applied research

RE/ACTION Applied Research Showcase – Call for Judges

volunteer judgesThe Office of Applied Research & Innovation is seeking volunteer judges for the applied research showcase competition on April 13th, 2018.

Every year, student teams work on applied projects in which they apply knowledge and skills acquired through their field of study. The majority of these projects are presented in April each year at the applied research showcase: “RE/ACTION. This year’s projects fall into a number of categories:

Science, Engineering and Construction;
Arts, Design, Business and Management; and
Information Technologies, Mobile and Web Design.

Judges evaluate selected student team’s results, based on novelty/creativity, technical competence, impact, the strength of client-team interactions and communication and presentation skills.

This event provides an excellent opportunity for entrepreneurs and industry leaders to network with Algonquin’s capable and motivated academic community of students and faculty.

Those interested in participating as judges, or who have more questions about this opportunity, can contact:

Danielle Evong
Office of Applied Research and Innovation, Algonquin College
evongd@algonquincollege.com
613-727-4723 ext. 5213

Winners of Applied Research Day (August 2017)

Dancing Data Visualization

1st Place Winning Project

A data visualization tool built to create seamless data animations at the click of a button. This tool allows large data sets to showcase relationships that are often lost in multi-dimensional forms. We call these animations ‘Dancing Data’.

Presenters: Edmer Buen; Shannon Wilson; Geemakun Storey; Weikai Li
Project Facilitator: Adesh Shah
Project Manager: Theodore Mirtchev
Industry Partner: Global Advantage Consulting
first place project team

Big Data for Small Places

2nd Place Winning Project

BD4SP is a project that’s at its core is to supply small business and small places with the right tools to make better decisions in order to create growth. At the center piece of this project, we focused on Frontenac County, which struggled to make sense of all the information it had to pin point: where they should invest their money? Where are the healthy hamlets? What are the social demographic issues that affect those factors? And many more. This project is meant to give visual representation, make sense of the data that’s being supplied and help Frontenac make more calculated predictions in the its future.

Presenters: Robert Taracha; Anton Antonenko
Project Facilitator: Adesh Shah
Project Manager: Theodore Mirtchev
Industry Partner: Big Data for Small PlacesWinners of Applied Research Day (August 2017)

Masterpeice VR/Exchange Integration

3rd Place Winning Project

MasterpieceVR is the world’s first collaborative 3D painting, sculpting and modelling program for virtual reality. Create works of art, colourful characters, and objects with ease. Connect with people anywhere in the world and create together in real time, teach an art class, or share your creation.

Presenters: Kari Ball; Mitchum Drury; Morgan Morrell-Frewn; Alex Papineau; Arin Poray; Devin Shepherd
Professor: Greg Beaton
Industry Partner: Brinx Inc.
Third place project team

Data Analytics Centre Officially Announced

Algonquin College on Monday morning formally announced that it will receive $2.3 million over five years ($460,000 per year) to fund a new Data Analytics Centre which will work with local and national partners to harness the power of big data for the purposes of data mining, machine learning for predictive analytics, and distributed intelligence. This initiative is the first of its kind in the Canadian college system, and will join Algonquin College’s six applied research centres under its Office of Partnerships, Applied Research, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship.

MP Anita Vandenbeld was on hand to make the announcement.

“With this technology Algonquin College will have new methods of providing applied research support to local businesses and industry. Companies will benefit from access to college expertise and resources; faculty will gain new knowledge and insights to integrate into the curriculum; college students will benefit from a real world, engineering experience,” said MP Vandenbeld, “In short, our government’s funding and this cutting edge technology will further anchor Algonquin College’s position as one of Canada’s premiere institutions.”

MP Anita Vandenbeld and President Cheryl Jensen

The funding was awarded following a successful application to NSERC’s College and Community Innovation program. Partners of Algonquin College’s centre include regional innovators such as Gnowit, Global Advantage, CHEO, Newborn Screening Ontario, Ocular Mobile Innovations, Community Ingenuity, Gymtrack, Contextere, IBM, Cumulus Dental, Paradigm Technologies, GaitTronics, RealDecoy, bitHeads, TyQuest, Discoverly, Mitel, Carleton University, The University of Ottawa, Invest Ottawa, Ontario Centers of Excellence, CANARIE, and Research Data Canada.

The Data Analytics Centre will be located inside the Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Learning Centre once construction on that project concludes next year. This is Algonquin College’s fifth successful application to NSERC’s CCI funding program.

Read the full article here

If you have plans in ‘Big Data’ as either an adopter or a provider, or if you could use assistance on data research, data analytics product development, testing, and commercialization, please contact:

Theo Mirtchev, Ph.D. | Project Manager | Applied Research & Innovation | Algonquin College | 613-727-4723 ext. 6080

Winners of Applied Research Day (April 2017)

Introduction to Arduino

1st Place Winning Project

This project’s goal is to create interactive Arduino labs for students in the library and to create an information technician program at Algonquin College. These labs are aimed at early users, with a range from simple labs for children to more interesting labs for others.

