Most people have never been up close to a natural gas processing plant, an oil sands operation or a large wind turbine. Yet the energy sector fuels not only Alberta’s prosperity, but also drives the country’s economic engine. Continued innovation in this sector is vital for Canada to remain globally competitive, to ensure a strong, environmentally sustain- able economy for Canadians now and in the future.
But it will take a new way of innovating to find solutions to large challenges such as climate change, or ‘greening’ oil sands production, or making our cities more energy efficient. Universities can and must play a leading in engineering, geoscience, business and other disciplines, and expand our interdisciplinary research and teaching in energy and environment. Here are three examples:
Researchers and graduate students at the University of Calgary are working with those at the University of Toronto–including Professor Heather MacLean (CivE)–along with industry and government partners, on the Life Cycle Assessment of Oil Sands Technology project. It will produce the first comprehensive picture of the economy-wide impacts of current and proposed oil sands operations – a standard that companies can then use to reliably measure their total environmental footprint.
In the Wabamun Area Sequestration Project (WASP), engineers, geoscientists, lawyers and social scientists explored a wide range of issues that must be resolved before carbon emissions can be safely captured from Alberta’s coal-fired power plants and permanently stored underground. Insights from WASP not only identified critical areas needing research, they informed investment and policy decisions by industry and government.
A ‘micro-grid’ electricity system on the Burnaby campus of British Columbia Institute of Technology could be the catalyst for major changes in power distribution at BC Hydro.
BCIT and research partners, including the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto, share $5 million in federal funding awarded last week by science and technology minister of state Gary Goodyear to ramp up the technical institute’s smart-grid research program. ECE’s Professor Reza Iravani is one of three team leaders on the project.
When New York artist Wafaa Bilal visited Toronto recently, he got together with inventor Steve Mann to compare notes on mounting cameras on their heads. Then they jumped into Mann’s hot tub to play some music.
Bilal, an Iraqi who has lived in the United States since 1991, is a performance artist who hopes to spend 2011 streaming photographs from the camera he had surgically implanted in the back of his head. Snapshots of his apartment and the streets, cafés and shops he frequents show up in batches on his website, with black blanks indicating places where he has not received permission to shoot, including New York University, where he teaches art.
Mann, an artist, musician and ECE professor at the University of Toronto who mounted a camera on his own head back in the 1990s, could be called the godfather of cyborg art, the inspiration for artists such as Bilal to consider how they might fuse their bodies and technology.
A pioneer of wearable computers and webcams, including various eyeglasses that use cameras to enhance sight, Mann is currently researching the possibilities of directing computers through brain waves, although he warns that a brain-computer interface is a long way off. Meanwhile, he’s perfecting his hydraulophone, the first musical instrument to make a sound exclusively with water – including a model incorporated into a hot tub and dubbed the balnaphone, in which Bilal was invited to take a dip.
Follow the link to read the full article on The Globe and Mail website.
In a study published online in the journal Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair, Toronto researchers report that functional electrical stimulation (FES) therapy worked better than conventional occupational therapy alone to increase patients’ ability to pick up and hold objects.
FES therapy uses low-intensity electrical pulses generated by a pocket-sized electric stimulator.
“This study proves that by stimulating peripheral nerves and muscles, you can actually ‘retrain’ the brain,” says the study’s lead author, Professor Milos R. Popovic (IBBME), a senior scientist at Toronto Rehab and head of the hospital’s Neural Engineering and Therapeutics Team. “A few years ago, we did not believe this was possible.”
Follow the link to read the full article on Physorg.com.
Being able to move and communicate with the world has long been a major hurdle for children living with severe physical disabilities. Thought cognitively capable, they have few ways of expressing themselves to, and moving about in the outside world. However, advances in computer-based technology have allowed researchers to find innovative ways to help liberate these children, letting them interact and contribute with the wider society.
One of these researchers, Eric Wan (CompE 1T0), currently working on his master’s degree in Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto, spends most of his days in the paediatric engineering research wing at The Bloorview Research Institute. His work involves designing new ways to improve the quality of lives of children living with severe disabilities.
He started programming when he was eight years old and since then, he enthuses, it has been his passion. “I really love it.”
His zeal is apparent and fruitful. As part of his undergraduate thesis, Wan created software for an award-winning “hum-activated” wheelchair. A child can power the wheelchair by simply making high- or low-pitched humming sounds. A vocal chord vibration sensor distinguishes between the different pitches to change direction. A major advantage of this wheelchair is that it drowns out unnecessary background noise such as street traffic or voices of people near by.
Audrey Kertesz, an ECE student in her first year of graduate studies and specializing in control theory, received the 2010 André Hamer Postgraduate Prize from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) in Ottawa on Monday, February 14th. Roberto Morandotti, an ECE post-doctoral fellow in 2002-2003 who is now a professor in the Institut national de la recherche scientifique in Montreal, received an E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship.
Kertesz plans to research ways to improve the efficiency of urban-based solar panel arrays by designing better control systems. Following an NSERC press conference at the Museum of Science and Technology—at which the Honourable Tony Clement, Minister of Industry, announced the awards—Kertesz said her win felt “extraordinary. I feel very out of place and hugely honoured to be surrounded by this group,” which included University of Toronto computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton as the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medallist for Science and Engineering.
“It’s very much an honour,” Kertesz added, “and I hope with my research that I can live up to it.”
In the quest to generate clean, inexpensive solar energy, installations of photovoltaic (PV) systems on the roofs of homes and other urban locations are on the rise. Most hardware, however, is designed to work with the uniform light levels more typically found in rural areas, meaning urban installations don’t perform as well as they could.
Solar installations rely on switched-mode converters to transform the voltage and current being produced so the system harvests as much energy as possible. These are in turn controlled by a maximum power point tracker.
For PV systems that can count on uniform light levels, one control can do the job for an entire array. Efficiency drops when different parts of the array are partially shaded by trees or neighbouring buildings at certain times of day.
Kertesz’s research will tackle the problem by setting up a distributed control system, where individual panels may have one or even several dedicated controls. Local controllers would perform optimization for their panel, while simultaneously ensuring that the voltage and current they output is compatible with the rest of the installation. The end result: a system that operates at peak efficiency and an increased supply of renewable energy.
Kertesz graduated from the University of Calgary in 2010 with a BSc in Electrical Engineering, and on graduation received the Governor General’s Silver Medal, the Faculty Gold Medal in Engineering, and the Muriel Kovitz prize for the highest grade-point average across the university. Now working in the Systems Control Group of The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Kertesz expects to receive an MASc in 2012. Her supervisors are Professors Bruce Francis (MechE 6T9, MEng 7T1, ElecE 7T5) and Olivier Trescases (ElecE 0T2, MASc 0T4, PhD 0T7).
“We are extremely proud of Audrey Kertesz’s achievements and prowess as a scholar, which NSERC has acknowledged with this prestigious award,” said Cristina Amon, Dean, Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “We look forward to celebrating her continued success.”
Roberto Morandotti received one of six Steacie Fellowships for his research into transmitting electronic information with unbreachable security. His new technology, based on high-performance integrated non-linear devices, aims to put theory into practice by transmitting pairs of light particles, called entangled photons, through existing optical networks.
Professor Morandotti studied twice with Engineering’s Vice-Dean, Research Stewart Aitchison: for his post-doctoral fellowship in ECE in 2002-2003, and at the University of Glasgow for his PhD in electrical engineering, which he received in 1999.
NSERC honorees were presented with their awards by Governor General David Johnson at a ceremony and reception at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on Monday evening.
Click here to view photos of Audrey Kertesz, and her video interview with NSERC.