The live-action video—built to provide fitness and nutrition coaching for women—placed first at Algonquin’s summer Applied Research Showcase. It was one of 36 projects featured at RE/ACTION on Aug. 9. The event drew a crowd of about 300 people to the DARE District to check out the innovations from more than 100 students and roughly 37 faculty members.
“It’s a nice surprise. I don’t believe it,” said the winning project’s video editor, Mona Eltahery. It’s a day she’s not likely to forget anytime soon. Aside from being awarded top honours, she was also awarded her Canadian citizenship the same day.
The team created the video for Musclebound Mama, a subscription-based, online nutrition-coaching business for women to help change their relationship with food. Their client, Musclebound Mama founder Sophie Smith, said the video does away with documents and 17-minutes of video explaining the “60-day challenge process.” In its place is a live-action video that explains how women can change the way they feel and think about food. The video combines full-screen overlay motion graphics and animation to help clients understand difficult and complicated concepts in a simple and effective way.
“Our team has Mona, who did video editing for 30 years in Egypt, so she did the bulk of the editing work,” explained Media and Design student, Stephen Gagné. “I’m a photographer. I did the green screen replacement, some of the colour keying and a few of the graphics. Frah (Ali Aman) drew everything, and Morgan (Nordskog) who is our lead, did all of the animations, said Gagné. Nordskog couldn’t be at the event because she is currently in Toronto working on a photography project. (Professors Adam Jarvis and Ken McGinn were the project’s faculty advisers.)
Taking to the podium to announce RE/ACTION’s top three winners, incoming President Claude Brulé couldn’t resist snapping a photo of the crowd.
“It’s a real pleasure for me to attend these events. It’s a combination of a lot of effort on our students’ parts, our faculty’s parts and staff, and it shows!” he said proudly. “You guys go all out to create a wonderful moment for our community and for our industry partners to come and visit, explore and discover Algonquin College. This is where the magic happens. This is where discovery happens. This is where development happens in applied research and today is no exception.”
Claiming second place was Energy Efficiency and Performance Simulations of PEX Water-Heating Systems by students Karl Murray, Kuwar Dalal, and Michael Stevens and Professor Ali Elwafi. Their project validates the performance of new hot water delivery (HWD) technology — both quantitatively and qualitatively. In particular, the study is to test, categorize, and benchmark the performance of new HWD systems using Cross-Linked Polyethylene (PEX) Piping against conventional piping materials and their associated installations.
Third place went to Autonomous Robotic Chimney Cleaner (ARCC) by students Steve Sokolowski, Dhaval Khodiyar, Rajesh Kangar, Venkata Sai Yath Chakka, and Professor Gino Rinaldi.
Their “autonomous chimney” functions as a cleaning robot intended for the consumer market. It is capable of scaling the walls of a chimney, measuring distance both above and below, all while cleaning the walls of the chimney.
“This edition we are featuring a very impressive list of projects. The quality of the projects speaks to the calibre of all of you students,” said Cristina Holguin-Pando, Director of Applied Research, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, during her opening remarks at the tri-annual AC Applied Research Day.
Algonquin’s applied research projects created a lot of media buzz this week. If you missed any of the headline-making projects you can catch them here:
Watch Electro-Mechanical Engineering Technician students demonstrate their Voice-Activated Bionic Arm, featured on CTV Morning Live on Aug. 8.
Listen to the CBC Morning Ottawa segment from Aug. 8 about Vision glasses, a prototype for the blind that allows the user to identify objects, read text, and identify faces.
Photo: Left to Right: Frah Ali Aman, Sophie Smith-Doré (industry partner & founder of Musclebound Mama), Mona Eltahery, Stephen Gagné and incoming President Claude Brulé.
