They’re inventing biotechnology to fend off disease. They’re designing the fabric of our growing cities. They’re even creating the communications networks that will connect our toasters with our running shoes – and recent data shows a record-breaking number want to join their ranks.
They’re U of T engineers, who lead at the cutting-edge of their fields.
The Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering experienced an unprecedented number of applications for fall 2014. Overall graduate applications rose a dramatic 14 per cent, with domestic students surpassing 20 per cent since this time last year.
Undergraduate studies broke new records with applications from 11,291 prospective students. Those received from outside of Ontario increased 29 per cent since the same period last year. This fall, one in 10 applicants will have a place in U of T Engineering’s undergraduate programs.
“I am delighted to see the exponentially increasing interest from students across Canada and around the world,” said U of T Engineering Dean Cristina Amon. “It demonstrates the appeal of our innovative learning programs, world-renowned faculty and our vibrant student community.”
Graduate applicants have displayed a strong demand in the pioneering research opportunities at U of T. Overall applications to the Faculty’s master programs have risen over 16 per cent, with significant growth of 39 per cent in the Master of Engineering (MEng) programs. For PhD programs, domestic applications have also exceeded 27 per cent since this time last year.
Both graduate and undergraduate programs had double-digit growth in domestic and international applicants for fall 2014. Over 28 per cent of all undergraduate applications came from abroad, which continues a growing trend of international undergraduate students that have doubled on campus in the last decade.
“Many diverse students continue to be attracted to the growing range of unique programs and co-curricular activities at U of T Engineering,” said Micah Stickel, Chair, First Year Engineering. “They’re able to learn technical engineering competencies, while opportunities like our Entrepreneurship Hatchery, a new certificate in engineering leadership and our popular Engineering Business minor enhance their creativity, leadership and business acumen.”
Placements in the Professional Experience Year (PEY) internship program continue to rise amongst undergraduate students. This year, 63 per cent of third-year students gained valuable workplace experience vital to their career development – the highest participation yet.
Since 2006, the level of undergraduate student applications has risen over 75 per cent. Preliminary graduate applicants show an overall growth of 25 per cent over this period, without taking into account the many more applications the Faculty will receive in the months ahead.
“When I ask graduate students why they chose U of T Engineering, I receive the same response nearly every time,” said Markus Bussmann, Vice-Dean, Graduate Studies. “They tell me about the immense possibilities offered through U of T’s innovative research programs, by our faculty at the top of their fields, and by the chance to collaborate across the disciplines.”
Fabrication labs transform a student’s idea into an innovation. A meeting of engineers from different fields sparks a new solution to an intricate problem. And a 500-seat lecture hall ushers in 21st century learning as it swiftly converts into interactive, small-group spaces.
The Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CEIE), a dynamic new hub for the Faculty’s research and education, has received approval from all levels of U of T governance. This includes the topmost University of Toronto Governing Council (GC).
“I am thrilled to have received such remarkable encouragement for this innovative centre,” said Cristina Amon, Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering. “The CEIE is an exciting next step for U of T Engineering, the University and the City of Toronto” she continued. “It will help prepare the next generation of engineers to be global leaders and creative innovators, and provide essential space and opportunity for researchers in many of our growing interdisciplinary centres and institutes.”
Moving beyond traditional design
Designed by Toronto-based Montgomery Sisam Architects and the UK-based firm Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, the Centre moves beyond traditional design concepts towards areas that are flexible and collaborative. Along with the adaptable 468-seat Lee & Margaret Lau Auditorium, classrooms are wired with the latest technology to engage students with interactive, hands-on learning.
New design labs and workspaces, including one that stretches two storeys, will promote cross-disciplinary research. Operating around ‘nerve centres’, these will connect facilities and personnel from across the Faculty in a physical space.
Student club space has also been designed into the CEIE, supported by a generous $1 million commitment from the Engineering Society, and will be used for club activities, including events and constructing group projects.
“The building will be a vibrant hub for many of the emerging cross-disciplinary research and education initiatives within the Faculty and with our industrial partners,” said Professor Emeritus Ron Venter (MIE), who leads the building’s planning committee.
