The Next 36, a new program that helps launch the business careers of 36 promising and innovative Canadian undergraduates, have chosen five U of T Engineering students.
In summer 2011, EngSci students Shahed Al-Haque (1T1), Shane Gu (1T3), Saksham Uppal (1T1 + PEY) and ECE students Michael Del Baso (1T2) and Tulika Gupta (1T2) will join other aspiring entrepreneurs from around the country, as they compete in teams of four to develop a mobile application company.
The program will provide each team with the capital, resources and mentorship (from celebrated entrepreneurs) over a course of five months leading up to the summer competition.
“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity and a dream come true for me. The array of industry and people put together would give me tremendous exposure and experience. I am very excited about the upcoming months,” said Gupta.
“We are delighted to hear of Michael and Tulika’s recent accomplishment. They are among the many talented, business-conscious students in our Department. We know they will do exceptionally well in this program,” said Professor Farid N. Najm, Chair, The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering.
And with the inclusion of three EngSci students, Professor Will Cluett, Chair, Division of Engineering Science, is thrilled to hear of their recognition.
“The Division is very pleased that The Next 36 has selected three Engineering Science students for this new and exciting initiative. Many of our students have developed their own companies during their time as students in Engineering Science or after graduation. It is terrific that Shahed, Shane and Saksham have been recognized as being among a very strong group of up-and-coming entrepreneurs in Canada,” he said.
Developing products that will enable treatments for devastating health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer and spinal cord injuries is the focus of a major University of Toronto-hosted research and commercialization initiative that has been awarded $15 million by the Government of Canada’s Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE).
The Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM) was one of five projects approved by the NCE on Dec. 6 as part of its Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR) competition.
The CECR program’s mandate is to create internationally recognized centres of commercialization and research expertise in four priority areas in order to deliver economic, social and environmental benefits to Canadians. As established in the Government of Canada’s science and technology strategy, the priority areas include: environmental science and technologies, natural resources and energy, health and related life sciences and technologies, information and communications technologies.
“Our government understands that an innovative society and economy depend on creative thinkers whose potential is encouraged and supported,” said Minister of Industry Tony Clement. “That’s why we are investing in the ideas, products and technologies generated by these Centres of Excellence to create jobs and businesses, help develop highly skilled people, strengthen our economy and position Canada for long-term prosperity.”
“The partnership aspect of the CCRM is our real strength,” said Zandstra, who is also Canada Research Chair in Stem Cell Bioengineering and a scientist at the University Health Network’s McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine.
The CCRM’s chief scientific officer will be Professor Peter Zandstra (IBBME), a leading specialist in regenerative medicine. In addition to U of T, the centre includes six institutions as research partners – The Hospital for Sick Children, McMaster University, Mount Sinai Hospital, the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and the University Health Network, as well as 16 inaugural private sector enterprises engaged in regenerative medicine.
“All our partner organizations, in academia and in the private sector, are conducting leading edge work in regenerative medicine that has the potential to become important products and technologies that will benefit the health and welfare of global society. Unifying this talent around core platforms to enable new technologies may lead to truly transformative advances.”
Regenerative medicine is an emerging field that encompasses innovative methods – such as stem cell therapy, regenerative biomolecules, tissue engineering and the use of biomaterials – of treating disease and injury. Scientists working in RM are making important progress that holds the possibility, for example, of people with diabetes being freed from having to use daily injections of insulin or enabling those paralyzed by spinal cord injuries to walk again.
Zandstra adds that while the scientific innovation is vital, the commercialization component, which will be driven by the CCRM, is key to bringing innovations to people around the globe.
“The problem is that many new and potentially life-changing RM-based treatments never reach patients because they are not successfully moved from the laboratory to a stage where they can be used in medicine. Our plan is twofold – to leverage our advanced biomedical research and engineering and to create an RM commercialization pipeline to get our innovations into the marketplace and to people suffering from these difficult health conditions. This is why our initiative combines the talents of academic scientists and commercialization experts. The investment and foundations we put in place over the next several years are crucial to achieving success and in ensuring that Canada is a global leader in what is becoming an important industry.”
