Compute Canada, a national platform of advanced computing resources across the country, has announced the largest ever awards of supercomputing resources to researchers working in areas from biomedicine and brain function to aircraft and aviation fuel design. These competitively-awarded grants will help scientists across Canada better understand our world, and move towards developing tools and products to improve the lives of Canadians.
“High performance computing is transforming research in Canadian universities, hospitals and industry,” said Susan Baldwin, executive director of Compute Canada. “Advances in information and communications technologies have revolutionized virtually every field. Our scientists are creating entirely new ways of conducting research, accelerating innovation and discovery across Canada.”
“Our SciNet allocation is transforming the landscape of combustion and air pollution research in Canada,” said Professor Seth Dworkin, a researcher at the University of Toronto’s Mechanical and Industrial Engineering department. Dworkin studies the combustion of biofuels, aiming to make them into clean-burning substitutes for current aviation fuels.
“The expertise and computational resources at SciNet are helping us tackle problems of combustion-generated emissions using simulations of unprecedented size and accuracy. We’re learning more and more about the formation and nanostructure of atmospheric pollutants and are now able to apply that knowledge to the design of engines and alternative fuels.”
SciNet is one of seven regional consortia of universities and colleges across Canada with mandates to provide High-Performance Computing (HPC) resources to both their own academic researchers as well as other users across the country and international collaborations. SciNet was funded by the National Platform Fund (NPF) of the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and by the Province of Ontario as well as the University of Toronto’s Faculties of Arts and Science, Applied Science & Engineering, and Medicine.
Follow the link to read the full news release on Canada NewsWire.
A few years ago Vincent Cheung, a doctoral candidate in ECE, created a software program called Shape Collage that automatically generates photo collages of any size and shape, starting it “as just a fun side project.”
Today, Shape Collage has three employees and annual revenues of approximately $750,000 — and Cheung has picked up a few awards along the way. In a recent article on BNET — CBS’s Interactive Business Network — Cheung explains why he’s chosen “a frugal, steady organic growth model” over venture capital.
The 2011 Acta Biomaterialia Gold Medal has been awarded to Professor Michael Sefton (IBBME, ChemE). The award recognizes excellence and leadership in biomaterials research and practical applications.
Professor Sefton is regarded as a pioneer in tissue engineering and a leader in biomaterials, biomedical engineering and regenerative medicine.
He is the first to recognize the importance of combining living cells with synthetic polymers to create “artificial” organs and tissues. Professor Sefton’s lab was also one of the first in the world that succeeded in micro-encapsulating live cells – with a view to creating an artificial pancreas and other tissues, that could then evade the patient’s immune system through the barrier properties of the encapsulating membrane.
Professor Sefton has published extensively in the world’s leading journals and international conference proceedings, and is the holder of several U.S. and international patents. He has delivered more than 400 invited lectures, seminars and keynote speeches at high-profile meetings in more than 20 countries. In addition, he has served on the editorial board of several professional journals.
“On behalf of the Faculty, I congratulate Professor Michael Sefton on this tremendous achievement,” said Dean Cristina Amon. “He continues to redefine the forefront of tissue engineering research, and we are delighted that Acta Biomaterialia is honouring Professor Sefton for his remarkable innovation and contributions in this crucial field.”
He will receive the Acta Biomateriala Gold Medal Award at a plenary session of the Society for Biomaterials’ annual meeting in April 2011 in Orlando, Fla.
For more information, please visit: www.elsevier.com/locate/actabiomat
Thousands of Canadian trucking companies violated U.S. road safety rules in the last two years, failing to keep proper records and driving longer than officials south of the border deem safe, according to U.S. data.
A CBC analysis of the data from the U.S. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration shows some 4,800 Canadian carriers violated key parts of the hours of service and logbook rules in 2009 and 2010. Hundreds of carriers, based in every province but Newfoundland and Labrador, violated rules related to driver fatigue.
Canada and the U.S. have different trucking regulations and enforcement mechanisms, and Canada does not have a similar database on how carriers are faring in this country. Michael Arpin, a Winnipeg-based trucker, said truck drivers often face pressure to violate hours-of-service rules.
Alison Smiley (MIE), a Toronto university professor and an expert on driver fatigue, said “just-in-time delivery” means many truckers are driving all night.
A range of factors play into deadly truck accidents, but Smiley said lack of sleep is a major concern — one that is often overlooked.
“We don’t have a fatigue-alyzer the way we have a breathalyzer,” she said, adding that some police forms don’t even have a space to check off fatigue as a possible contributing factor in an accident.
“We’re sacrificing people on the roads to have our strawberries on time and to not have to pay too much for them,” Smiley said.
Read the full article at CBC.ca and watch the report on CBC’s The National.
A group of University of Toronto students have designed a social networking platform that they believe will save time and prevent aggravation among students.
uBuddy, designed by Engineering student Charles Qu, is the first academic social networking platform that allows students to effectively facilitate note-sharing, meetings and course discussions online. “It brings all those features together,” said uBuddy Communications Director Ryan McDougall. “It’s built by students for the students.”
McDougall said that since the official launching of uBuddy last week they have already hit 1,000 registered users and the group has plans to add more.
Currently, uBuddy is available exclusively to U of T students, but McDougall said the networking site will spread. “We plan on opening the platform to other campuses,” McDougall said.
First-year students in large classes wanting to meet people to form study groups, or simply make friends, will get the most of the social networking platform.
Follow the link to read the full article and see a photo on Metronews.ca.
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.