{"id":46389,"date":"2018-05-02T16:58:42","date_gmt":"2018-05-02T20:58:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?p=46389"},"modified":"2025-08-19T09:36:44","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T13:36:44","slug":"carletons-tim-program-recognizes-top-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/2018\/carletons-tim-program-recognizes-top-projects\/","title":{"rendered":"Carleton\u2019s TIM Program Recognizes Top Projects"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Carleton\u2019s TIM Program Recognizes Top Projects\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

By Tyrone Burke
\n<\/em>Photos by Chris Roussakis<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The City of Ottawa<\/a>\u2019s staff was growing, its ranks swelling with tech-savvy young people who value mobility and said they wanted to telework. When a cloud-based IT infrastructure was introduced, it should have ushered in a new era of flexible work arrangements that made everyone\u2019s life easier and more efficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it didn\u2019t. Staff remained anchored to their cubicles, day after day, despite the pressure it was placing on office space and infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI asked, what are the things preventing people from working more from home?\u201d says Saswat Mohalik, whose Adaption to work from home in a public sector<\/em> master\u2019s project shared top prize at the TIM Impact awards, which recognized five of the best master\u2019s projects from Carleton\u2019s Technology Innovation Management<\/a> (TIM) program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The interdisciplinary graduate program for aspiring entrepreneurs is jointly run by the Faculty of Engineering and Design, Sprott School of Business, and Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs. It pairs graduate students with clients who need real-world solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne problem was that people feel a negative image might be created with managers,\u201d Mohalik says. \u201cSo I recommended to encourage employees to fix one day a week to work from home, and on that day managers will say, \u2018OK, go ahead and work from home.\u2019 There won\u2019t be any career disadvantage.  You\u2019ll get your promotions and everything. What we need is for the work to be done.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mohalik also recommended education sessions for old guard managers who equate telework with slacking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTechnological advancement and collaboration tools allow managers to see how much time an employee is available during the day,\u201d he says, \u201cand how much time they\u2019re not. Those types of things should be used to track their work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mohalik\u2019s research shared the top honour with Haiwen Hou, whose Using topic modeling to examine the application of machine learning in cybersecurity startup offers<\/em> used a machine learning technique that  recognizes hidden semantic structures in text to better understand and categorize the product offerings of cybersecurity companies. Hou\u2019s technique can be applied to other market research and competitive analysis problems. His client was Global Cybersecurity Resource<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mohalik and Hou shared the stage with three other top students:<\/p>\n\n\n\n