There is tremendous potential in forensic engineering to celebrate engineering contributions to public safety and welfare.
Professor Doug Perovic (MSE) is also an independent forensic engineering consultant. He conducts forensic engineering seminars through the Advanced Design and Manufacturing Institute (ADMI) and next September will begin a forensic engineering course for Engineering graduates and undergraduates at U of T.
Considered the first of its kind in Canada, the course will provide students an understanding of “scientific and engineering investigation methods to assess potential sources, causes and solutions for prevention of failure due to natural accidents, fire, high- and low-speed impacts, design defects, improper selection of materials, manufacturing defects, improper service conditions, inadequate maintenance and human error.” The course will also include mock trial proceedings using invited professionals to demonstrate the role of the engineer as expert witness in civil and criminal court proceedings.
Professor Perovic’s own forensic work now incorporates nanotechnology into material failure investigation. He believes forensic practitioners are at their very best when they retain the problem-solving mentality, and when they relate engineering design concepts to contemporary realities. He suggests forensic engineers stick to a simple program of understanding the problem, undertaking a thorough analysis and reporting their ultimate findings to their clients (and in some cases, the courts).
“It often comes down to communication skills,” he says.
Professors Shana Kelley, Michael Sefton and Gang Zheng of the Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering (IBBME) have received nearly $6.5 million in research funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), it was announced on Monday. These grants come from the Emerging Team Grant: Regenerative Medicine and Nanomedicine program which will back IBBME research projects for four- and five-year terms.
Professor Kelley’s project, Microchip-based Devices for the Analysis of Circulating Prostate Cancer Markers, involves developing a non-invasive screening for prostate cancer and the early detection of the disease. An approach relying on nanotechnology will be employed to produce very sensitive, accurate devices that will sense the presence of prostate cancer cells in the blood, and will analyze the aggressiveness of the disease by detecting molecules that can report on the type of tumour present.
Her team of principal investigators includes Dr. Robert Nam, Professor Edward Sargent (ECE) and Professor Aaron Wheeler. She received $1,735,400 for a four-year term.
Professor and former IBBME director Micheal Sefton received $2,335,000 for a five-year term to examine the influence of endothelial cell (EC) interactions with other cell types, as well as the effects of blood flow. The new knowledge obtained on EC function during remodeling will be used to design novel therapies with a view to achieving improved/accelerated vascularization. The project, Vascularized Tissue Engineered Constructs, is being carried out by Professors Sefton, Professor Myron Cybulsky, Dr. Philip Marsden and Professor Craig Simmons (MIE).
Nanotechnology-enabled Image-guided Interventions in Vascular and Lung Disease is another IBBME research project being investigated by Professor Gang Zheng, Professor Warren Chan (IBBME) and Professor Brian Wilson. This project will develop, and accelerate to clinical trial readiness, novel technologies based on nanoparticles (NP) that are targeted to lung cancer and atherosclerosis, combined with optical imaging technologies. These diseases are major killers with huge health and socioeconomic costs. Funding is secured for a five-year term at $2,317,262.
In total, IBBME garnered nearly half of the funding being offered through this CIHR peer-review program. This kind of recognition earmarks IBBME as a world-leading biomedical engineering institute or department.
IBBME is Canada’s leading biomedical engineering program in North America. Students and faculty participate in innovative educational programs and high-impact research to underpin this leadership. Such leadership draws on the strengths of Canada’s best Faculties: U of T Applied Science & Engineering, Dentistry and Medicine. IBBME is also located near the geographic centre of one of the leading Health Sciences Complexes in North America.
IBBME combines core strength in biomedical engineering with a spirit of collaboration that enables it to work closely with many cognate units at the University of Toronto.
The University of Toronto will conduct two major undergraduate surveys over the next several weeks.
On Wednesday, February 2nd, all first year and senior year undergraduate students at UTM, UTSC and in the Faculties of Arts and Science, Engineering, Music and Physical Education and Health, as well as all senior year students in the Faculty of Nursing will be invited to participate in the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE).
Students will receive an email invitation from U of T President David Naylor asking them to complete the Web-based survey. Those who complete the NSSE will be entered into a draw for more than 10 different prizes from the U of T Bookstore and Computer Shop, including an iPad.
This is the fourth time U of T has participated in NSSE, a survey now used by all Ontario universities to measure the quality of undergraduate education. The University has used the results to set priorities in its ambitious plans to enhance the undergraduate student experience. Significant funding has already been dedicated to projects as wide-ranging as improved study and lounge space, laboratories, new orientation programs and international field experiences for undergraduate students.
