Red River College’s third-annual Applied Research & Innovation Day was a great success, with innovative student research projects running the gamut from smart technology, to plant-based proteins, to advancements in health and social sciences.

The event also demonstrated the future is bright for women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) – as women researchers took home the first, second, and third place prizes, as well as the people’s choice award. Here’s a look at their award-winning projects:

First Place:

Natural Language Processing – Chatbot

Student: Victoria McNab
School: Business and Applied Arts
Referred by: Randall Peters, Instructor – Business Information Technology

“This project aims to process millions of historical chat records, to develop an industry specific, assistive chatbot trained on this data using an offline environment, with no access to cloud computing resources. Rapid RTC provides online chat services to their customers, along with receptionist support. My goal is to use machine learning, and Natural Language Processing techniques to help the receptionists build better customer relationships by extracting the topics being discussed and analyzing the sentiment of the discussions. Using unsupervised machine learning, I applied the Latent Dirichlet Allocation algorithm to model the topics being discussed. In parallel, I applied statistical analysis techniques to manually determine topics, which gave me a result set to evaluate models against.”

Second Place:

Manitoba Soy-Free Tempeh

Student: Anna Borys
School/Program/Class: Culinary Arts
Referred by: Mavis McRae – Culinary Research and Innovation

“Tempeh is traditionally made from hulled soy beans, the purpose of the project is to create a non-soy tempeh, using a different source of pulses. Initially, we used traditional methods to making a yellow pea tempeh, however resulted in substandard product. To get a product that more closely resembles a more traditional tempeh, we altered cooking and culture variables. Although no clients were initially incorporated into this project, the work is applicable to companies such as Manitoba Pulse and Soy Growers Association, Best Cooking Pulses, AGT, or Prairie Fava. Further work to optimize product to commercial standards would be required.”

Third Place:

Acid-based Cleaning Solution for Animal Barns and Related Areas

Student(s): Erum Naz
School/Program/Class: Health Sciences and Community Services
Referred by: Said Hassan, Instructor

“This project involved developing an acid based cleaning solution for use in animal barns and related areas. This project was conducted for our client Precision Chemicals a Manitoba company which is primarily in the business of developing innovative solutions to farming problems. Precision Chemicals markets an alkaline barn cleaning solution, Bioshredder. However, the company wanted to also market an acid base solution. This project started by investigating various emulsifying and foaming agents. The project then proceeded by making various formulations and trying them in simulated real life environment. Eventually a product meeting the client’s specifications was developed and is being tried in the field.”

People’s Choice:

Reducing Post-Stroke Depression

Student(s): Samantha Eveleigh
School/Program/Class: Research and Scholarship in Nursing
Referred by: Meagan Chorney, Patrick Griffith

“Depression after stroke is considered a primary complication and can lead to decreased health outcomes. Despite this, there are limited studies that describe the individual’s experience with depression. With my lived experience of surviving a hemorrhagic stroke at the age of 18, my hope is to bridge the gap of knowledge and bring alive what is learned in theory.

Recovery from a stroke reveals depression in both immediate and long-term phases that may require intervention that could be led by nurses. Support to manage symptoms of depression can be led by nurses who are specialized in neurosurgery by leading a follow up after discharge either by telephone or by face-to-face interactions.”

The top three winners were all NSERC-supported projects, while Victoria McNab’s Natural Language Processing Chatbot also received support through IRAP.

All are invited to attend a special keynote address hosted by NVDIA on Wednesday, June 5.

Griffin Lacey will present the keynote address on Manitoba’s Future in HPC-2019. Lacey is a deep learning solutions architect for NVIDIA. In his current role, he assists Canadian customers in designing and deploying their scientific compute infrastructure to solve artificial intelligence problems.

This event is open to the general public. It is being hosted by the Enterprise Machine Intelligence & Learning Initiative and is being held in conjunction with Manitoba’s Future in HPC-2019, Digital Ag conference, which takes place the following day (June 6^th at the University of Winnipeg’s Eckhardt Gramatté Hall).

To register, please click here.

Red River College is proud to introduce the inaugural 2019 Vehicle Technology International Conference, September 30th through October 2nd in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

The Conference is oriented to researchers and practitioners involved with advances in and practical applications of vehicle technologies. The conference focus includes alternative propulsion technologies, heavy-duty and specialized vehicle applications, vehicle simulation, vehicle testing, data analysis and modeling, “smart” vehicle technologies, improving vehicle sustainability performance, and addressing barriers for new technologies. A particular tour-feature is Red River College’s newly completed MotiveLab, an advanced heavy-duty vehicle capable, extreme temperature climatic-chamber and chassis dynamometer test facility.