“It will offer new opportunities for creative invention and interdisciplinary collaboration in sustainable energy, advanced manufacturing, robotics, data simulation and visualization, infrastructure and water, as well as in global engineering and leadership. It will be a home where alumni, entrepreneurs and friends of the Faculty can meet and inspire the finest engineering graduates of tomorrow.”
A recent $2.5 million donation from alumnus Gerald Heffernan (MMS 4T3) empowers student entrepreneurs to commercialize new ideas in the new Heffernan Hatchery. Two storeys below, light fabrication facilities, rapid-prototyping tools and workspace will be available to help them make their very first prototypes. Heffernan also made a recent gift of $2.5M to expand the Heffernan Commercialization program, which provides financial support to graduate student entrepreneurs.
Alumni as far as Asia-Pacific have also been showing their enthusiastic commitment to the Centre’s vision. This past fall, alumni groups in Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan pledged to sponsor spaces that will be recognized with their region’s names.
The new building is the centerpiece of U of T Engineering’s $200-million component of Boundless: The Campaign for the University of Toronto. Read more about the donors who have also supported the CEIE’s future impact.
The next pivotal milestone for the CEIE is soliciting approval from the City of Toronto for the addition of the innovative centre to the City’s urban landscape. In conjunction with this activity, the Faculty will resume with completing the detailed design and pricing options, all while continuing to fundraise through the Boundless initiative.
Research out of U of T’s The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) is making big waves in the field of plasmonics.
Post-doctoral fellow Muhammad Alam‘s (ECE PhD 1T2) 2007 paper proposing the world’s first hybrid plasmonic waveguide took the field by storm and now researchers here at the University of Toronto, as well as across Canada and the world, are building on the work. The exciting new design was manufactured and tested right here, in cleanrooms at the Toronto Nanofabrication Centre (TNFC), housed primarily in ECE.
When light illuminates a metal surface, it creates ripples in the sea of electrons in the metal – much like the ripples created by a stone thrown into a pond. These tiny waves, known as surface plasmon, can be used to trap light on the metal surface.
Applications of surface plasmon—a research area known as plasmonics—holds terrific potential. Researchers are using plasmonics to combine the enormous data carrying capacity achieved by photonics with the tiny scale of modern electronics to create faster and smaller computer chips.
Plasmonics holds great promise for biology, as the concept can be applied to biosensors to trap and detect the presence of micro-scale disease markers both rapidly and accurately. Plasmonics is also finding applications in solar cells, nanolithography, optical data storage and cancer treatment.
Its biggest limitation, however, is the large loss suffered by surface plasmon—as the light trapped by surface plasmon propagates along the metal surface, the power carried by light quickly dissipates as heat in the metal.
“This was a fundamental problem – no matter what metal you used, you saw loss,” says Alam. “The hybrid plasmonic waveguide can confine the light in a very small volume and at the same time bring the loss down.”
Alam’s 2007 work was the result of his PhD dissertation, co-supervised by ECE Professors Stewart Aitchison and Mo Mojahedi. His contributions have been cited more than 300 times, with 124 citations in 2013 alone. Alam was awarded the 2013 CMC Microsystems’ Douglas R. Colton Medal for Research Excellence for his significant and transformative contributions to the field of plasmonics. The award recognizes research leading to new understanding and novel developments in microsystems and related technologies. Alam was recently awarded the KNI Prize Postdoctoral Fellowship in Nanoscience from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Stars, diamonds, circles.
Rather than your average bowl of Lucky Charms, these are three-dimensional cell cultures that can be generated by a new digital microfluidics platform from researchers at U of T’s Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering (IBBME).
Published this week in Nature Communications, the tool can be used to study cells in cost-efficient, three-dimensional microgels. This may hold the key to personalized medicine applications in the future.
“We already know that the microenvironment can greatly influence cell fate,” said Irwin A. Eydelnant (IBBME PhD 1T3), recent doctoral graduate from IBBME and first author of the publication. “The important part of this study is that we’ve developed a tool that will allow us to investigate the sensitivity of cells to their 3D environment.”
“Everyone wants to do three-dimensional (3D) cell culture,” explained co-author Aaron Wheeler (IBBME), Professor and Canada Research Chair in Bioanalytical Chemistry at IBBME, the Department of Chemistry, and the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research (DCCBR) at the University of Toronto.
