As a high school student in Brampton, Ont., Bettina Oghinan (Year 3 MechE) was drawn to mathematics and physics. She wanted to go deeper to learn exactly how things are made, so she could one day create her own original designs. 

“I’ve advanced through my first three years as an engineering student, but I’ve only scratched the surface of the technical topics I am interested in,” she says. 

“I want to go to grad school, so I can pursue knowledge that can one day add value to research teams in industry.”  

Oghinan’s destination of choice is the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS), where she hopes to further her mechanical engineering education by specializing in research that will improve aircraft designs.   

Throughout her degree, Oghinan has relied on people around her, including upper-year students, professors and members of the U of T Aerospace Team, to help her make informed decisions. But she understands this could be a challenge for some Black engineering students.

 “It can be isolating if you don’t know that there is a community of Black students that have been in your position, and have had similar experiences, and that you can reach out to them,” she says.  

“If you don’t see people who look like you around you — the way students who aren’t marginalized see people like themselves all around them — then you won’t benefit from a valuable transfer of information.”  

It’s a situation that Professor Philip Asare (ISTEP, EngSci), Dean’s advisor for Black inclusivity, is very familiar with. In 2018, he published a study called “People Like Me,” which looked beyond exceptional examples of BIPOC success to find visible role models, mentors and coaches for underrepresented students pursuing education and careers in STEM fields.  

“The motivation for the project came from my own experiences as a Black undergraduate student,” he says. 

“A lot of the people who were presented as potential role models tended to be what I call outliers: people like Barack Obama and Wes Hall, who are so successful that the likelihood of failure was high in trying to emulate them. 

“The idea behind the project was to inspire underrepresented folks to see themselves more in STEM professions and to know that people like themselves have been through the path and made it on the other end.” 

While U of T Engineering offers pre-university mentorship programs for Black students in elementary and high school who are interested in pursuing STEM, there are currently no formal mentorship programs for Black undergraduate students who want to pursue graduate studies. However, a new student-led initiative is working on filling this gap, with the support of the Faculty.  

Engineering Graduate Connections was created by three graduate students: Anuli Ndubuisi (OISE PhD candidate), who also serves as a research assistant at InVEST in ISTEP and the Encore Lab at OISE; Mai Ali (ECE PhD candidate) and D’Andre Wilson-Ihejirika (ChemE PhD candidate). In 2021, Ali and Wilson-Ihejirika were the first two students at U of T Engineering to be awarded the Indigenous and Black Engineering and Technology (IBET) Momentum Fellowships. 

“We are a group of passionate individuals who are interested in promoting graduate research opportunities for underrepresented graduate and undergraduate students,” says Ndubuisi. “This all began when we asked ourselves, ‘what can we do to support Black undergraduate students to get into research?’”   

Last September, the group held its first event with a theme around building bridges between undergraduate and graduate students. The awareness session introduced students to pathways to research and included discussions on navigating imposter syndrome in academia and research spaces.  

“Some students might be surprised to learn that they can pursue research as undergraduates,” says Ndubuisi. “But they can start by taking the initiative to reach out to their professors to express their interest.”  

David Duong, the graduate affairs officer at U of T Engineering, whose role includes grad student recruitment as well as support for engineering grad students, is also a member of Engineering Graduate Connections.   

“If an undergraduate student is interested in research and graduate studies, I encourage them to be curious — talk to your instructors and teaching assistants, ask them about their research,” he says.  

“I am always happy to speak to students who want to learn more about the application process, the available scholarships and the IBET Momentum Fellowships.”  

The next Engineering Graduate Connections event, which is currently in the planning stages, will feature a panel of alumni from industry sharing their career paths outside of academia and experiences with graduate school. The goal is to provide role models who are succeeding in various career paths. 

“I’ve heard students tell me that they don’t want to go to grad school because they don’t want a career in academia,” says Ali. “But we want to emphasize that pursuing research won’t limit your career options.”  

As the recipient of mentorship throughout her education, Ali is grateful to have worked with supervisors who fostered her knowledge in various engineering streams and support her career ambitions. 

 “I really want to spread the word about the IBET fellowship, which opens a lot of doors for Black and Indigenous students,” she says. 

“As a graduate student, I’ve never been taught any courses by a Black faculty member, so I am eager to graduate and become a professor so that students like me — who are women and Black — can see more examples of people like them in this field.  

“I believe mentorship is really important since it can shape the path you follow during your degree and into your career.” 

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on February 16, 2023 by Safa Jinje

Professor Kamran Behdinan (MIE) and his research team are collaborating with the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) to optimize the design and layout of a new plant for processing used nuclear fuel packages. 

By leveraging a technique known as multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO), the project aims to further enhance Canada’s long-term management of used nuclear fuel. 

“The Used Fuel Packaging Plant will be the first of its kind in Canada,” says Grant Minor (MIE), a senior engineer at NWMO and a flex-time PhD candidate in Behdinan’s lab. “It is a huge infrastructure investment for Canada.” 

Currently, 19 Canadian deuterium uranium (CANDU) reactors provide about 15% of Canada’s electricity. The proportion is even higher in Ontario, which is home to three out of Canada’s four operating nuclear plants, and currently sources 56% of its electricity from nuclear power.  

Canada’s nuclear waste management plan, called Adaptive Phased Management (APM), is being implemented by the NWMO, a not-for-profit organization formed in 2002 through the federal government’s Nuclear Fuel Waste Act. The organization is responsible for designing and implementing Canada’s plan for the long-term management of used nuclear fuel that is not only safe but socially acceptable.   

