Professor Greg Evans (ChemE, ISTEP) is one of three co-leads on NEXUS, a research consortium bringing together experts from 17 universities across the UK, Europe, North America and Asia, alongside eight public and industry partners. Evans leads alongside Professor Chris Griffiths from the University of Oxford and Professor Ian Mudway at Imperial College London.
Funded for five years by the UK Medical Research Council, the partnership will build research capacity and deliver evidence to guide health policy and the development of cleaner vehicle technologies.
The partnership will also support international collaboration through graduate student and postdoctoral exchanges, as well as public, government and industry engagement.
“Non-exhaust emissions are an emerging global issue,” says Evans.
“A typical car emits roughly five kilograms of brake and tire material into the environment each year. While these emissions remain largely unregulated, studies have already detected tire-derived antioxidants and brake metals in fish. What we don’t yet know is how they impact human health.”
With improvements in combustion technology and the shift to electric vehicles (EVs), tailpipe emissions are declining. At the same time, rising consumer demand for heavier vehicles — such as SUVs, pickup trucks and EVs themselves — has driven up the release of non-exhaust particles, which now often exceed exhaust emissions in cities.
Evans’ expertise stems from his work on air quality through the Southern Ontario Centre for Atmospheric Aerosol Research (SOCAAR) at U of T, which specializes in using advanced instruments and data mining to measure urban air pollution exposure.
“This research connects with our work on subway air quality, where non-exhaust emissions are the major source,” says Evans.
“NEXUS will help us understand how these particles affect people and guide the creation of regulations and new technologies with lower emissions.”
Over the next five years, NEXUS aims to establish research priorities on non-exhaust emissions and elucidate their potential health effects. They also hope to launch pilot projects across disciplines and build a sustainable international network to address this emerging environmental issue.
The team’s other focus is to influence policy. Europe has introduced the first regulations limiting non-exhaust emissions, and Evans sees opportunities for Canada to follow suit.
“The potential benefits are significant,” he says.
“We can help shape regulations in Canada and give Canadian companies a head start in creating vehicle technologies that provide a competitive edge when similar regulations are implemented globally.”
For Evans, the work is both professional and personal. Having transitioned to electric vehicles years ago, he has noticed an increased need to replace tires compared with past vehicles.
“This bothers me,” he says.
“I hope that through NEXUS, and the changes it enables, we’ll be able to mitigate this.”
Beyond its initial five-year funding, Evans envisions NEXUS laying the groundwork for large, multinational, multidisciplinary research proposals. Communication and results will be shared through webinars, reports, journal publications and a forthcoming LinkedIn page.
The initiative aims to create opportunities for research exchanges, collaborations across sectors and public engagement activities.
“The convergence of people from industry, government, NGOs, health, medicine, chemistry and engineering is the best way to implement and lead positive change,” says Evans.
When Chris Yip became Dean at the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering in 2019, he set out to connect with students, faculty and alumni over coffee. While the coffee dates moved online during the pandemic, Yip kept his commitment to connect and listen. After a highly successful celebration of the faculty’s 150th anniversary and now into his second term, he has been a key force driving the growth of research, education and community-building at U of T Engineering.
Beyond his role as dean, Yip is an internationally renowned scholar for his work on molecular imaging. A faculty member with the Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry and the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, he holds cross-appointments with the Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research and the Department of Biochemistry in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine.
In an interview, Yip reflected on the importance of student voices, what it means to think sustainably and what’s next for U of T Engineering.
The Defy Gravity campaign priorities really highlight the importance of engineers in addressing some of society’s biggest challenges, from climate change to chronic disease to ensuring that AI is developed safely and in line with human values. How is the campaign making a difference at the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering?
Defy Gravity succinctly summarizes what we have been doing at U of T Engineering for more than a century and a half and continue to do today: we’re developing bold, innovative solutions to complex challenges, designing a better world for everyone.
In addition to inspiring ambitious thinking, active alumni engagement and generous giving within our community, the campaign prompted us to reimagine the scope of our work and how we communicate our impact. Early in the campaign, and again when we celebrated our 150thanniversary in 2023, we emphasized four pillars:
- Creating sustainable and thriving global communities;
- Promoting healthy societies;
- Designing intelligent machines for good; and
- Enhancing the development of the 21st century engineer.
Everything we do falls into one or more of these buckets. These are our grounding principles to lead us through the campaign and through the next 150 years and beyond.
