Strolling through this year’s Electrical & Computer Engineering Capstone Design Showcase, it’s hard not to think, “Hey, there really is an app for that.” But you might just as easily discover there is also an algorithm for that.

The best fourth-year projects – as judged by the ECE faculty – included apps for lonely GO Train commuters and shoppers eager to escape lineups by paying via smartphone before leaving the store. The showcase also featured algorithms to speed the process of bioengineering microRNA for treating genetic disease, as well as algorithms to predict the stock market, using 250 million daily tweets.

The April 5 event, which took place at the Bahen Centre atrium, showcased just 15 of a possible 100 projects.

“These projects tend to be very well executed or use technologies that are interesting, or not straightforward,” said Dr. Phil Anderson, Senior Lecturer in The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Computer & Electrical Engineering. “In other years, several have gone on to get patents.”

Certainly, Sumanth Ravipati (CompE 1T2) and Thisal De Silva (CompE 1T2) would like to see their GO Train commuter app become so popular that they might one day charge for it. Right now, anyone can download it for free at Apple’s App Store.

Their inspiration comes from the newspaper t.o.night, whose popular ‘Shout Out’ feature posts commuters’ complaints, questions and requests.

“Every day you see the same faces on the train, but nobody talks to each other. They prefer hiding behind shout outs,” said De Silva. “So we thought why not put it on a platform and let them reply in real time, so they don’t have to wait a day.”

The app also allows for private chats between commuters, but only works when you’re actually on the train. “That way, you look forward to the commute,” said Ravipati.

Alex Litoiu (CompE 1T2) and his project partner Mike Del Balso (ElecE 1T2) are also harnessing social media, but with a different goal in mind. Their system for analyzing global patterns of emotion on Twitter predicts whether stocks will go up or down.

The pair’s algorithm analyzes tweets from around the world for a list of words other researchers have correlated to emotions.

Litoiu and Del Balso tested their system over three months. They discovered they could predict with 57% accuracy – on average – whether a given stock in the NASDAQ Stock Market would go up or down 24 hours after analyzing the previous day’s tweets.

“So for a certain stock, we might have 100% accuracy, for others 30%. When we average those numbers across all stocks we are doing much better than random,” said Litoiu.

Judging from the crowds around their display, and the constant stream of questions, they aren’t the only ones intrigued by their algorithm’s potential.

The substantial role that University of Toronto researchers are having in the development of Field-programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) – the ‘chameleons’ of computer chips – was evident recently when more than half of the top 25 papers published on the subject over the past 20 years had ties to U of T.

Of the 25 papers included in the collection, 13 were authored by past and present U of T faculty and students. The collection of top papers was assembled to mark the 20th anniversary of the International Symposium on Field-programmable Gate Arrays, which this year was held in Monterey, California from February 22 to 24.

FPGAs are programmable computer chips, which gives them the unique ability to become any type of computer chip you might need. Unlike standard chips that are produced to serve one function, FPGAs can be reprogrammed based on the needs of the user at any time.

“They are like chip chameleons,” explained Professor Jonathan Rose, one of the leaders in the field and a faculty member in The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE).

Not only do FPGAs provide a high level of flexibility in established hardware, but they are also important tools for testing new designs. Developing a prototype for a new chip can be both time consuming and costly.

“To create a new chip from scratch, you have to send it to a very expensive fabrication facility where it can cost three-million dollars worth of tooling and two months worth of time to get it back,” said Professor Rose. “With FPGAs, because they are already prefabricated, you can configure it any way you wish, and it becomes that in under a second.”

Underlying FPGA development are two pillars. First, is the actual hardware itself that is the chip. The second is the software that allows the chip to be programmed.

“U of T is unique in that we are able to support both pillars of the field: the architecture of the chip – how it is made – and the software of the chip – how you are able to program it,” stated Professor Rose.

One of the world’s leading developers of the software that powers FPGAs is ECE Professor Vaughn Betz. He completed his PhD under Professor Rose’s supervision and has recently returned to U of T after serving for 11 years as the Senior Director of Software Engineering at Altera, a programmable semiconductor manufacturer.

“FPGAs have 100-million programmable switches,” Professor Betz explained. “You’re not going to program each one individually, so you need a very sophisticated computer-assisted design tool to enable and implement the design you develop.”

U of T’s strength in the field actually began at Stanford University in California, where two future faculty members – Professors Rose and Paul Chow – were post-doctoral fellows. The field of FPGAs was just beginning. and the two realized there was great potential in the applications. They brought that realization to U of T when they received faculty positions and the result has been more than 20 years of cutting-edge research.

While FPGAs were once limited to applications in laboratories and high-tech manufacturers, both Professors Rose and Betz can envision a not-too-distant future when FPGAs are common tools in everyday computing.

