July 24, 2015 — Four U of T engineers have received Ontario Professional Engineers Awards in honour of their outstanding contributions to the engineering profession and their wider community. Awarded by the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers (OSPE) and Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO), recipients include:

• U of T Engineering Dean Cristina Amon has been chosen to receive the Gold Medal, Ontario’s most prestigious engineering honour, recognizing public service, technical excellence and outstanding professional leadership.
• Alumnus Michael Butt (CivE 6T3) has garnered the Management Medal for innovative management practices that have contributed significantly to the engineering profession.
• Alumna Claire Kennedy (ChemE 8T9) has received the Citizenship Award, recognizing engineers who have made significant contributions to society.
• Alumna Jeanette Southwood (ChemE 8T6, MASc 8T8) garnered an Engineering Excellence Medal, recognizing those who have contributed substantially to advancing the engineering profession.

More about Dean Cristina Amon

Cristina Amon joined the Faculty in 2006 as Dean and Alumni Professor in Bioengineering. As Dean, she has been tireless in her efforts to advance U of T Engineering’s position as Canada’s top engineering school and among the best in the world. She has also dedicated herself to increasing diversity in engineering and ensuring that Canadian engineers are prepared to lead the world in addressing global challenges. Amon’s research pioneered the development of Computational Fluid Dynamics for formulating and solving thermal design problems subject to multidisciplinary competing constraints. She has delivered keynote lectures worldwide and contributed twelve book chapters, one textbook and over 350 refereed articles to the education and research literature. Amon has been inducted into the Canadian Academy of Engineering, Spanish Royal Academy, Royal Society of Canada and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and elected fellow of all the major professional societies in her field, including: AAAS, ASEE, ASME, CSME, EIC and IEEE.

“We are delighted that the Ontario Engineering Association has awarded its highest honour to Cristina Amon,” said U of T President Meric Gertler. “She is not only a pioneer in her own field – she is also leading the way in educating the engineers of tomorrow, as key drivers of innovation and prosperity. The University of Toronto community is immensely proud of her accomplishments.”

Read more at U of T Engineering News.

July 17, 2015 — U of T News talked to Forestry professor David Martell (IndE 7T1, MASc 7T2, PhD 7T5) to find out why wildfires seem so much worse this year. Read more.

July 6, 2015 — Professor Mark Fox (MIE) has been named a University of Toronto Distinguished Professor of Urban Systems Engineering, an honour that recognizes his exceptional career achievements and promise.

Awarded by the U of T Office of the Vice-President and Provost, Fox holds the title for a five-year term, beginning July 1, 2015. He is one of only 25 U of T faculty members and six Engineering professors that actively hold this distinction.

Fox is a pioneer in the theory and application of artificial intelligence in industrial systems. He is the director of the Enterprise Integration Laboratory (EIL) at U of T Engineering, a centre that investigates how organizations can build smarter cities locally and globally through the use of information and communications technologies. He is also director of the new Centre for Social Services Engineering, which applies engineering theories and techniques to the efficient and effective delivery of social services.

Fox focuses on developing ways of representing knowledge about cities, whether it be the services they provide or the infrastructure they maintain, in mathematical models. Known as ontologies, these models enable the development of smart cities.

In 1981, Fox’s research led to the creation of the field of “Constraint Directed Scheduling” within artificial intelligence, which is used in all modern scheduling systems today. He also spearheaded the application of artificial intelligence to project management, simulation and material design.

In 1984, he co-founded the software company Carnegie Group Inc., which specialized in intelligent systems for solving engineering, manufacturing and telecommunications problems. The firm provided logistics planning technology to the US Department of Defense. In 1992, he co-founded Novator Systems, a pioneer in the design and delivery of eCommerce software and services.

“I congratulate Professor Mark Fox on this well-deserved honour,” said Professor Ted Sargent, vice-dean of research at U of T Engineering. “It recognizes his remarkable achievements and leadership in his field over many years, and is yet another example of our Faculty’s commitment to excellence.”

Fox is a senior fellow in the University’s Global Cities Institute and a past holder of the NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Enterprise Integration. He is also a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and was a co-founder of the AAAI Special Interest Group in Manufacturing. Furthermore, he was elected a joint fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) and PRECARN. He received the Engineering Institute of Canada’s Canadian Pacific Railway Medal in 2011.

Fox earned a BSc in computer science from the University of Toronto in 1975, and his PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1983. Prior to his return to Toronto, he was an associate professor of computer science and robotics at Carnegie Mellon. He was a founding member of the Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute, founding director of the Robotics Institute Intelligent Systems Laboratory and founding director of the Center for Integrated Manufacturing Decision Systems of The Robotics Institute.

July 6, 2015 — Four mechanical engineering students at the University of Toronto set out to “demystify” the knuckleball by attempting to build the world’s first pitching machine that would replicate the notoriously capricious pitch on a consistent basis. Read more.

