Are you looking for a unique research internship during the summer of 2021? If so, check out the Mitacs Globalink program. More than 2600 new projects – including 51 at the University of Guelph – have just been posted.
This year I am excited to offer 5 different research projects for up to 10 students. Brief descriptions of the projects are provided below. The projects span three of the lab’s four main research programs.
Full time undergraduate students (18 or older) currently studying in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Mexico, Taiwan, Tunisia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, or the United States are eligible to apply for this 12-week program. Canadian students can also apply for internships offered outside of Canada.
If you have questions about any of these projects, feel free to contact me.
Project 22433: An R Package for Environmental Agent Based Models
The intern will join a team of undergraduate and graduate researchers to help develop, implement, and test an R Package for the Environmental Agent Based Model algorithm. This will include developing proper documentation to support the package. It is expected that the intern will help co-author a paper for peer-review publication that describes the package. The package will also be submitted to CRAN for broader use.
Project 22432: An R Package for Generalized Spatial Mixture Models
The intern will join a team of undergraduate and graduate researchers to help develop, implement, and test an R Package for the Generalized Spatial Poisson Mixture Model. The model will allow users to classify unlabeled cases of disease given correlations that exist between different diseases within a region (e.g. COVID19 vs seasonal influenza), and spatial correlations between regions for a given disease. This will include developing proper documentation to support the package. It is expected that the intern will help co-author a paper for peer-review publication that describes the package. The package will also be submitted to CRAN for broader use.
Project 22430: Developing Software for Environment & Health Monitoring
Students will be tasked to continue development of the Android software (as well as a web application). Specifically, students will work with an interdisciplinary team of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, government officials, and Inuit researchers to implement mobile and web app functionality that supports the needs of the community of Rigolet. This may include using gaming elements to improve engagement with the app, implementing a badging system for skills training, or expanding the instant messaging platform.
Project 22429: Open Source, Open Data Connectivity and Mobility Pattern Monitoring
There are many tools developed by large corporations such as Google and Facebook which enable these corporations to obtain and control massive amounts of valuable data regarding how often mobile devices are in range of Internet connectivity, how and where they are mobile, and which devices are in proximity of each other. This data would be incredibly useful for researchers developing network simulation, deployment and planning tools. It would also be valuable for governments wishing to guide policy with data on where the digital divide with respect to connectivity is most acute. However, since most of the leading tools for collecting this data are not publicly available, and the data is also not available – these opportunities are lost. This project would support the ongoing development of a tool which can collect this data and open source both the data and the tool so that the public can benefit from data which is already being collected from us. Research will be performed regarding how to properly anonymize the data, and keep peoples’ privacy respected while still keeping the data as open as possible. This may result in novel schemes to anonymize the data, unique visualization and analysis techniques which provide insight without compromising the privacy of the devices providing the data. Another possible research outcome from this project could support the development of realistic mobility models which take into account real world device mobility as opposed to the status quo which is often random two dimensional motion, movement in a grid, or other simplistic models. Finally, this research could be used to inform development on routing algorithms for highly mobile networks and delay tolerant networks which often break apart unpredictably.
Project 22431: Sustainable Management of Animal Species Using Simulations and Agent Based Models
Students will assist with the development and application of a spatially indexed agent-based model to understand the effect of anthropogenic activities on populations of different species (including perhaps, Lake whitefish, Caribou, Piping Plover, and others). Students will be tasked with developing and extending existing models to include predation and competition, and to explore plausible outcomes of various conservation management activities.
Dr. Daniel Gillis (he/him) 🏳️🌈 