U of T Engineering student design club Spark was featured March 12 on the Discovery Channel’s daily science information program, Daily Planet.
The team was given a big challenge, which was appropriate as the show was celebrating “Gigantic Week.” They were asked to build a giant tower of playing cards in the program’s studio using a new construction toy called Skallops, which are laser cut clips. The result: a tribute to the Eiffel Tower that was more than eight-feet high.
“The main reason we chose the Eiffel Tower was because it was such a world icon and we figured the audience would be able to recognize it, so we had to make sure all the modules we built were proportional to each other. There was a lot of background planning that went into place,” said Anmol Kaur (ECE 1T3), who leads the Spark design team.
The club was established to allow students to explore their design interests beyond the classroom. Through a combination of workshops and challenges, students blend their creativity, engineering knowledge and design acumen into interesting projects. Among their recent projects were LED tiles displayed in the lobby of the Galbraith building and a giant walk-on piano in the Bahen building.
What’s next for the Spark team? “There are so many neat and fun projects for us to choose from. Some ideas we’ve been tossing around are a big Pinball machine or some Domino Clocks,” said Kaur.
The innovation enabled by U of T Engineering was evident on March 1 in The Toronto Star. In a special supplement to celebrate the start of National Engineering Month that was entitled Engineering Innovation, the work of six U of T Engineering researchers were featured. They included:
- Professor David Zingg (UTIAS), who is working to reduce the greenhouse emissions from aircraft by optimizing their design (the story is available only in the PDF version)
National Engineering Month (NEM) is the biggest national celebration of engineering and technology, in which volunteers in each province and territory stage events and activities designed to increase public awareness of engineers and engineering technology and to encourage young people to consider careers in these fields. Across Canada, NEM is celebrated through the month of March.
For a second year, the theme is Design the Future. We at U of T Engineering can be proud of how we’re designing the future. On this page, we share some of the boundless innovations of our students, faculty and alumni. We also highlight our many forward-thinking educational programs and centres, along with our NEM activities. We hope you’ll join us in discovering Engineering at U of T — in all its wondrous facets.
Our Events
- Ten Engineering student societies, including U of T’s Engineering Society, will work together to connect one of the world’s largest Rube Goldberg machines, in sequence, via the Internet. Finally, the machine will light the entire CN Tower purple on March 7 at 6:30 pm. Stop by the Sandford Fleming building “pit” to see U of T Engineering’s Rube Goldberg design.
- The U of T Engineering Society will invite local students from Grades 3 through 8 to join in an afternoon of design challenges in the annual Hi-Skule™ Annual Designapolooza on March 11
- In celebration of National Engineering Month, U of T’s Engineers Without Borders chapter is hosting a number of exciting events. This includes a panel discussion on Corporate Social Responsibility in Mining on March 8, an Industry Lunch n’ Learn on March 13, as well as a Debate Competition on March 31.
Our People
A trip to Gambia changed the course of PhD student Bev Bradley’s (ChemE, Global Engineering) research career. There, Bradley saw firsthand the need for a reliable supply of medical oxygen in a low-resource country. For her PhD thesis, she is faced with an extremely complex challenge. To create technology that provides hospitals in developing countries with accessible and efficient medical oxygen, she must consider a country’s unreliable power system and its ability – or lack thereof – to transport equipment and maintain supplies. She and her team are, in turn, developing a battery-powered version of an oxygen-generating machine, which can last up to 20 hours without power.
The team behind a patented and portable lab-on-a-chip. From left, back to front: Professor Stewart Aitchison (ECE), Vice-Dean, Research, James Dou, Rakesh Nayyar; and Lino DeFacendis and Kurtis Scissons of the Innovations & Partnerships Office (IPO).
When PhD candidate James Dou (ECE) was a Master’s student, he couldn’t have imagined that exploring lab-on-a-chip technology would lead him to addressing a dire need in developing countries. Under the guidance of Professor Stewart Aitchison (ECE), Vice-Dean, Research, he developed an affordable and efficient lab-on-a-chip for HIV monitoring in developing countries. Today’s HIV blood-testing devices, called a flow cytometer, can cost up to $100,000. Dou’s patented lab-on-a-chip costs $5,000 to $10,000, and provides results in mere minutes. ECE post-doctoral fellow Dr. Lu Chen, who is working with the team, was awarded a Grand Challenges Canada grant for the group’s project.
