In vitro fertilization is a costly, invasive process—but what if there was a way to vastly improve a woman’s chances of getting pregnant in fewer in vitro sessions?
Enter QSperm, a startup grounded in U of T Engineering-developed research from Professor David Sinton (MIE), PhD student Reza Nosrati (MechE PhD 1T6) and alumna Lise Eamer (MechE 0T8, MASc 1T3).
“QSperm is a one-step, inexpensive and easy-to-use device that selects the best sperm for assisted reproduction,” said Eamer. “It races the sperm against each other in a sort of miniature obstacle course in order to select the highest quality sperm to improve the success rates of assisted reproduction.”
Eamer is a researcher at the Sinton Lab where the science behind QSperm got its start. She says the current success rate for assisted reproduction in Canada is only 24 per cent.
“By selecting the highest quality sperm, we aim to improve the success rates and reduce the number of fertilization cycles that couples require to conceive. This will help reduce both the financial and emotional burden of trying to conceive,” she explained.
Last spring, U of T News profiled QSperm as the team competed in the finals of an international life-sciences-based startup competition called OneStart. (Read the original article here)
With the competition again opening its call for applicants, Eamer looks back at the lessons QSperm learned in last year’s edition. And she talks about the entrepreneurship support her company continues to receive at U of T to help QSperm develop as a business.
How did taking part in an international competition help you develop your entrepreneurship skills?
The OneStart competition had many components which really helped in honing my business skills. The bootcamp in San Francisco was a great opportunity to learn about what makes companies attractive to investors, and how to sell them on your idea.
We also had breakout discussion groups based on our type of technology which made it possible to discuss the challenges specific to our businesses. In our case, there was a lot of discussion surrounding regulatory approval which is definitely something we must understand.
What I liked most about the bootcamp was the speed networking. The organizers set up a speed networking session with serial entrepreneurs, startup CEOs and investment directors. It was a great opportunity to make key contacts that will help us in moving forward. Working closely with a mentor was an invaluable experience which I strongly recommend to all entrepreneurs.
Why did you apply to OneStart?
First, it is geared specifically to startups in the healthcare industry, so it is a great opportunity for medical device companies and therapeutics.
Second, OneStart paired us with a mentor. Our mentor helped us develop a strong business plan and presentation which helped us get into the finals. Although the competition wrapped up in May we are continuing to work with our mentor to engage angel investors and potential partners.
What’s happened with your startup since we last spoke—any major milestones?
We have made some design changes to better meet user needs. We’ve also established some key partnerships that will make it possible for us to move to the next stage of commercialization.
How has U of T continued to support your startup?
Its technology was developed in the Sinton Lab in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering. I would like to acknowledge those that continue to work with me on this project, Professor David Sinton, Dr. Marion Vollmer (MIE) and Reza Nosrati. We have also received unbridled support from the University of Toronto Innovations and Partnerships Office, as well as MaRS Innovation.
What’s next for your company?
In the next year we are working on finalizing the design and conducting the final validation testing. We are of course continuing to develop our network of contacts and mentors in order to continue to hone our business and entrepreneurial skills.
Any advice for aspiring entrepreneurs at U of T?
To aspiring entrepreneurs at U of T, I would strongly recommend making use of the large variety of resources available to budding entrepreneurs at the university as well as through MaRS and the Ontario Network of Entrepreneurs.
It is also of utmost importance to find strong mentors. We have learned a lot from our continued work with various mentors, and they have served as one of the best resources. You should work on continuously growing your network since you never know where you will find someone who can help you advance your business idea.
If you visit the lighting section of your nearest hardware store, chances are you’ll be bombarded by the latest mega-efficient LED bulbs—but to alumnus Michael Helander (EngSci 0T7, MSE PhD 1T2), that technology is old news.
Helander and a team of former U of T Engineering students recently released the world’s first organic LED (or OLED) lamp, aerelight™. The product harnesses the power of next-generation OLEDs to emit a warm light from a thin sheet of non-toxic, carbon-based materials.
The lamp uses less energy than traditional sources, providing up to 1,000 lux of illumination—double a typical office environment—with only seven watts. It also features a dimming capability, wireless smartphone charging built into the base, and of course, an advanced OLED panel. (Read more about aerelight.)
