March 29. 2018 – Carbon dioxide, or CO₂, is a common gas. It’s what we breathe out on every exhale.  It’s what makes our favourite soft drinks fizzy. But it’s also one of the main by-products of burning fossil fuels. The build-up of CO₂ in our environment from human activities, like burning fossil fuels, has many harmful effects including global warming and ocean acidification. Much research is currently devoted to capturing this excess CO₂ and turning it into something useful.

But plants already do this! Through photosynthesis, plants and other photosynthetic organisms, use sunlight and CO₂ to produce the fuel they need to live and grow. They’ve had thousands of years to perfect these processes.  Why mess with a good thing? That’s why Professor David Sinton from the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto is using algae to turn CO₂ into fuel.

Algae are photosynthetic, just like plants, and some of the things they produce are fatty acid and lipids, that are similar to the fuels and oils we use to power our world today. They can also be grown on wastelands, avoiding the economic and environmental impacts that arise from using food crops for biomass production.

The trick is in keeping the algae happy.  “Can we give them the wavelengths they need, can we give them the fluids they need, the CO₂ they need… so they’re productive?” asks Sinton.  His research lab is developing improved photobioreactor architectures for optimal production of fuel from algae.

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March 9, 2018 – Ahmed Mahmoud (MIE MASc 1T6) hopes that his new invention — an unassuming grey box about the size of a coffee mug, attached to a metal probe — will be the key to significant improvements in crop yields for farmers in Nepal and around the world.

“It’s actually pretty straightforward in terms of function,” he says. “You stick the probe in the soil and it reads the moisture. It then makes that data available online or via text messages. You can query it on your phone.”

On March 11, Mahmoud’s collaborator Donn Pasiliao will travel to Nepal to provide 30 of the portable, networked probes for a trial conducted by the Mexico-based agricultural research organization CIMMYT and the Himalayan knowledge sharing network ICIMOD. The goal is to see whether or not this low-cost method of gathering detailed, hyperlocal information about soil moisture can be used to help improve local crop yields.

Mahmoud and Pasiliao, founders of Spero Analytics were inspired to create the device after hearing about the Data Driven Farming Prize, an international competition that seeks to create new tools for generating data and translating it into actionable information that can help farmers. The competition is sponsored by Feed the Future, a U.S. government initiative designed to combat global hunger and poverty, and the non-profit Challenge Prize Centre.

The 2017 competition focused on Nepal, one of the least developed countries in Southeast Asia. Mahmoud was already somewhat familiar with the region, having worked with professor Amy Bilton on solutions for improving the productivity of fish farms in Vietnam as part of his master’s thesis. That experience taught him the difference that technological innovation can make for farmers, and inspired him to join with his high school friend Pasiliao to enter the competition.

“Ahmed is one of my favourite students to work with, and it sounded like a great idea,” says Bilton, who also serves as associate director of the Centre for Global Engineering at U of T. “We supported him and Donn with some of the technical aspects, and in developing the proposal.”

Mahmoud says that while there are a number of development agencies working with farmers in Nepal to improve their agricultural productivity, they are limited by a lack of real-time analytics. “They have made detailed maps of average rainfall, soil acidity and nutrient levels,” he says. “What they don’t have is data on soil moisture levels, temperature and other conditions that change rapidly.”

In Canada, farmers can get this information from on-site weather stations or instruments such as tensiometers, which measure soil moisture. Mahmoud’s vision is to take off-the-shelf probes and add the ability to wirelessly share data within a network.

According to Mahmoud, assembling the first prototype was relatively simple: he took an electronic soil probe and connected it to an Internet of Things (IoT) controller. This controller transmits the data via 3G wireless networks, which are common in Nepal. Later versions incorporated the ability to transmit data via radio waves, reducing the reliance on external infrastructure.

The entire assembly is power-efficient, able to run for months on a simple smartphone battery. Mahmoud built the first prototype for less than $100, but with custom-made circuit boards Mahmoud estimates he could get the cost under $50.

After entering the competition, Mahmoud and Pasiliao found themselves among 13 finalist teams invited to take a trip to Nepal in May of 2017. “We met farmers, extension agencies and research organizations, all of which was really helpful,” says Mahmoud. Talking to these stakeholders also provided insight into their potential business plan. “We realized was that instead of selling the boxes themselves, it would be better to give them away and instead sell the data,” he says.