It was an earth-moving idea that won recent Civil Engineering graduate Michael Montgomery (CivE, PhD 1T1) the NSERC Innovation Challenge Award in October. Or rather, it was the novel approach to keeping buildings structurally sound after the earth moves that was key. Montgomery was recognized for his proposal to commercialize the research conducted during his graduate studies into a new product for the marketplace. Montgomery has established a new company — Kinetica Dynamics — along with his graduate supervisor, Professor Constantin Christopoulos. Tall buildings will naturally sway throughout the day because of wind or because of movements in the earth. However, taller buildings amplify these movements. This becomes all the more important in the event of an earthquake. The team’s solution is to replace some of the building’s coupling beams, which are common features that connect structural elements of the building, with their Wind-Earthquake Coupling Damper. “This is what we call game-changing technology,” exclaims Professor Christopoulos, who notes that it is not just important for earthquake-prone zones, but is needed for any new high-rise construction.
“We had to reverse-engineer a person, mentally as well as physically,” said Professor Goldie Nejat of her socially interactive robot, Brian.
Professor Goldie Nejat of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering (MIE) specializes in autonomous systems, robotics and mechatronics, and her research has the potential to significantly alter senior care. Her prototype, Brian, a highly intelligent and interactive robot designed to assist the elderly in long-term care, is being developed in cooperation with the Baycrest Centre and the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. She is also developing search-and-rescue robots for use in disaster areas.
“By changing the internal structure of engines’ materials, we can potentially increase performance and durability, and decrease overhaul and repair costs,” Gino Palumbo has said of his company, Integran Technologies, which has won major research and development contracts from the US Air Force and NASA.
When it comes to nanotechnology research, Gino Palumbo (MMS 8T3, MASc 8T5, PhD 8T9) has a simple philosophy: the crazier the better. The President and co-founder of Integran Technologies Inc. has valuable experience to back his thinking; the self-described “pie-in-the-sky” research he completed during his PhD studies at U of T Engineering translated into several major R&D contracts with the United States Air Force and NASA. In 2007 his company, Integran, was recognized as Innovative Business of the Year by the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters Association, an honour Palumbo credits in large part to his alma mater.
Less than a decade since his graduation from Lassonde Mineral Engineering in 2004, Donovan Pollitt is running a gold-mining company and mentoring mining engineering students.
Just a few years out from the Lassonde Mineral Engineering program, Donovan Pollitt (MIN 0T4) found his niche on the Board of Directors — as VP Corporate Development — at Wesdome, a Canadian gold-mining company. And following a successful campaign of mergers, financings and increased market visibility for the company, Pollitt grabbed the brass ring of the company, becoming President and CEO in early 2010. Donovan is one of the youngest winners of U of T’s Arbor Awards, and has personally mentored several of Lassonde’s competitors in last year’s Canadian Mining Games.
U of T Engineering made history when the “Snowbird” ornithopter became the first human-powered aircraft with flapping wings to achieve sustained flight on August 2, 2010. Its team included UTIAS graduate students Todd Reichert (EngSci 0T5, PhD candidate), who was pilot, lead developer and project manager, and Cameron Robertson (MASc 0T9), the chief structural engineer. Professor Emeritus James D. DeLaurier (UTIAS), who himself developed an engine-powered ornithopter, served as faculty advisor. Reichert is also a member of U of T’s Human-Powered Vehicle Team, which placed third overall at the 2011 World Human-Powered Speed Challenge, held in Battle Mountain, Nevada, this Fall. The competition took place on a flat and almost perfectly straight eight-kilometre stretch of highway in the Nevada desert. The U of T team had a top speed of 117 km/h, which was a personal best for Reichert, who spent the last year cycling and speed skating, working with the Peak Centre for Human Performance, in Ottawa. He now boasts the title of ninth fastest human of all time.
