Using AI-driven materials design, a team of researchers at U of T Engineering has discovered a new set of metal alloys that retain their strength under extreme conditions.
The materials are well suited to additive manufacturing, also known as 3D metal printing, and could lead to enhanced, custom-made parts for aerospace, power generation and more.
“There’s enormous demand for materials that can stand up to huge swings of temperature and pressure, such as what you would find inside a jet engine, or in the steam generators inside nuclear power plants — anywhere conventional steel just can’t survive,” says Professor Yu Zou (MSE), the Canada Research Chair in Materials and Manufacturing for Extreme Environments, who led the project.
“We also need materials that can be printed layer by layer, enabling us to make components that can’t be created by traditional manufacturing processes. For example, to make a material that is both lightweight and strong, you can vary the composition: a hard, tough alloy on the outside to something softer and lighter on the inside.”
Zou says that many of the high-performance metal alloys used today are made primarily of a single component — often nickel or cobalt — with small amounts of up to ten other elements mixed in.
But there are many other formulations that haven’t yet been explored, largely because of physical limits: identifying new 3D-printable alloys out of tens of thousands of possible combinations is a daunting task, particularly for complex alloys of three or more principal elements.
To overcome this problem and explore new regions of the potential design space, Zou’s team, in collaboration with Professor Jason Hattrick-Simpers (MSE), is leveraging the power of AI.
Their technique, which they call active learning, combines computer modeling, machine learning and robot-assisted manufacturing to create a self-driving lab, capable of following up on promising leads with minimal human intervention.
The project is partially supported by U of T’s Acceleration Consortium, a global community of government, academia and industry that uses AI and automation to accelerate the discovery of materials.
“One problem you often run into when trying to use AI to design to materials is that most machine learning models require lots of data about material properties to learn from,” says Ajay Talbot, a PhD student in Zou’s lab and lead author on a paper in npj Advanced Manufacturing that describes the work.
“But if you’re working in part of the design space that hasn’t been explored yet, that data doesn’t exist, so you’re kind of flying blind.”
“The way we get around that challenge is to use data-lean models that essentially feel their own way along. Our active learning model strategically selects a few samples to manufacture and test, and the data from those experiments is ingested back into the model to inform where we’re going to go next. It really speeds things up.”
To demonstrate the value of this approach, Talbot and his collaborators targeted what they call compositionally complex alloys that contain relatively large amounts of just three different elements: nickel, cobalt and chromium.
In just a few weeks of work, their self-driving lab had zeroed in on six new alloys with promising new properties.
“One of the properties we were targeting was puncture resistance at temperatures of up to 600 Celsius, which is what you’d find in the front section of a jet engine,” says Talbot.
“The industry standard in this space is nickel-based alloys such as Inconel 625. But we found one made of 12% nickel, 62% cobalt and 26% chrome that was great for retaining hardness at extremely high temperatures. Even with just three components, our alloy outperformed Inconel 625 — an alloy of more than 10 different elements — by 4.5% in our lab tests.”
Another alloy is designed for the back of jet engines, where temperatures can get even hotter, up to 1000 Celsius.
“One of the things that happens in an environment like that is the formation of oxide scale, which essentially means that your material is just getting burnt away,” says Talbot.
“We found a material made of 36% nickel, 14% cobalt and 50% chrome that was extremely good for oxidation resistance at these high temperatures: it even outperforms Inconel 625 by 85%. We’re eventually aiming to ramp up to even higher temperatures, up to 1,200 Celsius.”
Talbot says that the new alloys reported in the paper are just the beginning.
“This nickel-cobalt-chrome system has just three elements in it. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a relatively simple system,” he says.
“But it’s great for showing that this whole closed-loop discovery platform really works. What we want to do next is ramp up the complexity a bit more to make even crazier stuff, with maybe up to ten or twelve different elements.”
“As you add more components, you can get different strengthening mechanisms, different kinds of useful properties. There’s a lot more out there just waiting to be discovered.”
Parinaz Naseri recently joined the University of Toronto’s Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) as an assistant professor, teaching stream. This past term, she taught ECE221: Electric and Magnetic Fields and ECE342: Computer Hardware.
Prior to joining the faculty, Naseri was a student, earning her PhD from U of T in 2023. Her graduate research focused on inverse design of electromagnetic metasurfaces using machine learning, with applications in satellite communications.
What drew you to join the University of Toronto, and what excites you most about being here?
I completed my PhD at the University of Toronto, where I felt consistently encouraged, supported and empowered, not only by my supervisor, but by the broader U of T community. Even after transitioning to industry, I stayed connected by returning as a guest lecturer.