Their hard work paid off in September, when they were awarded one of two $50,000 runner-up prizes in the Data Driven Farming Prize competition. That prize money funded the construction of the 30-device network that is now heading to Nepal. The results of this first trial will inform further design of the devices. Eventually, Mahmoud hopes to add sensors for temperature and humidity as well as moisture.

Bilton says that the project is a great example of the ways in which engineering can address critical problems in international development.

“Though there are a number of big companies working in the area of global development, they don’t typically have engineering staff,” she says. “With the right knowledge base and just a couple of years, it’s possible to make a real impact.”

This story originally appeared on U of T Engineering News.

March 7, 2018 – When The Shape of Water won the Academy Award for Best Picture, U of T Engineering student Charlie Katrycz had a personal reason to celebrate. The MEng candidate in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering was part of the team that built a giant water tank to hold the humanoid amphibian character at the centre of the movie.

We sat down with Katrycz to talk about his experience working on a set piece for Hollywood blockbuster, as well as how his engineering studies are powering his future plans.

 

 

Where were you when you heard the film had won the Best Picture Oscar?

I had been working really late and wasn’t able to watch the ceremony. Sometime around 3 a.m., I got a text from my dad letting me know that [Guillermo] Del Toro had won.

It was pretty cool. I really liked his earlier films like Pan’s Labyrinth, so I was thrilled when I got to work on The Shape of Water, but I had no idea it would take off the way it did.

How did you get into prop creation?

After finishing my undergraduate degree in physics, I worked in material fabrication, including contracting, home renovation and carpentry. I was also working with a new fabrication process based on physics experiments, which is the basis of my company, Loonskin Labs. In 2016, I took that to Autodesk Pier 9, a world-class makerspace in San Francisco.

When I came back to Toronto, I was looking for work, and through a friend I found out about Walter Klassen FX. The place had so much character: there are relics from movie history all over, and lots of cool machines to play with. My very first job there ended up being the tank for The Shape of Water.

Can you describe the process of creating the tank?

The tank is made of steel, aluminum, acrylic, styrofoam, wood and fiberglass. There was a team of approximately 10 people building it from scratch, including welding the frame and designing and fabricating the mechanical parts and panels. It’s full of Bluetooth-Arduino electronics — this is what made the lights blink and the dials move on command.

One of the challenges was that it had to be able to stand upright, but also be wheeled around. And it had to hold the dense smoke that stood in for water: they shot it with wavy, caustic lighting and then did post-processing to add bubbles.

My role was primarily to sculpt the overall form around an acrylic tank, using foam, wood and plastics. I also designed some of the control panels, and worked with the crew to fit the tank into the set at Cinespace Studios here in Toronto.

How did you go from designing movie props to pursuing an MEng at U of T Engineering?

I’m looking for a way to up the ante on the kind of fabrication I do with Loonskin. It started as a way of imitating life-like processes, such as how lungs, trees and veins grow, but it is essentially a way to make channels within a big sheet of silicone. These channels can be filled with fluid and used to move liquid or heat around, such as when you are trying to cool a building or a human body.

I want to be able to mathematically simulate the physical phenomena behind the fabrication process. That will enable me to tweak it to meet the needs of new applications.

The MEng program enabled me to direct my own learning, and to choose the courses I found most relevant. I hadn’t done advanced mathematics in a while, so getting back up to speed was a big challenge, but also really enjoyable. I like being able to read equations and actually understand what’s going on, and it’s something I will use going forward.

 You are also the co-creator of the Banana Phone. Can you tell us about that?

When I was in San Francisco, I was living with a good friend, Brian Bunsing, who is a senior account manager for Visa. He thought it would be hilarious to have very important sales calls while talking on a phone that looks like a banana.

I told him that it wouldn’t be too hard to 3D print a shell and put some electronics in it. One thing led to another, and now we’ve sold about 1,000 of them on Amazon. It was a great learning experience about how you can take a design and actually bring it to market. One per cent of our sales go to Gearing up for Gorillas, an initiative that helps protect the critically endangered mountain gorilla.

Are you an artist, a maker or an engineer?

I think I am first and foremost a designer. A big part of design is determining what exactly are the problems you need to solve. But once you’ve done that, engineering is one of the most effective tools for solving them, and for creating something that’s actually useful. That’s what it’s done for me.

