Two Smart Freight Centre students, Ahana Malhotra and Heider Al Mashalah had their research recognized in the McMaster University Societal Impact Pitch competition.
Ahana Malhotra, a PhD candidate in the DeGroote School of Business – McMaster University, won the second prize. Ahana shared her research on CrowdFeeding, an innovative platform for food banks’ last mile delivery. Ahana is working with the Crowdfeeding research team (that includes a postdoc, two master students and nine engineering students) to develop an app platform to work with food banks to deliver surplus food, where it occurs in the food supply chain, directly to food bank clients. The team is working on a pilot project with food bank Mishka Social Services, Eastern Food Market and Blue Line Taxi. The Smart Freight Centre lab at McMaster University is developing tracking technology using sensors and imaging to ensure that food is delivered with good quality. CrowdFeeding will ensure safe good quality fresh produce is delivered to the needy and at the same time saving food waste and carbon emissions.
Heider Al Mashalah, a PhD student in Computational Sciences & Engineering, McMaster University, shared his research on equitable and sustainable last mile deliveries. Heider is developing data-driven models to incorporate consumer preferences in designing last mile networks, including locker location and fleet assortment that take into account carbon emission in low-income neighbourhoods.
Ahana and Heider are supervised by Dr Elkafi Hassini. This research is supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), SSHRC-CRSH, Canada Foundation for Innovation/Fondation canadienne pour l’innovation and SCALE AI | Canada’s AI Global Innovation Cluster.
