How does a second-year engineering undergraduate student nab a coveted internship with a global lighting startup like Nanoleaf? It helps to offer critical thinking, creativity and boundless energy — but having the boss share your intellectually impressive hobby doesn’t hurt.

When Nanoleaf CEO Gimmy Chu (ElecE 0T6) met electrical engineering student Frank Gu (Year 2 ElecE), he discovered that the young applicant was a member of U of T’s Blue Sky Solar Racing Club. Chu had worked on the acclaimed Blue Sky car almost a decade earlier.

“Gimmy gave me an assignment to prove my capability for the intern position,” Gu says. “Then, Gimmy and I proceeded to talk about Blue Sky Solar Racing at U of T.”

Nanoleaf, an LED startup from U of T Engineering alumni, recently announced a new product launch in partnership with Apple.

Read the latest news about Nanoleaf and Apple

“The U of T presence is still very strong at Nanoleaf, and I believe it always will be,” says Nanoleaf spokesperson Leslie Chen. “When we were looking for interns to join our team, the first place we looked was at U of T.”

U of T News writer Brianna Goldberg spoke with Gu about his experiences at Nanoleaf, which he joined in early 2015.

If you or someone you know has benefited from a bone marrow transplant, then you may be more knowledgeable about stem cells and regenerative medicine (RM) than you think.

Bone marrow transplants, a procedure used in treating cancer that has been around for the last 40 years, is just one of the applications of stem cell science. RM includes stem cells, biomaterials and molecules and it is used to repair, regenerate or replace diseased cells, tissues and organs.

“Regenerative medicine is exciting because it offers opportunities to learn about the fundamentals of tissue and organ development, form and (normal and diseased) function, as well as provide new strategies to treat and perhaps one day cure devastating degenerative diseases,” explains Peter Zandstra, an engineering professor at U of T’s Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering (IBBME) and a leading member of the University of Toronto’s Medicine By Design initiative.

The Canadian RM community met in Toronto this week for its annual scientific conference: the Till & McCulloch Meetings, named for the University of Toronto researchers James Till and Ernest McCulloch who discovered transplantable stem cells in 1961.

The conference was a who’s who of world-renowned researchers affiliated with U of T, including engineering professors Molly Shoichet (ChemE, IBBME) and Milica Radisic (ChemE, IBBME), as well as Janet Rossant (Ontario Institute for Regenerative Medicine and SickKids), Gordon Keller (McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine), Andras Nagy (Mount Sinai Hospital) and Armand Keating (University Health Network). A quarter of the attendees at the conference had a direct affiliation with the university.

“It was really gratifying to host the Till and McCulloch Meetings in Toronto and have Jim Till preside over the lectureship and meeting. U of T researchers were represented very well at the conference,” says Zandstra, who also heads up the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine . “Molly and Milica showcased exciting work combining stem cell derived cells into biomaterials for transplantation and organ modeling, while Sid Goyal (Physics) presented new work on clonal dynamics during blood stem cell transplantation.”

With its tremendous concentration of stem cell scientists and bioengineers, Toronto boasts one of the largest combined biomedical and biotechnology clusters in North America. More than 11,000 principal investigators and technicians operate from nine teaching hospitals and 37 research institutions.

Toronto’s prominence in this field is expected to grow even stronger when the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine, a translation centre working closely with U of T, brings together Medicine by Design, OIRM and cell manufacturing capabilities under one roof at MaRS Discovery District. The “RM village” being envisioned for downtown Toronto will solidify the city’s reputation as a RM leader and place to watch.

This year’s Till & McCulloch Award Lecture was presented by Timothy Kieffer from the University of British Columbia. He was being recognized for his work in diabetes, including breakthrough research published in Nature Biotechnology last year.

Zandstra, the chief scientific officer for CCRM, and a member of the award selection committee, called the paper “a fantastic example of Canadian leadership in an important and competitive area of regenerative medicine.”