“FPGAs of tomorrow are likely to adapt some traditional computer architecture features to lead to entirely new devices, such as a mix of processors and programmable logic connected by an on-chip network – a very flexible system on a single chip,” stated Professor Betz.

The collection was published under the title FPGA20: Highlighting Significant Contributions from 20 Years of the International Symposium on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (1992–2011). The papers included were selected because they “have impacted industry, described key building blocks in wide use throughout industry and academia, opened areas of research, resolved serious problems, illuminated difficult issues and illustrated innovative ways to use FPGAs.”

In addition to papers by Professors Rose and Betz, other U of T authors include: former faculty member and current Altera Fellow David Lewis; Professors Jason Anderson, Farid Najm and Greg Steffan; current and former graduate students Alexander Marquardt, Elias Ahmed, Guy Lemieux, Alireza Kaviani, Ian Kuon,Charles Eric LaForest and Paul Leventis; and, former undergraduates Ketan Padalia, Chris Wysocki and Adrian Ludwin.

If you ever found yourself saying, “I wish there was an app for that,” now you have the tools to make it yourself.

A recently opened laboratory in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering invites members of the University of Toronto community to explore the new possibilities smart applications for smartphones and tablets can offer. Called the Mobile Applications Lab – or Mobile APL for short – the new lab is led by two faculty members from The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Professors Parham Aarabi and Jonathan Rose.

“We want to welcome minds from across the University to partner with us. Intelligent Apps – which combine the sensors, processing and user interaction capabilities of smartphones – are not just for engineers, but also for many other fields including the arts and medicine,” said Professor Aarabi, noting just a few of the fields that can harness the potential of this technology.

The lab is open to all faculty, staff and students at the University, regardless of their field of study. The intention, Professor Aarabi explained, is to harness the multidisciplinary power of U of T to identify new needs and approaches for intelligent mobile apps.

Apps have become the cornerstone of mobile computing. Now an ingrained part of the information age, apps offer entertainment or specialized support for all of life’s needs, from measuring your performance during a workout to staying in touch with friends and family. More than 500,000 apps are available through Apple as well as 350,000 for the Android market, with new ones being added every day.

The new lab is the first of its kind in Canada and joins just a small number of institutions, including MIT and Stanford University, in providing such a facility.

The new lab builds upon a course launched last year by Professor Rose on app development. Aimed at graduate students from across the University, the goal of the course is for students to produce a working app. Students with computer programing experience are matched with students from other disciplines. In teams of two or three, an app is developed that reflects on the non-programmer’s field of study.

Professor Aarabi explained that smartphones have provided the average person with a powerful computing tool. When he initially set up his research lab 10 years ago, which focused on facial recognition and noise cancelling technology, a huge investment in equipment was needed.

“With today’s iPhone, for example, all of the sophisticated and expensive equipment can fit in the palm of your hand. That makes it much easier to gather data and reduce our experimental research costs,” he said.

In addition, apps also have the ability to solicit almost instant user feedback for new computer technologies, which will make testing and refining easier than before.

“I think it’s a great place for developing your abilities to create applications,” said Amin Heidari (ECE MASc 1T1), who recently completed his Master’s degree under Professor Aarabi’s supervision.

The lab houses a variety of dedicated stations for application exploration, simulation, and testing, including iOS- and Android-equipped development stations. New platforms will soon be added and industrial sponsors are being sought to further guide the lab’s development. Additional information about the lab can be found on its website.

“You are the most important generation in history. If you don’t get it right, nobody after you will.”

That was the challenge issued to 140 U of T Engineering students by Ontario’s Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, the Honourable Glen Murray, on March 30.

Engineers think differently, he explained. “What you think is important, are things that others wouldn’t even think of.”

It is that kind of mind- and skill-set, he went on to say, that allows engineers to innovate, prosper in the marketplace, and change Canada’s economy – even the world. It all starts with an idea.

Minister Murray’s remarks were part of a special seminar called myPatent. Organized by the Electrical & Computer Engineering Leaders of Tomorrow working group (ECE LOT), myPatent is an opportunity to guide and inspire students to take their ideas beyond the lab and into the marketplace through a series of workshops and seminars.

In addition to Minister Murray, students heard from a variety of dynamic speakers, including:

• Peter Fonseca, former Ontario Minister of Labour and Minister of Tourism;
• Wilson Teixeira, President of WAT Group Inc. and Able Translations Ltd.;
• Adjunct Professor Joseph Orozco, Director of U of T Engineering’s The Entrepreneurship Hatchery; and,
• Hadi (ECE 1T2) and Marwan Aladdin (ECE 1T1), Co-founders of CoursePeer Inc. and Angstron Technologies Inc.

