MIE - newsletter 13

Task Force on Implementing Teaching Groups
The Task Force on Implementing Teaching Groups Meeting will take place on October 5, 2009 from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM.

MC330 Lounge Open House
lounge On Friday, September 25th, MIE held an Open House to welcome everyone in the department to the new Lounge. Staff, faculty, and grad students dined on pizza and doughnuts, and received an "informative" demonstration of the new coffee machine, while relaxing on the new furniture. Thank you to everyone who contributed to the renovations, especially Joe Baptista, Lorna Wong, Sheila Baker, and everyone else who worked so hard to make this a comfortable and useful room for all to enjoy.

Spotlight on the Mechanical Engineering Building
mechbuilding The recent issue of UofT Bulletin reported on the Mechanical Engineering building for their spotlight on UofT. Darling & Pearson's original design for the Thermodynamics Building was ambitious but due to budgetary problems in 1908, only the laboratory wing, which is now part of the mechanical engineering complex, was completed. After the Second World War funding was available to complete the missing wing along King's College Road. The new, functionalist Mechanical Engineering Building opened in 1948. Designed by Allward & Gouinlock Architects, it is one of Toronto's most significant mid-20th-century modern buildings.

Research Activities

2009 Canadian Science Policy
Faculty members and graduate students are invited to register for the 2009 Canadian Science Policy Conference (CSPC), to be held Oct 28 to 30 in Toronto ( http://sciencepolicy.ca). This premier event will be the first comprehensive, national-level, multi-sector, multi-disciplinary meeting of its kind in Canada, and we are pleased to have assembled an outstanding program - 13 panel discussions across 5 overarching themes, with over 50 leading scientists, policymakers and industry representatives.

Please click here for event details.

Ph.D. Qualifying Exam
Marina Toropova will present Nonlocal Multiscale Models for Coupled Electromechanical Effects in Nanostructures
Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: Clarice Chalmers Conference Room (MC331), Mechanical Engineering Building, 5 King's College Road
Exam Committee: Professor R. V. N. Melnik, Professor J. W. Zu, Professor S. A. Meguid and Professor H. Naguib.

Ph.D. Thesis Seminar
Brian Gore will present Validating integrated human performance models involving time-critical complex systems
Date: Thursday, October 1, 2009
Time: 3:00 PM
Location: Clarice Chalmers Conference Room (MC331), Mechanical Engineering Building, 5 King's College Road
Exam Committee: Professor P. Milgram, Professor M. Chignell and Professor D. Frances.

Ph.D. Thesis Seminar
Anson Wong will present Development of Visualization Systems to Investigate Plastic Foaming Behaviors Under Extensional and Shear Stresses
Date: Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Time: 10:00 AM
Location: Clarice Chalmers Conference Room (MC331), Mechanical Engineering Building, 5 King's College Road.
Exam Committee: Professor C.B. Park, Professor H. Naguib and Professor G. Hibbard.

Ph.D. Thesis Seminar
Mohammed Jala Ahamed will present Design of a Microfluidic Based DNA Microarrayer with Integrated Sample Manipulation and Dispensing
Date: Thursday, October 8, 2009
Time: 1:00 PM
Location: Clarice Chalmers Conference Room (MC331), Mechanical Engineering Building.
Exam Committee: Professor P.E. Sullivan, Professor R. Ben Mrad, Professor A. Goldenberg and Professor L. You.

NSERC and OGS Application Deadlines
NSERC Postgraduate Scholarships (PGS/CGS) - Monday, October 5, 2009
Ontario Graduate Scholarships (OGS) - Monday, October 13, 2009

NSERC and OGS applications are submitted to the MIE Graduate Studies office, RS214.
Applications for postdoctoral fellowships are submitted directly to NSERC.

Registration 2009/2010 deadlines
Last day to add courses: Oct. 5, 2009
Last day to drop courses without academic penalty: Nov. 2, 2009

Master Tuition Bursary for 2009-2010
Tuition fee bursaries are awarded to master's students who still have a small amount of work outstanding. These students will have been registered full-time from the beginning of their program and their minimum period of registration (i.e. program length) will have ended by or before either August or December of the current year. Students receiving tuition fee bursaries will not be eligible for fellowships, scholarships and other awards. Essentially the bursary allows the recipient to pay the part-time fee for one term.

Click here for details.

Doctoral Thesis Completion Grant for 2009-10
The Doctoral Thesis Completion Grant is awarded to domestic and international doctoral students who are registered full-time, paying full-time fees, and currently in their 5th or 6th year of study. Students can receive the grant in both their 5th and 6th year of study and need to apply each year.

Click here for the application form, available on the SGS website.

Enter 5th/6th year of Doctoral Studies in January 2010 - Application deadline: January 30th 2010

Please click here for details.