You’ve always championed student voices, the student experience and the importance of developing well-rounded engineers. What does that look like in practice, and how is the faculty helping students grow as leaders, innovators and collaborators?
Students are at the centre of everything we do at U of T Engineering. That’s why my door’s always open — I encourage students to book a coffee chat with me. I want to know what they’re interested in as the faculty thinks through how to best prepare them for meaningful careers in a rapidly changing world.
With our students in mind, we’ve launched a wide range of minors and certificates in AI, business, communications, entrepreneurship, global leadership, nanoengineering and various other emerging areas. And because we recognize that leadership is a major component of engineering practice, U of T Engineering has dedicated resources to leadership training through the Troost Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering, which is part of our Institute for Studies in Transdisciplinary Engineering Education and Practice.
Outside the classroom, our students have rich opportunities to lead, innovate and collaborate on projects they are passionate about, from designing, building and racing EV formula cars to helping launch satellites into space to co-founding startups and so much more.
These experiences shape our students into well-rounded engineering professionals who can look at problems from various perspectives and work effectively with others on promising solutions.
In your career, you have travelled around the world. How have those global experiences shaped your vision for expanding international opportunities for students, and what role have alumni played in supporting this vision?
Travel has opened my eyes to just how big the world can be, and it’s introduced me to new cultures, new ways of thinking and new ideas. But it also drove home the fact that the biggest challenges we face are global — from pandemics to climate change — and that the market for talent and ideas is international as well. I truly believe that global fluency is the most valuable asset we can give our students, especially now, in this economy.
I would like to see as many of our students benefit from an international experience during their time here as we possibly can. I’m always thrilled to hear about students embarking on international exchanges or crossing borders to pursue a Professional Experience Year [PEY] Co-op opportunity or travelling abroad to work on a research project. We’re very fortunate that our alumni understand the importance of international experiences too, and they are always willing to help out any way they can.
We’re also grateful to those who have supported our Centre for Global Engineering, which mobilizes our students and researchers to solve engineering problems in contexts that look very different from downtown Toronto. For example, I’m very excited about a generous gift from alum Lee Lau — a double graduate in electrical and computer engineering — which will create more opportunities for our students in Hong Kong and mainland China.
How is the faculty developing a vision for sustainability in a way that brings together different areas of expertise and prepares students to lead in this space?
Achieving our sustainability goals will require more than a series of quick fixes, such as swapping one material for another. It’s about taking a holistic approach and thinking through how people interact with their environment, infrastructure and technology. It is, by definition, multidisciplinary.
We’re really excited about the new Lawson Climate Institute, which will give our researchers and students more opportunities to collaborate with their peers across U of T on exciting sustainability research.
Hands-on, experiential learning is such a big part of engineering. What steps is the faculty taking to ensure students have access to modern labs and real-world tools that reflect the industries they’ll be entering?
One of our biggest priorities right now is modernizing our labs and learning spaces. To make sure our students are industry-ready, they need to get hands-on experience now using state-of-the-art technologies and equipment.
Just a few months ago, we opened our new Keysight Electronics Laboratory, which was made possible through a generous in-kind donation of advanced equipment from Keysight Technologies. This lab will give students the opportunity to get real experience using modern electrical equipment. We’re looking forward to opening more spaces like these.
The Defy Gravity campaign includes an alumni engagement target – a first for U of T. What kind of alumni engagement are you seeing in the faculty, and how does it affect current students?
Our alumni engagement is stellar — I always “warn” our students that once you enrol in U of T Engineering, you’ll be a part of this community for life. (I’m a Chem 8T8 grad myself, and I can verify this!)
There is something about this place that keeps me and my fellow alumni coming back. Some of my best memories — staying up late studying with classmates, hanging out at the Pit in the Sandford Fleming basement, my iron ring ceremony — involve U of T Engineering. Coming back is a way to keep those memories and traditions alive.
At U of T Engineering, we’re happy to welcome alumni back as speakers, mentors, PEY employers and volunteers. Our grads show our students all the different places an engineering education can take you — and they are constantly emphasizing to students that they can always rely on this fantastic network that’s 100% behind them.
That kind of support is priceless, and it really aligns with our work on creating a more inclusive community within the faculty. Engineering schools have a history of not being reflective of the societies that we serve: we have to fix this. That means making space for diverse voices at the table so that we can develop solutions that work for everyone. Every deserving student has the right to pursue an engineering education, and the U of T Engineering community is ready to back them up, every step of the way.
You were recently reappointed for your second term as Dean. What’s next for the faculty?