It was a celebration of collaboration at Victoria College’s Alumni Hall last Wednesday as students, professors and industrial partners gathered to recognize the latest achievements of the University of Toronto Institute for Multidisciplinary Design and Innovation (UT-IMDI).

Founded in 2012 by Professor Kamran Behdinan (MIE), UT-IMDI catalyzes multidisciplinary collaborations between engineering students and industry partners. Undergraduate and MEng students apply for paid internships lasting several months, providing engineering solutions for companies in a variety of sectors. The students get a vibrant experiential learning environment, while partner companies benefit by leveraging innovative new ideas and identifying potential future talent.

Dean Cristina Amon congratulated the latest cohort of 24 UT-IMDI graduates. “You have had a unique opportunity to address industry challenges and develop key communications, professional and leadership competencies by collaborating with our partners to create innovative technical solutions,” she said. “You have worked intensely on these projects and you have more than risen to the challenge.”

Todd Young, chair of UT-IMDI’s Advisory Board and vice-president and general manager of customer services at Bombardier Commercial Aircraft, received the Recognition Award for his work in helping the program grow over the last three years. In his remarks, he noted that some of the graduates have already been hired by the industry partners. “That is a true testament to the value this program brings,” he said.

The completed projects ranged from intelligence analysis to advanced manufacturing and aircraft design. Below are three examples of student success:

Speeding up repairs

Gabrielle Sebaldt (MechE 1T5+PEY) worked at Bombardier, helping to standardize and speed up the repetitive process of making repair methodologies for composite aircraft components. She created a software script that asks the user questions about the repair they are making through a series of forms, then creates a document based on their inputs. “The form sequence responds to your previous answers, so you’re not asked for information that is not relevant to your repair,” she said.

Sebaldt really enjoyed the experience of working at a company. “The camaraderie was very strong,” she said. “People help each other out, and I really felt like I was part of the team, even though I was the intern.” She hopes to continue doing engineering design in her future career.

 

Anticipating future demand

Lu Liu (MechE MEng candidate) took on a project for SPP Canada Aircraft Inc. that looked at a classic problem in manufacturing: customers often need a shipment of parts more quickly than they can be created from scratch. Liu created a mathematical model that would accurately forecast the number of spare parts that are likely to be required at a given time. This allowed the company to optimize their process and avoid having too much or too little stock on hand at any time.

Liu said that working for a company was a great way to translate what she learned in the classroom into industrial solutions. “They told me about their pressures, and I applied my knowledge,” she said. “It gave me confidence.”

 

Predicting and extending product life span

Jayant Yerrapragada (AeroE MEng 1T5) worked for Honeywell Aerospace on flexible air heaters that are commonly used to maintain cabin temperature in a range of aircraft. He statistically analyzed a number of failure cases to get a sense of what faults or common causes of damage can cause them to stop working. He then developed a mathematical model to predict the average life span of the heaters and identify ways in which this could be improved.

“If there had been no UT-IMDI, I would have had to apply for projects with ten different companies,” said Yerrapragada. “With this program, students only send their resume to one person.” Yerrapragada’s internship was so successful that it was extended from four months to a year; he is now working full-time for Honeywell. “I met wonderful people, and I had a blast,” he said.

Nanoleaf, the fast-growing startup from U of T Engineering alumni, launched a new product Oct. 27 tied to Apple’s HomeKit line.

“We’ve received Apple’s approval to join the HomeKit ecosystem,” said Nanoleaf spokesperson Leslie Chen.

The Nanoleaf Smarter Kit combines “the world’s most energy efficient smart bulb” and a stylish, connected hub with Apple’s Siri-enabled HomeKit, Chen said. This will allow users to wirelessly control the startup’s award-winning LED bulb designs by simply using their voice.

“With the emergence of smart home products, lighting is entering a whole new territory,” said Chen, one of a growing number of recent U of T grads recruited to Nanoleaf.

“Imagine sitting in the living room and being able to control all of the lights in your home with just a few words,” she said. “Pretty revolutionary to say the least!”

