When Patricia Sheridan was a high school student, her decision to study engineering at U of T had a lot to do with her DEEP experience.

And she’s not alone. The Da Vinci Engineering Enrichment Program (DEEP) Summer Academy, now in its eleventh year, has inspired more than 9,000 high school students from around the world, and counting. Each year in July, students with a deep passion for engineering visit the U of T campus to get a glimpse into what it’s like to pursue engineering at the post-secondary level.

Here, students learn in a hands-on environment through courses that range from nanomaterials, to engineering leadership, to product design. And, they’re taught by the best and brightest engineering alumni and graduate students – like Sheridan, who is now a PhD student in Engineering Leadership Education.

As a DEEP instructor, Sheridan says that what continues to stand out about ‘DEEPsters’ is their endless curiosity about engineering.

“Many stayed back to finish conversations that were started in class, or to ask more questions about the topics, or engineering at U of T,” said Sheridan, who taught three courses this summer, including a Dragon’s Den-style course on innovative design. “I had so much fun teaching them every day.”

For Sheridan, it was important for her to participate because of the experience and knowledge she gained as a DEEP student.

“When I participated in DEEP, I saw a high calibre of intellectual, fun-loving and sociable people that I felt I would fit right in with – and I have, since I came to U of T Engineering,” she said. “This is my second year teaching at DEEP, and I look forward to it every year. Not only is it rewarding to help shape the future of the students I work with, but it is also a lot of fun for me too.”

DEEP is just one of a number of outreach initiatives that are shaping the future of aspiring engineers. This summer, the Faculty enriched its outreach programming by launching DEEP Leadership Camp – a two-week engineering leadership development course located at Gull Lake, in Northern Ontario – as well as Big Ideas: Creativity, Design and Innovation Camp, a collaboration with the Rotman School of Management that challenges young participants to reinforce their engineering interests, while nurturing their entrepreneurial potential. The two new program joins a suite of successful outreach initiatives taking place this summer, such as Jr. DEEP,Girls’ Jr. DEEP and ENGage.

Find out more about U of T Engineering’s outreach initiatives at:outreach.engineering.utoronto.ca.

University of Toronto Engineering professor Ben Hatton (MSE) is turning to nature to find a way to make windows more energy efficient.

In a recent article in Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells , Hatton and colleagues at Harvard University describe a novel process to cut down on heat loss during the winter and keep buildings cool during the summer.Their “bio-inspired approach to thermal control for cooling (or heating) building window surfaces” calls for attaching optically clear, flexible elastomer sheets, bonded to regular glass window panes.

The elastomer sheets, made from polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) have channels running through them through which room temperature water flows.  The technique has resulted in 7 to 9 degrees of cooling in laboratory experiments and is effective both at small and large scales, Hatton and his colleagues said.

“Our results show that an artificial vascular network within a transparent layer, composed of channels on the micrometer to millimeter scale, and extending over the surface of a window, offers an additional and novel cooling mechanism for building windows and a new thermal control tool for building design,” he said.

Hatton noted that windows account for about 40 per cent of building energy costs. To find a solution to the problem, he turned to nature. “In contrast to man-made thermal control systems, living organisms have evolved an entirely different and highly efficient mechanism to control temperature that is based on the design of internal vascular networks. For example, blood vessels dilate to increase blood flow close to the skin surface to increase convective heat transfer, whereas they constrict and limit flow when our skin is exposed to cold.”

He said the technique could also be applied to solar panels, increasing their efficiency. He also noted that as the water flows through the panels, it gets hotter, and this hot water could be used to supply heated water to an existing hot water system or to a heat storage system.

Link: Video interview with Ben Hatton.

The U of T Blue Sky Solar Team is trying to get to Australia, and they need your help.

The U of T Engineering-based team, which has built the B-7 solar car, has started a IndieGoGo campaign to raise funds to get the car to Australia for the 2013 World Solar Challenge Race, taking place in October.

Inaugurated in 1987, the World Solar Challenge continues to showcase the development of advanced sustainable transportation technologies. Every two years, teams from leading international universities and technical institutes, together with private entrepreneurs, come together Down Under to test and promote the ultimate synergy of nature, motion and innovation.

The 2013 World Solar Challenge will welcome 47 teams from 26 countries to Australia to take part in what is the world’s largest solar electric vehicle event.

For the past 18 months, Blue Sky members have spent countless hours working on B-7. The team of over 30 full time students, spanning a wide range of academic backgrounds, has come together to design, build and test our newest solar car, B-7.

The Indiegogo campaign lasts until midnight, August 26. The team is trying to raise $15,000 and have a number of different perks to acknowledge donations:

• $1000 – the Blue Sky car will attend your event
• $200 – 3d printed B-7 model
• $150 – invitation to attend a solar car workshop
• $75 – own a piece of the car
• $50 informational DVD
• $40 – official race crew t-shirt

Other perks are also available. See Indiegogo for full details.

Every year Ontario experiences more than 700 forest fires, affecting more than 120,000 hectares of woodland.

Finding those fires and alerting fire rangers is a daunting task in a province as large as Ontario. But UTIAS Professor Hugh Liu thinks he may have a solution – UAVs – pilotless airplanes armed with thermal cameras.