“Cells grown in this manner share much more in common with living systems than the standard two-dimensional (2D) cell culture format.” But more naturalistic, 3D cell cultures are a challenge to grow.
“The reagents are expensive, the materials are inconvenient for automation, and 3D matrices break down upon repeated handling,” said Wheeler, who was named an Inventor of the Year by the University of Toronto in 2012.
Eydelnant was able to address these difficulties by adapting a digital microfluidics platform first created in the Wheeler lab. Cells, caught up in a hydrogel material, are gently flowed across a small field that, on a screen, looks much like a tiny chessboard.
The cells are strategically manipulated by a small electric field across a cutout shape on the top plate of the system, made from indium in oxide, and they become fixed.
The tool allows for a greater level of flexibility in both the many number and types of cells, and the shape and size of the microenvironments. Some are whimsical, like the stars; diamonds and circles like those in Lucky Charms, or those designed to mimic living 3D niches. These diverse offerings give researchers a glimpse into how these many factors can affect cell fate decisions.
What’s more, according to Eydelnant, the platform permits researchers to run, “32 experiments at the same time, automatically, and all on something the size of a credit card.”
“[This new] system allows for hands-free assembly of sub-microlitre, three-dimensional microgels,” said Wheeler. “Each gel is individually addressable, fluid exchange is gentler than macro-scale alternatives, and reagent use is reduced more than 100-fold.”
“We believe that this new tool will make 3D cell culture a more attractive and accessible format for cell biology research.”
Although the researchers can foresee numerous possible applications for this platform, the team is “particularly excited” about its potential for personalized medicine.
“We may be able to collect small tissue samples from patients, distribute them into 3D gels on digital microfluidic devices, and screen for conditions to identify individually tailored therapies. This is in the ‘dream’ stages for now,” Wheeler argued, “but we think the methods described here will be useful for these types of applications in the future.”
They howl, they chew, and sometimes they leave you unpleasant surprises on the carpet. When dogs are left alone at home, it’s easy for them to get up to no good. But what if you could visit and play with them from a thousand miles away through your smartphone?
Enter Pawly, a durable digital toy that lets owners interact remotely with their pets via smartphone. Pawly was first developed by U of T Engineering student Gordon Dri (CivE 1T5), alumnus and Master of Engineering student Yunan Zhao (CompE 1T2, MEng 1T4), and their team of engineers, designers and strategists during an intense 54-hour contest called Startup Weekend: Maker Edition in Toronto.
Startup Weekend events are held across the world in cities ranging from Cape Town and Islamabad to Melbourne and beyond. Finalists from each weekend move on to a championship round called the Global Startup Battle − dominated most recently by teams with members from U of T.
Pawly had only placed second at its Startup Weekend behind Griflens, a team developing a set of interactive story beads for children. Griflens, whose roster included Helen Kula, librarian at University of Toronto Mississauga’s Institute of Management and Innovation, went on to take third place overall in the Global Startup Battle.
Pawly took the top prize.
“The Pawly team is perhaps the best example of what can be accomplished at a Startup Weekend when you combine great skill, motivation and impressive teamwork,” said Chris Eben, founding organizer of Startup Weekend Toronto.
“Their success in this significant annual competition demonstrates that Toronto’s startup community is an international powerhouse. The rest of the world should take note – Toronto is where you want to build your startup!”
Inventor Dri spoke with U of T News about the Pawly team’s experience in the global competition.
Tell us about why and how you got involved with the Global Startup Battle.
My journey began at the beginning of third year when I was provided with the choice to work for a year through the Professional Experience Year (PEY) program at U of T. I realized not one job seemed like the “perfect fit” and it was then I decided I would create my own job and work for myself. Coupled with the inspiration that past entrepreneurs (e.g., Andrew Mason, Reid Hoffman, Steve Jobs) provided me, I began my journey as an entrepreneur.
I realized that all great entrepreneurs in the past surrounded themselves with like-minded individuals and fed off their innovation and creativity. Therefore, I wanted to join a community of budding innovators and thus registered for Startup Weekend. I collaborated with a 10-person team for 54 hours to launch our startup, Pawly. We placed second in the competition for our concept and execution and qualified for the Global Startup Battle. We competed in this national competition against other teams across the globe and came out on top.
What was your experience like at Startup Weekend?
