U of T Engineering is launching a new program designed to give incoming students all the material they need to shine in their first-year courses.
The University of Toronto Engineering Academy is an optional and not-for-credit program that is free to all incoming students for Fall 2020. Students gain access to a suite of established learning modules in math, physics and chemistry that they can move through at their own pace.
They will have regular opportunities to check in with mentors, upper-year U of T Engineering students who can help them navigate the material and coach them on how it will be applied in first-year courses. If a student wants extra instruction on a particular topic, they can also request to participate in a session with a celebrated high-school teacher.
Designed with close consultation between high-school teachers and curriculum leads in the U of T Engineering First-Year Office, as well as the Troost Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering (Troost ILead), the program was launched to support students who may have had their final year of high school disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“U of T Engineering Academy gives students what they need to fill in any gaps in their Grade 12 year, as well as a friendly introduction to our Faculty with the support of our incredible students and professors,” says Micah Stickel, Vice-Dean, First Year for U of T Engineering. “And because it’s optional and not-for-credit, it’s a great way to gain some experience with online learning and explore what kinds of approaches work for you.”
When a student accepts their offer of admission, they’ll also have a chance to register for U of T Engineering Academy through the same Engineering Applicant Portal. They will then receive an email with access details and any tech requirements. Access to the learning materials will be available in early June, and students can move through at their own pace through July.
For students who feel they might benefit from a little extra support after completing U of T Engineering Academy, the First Year Foundations program provides that boost. First Year Foundations is a suite of optional sessions, workshops and courses to help incoming students prepare for several aspects of university life — from developing effective study and learning skills, to getting ahead with introductions to concepts like computer programming, the engineering design process and communications.
“The year so far hasn’t gone the way any of us expected,” says Chris Yip, Dean of U of T Engineering. “We’re here to make sure that no matter what happened in the final year of high school, we’re giving our students the tools and supports they need to be comfortable, prepared and ready to have a terrific experience when they start this Fall at Skule™.”
Brandon Rufino’s (IBBME MHSc candidate) preparation for his big presentation is a bit different today: he’s testing out his laptop mic and finding a spot in his apartment with the most light and least clutter.
Rufino is among nearly 100 undergraduate and graduate students taking part in the inaugural U of T Engineering Research Conference (UTERC) happening June 9 and 10. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the event will be broadcast digitally, with students presenting their research as poster presentations via Twitter, or through non-technical lightning lectures on Zoom.
The conference will feature the latest in undergraduate and graduate research in six key areas: advanced manufacturing; data analytics and artificial intelligence; human health; robotics; sustainability; and water. Industry partners and alumni are also invited to connect with students and discuss the work.
Rufino will be presenting in the human health category as a lightning lecture speaker. Under the supervision of Professor Elaine Biddiss (IBBME), he and his fellow grad students develop and evaluate technologies to allow young people with disabilities to participate more meaningfully in arts, music, physical activities and therapies.
“I’ve yet to attend a fully digital conference — I’m excited about this format, which really lends itself to being easily accessible and shareable,” says Rufino.
The idea to host a virtual conference was hatched after the university shutdown in March. With no access to labs, many students’ experimental work has been put on pause. U of T Engineering’s Graduate Engineering Council of Students (GECoS) began brainstorming.
“I thought a virtual conference would be useful for those looking for ways to progress their academic and professional development during this time when many conferences have been cancelled and some of us have less work to do,” says Samantha Cheung (ChemE PhD candidate), UTERC organizer and president of GECoS mental wellness commission.
“When Sam approached us with this idea, we fully supported the initiative,” says Chaim Katz (IBBME PhD candidate), Chair of GECoS. “We’ve been supporting the conference team’s efforts since and are looking forward to what will be an excellent opportunity to showcase research going on at U of T Engineering.”
After receiving positive feedback from students, faculty and staff, Cheung immediately created a committee made up of faculty and graduate students to plan a conference to be held within two months.
“I’m most excited to see people from various backgrounds connecting and engaging with each other through these online platforms,” says Cheung. “I think the best part about hosting this virtual conference is the ability for people from all over the world to participate.”
The organizers have even considered another important aspect of most academic conferences: the networking. In addition to participants asking questions during posters and talks, UTERC will also facilitate networking with breakout sessions and through Slack.
Cheung hopes the success of the Faculty’s first-ever virtual conference serves as a framework for future events at U of T Engineering and for other institutions that want to engage their research community.
