September 13, 2017 – Startups founded by engineering students are poised to address challenges from sustainability to surgery. Twelve companies pitched their vision to a room of judges, investors and faculty members at the fifth annual Hatchery Demo Day, held September 6 at U of T Engineering.

“Five years after we founded the Hatchery, the spirit of entrepreneurship continues to be the engine of all that we do,” said Joseph Orozco, executive director of The Entrepreneurship Hatchery, in his opening remarks. “We nurture the mindset for entrepreneurial thinking, and we have seeded the ideas that I believe will transform our society. Together, we are building the Canada of tomorrow.”

Demo Day is the culmination of The Hatchery Nest program, a four-month accelerator which pairs student teams with experienced mentors — including executives, lawyers, medical professionals and engineers — to develop their businesses. They receive detailed feedback on their business plans, explore their proposed market, learn about patents and marketing and build prototypes using 3D printers and other fabrication resources. A second Hatchery program, Hatchery Launch Lab, focuses on supporting startups built on graduate-level research in the Faculty.

Of the dozen teams that presented at Demo Day 2017, four took home a share of $42,500 in seed funding, including one $20,000 grand prize and two $10,000 runner-up prizes donated by alumnus Anthony Lacavera (CompE 9T7), founder and chairman of Globalive Holdings and former CEO of WIND Mobile. An additional $2,500 Orozco prize is provided through funds raised by the students themselves.

MIE student Rachel Baker (IndE 1T7 +PEY) won a runner-up prize for her company, Tejo.

$10,000 Lacavera Prize: Tejo — A better way to buy makeup

Left to right: Lakshmy Subramanian and Rachel Baker (IndE 1T7 + PEY) are the co-founders of Tejo, a recommendation engine for online makeup sales. (Photo: Tyler Irving)

The North American makeup industry is worth more than $10 billion, but it does a poor job of serving people with darker skin tones. Not only is darker makeup more expensive, but many traditional retailers don’t even carry the brands that provide these shades. Furthermore, buying online can be a gamble, as it’s difficult to choose the right colour without trying the product.

“You’re supposed to pick from swatches, but different screens render colours differently,” said Rachel Baker (IndE 1T7 +PEY), co-founder of Tejo. “What looks great on your smartphone might not look great in real life.”

Baker and her business partner, fashion management student Lakshmy Subramanian, believe that artificial intelligence and machine learning offer a way forward. Tejo users simply take a selfie, which is then fed into software designed by the pair. Using open-source computer vision and a proprietary algorithm that accounts for ambient lighting conditions, Tejo determines a user’s precise skin tone and recommends an appropriate brand. If the user chooses to buy, Tejo collects a 5 to 10 per cent commission on the sale.

“Before we joined The Hatchery, we were really struggling to get people who don’t wear makeup to understand what our business is,” said Baker. “They provided us with excellent mentors and advisors, and really helped us to get a really clear vision of what we want our company to be.”

The pair plan to use the prize money to file a patent on their software and expand their e-commerce platform, which is already accepting early sign-ups online. Once they have penetrated their target market, they plan to expand their “recommendation engine” approach to other areas, including ethically sourced beauty products and men’s grooming.

September 8, 2017 – On September 6, faculty and staff had the pleasure of welcoming students to their first year at MIE.

Nearly 200 students attended the department’s orientation session, which introduced them to resources readily available to them, including student support at the MIE Undergraduate Office, as well as the weekend machining courses offered at George Brown College. The students also got to meet the department Chair, Markus Bussmann, and were treated to a BBQ lunch where they got to meet and chat with Dean Cristina Amon.

Professor Mark Chignell

August 16, 2017 – Caring for individuals with dementia often involves managing residents’ disruptive and sometimes dangerous behaviors, including screaming, hitting or kicking. Common measures used in long-term care to circumvent these aggressive acts include antipsychotic medications and personalized therapy programs. But many medications can compromise the well-being of residents, and recreational programs require significant staff time.

A new technology developed by a multidisciplinary team at the University of Toronto, led by MIE professor Mark Chignell, is designed to help calm and engage long-term care residents with dementia and with that, improve their quality of life. Ambient Activity Technologies (AAT) are interactive tools that can be installed on a wall of a facility, where they can be easily accessed by residents with or without staff assistance.

Read more here.

August 8, 2017 – Professor Mark Fox recently co-wrote an op-ed in The Globe and Mail on the country’s intellectual property strategy, and the need for Canada to to become an innovation-based economy.

“To be blunt, Canadians operate in a world where the deck of cards is already dealt and our competitors have all the aces. Nonetheless, if we want to ensure our continuous prosperity and way of life, we must create and scale-up companies, while vigorously defending their freedom to operate in order to grow,” says Fox.