 

 

This story originally appeared on U of T Engineering News.

February 28, 2018 – Huda Idrees (IndE 1T2+PEY) thought she entered the male-dominated tech industry with her eyes wide open. But the University of Toronto engineering alumna says she was totally unprepared for what she found.

“I’ve actually been in situations where my employer has tried to pay a male subordinate of mine more money than me,” says Idrees, who has worked for several Toronto startups before launching one of her own.

“It’s really shocking.”

Yet, while tech’s frat-boy reputation has been well-documented, including at giants like Facebook and Uber, Idrees doesn’t believe there’s anything particularly unique about her chosen industry.

Rather, she says tech’s gender diversity problems have more to do with the sector’s rising social and economic clout since all powerful industries tend “to be dominated by people who are already in power – and for the last thousand or so years, it’s been men.”

Idrees, who is the founder and CEO of digital medical records company Dot Health, was one of four panellists who participated in a Women in Tech event at U of T’s OnRamp co-working space, part of the university’s Entrepreneurship Week.

The event was hosted by U of T Mississauga’s ICUBE accelerator – one of several U of T entrepreneurship hubs – and information giant Thomson Reuters. The other panellists were Julie Roussin and Leyla Samiee of Thomson Reuters, and Sonia Kang, an assistant professor in the department of management at U of T Mississauga with a cross-appointment at the Rotman School of Management.

Idrees also has a message for men in the tech business who are pushing back against the #MeToo movement: Get educated about the issues – and quick.

“You can’t afford to be ignorant today,” she says.

U of T News reporter Chris Sorensen caught up with Idrees to learn more about her experiences, and how she’s trying to do things differently at her startup.

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There was a report out recently from the Information and Communications Technology Council that said women only account for about a quarter of all tech jobs in Canada, despite representing half the overall workforce, and the further you move up the ranks the smaller that number gets. Why is this industry such a boy’s club?

There’s a bit of an oscillation within industries once they become more lucrative. If you go back to the beginnings of computer programming, there were a lot of compiling engines and a lot of menial work – and a lot of that work was actually done by women. So I disagree with those who say there’s some sort of predisposed genetic or biological condition that keeps women away from tech. I think it’s because technology is one of the most – if not the most – lucrative industry that we know of. And whenever we have industries with more power, it tends to be more dominated by people who are already in power – and for the last thousand or so years, it’s been men.

So because tech has become such an important industry, with so much focus, it’s brought to the fore, or even concentrated, the inequality that exists throughout the job market? 

Yes. I would compare it to any other industry that’s highly lucrative, with lots of high-paying jobs. If you look on Wall Street or Bay Street, I’m sure you would find similar if not worse representation of women. Sometimes we talk about tech as though it’s this special snowflake. But it’s mimicking a lot of trends in other industries as well. I wrote a piece in the Globe about workplace culture and how it’s biased against women, and a lot of the responses I got were actually from the medical and legal industries, which are also high-paying, lucrative industries. So I think tech is seeing a lot of the same things. On top of that – this is somewhat related – tech is built on top of a lot of venture capital and venture capital has traditionally been in the hands of men.

U of T Engineering has one of the highest levels of enrolment for female students in Canada. But engineering is a field that has traditionally been male-dominated. What’s been your personal experience? 

I’m a huge fan of U of T Engineering, so I will give [the faculty] a lot of credit for doing a really good job on this. Dean Cristina Amon has been really phenomenal in terms of how many women are being accepted and graduate. The numbers have really risen over the past several years. As for my experience from within the engineering community – as someone who was a complete outsider, as an immigrant to Canada and an international student – I didn’t see the [gender disparity] issue as much as I see it in tech. That’s despite the fact only 18 per cent of engineers were women in my year, which is very low.

The first-year class has included more than 40 per cent women for the past two years.

