Rose-Marie's project focuses on the analysis of interactions between bacteriophages - the viruses of bacteria - and bacteria of the intestinal microbiota based on datasets from experiments carried out by the student in collaboration with members of the Institute of Nutrition and Functional Foods (INAF) at Université Laval. The first objective is to study the impact of phages on bacterial dynamics in a simplified microbiota, composed of 8 key bacterial strains of the human intestinal microbiota.

Alexandre Boulay's project involves the analysis of phages and bacteria in the gut microbiota from a metagenomic dataset from the Institute of Nutrition and Functional Foods (INAF) at Université Laval, relying on bioinformatics and artificial intelligence (AI) methods. The dataset comes from a recent study that examined the interaction of the endocannabinoid axis with host environmental factors as well as gut, metabolic and mental health status in Quebec adults with various metabolic and lifestyle statuses.

The intern developed a tool for converting pulmonary nodule annotation data stored inHDF5 files to theDICOMfile format. The tool enables the extraction of annotation data from the HDF5 file as well as the lung computed tomography (CT) data of patients stored in a database. Subsequently, the tool generates and saves a DICOM annotation file following the structure indicated by the DICOM Standard Browser. The student programmed this tool in Python while keeping track of versions using Gitlab.

Delirium is a condition that, when left unmanaged, is associated with increased mortality and longer hospitalization of patients in intensive care; therefore, its detection should be an integral part of care. It is characterized by confusion, anxiety and reduced alertness. It is estimated that 75% of delirium cases are not detected on admission to hospital. Detecting such an acute condition requires frequent monitoring of participants, which is labor intensive and requires expertise.

High-dose-rate (HDR) brachytherapy is a standard treatment modality to treat cancer (e.g., prostate and cervical cancer) using the ionizing radiation of a small encapsulated radioactive source. The curative aim in the clinic is to create treatment plans that maximize the dose to the tumor while minimizing the dose to normal tissues. When it comes to the treatment plan generation, manual fine tuning of an objective function is necessary to achieve optimal trade-offs between these two conflicting objectives.