OLEDs are a sophisticated type of light-emitting diodes that pass electricity through carbon-based dyes and pigments to power lights and displays. While we’ve seen this technology in certain high-end smartphones and premium flat-panel displays, this is the first consumer-ready indoor OLED lighting product ever made.
“We started with a goal of building the aerelight desk lamp, first as a great product, and second as the first consumer-ready OLED lamp,” said Helander, who co-founded OTI Lumionics to commercialize OLEDs in 2011. The startup manufactures the lamps in-house, and is scheduled to ship them to consumers in early 2015.
“With traditional light sources, the bulb is a distinct separate entity from the fixture,” said alumnus and OTI senior product designer Ray Kwa (EngSci 0T0 + PEY). “With aerelight, I wanted to create a seamless, continuous frame integrating the base, frame and light—synonymous to the OLED light source itself which emits a diffused, fluid soft light.”
Although the lamp’s efficiency and sleek design are already making media headlines, aerelight is actually part of a much greater strategy from OTI to make OLED technology cheaper and easier to manufacture.
“OLEDs have many unique characteristics that make [them] the ideal light source of the future, but potential growth has been stifled by the high manufacturing costs,” said Helander.
In 2011, then-PhD students Helander and Zhibin Wang (MSE PhD 1T2), along with their supervisor Professor Zheng-Hong Lu (MSE), discovered a new method for cost-effective production of OLEDs. Published in the leading journal, Science, the trio used a single-atom-thick layer of chlorine that simplified the internal structure of OLED technology, while still achieving high brightness and efficiency.
Shortly after the breakthrough, Helander and other Engineering alumni spun off the technology into OTI—taking their ideas to U of T’s elite accelerator program in the Creative Destruction Lab, based at the Rotman School of Management. Over eight months, they honed the necessary technical and business aspects of their company, while also meeting with Canadian business and entrepreneurship titans.
The fledgling startup has already received significant interest from notable investors, including Lee Lau, ATI Technologies founder and a G7 fellow at U of T’s Creative Destruction Lab, and Roger Martin, former Rotman School of Business dean.
“This is a great example of how new materials like OLEDs can be showcased in a product that represents a paradigm shift in indoor lighting and sustainable technologies,” said Professor Jun Nogami, chair of the U of T Department of Materials Science & Engineering.
With their first product hitting desks soon, Helander and his team at OTI continue to make OLED technology more accessible than ever—suggesting a bright future is in store for them as well.
See aerelight for yourself:
http://youtu.be/1s0o1xkJo20
As Torontonians get ready to head to the polls on October 27, issues that have been driving public debate and city politics over the past year are heating up.
Over the next four weeks, U of T News—reposted on Engineering News—will feature a mini-series of podcasts introducing experts from engineering, geography, architecture and more as they explain their boundary-breaking research with the aim of providing voters—and anyone interested in the future of cities—with a snapshot of what Toronto and other global cities could look like just a few years from now.
The first episode is all about traffic. You can download or stream the full episode here:
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(Click the down-pointing arrow button in the player to download episode and transfer to your listening device)
Part One: Smarter traffic lights
In the first part of this episode, post-doctoral researcher Samah El-Tantawy (CivE) explains her work with Professor Baher Abdulhai (CivE) as they develop a system known as MARLIN-ATSC (Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Integrated Network of Adaptive Traffic Signal Controllers).
The name sounds complicated but it’s really a simple idea: making traffic lights artifically intelligent.
She says traffic simulations have shown that MARLIN can reduce traffic wait times by 40 per cent—and it’s just about to be tested on the roads of Burlington.
Last year, El-Tantawy was featured in U of T News for winning an international award for her work on MARLIN.
Part Two: A new kind of ride on Toronto streets
Engineering alumnus Phil Lam (EngSci 0T9, MIE PhD 1T5) and his team at Wheelspan want to make travel on Toronto roads greener, safer and more efficient.
Their innovative human-electric hybrid vehicle and their company are both in development at the Impact Centre, one of U of T’s entrepreneurship hubs specifically designed for entrepreneurs focused on the physical sciences.
Lam explains the urban needs driving the mission of Wheelspan.
Part Three: Putting the politics of traffic into students’ hands
Professor Zack Taylor teaches urban issues and local government at University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus.
He’s interested in political questions and behaviour at a local scale –and he’s inviting his students to join him in his work.
This semester, Taylor is leading a fourth-year seminar course all about the Toronto election.