Which is incredible – and Dean Amon has a lot to do with that. But I actually didn’t see the problem so much in engineering because the community was very supportive and welcoming to me. So it was a bit of shock when I entered tech. I wasn’t prepared for how much worse it was. I knew I had operated in a male-dominated industry – or faculty, at least – so I figured it would be similar. But what I found in tech, which is also the “real world,” was that it was much harder for me, as a woman, to ask for, and receive, higher salaries. I’ve actually been in situations where my employer has tried to pay a male subordinate of mine more money than me. It’s really shocking. Now, I raise venture capital for my own company, Dot Health, but when I walk into an investor’s office, they haven’t seen people who look like me come and ask for money. Historically, the biggest [tech] success stories haven’t been built by people who look like me. In their eyes, the biggest successes have been people like Mark Zuckerberg [Facebook] and Evan Spiegel [Snapchat], who are privileged, upper class men. But I don’t fit that mould. So I’ve found it harder to make the case for why I should be entrusted with money and why I would have a bigger return than my equivalent male counterpart. And it’s not like people have something written on them that tells you they’re going to discriminate again you. You just have to figure it out.

That must be incredibly frustrating.

It is. But it’s hard to quantify. You can’t give people a survey and have them say: “On a scale of one to 10, I was most or least likely to have discriminated against you.” So it’s a lot of feeling the room out. But it’s hard because you have to learn to read people while also being a young person trying to navigate the world of venture capital. I started noticing certain red flags. I would walk into a room and it would be full of men, but I have an all-female team. So when I put up our team slide, some of them would have an aversion it.

They would actually say something to you?

Yup. My chief technology officer has this incredible pedigree. She comes from Shopify. She’s a leader in the community when it comes to the technology that we build on. And yet, when we put her name on the slide, the questions we get are: “Has she led teams before? Is she actually good?” That’s versus when I had a male co-founder shortly after I launched the company and I never got those questions. It’s an apples-to-apples comparison so I feel like I can speak to that quite confidently.

So, basically, you walk into a room and discover you’re facing an obstacle a male entrepreneur coming in behind you doesn’t have to deal with. Do you think that’s held your company back in any way?

I’ve spent my entire working career in tech so I know what I’m up against. It’s not so much discovery of bias as it is a confirmation. What I’m focused on more than anything is numbers. The reason people invest in you is because they want a return, so you need to convince them you can deliver a bigger return on investment than somebody else. For better or worse, pushing past the gender discrimination and actually making a business case has been the way I’ve gone about it. I believe Big Data in health care is a hugely untapped market, and that we’re uniquely poised to excel in it. That’s really my go-to argument. I’m not trying to highlight the fact that my company is women-founded or women-led. I’m trying to focus on the things that should matter the most to venture capitalists. So they can be prejudiced against me, but if I can promise them a 20 times return and prove I deliver it, I’m in a better spot.

In addition to issues of equality, there’s also the question of what we, as society and customers, are missing by not having as many women in these industries and in positions of power.

The business case for diversity, basically. There’s a lot of conversation about that – and I do agree with a lot of it. But there’s a weird split to this discussion. It’s been proven again and again that if we have more diverse teams, we perform better as businesses. There’s studies going back a decade. But that doesn’t seem to have changed anything for companies today. Clearly that’s not getting us anywhere. So the split is a moral question: Is the only reason we should have women or minorities in the workplace because it’s better for business, or should we help them get those positions because of equality? I think those are two completely different things. We always say, “Oh, we should do it because it’s better for business.” But what if it wasn’t? Would we say, “Women are bad for business so we should just keep them out?”

So we shouldn’t be making that argument? 

I want us to move toward a conversation about whether we’re keeping women out on purpose. I think that becomes a much more interesting conversation because people start to question it morally. It’s about rights and equality. I would love to have that conversation. At some point, the businesses of the future will be different from the businesses of today, and one of my top reasons for having women be part of technology teams, and particularly emerging technology teams, is that the technology will impact everybody alive. So if you’re excluding them, we’re going to build technology that’s biased against a certain group because they weren’t involved in designing it. Think about virtual reality, which makes some women nauseous but doesn’t have that effect on men. Or facial recognition technology that doesn’t recognize the faces of Black people – these are things that will affect us in a major way. I’m more interested in involving a representative group in our team so we can build a technology that’s going to be better for the world.

This whole discussion in tech is now happening against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement, and some prominent people are warning of a backlash. How do you see this playing out?

