On November 11, U of T Engineering students Tarek El Fedawy (IndE 1T3), Kazem Kutob (IndE 1T3), Layan Kutob (IndE 1T2 + PEY) and Alberto Picard-Ami (IndE 1T3) took second place at the Wharton Undergraduate Consulting Competition, beating out teams from Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, New York University and Rutgers.

The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania is one of the top business schools in North America and the world. This year, the focus of the competition was on “The Aspiring Consultant.”

Teams were required to identify strategies to remediate a global financial service firm’s regulatory and operational deficiencies, while increasing annual revenues 60% by 2015.

The U of T Engineering team proposed strategies that tackled expansions in the global market and revenue streams, as well as new technologies and improvements on the operational system’s efficiencies. Though first place went to Yale, U of T still had an incredible showing.

“It was such an incredible moment of joy to be a finalist and to be awarded second place after competing against some of the world’s most respected and top-rated universities,” said Layan Kutob. “It made us, even more, appreciate the education and extra-curricular exposure that U of T Engineering gives us.”

“On behalf of the Faculty, I would like to congratulate the team on their richly-deserved achievement,” said Dean Cristina Amon. “Their success, among other world-renowned universities, illustrates the strength of our remarkable engineering education with business acumen.”

University of Toronto Engineering alumnus and current Harvard Medical School Professor Ali Khademhosseini (ChemE 9T9, MASc 0T1) is one of the recipients of the 2011 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers by American President Barack Obama. The award, which is the highest honour bestowed by the U.S. government on scientists and engineers in the early stages of their research careers, was announced September 26, 2011.

Professor Khademhosseini’s research focused on developing micro- and nanoscale technologies to control cellular behavior. He is particularly focused on developing microscale biomaterials and engineering systems for tissue engineering. His work in tissue engineering began under the supervision of University Professor Michael Sefton, under whose supervision Professor Khademhosseini completed his Master’s degree. He continued his work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a doctorate in bioengineering in 2005.

In addition to his appointment at Harvard, Professor Khademhosseini is an Associate Professor at Harvard-MIT’s Division of Health Sciences and Technology and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, as well as an Associate Faculty at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.

This is far from Professor Khademhosseini’s first honour. In 2007, he was named one of the Top 35 Innovators Under 35 by MIT’s Technology Review. In the past year alone, he was recognized with the Pioneers of Miniaturization Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Lab on a Chip and Corning Inc, the IEEE Early Career Award in Nanotechnology, the Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, the Society for Biomaterials (SFB) Young Investigator Award and the Y.C. Fung Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

“We congratulate Dr. Khademhosseini on the substantial recognition he has received at this early stage in his career for his contributions to the field of tissue engineering,” said Professor D. Grant Allen, Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry. “We are proud of Dr. Khademhosseini’s accomplishments and his association with our Department.”

With the 22nd anniversary of the École Polytechnique tragedy in December, the CBC’s The National takes a closer look at what has changed for women in engineering, as well as the legacy of the massacre.

Wendy Mesley sat down with 10 U of T Engineering students to talk about their experiences as a female engineering student, as well as how the tragic events 22 years ago have affected and inspired them.

The University of Toronto tops Re$earch Infosource Inc.’s 2011 list of Canada’s leading research universities.

Re$earch Infosource Inc. is a division of The Impact Group, one of Canada’s leading consulting firms specializing in strategic planning, research and evaluation, and more, for organizations concerned with science, technology and innovation.

In ranking the universities, the firm took into consideration a university’s sponsored-research income, the number of full-time faculty, as well as research intensity. U of T is the only Ontario university in the top five, and has been ranked first since 2001.

“U of T Engineering is doing its part in keeping the university at the forefront of innovation by focusing on our strategic research themes,” said Professor Stewart Aitchison (ECE), Vice-Dean, Research. “As a result, our research funding has increased by 30% over the last three years.”

For more information on this year’s rankings, visit Re$earch Infosource Inc .

Nancy Ho (MechE 1T4), Engineering Society’s Community Outreach Director, wanted to find a creative way for engineering students to give back.

“So that’s when I found out about CANstruction,” said Ho. CANstruction, which was held at Simcoe Place on November 5, is a design competition that challenges the Toronto community to build structures out of canned goods. The structures are on display for a week, before being donated to the Daily Bread Food Bank.

As if the challenge at hand wasn’t already difficult enough, Ho and her team of engineering students decided to build a structure inspired by Angry Birds. With the help of a $1,000 donation from one of CANstruction’s sponsors, the team was able to purchase more than 1,000 cans.

“But that wasn’t enough to build it,” said Ho, “So we ran a food drive at U of T with the help of the Engineering Society and Professor Susan McCahan (MIE, Vice-Dean, Undergraduate).” The team managed to collect 1,700 cans in total, and successfully built their ode to Angry Birds, which stood alongside three other structures created by Ryerson University teams.

“I’m so proud of the work we did,” said Ho. “It was a big project, a cool idea, and we managed to pull it off for a good cause. It’s community outreach at its finest.”

Professor Shaker Meguid (MIE), Director of the Mechanics and Aerospace Design Lab at U of T, and his team are looking to improve the ability to monitor an aircraft’s primary sources of failure.

The team are converting polymeric thermoset adhesive resins into multifunctional materials that perform multiple “structural” and “non-structural” functions simultaneously. The development of such smart adhesives will provide early warning of impending catastrophic failures in next-generation aircrafts.

The group is currently investigating the effect of carbon nanotubes on the electrical conductivity of multifunctional nanocomposites.

Their work is currently published in this month’s Nanotechnology  journal. And for an overview of their research, visit Nanotechweb.