It began with the polar vortex of 2014. That’s when University of Toronto engineering alumni Jason Yakimovich (CompE 1T3+PEY) and Alex Huang (ElecE 1T3+PEY), fed up with low temperatures, developed the first intelligent heated base layer.
The “smart” shirt monitors body temperature to provide just the right amount of warmth for its wearer to enjoy outdoor sports—or simply walk from the front door to the subway entrance in comfort.
“That cold winter was the instigator,” said Yakimovich. “We had the idea, and things got pretty serious pretty quickly.”
The team launched a crowd-sourcing campaign on IndieGoGo, calling their star up FuelWear, and raised more than $84,000. They exceeded their target funding by 400 per cent.
Since then, FuelWear joined a U of T incubator for early-stage ideas called the Entrepreneurship Hatchery. They walked away with the program’s highest honour, the Lacavera Prize, which earned the team $20,000 to further develop their company.
FuelWear has attracted media attention from CBC, Financial Post, Huffington Post and elsewhere. And consumers are intensely interested, too.
“As we underestimated the demand for our product, we hit the production cap of our manufacturer in Canada within the first two weeks,” co-founder Clement Zhou told the Financial Post.
“Alex and Jason researched the market and refined the product until they had something that really resonated with people—truly smart clothing that adapted its heating to your activity level and temperature, yet remained comfortable and washable,” said Vaughn Betz (ECE), an associate professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering.
“The combination of engineering excellence, business acumen and sheer tenacity that they bring to a project has been the secret of their success, and a pleasure to witness.”
Now that they’re a year into building their startup, members of the FuelWear team say they’ve learned a lot and are using that knowledge to grow. Below, co-founder Yakimovich shares the latest news with U of T’s Brianna Goldberg.
What’s new with FuelWear since you won the Lacavera Prize?
We are working on producing the best possible quality Flame Baselayer. It hasn’t been easy; dealing with suppliers requires a very close watch, but we are well underway. We are also investigating potential product improvements and new products such as heated pants or heated leggings. We are looking to join U of T’s Creative Destruction Lab accelerator, a Silicon Valley-based accelerator called Y-combinator and we are seeking investors.
What have you learned about running a startup in the past few months?
We’ve learned a great deal about manufacturing. You can’t expect your suppliers to stick to any schedule you lay out, even if they agree to it. You have to allow for extra time to deal with things that go wrong. For example, our manufacturer of the actual shirt sewed approximately 100 heated patches incorrectly – they all had to be redone.
How has U of T helped you along the way?
The U of T Hatchery and its director, Joseph Orozco, as well as Professor Vaughn Betz, have been very useful.
Joseph has put us in contact with lawyers and accountants to help us with our incorporation, patent and payroll. And they have provided lots of useful advice regarding how to run a business.
Clement is still in school and is only taking a small course load so it is easy for him. Alex is working full time. And I am splitting my time between working for Amazon as a software engineer and working on FuelWear
What’s next for your company?
Next year is going to be an interesting one for FuelWear. Our aim is to grow by 10 times. As such, we are looking for both investment opportunities and another crowdfunding campaign. We have plans to reduce the size of the battery, relocate the heating zones and streamline production. Additionally, we are planning to build our online shop so that we can directly process sales.
It’s about to get a whole lot brighter in Toronto thanks to a significant investment from the Canadian government in a U of T Engineering alumnus’ sustainable lighting company.
OTI Lumionics, a company co-founded by alumnus Michael Helander (EngSci 0T7, MSE PhD 1T2), has been awarded $5.7 million from Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) to implement a pilot production line capable of producing high volumes of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) lighting panels.
“We can make large, flexible OLED panels in about an hour with our rapid prototyping module,” said Helander. “This new pilot production line will be the same process, except it’ll be ten modules next to each other, cutting down the production time from an hour to minutes.”
OTI is one of seven clean technology projects in Ontario announced to receive investments totalling more than $26.8 million from SDTC’s SD Tech Fund™, an initiative that is part of Canada’s Economic Action Plan, supporting jobs, economic growth and the environment.
Founded in 2011, OTI Lumionics was created by Helander and several of his U of T Engineering colleagues to commercialize their major breakthrough in OLED technology made during their doctoral studies. Today, OTI employs about a dozen employees—most of them U of T Engineering alumni—and is located in a 3,300 square foot office and lab space in the U of T Banting Building on College Street across from the MaRS Discovery District.
Their inaugural product—the world’s first OLED table lamp, aerelight—was launched to market in 2014.
