The Nobel Prize-winning discovery of insulin by Frederick Banting and Charles Best remains one of the most significant research achievements from the labs at U of T. But discovery alone is not enough; the drug is still saving the lives of diabetics around the world today because those researchers commercialized their discovery.
“Banting wasn’t an entrepreneur. Best wasn’t an entrepreneur. But the emergence of insulin really was an example of entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto,” said Michael Bliss, historian and author of The Discovery of Insulin.
“It involved a whole team’s determination to take a fundamental laboratory discovery and turn it into a commercial product. They did it by working in collaboration.”
Today, U of T’s ecosystem for startups includes seven customized accelerators and a growing network of entrepreneurship courses, programs, office space and more. They are all brought together by the Banting & Best Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (BBCIE), home to over two dozen startup companies, including many founded by U of T engineers.
“That same atmosphere of collaboration and support seen through the development of insulin is what student entrepreneurs get when they’re in any one of our incubators or accelerators,” said Karen Sievewright, director of the Banting & Best Centre.
“Our young scientists and entrepreneurs get access to professors who have deep knowledge; they get access to mentors and investors who have the practical expertise to implement things,” she said. “It’s the same concept as what happened with Banting and Best and we are excited to see how we can help today’s entrepreneurs make their mark in the same way.”
U of T Engineering alumni startup OTI Lumionics is just one of the companies that chose to locate its headquarters at the BBCIE.
The company offers a low-cost system for producing organic LED lighting—thin, light and flexible ‘green’ lighting solutions with applications for interior design, architecture, medical devices and commercial products such as their aerelight lamp. Built on research produced in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, OTI Lumionics was developed through various U of T entrepreneurship supports brought together by the BBCIE.
“The location of the Banting and Best Centre—allowing us to get such a large space, and space that’s suitable for research in downtown Toronto—is fantastic,” said Michael Helander (EngSci 0T7, MSE PhD 1T2), chief executive officer of OTI Lumionics.
“You can turn graduate research into successful startups. It can be done in Canada, you don’t have to go all the way down to Silicon Valley or outside the country,” he said, describing the “ecosystem and community of mentors, advisors and investors that are all either U of T alumni or associated with the university in one way or another.”
OTI Lumionics began as Helander’s graduate research in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering. The company developed with help from the BBCIE’s elite Creative Destruction Lab accelerator program and, after graduating, leased office space at the BBCIE.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_MTy-mS8cc]
“There are many entrepreneurship opportunities at the university that are open to students, to young people, to faculty,” said Sievewright. One of these is U of T Engineering’s own Entrepreneurship Hatchery, an early-stage ideas factory where students can turn their ideas into working prototypes, while simultaneously developing business plans under the mentorship of seasoned entrepreneurs.
With an upwards trend towards startups and entrepreneurship in the changing North American economy, many universities now offer entrepreneurship support. But, Bliss notes, U of T’s experience launching insulin made it one of the first.
“It’s hard to think of another North American university that had so much success commercializing a product for the next half-century,” said Bliss.
“Insulin was not just a research triumph, it is the most important commercialization to have happened at U of T,” said Cynthia Goh, director of the Impact Centre at the BBCIE. “In a few short years insulin went from brilliant research to saving lives, to commercial success and a Nobel Prize. What better example of a commercialized university discovery could we ask for?”
It was a discovery that lit a path for OTI’s Helander, and the generations of others that will follow.
Tragedies such as the train explosion in Lac-Mégantic, Que. will never happen again if Iman Chalabi (Year 3 ElecE) has his way.
The third-year student in The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering took first prize in the 2015 Minerva Canada James Ham Safe Design Awards competition today for designing a system that renders crude oil cargo non-flammable in the event of train derailment or collision.
“I’ve always wanted to participate in the Minerva competition and have had several ideas over the past few years,” said Chalabi. “But just recently I was reading a news article about the accident in Quebec, and I decided I wanted to work on that problem.”
Chalabi’s safe design solution is a ‘smart tank’ rail car to transport crude oil or any type of flammable fuel. His system relies on sensors to detect collision or uncontrolled rolling, much like the sensors in your car that deploy its airbags.
When sensors trigger, small tanks inside the fuel cars deploy a mix of water and surfactants into the oil or fuel through high-pressure nozzles. This creates an emulsion that’s significantly less flammable than the raw oil or fuel, rendering it less likely to explode. If the tank car is punctured in the collision, the oil or fuel that leaks out will also be much less susceptible to sparks and less likely to ignite.
In addition to the surfactants that reduce flammability, Chalabi added a small tank of norbornene, an organic compound that increases the viscosity of crude oil upon contact. Once released, norbornene turning the contents of the rail car into a gel mixture that would be easier for responders to contain, and slower to leak into the surrounding environment. His design also includes a gas pressure sensor and release valve to relieve explosive pressure inside the tank.
