June 8, 2015 — Eight members of the U of T Engineering community have been inducted as fellows of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE).

Professors Kamran Behdinan (MIE), Greg Evans (ChemE), Vladimiros Papangelakis(ChemE), Michael Sefton (ChemE, IBBME) and Jim Wallace (MIE), along with alumni Pu Chen (MIE MASc 9T3, PhD 9T8) and Anne Sado (IndE 7T7) are among the Academy’s 50 new fellows. Alumnus Norbert Morgenstern (CivE 5T6) was inducted as an honorary fellow.

The CAE comprises the country’s most accomplished engineers, who have demonstrated their dedication to the application of science and engineering principles in the interests of Canada. Fellows of the Academy are nominated and elected by their peers, in view of their distinguished achievements and career-long service to the engineering profession.

“I am delighted so many of our faculty and alumni have been recognized by the Canadian Academy of Engineering for their extraordinary contributions,” said Dean Cristina Amon. “I would like to extend heartfelt congratulations to our honourees. This recognition demonstrates the depth and breadth of their achievements and confirms that U of T engineers are leaders in their fields, both in Canada and around the world.”

Read more at U of T Engineering News.

June 8, 2015 — Three promising new technologies from U of T engineers are one step closer to market thanks to the latest round of Heffernan Commercialization Fellowships. Researchers are awarded $17,000 per year, with the possibility of a one-year renewal.

This year’s recipients include an alumnus from IBBME and EngSci who is creating a smaller, less expensive machine to keep lungs alive before they are transplanted; two ECE PhD students who have invented an implantable chip that can stop brain seizures and a MechE PhD graduate who developed a device that tests computer circuits using nanoprobing.

First established in 1997 by entrepreneur and Engineering alumnus Gerald Heffernan (MMS 4T3), the commercialization fellowships continue to enable graduate students turn their research into viable businesses. In 2014, Heffernan renewed the program as part of a $5 million gift to the Faculty that also provided support for the upcoming Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship(CEIE).

Learn more about three of this year’s Heffernan Commercialization Fellowships:

Testing nanoscale devices

A computer chip contains billions of nano-sized integrated circuits; a flaw in any one of them could spell doom for the entire chip. The only way to ensure quality control is ‘nanoprobing’, which involves using tiny robotic arms to make direct measurements on each circuit. U of T mechanical engineer Brandon Chen (MechE PhD 1T3) has developed an advanced manipulator system that could greatly speed up this task.

Working in the lab of Professor Yu Sun (MIE), Chen developed sophisticated control algorithms that can automate the movements of the robotic manipulators, eliminating the dependency on the skills of a human operator.

“Our technology has demonstrated at least ten times increase in nanoprobing speed compared to the state-of-the-art systems used in the industry,” he says.

Already attracting the attention of the leading semiconductor manufacturers, Chen’s company, Toronto Nano Instrumentation Inc., has purchase orders in the queue. He will be using the Heffernan Commercialization Fellowship to fund some final improvements, safety certification and prepare demonstration products for future customers. Chen expects an official product launch later this year.

Read more at U of T Engineering News.

June 8, 2015 — GLEE is part of the Faculty’s strategy to increase diversity, particularly gender diversity, which is a key goal of the Academic Plan. In 2014-15, women made up 30.6 per cent of the first-year class, the highest proportion of any entering engineering class in Canada.

9:55 a.m. – Registration

The lobby of the Galbraith Building is already buzzing with activity. A line of young women lugging suitcases and backpacks snakes toward a table covered with nametags, while others try on t-shirts or stand in twos and threes, chatting with other attendees.

All of these women — more than 80 in all — have earned admission to U of T Engineering this fall. And they have travelled here from across Canada for GLEE to learn more about the Faculty, meet their future classmates and get a taste of student life.

“U of T is awesome, and we’re going to spend the weekend showing you why,” exclaims one Engineering student volunteer as she leads a group of GLEE participants to the first session of the day.

10:30 a.m. – Welcome and Student Panel

“This is definitely an inclusive environment — a close-knit community that is welcoming to all students,” Michelle Beaton, associate director of the Engineering Student Recruitment & Retention Office, tells GLEE participants before turning the microphone over to the weekend residence advisors, upper-year engineering students who have volunteered their time to make the program a success.

“Last year, we were in the exact same boat as you are now: deciding whether or not to come to U of T for engineering,” says Lauren Reid (Year 2 EngSci), who took part in GLEE last year and has just completed her first year of Engineering Science. “After the weekend at GLEE, I can tell you that the choice was pretty easy for us.”