Read more at The Globe and Mail.

August 3, 2017 – Marianne Touchie, an assistant professor in MIE and CivE, is quoted in Motherboard, talking about how climate change and the ensuing increase in temperature is going to cause problems for people living in highrises.

About 1,200 apartment towers in Toronto alone that were built during the post-war period did not worry about energy efficiency and cooling, the article states.

In buildings built between 1945 to 1984, “even the use of air conditioners and fans is not satisfying people from a thermal comfort perspective,” Touchie says in the article, titled, Why Social Housing Units in Cities Will Be Hard Hit by Climate Change.

She’s taking part in a study that monitors environmental conditions in public housing units and offers solutions such as specialized films applied to windows.

“During the heat wave [in Toronto] last summer, over 80 percent of the suites that we monitored had average temperature of over 30°C. [These units] will become unbearable as temperatures continue to rise.”

Read more at Motherboard.

June 30, 2017 – U of T Engineering alumni George Myhal (IndE 7T8) and Bert Wasmund (ChemE PhD 6T6) have been named Members of the Order of Canada, two of 99 extraordinary Canadians to receive one of the nation’s highest civilian honours.

Myhal was named a Member of the Order of Canada for his achievements as an investment and finance leader, and for his philanthropic contributions, notably in support of innovation in engineering.

Myhal arrived in Canada with his family from Western Ukraine in 1958, and is now president and CEO of Partners Value Investments Inc. Previously, he was a senior managing partner and the chief operating officer of Brookfield Asset Management Inc. He has also served for more than a decade on the University of Toronto’s Governing Council and the Faculty’s Dean’s Strategic Council, offering his advice and perspective on a variety of topics and initiatives. As an early supporter of the Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CEIE), Myhal’s support was instrumental in building momentum for this dynamic new space. The main foyer of the CEIE will be named in Myhal’s honour in recognition of his pace-setting $5-million gift. Myhal continues to be a valued advisor to Dean Cristina Amon.

June 28, 2017 – MIE alumnus Som Seif (IndE 9T9), founder and Chief Executive Officer of Purpose Investments Inc., recently shared with The Globe and Mail his expert insights on how to invest in light of a looking interest rate hike. Watch it here.

Only a few weeks after arriving in Canada as a refugee, Levon Markarian (centre) found work he intends to do for the rest of his life. He says his new bosses, brothers and factory co-owners Levon Hasserjian (left) and Simon, are “like big brothers, or uncles” to me. (Courtesy of Ara Hasserjian via CBC)

June 28, 2017 – Only a year and a half after arriving in Canada, Levon Markarian feels at home on the factory floor of Rex Power Magnetics. In Syria, Markarian owned a small tool and die factory. In Toronto, he’s building electrical transformers and rebuilding his life at the Rex factory in Vaughan.

The company, with almost 300 employees, pursued an aggressive expansion plan in 2016, increasing sales by ten per cent to $60 million. The expansion was based on sound business practices, says MIE alumnus Levon Hasserjian (MechE 7T5), one of the plant co-owners with his brother, Simon (ECE), but the goal was not growth for its own sake.

Instead, it was primarily to create new jobs for the wave of refugees arriving from Syria.

For the past ten years, Rex Power Magnetics has worked with COSTI, Toronto’s biggest immigrant settlement agency, employing newcomers from around the world — from the Phillippines and Vietnam to India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and now from Syria.

“I don’t know another company that’s come through at this level,” says Mario Calla, executive director of COSTI.

The most recent hires are Syrian-Armenians, privately-sponsored by Toronto’s close-knit Armenian community which has taken in thousands of refugees.

Read more at CBC News.

June 27, 2017 – Three MIE professors and alumni were recently inducted as fellows of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE). Professor Sanjeev Chandra, Mark Hundert (IndE 7T1) and John Young (MMS 7T1, MIE MASc 7T4) are among the CAE’s 50 new fellows. The CAE is a national institution through which Canada’s most distinguished and experienced engineers provide strategic advice on matters of critical importance to Canada. The new CAE fellows were inducted on June 26 in Ottawa, as part of the Academy’s Annual General Meeting and Symposium.

“The Academy’s recognition of so many faculty and alumni attests to the tremendous contributions U of T Engineers are making in Canada and around the world,” said Dean Cristina Amon. “It also demonstrates their impact in all aspects of the engineering profession — from engineering education to fundamental research to technology transfer, commercialization and consulting.”

Sanjeev Chandra is co-founder of the University of Toronto’s Centre for Coating Technologies, one of the world’s leading research centres in the area of thermal spray coatings. He has collaborated with research groups and industrial partners around the world in the development of cutting-edge technology in this area. Chandra’s work has been applied in the fields of spray coating and forming, spray cooling, ink jet printing, agricultural spraying and forensic science. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering, and received the NSERC Brockhouse Prize.