What I think is interesting about the #MeToo movement is the changes it’s bringing – the good that’s coming from it – rather than the social media frenzy it’s causing. Men who say they don’t want to work with women [because they’re afraid of being accused] are completely missing the point. It’s a little bit juvenile. I don’t fear a backlash so much as I do men self-selecting out of these conversations – which is really just about a willingness to learn and be educated. If someone were to say Black Lives Matter is too prominent and I’m going to be discriminated against as someone who’s against Black people, that has more to do with the people self-selecting out than the movement. I wouldn’t change anything about the #MeToo movement. But I would change the attitude of people who feel like they’re being attacked so they seek out education. You can’t afford to be ignorant today.

Now that you’re running your own company, what steps are you taking to build an inclusive, forward-thinking organization? 

What we’re starting to be really conscious about is who we hire and how we bring them on, and what values and principles we set for the company. We’re slow to hire and quick to fire. We have actually let two people go in the short period of time we’ve been around, which is coming up to a year now. The reason we did that is we’re very focused on crafting a culture that ensures people aren’t making their teammates uncomfortable. We actually call it – pardon my swearing – the no asshole rule. During hiring, you have to pass the no-asshole test, basically. That’s not so much a culture fit as it is checking references and asking how prospective employees fit with their former teammates – and then having them come in and work for us for a few days. It’s very easy for someone to act nice during an interview for an hour, but it’s a lot harder to change your behaviour for a day or two.

For U of T students, particularly women, who are curious about starting their own company or working at a startup, but might be turned off by what they hear about the industry – what advice would you offer them?

It’s the reasons for staying versus the reasons for quitting. I think I’ve been given a lot of reasons to quit tech. But the reason I stay – and this is what I tell everyone who is considering joining – is that I want to be able to build a better world for the future. And the fastest way to do that is by building technology. I think that’s quite motivating. The other side of that is living in a community with technology that does not help you or is designed against you. That’s a scary alternative. There’s tons of problems that people who have been shut out of this industry can solve – and you can be one of them.

February 27, 2018 – When Lian Leng (MIE MASc 1T0, PhD 1T4) was a graduate student at MIE, her research garnered headlines and awards.  Under the supervision of Professor Axel Guenther (MIE), she developed a 3D skin-tissue printer, a technology that could help burn victims and revolutionize burn care.

After Lian graduated from U of T Engineering, she knew she wanted to continue specializing in microfluidics and continue to make an impact with her research. As a lead investigator at Emulate, a biotech company spun out of the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, she is working on various organs-on-a-chip platforms, including skin, with the goal of recreating key features of the human body.

Lian is also a published fashion photographer who’s worked for various top modeling agencies, including Elite and Next. She recently spoke to MIE about her research career, and explains how her passion for photography actually has ties to engineering.

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Why did you choose to pursue your Master’s and PhD at U of T Engineering?

U of T has an excellent reputation for their graduate program in engineering. At the time I had also heard from my aunt Keryn Lian, who happens to be a professor in Materials Science & Engineering at U of T, of Professor Axel Guenther who was doing some exciting work with microfluidics. I was particularly interested in fluid mechanics and microfluidics seemed to be an exciting and fairly new field.

My Master’s thesis consisted in the development of a microfluidics-based 3D printer for biomaterials and tissue engineering applications. The project was fascinating and opportunities endless so I decided to continue on with my PhD under the mentorship of Professor Guenther.

Can you explain the research you conducted here?

My work consisted in the design of a 3D printer using microfluidics, a platform where microscale channels enable the transport of various fluids with a high level of precision. The technology was applied for the printing of soft biomaterials for tissue engineering applications and has led to a collaboration with Sunnybrook Hospital where we developed skin graft for burn wounds.

What made your time at MIE memorable?

I’ve made great friends and met passionate and dedicated scientists who have really inspired me and pushed me to work hard through thick and thin.

How do you think your engineering education has prepared you to work towards and achieve your career goals?

I think my graduate degree has really prepared me to be a critical thinker and always strive for innovation. You really need to keep pushing boundaries but also be dedicated and patient.  Research is an iterative process, and experiments will fail numerous times before they succeed. I think that understanding failure and making the most out of it has really been key in shaping me into the scientist I am today.

After graduating, you were a postdoctoral fellow at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University and now you’re working as a lead investigator at Emulate Inc., a biotechnology company. Can you take us through your engineering career journey? What decisions led you to where you are now in your career?

After two summer internships in consulting engineering at Hatch during my undergraduate degree, I knew that I wanted to switch to life sciences and truly make an impact on society.  Microfluidics was the field of choice as it is extremely interdisciplinary and has allowed me to learn fundamental biology and apply my 3D printer to the development of human skin grafts.