The lively question-and-answer session that follows provides a candid and often humorous view of life at U of T Engineering. “Was the transition from high school as scary or even scarier than you expected it to be?” asks one GLEE participant. “Yes,” blurts out a residence advisor to gales of laughter, before clarifying that first year is a big learning curve and one of her biggest challenges was learning how to study effectively in a university environment. Others talked about the range of supportsthat are available to first-year students, including the First Year Office, Success 101 seminars, professors and teaching assistants, peer study groups and online resources.

Other questions include how to balance academics with extra-curricular activities and commuting, what minors students can take and whether the residence advisors knew for certain when they started first year that they wanted to be engineers. The upper-year students reassure the audience that while life as an engineering student can be demanding, they will be part of a tight-knit and supportive community that will help them succeed. They also dispense practical advice: make friends, take time away from your studies to relax and have fun, and don’t pull all-nighters.

1 p.m. – Workshops

After lunch, the women begin to forge bonds with their future classmates during experiential workshops that range from sustainable energy to leadership.

With two other GLEE participants, Janice Zhou uses everyday items to fashion an arm that can pick up a cup from a distance, lift it in the air, invert it and set it back down.

“I’ve always heard the rumour that there aren’t a lot of girls in engineering programs and I got a little scared of that,” says Zhou, who is from Toronto and has already accepted her offer of admission to TrackOne. “But now I feel like I have a lot of peers and they all seem really nice and really smart. So I think GLEE really helped me gain some confidence.”

After attending a workshop on biomedical engineering, Sabahat Hussain, a Mississauga high school student who will be studying Engineering Science in the fall, says the most important thing she is learning at GLEE is that “school is not just about the marks. It’s all about the whole community and getting involved. That’s what I’m looking forward to.”

2:45 p.m. – Career Panel

A career panel made up of U of T Engineering alumnae discusses topics including what it’s like being a woman in engineering, how to integrate a career and family, and pathways available to graduates beyond engineering, including law and medicine.

“If I can be some inspiration to other people and shed some light on certain things to encourage other people to take a really exciting path, then it feels like a really great thing to do,” panellist Isi Caulder (EngSci 8T9, ElecE MASc 9T1, LLB 9T5), a partner and patent lawyer at Bereskin & Parr LLP, says of volunteering for the panel.

Some of the students have already made up their minds. “There’s so many places you can go with engineering,” says GLEE participant Olivia Roscoe, who plans to combine computer engineering studies with Varsity volleyball. “You can go into any field and I’ve always liked the problem-solving piece of it. I’ve wanted to be an engineer since I was eight years old. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”

6:45 p.m. – Dinner

Dean Cristina Amon greets GLEE participants at a dinner at Strachan Hall at Trinity College. “You are among the best and the brightest, you are hard-working and you have high aspirations — and I believe you belong here,” she tells them. “I look forward to welcoming you this fall as part of our entering class.”

During dinner, Professor Angela Schoellig of the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) encourages the students to follow their passions and shares her research on robotics, controls and machine learning. She also demonstrates one of her flying robots.

And Dr. Micah Stickel, chair of first year and emcee for the evening, jokes that the students likely recognize him from the instructional video for the new “personal profile” component of the U of T Engineering admission process.

8:30 p.m. – Evening Activities

GLEE participants and residence advisors convene in the Trinity College quad for an evening of fun, friendship and snacks. “It’s like a giant slumber party,” says Tessa Pietropaolo (Year 4 IndE), the lead residence advisor.

After a night in residence, many of these young women stay on Sunday for the Faculty’s “Welcome to Engineering” events, where they learn more about the academic and co-curricular community they will become part of in the fall.

May 22, 2015 — MIE Professor Andrew Jardine is the industry expert on predicting manufacturing failure risk, replacing or repairing at the optimal moment. Needless to say, his software innovation is a hit with manufacturers. Read more.

May 22, 2015 — Fifteen years ago, the da Vinci system of robotic surgery rocked the medical world with its ability to assist surgeons with difficult surgeries on organs and tissue. Today, MIE Professor Yu Sun is taking robotic surgery to a whole other level — to the cells themselves. Read more.

May 22, 2015 — Hani Naguib’s smart materials group is building artificial muscles, electronic skins and an array of other cool products. Read more.

May 22, 2015 —  Have you ever been on a plane and marvelled over the fact that a 400-ton hunk of metal can get off the ground? As you peered out the window at the wing flaps, you probably thought about how the miracle of flight has something to do with the laws of physics. Or maybe, temporarily deafened by the roar of the jet, you credit the internal combustion engine.