Chemical and Biomedical Engineering Professor Molly Shoichet designs strategies and materials to help the body heal itself after traumatic injury, in particular to the brain and spinal cord, and has founded two spin-off companies from research in her laboratory. Her research team recently developed a new method for creating 3D hydrogel scaffolds that will aid in the development of new tissue and organs grown in a lab. The discovery is outlined in the latest issue of Nature Materials. In recognition of her world-renowned research into regenerative medicine, she was inducted into the Order of Ontario – the province’s highest honour. In January, she was honoured with the Clemson Award for Contributions to Literature from the Society for Biomaterials. Professor Shoichet was also elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2011, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2008.
Yu Sun holds the Canada Research Chair in Micro- and Nano-Engineering Systems. His innovative work will change the way cells are physically manipulated and characterized in medical applications such as IVF and rare cell isolation.
In February, Professor Yu Sun (MIE), the Canada Research Chair in Micro- and Nano-Engineering Systems, was one of eight professors to receive NSERC’s Strategic Project Grants (SPG). SPG is designed to enhance Canada’s economy, society and environment in the next 10 years. Professor Sun’s research looks at characterizing electrical and mechanical properties of nanomaterials to construct high-performance devices. Last March, he was among nine professors who were named “Inventor of the Year” by U of T.
Tom Chau, pictured at left with Eric Wan (below), at an awards ceremony in 2010.
The Virtual Music Instrument, a specialized software program Eric Wan (ECE 1T0) helped to develop, is among several projects the computer engineering graduate has been involved with that aims to help children with disabilities. Unlike many of his peers, Wan has a true understanding of the importance and need for such technologies to assist youngsters with disabilities. At age 18, he was diagnosed with transverse myelitis — a condition resulting from inflammation of the spinal cord — four days after getting a measles vaccination. During his studies at U of T Engineering, Wan met Professor Tom Chau (IBBME), Vice President of Research, and Director of the Bloorview Research Institute at the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital (effective April). Chau himself was named one of Canada’s 25 Transformational Canadians by The Globe and Mail in 2010.
“The engineering background gave me the confidence to do it,” Hana Zalzal has said of her undergraduate education and her company of best-selling cosmetics.
Hana Zalzal (CivE 8T8) started Cargo Cosmetics Corp. from her home in North York, Ont. in 1995. Since then her products have found their way into the official Oscar gift bag, and onto the red carpet on the faces of movie stars such as Helen Hunt and Drew Barrymore. Zalzal credits her civil engineering degree as laying the groundwork for her career and academic success, which includes an MBA from York University in Toronto.
Our Programs
At U of T Engineering, we’re constantly renewing our educational offerings. Creating new minors and certificates support our curriculum innovation, provides our students with choices and meets the needs of industry and the engineering profession.
This September, we launched an undergraduate minor in Robotics and Mechatronics, as well as a Clinical Engineering concentration in the IBBME PhD program.
Our innovative existing programs include our unique Engineering Business minor (directed by ECE professor and entrepreneur Jonathan Rose), along with our Engineering Business and Global Engineering certificate programs, as well as our Engineering Mathematics, Statistics and Finance major for Engineering Science students. We also offer the more established Certificate in Entrepreneurship.
In addition to our four graduate degrees, the Faculty also offers certificates that can take graduate students even further. This includes ELITE, Engineering and Globalization, as well as Robotics and Mechatronics. What’s more, U of T Engineering offers the Master of Engineering (MEng) degree, which is designed for working engineers looking to upgrade their skills for professional practice. The MEng continues to expand, and is a perfect mix of technical, leadership and business skills to give you an advantage for a leading-edge engineering career.
Our innovative Institutes and Centres include the new Institute for Multidisciplinary Design and Innovation (UT-IMDI), as well as BioZone, the Lassonde Institute of Mining and the Centre for Global Engineering, among many others.