Professor Liu, who heads the Flight Systems & Control group at UTIAS, is putting his theories to work, with the help of Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Brican Flight Systems of Brampton. Recently, he and his graduate students tested their system – a Brican-built plane equipped with a thermal camera – at MNR’s Burwash Training Centre. The test was a great success, Liu said. “Ten fires were randomly set up by MNR, and the UAV managed to detect 9 out of the 10. The only reason it didn’t detect the 10th was that we ran out of time – our current detection software only records for one hour.”

Video courtesy of Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources.

Liu said he was pleased with the results. “It demonstrates a fully functional proof-of-concept system for monitoring forest fires using UAVs,” he said.

More tests of the pilotless fire spotting planes are planned, Liu said, including, possibly, participating in real fire-monitoring missions.

Liu’s research focuses on autonomous flight for UAV and multi-UAV systems. “I was looking for potential applications for the systems, especially in civil and commercial aviation where I believe UAVs can play significant. Wildfires have been in the news, and after talking with U of T Forestry professor Brian Wotton, I realized that there is a great opportunity where we may apply the technology with obvious social and economic impact. “It would be such a satisfying and rewarding experience if our technology can contribute to fire management and to serve the community directly.”

According to the World Health Organization, nearly 600,000 perinatal deaths, and more than 100,000 maternal deaths are caused by iron deficiency each year.

Professor Emeritus Levente Diosady (ChemE) believes these numbers can be reduced by creating an ‘iron brew,’ or in other words, developing iron-fortified tea leaves for consumption.

He was recently awarded a $250,000 grant for his research idea from the prestigious competition, Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development. Professor Diosady was the lone Canadian among 22 grant recipients.

The international competition, now in its third year, calls on the brightest, most innovative minds across the globe to identify transformative prevention, as well as treatment approaches, for pregnant women and newborns in the developing world.

Professor Diosady was part of a team that was first to fortify salt with iodine, then later with iron. Speaking to The Globe and Mail, he said trying to fortify tea with iron was the next logical step.

“Tea is really consumed in South Asia by practically everybody, but the problem is the chemistry is much, much more difficult,” he said. “The last couple of years we’ve been working on the delivery system.”

According to Professor Diosady, the biggest challenge is overcoming a biomolecule in tea called tannin. When iron and tannin meet, a compound is formed that the body can’t absorb. The technology he has developed encapsulates the iron in a coating, preventing it from reacting with the tannin.

His goal is to get the encapulated iron to the intestines, where it can then be absorbed by the body. The Saving Lives at Birth grant will allow his research team to determine what kind of coating will work best with tea, as well as withstand hot water.

Professor Diosady hopes his research will be fully developed within the next five years.

To find out more, read about Professor Diosady’s research at The Globe and Mail and on the UK Government website.

U of T’s Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control (CQIQC) has announced Michel Devoret and Robert Schoelkopf, both of Yale University, as winners of the prestigious John Stewart Bell Prize for their enormous contributions to the field of quantum mechanics.

Quantum mechanics is the theory physicists believe describes everything in nature, according to ECE Professor  Amr Helmy, director of the Centre. Yet, with predictions such as the fact that any small particle, an atom for example, can be in two places at the same time, the story it tells is so remote from our everyday experience that it looks — and is — deeply mysterious. Over the years, scientists have learned to live with these bizarre ideas and even harness them for practical purposes.

Devoret and Schoelkopf are honoured for pioneering experimental advances which have opened up a new regime for studies of fundamental quantum physics and the development of quantum technologies. By spearheading the development of ‘circuit quantum electrodynamics’ (cQED), they have extended the study of entanglement to the arena of solid-state ‘artificial atoms.’ In the past few years, this area of research has grown immensely, catching up quickly with decades of research in atom-based quantum optics, and the awardees have been responsible for much of the ground-breaking work, developing superconducting qubits and harnessing their interaction with microwave photons. Thanks to their efforts, such systems are now among the most promising candidates for practical, scalable, quantum information processing devices.

“Through their enormous contributions, Michel and Robert have set forth an optimum platform for the community to further explore, examine and exploit quantum mechanical effects, that is likely to fuel astounding advances in the field,” Helmy said.

The Bell Prize will be awarded at 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 15, 2013, in a ceremony at the bi-annual conference hosted jointly at U of T by CQIQC and the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences. Devoret and Schoelkopf will deliver a public lecture on their trailblazing work.

This year, the prize celebrates the imminent 50th anniversary of the discovery of the Bell Inequality, a cornerstone in the field discovered by John Bell, whose insights have changed our view of reality. The award recognizes major advances relating to the foundations of quantum mechanics and to the applications of these principles. This includes quantum information theory, quantum computation, quantum foundations, quantum cryptography and quantum control. The prize highlights the continuing rapid pace of theoretical and experimental research in these areas, both fundamental and applied, and consists of a medal, a certificate and $1,000 honorarium.

For more information on the Bell Prize and the CQICQ-Fields conference, visithttp://cqiqc.physics.utoronto.ca/bell_prize/home.html.