“Congratulations to all of our U of T Engineering alumni at OTI Lumionics. This is a well-deserved recognition of the important work they are doing,” said Professor Jun Nogami, chair of the U of T Department of Materials Science & Engineering. “This investment shows that our federal government has a strong commitment to supporting leading edge technologies that will help grow Canada’s green research and development knowledge base as we all work towards a more sustainable future.”
Read more about Michael Helander and OTI Lumionics’ story in ‘The Glow of Confidence’ feature in the U of T Department of Materials Science & Engineering’s recently released Impact magazine.
David Yao (MASc 8T1, PhD 8T3), MIE alumnus and professor of industrial engineering at Columbia University, has been elected as Member to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Members—including U of T Engineering Dean Cristina Amon—rank among the world’s most accomplished engineers.
NAE membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice, or education. That includes significant contributions to the engineering literature, to the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, and to making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing innovative approaches to engineering education.
Yao was cited for his research of stochastic systems and their applications in engineering and service operations. “I am deeply grateful for the kindness and generosity of many colleagues at Columbia and elsewhere in helping me throughout my career,” said Yao, in an announcement made by Columbia University. As a PhD student at U of T’s Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering (MIE), Yao was supervised by Professor John Buzacott (MIE).
“On behalf of the MIE community, I would like to congratulate David Yao on this prestigious honour,” said Jean Zu, chair of MIE. “His election to NAE brilliantly demonstrates the high-calibre of engineers we graduate from our department. Yao is among many outstanding alumni making important contributions to engineering through leading-edge research.”
Your smartphone may keep getting smarter, but its network is struggling to keep up.
Demand for fast, cheap and plentiful data continues to surge, but wireless communications infrastructure is reaching the limits of what it can provide to users—unless we can find more efficient ways to engineer our networks.
Professor Wei Yu (ECE) is doing exactly that. A professor in The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Yu has been awarded a 2015 E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).
The award allows researchers who show extraordinary promise to focus on their research, relieved of teaching and administrative duties for a two-year term. Each Fellow receives a research grant of $250,000. Up to six Fellows are named each year, and received their awards from the Governor General of Canada, David Johnston, at a ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on February 17, 2015.
“Being able to focus on research one-hundred per cent of the time is hugely important,” said Professor Yu. “The Steacie Fellowship makes it possible for me to recruit the best students and post-docs to my research program to help develop the next generation of wireless technologies.”
Professor Yu’s work tackles the design and optimization of wireless communication systems. “I’m passionate about information theory, which is the mathematical foundation of modern digital communications,” he said.
Yu is currently investigating novel ways that base-stations and smartphones in a radio-access network may cooperatively transmit and receive information to and from each other, in order to enhance signal quality and to reduce interference for wireless data access. His discoveries have impact on the network architecture, transceiver design and network deployment for future generation wireless cellular services.
Professor Yu’s work is already hugely influential—in 2014 he was named to Thomson Reuters’ rankings of the most highly cited scientific researchers in the world. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, and currently holds a Canada Research Chair in Information Theory and Wireless Communications.
“Wei Yu is known internationally not only as an exceptional scholar in the communications field, but for the applicability of his work to engineering practice,” said Professor Farid Najm, chair of The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. “We are extremely proud and gratified to see him recognized with one of the most prestigious research awards in the country.”
University of Toronto researchers received three of the six E.W.R. Steacie awards conferred this year—the other Fellows include Professor Aaron Wheeler of the Department of Chemistry and Professor Leah Cowan of the Department of Molecular Genetics.
“My congratulations to all our NSERC award winners,” said Professor Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice president of research and innovation. “They are conducting both fundamental research that is pushing the boundaries of human knowledge and applied research that will improve health and quality of life worldwide in the coming years. We are grateful to NSERC for this recognition of and investment in U of T researchers.”
Researchers from University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering have been awarded a total of $636,300 from the University’s own research funding source, the Connaught Fund.
The new awards are part of over $900,000 that was distributed across U of T through Connaught’s Innovation Award, Summer Institute and Cross Divisional/ Cross Cultural programs.
Founded in 1972, the Connaught Fund was created from the sale of the Connaught Laboratories. The labs mass-produced insulin, the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of U of T’s Frederick Banting, Charles Best, John Macleod and Charles Collip. The University has stewarded the fund in the years since, awarding more than $130 million to U of T researchers.
Today, the fund invests approximately $4 million annually in emerging and established scholars from the full spectrum of research and scholarship throughout U of T.
“Thanks to the innovation of the U of T researchers who discovered insulin, the Connaught Fund continues to enable innovation to thrive today,” said Professor Vivek Goel, vice president, research and innovation. “Each of the projects being funded through these new awards will, in its own way, move global society forward on fronts that affect us all every day. Thanks to all of our Connaught researchers for their excellent work.”