The graphics banner at the top of this page has been designed using Shape Collage, the innovative digital media software developed by PhD candidate Vincent Cheung (ECE). Shape Collage is a digital media software company, whose products have now been downloaded more than five million times. Cheung has been recognized as Global Graduate Student Entrepreneur of the Year in the 2010 Global Student Entrepreneur Awards, and student entrepreneur champion at the 2010 Student Entrepreneur National Competition.
Mechanical Engineering Professor David Sinton and his research team have developed a process to analyze the behavior of bitumen in reservoirs using a microfluidic chip, a tool commonly associated with the field of medical diagnostics. The process may reduce the cost and time of analyzing bitumen-gas interaction in heavy oil and bitumen reservoirs.
Professor Sinton and postdoctoral researcher Dr. Hossein Fadaei are using the chips to examine the way highly pressurized CO2 behaves when injected into bitumen, which is a type of petroleum. The new method, reported in the journal Energy & Fuels, could streamline the way fossil energy companies measure the diffusion of gases in heavier oils like bitumen.
“To my knowledge, this is the first application of microfluidics in the study of gas-bitumen diffusion,” said Professor Sinton.
Bitumen and heavy oil are difficult to extract from reservoirs due to its density. There are several methods of extraction, one of which uses CO2-rich gas to help liquify the bitumen for easier extraction. This process can supplement the steam-injection method that requires heavy inputs of energy and water, and it presents opportunities for sequestration of CO2 in the reservoir.
Before companies pump CO2 into reservoirs, they need to first determine how the CO2 and oil will behave under specific pressures and in specific rock formations. Conventional methods of analysis can take hours or even days for a single test result.
Professor Sinton and his colleagues use a small glass microchip to replicate a pore within a rock reservoir. The channels in the pore are 50 microns wide, or about half the diameter of a human hair. The device is initially filled with CO2 at low pressure and a small sample of bitumen is injected into the centre of the chip. High pressure CO2 is then injected at both ends of the chip and the swelling of the oil is measured over time.
“This takes 10 minutes and uses a nanoliter plug of sample. If you can do a test in a few minutes and perform many tests in parallel, that’s a lot cheaper,” he noted. “The experimental setup is also quite simple compared to existing methods.” The experimental method developed shows potential as a rapid, reliable approach that could be used by both researchers and the oil and gas industry. Because it uses such small samples, the method could also be employed using hazardous solvents.
Professor Sinton is seeking industrial partners while working to further refine the device. His project was funded in part by Carbon Management Canada, a national Networks of Centres of Excellence, which funds research to reduce CO2 emissions in the fossil energy industry and other large-scale emitters.
The groundbreaking research of two U of T professors has been recognized with the 2011 NSERC John C. Polanyi Award, which honours an individual or team whose Canadian-based research has led to a recent outstanding advance in the natural sciences or engineering.
Professor Brendan Frey of The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Professor Benjamin Blencowe of the Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research were presented with the award by the Governor General of Canada, the Right Honourable David Johnston, at a ceremony in Ottawa’s Rideau Hall.
Professors Frey and Blencowe were recognized for their research that cracked the codes hidden in DNA that allows a relatively small number of genes to be transformed into hundreds of thousands of variations.
After the initial excitement surrounding the sequencing of the human genome nearly 10 years ago, scientists quickly realized that unlocking its potential would be far more complex than originally thought. It was assumed that humans must have more than 100,000 genes, but only 22,000 were found, roughly the same number as the nematode worm. Clearly, humans can do much more than worms, but how?
Professors Frey and Blencowe, along with their research team including Yoseph Barash and John Calarco, were able to decipher a genetic code embedded in vast expanses of DNA that cells use to control the rearrangement of gene parts in a process called “splicing.” They demonstrated that through alternative splicing, a single gene may do dozens or even thousands of different things, such as control when and where neural connections are made in the brain for learning. So far, the team has discovered hundreds of biological rules embedded in DNA that comprise the ‘splicing code,’ as well as hundreds of examples of splicing that are specific to brain, muscle, digestive and embryonic tissues.
