gauge public opinion with respect to a given topic.
This project benefits the partner organization by helping advance its mission of promoting democratic participation. The benefit to the intern is the ability to work with the partner organization’s unique data which are central to the development of the proposed method.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Paul McNicholas

Student:

Corentin Vande Kerckhove

Partner:

Vox Pop Labs Inc

Discipline:

Statistics / Actuarial sciences

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

McMaster University

Program:

Accelerate

Development of a point-of-care medical instrument for detection of COVID-19 virus in saliva

Fourien Inc. is developing a diagnostic medical instrument for rapid and low-cost detection of COVID-19 virus using saliva samples from early-stage infections. The custom-built vibrometer instrument will use micro-sensors to detect the RNA of the virus. There is a need to develop optimized and sensitive modules of optics, electronics and mechanics that are critical for the instrument to work. The intern will use her prior academic experience to bring creative solutions to industry problems. The successful completion of this research project will enable Fourien to commercialize the virus detection technology in clinics, labs, and pharmacies. It will also well position Canada to export the technology to the rest of the world.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Jie Chen

Student:

Nandini Debnath

Partner:

Fourien

Discipline:

Engineering - computer / electrical

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

University of Alberta

Program:

Micro Transit Demand Management (microTDM) with Big Data and Artificial Intelligence

Many typical transit operating costs are lumpy and expensive; the addition of an extra bus on a route at rush hour can cost up to a million dollars over the course of the year. At the same time, an extra bus is sometimes added to satisfy demand for a relatively small number of transit users. This project seeks to understand how micro transit demand management (microTDM) can change the behavior of a small number of transit users to obviate the need for costly, additional buses. To get there, we’ll use Big Data and Artificial Intelligence to ask who to incentives, when and with what? BusPas Inc. will benefit from participation in this project by being able to use the results of this research, as well mechanisms developed by the project applicants in BusPas’s implementation of microTDM. Doing so will place BusPas and Canada at the cutting edge of smart cities technologies as they relate to transit system management in the world.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Zachary Patterson;Nizar Bouguila;Owen Waygood

Student:

Ashkan Amirnia;Zixiang Xian;Ravi Teja Vemuri;Shahrzad Ranjbar;Bingwei Ge

Partner:

BusPas Inc

Discipline:

Sector:

Information and cultural industries

University:

Program:

Accelerate

Leveraging Community Support Services to Support Integrated Health and Social System Response to COVID-19

Social distancing due to COVID-19 has meant that older adults have not been as able to see their doctors. Older adults have chronic conditions, such as diabetes, that can flare up and cause emergencies. So, finding older adults who are unwell is very important. Community support services, such as those providing meals-on-wheels, are available to find older adults who need help. Researchers designed a self-report tool to use over the phone to see if a person needs to see a health-care worker or go to the hospital. This project will teach a community support service how to use this tool and note the steps to use the tool well. The information about how the community support service clients are doing during the pandemic will be described to help health-care and government planners understand how older adults are feeling and what help they need during the pandemic.

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Faculty Supervisor:

George Heckman

Student:

Melissa Northwood

Partner:

Community Care Concepts of Woolwich Wellesley and Wilmot Townships

Discipline:

Epidemiology / Public health and policy

Sector:

Health care and social assistance

University:

University of Waterloo

Program:

Accelerate

Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic challenges for families with children impacted by Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Citizen Advocacy Ottawa (CAO) is a non-profit organization supporting families with children impacted by Neurodevelopmental Disorders such as Autism Spectrum Disorder, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many challenges to families already strained by the complexity of caregiving for these children. Many issues have been identified such as caregiver burnout, social isolation, mental health issues of all family members, and even increased violence in the home. CAO programs have modified service delivery to now offer virtual support to their clients (i.e., virtual support groups, family support and training). Caregivers’ needs will be assessed through an online survey and qualitative interviews will be conducted; impact of virtual training will be assessed through pre and post training evaluation. The organization will benefit from this study in having a better understanding of their clients’ needs and ways to adapt their service during this pandemic.