For more information and to register, please click here.

For the fifth year in a row, Colleges and Institutes Canada(CICan) is looking to showcase student talent on the walls of the association’s national office at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa. For the 2019 Art Showcase, CICan invites students from colleges and institutes across the country to submit their artwork.

CICan will be selecting a winner from the following categories:

• Printmaking
• Textile/Mixed Media/Sculpture
• Photography
• Digital illustration/animation
• Painting
• Drawing

The deadline for submissions is March 15, 2019. To learn more, please visit the CICan website.

Red River College, in partnership with Bioscience Association Manitoba, is pleased to welcome Dr. David Hughes, international speaker on global food and drink industry issues, to the Prairie Lights Dining Room on Monday, Dec. 3rd for a talk on “Insights and Trends in the Healthy Food Sector.” The event is free and all are welcome.

• Date: Monday, Dec. 3rd, 2018
• Time: registration is at 9am, session begins at 9:30am
• Location: Prairie Lights Dining Room, Notre Dame Campus
• Please register in advance at: biomb.ca.

Light refreshments will be served.

From Bioscience Association Manitoba:

Professor David Hughes is an Emeritus Professor of Food Marketing at Imperial College London, and a Visiting Professor at the Royal Agricultural University, U.K. He is a much sought-after speaker at international conferences and seminars on global food industry issues, particularly consumer and retail trends. David has lived and worked in Europe, North America, the Caribbean, Africa and South East Asia and has extensive experience as an international advisory board member with food companies and financial service organizations on three continents.

For 20 years, he was a Non-Executive Director of Berry Gardens Ltd – a U.K. farmer-owned berry fruit business (£230 million turnover in 2015). With his American business partner, David established, grew and sold a branded fresh produce business which served supermarkets in the USA. Around the globe, he works with food and beverage supply chain companies – including farm input, growers, manufacturers and ingredient companies, retailers and food service firms – to assist them in management training, strategy and Board level decision-making. David’s views are frequently sought by TV, radio and the printed press.

PARKING INFORMATION

If you are entering through the main entrance by the bus loop:

• Please go down to the Mall level,
• Proceed through the hallway on your right,
• Prairie Lights Restaurant is located on your right, next to Tim Horton’s in the Mall Level.

If you are entering through any other entrances:

• Please head to the Mall level
• Look for the Tim Horton’s (Prairie Lights is adjacent to it.)

Research Partnerships & Innovation (RPI) in collaboration with the Office of Small and Medium Enterprises (OSME) is pleased to host IDEaS program representatives at Red River College, Notre Dame Campus to bring awareness of the program to individuals, companies of all sizes, and academia. Learn more about the IDEaS, understand how to access program funds, and find out which of the many program elements might interest you the most. They will also get the chance to ask specific questions to program management, hear about new and upcoming IDEaS challenges, and ask questions about the various application processes.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.

Lunch & Learn
Time: 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm
Date: Thursday, September 20
Location: Prairie Lights Dining Room, Notre Dame Campus

Seating is limited so please register early. Deadline to register is by September 17, 2018.

Light lunch will be provided.

For more information, please email rpi@rrc.ca.

About the event:
Are you an innovator? Regardless if you are working from your home, an academic in a university lab, or a scientist in a small or major corporation, the Department of National Defence (DND) Innovation for Defence, Excellence and Security (IDEaS) program is looking for your solutions to help resolve defence and security challenges.

On April 9th, 2018, the Government of Canada launched the IDEaS Program. Through IDEaS, DND will invest $1.6 billion into the external innovation community over the next 20 years, accessing innovation from the most creative minds external to DND. The program will include competitions, contests, networks and mechanisms to engage with DND and show and test proposed solutions. As the program moves forward, new challenges and opportunities for working with DND will be announced.

Register now and join industry, business, and applied research leaders for this Lunch & Learn to explore how federal support can bring your work to the next level.
Get a practical snapshot of the spectrum of federal programming available from exploratory applied research, to pre-commercialization, and support for late-stage procurement and testing.
Read More →

Heather Smart, an Applied Research Professional at the Technology Access Centre for Aerospace & Manufacturing (TACAM) based at Red River College, is participating in a panel today at the 17th annual Research Money Conference in Ottawa.
Read More →

We are excited to release the list of student applied research projects that will be on display during Applied Research & Innovation Day on April 5, 2018.
Space is filling up fast for the event so register now!
Come see how what Red River College students are doing is working. Read More →

Back by popular demand, we are delighted to announce that Ace Burpee will emcee the keynote luncheon at Applied Research & Innovation Day on April 5 at Red River College! Read More →