“Right now, we are all adjusting to new living circumstances and ways to socialize,” says Cheung. “UTERC is a reminder that the U of T Engineering community is here to support our students even if we aren’t physically together.”
Learn more and register for UTERC: uoft.me/uterc2020
Researchers at U of T Engineering and Carnegie Mellon University are using artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate progress in transforming waste carbon into a commercially valuable product with record efficiency.
They leveraged AI to speed up the search for the key material in a new catalyst that converts carbon dioxide (CO2) into ethylene — a chemical precursor to a wide range of products, from plastics to dish detergent.
The resulting electrocatalyst is the most efficient in its class. If run using wind or solar power, the system also provides an efficient way to store electricity from these renewable but intermittent sources.
“Using clean electricity to convert CO2 into ethylene, which has a $60 billion global market, can improve the economics of both carbon capture and clean energy storage,” says Professor Ted Sargent (ECE), one of the senior authors on a new paper published today in Nature.
Sargent and his team have already developed a number of world-leading catalysts to reduce the energy cost of the reaction that converts CO2 into ethylene and other carbon-based molecules. But even better ones may be out there, and with millions of potential material combinations to choose from, testing them all would be unacceptably time-consuming.
The team showed that machine learning can accelerate the search. Using computer models and theoretical data, algorithms can toss out worst options and point the way toward more promising candidates.
Using AI to search for clean energy materials was advanced at a 2017 workshop organized by Sargent in collaboration with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). The idea was further elaborated in a Nature commentary article published later that year.
Professor Zachary Ulissi of Carnegie Mellon University was one of the invited researchers at the original workshop. His group specializes in computer modelling of nanomaterials.
“With other chemical reactions, we have large and well-established datasets listing the potential catalyst materials and their properties,” says Ulissi.
“With CO2-to-ethylene conversion, we don’t have that, so we can’t use brute force to model everything. Our group has spent a lot of time thinking about creative ways to find the most interesting materials.”
The algorithms created by Ulissi and his team use a combination of machine learning models and active learning strategies to broadly predict what kinds of products a given catalyst is likely to produce, even without detailed modeling of the material itself.
They applied these algorithms for CO2 reduction to screen over 240 different materials, discovering 4 promising candidates that were predicted to have desirable properties over a very wide range of compositions and surface structures.
In the new paper, the co-authors describe their best-performing catalyst material, an alloy of copper and aluminum. After the two metals were bonded at a high temperature, some of the aluminum was then etched away, resulting in a nanoscale porous structure that Sargent describes as “fluffy.”
The new catalyst was then tested in a device called an electrolyzer, where the “faradaic efficiency” — the proportion of electrical current that goes into making the desired product — was measured at 80%, a new record for this reaction.
Sargent says the energy cost will need to be lowered still further if the system is to produce ethylene that is cost-competitive with that derived from fossil fuels. Future research will focus on reducing the overall voltage required for the reaction, as well as further reducing the proportion of side products, which are costly to separate.
The new catalyst is the first one for CO2-to-ethylene conversion to have been designed in part through the use of AI. It is also the first experimental demonstration of the active learning approaches Ulissi has been developing. Its strong performance validates the effectiveness of this strategy and bodes well for future collaborations of this nature.
“There are many ways that copper and aluminum can arrange themselves, but what the computations shows is that almost all of them were predicted to be beneficial in some way,” says Sargent. “So instead of trying different materials when our first experiments didn’t work out, we persisted, because we knew there was something worth investing in.”
Professor Micah Stickel (ECE) has been named as the next Acting Vice Provost, Students for the University of Toronto.
He will assume the position on October 1, 2020, replacing Professor Sandy Welsh for a six-month term. Before and after this term, he will serve as a Vice-Provostial Advisor on Students, a role which begins July 1, 2020.
“I am honoured to have been selected for this role,” said Stickel. “To me personally, there is nothing more important than giving each one of our students the opportunity to find a positive and inclusive experience at U of T. I am excited to support and enhance the thriving campus life that makes the years here unforgettable.”
Stickel is a triple graduate of U of T, having completed his BASc, MASc, and PhD degrees in The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His graduate research focused on electromagnetics and the development of novel devices for high-frequency wireless systems.
Since becoming a teaching-stream professor in 2007, Stickel has become well known among students and faculty alike for his passion for adopting innovative approaches to engineering education and integrating the use of technology in the classroom. He is a pioneer of the “inverted classroom” approach — which uses online videos to introduce new material, freeing up for class time for collaboration and active learning — and is engaged in scholarly work to quantify the impact of new technologies in teaching. He was appointed as the Faculty’s Chair, First-Year in 2012, a position which became Vice-Dean, First Year in 2017.