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Faculty Supervisor:

James Reynolds

Student:

Maude Champagne

Partner:

Citizen Advocacy Ottawa

Discipline:

Other

Sector:

Health care and social assistance

University:

Queen's University

Program:

Accelerate

Development and validation of a questionnaire predicting individual differences in time to return to work after injury

Across many occupational settings, workers who are injured on the job receive a percentage of their lost earnings as they recover during the time they are unable to work. At the time of injury, trained professionals assign each of these injured workers an expected return date based on the severity of their injury. Currently, case workers rely solely on intuition about who they believe will be a slow versus fast returner to formulate different strategies for managing individual cases; despite the financial and psychological burden which can be levied on injured workers who return to work too quickly, or not quickly enough, to date, there exists no single validated questionnaire to assist case workers in their determination. This is the aim of the current research. This research will benefit Candian workers and the partner organization by helping case managers optimize strategies geared towards helping injured workers return to work safely and in a timely manner that is appropriate for the timecourse of their particular injury.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Frances Chen

Student:

Alec Beall

Partner:

Sentis

Discipline:

Psychology

Sector:

Other

University:

University of British Columbia

Program:

Development, optimization and production of fiber-based strain sensors for aerospace, automotive and health

The project will employ three undergraduate coop students and one post-doctoral fellow to work with the MesoMat team to improve the sensing capabilities of the fiber technology that has been developed at MesoMat and develop robust production methods. MesoMat has developed a fiber-based sensor manufactured from plastics and nanoparticles. These materials change their resistance when stretched and for this reason can be used as a sensor. Measuring the change in resistance as a function of strain is the operating principle of the sensors. The strain range over which the sensors are effective can be adjusted through the concentration of nanoparticle additives. The fibers are as thin as 10 micrometers in diameter. For this reason, they can be embedded within composites, bonded to the surface of materials that experience strain, placed within adhesive joints, or used to monitor biomechanical changes on the human body, amongst many other uses. The interns will determine optimal parameters for the nanoparticles, the concentration of nanoparticles, the various polymer materials that can be used for a range of applications and develop the required electronic data acquisition units required to read the signal. An ambitious aspect of the project is to develop fully scalable solutions for the

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Faculty Supervisor:

Harald Stover

Student:

John Frederick Niven;Alexander Dingwall

Partner:

Mesomat

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

McMaster University

Program:

Accelerate

Sparse array photodetector in multiplexed confocal FLIM

Confocal microscopy is a specialized imaging technique that is used by universities and pharmaceutical companies to perform drug discovery. The research team developed a multiplexing technique that can improve the imaging speed by 1000 times. In this project, the team will develop customized versions of the instrument with different cameras to cater to specific customer needs. Success of the proposed development will significantly strengthen the technology and pave the path towards a Startup company to bring it to the market.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Qiyin Fang

Student:

Morgan Richards

Partner:

I-INC Foundation for Business Development

Discipline:

Engineering - biomedical

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

McMaster University

Program:

Accelerate

Assessment of compression breakage test methods for rock hardness characterization

The most energy intensive component of mineral processing is comminution (crushing and grinding), consuming, on average, about 50% of the total electric energy of a mine site . To optimize and thereby improve the energy performance, accurate measurement of the ore hardness is critical. The proposed study is aimed at developing a new test apparatus that represents an improvement over existing methods. The test apparatus has the ability to generate data for larger sample sets than present methods and thereby represents a significant improvement.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Bern Klein

Student:

Lei Wang

Partner:

Minpraxis Solutions Ltd.

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

University of British Columbia

Program:

Accelerate

Production of semi-synthetic jet fuel

Greenfield Global is developing a process to produce jet fuel from renewable materials, such as waste biomass and organic municipal waste. The renewable materials are first converted to a synthetic oil and then converted into jet fuel. This project deals with the final step in the process, namely, to convert the synthetic oil to jet fuel. Jet fuel must meet stringent international specifications which makes it difficult to develop an alternative fuel for aviation. In order to meet those specification, the project will focus on the conversion processes needed such as hydrotreating and hydrocracking to turn the synthetic oil into jet fuel. Although these are known petroleum-based oil conversion technologies, none of these technologies were developed to convert synthetic oil from renewable materials, which include oxygen-containing compounds. It is our aim to adapt these petroleum refining technologies for use with synthetic oils. Technically speaking, competitive adsorption on catalysts, the impact of vapor-liquid-liquid equilibrium due to the formation of an aqueous phase, and the oxygen-containing compound reaction network must be better understood. Understanding the processes to generate renewable-based jet fuels will assist Greenfield Global with the development of renewable jet fuel that could in future expand their current renewable fuel business.

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Faculty Supervisor:

Arno de Klerk

Student:

Garima Chauhan

Partner:

Greenfield Global

Discipline:

Engineering - chemical / biological

Sector:

Other

University:

University of Alberta

Program:

Elevate

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