A project at Confederation College in Thunder Bay is testing drones for aerial surveys of northern forests.
From the kitchen to the great outdoors – and many other places in between – students and faculty at Canada's community colleges, institutes and polytechnics provide the brains and brawn to help get products and inventions to market.
These schools added more than $190-billion to Canada's economy in 2014-15, according to an EMSI study released Oct. 5 by Colleges and Institutes Canada (CICan).
Every fall, Research Infosource Inc. releases data on how much colleges and the like earn in research dollars. The top 50 research schools earned a total of $158-million in fiscal 2014, the 2015 report said.
While information from the 2016 report won't be released until later in October, with the full report out Nov. 17, the research income the schools pulled in during 2015 has remained "pretty level," Research Infosource chief executive officer Ron Freedman says.
"Previously we saw a period of rapid growth for a number of years and that growth has levelled off, but the number of partnerships and projects as well as the number of students involved in the research is increasing," Mr. Freedman says from his Toronto office.
While universities tend to collaborate with larger businesses such as multinationals, he points out that colleges more commonly form key partnerships with local industry – mainly small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), which account for more than 40 per cent of private-sector GDP according to Industry Canada.
In college partnerships, SMEs don't just get access to highly skilled student and faculty researchers, they also get the benefit of colleges' machinery, equipment and facilities "that they may not be able to afford on their own or need only on a short-term basis," Mr. Freedman adds.
Research Infosource says a key metric for college research is the number of active and completed formal partnerships and projects, which generally get private and public funding support, including from governments. In fiscal 2014, the top 50 schools were involved in 2,093 active research partnerships, compared with 1,810 in 2013.
So what projects have been on the applied research plates of some of Canada's colleges and institutes of late? Here are just a few of them:
Alfredo sauce gets extended life
George Brown College, Toronto
Kailey Gilchrist, sole proprietor of NONA Vegan Foods Ltd., gave George Brown College's Food Innovation Research Studio (FIRSt) in Toronto a meaty challenge: Extend the 10-day shelf life of her mother's cashew-based Alfredo sauce recipe, without changing the ingredients, to make it a more economically viable product.
In five months, FIRSt senior food scientist Rob McCurdy and culinary management student Hayley Turnbull, who has since graduated and is now a chef in British Columbia, increased by more than five-fold the shelf life of the sauce, which is sold at Whole Foods.
"We improved [Ms. Gilchrist's] raw materials, standardized her processes – we just changed the way she made the product, and … she was involved all along the way," Mr. McCurdy says. "We just modified some of the ingredients to make it more process friendly," improving the product's appearance at the same time.
Completed in October of 2014, the partnership has solidified the relationship George Brown researchers have with Ms. Gilchrist, who this year was named Futurpreneur Canada's Entrepreneur of the Year.
"She wants to do more work with us to investigate line extensions," Mr. McCurdy says.
A drone for forest mapping
Confederation College, Thunder Bay
KBM Resources Group's relationship with Confederation College goes deeper than just partnering with the Thunder Bay school for a recent project using drones for aerial surveys of northern forests.
The natural resources consulting firm, which is based in Thunder Bay and has an office in Prince Albert, Sask., specializes in aerial surveys, environmental consulting and technical services for clients in the energy, forestry, mining, transportation and utilities sectors.
KBM Resources partnered with Confederation College in a project comparing the quality of data acquired using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or drones) to current industry methods, including the use of manned aircraft outfitted with LiDAR, high-resolution mapping cameras, and positioning and data storage equipment.
KBM Resources has also hired numerous Confederation forestry program students for field work, including resource inventory surveys, says Stéphane Audet, who runs the company's UAV division.
In the now-completed project that began in 2014, student and faculty researchers studied whether drones offer new potential for more accurate and cost-effective aerial surveys of northern forests.
"Since the [drone] research ended, it has allowed us to get a certain level of confidence to deliver an accurate product, and it's now another data acquisition tool for us – primarily for measuring stockpiles," Mr. Audet says.
"They [drones] fly at a much lower altitude than manned aircraft and can capture data below the cloud ceiling. These systems will cover up to 15 square kilometres per day, making them more cost effective for smaller-scale jobs."
The KBM Resources-Confederation partnership allowed the company to "investigate a new opportunity and at very low cost, and now it's using some of the results," says Colin Kelly, the school's director of applied research.
Getting parents in the digital know
Cégep de Jonquière, Saguenay, Que.:
Reaching parents with digital tools so they don't forget that important school meeting or miss out on what's happening in their children's classrooms is the focus of a two-year research project at Cégep de Jonquière in Saguenay, Que..
The project, through the Centre d'étude des conditions de vie et des besoins de la population (ÉCOBES), targets "parents with a low level of digital literacy" and aims "to draw a picture of access and use of digital tools made by the parents, to design and implement a communications strategy to equip them in supporting their child throughout their schooling," according to a Cégep de Jonquière release.
Josée Thivierge, an educational consultant who is leading the work announced in February, says that "disadvantaged parents may not have a computer. If they do, they may be shy about using it.
"We are looking for the best ways to reach parents who are not in front of computers all day long," she adds.
The first year of the project focuses on exploring parents' access to digital tools and how they use them. The aim of the second year will be to design a communications strategy and ways to put that plan in gear, so more parents will become comfortable using electronic tools.
Partners in the project are Le Conseil régional de prévention de l'abandon scolaire, Le Carrefour communautaire Saint-Paul, and Le Centre de recherche, de développement et d'innovation en communication (CRDIC).
A special outfit for Parkinson's patients
Fanshawe College, London, Ont.:
Even when creating garments for medical purposes, comfort and ease of wear count.
It's one reason London-based medical device company Movement Disorder Diagnostic Technologies Inc. (MDDT) turned to Fanshawe College's school of design in London, Ont., for help in the development of a "motion capture suit" and "tremor arm sleeve" for people with Parkinson's disease.
A Fanshawe release says the suit and the experimental TremrTek sleeve aid in more accurately reporting and assessing tremors (which can occur in the hands, arms, legs, and face), providing vital information for doctors to decide the best drug therapy and dosage for individuals with Parkinson's – a chronic, degenerative disease of the nervous system.
The suit, which can be adapted for home use and mass production for commercial purposes, also features design elements for ease of wear and durability: large, simple-to-use zippers and belting features, mesh underlay for breathability, anti-skid fabric to tighten the sensor pockets against the body to more accurately read tremors, and pockets for 51 sensors located at key areas of the body.
Dan Douglas, dean of Fanshawe's Centre for Research and Innovation, says the project, undertaken by graduate Louise Marchand under the guidance of design professors, "demonstrates the trend toward cross-sector research and innovation activities and, in this case, by the merging of fashion with technology to develop a product for the health sector."
"The collaborative efforts between MDDT and Fanshawe College allowed us to address an unmet patient need in medicine," says Jack Lee, chief technology officer at MDDT, adding the designs incorporate "comfort and practicality into new medical technology."