Chen said the Ivy is an app-controlled bulb that users can turn on, off and dim using their Apple phone, tablet or smart watch. The Nanoleaf Smarter Kit is set for release in selected Best Buy locations in early November, she added, with more details still to come.

“Integrating technology like this, especially through a company as famed as Apple, is a great way to reach a wider audience and get access to a new market,” said Karen Sievewright, managing director of U of T’s Banting & Best Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship. “It’s a smart move by Nanoleaf.”

The green tech startup founded by Engineering alumni Gimmy Chu (ElecE 0T6), Tom Rodinger (IBBME PhD 0T7) and Christian Yan (ElecE 0T6) has grown from a massively successful Kickstarter project in early 2013, based on the strength of their stylish “world’s most energy efficient” bulb, to a bustling company with approximately 40 employees spread between its Toronto and Shenzhen, China, offices.

The venture recently scored funding from ‘Asia’s richest philanthropist,’ debuted products at fairs in New York, Shanghai and Tokyo and won a reddot design award for 2015.

• Read about Nanoleaf’s Kickstarter surpassing its goal by 500 per cent
• Read about ‘Asia’s richest philanthropist’ investing in Nanoleaf
• Read about Nanoleaf creating green jobs in Canada and China
• Read about Nanoleaf’s revolutionary dimming bulb

Chen says the next big step for Nanoleaf will be releasing a product they believe will change the way people think about lighting.

“Light is not merely illumination. Light is atmosphere, it wakes you up after a night of sleep, it keeps us safe and content, just as much today as two million years ago,” said Chu, CEO of Nanoleaf. “We want to make products that will transform simple lighting solutions into meaningful experiences.”

Nanoleaf made the announcement as U of T’s Impact Centre prepared to host a symposium celebrating the International Year of Light.

Chen says the gains of Nanoleaf rely on the team members they continue to recruit from U of T.

“The U of T presence is still very strong at Nanoleaf, and I believe it always will be,” said Chen. “When we were looking for interns to join our team, the first place we looked was at U of T.”

Watch for U of T News and Engineering News stories profiling Nanoleaf’s three undergrad interns, Jeanny Yao, Frank Gu and Josh Hwang in the coming week.

“Nanoleaf will always be very closely connected with U of T: our three founders are all alumni and without the school, they would have never met in the first place,” said Chen.

“It will always be part of our identity and I think that’s why U of T grads are a good fit for us.”

This story originally appeared on U of T News.

Originally published in the 2015 issue of Interfaces Magazine.

Not so long, lessons on bioethics and the history of medicine might have seemed out of place in an engineering program, but today, they blend easily into the diverse menu of courses in U of T’s Bioengineering Minor. The program was launched in 2006 in the recognition that biological applications were increasingly taking center stage in technological advancement.

“We also recognized that students were quite curious to learn more,” says Professor Emma Master (ChemE), director of the Bioengineering Minor. “They were hearing more about it in the news and were curious what bioengineering means — and what it can do.”

Although bioengineering only congealed into a recognized field in recent decades, Master notes that technological processes and designs rooted in biology have a long history. The use of microbes to ferment yogurt, cheese, beer and wine, for example, are all ancient applications of biology. Microbial processes have also been used in sewage treatment for over a century. Today’s bioengineering has leapt beyond yogurt and beer to span everything from developing brain-computer interfaces to synthesizing plant-based polymers that could replace plastic.

“The common thread is the application of biology in many areas,” says Master.

Bioengineering students like Jandi Kim (ChemE 1T5), who graduated in the spring, have the opportunity to conduct research that gives them practical and theoretical know-how, and helps lay the groundwork for new technologies. For her undergraduate thesis, Kim assessed the toxicity of air samples across Canada — specifically, the oxidative capacity of particulate pollution in the air.