Joining U of T as a faculty member felt like a natural way to give back; to contribute to the same culture of mentorship and excellence that shaped my own development. What excites me most is the opportunity to help train the next generation of engineers and to play a meaningful role in enriching the student experience in a way that reflects the support I once received.
What are the main areas of your research, and why are they important today?
My research sits at the intersection of electromagnetic engineered materials, specifically metasurfaces, and machine learning.
Metasurfaces enable highly compact, multi-functional systems that can precisely control electromagnetic waves. By integrating machine learning into their design, I focus on rethinking how these structures are created — replacing slow, intuition-driven design cycles with data-driven approaches that can quickly explore complex design spaces and uncover non-obvious, high-performance solutions.
This is particularly important today as demands grow in connectivity, advanced sensing, and real-time adaptability across applications such as wireless communications, imaging and next-generation radar systems. My work aims to develop scalable and intuitive design frameworks that make these technologies more powerful and more accessible.
At the same time, I’m passionate about making these concepts easier for students to grasp and engaging enough to inspire the next generation of researchers to contribute to this rapidly evolving field.
What is the most memorable experience in your career so far?
One of the most memorable moments in my career dates back to the European Conference on Antennas and Propagation in 2016. I was a master’s student presenting my work among leading experts and industry researchers.
After one presentation, I raised a technical question, pointing out that some of the challenges being discussed were already addressed in existing literature and that the proposed approach required further scrutiny. At the time, this was not necessarily the expected behavior for a student presenter, especially with my own talk coming up next, and I was advised afterward that it might have been better to stay silent. However, that moment unexpectedly became a turning point. The session chair engaged with my comment and later reached out to learn more about my work. This led to an invitation to join their research group in Portugal, where I worked on European Space Agency–funded projects for more than a year. That experience had a lasting impact on me; it reinforced the importance of engaging critically in technical discussions and showed me how moments of intellectual curiosity, even when uncomfortable, can open unexpected and meaningful research paths.
When did you know engineering was for you?
I think I realized engineering was for me quite early on, probably around age 10. I was always curious about how things worked, often to the point of taking them apart just to see what was inside. One of my first projects was building a simple stethoscope using things I found at home, including IV tubing and parts from a saline drip set. I made it for a school project, and I still remember that it actually worked! Getting positive feedback about it was a big moment of excitement for me at that age.
Around the same time, I also tried to take apart a few watches I’d been gifted, hoping I could figure out how to fix them. That part didn’t go as well; I never managed to put them back together properly. But looking back, those small experiments were probably the clearest early sign of where I was headed: I liked understanding how things worked from the inside, even if it meant breaking them first.
As a new professor, what’s one piece of advice you would give to new students?
I’d tell students not to be too quick to decide what they can or can’t do. A lot of growth comes from stepping into situations where you don’t feel fully ready yet. You don’t find out what you’re capable of just by thinking about it. You find out by trying things, even when they feel a bit out of reach. Skills aren’t something you wait for; they’re something you build by showing up, making mistakes, and trying again. So I’d say: take the chances that stretch you a little. That’s usually where the real learning starts.
What’s something students might be surprised to learn about you?
Students are often a bit surprised that I tend to turn everyday things into small problem-solving challenges. I’ll turn routine tasks into, “Can I do this a bit more efficiently?” moments without even thinking about it. It’s not something I consciously try to do; it just naturally happens. I think that the engineering way of thinking doesn’t just stay inside the university; it quietly shows up in ordinary parts of life too.
In the fall of each year, Tom Mihalik makes a short trek from his store in Kensington Market to a lecture theatre on U of T’s St. George campus for what has become a very cherished tradition.
He’s there to share his story — and the story of Tom’s Place, the men’s clothing business he has owned and operated for many decades — with students taking a course called CHE488 Entrepreneurship and Business for Engineers, which today is taught by adjunct professor Vince Arone.
“Vince is such a kind, good-hearted gentleman, and so well prepared,” says Mihalik.
“He makes copies of the radio ads that we do, and plays them for the students, so that when I get there, they know all about me. I feel like a superstar, larger than life. I look forward to it every year.”
Tom’s Place was founded in 1958 by Tom’s father, William Mihalik, a Hungarian immigrant who built his livelihood through hard work and trust. Growing up in Kensington Market, Tom learned the business through experience, eventually transforming it into one of Canada’s most respected independent menswear retailers.
“I went to school at Oxford — by which I mean the corner of Oxford and Spadina,” says Mihalik, referring to an intersection just a couple of blocks away from where his store now stands.