The Innovation Awards are designed to help accelerate the development of promising technology and promote commercialization and/or knowledge transfer.
This year’s U of T Engineering recipients include:
Edgar Acosta (ChemE)
“Microencapsulated self-microemulsifying drug delivery system”
Constantin Christopoulos (CivE)
“Implementation of the GIB system for the seismic upgrade of a real soft-storey building retrofit”
Ofer Levi (IBBME)
“Miniature, implantable multimodality optical imaging systems for drug screening in awake rodents”
Mo Mojahedi (ECE)
“Multimode spectroscopy with plasmonics and hybrid plasmonics sensors”
Ridha Ben Mrad (MIE)
“A cell phone camera module incorporating a micro-electrostatic actuator enabling autofocus (AF) and optical image stabilization (OIS) capabilities”
Radhakrishnan Mahadevan (ChemE)
“Production of bio-based 1,3-butanediol”
Edward Sargent (ECE)
“Commercialization of a highly efficient hybrid quantum dot/silicon solar cell”
David Steinman (MIE)
“A disruptive, physics-based ultrasound simulation platform for accelerating sonographer training”
With files from Paul Fraumeni.
Whether it’s mimicking ocean mussels to create powerful non-toxic glue, or designing energy technologies that can store power for a whole city block, U of T undergraduate engineering students have the opportunity to lead innovative research that improves both our communities and ecosystems.
Here are three materials science and engineering students who are designing a greener tomorrow:
Environmentally-friendly, non-stick coatings inspired by mussels—Robert Alexander
The Quagga Mussel is an invasive species found in the North American Great Lakes. It self-produces a protein-based “glue”—known as byssus—that allows the mussel to attach to a range of surfaces, even in water. Most often, it attaches itself to drainage pipes and ship hulls, resulting in major clogs and increased drag forces. The rapid accumulation of these mussels results in a variety of performance and economic issues, not to mention costly removal processes.
Robert Alexander (MSE 1T5), a fourth year materials engineering undergraduate student, works with professors Benjamin Hatton (MSE) and Eli Sone (IBBME, MSE) to investigate a variety of these mussels. Their research involved two objectives: first, to figure out the composition of its self-produced “glue” to determine their adhesion capabilities, and, second, to test their strength on a special, non-toxic coating the group has developed. This non-toxic coating, based on a parent technology known as Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces (SLIPS), utilizes micro-sized holes with a repellent liquid film on the interface to maximize non-stick capabilities. In other words, they’re developing the stickiest non-toxic glue and its countermeasure at the same time.
Increasing the shelf-life of organic solar cells—Stephanie Nyikos
Organic materials-based solar cells present the best of both worlds: they harvest the sun’s energy without producing greenhouse gases and they’re made of environmentally-friendly, biodegradable compounds. One problem, however, is that their efficiency decreases significantly when in storage. This could pose a notable concern, particularly when panels might be put away during transportation, or covered by obstacles like snow.
Stephanie Nyikos (MSE 1T6) works with chemical engineering professor Tim Bender (ChemE) to investigate nitrogen encapsulation of these organic photovoltaics to preserve their efficiency during downtime. The preliminary data in her research has pointed to increased shelf life and stability of the organic solar cells she stored in a sealed nitrogen environment versus ambient surroundings.
“The success of encapsulating these organic solar cells is the first step to taking this technology outside of the lab and into the real world,” says Bender. “We’re quite excited to take this testing to a further stage.”
Engineering better and more cost-effective super-capacitors—Yee Wei Foong
Working with his mentor, Matthew Genovese (MSE PhD candidate) in Professor Keryn Lian’s (MSE) Flexible Energy & Electronics Laboratory, Yee Wei Foong (MSE 1T5) was able to successfully synthesize germanomolybdate—a low-cost alternative used to modify nano-carbon capacitor electrodes. Not only does his new material work, but has also demonstrated a dramatic increase in energy storage on a micro-sized, lab-scale device. Foong has since co-authored two peer-reviewed journal articles and a conference presentation on this discovery.
Foong has been working on developing cost-effective materials for super-capacitors since the summer after his second year. Specifically, he has been focused on finding an inexpensive substitute for ruthenium dioxide (RuO2)—the current state-of-the-art material used for high-performance electrodes.
For his fourth year thesis, Foong is taking his initial success to find out if his new material will produce similar results on conventional-sized devices. “The energy storage readings on our scale-up applications are looking quite promising,” says Genovese.
“Our students fully understand the need for new materials and their critical role in building a sustainable future,” says Professor Jun Nogami, Chair of the Department of Materials Science & Engineering. “My sincerest thanks to our professors and graduate researchers who tirelessly guide and mentor our young bright minds to bring them to their fullest potential.”