Mark Hundert is a pioneer in the application of industrial engineering and operations research practices in order to improve the delivery of health care in Canada. He has helped to introduce principles and methodologies to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our hospitals and other health care organizations. Among his many contributions in this field, Hundert spearheaded the development of a national database benchmarking the efficiency and quality of care in Canadian hospitals, which has been an essential tool in identifying and addressing areas needing improvement in the Canadian health care system. He received the Ontario Professional Engineers Management Medal in 2008.

June 20, 2017 – Few product tests are as emotional as the one Manmeet Maggu performed at his brother’s house near Delhi last summer.

The U of T MBA student was watching as his eight-year-old nephew Praneit, who suffers from severe cerebral palsy, was hoisted into a robotic exoskeleton device built by his startup, Trexo Robotics.

Moments later, Praneit’s robotically assisted legs began tracing delicate steps across the floor as a grin crept across his face.

“He gave us a smile,” said Praneit’s mother, Jasmeet Maggu, who battled back tears in a short video that was filmed following the initial tests. “That was the very first sign – a good sign that said, yes, he was going to take his steps and was going to walk.”

Maggu, who graduates this week, says the moment was incredibly satisfying on both a personal and professional level.

Manmeet Maggu’s nephew Praneit takes Trexo Robotics’s exoskeleton for a test drive in New Delhi, India. (Courtesy: Trexo Robotics)

“It showed that it can be done,” he says. “So now we’re working on the next version of the prototype and, when it’s ready, we’re going to build another one for my nephew and take it to India again.

“Watching Praneit take his first steps using our device was an incredibly proud moment for us.”

The idea behind Trexo was first planted while Maggu was studying mechatronics engineering at the University of Waterloo several years ago. After learning about his nephew’s devastating diagnosis back in India, he and fellow student Rahul Udasi (MIE MEng 1T6) began tinkering with the idea of building a child-sized robotic exoskeleton.

But it wasn’t until the pair arrived at U of T in 2015 that they realized their side project could be a full-time business. They focused their efforts, perfected a prototype and took advantage of U of T’s expansive network of 10 campus-linked accelerators to transform the idea into a startup.

Trexo Robotics recently joined the inaugural cohort of Hatchery LaunchLab, a new program in U of T Engineering’s Entrepreneurship Hatchery accelerator that provides support and funding to enable follow-on investment for engineering research-based startups. Last fall, the company took home the $20,000 Lacavera Prize at the Hatchery’s annual Demo Day competition, which sees startups pitch their business models to panel of entrepreneurs and investors.

Read more about Trexo’s success at Hatchery Demo Day

Trexo is also a recent graduate of Rotman’s Creative Destruction Lab, the Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab, and a member of the Faculty of Medicine’s Health Innovation Hub (H2i).

Jan Andrysek, a professor at U of T Engineering’s Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering, is the company’s scientific advisor.

Building an exoskeleton — particularly one for kids — isn’t easy. Children are small, with weak muscles and limited cognitive development. Most existing exoskeletons, by contrast, are big, heavy and relatively difficult to operate.

For safety reasons, Maggu and Udasi decided to build their device around a walker-type frame. Keeping the weight down meant using a mix of metal and plastic parts. Miniaturizing key components tested their engineering skills.

The result was a unique design that reduces the weight of a child’s body on his or her legs, while also stimulating a walking motion in the hopes of gradually retraining the brain. “It’s like reducing the effect of gravity while, at the same time, it’s also providing mobility to your legs to actually walk,” Maggu says.

Given the young age of a potential patients, Maggu says he was also conscious that his exoskeleton had to be fun to use. “We call it the Iron Man,” he says, referring to the comic book superhero and popular movie franchise. “For them it’s a bit like a ride – this robotic thing they’re getting into that’s really cool.

“We also added exciting things. For example, we put a tablet on the device so the child can be watching his favourite Paw Patrol episode while he’s getting to walk around in the device.”

This summer Trexo is launching its first partnership with Able Bionics, a Toronto-based distributor providing exoskeletons direct to physiotherapy clinics.

While Trexo is currently focused on the pediatric market, Maggu says the long-range plan is to make robotic mobility devices for an aging population. The wheelchair, after all, was invented more more than 400 years ago. “It’s high time some disruption happened in that area,” he says.

But, for now, he’s content with seeing the positive impact Trexo is having on his nephew and his family.

“Why do mechatronics engineering if you can’t build something to help someone?” Maggu asks. “That is the kind of impact that you want to have in life.”