Startup Weekend was a no sleep, high stress, yet exciting marathon. I had the opportunity to work with inspirational, creative, and budding entrepreneurs whom I had never met before.
The event was held at OCADU and the theme was ‘Maker Edition,’ stressing that startups launch a hardware-related product. We were given the support of all the resources at the university including woodworking labs, laser cutting as well as the donation of 10 3-D printers by General Electric.
The weekend focused not only on building a product but also market validation, customer development and practicing LEAN Startup Methodologies. We managed to receive over 100 responses to our Google Survey and received our first sources of revenue in just 54 hours.
What’s the most important thing you learned from being part of Startup Weekend?
The most important thing that I learned from the weekend is the power that entrepreneurs have to drive the world forward. All the great innovations in the past have derived from creative entrepreneurs with a common mission to change the world. Our future is in our hands as innovators and entrepreneurs.
What did winning the Global Startup Battle mean for you and your team?
Once my team and I won the Global Startup Battle we were both surprised and excited. The success in this competition validated our concept and we immediately knew Pawly was the start of something big.
As a team we have committed ourselves to an official startup with the goal of developing Pawly and bringing it to market. The success of this competition provided us visibility which is crucial in the beginning stages of any startup. We have the luxury of approaching media, investors and potential partners with the news that our concept won the largest startup competition in the world powered by Google for Entrepreneurs.
We are currently preparing for the LAUNCH Conference in San Francisco, California held from February 24th to 26th where we will demo our prototype and hopefully attract the interests of investors and partners.
How have you found the ‘entrepreneurship’ environment at U of T?
The University of Toronto has an exceptional community for entrepreneurship from incubators like The Hatchery and Creative Destruction Labs to conferences such as Young Entrepreneurs Challenge. Although we have not engaged in the resources to date we hope to get involved and take advantage of them in the future.
What’s next for you as an entrepreneur?
I will continue working with my team to revolutionize the next generation of pet technology while completing my engineering degree. I hope to join the team full time through the Professional Experience Year program and again post-graduation. I enjoy learning about new startups and hearing about both successful and unsuccessful experiences of other entrepreneurs.
A study co-published in Nature Medicine this week by University of Toronto researcher Penney Gilbert (IBBME) has determined a stem cell based method for restoring strength to damaged skeletal muscles of the elderly.
Skeletal muscles are some of the most important in the body, supporting functions such as sitting, standing, blinking and swallowing. In aging individuals, the function of these muscles significantly decreases.
“You lose fifteen per cent of muscle mass every single year after the age of 75, a trend that is irreversible,” said Gilbert, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering and the Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research (CCBR). The study originates from Gilbert’s postdoctoral research at Stanford University’s Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology.
Through tracing the signaling pathways of the cells, the researchers – including lead author, Professor Helen Blau, and postdoctoral researcher Ben Cosgrove – determined that during aging, a subpopulation of stem cells begin to express a modification of a protein that inhibits their ability to grow and make new stem cells.
“But if we instead treated those cells outside the body with a drug that prevented that protein modification from occurring, in combination with culturing the cells on something soft that is reminiscent of soft skeletal tissue, like a hydrogel biomaterial, the combination allowed the aged cells to grow and make more copies of themselves,” said Glibert.
The rejuvenated cell cultures were then transplanted into injured and aged tissues, with remarkable results: the transplanted cells returned strength to the damaged and aged tissues to levels matching a young, healthy state.
“An important thing to stress here is that this is not a panacea for aging in general,” warned Dr. Blau. The stem cell treatment would only be used to repair localized defects in relatively small muscles found in the hip area, the throat, or the muscles in the eye.
One of the significant challenges to elderly individuals who receive hip transplants, for instance, is the repairing of skeletal muscles around the joint that have been injured during surgery. The study points to the potential for future post-surgery therapies that could leave elderly hip replacement patients spry in a fraction of the time.
“Even a small, localized transplantation could have a huge impact on quality of life,” said Blau. “One big advantage is that because the cells would come from the person’s own muscles there would be no problem with an immune response.”
“It’s a really new, exciting field,” said Gilbert, who noted that the muscle stem cell field, which only began to isolate muscle stem cells for study within the last five years, is especially “wide open” in Toronto where “there are really impassioned clinician researchers who are interested in restoring strength in aging and disease.”