I think a growing concern on everyone’s mind right now is health care: as a large subset of Canadians age and enter their elderly years, we need to make sure our population stays healthy, and engineering can play a major role here.
As Professor Milos Popovic, the director of our Institute of Biomedical Engineering, always says: “there is no health care without engineering.” That’s why we’ve engaged in so many exciting health care partnerships, including with the University Health Network, which give students experience solving real-world challenges.
Today, our students are creating tiny robotic tools that enable a less-invasive way of performing brain surgery, leveraging AI to improve imaging in breast cancer cases, advancing tissue engineering, and so much more. There are more breakthroughs to come!
I’m also excited about strengthening our partnerships with industry. We just opened our new Partnerships Office at 800 Bay Street, and we have alumni-run businesses operating out of that space. I can’t wait to deepen our work with them and support their growth.
U of T Engineering professor Adrian Nachman (ECE) has been elected a 2025 fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC). The RSC’s mission is to advance knowledge, encourage integrated interdisciplinary understanding and address issues that are critical to Canada. Fellowship in the RSC is one of the highest honours a Canadian scholar can achieve.
Nachman is internationally renowned for his breakthroughs in mathematical problems related to medical imaging, some of which had been unsolved for decades. His career is distinguished by a rare combination of fundamental contributions published in top mathematical journals and extensive collaborations with bioengineers to apply his novel ideas to new medical diagnostic technologies.
In medical imaging, the goal is to determine interior structures in the body noninvasively from measurements of acoustic or electromagnetic waves. Waves are modeled as solutions of differential equations that depend on the medium of propagation. This leads to what are known as inverse problems, as their aim is essentially to compute causes from observations of effects. Nachman is known as one of the most original and influential thinkers to have tackled these important mathematical problems.
Nachman has also collaborated with bioengineers and clinical researchers to advance medical imaging technologies. Before joining U of T, he worked with colleagues at the University of Rochester to develop quantitative ultrasound imaging instrumentation for early breast cancer detection. A numerical method developed in this collaboration for simulation of ultrasonic pulses spanning hundreds of wavelengths is now a standard approach in the field. In his research on electric imaging, Nachman invented a method for determining the electric conductivity of tissue from measurements of currents obtained using Magnetic Resonance Imaging by colleagues in biomedical engineering at U of T. The resulting series of joint papers and patent were novel contributions to the area of hybrid inverse problems, which couple two distinct physical responses of tissue to achieve unprecedented high resolution and high contrast images.
As an expert on the mathematics of medical imaging, Nachman was approached by Mitacs to be lead organizer of a Focus Period on the subject. The program he assembled included a major interdisciplinary conference in Toronto and several workshops — on brain imaging, cardiac imaging, numerical procedures, and analytic methods — in Toronto, Vancouver and at the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge, UK. In 2013, he gave the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Invited Address at the Joint Mathematics Meetings. In 2014, he was named a Fields Institute Fellow.
“Professor Adrian Nachman’s novel solutions to longstanding inverse problems have enabled key breakthroughs in developing next-generation medical diagnostic imaging methods,” says Christopher Yip, Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.
“On behalf of the faculty, I congratulate him on this prestigious honour.”
Autonomy algorithms developed by the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) researchers could one day make cargo transport on the moon safer and more efficient for astronauts.
As part of a team led by MDA Space, Professor Tim Barfoot (UTIAS) and Alec Krawciw (UTIAS PhD student) are developing technology that will help Canada’s proposed Lunar Utility Vehicle (LUV) navigate between cargo drop-off points during future lunar missions — addressing a key transportation challenge once astronauts land on the moon.
“Lunar exploration involves a landing site and a habitat site about five kilometres apart,” says Barfoot, who is also director of the University of Toronto Robotics Institute.
“The landing site is flat for safe shuttle arrival, while the habitat needs to be shielded from radiation, typically behind rocky terrain. This creates a transportation challenge: astronauts must be able to move all cargo from the shuttle to the habitat.”
Unlike previous planetary missions where rovers explore terrain in multiple directions to collect data, the LUV will make regular round trips between fixed locations to deliver goods and equipment to astronauts. This marks the first time a space rover will be required to repeat the same path, making Barfoot’s visual teach-and-repeat (VT&R) navigation framework well-suited for the mission.
“Teach-and-repeat algorithms allow us to pilot the rover along a predetermined path by manually or physically driving it, and once it learns the path, it can automatically repeat the route as many times as you like,” says Barfoot.