Presenters: Andrew Moon; Enias Gengezha; Yitagusu Shiferaw
Principal Investigator: Cynthia Ough-Underwood

Winners of Applied Research Day (April 2017)

Static Load Testing Cell

2nd Place Winning Project

This static load testing cell is designed and built on the basis of functionality, accuracy, and ease of operation in order to allow the client to accurately test their products to ensure they meet the required standards and specifications.

Presenters: Andrew McDonald; Casey Foley; Angus Wilson; Nathanael Slow; Flint Gleeson
Principal Investigator: Sandra Brancatelli
Industry Partner: HealthCraft ProductsWinners of Applied Research Day (April 2017)

Expense Tracking App

3rd Place Winning Project

The goal of this project is to create a mobile application designed for tracking travel expenses for business trips. The application encompasses the pre-approval, expense tracking and claims submission processes.

Presenters: Ryan Doiron; Sercan Kum; Anton Antonenko; Hjalmar Ayestas Leclair; Matthew Saab; Caleb Lalonde-Sauvé
Principal Investigator: Gerald Hurdle
Industry Partner: Canadian Commercial CorporationWinners of Applied Research Day (April 2017)

New Student Researcher Position

WordPress Developer
Paid Co-op / Student Researcher Position
4 – 8 months with potential for permanent placement at firm
$15 per hour / 20hrs – 37.5 hours per week

Gnowit is seeking a WordPress developer to design, develop and maintain a WordPress plugin to cleanly integrate several of Gnowit’s information aggregation and analytics products into WordPress powered web sites.

Responsibilities

  • Develop custom and interactive WordPress Plugins using proven technologies and best practices
  • Collaborate closely with designers, developers, product managers and the marketing teams to effectively productive the Gnowit plugin on the WordPress app store and other trade publications
  • Optimize the WordPress plugins for speed and conversion
  • Troubleshoot bugs and fix them in a timely and non-disruptive manner

Requirements

  • 1+ years of WordPress Experience
  • 2+ years of HTML, CSS, JS, PHP and MySQL experience
  • (Bonus) Expertise with modifying and managing themes and plugins
  • Understanding of WordPress code
  • Thirst to learn new things and to constantly improve your work
  • Problem Solver mentality – whether load times are slow or the plugins are conflicting, you won’t stop until things are running smoothly
  • Understanding of cross-platform and cross-browser issues

Please contact Dr. Shahzad Khan (shahzad@gnowit.com) with your resume and a brief description of relevant experiences to set up an interview.

ARI Open House Highlights

The Algonquin College Office of Applied Research & Innovation (ARI) held an open house this past Thursday, February the 9th, 2017 to celebrate its new space in the F-building.

Open house conversations

The goal of the event was to increase ARI’s visibility and share the new space with students, staff, and industry. In pursuit of this result, the Collaboration Lab was filled with projects to engage attendees and offer experiential learning opportunities.

Projects included:

  • Virtual Reality artwork collaboration software “MPVR” from Brinx
  • Visual collaboration system “Nureva Span” from Nureva
  • Laser engraved artwork from Eepmon
  • Digital interactive comic Immunity Warriors

Overall, the event succeeded in bringing the Algonquin College community together with industry, enabling the education and promotion of emerging partnerships and projects.

Immunity Warriors Launch

Immunity Warriors: Invasion of the Alien Zombie is a motion comic book that uses Madefire to transform a traditional comic book into an exciting interactive experience. With an action-packed storyline, Immunity Warriors educates children on their immune system, battling viruses, and the importance of vaccinations.

The group responsible for the project including Dr. Wilson, the mHealth group at OHRI and Kevin Holmes, Project Manager at the Health and Wellness Research Center, held a press release on Tuesday, January 24th. The event took place at Broadview Public School and participating students were asked to brainstorm names for the motion comics characters.

The response from the press has been very positive – Immunity Warriors is featured in the Ottawa Citizen, The Kitchissippi Times and on CBC and Global News.

Currently, Immunity Warriors: Invasion of the Alien Zombies is available through the CANImmunize app or online at www.immunity warriors.com

Immunity Warriors space ship and rockets

Masterpiece VR Launched on Steam

Masterpiece VR is a collaborative virtual reality platform that allows you to freely and intuitively create 3D models, this past week it was launched on Steam. The software is being provided FREE for the time being, as it is still an “Early Access” title.

Read more about the software on their website at http://brinxvr.com/mpvr and download it today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k089LjkDhxA

 

 

Maclean’s Covers Applied Research Project: Live Line

A team of recent graduates from Algonquin College paired up with Hydro Ottawa this summer to help make a dangerous job a bit safer. Bradley Kasaboski, Derek Boase and Mauricio Ledón spent three months developing a prototype for a training jacket that can teach would-be power-line technicians how to navigate high-voltage wires.

Read the full article

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Ottawa Business Journal Highlights Algonquin Applied Research Day

Algonquin’s Applied Research Day a ‘win-win’ for Students, Industry

For Algonquin College students, applied research means solving real-world problems for actual businesses. That research – and its diversity – was on display at the school’s Applied Research Day on Aug. 19.

“We emphasize developing soft skills, understanding the expectations of a professional environment and since we do serve a lot of small startup-size companies, often there’s opportunities to continue on with the companies or, if they do a particularly good job, to get recognition.”

Read the full article and interview with Alex Yang.

Ottawa Business Journal logo