Oxidative damage to the skin, for example, contributes to skin aging. Particulate matter in the air, especially the tiny, 2.5 micrometer variety that Kim studied, has been linked to respiratory diseases, including lung cancer, possibly by inducing oxidative stress. Under the supervision of Professor Greg Evans (ChemE) and former postdoctoral fellow Krystal Godri Pollitt (ChemE 0T5, MASc 0T8), Kim worked to determine just how much oxidative damage these particulates could inflict on our lungs. She tested 392 samples from British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec by mingling the particulates with synthetic lung lining fluid. The fluids contained the same anti-oxidants found in the natural equivalent, and after incubating the samples with the “lung lining” for several hours, she measured how much these anti-oxidants had been depleted.

After nearly a year of extractions, pipetting, measurements and data analysis, Kim appeared to have her preliminary results revealing variation in particulate toxicity across the provinces, as well as differences between rural and urban air. Kim also learned how research is an iterative process and rarely runs smoothly on the first go. Curious patterns in Kim’s control data revealed there’d been a systemic error somewhere along the way, possibly in mixing or pipetting. Until the error is found and corrected, her results remain tentative, but despite the complications, the process has left Kim satisfied.

“I was very glad that I did something from the beginning, and I found the result from my research,” she said. Though she graduated in June, she’s still working to pinpoint the cause of the error and is keen to see the project through.

Katarina Neskovic (ChemE 1T5) can relate.

“Things don’t always go as planned — that’s what research is all about — but when it does, it’s a wonderful feeling,” says Neskovic, who completed her undergraduate thesis with University Professor Michael Sefton (IBBME) focusing on the role of a novel biomaterial and the complement protein system on blood vessel growth.

Endothelial cells are a critical component of blood vessel growth, or angiogenesis, which line the interior vessel walls and migrate to the site of a wound or developing tissue.

“On the global scale, we want materials that can promote blood vessel growth for tissue engineering applications,” says Neskovic. “One of the cornerstones of tissue engineering is bringing a blood supply to the tissue engineered organ.” Without blood, the introduced organ could not survive.

For Neskovic, a chemical engineering graduate, work with tissue cultures was an entirely new experience, but she says she quickly learned what she needed to and got her experiments underway.

Neskovic’s experiments focused on a polymer called MMA, short for Poly(methyl methacrylate-co-methacrylic acid), that previous studies had shown promoted blood vessel growth.

Researchers aren’t sure exactly how this occurs, so to start answering that question, Neskovic conducted what are called “scratch assays”: simulating wounds in thin layers of lab-grown endothelial cells. As wounds heal — even in lab-grown tissue — endothelial cells migrate toward the gap. When Neskovic threw MMA into the mix, she found it altered that rate of cell migration.

This finding alone doesn’t solve the puzzle of MMA’s growth-promoting powers, and further research will be needed to confirm Neskovic’s results, but her research contributes incrementally to finding the answer.

Since graduating, Neskovic has participated in the Next 36 program, an incubator program that accepts just 36 young entrepreneurs across Canada each year. She’s not sure where she’ll head next, but says she’s loving the entrepreneurial world.

Kim plans to pursue work in the environmental or pharmaceutical industry and she hopes to eventually go on to graduate studies.

Meanwhile, the Bioengineering Minor continues to attract new students, sprouting a second minor last year, which focuses exclusively on medical applications of bioengineering.

“Advances in life sciences are escalating with the advent of genomics and automated platforms for studying biological systems,” says Master. “All this means that understanding fundamental aspects of biology is becoming increasingly an important part of being technically savvy.”

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Interfaces Magazine is an annual publication from University of Toronto Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry.

 Read more articles from Interfaces.

Earlier this month, U of T Engineering welcomed its two newest faculty members. They join a dynamic community, producing world-leading research in their areas of expertise while inspiring and nurturing the next generation of global engineering leaders.

Professor Mason Ghafghazi (CivE) completed his PhD in geotechnical engineering at the University of British Columbia in 2011. After a term at BC Hydro, he attended the University of California Davis to do postdoctoral research on liquefaction susceptible dams in California. He specializes in liquefaction assessment, field investigation and constitutive modelling of soils.

Professor Masayuki Yano (UTIAS) completed his PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2012 and did postdoctoral work in the group of Professor Anthony Patera in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. His research focuses on building mathematical models that support the design of new aeronautical components, from airplane landing gear to rocket engines.

