Imagine having blood drawn for HIV-related testing, and then never finding out the results.
In developing countries around the world, it can be common for patients not to receive test results for treatable diseases such as HIV. But what if the testing could be brought to them and performed on the spot?
This is the promise of “point-of-care” testing, a fast-rising trend in the global health field. And ChipCare, a startup driven by unique U of T Engineering-developed technology, is poised to revolutionize this type of in-the-field diagnostic work.
Today, as the company readies its prototype for market, ChipCare has just exceeded its latest funding goal with a round of $5 million of investments. In 2013, they already received the largest-ever angel investment of a Canadian healthcare startup.
U of T Engineering researchers James Dou (ECE PhD Candidate) and Stewart Aitchison (ECE), along with biological testing expert Rakesh Nayyar, founded the socially-driven global health venture in 2013. Soon after, they brought on product developer Lu Chen (ECE), who completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Aitchison’s lab, and signed Chief Executive Officer James Fraser, who brought his experience from Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and Dignitas International.
“Everywhere you turn, not having access to diagnostics means lack of access to appropriate treatment,” said Fraser. “When ChipCare found me and made the pitch, it really resonated. There is a humanitarian imperative behind this company. It was a perfect fit.”
The company set up headquarters at U of T’s entrepreneurship hub, the Banting & Best Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (BBCIE), and continued to win the support and interest of investors and international media including the Wall Street Journal.
“They’re a great example of the kind of company we’re happy to foster, the kind that translates deep university research into companies that benefit society,” said Karen Sievewright, director of the BBCIE. “We’re here as a ‘way-finder’ to connect young startups with the space, resources, and support offered by the university.”
“The first round of seed funding was to get our handheld platform to a prototype model. We’ve now achieved that and in May or June of this year we’ll have a handheld device for the first time,” said Fraser. “The money we raised just now is to pay for all of the go-to-market aspects like verification trials, clinical trials, regulatory pathways, sales and marketing capacity.
“We tried to raise $3 million and we ended up with $5 million, so it gives us a little bit more breathing room. The next step is to sell the device and save lives.”
As ChipCare develops, said Fraser, it will be crucial for investors to recognize that the company needs to be profitable in order to fulfill its global health mission.
“The constellation of investors that we’ve been able to pull in is attuned to that mission and get that we’re not only about profit but also about impact,” said Fraser. “I think it bodes well for social enterprise and other people who are working in universities or are even just inventors in their basements. There are investors who want to see us develop products and services that will have an impact beyond making money.”
The company is looking into a wide range of tests—for other sexually transmitted infections but also for neglected tropical diseases and antenatal care.
“We’re focused on tests that could be very useful for clinical care and would directly save lives, as well as for surveillance purposes, such as understanding the epidemiology of a disease within a community.”
Support for ChipCare from across U of T and from among the university’s partners has been strong right from the start, Fraser said.
“Lino DeFacendis from U of T’s Innovations and Partnerships Office was key when we started. He walked the founders through the whole process of intellectual property commercialization and went above and beyond in terms of helping the team get to the point of investment.”
ChipCare also received Connaught funding from U of T “which was important in terms of putting money in the bank and also gave us the imprimatur of the University of Toronto,” when approaching investors, said Fraser.
MaRS Innovation, which works in partnership with U of T, was one of the initial investors, helping the team develop its intellectual property portfolio and its understanding of the market.
“They know how to navigate the scene and maximize the network for us,” said Fraser. “They’ve been awesome. MaRS DD has also been very supportive.”
“U of T’s been a really good home. We’ve received lot of support.”
On March 5, a team of six Engineering students took home $5,000 at ILead’s The Game showcase. Presenting an idea for an online platform that links socially-minded individuals with volunteer opportunities around the world, they were one of five teams that tackled societal challenges and competed for the grand prize.
Organized over six months through the Institute for Leadership in Engineering Education (ILead), The Game encouraged engineering students to approach large-scale social projects the same way they would technical ones: by bringing together different perspectives, examining many possible scenarios and working as a team. Their projects ranged from addressing homelessness in Toronto to increasing mental health awareness at universities.