In this episode, he explains why he’s looking to students to help fill the gaps of scholarship on city elections and what it means for young researchers to dig in.
Read more about building successful cities at U of T.
This podcast features music made available on the Free Music Archive from artists Cheese N Pot-C, Tha Silent Partner and The Custodian of Records.
When you download photos from your digital camera, it may only seem like a click of a mouse. But to your computer, it’s an intricate process fraught with error. As millions of information bits travel between devices at lightning speed, tiny blips and blunders are common—and fixing those errors is more complex than you’d imagine.
ECE Professor Frank Kschischang is a pioneer in developing new coding systems that correct these errors—and his innovative work recently garnered him the role of University of Toronto Distinguished Professor in Digital Communication.
Granted by the office of the vice-president and provost for the University of Toronto, he will hold the position for a five-year term, effective January 1, 2015. The Distinguished Professor Awards are designed to advance and recognize individuals with highly distinguished accomplishments, who maintain an extraordinary level of activity in their research and scholarly work and have achieved pre-eminence in their fields.
Professor Kschischang has made seminal contributions in the area of error-correcting techniques, and his methods have been applied in wired and wireless systems, as well as optical networks. In the late 1990s, he co-invented the factor graph, a type of graphical model that implements an efficient probabilistic-inference algorithm for application in error-control coding, signal processing and DNA sequencing. Now a standard tool used throughout machine learning and digital communications, the factor graph has also been implemented in many industrial standards.
His award-winning work on subspace codes for network coding provided an elegant solution to the problem of error-control in communication systems. Using random linear network coding, it introduces a radically new approach to communications in networks like the internet. His research on optical communications has been equally groundbreaking, attracting attention from leading theoreticians and industrial practitioners. His published papers are influential and highly cited, and he has won several best paper awards.
Kschischang has received many awards and honours in recognition of his pioneering research contributions. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Engineering Institute of Canada and the Royal Society of Canada, and garnered a Killam Research Fellowship in 2010. He is a recipient of the Canadian Award in Telecommunications Research, given biennially to a top Canadian researcher in this area. A member of the first cohort of Canada Research Chairs at the University of Toronto, he was awarded the CRC in Communication Algorithms in 2001. Highly regarded by his peers, Kschischang was elected president of the IEEE Information Theory Society in 2010. He currently serves as editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, the most prestigious journal in his field.
In addition to his research accomplishments, Kschischang is one of the Faculty’s most accomplished and popular teachers. An excellent lecturer who receives outstanding teaching evaluations, he has also contributed to curriculum development. He was a key architect of the “flexible curriculum” and served for several years as chair of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering’s Curriculum Committee. He has received six departmental teaching awards over the years, as well as the Faculty Teaching Award. His remarkable record of teaching and research was recognized in 2010 with the University of Toronto Faculty Award.
With files from Carolyn Farrell and Marit Mitchell.
Often singled out for his academic leadership and research, U of T Professor Paul Santerre is being celebrated for a different reason this month. His leadership in moving his biomaterials discovery, Surface Modifying Macromolecules, to the marketplace has garnered him top prize from the 2014 Ernest C. Manning Innovation Awards.
The awards recognize Canadian innovators who have successfully created and marketed new concepts, processes or procedures. Santerre, from the Faculty of Dentistry and the Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering (IBBME) (which spans the faculties of Applied Science & Engineering, Medicine and Dentistry), has been distinguished by this year’s $100K Principal Award.
Santerre’s discovery solves an important dilemma in medical care. When patients are fitted with tubing devices – used for everything from kidney dialysis to blood transfusions – the tubes can cause thrombosis (blood clots) to form. These clots can detach and lead to major complications or mortality. Current treatments involve coating devices with anti-coagulant drugs, such as heparin, that can strip away from the tubing and enter the body.
Rather than acting like a coating, Surface Modifying Macromolecules (referred by the trade name Endexo™) are added during manufacturing so that they are embedded throughout the device. The molecules don’t shed, and their success rate at preventing blood clots has been extremely high – reducing incidents of clots by as much as 87 per cent in blood loop tests, a lab test that simulates blood circulation in the body.
Santerre, who also won the NSERC Synergy Awards for Innovation for his research leadership in 2012, commercialized the intellectual property into a budding startup company, Interface Biologics, Inc., which then developed the molecular technology into several products. Garnering major investments, and then entering into licensing agreements with a leading U.S.-based biomedical device company, AngioDynamics, the company was able to develop the technology to a point that made it market-ready.