“By automating this part of the mission, it saves astronauts time and energy returning to the landing site to pick up cargo, limits astronaut exposure to lunar elements and increases mission productivity.”
As part of his PhD research, Krawciw is adapting the self-driving technology for integration with the Canadian Space Agency’s (CSA) LUV test vehicle, the Lunar Exploration Light Rover (LELR).
In December 2024, Krawciw and Barfoot joined teams from MDA Space and the Centre de Technologies Avancées BRP at the University of Sherbrooke, at the CSA’s analogue terrain in Montreal, Quebec to trial the autonomy on the LELR.
The field test provided an opportunity for the teams to identify and address any hardware and software constraints when the vehicle is operating in lunar-like conditions.
“Adapting our code to the LELR came with some unexpected challenges,” says Krawciw.
“Simulating lunar conditions introduced a five-second delay in command and feedback, so we couldn’t rely on joystick control like we normally would. That pushed us to develop a new semi-autonomous teaching method using short path segments — something we hadn’t done before.”
“Despite the technical challenges, it’s always exciting to see something I worked on in the lab come to life in a real space-focused mission.”
After a successful field trial, the team was selected by the CSA in July 2025 to conduct an early-phase study for Canada’s proposed LUV as part of the CSA’s Lunar Surface Exploration Initiative. This will be the country’s next contribution to NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to establish a sustainable human presence on the moon.
As the team prepares the vehicle to be mission-ready, Krawciw is focused on enhancing the system’s readiness in long-duration deployments and improving its performance in real-world conditions.
“We learned a lot from running the system continuously in the field,” says Krawciw.
“It wasn’t just about getting the autonomy to work — it was about making it reliable and user-friendly for operators who might be using it all day, in tough conditions. That perspective is shaping how I approach the next phase of development.”
U of T Engineering’s self-driving car team aUToronto has once again taken the top spot at a prestigious international challenge — and notched a few personal bests as well.
The AutoDrive Challenge II invites ten teams from universities across North America to compete at the Mcity Test Facility in Ann Arbor, Mich. each June.
Though this year’s competition involved several new challenges and levels of difficulty, the team maintained their track record of success. As a bonus, a paper about the custom algorithm developed by the team members was accepted into Canada’s top conference on AI-robotics innovation.
“We’re always proud of the team, but to see them improve so much from year-to-year and for their hard work to be accepted for a conference publication really shows how beneficial club work can be for students’ professional goals,” says Professor Tim Barfoot (UTIAS), one of the academic advisors to the aUToronto team.
Each year, in late August, the competition releases a new set of rules and challenges. The team then has roughly 8 months to get to work before heading to the competition. Even for a team as experienced as aUToronto, each year comes with new surprises.
“There was a big jump in difficulty. I feel like this happens every other year and this year that jump was quite high compared to what had I experienced before,” says team captain Chad Paik, a PhD student at UTIAS.
One of this year’s biggest challenges also led to the team’s biggest success.
“With the Buy off Ride Challenge, essentially what happens is you start the car somewhere and then you have to hit six destination points out of a possible 30. The car has to go from one [destination] to the other, but the key here is that the challenge is almost 20 minutes long,” says team member Connor Wilson (Year 4 EngSci).
“Your car has to stay autonomous for 20 full minutes without hitting anything or without you having to take over. That raises the bar a lot, because previously they were five-to-ten-minute challenges.”
Not only did aUToronto receive the top score in this contest, but they were 150 points above second place.
All of the challenges are carried out with relatively low computing power in the car compared to some state-of-the-art systems — something the team says is both a hindrance and an advantage.
“I think that forces us to innovate in different ways,” says Wilson.
“For example, the [the planning and controls portion] that I worked on, there’s no AI involved, but I was still able to kind of find some novelty there.”
With pressure to remain on top after several years of wins, the team employed some new strategies.
“We had one milestone presentation [with faculty advisors] every two months. The desire for the students to showcase their abilities to the professors really help with keeping everybody in check,” says Paik.
The team was also committed to testing as early and as often as possible, with each of the different events they took part in giving them opportunities to demonstrate what they were working on.
While these demos were helpful, nothing prepared the team for what would happen at the competition.
“On the day of the competition, a hardware failure we had never experienced before happened… the computer just turned off. For the next challenge, the GPS unit also failed,” says Paik.
“We were devastated.”
Despite the setbacks, the team was able to fix both the computer and GPS at the last minute and move their run to the end of the day.