After I graduated, I had the chance to meet Dr. Donald E. Ingber, founder of the Wyss institute at a conference in Washington. He was looking for a postdoctoral fellow to develop a human skin model using their organs-on-chip technology. I jumped on the occasion and my plan was to develop the platform within a year and join Emulate, a biotech company spun out of the Wyss Institute. It has definitely been an incredible journey and I feel extremely privileged.

Tell us about your job at Emulate.

I’m currently a lead investigator at Emulate and am developing various organs-on-chip platforms including skin, with the goal of recreating key features of the human body, enabling us to understand and predict various disease states and responses to drugs.

What advice would you give to young graduate alumni, or grad students completing their degrees this spring, who want to continue making an impact with their research? 

I would say to keep your mind open to learn and look for what really excites you. Often enough, I have had moments of doubt and wondered if specializing in my field was in fact narrowing my career opportunities, when in reality you truly are learning valuable skills that can be applied anywhere you go.

When in doubt, talk to other scientists and see what they do and what inspires them. Conferences have always been an incredible boost for me, mentally and intellectually, and I have always felt reinvigorated after an exciting meeting.

 What are your career goals for the future, both short-term and long-term?

I hope to influence and inspire other scientists, create impact and be an influencer within the company.

You are also an accomplished fashion photographer. Is there anything you learn from engineering that you bring to your art?

I’m probably as passionate about my work as I am with my photography. I have been doing this for over five years now and have worked with numerous modeling agencies such as Next and Elite. One interesting fact is that I shoot exclusively with film.

My engineering background probably played a big role in that choice, since I picked up photography from the simple enjoyment of repairing vintage cameras. I really like the creative process and being limited to a certain number of frames. The digital world has created a sense of immediacy and the expectation that an infinite number of images that can be captured. I’m a strong believer that constraints force you to be more creative, and I think that applies as well to science.

 

February 6, 2018 – Engineering student, musician, entrepreneur and philanthropist Andrew Forde (MSE 1T1, IndE PhD candidate) strives to challenge the status quo with his projects. Now, the multi-talented artist is debuting a new musical composition he designed to reflect modern Canada. Called The Ideas of North, the concert will be performed on Friday, February 9^th at Koerner Hall.

Inspired by Glenn Gould’s 1967 CBC radio broadcast The Idea of North, Forde heard within that broadcast a project about embracing something classic and wrapping it in a modern quilt of voices and instrumentation. Half a century later, Forde recognized that many of the original themes were still relevant to contemporary Canada.

“By using Gould’s legendary radio documentary as the backdrop, I want to reimagine the north for a 21st century pan-cultural Canada,” says Forde. “I want to extend my search of self, of community, of those whose perspectives remain untold and to take the lead from our Aboriginal sisters and brothers and share our collective stories.”

Forde began composing The Ideas of North nine months ago, and conceived of the work as unfolding in three parts, like a concerto. He reached out to friend and Juno-winning musician and performance artist Shad to write the lyrics.

“The Shad we hear on this song is nothing like the Shad of past,” says Forde. “We discussed the philosophy of the track extensively, and what it was meant to conjure, what message we wanted to get across. Like Gould, Shad created a performance like we have never experienced from something as familiar as rap.”

Born and raised in Toronto to parents who arrived from the Caribbean, Forde grew up immersed in the city’s multiculturalism. He started studying violin as a child, a passion he maintained throughout his studies in U of T Engineering. This balance between arts and engineering strengthened both abilities, he says — the rigor and wonder he found in engineering influenced his music, and the creativity of his compositions enriched his engineering design thinking.

“I can create compositions methodically, by picturing where it is I want to end up, what I want the listener to feel, and then constructing harmonies and melodies that deliver on that promise,” says Forde. “It’s a ‘first principles’-based approach every time I write something new, and I am sure that it comes from the engineering side of my being. I can truly think outside the box because the box itself does not exist.”

This multi-faceted approach, along with Gould’s initial work, led to the creation of The Ideas of North. The performance is collaborative, interactive and communicates a responsibility to shift consciousness, to instigate conversation, and to have safe opportunities to reconcile differences, says Forde. When he takes to the Koerner Hall stage on Feb. 9, 2018, he will bring Iskwé, an Indigenous singer-songwriter, and teenage trumpeter and pianist William Leathers, along with Shad who will appear digitally.

