The Teaching and Learning Innovation Digest - May 2023

Student Researchers, Islam Albadawi and
Tarandeep Bansal, had the opportunity to get
a unique training experience while working
on the project. “It’s not just a project, it’s with
an industry partner so we are making a real
difference,” said Islam. “It’s such an interesting
and enriching experience for a student to
have. It gives you the hands-on experience of
how research is done.” Tarandeep was equally
pleased with his internship experience. “It was
very good in terms of exposing us, exposing
an international student to how research goes
on in Canada and how you have to collaborate
(being in an educational or a research and
institutional background), and manage things
with an industry partner,” he said. “Overall, it
was a test on every skill that we learned during
our study curriculum.” Professor Nurul Hassan,
a co-Principal Investigator on the project, with
Principal Investigator Professor Siyam Subair,
mentioned how valuable this project was for
him. “I learned from the process and the whole
experience, [things like] time management
and how to effectively use chemicals in a
laboratory. These were all new learning
experiences for me as well,” said
Professor Hassan.
Xello Inc. engaged WIMTACH in another
successful project collaboration on an
applied research project centered on
upgrading a framework for their existing web
applications. For the Xello team, WIMTACH
was a valuable resource to find experts and
skilled developers needed to undertake
a project that the company was unable to
shoulder. Ben Pierce, the Vice President
of Xello Inc., was very pleased with the
collaboration and noted that the partnership
was instrumental in removing some of the
major roadblocks of project development,
including finding and managing a team of
skilled professionals who can deliver great
work on deadline. “Normally, this is something
we would have to do on the Xello side but
[WIMTACH] knows these students, knows
where they perform well, and [they are] able
to match the skills we need on the team
to the project and handle quite a bit of the
organizational work that would normally
have to be done within the company,” Pierce
said. Students were able to share insightful
ideas to improve upon project development
decisions. “We probably had three or four
really great ideas come in just from the student
side…things we would never have thought of
internally,” he said.
As a result of the continued partnership
with WIMTACH, Xello Inc., hired several
WIMTACH Student Researchers as fulltime
developers after their graduation
in December 2021. Gagandeep Singh
was one student who benefited from this
collaboration. Singh assisted the WIMTACH
research team in the development of a project,
and through that experience, was able to
secure a Front-End Development role with
Xello Inc. “[At WIMTACH] everyone was just
so helpful. My manager, the one who hired me,
would be open to help me on every topic and
angle. Moreover, because many of us were
students, it was effortless to seek help, as
everyone needed it as much as I did,” Singh
said. “[The WIMTACH internship was] the most
engaging and interesting work experience…
WIMTACH is as real as it gets in simulating
real work experience on campus.”
Moreover, in mid-2021, Dicentra, a Torontobased
Contract Research Organization,
collaborated with WIMTACH to develop a
platform-independent, user-friendly, Artificial
Intelligence (AI) enabled web application to
collect and manage participant information
and identify appropriate participants
from their database for specific clinical
trials. The application uses a point system
that enables administrators to easily manage
clinical trial participants to reduce recruitment
costs. Peter Wojewnik, Dicentra’s project lead
and Vice President of Growth, Marketing, and
Sales, was satisfied with the collaboration.
“WIMTACH has been outstanding so far and
I am so happy I found them. They have been
extremely helpful and accommodating and
they made the whole process very easy and
exciting,” Wojewnik said.
Continuing to assist businesses to stay ahead
of industry innovation and technological
development, the WIMTACH research team
is currently assisting several businesses with
innovative applied research projects. Some of
these collaborations include Legacy Financial
Canada Inc., a Toronto-based financial
planning and services firm, with the
development of an Artificial Intelligence
system to manage workflow and enable
communication between clients and
advisors. WIMTACH is also working with
Interaxon, a Toronto-based company, on Muse,
a responsive sleep experience designed to
monitor and improve sleep hygiene. Muse is
also a multi-sensor meditation device that
provides real-time feedback on brain activity,
heart rate, breathing, and body movements
to help build a consistent meditation
practice. With the Fabric-Based Research,
Innovation and Technology Development
(FIBRE) program, WIMTACH aims to help
Interaxon by increasing the lifetime of the
Muse headbands, providing a solution to the
low durability challenges posed by the current
Muse headbands. Amal Surendran, a Student
Researcher involved in the development
of the FIBRE project, is another student
who has noted benefits from his internship
at WIMTACH. “After joining WIMTACH,
I understood why meeting deadlines, being part
of the team, and being someone people can
rely on when needed is so crucial,” Surendran
said. WIMTACH’s student engagement
initiative and teaching model continues to
prepare Centennial College students for
employment as it remains a leader among
other Technology Access Centres in providing
paid student development opportunities.
In 2022, WIMTACH collaborated
with industry partners on
44 projects and hired 22
Centennial College experts to
assist with applied research
projects while providing
experiential paid learning
opportunities to over 110
Centennial College students.
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