“There was a fruit store there, Budapest Fruits, that was owned by friends of my father. They gave me my first part-time job, at 12 years old, and I became one of their best salesmen. Many of the customers were Hungarian immigrants, like us, so we could talk about anything.”
One of these fellow Hungarians was Professor Emeritus Joseph Paradi (ChemE). Paradi’s research at U of T Engineering focused on applying engineering principles to areas such as entrepreneurship and business development.
It was Paradi who created the entrepreneurship course, and who first invited Mihalik to be a guest lecturer for his students.
“Joe knew my dad. He bought his first leather jacket from his store — I probably sold it to him,” says Mihalik.
“He asked me to come talk to his students about my story, about my business and about the history of Kensington Market, which I’ve always been so attached to.”
Arone, who took over the course from Paradi in 2023, says that Mihalik’s perspective on business in invaluable and becomes more so every year.
“His insights are grounded in real experience, and his approach resonates deeply with engineering students who are beginning to consider what it means to build something of their own,” says Arone.
“I always learn something new from Tom’s visits to the classroom.”
Mihalik is also a donor to the many different faculties at U of T. He has given to Arts & Science, Rotman, Temerty Medicine, Jackman Law, Pharmacy, U of T Scarborough and, of course, U of T Engineering.
Mihalik gives to the 8T8 Resilience Award created by Arone and his classmates to celebrate the 35th anniversary of their graduation. The award supports undergraduate students on the basis of financial need.
“I’ve always seen U of T and the students there as a key part of what makes Kensington Market special; we’re all one community,” says Mihalik.
“If you come during graduation, our store is full of first-time suit buyers, and many come back in a few years to buy another one for their wedding. I’m lucky that our business is strong enough that I can make a donation to support those that need it, and I hope that more people can do the same. After all, they are our future.”
During her PhD thesis, Meagan Flus (MIE PhD 2T6) often found herself in a noisy lecture theatre at 3 a.m., wielding a video camera and a notebook.
“I joined 24-hour hackathon events in Toronto and Waterloo with a team of research assistants for data collection,” she says.
“We would stay awake overnight with hackathon teams to collect audio and video recordings, along with observation notes. Our unique approach to collecting rich, in-situ data is something I’m particularly proud of.”
Flus is a recent graduate of the Ready Lab, headed up by Professor Alison Olechowski (MIE, ISTEP). Using an interdisciplinary approach, the researchers study how engineering design teams can collaborate more efficiently and effectively.
Over the course of her PhD, Flus and her research projects earned awards at the national and international levels. She is now in the process of relocating to Glasgow, Scotland for a postdoctoral position with the University of Strathclyde.
Flus completed her undergraduate degree in Knowledge Integration at the University of Waterloo. But she was always interested in graduate studies, and was encouraged in this path by her project advisor and mentor, Professor Ada Hurst.
“Excellent mentors provided, and still provide me with great insight and inspiration,” says Flus.
“They helped me realize the importance of surrounding oneself with good mentors and being a good mentor for others.”
One piece of advice she received was to engage with organizations aligned with her research goals, such as the Canadian Design Workshop (CDW). Convened every two years, CDW brings together design educators and researchers from across Canada to advance engineering design education.
It was during one of these meetings that Flus first met Olechowski. Flus joined her team as a PhD student in 2021.
“I have always considered myself a collaborator and interested in how people work together,” says Flus.
“I would say that has been the overarching theme of my research: helping people do engineering design effectively.”
Flus’ strategy of collecting real-time recordings of design communication during team collaboration was highly novel and opened the door to multiple new research directions. Analysis of this data could help design communities better understand team dynamics, inform decision-making and improve engineering design processes for both hardware and software projects.
In 2025 Flus was the recipient of the Design Theory and Methodology Best Paper Award at the International Design Engineering Technical Conferences. Later that same year, she was awarded the Volunteering Scholarship Award from the Design Society for her participation at the International Conference on Engineering Design, held in summer 2025.
Also in 2025, Flus received the Engineering Education Student Award from the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA-ACÉG). The award recognizes a commitment to innovation, change and improvement in engineering education.
“As part of CEEA-ACÉG, I have worked with folks so passionate about engineering education,” says Flus.
“It deepened my appreciation for engineering education as a space of innovation, equity and transformation. It also reaffirmed my commitment to ensuring students have access to diverse, empowering learning experiences that prepare them to be not just engineers, but changemakers.”
Her postdoctoral position will be with the University of Strathclyde’s Department of Design Manufacturing and Engineering Management, where she will focus on a project known as SEISMIC SHIFT. SEISMIC SHIFT stands for Systems Engineering Innovation Hubs for Multiple Long-Term Conditions: Systemic Health Innovation for Transformation
“The project aims to improve care for patients living with multiple long-term health conditions,” says Flus.