All that may be true, but you also have something else to thank for getting you safely and speedily to your destination: coating.

The landing gear, the engine, even the windshield wipers — everything is coated with substances to allow the plane and its parts to withstand heat, fight corrosion and repel water.

It’s true in daily life, too. Your enamelled bathtub, your non-stick pan, your eyeglasses, even the paint on your walls — coatings are all around you. And their manufacture is a multi-billion dollar industry that is constantly innovating to create products that improve performance while protecting health and the environment.

For 20-plus years, mechanical engineering professor Javad Mostaghimi (MIE) and his colleagues at the Centre for Advanced Coating Technologies have been conducting basic research into how coatings work and testing and developing new coatings as well as technologies for applying them.

Take those airplane engines. “According to thermodynamics,” Mostaghimi says, “if you run an engine at higher temperatures, you get better efficiency. We can run engines at higher temperatures if the materials they’re made of can withstand those temperatures. The challenge is that the materials that can withstand those temperatures are not good for manufacturing. Ceramic, for example, can withstand high temperatures, but it is brittle. You can’t use it to build things. But you can put a thin layer of it on other things that are good for manufacturing.”

Coating, says Mostaghimi, used to be more of an art. His group is bringing scientific rigour to the field.

“The basic, fundamental building block of coating is the impact of droplets on surfaces,” he says, so his team models and photographs what happens when droplets hit surfaces.

But, he says, “this is a technology that should be applied.”

And apply it they do, working with industrial partners to solve problems and improve processes. Based out of a lab packed full of various machines and tools to test different sprays and surfaces, they have undertaken all kinds of challenges, including:

• Developing coatings for reactors that process waste from nuclear power generation and make it into hydrogen.
• Improving the infrastructure that burns municipal waste to make the process more environmentally-friendly.
• Developing coatings for valves in factories to make them much less vulnerable to corrosion.

Coating, says Mostaghimi, may be invisible in most cases, but that’s just because it’s “an enabling technology.”

In other words, you don’t notice it because it’s doing its job.

May 21, 2015 — According to recent studies, texting while driving has surpassed drunkenness as the leading cause of death for teen drivers. But even as public service campaigns plead with drivers to relinquish their devices, cars are increasingly loaded up with GPSs, infotainment systems, dash cams and other on-board tech.

Cars themselves are becoming devices of distraction.

As vehicles get brainier, auto manufacturers have turned to university researchers to find ways to reduce, rather than exacerbate, distracted driving. Counterintuitively, that can mean turning driving into a kind of game.

“If your eyes have been off the road for a certain number of seconds, we’re going to provide you with real-time warnings. We know that helps,” says Birsen Donmez (MIE), an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering who researches human-car interactions. “But we’re also experimenting with a gamification interface to motivate drivers to decrease their distraction.”

Using eye tracking, proximity sensors and other measurements, her lab generates post-trip reports on a driver’s performance. Drivers can compare their records against those of their peers or general society to see how they stack up — turning safe driving into a competitive sport.

“We also try to give people badges like in a game,” Donmez says. “‘In this portion of the drive, you were safe, your driving performance was good.’ This may help change the intrinsic motivation of the driver.”

She has been running tests both in simulators and on the road. Toyota Canada donated a Rav 4 to the project, which Birsen’s lab is tricking out with sensors and data recorders. The car manufacturer also supports her research financially through the Toyota Collaborative Safety Research Center (CSRC). Reflecting the complexity of modern car-making, the CSRC supports research that explores major issues like safety, rather than focusing on developing a specific new widget. Manufacturers like Toyota have begun to recognize the value in supporting research whose outcome is not known.

“Dr. Donmez’s research could eventually find its way into production,” says James Foley, the senior principal engineer at CSRC. “Once the project is completed and we know the benefits it can offer to encourage safe driving and minimize driver distraction, Toyota can consider how to best incorporate them into a car.”

Donmez says the game elements of her research will likely be most effective with risk-unaware or non-risk-averse drivers. (That’s code for teenagers.) Real-time warnings may matter more to older drivers who have declines in their attentional abilities.

Of course, she is wary of designing a feedback system that becomes a distraction unto itself.

“With something like a single alert that comes up if your eyes are off the road, the meaning is clear,” she says. “But with more complex displays we want to ensure that people’s eyes aren’t off the road for more than two seconds.”

Donmez’s partnership with Toyota concludes later this year, but the CSRC has announced a new round of funding. Her lab is in contention for follow-up projects, also aimed at ensuring that cars’ brains don’t mess up the brains of their drivers.