The project was supervised by Professor Graeme Norval (ChemE) in the Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry, and Professor Nazir Kherani (ECE, MSE) helped Chalabi decide on the best materials for his plan—a specialized mixture of sorbitant esters and water for the surfactant, and norborene to increase viscosity. All Chalabi’s components are possible to retrofit inside the DOT-111 and DOT-112 tank car models currently used for shipping flammable liquids by rail, and his project included a cost analysis demonstrating its economic viability.
“Our awards committee liked this concept,” said Tony Pasteris, president and CEO of Minerva Canada Safety Management Education. “Iman’s design is a practical approach that could reduce the consequences of an incident.”
Chalabi received the award today, along with a plaque and $3,500 prize, at the plenary session of the Workplace Safety & Prevention Conference.
The award honours James Milton Ham, former head of Electrical Engineering (1964-66), dean of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering (1966-73) and president of the University of Toronto (1978-83). His Royal Commission Report on Health and Safety led to the creation of Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act in 1979 and to the adoption of the Internal Responsibility System in Ontario workplaces. Professor Ham trained as an engineer with a secondary field of study in sociology; his writings emphasized ‘society and human needs’. He was awarded the Order of Canada in 1980 and died in 1997.
The Minerva Canada James Ham Safe Design competition challenges Canadian university engineering students to make an original contribution toward integrating safety into engineering design. Participants are encouraged to suggest ways to improve the existing design of devices, processes or systems, envision new, innovative designs that will eliminate or reduce potential hazards, and to create tools to help manufacturers and workplaces integrate safety into new or retrofit designs.
The Minerva awards committee gave honourable mention to the student team of Shatha Abuelaish, Fei Ba, Priyadeep Jaswal and Alex Lui from both ECE and Industrial Engineering. Their team worked with the Hamilton Professional Fire Fighters Association through the Faculty’s Multidisciplinary Capstone Projects course to design a web and mobile-based system for capturing firefighters’ exposure and medical data. They tested the tool with Hamilton firefighters and received a strong endorsement for their work.
A $20 million investment from the federal government announced today will enable the Southern Ontario Smart Computing Innovation Platform (SOSCIP) consortium to add new areas of focus—such as advanced manufacturing and cybersecurity—to its research projects.
U of T is a founding member of SOSCIP, created in 2012 to support collaboration between academic researchers and industries using advanced computing and big data analytics.
The funding comes from FedDev Ontario, a federal agency established in 2009 with $1 billion to work with communities, businesses and not-for-profits in Southern Ontario to address regional and global economic challenges.
“This investment will open the doors for a number of small- and medium-sized businesses, who can benefit from access to smart computing platforms. These new partnerships will lead to the discovery and development of innovative new technologies and will help build a healthy information infrastructure here in southern Ontario,” said Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for FedDev Ontario. He made the announcement at Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) Discovery Conference April 28.
The new funding will be received by U of T on behalf of SOSCIP, and it will be used to increase access to advanced computing and big data analytics, tools and systems and to develop new collaborative projects. The ultimate goal is for these projects to bring new products and services to market.
(Last December, researchers at The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering used computing facilities through SOSCIP to help develop spray-on solar cells. Read more.)
“This magnificent new investment from the Government of Canada will enable SOSCIP to increase its positive impact in many ways. SOSCIP proves that collaboration between academia, industry and government can produce important benefits to Canadians and Canada’s prosperity,” said Professor Cheryl Regehr, U of T’s vice-president and provost.
In addition to the FedDev funding, IBM Canada Ltd., as the lead industrial partner of the consortium, will contribute $65 million of agile, advanced computing infrastructure and big data analytics as well as related support through research, IT and business expertise.
SOSCIP was founded with a focus on research into five core areas—cities, health, energy, water and advanced computing. Using state-of-the art technology, such as the IBM BlueGene/Q (the fastest supercomputer in Canada), research has progressed by way of scientists such as U of T Engineering Professor Eric Miller (CivE), who is analyzing urban transportation and Professor Richard Peltier, who is investigating climate change.
“SOSCIP has made important progress over the past three years in these important areas. This new investment will enable the consortium to support collaborative projects in the additional areas of mining, advanced manufacturing, digital media and cybersecurity,” said Professor Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president, research and innovation.
He added that the new projects will include at least eight medium-sized businesses and are expected to create or maintain about 100 jobs, including training and skills development opportunities for students and postdoctoral fellows.
In addition to U of T, SOSCIP’S other founding partners include Western University, McMaster University, Queen’s University, University of Ottawa, University of Waterloo and the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, IBM Canada Ltd. and OCE. Four additional universities joined SOSCIP in April 2014: Carleton, Ryerson, York and Wilfrid Laurier.