“At the core of The Game was a societal challenge: for students to frame and design a project that lived up to their version of a better world,” said Mike Klassen, leadership programming consultant at ILead and one of the key organizers of The Game. “Surrounding that core were a variety of resources designed to help students better grasp the depth and complexity of the challenges they chose to solve.”
Participants of The Game attended seminars, speakers series and had access to networks of experts and mentors. ILead instructors only released information to the teams every few weeks, almost as if they were clues for a game—hence the name. The idea stemmed from a desire to enable students to better implement the Institute’s motto: “Engineers leading change to build a better world.”
“I didn’t know what The Game was about when I signed up for it—none of us did,” said Deniz Jafari (EngSci 1T5t + PEY), a member of the winning team.
“We’ve learned so much during this experience,” added her teammate Noor Shaikh (EngSci 1T6). “It’s amazing what you can do when you take the time to focus on something you’re really passionate about.”
Other projects included Lecture Bee, an app that enables students to participate in class via smartphone, and a unique program aimed at reducing unconscious bias among university students.
“The Game has been a new experience for us. In fact, it was a bit of an experiment,” said Annie Simpson, ILead’s assistant director. “We work a lot on teamwork and self reflection at ILead, but [The Game] is about how to apply those skills to make the world better. Societal leadership at this scale is new for us.”
The Game is one of the latest transformative learning opportunities from ILead, an institute that offers pioneering learning offerings to help engineering students develop critical competencies in leadership, collaboration, communication and problem solving. In 2014, their contributions to engineering education garnered them the prestigious Alan Blizzard Award for Collaborative Teaching.
“We hope to continue with social leadership programs like The Game in the future,” said Simpson, who noted that she and her colleagues were amazed by the calibre of the projects, and the commitment of the participants despite all the uncertainty.
“It was a huge success with the students. Even though it was not for credit, they stuck with it and made some truly outstanding projects. Our biggest challenge was having to choose a winner!”
Learn more about the projects:
U of T Engineering professors Alberto Leon-Garcia (ECE), Baher Abdulhai (CivE) and David Sinton (MIE) have been recognized by the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC) for their outstanding engineering achievements in the areas of Internet architecture, traffic reduction and bioenergy technologies, respectively.
Leon-Garcia received the Julian C. Smith Medal “for achievement in the development of Canada,” and Abdulhai and Sinton have been named EIC fellows for their exceptional contributions to engineering in Canada.
Learn more about these three outstanding professors:
Alberto Leon-Garcia (ECE)
Alberto Leon-Garcia is a world leader in research on the design and management of application-oriented multi-service packet networks—a kind of Internet data-sharing technology. He holds several patents and is published extensively in the areas of virtual architecture and traffic management.
He is also an innovator in networking education, and has led the development of industry-oriented programs that educated many of today’s Canadian telecommunications executives. He has authored two textbooks, both of which are used in universities worldwide and have been translated into several languages.
Leon-Garcia is a Fellow of IEEE, EIC and the Royal Society of Canada (RSC). He received the 2006 RSC Thomas Eadie Medal and the 2010 IEEE Canada A. G. L. McNaughton Gold Medal for his contributions to the field of communications technology. He is a Distinguished Professor in Application Platforms and Smart Infrastructure at the University of Toronto, and scientific director of the NSERC Strategic Network for Smart Applications on Virtual Infrastructures. He has held the Nortel Institute Endowed Chair in Network Architecture and Services, the Skoll Endowed Chair in Network Innovation, and a Canada Research Chair in Autonomic Service Architecture.
Baher Abdulhai (CivE)
Baher Abdulhai’s research employs Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) to reduce congestion, improve travel time and system reliability, and enhance safety for travellers. His achievements include the development of the ONE-ITS (Online Network Enabled Intelligent Transportation Systems) network, part of the University of Toronto Transport Research Institute (UTTRI), and the invention of MARLIN, a machine-learning-based control software system for self-optimization of traffic lights, currently being commercialized through the spin-off company Pragmatek Transport Innovations.