U of T Engineering’s enriched undergraduate experience has helped students such as Hadi Aladdin, the Mentorship Chair for ECE LOT, become a full-fledged entrepreneur. Aladdin created myPatent this fall to help students succeed in the marketplace, whether it be advice on filing a patent, prototyping or starting a business.

“You can’t learn business, you can only learn from the mistakes other people made in the business world,” said Aladdin. “I wanted the series to be a concentrated dose of practical advice from the experience we gained.”

“We at U of T Engineering recognize the important contributions that our researchers and students – both former and present – can make to Ontario’s knowledge economy,” said Acting Dean Yu-Ling Cheng, Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, who opened the session.

“First, we educate and inspire a new generation of leaders who will bring their skills, knowledge and passions into the marketplace and society. Second, the research and discovery that is generated here can create new businesses, new industries and new possibilities,” she said.

The advice coming from speakers at the March 30 session was practical, but also inspirational. As Minister Murray concluded, “You’re the best educated generation, you live in the most open society in Canada, and have access to the best technology. We’re counting on you to go out and change the world.”

Neural imaging – maps of brain functions – is a primary tool used by researchers hoping to transform the lives of people living with chronic neurological conditions such as epilepsy. At present, researchers often require several different imaging techniques to fully map brain functions, making research and treatment of these conditions expensive and inefficient.

Using cutting-edge illumination technology, Professor Ofer Levi and his research students from the Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering (IBBME) and The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) have developed a new cost-effective neural imaging system. It allows researchers to make much more complex maps of the brain with just one camera and one imaging system. The team’s initial findings, released this week in Biomedical Optics Express, demonstrate that this new technology may one day transform the way researchers view the human brain.

Developed from the same technology that lights up our cell phones and computers, this unique system uses Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VCSEL): low-cost, easily tested, miniature microchip lasers mounted on an extremely fast, sensitive camera, which allows the operator to switch the lasers on and off with extraordinary speed and precision. This rapid light manipulation (at a rate of approximately 1x/millisecond) means that the brain can be mapped with greater sophistication and precision – much more quickly. Results published in Professor Levi’s article, for instance, demonstrate that this imaging technology is able to classify both veins and arteries simultaneously – something never before accomplished.

Hart Levy, co-author of the article and recent graduate of ECE and IBBME, looks forward to seeing the results of further testing. “It’s amazing to develop something that’s going to be used to help people,” he said.

Professor Levi asserts that this new, “agile system” is only the beginning; he plans to adapt the technology into a portable model, which would enable researchers to conduct studies with “freely behaving,” or non-anesthetized, animals. While other portable neural mapping systems already exist, Professor Levi’s multi-modality technology mean that blood flow, oxygenation and florescence – the three components of the human brain that researchers look at, which currently requires three different imaging systems – can be mapped simultaneously.

Professor Levi’s research collaborators, IBBME Professor Tom Chau, Dr. Peter Carlen at Toronto Western Hospital, Dr. Taufik Valiant at Toronto Western Hospital, and Dr. Bojana Stefanovic at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, are keeping a close eye on this technology towards its potential future applications. Dr. Carlen’s lab, for example, participated in experiments to map epileptic seizures in living animals. Although this new technology requires further testing, Dr. Carlen said, “its potential is enormous and exciting.”

Professor Levi’s imaging system may someday enable researchers to pinpoint metabolic changes in the brain that occur just moments prior to an epileptic seizure, or may help doctors map the brain’s “areas of eloquence,” those areas that need to remain untouched, prior to surgery on epileptic patients. Currently these areas are mapped electrically, over sometimes-extended periods of time and with great discomfort to the patient.

Other applications may include helping researchers create brain-interface technology that would allow researchers “to decode [disabled children’s] intentions in the absence of speech and gestures,” said Professor Chau in a statement. Professor Levi and his former U of T graduate student, Elizabeth Munro (IBBME MASc 0T9), submitted a patent for the new technology adaptations through the University of Toronto Innovation Group in January.

Civil Engineering Professor Emeritus Ezra Hauer explained why he feels older drivers have an unfair reputation as bad drivers in the latest issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

In the paper, Professor Hauer argued that the only groups to have 10 or more accidents for every million miles (or 1,609,000 kms) they drive are those under 19 or over 82 years old. Though older drivers involved in an accident have a higher fatality rate than other drivers, Professor Hauer argues that is likely due to elderly drivers being frailer than the rest of the population.

Speaking to Bloomberg Businessweek, Professor Hauer explained that data surrounding elderly drivers are skewed by a variety of factors. “Old farts that we are, we also tend to report the accidents more often. Young bucks tend not to report,” Professor Hauer told Bloomberg reporter Ashlee Vance.

You can read the full story on the Bloomberg Businessweek website, as well as subsequent stories from The Toronto Star  and the International Business Times.