MIE joining HCTP Doctoral Collaborative Program
MIE has officially joined Health Care, Technology, and Place (HCTP) Doctoral Collaborative Program. HCTP Doctoral Collaborative Program is the only graduate program at UofT that simultaneously focuses on the social, spatial, and technological configurations that characterize health care, with an emphasis given to the technological mediation of care. The program also re-asserts an expansive and re-invigorated approach to the highly practical and policy-relevant domain of health technology assessment, to capture the breadth and context-specific features of technologies in health systems and everyday life.

Including MIE, HCTP currently has ten participating departments from different divisions; seven students have graduated and fifteen students are currently enrolled in the program. Emily King, a MIE graduate student, has accepted an offer for a one-year HCTP fellowship starting this fall.

Report on the 2009 U of T Shootout
sae The UofT Shootout is a one-day, student-run competition involving no rigorous presentations or reports � only track driving. Since 2002, Shootout has been run entirely by the UofT FSAE team and takes place at the Mosport Kart track, featuring a technically challenging course and dramatic elevation changes. The full day is run as an autocross event, where drivers race timed laps to rank on an individual basis and also a team score. With cars running hard all day, the full teams need to be there to make frantic repairs in the pits, and keep the systems in top shape.

This year the UofT Shootout was held on September 26th, and featured 18 universities from across North America, making 2009 the largest event to date. Throughout the competition, the top times came from Missouri S&T, ETS Montr�al, Rochester IT and the UofT cars. All times were just above 60s, so breaking the one-minute mark became everyone�s objective.

Dark clouds loomed over the track by the late afternoon. The UofT pit crew made a swift change to the rain tires as the track became damp and squeezed in a couple strong laps with the tire advantage. Some teams followed suit, while others remained on their dry compounds. Incredibly, the rain came down just minutes after the race ended at 5:00pm. There were a total of 398 laps over the course of the day.

The UofT Racing Team had many valuable volunteers at Shootout, including 60 undergraduate students who helped marshal the track. To ensure all cars met FSAE safety standards, the morning technical inspection was conducted by Laurence Polly from Engineered Solutions. Also in attendance were representatives from the Central Ontario section of SAE.

The UofT Shootout would not have been possible without the sponsorship of SAE Central Ontario, Mosport International Raceway, The Bridgestone Racing Academy, C&R Engineerd Solutions, Goodyear and Red Bull. The University of Toronto Racing team thanks all the universities and spectators that made this event so enjoyable and wishes them the best of luck in the 2010 season.

Toronto Star Plant Tour
Date: November 12th, 2009
Time: 6:00 to 8:00 PM
Location: Toronto Star Print Plant

Tour Will Satisfy Student Interest In:

Manufactoring Sector;
Quality Control;
Printing Technology;
Mechanical Systems;
Factory Automation;
Optimization;
Real-Life Application of Engineering Knowledge;
And Much More!

Refreshments will be served and transportation will be provided. Cost for members is $5.00 and non-members is $10.00, so become a member to learn and save more.

Sign up for this event at the MIE Undergraduate Office, RS214.

Announcements

Get Involved: Become a Client for Engineering Strategies and Practice
esp All engineering students in the Faculty (with the exception of Engineering Science) take APS111 and 112, Engineering Strategies and Practice. During the winter term (January to April 2010) teams of four to six students will work on projects for real clients, and we are inviting anyone interested to participate by becoming a client. There are a large number of Track One students in the course, and this is a way for various departments to gain exposure within this group.

Past projects have included:

Redesigning a storage area,
Energy efficiencies in a building,
Designing a green roof,
Accessibility in a church,
Designing a playground,
Solving a problem for an indiviual or group of the disabled,
A teaching tool to explain epilepsy to children,

Clients can be private individuals, or come from industry or institutions. They provide a brief proposal, usually framed as a problem, which can be as brief as a single sentence. The team interprets the problem, and thinks of half a dozen possible solutions to present at the first meeting. At a second meeting, they then present their alternative designs and decide on a preferred solution with the client. At the final meeting, they present the Final Design Specification. Meetings are usually held at the client�s location, and at the end of April, clients are invited to the Final Presentation at the University.

Please submit proposals as soon as possible to give us the chance to discuss and adjust the problem statement. Please send all correspondance to Hans Kunov (416-978-6712) or Vicki Norton (416-946-0307), or visit the website.

If you know of other potential clients, please inform them of this opportunity. Most have been pleased with reports from the design teams in the past, and a number of them have implemented the plans.

Thanksgiving Holiday
Please note that on Friday, October 9th, the MIE Machine Shop will be closing at 2:00 PM, and the Administration Offices will be closing at 3:00 PM for the Thanksgiving Holiday, reopening for regular business hours on Tuesday, October 13. Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

Vacations

Teresa Lai-Ho, Research Accounts: October 1st to 30th
Osmond Sargeant, Undergrad Lab Technologist: October 12th to 16th

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