“To see them under that much stress, and not only support one another and pull through but do so well on that challenge. It’s an inspiring moment to witness and I hope they’re very proud,” says Professor Steven Waslander (UTIAS), academic advisor to the aUToronto team.
Wilson, Paik and others have published a paper that outlines the custom algorithms they developed for the planning and controls portion of the competition. The paper was presented at the 2025 Conference on Robotics and Vision, in Calgary, last spring.
Their work focuses on autonomous driving in busy urban environments by unifying path planning and vehicle control into a single framework. This hybrid approach ensures that route generation and execution are optimized for both safety and navigation.
This is the team’s seventh first-place finish in eight years. Both Wilson and Paik will return next year and are already anticipating the 2026 challenges.
“Autodrive is something where I think you get out exactly what you put in,” says Wilson.
“There’s a lot of opportunity to learn. The more time you’re spending on it, the more you’ll learn.”
This summer, Benjamin Humer (Year 4 EngSci) spent two weeks attending the Culham Plasma Physics Summer School in Oxfordshire, England. The trip was a culmination of months spent working with General Fusion, a Canadian startup focused on bringing clean, reliable energy through fusion technology to the grid by 2030.
“Everyone [from the company] was very excited that I was going,” says Humer.
“All the physicists were asking me about it and helping with the poster. It’s their life’s work. They get excited when someone young is excited about it and were all super supportive of the process.”
For Humer, tackling major engineering challenges in energy is part of a family legacy.
“My grandfather was an engineer who worked for BC Hydro, which allowed him to go all over the world and build hydroelectric dams,” says Humer.
“That seemed like an interesting way to help bring technology to people while still working on technical problems. That’s really what threw me into engineering.”
As a self-proclaimed “lego and physics kid,” Humer, who is originally from Vancouver, chose U of T for its EngSci program and because he was attracted to the idea of an uninterrupted co-op placement.
“The continuous co-op was a big draw instead of having it all sectioned off into little four-month chunks,” he says.
“I enjoyed being involved with all stages of a project, and in the 12 or 16 months of PEY Co-op, there is an opportunity to actually do that in a way you can’t in a shorter placement.”
Humer began working with General Fusion even before it was time to apply for his PEY Co-op placement. Starting in September 2023, he collaborated with researchers from the company as part of his undergraduate thesis, which focused on a key challenge in fusion energy: plasma formation.
The idea behind fusion is that atoms of light elements, such as hydrogen, get smashed together to form atoms of slightly heavier elements, such as helium. The process — the same one that powers the sun — releases tremendous amounts of energy but is extremely complicated to carry out in a controlled manner.
In most fusion reactors, the hydrogen fuel exists in the form of a plasma, a kind of super-heated fluid in which all the electrons have been stripped away. Because it would melt or destroy almost any material that could contain it, it must be held in place using magnetic fields.
“Imagine if you were holding plasma in a jar, but you couldn’t let a single particle of it escape and touch the edge,” he says.
“Like all fluids, the plasma will tend to expand to fill the entire volume of its container, so we have to use the magnetic fields to keep it from touching the walls.
“We had indications that instabilities were occurring, but we didn’t have confirmation what the specific instabilities were. I spent my time identifying the instabilities occurring and building a scientific basis for not only detecting these instabilities but also mitigating them in the future.”
Humer’s co-op with General Fusion began in May 2024. After just a few weeks, he found himself questioning some of his long held professional and personal ideas.
“I walked in thinking the problem was closer to solved than it was, which doesn’t discourage me from trying to solve it. There’s more meat on the bone from a scientific perspective,” he says.
As part of the Culham Plasma Physics Summer School, Humer got to present a poster outlining the progress he’s made so far. He also got to meet many other young scientists interested in fusion.
“It’s lots of fun to connect with a generation of people that are going to be solving very similar problems,” says Humer.
“Plasma physics is not a big field so to have met 70 people that are the same age — it’s cool headed into the future thinking I’m going to stay in the same field. Problems of this scale require a lot of experts working together. I would like to be one of those experts.”
With the support of General Fusion, Humer plans to bring an updated version of his research to the Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society (APS) Division of Plasma Physics in California this November. After graduating from U of T, he plans to apply to graduate school, studying either plasma physics or applied math, and eventually earn a PhD.
“One piece of advice I’ll give is doing something outside of your co-op that is going to be recharging or interesting,” says Humer.
“My PEY Co-op experience has been really improved by living somewhere that I really wanted to live. I wanted to come back to Vancouver and that’s been great. I think the secondary pieces of the decision are as important to your experience as the specific company that you’re working for.”