U of T Engineering spoke with the new professors to find out more about their research and what they’re looking forward to at U of T:

Could you explain the focus of your research?

MG: Everything on earth is sitting on either rock or soil. Soils can also be building materials for much of our infrastructure — embankment dams are one example. I come from the West Coast, and one of my main focuses is what happens to soils during earthquakes. Some soils liquefy, meaning that in a matter of seconds they transform from a strong material holding bridges and buildings to a soup that buildings and cars can sink into.

Students in my group use laboratory testing and numerical modelling to figure out what soils, under what types of earthquake loading, will liquefy and how much damage they will cause.

One thing that makes soils particularly interesting as engineering materials is that unlike steel, concrete, or carbon fibre, we do not get to choose them. We have to deal with whatever is in the ground where a project happens to be. So part of my work is building, analyzing, and improving tools that we use in the field to characterize soils. This work also involves lab testing and computational modelling. In addition to that, we build new tools and modify existing ones to measure things that were unknown before.

MY: My research focuses on the development of computational methods for problems in aerospace sciences and engineering. Specifically, I develop computational algorithms to accurately and efficiently solve partial differential equations with applications in aerodynamics and continuum mechanics. The goal is to develop computational tools that facilitate the analysis and design of the next generation of aerospace vehicles.

Why did you choose U of T?

MG: U of T has many attributes, including world recognition, being in a large vibrant city and having many world-class facilities that make it attractive to any young academic. What made it particularly attractive to me was a sense of collegiality and support for research that is probably unparalleled in Canada and many other places in the world, too. This includes multiple research funding sources, scholarships for students and most importantly, opportunities for collaboration.

Toronto is a great city to live in. It seems like other people like it as much as I do, and that means that there are lots of room to work with various engineering firms in the city to address their research needs. It also means that there are many smart hard working students coming through our own undergraduate program or other programs in the area who can help create a successful and productive research group.

MY: U of T provides strong research programs that attract outstanding students from around the world. Faculty members are leaders of their respective research fields and they also take their teaching responsibilities seriously. This excellence in both research and teaching is what attracted me to U of T.

What are you most looking forward to in your new position?

MG: We are expanding our geotechnical testing laboratory. There is great support from the department, university and government for doing that. We have already started bringing in new state-of-the-art equipment and will be adding some unique equipment in the next couple of years. I certainly look forward to seeing the new lab up and running with many graduate and undergraduate students working in it and getting trained there.

I will also be introducing a new course on geotechnical earthquake engineering. Even though we don’t have big earthquakes here in Toronto, this course will help our students be more competitive in today’s global market. I am quite excited about seeing that course becoming a fixture of our curriculum here.

MY: I am most looking forward to working with talented students and colleagues who come from diverse backgrounds. Collaborating and challenging each other to find innovative solutions to current and future engineering problems will be very exciting.

As a new professor, what one piece of advice would you give to new students?

MG: Work hard and stay focused. It wasn’t that long ago when I was a student, and I realize that it is not always easy to stay motivated. Being a student you often face new challenges fitting into a new and more-or-less independent life and deal with the quickly increasing expectations that people around us may have. At the same time, it is pretty hard to see how a certain — sometimes obscure — topic will matter in the future. Trust me, you end up using most of the things you learn here in your professional life. Even where that may not happen, everything that you learn gives you a vision that will guide your decisions in the future.

MY: Enjoy your learning experience and take advantage of opportunities U of T offers: follow your curiosity, find a passion and pursue your passion with everything you have.

What do you hope to accomplish in your new position?

MG: Looking at the legacies of the luminaries of any academic field, you can track three common elements: innovative work, star alumni and an established program outlasting them. If I manage to contribute to these three at U of T, I would say I will be retiring a happy old man one day.

MY: I hope to inspire many students through both research and teaching, just like many of my professors did for me in the past. If I can help students build the foundation for their future in any way, it would be an honour.