Researchers from the Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering (IBBME) continue to build on the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering’s unparalleled strengths in biomedical engineering with the establishment of the Translational Biology and Engineering Program (TBEP)—a key component of the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research (TRCHR).
TBEP will occupy an entire floor of the MaRS Phase 2 building in Toronto’s Discovery District beginning in fall 2015. It will be a powerful addition to the network of researchers and educators at the TRCHR aiming to accelerate treatment development and reduce the estimated $2.3-billion cost of managing moderate and severe heart failure patients in Canada.
Ten U of T researchers and their graduate students from U of T Engineering, the Faculty of Dentistry and the Faculty of Medicine will work side-by-side in the open and collaborative research space to advance clinical applications in genomic medicine, regenerative medicine, tissue engineering and advanced cardiac care.
“The idea of creating an inter-disciplinary research centre focused on discovery and clinical translation in the area of cardiovascular disease is really exciting,” said Peter Zandstra (IBBME), interim scientific director at the TRCHR. “Although there are inter-disciplinary research centres in different places, one that is exclusively focused on heart failure and cardiovascular disease like this one is unique internationally and should enable accelerated outcomes and focused impact.”
Zandstra, who is the Canada Research Chair in Stem Cell Bioengineering and a professor at IBBME and the Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research, has been managing the start up of the TRCHR and organizing the TBEP component.
U of T Engineering researchers at TBEP
TBEP’s roster of U of T Engineering faculty includes award-winning researchers Rodrigo Fernandez-Gonzalez (IBBME), Paul Santerre (IBBME, Dentistry) and Craig Simmons (MIE, IBBME), who will combine stem cell technology with new approaches in biomaterials, cellular and tissue engineering for the regeneration of heart muscle, coronary vessels and heart valves. All of the participating engineers are inspired by the prospect of working in a collaborative environment where researchers from multiple disciplines are engaged in a continuum of discovery and translation.
Santerre, a former director of IBBME, was central in developing U of T’s scientific research in the partnership. His research will focus on developing polymer technologies that reduce inflammation around life-saving devices such as stents and stem cell delivery systems, allowing heart cells to repair themselves and preventing longer-term complications like blood clots and fibrosis.
“If you can reduce some of the long-term management elements by allowing these cells to repair themselves better, we are reducing the burden on the health-care system in the most phenomenal way,” Santerre said.
Santerre said that in his experience, it takes about 20 years to get a treatment into clinical practice once a research idea is conceived. He believes this timeframe can be reduced by at least five years because of the cluster of experts at the Centre working together.
“To me, that’s the power of this initiative—the ability for those three institutions to lend out this brainpower that has demonstrated a unique ability to collaborate in other instances,” he said. “The resources are there to actually bring the world to Toronto on this theme.”
Simmons is collaborating with Sick Kids to develop treatments for babies born with congenital heart defects. The work involves growing tissue from stem cells taken from the baby’s umbilical cord and putting it on a “bio-scaffold” that degrades away, leaving a valve made of the baby’s own cells. The end goal is to develop a “living tissue” valve that restores normal heart function and doesn’t have to be replaced as the child grows.
Simmons said that much of his work is at the interface of medicine and engineering, so it demands collaboration—one of the Centre’s biggest strengths.
“We’re going to be imbedded on the same floor as people from the Faculty of Medicine and within a hospital research complex, so our students will be working side-by-side, exchanging ideas with one another,” Simmons said. “The interaction that will occur just because we’re physically in the same place is bound to result in new ideas, new approaches and new innovations that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.”
Fernandez-Gonzalez applauds the Centre’s embrace of fundamental discovery research—such as his study of fruit fly embryos to gain a better understanding of how heart cells develop or how they could be stimulated to repair themselves.
He said about 70 to 80 per cent of genes implicated in human diseases are found in fruit flies, so if researchers know which genes are key for cell repair in a fruit fly embryo, they can also gain an understanding about which genes may be important to repair the human heart.
About the Centre
The University of Toronto, Hospital for Sick Children, and the University Health Network announced the creation of the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research in November 2014, funded by an unprecedented donation of $130 million from the Rogers family—the largest monetary gift ever made to a Canadian health-care initiative. The Centre will bring together expert clinicians and researchers from across the partner institutions, as well as graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and clinical fellows who represent the future of the field.
The TRCHR will also establish a competitive innovation fund to drive discovery and development of next-generation therapies for heart failure, and an education fund to attract the best and brightest students and postgraduates to ensure a deep pool of talent in Canada for cardiac care and research.
This story is Part 3 of an eight-part series, Engineering Experiential Learning, running throughout spring and summer 2015.
On March 30, fourth-year students from departments across U of T Engineering displayed their innovative solutions to industry challenges in the second-ever Multidisciplinary Capstone Design Projects (MCP) course.