Abdulhai has received several awards spanning service, teaching and research, including the IEEE Outstanding Service Award, the Early Career Teaching Excellence award and the University of Toronto Inventor of the Year Award. His graduate students have won several major international awards and many are faculty members at universities around the world. Abdulhai has served on many important transportation boards and committees, including the Board of Directors of the Government of Ontario Transit Authority and the Toronto Board of Trade Infrastructure Committee. He is also the founding director of the U of T Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Centre.
David Sinton (MIE)
David Sinton has made outstanding research contributions in the area of microfluidics—the science of controlling fluids at a microscopic scale—most notably for energy applications. He has become a globally recognized leader in this area for his pioneering work in pore-scale microfluidics, fluid property analysis, fuel cells and bioenergy. His work has resulted in more than 100 journal publications with over 3,000 citations and numerous research awards, including the CSME I. W. Smith Award, the Douglas R. Colton Award from CMC Microsystems, the Early Career Achievement Award from the University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, and an award for teaching excellence. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering (CSME) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (CSME). He was the 2013 University of Toronto McLean Senior Fellow.
Sinton is the director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy at the University of Toronto. Previous to joining U of T, he was a Canada Research Chair at the University of Victoria and a visiting associate professor at Cornell University.
The EIC is a federation of Canadian engineering societies that sponsors education standards, recognizes individual engineers and records engineering history.
EIC award recipients and new fellows will be honoured at the Institute’s Annual Awards Banquet at the Omni Hotel in Montreal on May 26, 2015.
Four Engineering professors travelled to India with U of T president Meric Gertler earlier this year to discuss Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plan to build 100 smart cities in his country.
“I think Prime Minister Modi’s decision to spearhead the development through the idea of smart cities is breathtaking and it is inspiring,” U of T President Meric Gertler said in a recent interview with an Indian news service.
Professors Stewart Aitchison (ECE), Yu-Ling Cheng (ChemE), Constantin Christopoulos (CivE) and Mark Fox (MIE) participated in a roundtable on sustainable urbanization at the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay, visited think tanks and foundations, and met with government officials in Mumbai and Delhi. (See some highlights of the India trip.)
But defining a “smart city” is not always easy, said Fox.
“What it means for a city to be smart depends upon what service you’re focusing on and how efficient and effective you are at providing it. You may be interested in transportation. Or you can be smart from a garbage perspective where a smart city means that you do a better job of recycling and separating and stuff like that. So being smart can occur in many different areas within the city.”
India’s proposed smart cities will probably all be “smart” in different ways, said Fox.
“I presume there will be a baseline that will be the same across all the cities, but that each city will excel in certain areas. Some may be excellent from a transportation point of view, others in terms of sanitation, or housing, et cetera.”
Christopoulos, a civil engineering professor, said his Indian counterparts were very interested in his particular area of expertise – the resilience of infrastructure. Structural resilience is important to cities such as Mumbai, which is located in both an earthquake and flood zone, he said.
“If India plans to build 100 smart cities, that’s a lot of buildings and a lot of people. You’ll want those buildings to be resilient, to be able to survive natural disasters.”
The smart city wasn’t the only agenda item for the trip. At meetings at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Indian officials wanted to learn more about a new U of T initiative called the Centre for Social Services Engineering, Fox says. India has more than one million non-governmental organizations and the Tata Trusts and the ORF are concerned that with so many NGOs, social services are being delivered inefficiently with much duplication and missed opportunities, he said.
Both Fox and Christopoulos said U of T researchers and their Indian colleagues are just beginning to explore the potential of collaboration. “There’s strong interest from the Indian side in working with U of T in the area of smart cities,” Fox said.
“We took a number of promising first steps,” said Christopoulos. “Now we need to continue to work on the areas of mutual interest.”
(Read more about Canadian scholars studying innovation in India and U of T’s India Innovation Institute.)
A new startup from PhD candidate Rehman Merali (UTIAS PhD 1T5) enables tea-lovers to make a personalized cup of tea from a beverage-weilding robot in under 30 seconds.
“It’s not just a great cup of tea, it’s also the experience,” said Merali, who co-founded teaBOT with his childhood friend, Brian Lee. “You see each ingredient fall down, the water temperature at exactly what you specified, watching the cup of tea made before your eyes.”