In the past two years the technology has jumped several major regulatory hurdles, including two approvals from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as well as similar approvals in Europe and Canada, and has quickly overtaken the market with strong interest. Within its first year of sales, Peripherially Inserted Central Catheters (PICC) containing Endexo landed 45 per cent in the Canadian market alone – and with new licensing partners, is set to steal a major piece of the dialysis market in the U.S., worth an estimated $2 billion.
Daniel Haas, Dean of the Faculty of Dentistry, dubbed Santerre’s latest tribute “fitting”: “Throughout his career here at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Dentistry, as well as at IBBME, Paul has consistently demonstrated outstanding innovation in the field of biomaterials research that has brought him international recognition.”
The award recognizes Santerre as one of Canada’s leading inventors who has overcome the challenges associated with pushing his creation into the marketplace, and in turn, is helping to position Canada as a global leader in technology, business, engineering and social innovation.
It’s a job, Santerre admits, that’s not always easy.
“The Manning award is a recognition that the University of Toronto is driving and enabling the world class research of its academics to be translated into unique and transformative technologies for the health care field,” said Santerre, who urges decision-makers at all levels of government to “capitalize on the potential economic opportunities that exists in Canada,” especially those available through university research networks.
“Paul Santerre is a trailblazer in biomaterials and biomedical engineering,” said Cristina Amon, dean of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “Not only is he pioneering innovative research, but he is also transferring his findings directly to market so they can improve health care for people around the world. I extend my heartfelt congratulations on behalf of the Faculty for this richly-deserved award.”
“Paul Santerre is a talented and innovative research leader. The success of Interface Biologics is yet another example of how U of T-born research can lead to new clinical applications and economic success. I congratulate him on earning a Manning Award,” said Catharine Whiteside, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Vice Provost, Relations with Health Care Institutions.
Transforming intellectual property into booming businesses has become something of a trademark for the University of Toronto in recent years. The University consistently tops the rankings of North American schools for startup activity, according to research conducted by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM).
Read the full story on this year’s Manning Innovation Awards in Maclean’s magazine.
Most of us think of a classroom as rows of desks facing a podium or screen; students sit quietly, alternating between taking notes and listening to a professor lecture.
This is a model that all of us have experienced—but is it the best way to learn?
Eager to explore this question, U of T Engineering recently unveiled a pilot Technology Enhanced Active Learning (TEAL) classroom. TEAL rooms offer an innovative new educational method that facilitates collaboration and hands-on learning, assisted by technology and strategic design.
With several TEAL rooms expected in the forthcoming Centre for Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CEIE), the pilot project gives U of T engineering students and educators a taste of how the different format works
“The pilot room is a great chance for us to see the design in action,” said Steve Miszuk, director, facilities and infrastructure planning. “We can try out different layouts and technologies, get feedback and see what really works.”
Located in the Sandford Fleming building, the TEAL room features bright green chairs clustered around 12 hexagonal tables that are spread throughout the room. This layout – an alternative to the traditional lecture-style of all tables and chairs facing one podium – encourages collaboration amongst students. And thanks to wheels on all chairs and tables, the room can be as flexible as needed, quickly adjusting for exam or tutorial formats.
“The new TEAL classrooms provide a great space for collaborative learning in tutorials or courses with small class sizes,” said Susan McCahan, vice dean, undergraduate. “There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that active, team-based learning is an effective model for students, and this is a great chance to implement those practices.”
In addition to changing the method of how students learn and retain information, TEAL rooms also invite instructors to rethink how they deliver material. Rather than remaining stationary near the front of the room, professors
are encouraged to move from table to table.
Eight 80-inch screens are spaced evenly around the room – two on each wall – to make material visually accessible to every student. And with tables set at bar-height, the instructor is able to engage students at eye-level rather
than leaning down or lecturing from above.
To further enhance the collaborative experience and enable peer-to-peer learning, every table is equipped with ports so that students can showcase their work easily on the digital displays.
U of T Engineering’s pilot TEAL classroom is already being heavily used, with over 35 hours booked per week across a number of departments and divisions.
“The TEAL rooms are one example of collaborative learning spaces we’re implementing around campus,” said Miszuk, who also mentioned new study areas in the Bahen Centre. “Keep an eye out for more projects in the future.”