As Vice-Dean, Stickel has undertaken a number of major initiatives and reviews to further strengthen the student experience and academic excellence of the core first year programs within U of T Engineering. He is also responsible for the Engineering Student Outreach Office, which offers innovative outreach programming that includes a focus on members of groups that are underrepresented in engineering.
Stickel also oversees the Faculty’s Engineering Student Recruitment and Retention Office, and leads and coordinates its Broad-Based Admissions Project and Assessment, which aims to expand the criteria upon which undergraduate admissions decisions are based. Stickel also co-created and continues to co-chair the Engineering Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Action Group, a group of students, staff, and faculty that meets weekly to discuss issues, experiences, and initiatives related to EDI and how to improve the student experience within U of T Engineering.
Stickel has been honoured with five departmental teaching awards and was selected as a New Faculty Fellow at the 2008 Frontiers in Education Conference. In 2012, he was awarded the Early Career Teaching Award by the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. In 2014 the American Society for Engineering Education named him one of their Top 20 Under 40. In 2017, he was awarded one of the inaugural Hart Teaching Innovation Professorships to support his research related to active teaching and learning.
“I have seen first-hand the positive changes engendered by Professor Stickel’s thoughtful, compassionate leadership over many years,” said Chris Yip, dean of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “It’s impossible to overstate the impact of his efforts to support our students, from driving the introduction of our current Broad-Based Admissions strategy, to his enormous dedication to advancing equity, diversity and inclusion in our Faculty.
“Both before and since becoming dean I have been continually inspired by the many ways he puts students first, most recently during the transition to online learning during this pandemic — I know he will accomplish great things in his new role.”
Omar F. Khan (ChemE MASc 0T6, PhD 1T0) officially joined the Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering (IBBME) as an assistant professor on May 1, 2020. After receiving his doctoral degree from U of T Engineering, he began his postdoctoral training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Khan is now back at his alma mater, and excited to bring the entrepreneurial spirit of technology translation to the tech hubs of Toronto.
Writer Qin Dai spoke to Khan to learn more about his academic journey and the research he’ll be conducting at IBBME.
How did you start in biomedical engineering?
My father is an amputee who lost his arm in an industrial accident. Growing up, I was fascinated with his prosthetic arms and the way he adapted to and overcame the challenges associated with the injury.
As I got older, I became more interested in the idea of regeneration, making the University of Toronto a top choice for studying biomedical engineering. I really wanted to pursue my PhD with Dr. Michael Sefton, a pioneer in biomaterials and tissue engineering. I felt that the field of biomedical engineering would be an opportunity for me to contribute to healthcare in an application-driven way and maybe help people like my dad.
The University Health Network was also a major factor. Being at a university that has close research ties and physical proximity to clinicians and renowned hospitals was important to me. That way you get a bit more context than you normally would otherwise, because you are an engineer directly interacting with people working in the field and end users.
What does biomedical engineering mean to you?
As is the case with nurses and medical doctors, biomedical engineers have a special responsibility to the community because their work is meant to help save lives. Personally, I feel that healthcare is an inalienable human right. To me biomedical engineering is a way to apply engineering principles to solve biological problems.
Biomedical engineering is broad with a great diversity of sub-disciplines; however, when we combine our efforts, that diversity gives us added perspective and insight. It is also the clever application of seemingly unrelated technologies to solve biology-centered challenges. As engineers, we are great at inventing, optimizing, looking for new applications and combining our diverse skill sets in teams to solve healthcare problems.
Why did you become a professor at University of Toronto?
Establishing a nucleic acid tech hub in Toronto is important for the ongoing development of Canada’s biotech sector and retaining our Canadian talent. We want our trainees to be successful and gain the experience needed to create their own opportunities here in Canada. In turn, their success will inspire others and continue to attract people from all over the world. I think that’s extremely important in building a healthy research-to-translation ecosystem capable of addressing diverse local and global needs, and that’s why I came back.
In Boston, my U of T graduate and MIT postdoctoral training helped me invent some useful nucleic acid delivery technologies. From there, I got to be a scientific founder, chief engineer and also an entrepreneur. This path allowed me to experience the process of growing an academic idea into a company focused on achieving clinical translation in two very different startups. In order to drive innovation, biomedical engineers should have the courage and support necessary to try new, unconventional and risky ideas. Thanks to exceptional students, faculty, facilities and vision, the University of Toronto’s IBBME is the perfect environment to conceive, develop and incubate new technologies.