In early March, the University will participate in a second undergraduate survey: The Globe and Mail’s University Report Card. Results from this survey are published in The Globe and Mail and are provided to the University administration to help identify priorities for change.
All students are advised to: (1) Check your email! (2) If you receive the invitation, respond promptly and honestly. Your opinions matter.
For more information, please visit U of T is Listening.
A new Engineering Business Minor and two certificate programs, in Engineering Business and in Global Engineering, have been approved for launch in fall 2011. The new Engineering Business offering is a collaboration between U of T’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and the Rotman School of Management.
“The goal of the new Engineering Business Minor is to give our engineers the basic business concepts that will enable them to move across the technology-business barrier that often exists in companies,” said Professor Jonathan Rose (ECE), the new program Director. “They will be able to engage in the strategic business thinking that goes on and bring much more to the table when combined with their technological and scientific acumen.”
Students interested in the Engineering Business Minor will take a set of six courses in strategy and marketing, accounting and finance, as well as management and entrepreneurship. An Engineering Business Certificate will require the completion of three courses.
The new Engineering Business Minor will enable engineering students to understand and operate in the language of business, and to engage more fully in the companies in which they work, says Professor Rose.
With the creation of the Centre for Global Engineering (CGEN) in 2009, U of T Engineering will also offer a new Global Engineering Certificate, through which students will be able to develop their knowledge of global issues including global energy systems, innovative finance techniques, and current theories in international development and foreign aid. To graduate with a Global Engineering Certificate, engineering students must successfully complete three courses.
“In today’s global marketplace, we want to graduate engineers with a strong technical foundation who are also business-literate, with international knowledge, leadership and entrepreneurial skills,” said Cristina Amon (MIE), Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.
“Our Engineering Business Minor graduates will understand all aspects of engineering work, from inception of an idea to technological innovation and commercialization, through strategy, marketing, management and finance; they will be able to manage the technology as well as the business aspects of their jobs.
“Our Global Engineering Certificate will prepare U of T engineers to work internationally, both overseas as well as from home.”
Sujoy Ghosh Hajra (ECE 0T8) never has to go far for inspiration. A systems analyst, he toils away at a lab for the National Research Council Canada’s Institute for Biodiagnostics (Atlantic).
The lab is located at the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre in Halifax, where there is no shortage of the patients and their families who drive his passion.
You could be forgiven for wondering about the connection between a computer engineer and health care. But once you meet this 25-year-old research dynamo and hear what he’s been up to since he was wooed here as a recent University of Toronto computer engineering graduate in 2008, you’ll be grateful there is one.
Ghosh Hajra is a key member of the Canadian team responsible for a medical breakthrough — the world’s first virtual brain surgery.
In August 2009, when Halifax neurosurgeon David Clarke took out Ellen Wright’s benign brain tumour, he and the team were in familiar territory. Hours earlier, they had practised the same operation on her brain, without ever having made an incision, thanks to a virtual-reality neurological simulator.
Impossible? Not at all, in large part because Ghosh Hajra, working with others, had figured out a way to take pictures from scans like MRIs and turn them into realistic 3-D images. Those images showed surgeons the precise details they needed to plan and practise what they would do in the operating room.
“It’s very patient specific, not a generic brain the surgeon practises on,” Ghosh Hajra says. “In brain surgery, it’s a very important thing because everyone’s brain is slightly different.”
Steve Mosher’s ears take a beating at work: they actually hurt during particularly noisy moments, are ringing by the end of some shifts, and after 20-plus years on the job are now afflicted permanently with tinnitus.
Surprisingly, Mosher plays in the orchestra of the National Ballet, Canada’s premiere classical dance company, and his concerns about long-term hearing loss led to a novel study that has just been published by researchers at the University of Toronto.
Using 10 performances of Romeo and Juliet — the company’s highest-volume ballet — as their lab, the researchers documented the level of noise exposure experienced by every member of the 70-person ensemble.
The same team conducted a similar study earlier on the Canadian Opera Company orchestra, as the classical music world increasingly turns its attention to a workplace hazard more commonly associated with heavy industry, or at least the kind of music played in hockey arenas, not concert halls.
“It doesn’t matter what the nature of sound is, it is the sheer energy of sound that causes damage,” said Cheng Liang Qian, the doctoral student in The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering who led the research. “Just having beautiful music around you all the time doesn’t protect your hearing.”
The University of Toronto team advised the musicians to lessen risk of hearing loss by being extra careful in other aspects of their lives.
Follow the link to read the full article on the National Post website.