May 11, 2015 — MIE Professor Kamran Behdinan has been elected as a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) for his outstanding achievements in the engineering profession.

Professor Behdinan is the NSERC Chair in Multidisciplinary Engineering Design and the Director of the University of Toronto Institute for Multidisciplinary Design & Innovation (UT-IMDI). His research fields include: design and development of light-weight structures for aerospace, automotive, and nuclear applications, multidisciplinary design optimization of aerospace and automotive systems, as well as multi-scale simulation of nano-structured materials and composites at elevated temperature.

He has also published more than 90 peer-reviewed journal papers and 140 conference papers, and six book chapters. He has been the recipient of many prestigious awards and recognitions such as the Research fellow of Pratt & Whitney Canada, fellow of the CSME, and the Ryerson FEAS research awards in 2004 and 2010.

ASME is a not-for-profit membership organization that enables collaboration, knowledge sharing, career enrichment, and skills development across all engineering disciplines, toward a goal of helping the global engineering community develop solutions to benefit lives and livelihoods.

April 29, 2015 — When Patricia Sheridan (MechE 0T9, MASc 1T1, ILead PhD Candidate) was an undergraduate student in mechanical engineering at U of T, she loved working on team projects. Most of her fellow classmates, however, were less than enthused.

That’s when Sheridan had an idea.

Now four years into her PhD in Engineering Leadership at U of T, Sheridan has turned that idea into the Team-effectiveness Learning System (TELS), a unique online tool that’s designed to enhance teamwork and leadership skills among engineering students.

TELS helps students organize, learn and practice cooperative skills during their school projects, and it also sets them up to succeed in their engineering careers in either academia or industry—both environments where successfully working in a group is essential.

“Teamwork is critical because engineering is a team-oriented profession,” Sheridan said. “Yet many technically savvy students struggle with the ‘softer’ science of how to work effectively with others in a group.”

Sheridan’s research is being conducted through the Faculty’s Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering (ILead), a multidisciplinary hub that offers innovative learning opportunities that help engineering students develop critical competencies in leadership, collaboration, communication and problem solving.

Professor Doug Reeve (ChemE), ILead’s director, said what he hears from industry echoes Sheridan’s experience. Sometimes smart, technically savvy engineers fall short in their ability to translate their knowledge into a workplace setting.

“It is the ability to translate technical knowledge to real-world situations that we are developing,” said Reeve.

How TELS works

TELS creates a personalized learning environment that provides students with lessons, exercises and self- and peer-assessments throughout the duration of a project. It offers students individualized training based on their current level of competency in a range of specific team-effectiveness behaviours.

For example, TELS is used in the first year engineering design courses, where formal team projects can account for up to 75 per cent of a student’s grade. At the beginning of the project, students are introduced to TELS and different models that can be used to help facilitate effective teamwork.

Throughout the semester, students are asked to complete online assessments of themselves and others. This feedback is then shared confidentially with each team member, and they are encouraged to develop weak areas through tailored exercises that TELS provides. The instructors also get a report—called a sociogram—that shows how the different team members perceive each other’s effectiveness.

“In the [instructor’s] diagram, if you start seeing three members that are really tightly clustered together and one member that’s really far out, we’ll flag that as a team where it looks like the four members aren’t working effectively together,” she said.

The tool has already been fully integrated into several team-based courses at U of T Engineering for the last two years. This has provided data that Sheridan can analyze—such as the differences between student assessments and teaching assistant assessments—to determine how TELS is working and how to improve it in the time ahead.

National recognition

Since its development, TELS has already captured the attention of Canada’s research community. This spring, Sheridan received a scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)—an honour that is very unusual for engineers, who are typically funded through more technical-oriented funding bodies.

Sheridan said she hopes the SSHRC award will not only elevate the status and credibility of her research, but also the status of ILead and U of T Engineering “as a place that conducts world-class leadership research, in particular, on engineering and about engineers.”

Using findings from TELS trials and other activities, the team at ILead is also designing a resource kit for instructors to help them teach teamwork more effectively and develop more confidence in teaching effective teamwork. This project is being funded through the Faculty’s Engineering Instructional Innovation Program and has been underway for nearly one year.

Programs like TELS have great value, said Reeve, because they help students learn how to become leaders by developing self-awareness and increasing their capacity to apply their knowledge.

“And that’s important not only for the success of the individual engineer, but also for the success of the enterprises they join, for the country, and for that matter, the world,” said Reeve. “We have a lot of issues to deal with in the world and engineers are extremely well placed to bring solutions to those challenges—but they need an additional set of skills beyond the technical.”