June 22, 2015 — Fifty-five researchers from U of T Engineering have received $12.7 million in research funding and scholarships awarded today by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

The awards comprise the 2015 competition results for NSERC’s Discovery Grants, Discovery Accelerator Supplements, Discovery Development Grants, Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarships, Postgraduate Scholarships, Postdoctoral Fellowships and Research Tools and Instruments Grants. In total, NSERC announced $340 million in funding for more than 70 institutions across Canada.

“These awards reflect the excellence of our research programs and the outstanding contributions of our professors to Canada and to the world,” said Professor Ted Sargent (ECE), U of T Engineering’s vice-dean, research. “They will enable leading-edge innovation and advances in many sectors, from biomedical devices to information technology and sustainable resource extraction.”

Of the 55 engineering professors included in the U of T investment, six received prestigious Discovery Accelerator Supplements. These awards are designed to maximize the impact of those researchers with programs that are highly rated in terms of originality and innovation, and who show strong potential to become international leaders.

The winners and their associated projects were:

• Professor Christopher Beck (MIE) – Artificial intelligence planning and mathematical programming
• Professor Timothy Chan (MIE) – Generalized inverse optimization with application to radiation therapy
• Professor Ben Liang (ECE) – Integrated communication and computation resource management for mobile cloud computing
• Professor Heather MacLean (CivE) – Development and application of novel life cycle-based framework: towards a sustainable aviation fuel strategy for Canada
• Professor Paul Milgram (MIE) – Augmented displays for teleoperation
• Professor David Sinton (MIE) – Nanofluidics for energy

With this recent announcement, the total amount of funding for research was $10.2 million. On the scholarship side, 34 engineering graduate students and post-doctoral fellows will share more than $2.5 million in support. Across the entire University of Toronto, the total amount of scholarship and research funding was $48.7 million.

“NSERC’s Discovery Grants Program is our flagship. It invests in the full range of science and engineering disciplines and thus builds the strong foundation that is a necessary prerequisite for innovation,” said B. Mario Pinto, president of NSERC. “We’re building on its success with our Discovery Development Grants, because we want to take advantage of the full diversity of insights and ideas across Canada. Complementing our support for discovery research, NSERC’s scholarships and fellowships invest in a new generation of talent and give these brilliant students and fellows the skills and experience to meet the challenges of the future.”

June 22, 2015 — Professor Aimy Bazylak will be the Director of Institute for Sustainable Energy from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2018. Professor Bazylak has served as Associate Director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy since 2012. She has helped foster strong ties among industrial partners within the clean energy sector with researchers across the Faculty. In particular, she has focused on developing cross-linkages between CREATE and ISE training activities to enhance the learning and research experiences of our graduate students specializing in energy.

June 17, 2015 — Professor Craig Simmons(MIE/IBBME) is among five Canadian researchers to receive $300,000 over two years by research associations CQDM and Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE). The funding aims to support unconventional and innovative research projects to accelerate drug discovery in Quebec and Ontario.

The announcement was made on June 16 at the 2015 BIO International Convention in Philadelphia by CQDM and OCE, alongside Dr. Gaétan Barrette, Quebec Minister of Health and Social Services, and Dr. Reza Moridi, Ontario Minister of Research and Innovation, and Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities.

The combined grant of $1.5 million to Quebec-based and, for the first time, Ontario-based researchers, is thanks to the partnership with OCE through CQDM’s 2014 Explore Program. The program focuses on early concept validation of cutting-edge technologies addressing crucial needs in drug discovery and development.

The funding will support Professor Simmons’ research in developing 3D liver tissue models, used to screen the effects of drugs. Co-principal Investigators include professors Michael Sefton (ChemE/IBBME), Denis Grant(Pharmacy) and research associate Dean Chamberlain (ChemE).

“The CQDM/OCE grant funds us to advance a new microfluidic technology as a tool to test drugs for their adverse effects on the liver before they are tested in animals or humans,” said Professor Simmons.

Most drugs are removed from the market due to ineffective or unexpected toxic effects that are not detected by current drug screening technologies. “Our improved liver model will identify and eliminate toxic and ineffective drugs earlier in the drug discovery process,” said Professor Simmons. As a result, the liver model will reduce the time, cost and reliance on animal testing for drug development.

Professor Simmons says the grant will also help accelerate the translation of the technology to end users such as pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms and biology researchers.

“By the end of this project, we expect to deliver a new best-in-class liver model that is designed to be immediately implemented and to enable faster, less expensive, and more effective drug discovery and development,” he said.

“This innovative funding collaboration between CQDM and Ontario Centres of Excellence will help accelerate drug development through biopharmaceutical research and development in Ontario and Quebec,” said said Dr. Moridi. “The important work of the chosen project teams will help to improve the everyday lives for people in both provinces and beyond, by generating positive health and economic outcomes.”

June 15, 2015 — Three U of T Engineering professors have received Early Researcher Awards from the Government of Ontario. The ERAs provide as much as $140,000 for promising early-career scientists and engineers to build their teams.