“We are delighted with this dynamic partnership, as it is a unique initiative that will not only generate solutions to Canada’s most pressing healthcare issues, but will also generate commercialized products,” said Professor Cristina Amon, Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “As CCRM’s chief scientific officer, Professor Peter Zandstra brings extraordinary leadership in regenerative medicine expertise, engineering know-how, and leading-edge innovation into industry.”
To pursue this program, the CCRM has identified three thrusts to fuel a sustainable, global RM industry based in Canada:
• CCRM will unite the significant investments from the Canadian and Ontario governments, its institutional members and its industry partners around product development platforms dedicated to enabling stem cell- and biomaterials-based technologies. These development platforms will underpin the long-term sustainability of the centre.
• CCRM will coordinate and build upon Canada’s strength in stem cell and biomaterials sciences with knowledgeable and dynamic business leadership. By
creating a strong business development arm, CCRM will be able to focus on playing an active role in capturing, managing and adding value to Canadian RM intellectual property.
• CCRM will engage industry partners, making CCRM a global hub of RM commercialization and attracting investment to Ontario, leading to new jobs and economic growth.
“Partnership is so important to conducting great research, and the CCRM is about to prove the value of bringing universities, hospitals and private sector enterprises together,” said Professor Paul Young, vice-president (research) at U of T. “We are sincerely thankful to the Networks of Centres of Excellence for its investment in this venture. The CCRM will have an important future impact in improving the health of people worldwide, in addition to contributing to the Canadian economy.”
Also important in the development of CCRM was MaRS Innovation (MI), established in 2008 to manage research commercialization ventures for 16 universities and hospitals in Toronto.
“MaRS Innovation worked closely with the teams at U of T and the affiliated teaching hospitals to coalesce everyone’s interests, create the proposal, and manage the process,” said Dr. Rafi Hofstein, MI’s president and CEO and a member of CCRM’s board of directors. “Indeed, we’re thrilled that our strategic approach to commercialization has won such a significant boost in such a short time. This is an extraordinary initiative in bundling of intellectual property. But what it really shows is the power of accretion, the fact that one plus one can equal three.”
In addition to the NCE’s $15 million, partner organizations in the CCRM will contribute $13.7 million, bringing the total funding for the project $28,795,000. U of T’s investment will come from the IBBME, the Faculty of Medicine, the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and central administrative sources.
The NCE was established by the federal government in 1994 with the aim of mobilizing Canada’s best research and development talent to build a more advanced, healthy, competitive and prosperous Canada. The NCE manages four national programs: Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE); Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research (CECR); Business-Led Networks of Centres of Excellence (BL-NCE), and Industrial Research and Development Internships (IRDI).
In the early hours of Dec. 6, a group of 30 U of T Engineers, who go by the name of the Brute Force Committee, erected their own version of Mayor Rob Ford’s “gravy train” at Nathan Phillips Square. In an effort to raise a public food drive this holiday season, the “U of T Gravy Train,” left parts of the train empty for donations. Their plot was foiled, however, when a security guard spotted the train soon after its set-up. The train is now reassembled and safely parked on the lawn of King’s College Circle at U of T, where the students hope to collect more food donations. Though the train may not have been as welcomed at Nathan Phillips Square, Dean Cristina Amon was proud to see it make a stop at U of T. “On behalf of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, I congratulate you and your “train engineers” who installed the donation train on front campus. Not only an appropriate use of our students’ creative energies, the train draws support of our community members’ need for food – at a time when it is most keenly felt – and draws attention to how engineers respond to global issues such as hunger.” Read more about the Gravy Train in The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Torontoistand 680 News .