“The Ideas of North is perhaps one of the few shows that will bring an audience of such diverse backgrounds under a single roof,” says Forde. “This will be a historic night for so many different reasons, all of which will leave the audience feeling more Canadian and connected regardless of any differences.”

Tickets for The Ideas of North are available online and through The Royal Conservatory of Music.

This story was originally posted on U of T Engineering News.

February 6, 2018 – At the Olympics, being a tenth of a fraction slower to react can be the difference between winning a medal and missing the podium. Grad student Amol Rao (MIE MEng candidate) is making sure Team Canada has an extra edge.

“Our main goal is to help people sleep, something that is especially important for elite athletes,” says Rao.

Rao is the co-founder of Somnitude, a startup that develops special glasses that help people get the rest they need to perform their best. Their technology filters out a blue wavelength emitted by phones, tablets and laptops — devices most people habitually check right before bed — that disrupts circadian rhythms and has an adverse effect on natural sleep patterns. By wearing the glasses two to three hours before bed, users can mitigate the effects of blue light and get a better sleep.

“Sleep affects so many ways an athlete can perform,” says Rao. “Lack of sleep affects mood, ability to focus, physical recovery time, response and reaction times, as well as memory consolation and learning.”

Rao’s company is working with the director of sports science at Freestyle Canada, a Calgary-based program training freestyle skiers for the Olympics. Somnitude shipped glasses to 30 of their athletes a month before the games.

He hopes that by wearing the glasses and promoting better sleep, Team Canada’s freestyle skiers will focus better, train better and improve their times and performance. “We hope it helps them get that extra boost, that extra fraction of a second to win a medal,” says Rao.

And although top-tier athletes are used to travelling and competing around the world, Rao points out that it would also be beneficial for athletes to arrive at their destination without feeling jetlagged — especially with the time difference between South Korea and Canada ranging from 12.5 hours in Newfoundland to 17 hours in British Columbia.

In January, the company launched Chronoshift, a mobile app to help ease jetlag. “What an athlete could do is put in where they’re leaving from, where they are going to — in this case, South Korea —  and in the days before their travel, they would get suggestions on how they can shift their schedule, using light, our glasses, waking and sleeping times, to align with the sleep schedule of South Korea,” says Rao.

“They get to their destination without experiencing jetlag. They’re ready to train, they’re ready to win.”

When the Winter Olympics begin next week, Rao will be paying extra attention to Team Canada’s freestyle ski team. If the athletes find the glasses helpful during the competition, Rao plans to step up his partnership with Freestyle Canada. “Maybe in a few years, we can extend our partnerships and help athletes in the Summer Olympics, too,” says Rao.

February 6, 2018 – MIE Professors Andreas Mandelis, David Steinman and Yu Sun are among nine U of T researchers sharing almost $820,000 in funding this year from the Connaught Innovation Award, aimed at accelerating the development of promising technologies and promoting knowledge transfer arising from the university.

The projects awarded were:

– Andreas Mandelis for  “Development of dynamic lock-in carrierography (LIC) imaging technology as a quality control tool for the electronics wafer process cleaning industry.”

– David Steinman for “A real-time, dynamic ultrasound simulator incorporating tissue motion and deformation.”

– Yu Sun for “A novel system for non-invasive selection of single spermatozoa with high DNA integrity for clinical in vitro fertilization (IVF).”

“We’d like to congratulate the recipients of this year’s Connaught Innovation Award. The Connaught Fund continues to support cutting-edge research at the University of Toronto,” said Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president of research and innovation. “The range of research and innovation activities receiving support is incredible, from new treatments for multiple sclerosis to testing ways to automatically assess dementia from speech, and it showcases the breadth and depth of research at the university.”

The internal award is made possible through the Connaught Fund, the largest internal university research-funding program in Canada. Since its creation in 1972 from the sale of the Connaught Laboratories, which produced vaccines, antitoxins and insulin after its discovery by U of T researchers Frederick Banting and Charles Best, the Connaught Fund has awarded more than $160 million to U of T scholars.

 

February 2, 2018 – For the last three years, Professor Amy Bilton (MIE) has brought teams of engineering students to Nicaragua to work with local communities on projects aimed at improving crop irrigation. Now, with the help of external partners, she aims to offer this international experience to even more students.

