Professor Jason Foster (EngSci) and graduate student Locke Davenport Huyer (ChemE, IBBME PhD candidate) have been recognized with University of Toronto Awards of Excellence.

Foster is receiving the Joan E. Foley Quality of Student Experience Award, which recognizes exceptional contributions to improving the quality of academic or extracurricular student life on campus.

As the creator of the Praxis courses for first-year Engineering Science students, he has been a driving force in enabling his students to get involved in community-focused design projects with tremendous impact. Praxis students have helped Toronto communities solve challenges from improving school safety to responding to art gallery visitor feedback.

Foster creates the opportunity for students to showcase their innovative solutions at a public showcase, where they often receive media coverage. In addition, he has developed several key design courses, created new teaching software to encourage student feedback and founded a group for the faculty’s design instructors.

Davenport Huyer has been named a UTAA Graduate Scholar. His biomedical engineering research focuses on creating a new kind of polyester material for building artificial cardiac tissue, and he has already published two first-author papers about his findings and organized two research conferences. He was awarded a prestigious Vanier Scholarship, worth $150,000, in 2016.

An enthusiastic mentor, Davenport Huyer is a volunteer lecturer for the Let’s Talk Science program and co-founder of the Institute for Biomatierals & Biomedical Engineering Discovery Program, an enriched science course taught by U of T students to high schoolers in one of Toronto’s low-income communities.

Conferred by the University of Toronto Alumni Association, the Awards of Excellence program recognizes faculty, students and staff who exemplify a commitment to enhancing the university experience for their peers and colleagues.