“We will take a systems-based redesign focus to prioritize whole patient care and work closely with a team of researchers, designers and practitioners from the National Health Service. I am very excited about this opportunity and to have the chance to conduct applied research that will impact many lives.”
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the creation of the Engineering Communication Program (ECP). Housed within the Institute for Studies in Transdisciplinary Engineering Education and Practice (ISTEP), ECP helps ensure that students are proficient not only in their technical skills, but also in the ability to effectively communicate with others, both within and beyond their discipline.
Professor Robert Irish (ISTEP) is the founder of the program and continues to serve as a communication instructor. Irish is also the recipient the 2026 University of Toronto President’s Award, the university’s highest honour for teaching excellence.
ISTEP’s Mason Subotich sat down with Irish to find out more about ECP: how it started, how it has evolved, and why communication is more important than ever for engineers.
Take us back to the moment when ECP first came into existence. How did the idea come about, and who helped bring it about?
Before the Engineering Communication Program existed, the faculty conducted a review of its graduates. The reputation at the time was that our students were excellent technically, but communication was identified as a big weakness. Michael Charles, the Dean at the time, was a major champion and advocate for communication skills for engineers and tasked me with addressing this.
From the beginning, integration — not stand‑alone communication courses — was central. I met with four departments and looked for places where engineering writing was already happening and could be supported. This led to early embedded work in courses from first year to capstone. At that time, we were known as Language Across the Curriculum.
Over time, that early integration grew into a program‑wide philosophy; working inside engineering courses was in our DNA. This approach is what led to the creation of Engineering Strategies & Practice and Praxis, and the development of communication pathways across all years in each program.
Over time, more faculty joined the team, and in 2007 we became the Engineering Communication Program as we are known today.
What are the expectations on todays’ engineers to be effective communicators? Is this different from 30 years ago?
Technical knowledge is necessary but not sufficient. The skills that elevate an engineer — technical knowledge, ethical reasoning, critical thinking — are interconnected, with communication acting as the connection point.
Thirty years ago, the expectations for engineers’ communication skills were very different. Someone, usually an executive assistant or a pool of admins, was always there to filter your writing. Today, that buffer is gone. The expectation is now that the engineers themselves are making those calls, communicating clearly with clients, teams and stakeholders.
Today, I’m proud to say that we have made significant progress shifting the narrative, and U of T’s engineering graduates are now widely perceived as excellent communicators.
What makes the ECP unique compared to other communication supports?
Communication is a blend of literacies, and teaching communication inside the context of engineering meant learning how engineers think.
There is a difference between the ‘science mind’ and ‘design mind’ — lab reports follow a fixed structure, while design reports are open‑ended, but still rigorous. The key is teaching how to manage ambiguity while maintaining logical discipline.
This led to ECP’s signature teaching approach: treating communication as a design activity. Framing everything from a document to a presentation as design artifacts helps engineering students immediately connect communication to their core identity as designers and problem solvers.
There are two defining features of the ECP that makes it stand out.
The first is that it is built within engineering. It’s not the English department. We are responsible to engineering. This ensures relevance, accountability and tailoring to discipline‑specific genres — design reports, memos, technical reviews, failure analyses and more.
The second is deep integration and co‑teaching. In courses such as Praxis, we piloted a co-teaching model in which instructors completely dovetail communication and design lectures. I might talk for 15 minutes, then the design instructor speaks, then I come back in. The result is a highly dynamic interplay, and students get to see directly how communication is a central part of engineering thinking — not an add‑on. This is what interdisciplinary teaching is all about.
What makes an engineer a strong communicator?
For oral communication, strong engineers are experts at reading the room, are very active listeners and can synthesize ideas clearly.
For written communication, clarity of thinking is paramount. Making a claim, supporting the claim and presenting a clear argument — this disciplined structure applies whether students are writing a four‑line email or a 100‑page report.
Across all forms, the foundation is logical argumentation; the idea of building argument is central to everything ECP does.
Looking ahead, what are some of the communication challenges and opportunities engineers are going to face?
The prominence of AI today creates a misconception that it will reduce the burden on engineers, but in reality the opposite is true. The need for strong communicators has heightened dramatically. At the end of the day,someone still has to sit across the table from the client and make the case.
AI also makes critical thinking more urgent. How do we know whether we can trust AI-generated information? This is another question engineers must evaluate.
In other words, I don’t think AI changes what’s important; clear‑eyed critical thinking is even more important than ever.
The good news is that the act of writing is incredibly effective at engendering critical thinking because it requires linear thought through expression. It forces you to go through the process of critical thinking.
