A research team led by U of T Engineering Professor Craig Simmons (MIE, IBBME) received $300,000 this week to create a 3D model of the human liver. Funded by Ontario Centres of Excellence and pharmaceutical consortium CQDM, the project could help determine whether or not new drug molecules are safe for use in humans.
Drug developers rely on lab tests and preclinical trials to determine how a potential drug molecule might react when processed by the liver or other organs in the human body. One form of testing is to try the drug on lab-grown cells, but an individual cell can behave very differently to one in its natural environment that is surrounded by blood vessels and other components of tissue.
Simmons, along with Professor Michael Sefton (ChemE, IBBME) and other team members, have developed a way to grow small amounts of three-dimensional liver tissue in the lab. The team is now incorporating these bits of tissue into a microfluidic platform that simulates the flow of blood through the liver. In this way, they could simultaneously test dozens of chemical compounds to determine what their effect on the liver might be. The system will allow them to screen out drugs with potential negative effects at a very early stage of the drug development process.
“Our improved liver model will identify and eliminate toxic and ineffective drugs earlier in the drug discovery process,” said Simmons. As a result, the liver model will reduce the time, cost and reliance on animal testing for drug development.
Simmons said the grant will also help accelerate the translation of the technology to end users such as pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms and biology researchers. “By the end of this project, we expect to deliver a new best-in-class liver model that is designed to be immediately implemented and to enable faster, less expensive, and more effective drug discovery and development,” he said.
In total, five Canadian-led research projects will share a total of $1.5 million spread over two years. The announcement was made on June 16 at the 2015 BIO International Convention in Philadelphia by officials from the Ontario Centres of Excellence and CQDM, a consortium that represents many of Canada’s major pharmaceutical companies.
“This innovative funding collaboration between CQDM and Ontario Centres of Excellence will help accelerate drug development through biopharmaceutical research and development in Ontario and Quebec,” said Reza Moridi, Ontario Minister of Research and Innovation. “The important work of the chosen project teams will help to improve the everyday lives for people in both provinces and beyond, by generating positive health and economic outcomes.”
This story is Part 7 of an eight-part series, Engineering Experiential Learning, running throughout spring and summer 2015.
At the end of summer before their third year of classes, civil and mineral engineering students travel to the heart of cottage country to spend two weeks learning the art and science of land surveying.
Survey Camp, a 175-acre property on the northern shore of Gull Lake in Haliburton, Ont., has been a fixture in U of T Engineering’s field work education since 1919, when the University purchased the land.
“The country is broken and rolling and admirably suited for the various problems that arise in practical surveying,” states the 1930s camp manual.
Surveying is a core skill for these students, but “the main thing I learned at camp has more to do with life than with engineering: I learned that everybody has something valuable to offer,” says Marcia Lamont Scott (CivE 4T7), who graduated from civil engineering at U of T in 1947. “Survey Camp taught us a lot technically, but it also taught us so much about working together.”
“When you spend concentrated time sleeping, eating, learning and romancing with a group,” adds alumnus Gordon McRostie (CivE 4T4), “you develop a camaraderie that is uncommon among classes.”
While the fundamentals of surveying haven’t changed since the camp opened in 1920, the students have. In 1947 Lamont Scott was the first woman civil engineering grad in Ontario; in 2014, U of T Engineering celebrated 30.6 per cent female enrolment in the incoming class. Between now and 2020, Survey Camp aims to raise $1 million to upgrade its 95-year-old buildings and add new women’s facilities.
Ekaterina Tzekova (CivE 0T9, PhD 1T5) got to know her fiancé, Stephen Perkins (CivE 0T9), at Survey Camp; he proposed at the fire pit where their relationship kindled. While studying for her PhD, Tzekova returned to Gull Lake yearly as a teaching assistant to watch a new crop of campers make memories.
Beyond Survey Camp, all civil engineering students also travel to Gull Lake for a short field trip course prior to their second year of studies, visiting significant construction sites along the way.
“You wonder about the experiences of the students who came before you,” says Tzekova. “It’s neat how people of different generations have this place in common.”
This story originally appeared in the Summer 2015 issue of U of T Magazine.