This breakthrough was enabled by taking a radically new approach to this research. Previously, scientists studied one splicing code rule at a time and tried to determine its role. Since the number of possible combinations of rules is larger than the number of atoms in the universe, this approach was impossibly slow. Instead, Professors Frey and Blencowe developed a machine learning framework that can analyze all the rules at the same time by making use of data for thousands of genes, which the researchers generated using custom gene chips.
“This enabled us to combine all the previous discoveries in the field, incorporate vast amounts of new data from Professor Blencowe’s lab, and rapidly assemble a comprehensive splicing code,” said Professor Frey, who is the Canada Research Chair in Information Processing and Machine Learning. He is cross-appointed to the Donnelly Centre and the Department of Computer Science.
“Rules provided by the splicing code are providing us with a fascinating new perspective on how genes are regulated, and this is opening the door to new avenues of research,” said Professor Blencowe, who is also appointed to the Department of Molecular Genetics.
One of the benefits of the splicing code is that it can explain how DNA mutations, which disrupt the normal set of rules, lead to changes in a gene that can result in disease. In new research, Professor Frey and his team are using the splicing code to understand how mutations in a gene cause spinal muscular atrophy, a leading cause of infant mortality, and to predict which of many potential biomolecular therapies are able to correct the problem. Professor Blencowe and his colleagues are using the code to study the molecular basis of biological differences between species and to discover regulatory mechanisms that can be manipulated to improve the generation of stem cells for research and therapeutic applications.
Oti Agbeyegbe (IndE 1T3 + PEY) was inspired by his engineer dad. Lloyd Wiredu (CompE 1T1 + PEY) was sparked by Dexter’s Lab. And for Jean-Yves Ntamwemezi (CompE 1T1 + PEY), he knew he wanted to be an engineer after his family bought their first computer.
They all took different roads to U of T Engineering. But that road could have been easier if they knew they didn’t have to take it by themselves.
“I was one of very few black students in my school who were interested in engineering. It helps to know that you don’t have to do it alone. Having a support group may not affect your marks, but it matters,” said Ntamwemezi.
Once they set foot on the U of T campus, they heard about the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE). NSBE is the largest student-managed organization in the world, with more than 300 chapters on university and college campuses.
Every NSBE chapter has the same mission: increase the number of culturally responsible black engineers who excel academically, succeed professionally and positively impact the community. NSBE U of T is the largest chapter in Toronto.
Now as NSBE U of T executive board members, Wiredu (President), Ntamwemezi (Vice President), Agbeyegbe (Pre-College Initiative Chair), along with Life Science student Sayo Falade (Administrative Director), hope to support and inspire black youth to pursue and succeed in engineering.
Through social, technical and outreach programs, they are doing exactly that. “On the social side, we have team-building events, like movie night, game night – and then there’s D-Battle. It’s the largest dance battle on campus,” said Wiredu. Technical programs include, Study Bash, which provides study sessions, peer mentorship and career guidance.
Their outreach efforts have been the most ambitious, however. In collaboration with U of T Engineering’s Student Outreach Office, the ENGage program was launched in summer 2010. ENGage allows black youth – in grades seven and eight – to explore engineering through week-long, hands-on projects.
The program was conceived by Mikhail Burke (MSE 1T2) and Sayo’s brother, Ayokanmi Falade (MechE 1T1 + PEY), in 2009, when they were President and Vice-President, respectively.
In its two years of existence, ENGage has grown from a week-long summer program with 25 participants in 2010, to a two week-long program, with 50 participants in 2011. ENGage is the only Canadian outreach program of its kind that is led by an NSBE chapter. This year, it was coordinated in part by Agbeyegbe.
“As an ENGage instructor, I saw first-hand the enthusiasm from the students. It’s an amazing feeling, being able to give them the exposure and support they need to pursue engineering,” said Agbeyegbe.
With February being Black History Month, the significance of NSBE is all the more apparent. “Even if we get one student interested in going into this field, that means we’ve made an impact in their life and that we’ve achieved our mission statement,” said Wiredu, “We want them to say, ‘I found a family here, I was able to get help when I needed it, and I found success because of NSBE.’”