“These awards recognize the important contributions three of our promising young professors are already making in their fields and will help them advance their ground-breaking research,” said Dean Cristina Amon. “I would like to extend my heart-felt congratulations to professors Donmez, Ekmekci and Fernandez-Gonzalez on this well-deserved honour.”

Learn more about the U of T Engineering professors who received ERAs:

Improving driver safety

Professor Birsen Donmez (MIE) is an expert in human adaptation to technology and designing feedback to guide operator behaviour. Her project will compare different types of in-vehicle technologies, such as dashboard displays, smartphones, smart watches and Google Glass, with respect to driver distraction. She will also investigate their potential to improve safety by providing relevant driving-related information. For example, an eye-tracker could be used to let drivers know if their eyes have been off the road for a certain number of seconds. Her students will be trained for careers in traffic safety.

Read more at U of T Engineering News.

June 9, 2015 — On June 4, MIE held its 6th Annual Graduate Research Symposium.

Nearly 50 poster presentations and 30 oral presentations took place throughout the day.

Graduate students presented on an array of important research areas, from harvesting next-generation solar energy, to modeling homeless behaviour, to developing rapid, on-the-spot testing for diseases. A keynote lecture was given by MIE alumnus, Professor David Erickson (MechE MASc 0T1, PhD 0T4) of Cornell University.

In the evening, the department hosted a special graduate gala to recognize the achievements of its graduate students, as well as to celebrate 125 Years of Mechanical Engineering at U of T. Attendees were treated to welcome remarks by Dean Cristina Amon and a keynote speech by former CEO of ShawCor Ltd., Bill Buckley (MechE 7T1).

At the dinner, awards were annouced for this year’s Endowed Fellowships, MIE’s first-ever Teaching Assistant Award, as well as the symposium’s Best Oral Presentation and Best Poster Presentation.

Congratulations to all of this year’s winners!

Best Oral Presentations

• Karl Price (Biomedical Engineering)
• Parnian Saberi (Advanced Materials, Applied Mechanics and Robotics)
• Tiffany Tong (Industrial Engineering)
• Thomas Burdyny (Energy, Thermal and Fluid Sciences)

Best Poster Presentations

• Deepika Devadas (Biomedical Engineering)
• WeiDan Ding (Advanced Materials, Applied Mechanics and Robotics)
• Raghav Singal (Industrial Engineering)
• Michael George (Energy, Thermal and Fluid Sciences)

June 8, 2015 — Could engineering improve your basketball jump shot, optimize your sleep schedule or help you make smarter investment decisions? These are just a few of the challenges that are motivating the next generation of entrepreneurs in U of T Engineering.

The Faculty is creating more student startups than ever — due in part to the growth of incubators such as the Faculty’s Entrepreneurship Hatchery and extensive experiential learning opportunities that equip engineering students with critical competencies to solve pressing problems.

In addition to working within U of T Engineering, The Hatchery is also part of a cross-campus network of entrepreneurial resources coordinated by the Banting & Best Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, including local incubators, courses and other activities.

Here are five of the latest U of T Engineering student startups to watch:

Syncadian

It’s hard to be at your best when you don’t get enough sleep, but for military personnel or airline pilots, fatigue is a serious safety issue.

Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) the research arm of the Canadian military, has studied the problem for more than a decade. Two years ago, DRDC approached a team of undergraduate engineers in APS 490 Multidisciplinary Capstone Course with a simple question: could they use this extensive body of research to develop an app that would allow military personnel to better manage their sleep cycles and avoid fatigue?

The team, which included Hanna Janossy (IndE 1T3 + PEY, MEng Candidate), successfully produced an app that helps users mitigate the effects of jetlag. Based on DRDC’s research into fatigue science, the app gave users advice about when to sleep, nap, seek and avoid light, and take melatonin. But there was a feeling around the table that more could be done. “Our contact at DRDC was very entrepreneurially-minded,” says Janossy. “Right from the beginning, he encouraged us to turn it into something commercial.”

He couldn’t have asked for a more receptive audience. “My father is an inventor, and I grew up going to trade shows all around the world,” says Janossy. “I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur.”

In 2014, Janossy co-founded Syncadian Inc. with Ryan Love, a post-doctoral fellow in computer science at U of T and at DRDC. “What we want to develop is a small device that can test for melatonin and other hormones associated with sleep from samples from saliva,” she says. “Ideally it would be able to plug into a smartphone and interface with our app.” The team is currently receiving support from the University of Toronto Early-Stage Technology (UTEST) program.

Janossy, who is working on the company part-time while she pursues a Master of Engineering degree, says that her desire to start her own business is part of what attracted to U of T Engineering in the first place. “It seemed to have a stronger overall entrepreneurial ecosystem than some of the other schools I looked at,” she says.

In addition to the problem solving and critical thinking skills she developed in engineering, Janossy credits her experience as director of Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) for preparing her to be a CEO. “I made all the mistakes of the beginner manager,” she says. “What I learned was that when people are given responsibility and ownership over the problem, they’re much more likely to perform. That still influences my thinking today.” Read more about Syncadian in U of T Magazine.

Read more at U of T Engineering News.