On June 15, the Faculty celebrated nearly 1,300 graduating engineering students at Spring Convocation. These new Skule alumni gathered with proud parents, friends and the U of T Engineering community before taking the next step into their promising and dynamic futures.
“Soon you will discover that the world is changing faster than you think,” said this year’s honorary grad, Alfred Aho (EngPhys 6T3). “Your career as an engineer is really a career in lifelong learning.”
“U of T Engineering is the premier engineering school in Canada and one of the best in the world, and your exceptional preparation here will take you anywhere you want to go,” said Dean Cristina Amon to graduates. “I encourage you to take risks, knowing that great innovations and remarkable achievements come from hard work and determination. Your possibilities are boundless.”
See the day in action:
On June 15, the University of Toronto awarded alumnus and computing pioneer Alfred Aho (EngPhys 6T3) a Doctor of Science, honoris causa. Aho’s incredible accomplishments were recognized in U of T Engineering’s morning convocation ceremony.
Alfred Aho is a world-renowned computer scientist whose pattern-matching algorithms are run daily on computers around the world, and whose books on algorithms and compilers have been used as standard texts in virtually every computer science department. He is currently appointed the Lawrence Gussman Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University.
Aho attended North Toronto Collegiate Institute. An alumnus of the University of Toronto, Aho earned a BASc in Engineering Physics (now Engineering Science) in 1963. In his senior year, he was president of the Engineering Physics Club and earned his athletic letter as captain of the Engineering School squash team. After U of T, he attended Princeton University where in 1967 he received his PhD in electrical engineering/ computer science.
After Princeton, Aho joined the Computing Sciences Research Center at Bell Labs, the lab that created the Unix operating system and the C and C++ programming languages. He served as a member of technical staff, department head and director of this lab. In 1995 he joined the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University as chair of the department.
Aho is well known for his many papers and books on algorithms and data structures, programming languages, compilers and the foundations of computer science. He is the “A” in AWK, a widely used text-processing language, and he wrote the first versions of the popular Unix pattern-matching utilities egrep and fgrep. His current research interests include programming languages, compilers, algorithms and quantum computation.
Professor Aho has served as chair of the Computer Science and Engineering Section of the National Academy of Engineering, of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory, and of the Advisory Committee for the National Science Foundation’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate.
Among his many accolades, Alfred Aho has won the IEEE John von Neumann Medal and has been elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, ACM, Bell Labs and IEEE. He received the Great Teacher Award from the Society of Columbia Graduates and has honorary doctorates from the Universities of Waterloo and Helsinki.
Read about 16 exceptional engineering students graduating this year in our “Grads to Watch” feature.
This week, U of T Engineering received $16.9 million from the Government of Ontario to advance 13 innovative research projects. Awarded through the Ontario Research Fund (ORF), three of the most significant grants build on the Faculty’s established research excellence in sustainable combustion for aircraft, city building and solar energy.
ORF – Research Excellence
Through the ORF Research Excellence stream, three professors received funding to accelerate research with key economic and societal benefits for Ontario.
Professor Ömer Gülder of the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) received $3.1 million to develop next-generation combustor technologies for aircraft. Gülder and his research team will be designing gas turbine engines that are more fuel-efficient, produce less carbon emissions and reduce maintenance requirements. The result would be a more sustainable way to travel the skies.
Professor Eric Miller (CivE) was awarded more than $2.9 million to create and implement iCity, a virtual lab for urban design that will develop and apply advanced data, analysis and visualization capabilities to find groundbreaking ways to improve urban transportation system performance. The system will help design efficient, sustainable cities for the well-being of individuals and society.
Professor Ted Sargent (ECE) was granted $2.9 million to create a new class of low-cost, highly efficient solar cells by combining existing technology with a novel and versatile material known as colloidal quantum dots. Solar power is the safest, cleanest and most abundant source of energy that society has at its disposal. Sargent and his team will partner with 10 companies to commercialize the technology and enhance the energy industry in Ontario.
ORF – Research Infrastructure
Ten U of T engineering professors received grants through the ORF Research Infrastructure stream intended to ensure Ontario’s research infrastructure remains competitive in attracting the world’s leading researchers. This funding follows significant investment in U of T Engineering infrastructure from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI).