“I think there are a lot of students who have an interest in projects with a global dimension,” says Bilton, who is the associate director of the Centre for Global Engineering (CGEN). “I certainly did when I was a student, which is part of the reason I do what I do today.”

The Nicaragua project came about organically, after Bilton was contacted by the external Winds of Change initiative. The team worked closely with Seeds of Learning, an NGO with a strong presence in Latin America, as well as the local community of Pedro Arauz. With this work gaining traction, other groups are starting to get in touch as well.

Learn more about the Winds of Change project

“International development companies and NGOs have a lot of technical challenges, but they don’t necessarily have a lot of technical staff,” says Bilton. “Partnering with engineering schools like ours is one way for them to address technical issues.”

In addition to the ongoing partnership in Nicaragua, Bilton and her students teams are working with World Vision on two projects in Kenya, including developing a power system for a small, mobile classroom. Both the Kenya and Nicaragua projects are part of MIE 490: Capstone Design, a course taken by fourth-year students in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering.

Similar projects are incorporated into graduate-level courses. This year, through a partnership with the Public Health Foundation of India, selected teams of students in JCR1000Y: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Addressing Global Challenges travelled to India to meet with stakeholders and organizations related to a project on food security.

Through CGEN, and with the support of the Dean’s Strategic Fund, Bilton is spearheading a drive to expand international partnerships for such courses. Potential collaborators include Asheshi University in Ghana, ACF Canada in Guatemala, and Global Medic in the Philippines.

“It’s definitely been easy to be able to get people interested, both from the partner side and the student side,” she says. “Many organizations already have a challenge they’re thinking about. Having our students collaborate with the organizations to develop a solution gives them the opportunity to put themselves in that context, to interact with people who are dealing with these challenges every day. You learn so much more than you would from a textbook.”

CGEN is one of the many multidisciplinary institutes that will soon have a new home in the forthcoming Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship. Learn more about the building.

February 2, 2018 – In October, Ashley McIlvena (MechE 1T7 + PEY) boarded a plane for her first-ever trip to China. Along with her teammates — Milan Yang, Alice Wolfe and Jelica Bornath (all MechE 1T7 + PEY) — McIlvena met up with a team of engineering students from Beihang University in Beijing, with whom they had been collaborating for the last three months.

“Most of our team had never even been anywhere in Asia before so it was a very new experience for us,” says McIlvena.

The trip was part of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering’s international capstone course, in which teams of students from U of T Engineering and its partner universities — which this year include Beihang University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Tsinghua University — work collaboratively across continents and cultures on industry-sponsored engineering projects.

McIlvena and her collaborators are designing a pod for a Hyperloop, a concept introduced by Tesla CEO Elon Musk in 2013. Hyperloops are essentially high-speed trains operating in a tube from which air has been partially evacuated, enabling speeds of up to 1,200 kilometres per hour. At that pace, the train travel time from Toronto to Montreal would be reduced from the current average of approximately 5 hours down to 30 minutes.

Since September, the two teams have been collaborating online, using Skype and other tools to exchange ideas. But McIlvena says that nothing compares to a face-to-face meeting.

“It was extremely beneficial for us to collaborate in China,” she says. “Our project is primarily focusing on the aerodynamics and structure of the pod which will be propelled inside the tube. It was very helpful to hear input from the Beihang University students, since their whole institution is focused on aerospace engineering.”

In total, four U of T Engineering teams totaling 16 students went to China this year, supervised by Professor Kamran Behdinan (MIE). Though the trip lasted only four days, the students were still able to fit in some sightseeing.

“The highlight was probably seeing Summer Palace and its gardens from the Qing dynasty,” says McIlvena. She is already looking forward to hosting the students from China at U of T when they meet again to present their final design in February. “Since they’re coming in the winter they were really excited to try skiing. We may also take them to Niagara Falls and some cool spots around Toronto.”

Behdinan says that the international capstone course provides valuable experiences for students on both ends of the partnership.

“We live in a global marketplace where companies around the world are competing for top talent,” he says. “When our students get the chance to work in another country and experience another culture, and those students get a chance to come here, they develop a sense of global fluency that will serve them well, whatever path they choose after graduation.”

This story was originally posted on U of T Engineering News.