On Nov. 29, Engineering alumnae Anne Sado (IndE 7T7) and Dawn Tattle (CivE 8T5) were honoured at a gala celebrating Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women.
Sado, who has been the President of George Brown College since 2004, was honoured in the Cisco Public Sector awards category for her leadership in the growth and renewal of George Brown. She was also recently named the Chair of the board of ORION, an organization supporting Ontario’s advanced research and education network. As well, Sado was given the Engineering Alumni Hall of Distinction Award at this year’s EAA awards ceremony earlier in November.
Tattle, a distinguished leader in the competitive industry of excavations and shoring, was recognized as one of the top 100 most powerful women in Canada in the KPMG Professionals category. Since 1997, she has served as President of Anchor Shoring & Caissons Ltd., and in the process, has had many successes, including increasing the company’s revenues fourfold. Tattle was also the recipient of the 2T5 Mid-Career Award at this year’s Engineering Alumni Association (EAA) Awards.
The Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Awards is Canada’s most recognizable award for the country’s highest achieving female leaders in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors.
Read more about the honours at the official website, Exchange Magazine, Financial Post and News Wire .
With the Christmas video-game-buying season in full swing, now seems the right time to ask, Are active video games being aimed, at least in part, at the wrong audience? Active video games refer, of course, to games that require you to be active. Often also called exergames, they include the Wii Fit, Dance Dance Revolution from Konami and the new Microsoft Xbox Kinect and Sony PlayStation Move systems, among others. Depending on the game, they exhort players to hop, wriggle, serve and volley, left-hook a virtual boxing opponent or, in some other fashion, move. The underlying premise of these games is that, unlike Madden NFL 11 or Super Street Fighter IV, playing them should improve people’s fitness and health.
But the latest science suggests that that outcome, desirable as it may be, is rarely achieved by most players, particularly the young. In theory, active games should come close to replicating the energy demands and physiological benefits of playing the actual sports they imitate. But as most of us might guess, they don’t. Studies consistently have found that active video games, although they require more energy than simply watching television or playing passive video games, are not nearly as physically demanding as real sports and physical activities. A study published earlier this year in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise found that when adults “exergamed” in a metabolic chamber that precisely measured their energy expenditure, only 22 of the 68 active video games tested resulted in moderately intense exercise, similar to brisk walking. The vast majority were light-intensity activities, which burned few calories and raised heart rates only slightly. None of the games were as vigorous as a run or an actual tennis match, and few lasted long.
The import of these various findings is clear. “At this point, there is little scientific evidence to suggest that exergames can be used alone to meet current guidelines for physical activity in young people,” said Elaine Biddiss (IBBME), Ph.D., an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto and co-author of a review article published this summer in The Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine about children and active video gaming. Exergaming can be an adjunct to other activities, she and other experts say. It can be worthwhile if it replaces time sitting on the couch. But by themselves, active video games do not result in enough energy expenditure to keep children and teenagers fit.
Follow the link to read full article on The New York Times.
EurOmax Resources Limited has announced the appointment of two geologists to its newly formed technical advisory board: Roger Moss and Quinton Hennigh.
Dr. Moss received a Ph.D. in geology from the University of Toronto in 2000, and has been a lecturer in the Lassonde Mineral Engineering Program since 2008. He is a professional geologist with 15 years of international exploration experience, including ten years in senior management positions with Amerigo Resources Ltd., Nikos Explorations Ltd., and Los Andes Copper Ltd. Dr. Moss was instrumental in the discovery of the Navachab gold deposit in Namibia, which after 13 years of operation still contains reserves and resources of 3.7 million gold ounces. He also conducted extensive research on hydrothermal ore deposits.
Dr. Hennigh is an economic geologist with more than 20 years of exploration experience.
“We are very fortunate to have secured the experience and talent of both Roger and Quinton,” said John Nugent, Executive Chairman of EurOmax. “We look forward to their technical contributions as we complete our formal properties review and beyond.”
Click on the link to read the full press release.