- Gisele Azimi (MSE, ChemE) – Extraction, Processing, and Recycling of Strategic Materials ($115,214)
- Amy Bilton (MIE) – Laboratory for Prototyping Energy and Water Systems ($100,000)
- Eric Diller (MIE) – Laboratory for Micro-Robotics Research ($100,000)
- George Eleftheriades (ECE) – CERES: Centre for Reconfigurable Electromagnetic Surfaces ($2.6 million)
- Amr Helmy (ECE) – Canadian Entangled Photon Source ($3.2 million)
- Hoi-Kwong Lo (ECE) – Smart Grid: Cyber-Physical Operation, Security and Quantum Technology ($762,660)
- Elodie Passeport (ChemE, CivE) – Stable Isotope Facility for Improved Understanding of the Fate and Removal of Emerging Contaminants in Water ($200,000)
- Joyce Poon (ECE) – Integrated Quantum Photonics for Secure Communications ($399,999)
- Angela Schoellig (UTIAS) – Indoor/Outdoor Testbed for Aerial and Ground Multi-Robot Research ($99,946)
- David Sinton (MIE) – From Fracture to fluids to combustion: Infrastructure to understand the implications of hydraulic ($250,000)
“We are grateful to the Ontario government for investing in so many of our professors for their world-leading work,” said Dean Cristina Amon. “This funding will accelerate the globally significant and transformational research for which U of T Engineering is known, and advance innovative solutions to pressing issues such as sustainable energy and urban transportation design.”
Researchers across the University of Toronto received more than $45 million for 38 different research projects, including six ORF Research Excellence grants. The Government of Ontario committed $209 million for institutions across the province.
(Photos: Dani Couture, Roberta Baker)
Three U of T Engineering professors have received Early Researcher Awards from the Government of Ontario. The ERAs provide as much as $140,000 for promising early-career scientists and engineers to build their teams.
“These awards recognize the important contributions three of our promising young professors are already making in their fields and will help them advance their ground-breaking research,” said Dean Cristina Amon. “I would like to extend my heart-felt congratulations to professors Donmez, Ekmekci and Fernandez-Gonzalez on this well-deserved honour.”
Learn more about the U of T Engineering professors who received ERAs:
Improving driver safety
Professor Birsen Donmez (MIE) is an expert in human adaptation to technology and designing feedback to guide operator behaviour. Her project will compare different types of in-vehicle technologies, such as dashboard displays, smartphones, smart watches and Google Glass, with respect to driver distraction. She will also investigate their potential to improve safety by providing relevant driving-related information. For example, an eye-tracker could be used to let drivers know if their eyes have been off the road for a certain number of seconds. Her students will be trained for careers in traffic safety.
Reducing bad vibrations
When fluid flows around a structure — whether it’s seawater around an offshore oil platform or wind around the landing gear of a plane — it often creates powerful vibrations that make a lot of noise and can even damage equipment. Professor Alis Ekmekci (UTIAS) will investigate ways to reduce these vibrations by adding bumps or other surface protrusions that disrupt fluid flow. The solutions will improve safety for workers and make for quieter landings.
Tracking cells on the move
Within our bodies, cells coordinate their movements to build and repair tissues. However, cancer cells also do this in a process known as metastasis, in which cancerous tumours spread from their initial site to other parts of the body. Professor Rodrigo Fernandez-Gonzalez (IBBME) is creating new imaging techniques and models to understand how cells coordinate and regulate migration. By understanding the genes and chemical signals involved in migration, Fernandez-Gonzalez and his team hope to find new ways of fighting metastatic cancers which affect thousands of Ontarians each year.
“Our capacity to compete globally depends on how well we can harness our research, innovation and entrepreneurial strengths,” said Reza Moridi, Ontario’s Minister of Research and Innovation. “Through these investments, Ontario is mobilizing and preparing our researchers to succeed, compete and create the jobs of the future.”
In total, researchers across the University of Toronto received more than $2.6 million for 19 projects through the Early Researcher Awards, part of a recent $13-million announcement for ERAs across the province.