The team launched a prototype in 2013 through Rotman’s Creative Destruction Lab, and is now part of the JOLT business incubator at the MaRS Discovery District.
The teaBOT kiosks target high-traffic urban locations where tea lovers need a quick on-the-go cup. Using the company’s app, customers can order a customized blend, choosing from 18 loose-leaf teas, and collect their specialized hot beverage in under 30 seconds.
The project has been piloted at the downtown campus, Harry Rosen stores and at the MaRS Discovery district. In December, the team launched an ecommerce site that lets customers reorder their blends to drink at home.
According to the startup’s business manager, next on the development list are “tap to pay” capabilities, adjustable water temperature and new locations around university campuses, transit hubs and malls.
For Merali, the business model is unique, in part because of its capacity for personalization.
“It’s up to the user’s imagination to create those blends and share them with their friends and family,” he said. “Then, they get to try something special that you’ve created for them.”
Entrepreneur Francis Shen (UTIAS MASc 8T3), an alumnus of the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, recently established a new entrepreneurial incubation program at the Institute called UTIAS Start, which backed teaBOT with a grant of $25,000 in February.
“The program was set up to encourage and facilitate UTIAS students to utilize the knowledge they have gained through their education and life experience to create business startups and teaBot is a great example,” said Shen. “The leadership team is passionate and resourceful and have a deep understanding of their core market – tea.”
“They are using technologies to revolutionize something quite traditional.”
This March 21 and 22, more than 250 students from across Canada will converge on the Metro Toronto Convention Centre for the annual Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) National Conference—an inspirational weekend to build leadership skills, increase confidence in careers and boost involvement in research and technology-related professions.
“We encourage everyone who’s passionate about science and engineering, and its applications, to attend,” said Mahsa Nami (ChemE 1T4 + PEY), a chemical engineering student and this year’s conference chair. High school students are also welcome, part of WISE’s mandate of motivating young people to join science and engineering fields.
With a growing interest in entrepreneurship at universities and in industry, the theme of this year’s conference is ‘build your own legacy‘.
Industrial engineering student Areeba Zakir (IndE 1T6), who leads WISE’s high school outreach, said the theme connects what people do now to their future, and “motivates you to do something better than just average.”
Some of this year’s keynote speakers include:
- Anne Sado (IndE 7T7), U of T Engineering alumna and president of George Brown College;
- Karl Martin (EngSci 0T1, ElecE MASc 0T3, PhD 1T0), Engineering alumnus and founder of Bionym, creators of the Nymi wristband;
- Cynthia Goh, director of the Impact Centre at the University of Toronto; and,
- Diane Freeman, professional engineer, Councilor for the City of Waterloo and senior manager at Conestoga-Rovers & Associates.
The conference also involves a social innovation case competition where small teams will have two days to create collaborative solutions to a design challenge. To win the $1,000 cash prize, groups will have to propose a design that meets the needs of a specific target market.
Also on the roster are casual fireside chats with mentors, poster and case competitions, a team-building workshop, networking sessions, a career fair and two industry-based sessions hosted by Accenture and General Electric.
Community outreach in STEM
The National Conference is not the only way WISE inspires and supports students all across Canada. Founded in the late 1990s at the University of Toronto, the organization now has local chapters at the University of British Columbia, University of Calgary, University of Ottawa and Carleton University, among others.
WISE’s U of T Chapter leads outreach activities to attract more young women into science and engineering around the Greater Toronto Area, including:
- Visiting local high schools, where student volunteers share their experiences and discuss various programs at U of T;
- Organizing Take Your Kid to Skule Day, an opportunity for high school students to attend lectures and tutorials at U of T.
- Participating at the Science Expo in February; and,
- Joining the one-day public outreach program Science Rendezvous this summer.
“We do a lot of hands-on activities to show children and youth just a small version of some challenges or problem-solving skills that engineering students use,” said Zakir. “It feels great when people come back to you and say, ‘I’m choosing engineering because you told me about your experience.’”
Tickets to this year’s WISE National Conference can be purchased online for $100, and U of T offers 60% reimbursement to its students who attend. Various other universities also offer reimbursements to students.