My colleague’s motto captures the idea best: “How do I know what I mean till I see what I say?”
For James Ropotar (MIE MASc student), strong communications skills are essential to successful engineering practice — especially when it comes to projects carried out in partnership with Indigenous communities.
Ropotar, who has Mohawk ancestry, grew up in Kelowna, B.C. and completed his undergraduate studies in manufacturing engineering at the University of British Columbia. Today, he’s an MASc student in the Cognitive Engineering Laboratory, directed by Professor Greg Jamieson (MIE).
“When I was in my undergrad, what I was really looking for is to get the widest breadth of education possible,” says Ropotar.
“Communications is what I saw as my weak point. I minored in it to enhance that skill set so I could better talk about ideas. That, in turn, really strengthened me as an engineer.”
Ropotar, Jamieson and their collaborators are exploring how Indigenous perspectives can be integrated into the operating documents for small modular reactors (SMRs), an emerging paradigm in the nuclear energy space.
Unlike traditional nuclear plants, which are custom-designed and take decades to build and commission, SMRs are smaller and designed around the idea of standardized, repeatable deployment. Because of this, they are often seen as a potential solution to the unique energy needs of remote communities, including many Indigenous ones.
One challenge with SMRs is the communication gaps that emerge between Indigenous communities and SMR operators. These gaps relate to the conventional Western approaches often used to manage such complex systems. Ropotar says his research explores how language and communication can bridge those differences to ensure the technology is understood and benefits the local needs of the population.
“For a long time, I’ve felt that there’s a massive gap in the way we talk about and explain operations, especially when they come to Indigenous communities,” says Ropotar.
“We can bridge this disconnect with more transparent communication.”
Ropotar says he was partly inspired to pursue this project after hearing about the experiences of friends who are members of other nations and reserves.
“When a project comes on to a nation, the project proponents might have good intentions and promise a lot of work, but there’s a huge language gap and they don’t provide the adequate training, which leads to a perceived lack of qualifications,” says Ropotar.
“So we have to say, hey, the way we describe systems and provide training is vital because we want to use local workers. We want to benefit the community and not have to import workers to operate the local infrastructure.”
This past year, Ropotar has been researching operations within nuclear plants and speaking with Indigenous operators who have experience working in the nuclear sector.
Through these conversations, he has sought to identify shortcomings in how reactors and their operating cycles are described and communicated.
“It comes down to a lot of misunderstanding about nuclear and even about what engineering is,” says Ropotar.
“So we’re trying to develop new ways of talking about SMRs and work. We need to be inserting the language of a local community or putting concepts into terms that can be understood by a broader variety of people.”
With some of the groundwork of his research complete, Ropotar is spending this next phase interviewing different communities and conducting a narrative analysis of how they view work and operations within the nuclear sector.
That analysis will inform the development of new training materials and, ultimately, a complete Indigenized concept of operations for future SMR plants — one that rephrases operational concepts within a community’s own understanding of systems and values.
“Technical documentation carries embedded assumptions about hierarchy, relationships and whose values a system is built to serve,” says Ropotar.
“For example, we sometimes describe automation as a master/slave system. That kind of terminology doesn’t match the communities a system is meant to benefit.”
Ropotar is incorporating the seven generations principle into his work, honouring the Indigenous philosophy that the decisions we make today should result in a sustainable world seven generations into the future.
“We want to think about creating a better world and continuing the cyclical idea of making improvements, not purely extracting but creating something better for future generations,” he says.
“I think successful communication looks like a clean, constructive two-way dialogue between any nation that wants to develop this power infrastructure and the agency trying to bring the power infrastructure online. That dialogue considers both the community values and needs, as well as things like operations and worker training.”
One of the ways Ropotar has made contacts with Indigenous people in the nuclear sector is through his work with the Advancing Indigenous Science and Engineering Society (AISES). He is currently serving as president of the U of T chapter of AISES.
“We just got a new office space in the Myhal Centre, so we’re hoping to use this to launch our recruitment and growth as a chapter,” says Ropotar.
“Our goal is to continue to boost our numbers so we can start to build that continuous community of Indigenous STEM students at U of T.”
Beyond his own research and work with AISES, Ropotar says building Indigenous representation means recognizing the continuing presence and perspectives of Indigenous communities.
“Thinking about the rich Indigenous history we have in Canada also means reflecting on and remembering that it’s not just history. It’s ongoing. We’re still here.”
“We need to be continuously talking about First Nations, about culture, about the way that the communities have grown, the history that shapes them and about the land that we’re on, and how we’re really taking care of it.”