The showcase was the grand finale for 20 multidisciplinary student teams who spent eight months collaborating with clients from Bombardier, Magna, Defence Research & Development Canada, Toronto Rehab and other organizations on iterative, hands-on projects.
Experience three of this year’s projects:
Students engineer new database workflows (Hamilton Professional Firefighters Association)
Students Design New Helmet that Avoids Neck Strain (Defence Research & Development Canada)
Inventing a New Portable Ramp for Mobility Scooters (Toronto Rehab)
Learn more about the Multidisciplinary Capstone Projects course:
The MCP is a unique experiential learning opportunity organized by Professor Kamran Behdinan (MIE), director of the Faculty’s Institute for Multidisciplinary Design & Innovation. Now finished its second year, the program brings together engineering students from different departments to solve challenges proposed by prominent industry partners.
Learn more about the Multidisciplinary Capstone Projects course.
If the next generation of engineers is to continue solving the world’s greatest challenges, they need both rich technical competencies and the ability to clearly communicate their ideas to others.
While U of T Engineering’s many academic courses equip students with engineering fundamentals, the Faculty’s Engineering Communication Program (ECP) enables them to learn the necessary writing, speaking and critical thinking skills to succeed in their careers.
This fall, ECP will offer the Faculty’s first academic certificate in communication. Engineering students will have the ability to develop their expertise in particular communication areas of interest. (Criteria outlined below.)
Established 20 years ago by Senior Lecturer Robert Irish (ECP, EngSci), ECP includes a robust suite of educational offerings—from one-on-one student tutoring to curriculum design and consultation. They now have five full-time senior lecturers and three dedicated sessional lecturers in key roles, as well as 37 other sessional lecturers and teaching assistants.
U of T Engineering sat down with ECP Director Deborah Tihanyi (ECP) to learn more about the program and how it benefits engineering students:
1. What does the Engineering Communication Program offer the Faculty?
ECP’s educational offerings are embedded throughout the Faculty and are available to all undergraduate students. We partner with our Engineering colleagues to develop instructional and assessment materials that will best serve students, fostering a culture of excellence that continues beyond the classroom.
Our program includes a number of curricular and co-curricular student supports, as well as guidance for faculty and teaching assistants. We lead stand-alone communication courses, co- instruct design and communication classes and assist most of the capstone design courses across the Faculty.
Outside of the core curriculum, we offer five electives designed specifically for engineering students, as well as creative writing workshops in the fall and summer. We have a Tutoring Centre that provides online and in-person sessions to assist students in their course work, graduate school and job applications and more.
2. How is the ECP improving engineering education?
There is an integral relationship between learning and communicating. We use language to teach, ask questions and express ideas. The ability to articulate ourselves aids—and even underpins—our understanding.
This is where ECP comes in. Our supports not only enable engineering students to develop as writers, speakers and thinkers, but also enhance their learning by making core engineering concepts easier to grasp. Students learn to formulate thoughtful questions and express ideas. This, in turn, lays the groundwork for success in the classroom and beyond.
3. Why are communication skills important to engineering students?
The volume of writing that is required during an engineering degree often surprises students, but effective communication is also vital for success in the real world.
Engineering is a multidisciplinary profession. A single project may involve teamwork with business specialists, psychologists and public health officials, to name a few. The ability to collaborate and communicate effectively with a diverse team, as well as express complex concepts to a non-technical audience, is an asset.
ECP helps students develop into proficient writers, speakers and communicators, both in print and online. More than ever, these skills are vital to engineering leaders.
4. How is ECP different from communication programs at other engineering schools?
We are one of a very few communication programs in North America fully integrated into the engineering curriculum. We have played a pivotal role in curriculum redesign, in developing learning outcomes for our students and in shaping the learning culture at the University to be one where communication can be a core component of engineering education.
A student who graduates from engineering at the University of Toronto has had more than just a writing course. They have learned to write, speak and communicate effectively as part of their engineering education over four years.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
About the Academic Certificate in Communication
To receive the new academic certificate in communication, undergraduate engineering students must complete any three of the following courses:
- APS 281H1 – Language and Meaning
- APS 320H1 – Representing Science on the Stage
- APS 321H1 – Representing Science and Technology in Popular Media
- APS 322H1 – Language and Power
- APS 325H1 – Engineering and Science in the Arts
- APS 445H1 – The Power of Story: Discovering Your Leadership Narrative
- INI 304 H1 – Critical Thinking and Inquiry in Written Communication (Offered by the Faculty of Arts & Science)
- INI 305H1 – Word and Image in Modern Writing (Offered by the Faculty of Arts & Science)
- INI 310H1 – Editing (Offered by the Faculty of Arts & Science)