What kind of research will you be doing?
The OFK Lab will focus on the application of nucleic acids to improve and promote health via nanotechnology. There are many kinds of useful nucleic acids that, if deployed correctly as nanoparticle payloads, can help regulate genes in a patient’s body to achieve a therapeutic outcome. In our lab, we want to understand how to design these nucleic acids and their complimentary nanotechnology delivery systems to maximize therapeutic effects.
The OFK Lab will also continue my multiplexing work. Many challenging diseases are complex and have multiple aberrant or defective genes. One strategy to address this challenge is to simultaneously deliver many therapeutic nucleic acids with a single nanotechnology. This approach allows us to target multiple genes in the same disease, therefore increasing the treatment efficiency. This is done by optimizing the nucleic acids and building advanced delivery vehicles that control the timing of nucleic acid release, the type of cell they target, etc. This multiplexing approach simplifies treatments because the delivery vehicle takes on the role of coordinating the multifaceted therapy.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
My wife, who is also in science, recently gave birth to our spectacular baby daughter, so our entire multicultural family loves spending time with her. But if I have any other spare time, I’m usually motorcycling, swimming or running batch reactions (baking).
Testing for viruses is not a new science, but the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the bottlenecks in established methods. Now, a team led by Professor Leo Chou (IBBME) is pursuing a non-traditional approach that, if successful, could lead to simpler, faster tests.
“What we are finding out in this pandemic is that surges in global demand can cause every step in the process to break down due to supply chain shortage,” says Chou, who joined U of T Engineering as a professor in January 2019. “There are opportunities to make these tests simpler and more streamlined.”
While the project is in its earliest stages, the team hopes to overcome the limitations of traditional methods by pursuing a strategy based on short, synthetic strands of DNA. These strands can be customized to react in certain ways in the presence of genes from the virus that causes COVID-19.
Currently, most tests begin with a nasal swab to extract virus particles from the body. These particles are then shipped to a testing lab, where heat, detergents and enzymes are used to open them up and expose the viral RNA — the genes that the virus uses to replicate itself.
The RNA is then subjected to the ‘gold standard’ technique known as real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Using specialized enzymes and a device called a thermocycler, RT-PCR amplifies targeted RNA sequences — such as those known to code for viral genes — to determine whether or not they are present in the sample.
In theory, RT-PCR can provide results in a matter of hours, but the need for specialized infrastructure has been a key limitation of testing around the world.
“Because samples collected at the point of care must be shipped to a central lab for testing, logistics become a key issue,” says Chou. “For one single sample to get tested, you are usually talking about a turnaround time of two or three days.”
In contrast, the new approach could lead to a one-step test. The team aims to design customized DNA sequences that are capable of self-assembling into a larger structure, but which are missing a key catalyst to bring them all together: an RNA sequence specific to the COVID-19 virus.
“The best analogy I can think of is growing rock candy,” says Chou. “You start with a saturated solution of sugar molecules in water, but they don’t do anything because they don’t have anything to crystallize around. When you introduce a stick into the solution, the crystals form rapidly around it.”
In this analogy, the short DNA sequences made by Chou and his team are the sugar, and the viral RNA serves as the stick. By design, only the correct RNA sequence would work — genes from other viruses or contaminating organisms would not trigger the same reaction.
If the virus is present, its RNA would quickly cause the DNA strands to self-assemble. The team could easily attach pigments or light-emitting molecules to the DNA strands, resulting in a solution that changes colour in the presence of viral genes.
Chou says that the technology already exists to manufacture the short DNA sequences quickly and inexpensively, and that these molecules are stable, meaning they can be stored wet or dry at room temperature for months or years.
Because it wouldn’t require complex materials or equipment such as enzymes or thermocyclers, the new test could be done in one step at the point of care, eliminating the logistical bottlenecks that are currently hampering testing efforts.
While he believes that the new approach is promising, Chou cautions that it will take many months before a prototype can be developed, and many more to determine whether or not the test is anywhere near as reliable as RT-PCR.
“All the tests that are being used right now took years to develop and clinically validate,” he says. “This is no different, but the strategy we’re proposing is unlike anything that is already being used. We aim to have proof-of-concept done within a year. If it works, it could have some very exciting advantages.”