CANDU reactors are fuelled by a reaction using natural uranium, which is moderated by deuterium, a constituent of heavy water. The fuel goes into pressure tubes that are held by a large cylindrical vessel called the calandria, which holds approximately 5,000 fuel bundles when it is operating, depending on reactor configuration. Each CANDU fuel bundle — around the size of a fireplace log — contains about 20 kilograms of uranium and can power 100 homes for a year. These bundles stay in the reactor for 15 to 18 months.   

Once the used fuel is removed from the reactor, it first goes into wet storage, where it sits for seven to ten years before being moved to dry storage. There are about 3.2 million used CANDU nuclear fuel bundles in Canada, which are distributed between the nuclear reactor sites. 

Watch: What is Canada’s plan for used nuclear fuel?

The Adaptive Phased Management plan, which is funded by the major owners of nuclear fuel in Canada — Ontario Power Generation, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, Hydro-Québec and NB Power — requires used fuel to be contained and isolated in a deep geological repository. 

But before that can happen, the used nuclear fuel needs to be received from nuclear reactor sites, inspected and repackaged into used fuel containers. This will happen at the Used Fuel Packaging Plant — a key surface facility at the repository site.  

Minor’s PhD research is focused on finding an optimal design and layout for this facility, where employees will control every aspect of the process using remote handling techniques, robotics and automated systems.  

“The key operation in the Used Fuel Packaging Plant is the handling of highly radioactive nuclear material, so it will have to operate very reliably,” says Minor. “Protection of the environment, public safety and worker safety is and will be NWMO’s highest priority during design, development, construction, commissioning, and future operations and maintenance. 

“I saw an opportunity to apply multidisciplinary design optimization to a nuclear facility. Professor Behdinan, a leading expert in MDO, has many years of experience in this technique.”  

MDO is a methodology that is used to create systems where multiple engineering disciplines are integrated, such as mechanical, electrical, controls and automation, manufacturing, process, and reliability engineering. It provides a holistic approach to solving multidisciplinary design problems. 

Over the past few decades, MDO has traditionally been used in the aerospace and aviation industry and has proven crucial in the structural design of aircraft and their many parts. More recently, Behdinan has applied MDO to automotive, advanced manufacturing and biomedical designs as well.   

“This method is very effective when you are dealing with a very complex system,” says Behdinan, who holds the NSERC Chair in Multidisciplinary Engineering Design.  

“It is a structured way of interacting between these engineering disciplines, not only for optimization, but to see how design variables within these disciplines interact and affect each other. This allows us to analyze and assess the parts that will be integrated into the overall design of a big system like an aircraft.” 

In the case of an aircraft, where every gram of weight matters for fuel efficiency and to maximize the payload — passengers, baggage and cargo — engineers use MDO to evaluate each of their design decisions.   

By exploring the mathematical optimization equations used by different engineering disciplines simultaneously, researchers like Behdinan and Minor can see how they relate to each other to create safe and reliable designs that operate as efficiently as possible. 

“NWMO is accountable to the public for the safe and reliable design and operation of this Used Fuel Packaging Plant,” says Minor.  

“The plant has to process about 120,000 used fuel bundles each year. It has to operate for 250 days a year, while being reliable and cost effective. The facility design must also comply with Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission regulations, other applicable laws, regulations, codes and standards, and engineering best practices.”   

Minor has developed an initial framework for a simplified study of the processes that will take place in the Used Fuel Packaging Plant, looking at three disciplines: radiation analysis, cost analysis and reliability analysis.  

For example, there will be remotely controlled machinery in the packaging plant to close the used fuel containers, and that machinery will have to operate sequentially to perform the processes on each container. The team is looking at the best way to split the equipment in the processing cells — from setups where all the equipment is in one line, to every single piece of equipment in its own isolated enclosure   

The design targets include minimization of the risks associated with management of the used nuclear fuel in the plant. For example, reduction of unnecessary fuel handling steps and unnecessary transfer of used fuel between environments would be a focus.  

Minor and Behdinan will be collaborating to create novel optimization techniques for used nuclear fuel disposal facilities that will result in increased safety, improved and reliable operations and cost savings.   

“We haven’t seen the application of MDO in the nuclear waste management field,” says Behdinan.   

“But there are so many disciplines involved in the overall design of the nuclear waste management system, and this creates many design variables. We want to optimize them because we want to get the best out of the plant. Optimization is always about better solutions.”  

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on February 13, 2023 by Safa Jinje

On a dark evening in December 2022, members of the U of T Engineering community gathered in front of the Galbraith Building to unveil a student-built monument commemorating the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. 

Fourteen transparent figures stood on a wooden platform, each bearing the name of one of the 14 women killed on December 6, 1989, when an antifeminist gunman entered the École Polytechnique and targeted students who were women.   

The monument, designed and built by a group of women engineering students, was interactive: its colours changed and got brighter depending on how many people were standing on a pressure-sensitive pad concealed under nearby grass turf.   

“The symbolism was that you can’t make change by yourself — we have to all work together,” says Erika Narimatsu (Year 3 MechE).  

Ahead of February 11, the International Day of Women and Girls in STEM, writer Safa Jinje spoke with four of the women who led the creation of the monument: Narimatsu, Stella Gregorski (Year 4 ChemE), Natalia (Nat) Espinosa-Merlano (Year 3 MechE) and Karen Ng (Year 3 ECE).  

Why did you choose to build the December 6 monument? How did your team come together? 

Narimatsu: The idea was floated around that it would be really cool if this build was led by women because it is about women. It’s about acknowledging the sexism and all the discrimination women face, especially in engineering.  

We had a lot of support from our colleagues — we had a team of 30 to 40 people working on this — and support also from the Faculty’s Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Professionalism with funding, being there for us and showing up to the ceremony. 

Ng: It was really nice for people to trust that we knew what we were doing and believe in our plans and just say, ‘how can we help?’   

Espinosa-Merlano: Historically, the Blue & Gold committee has led this build. But since we felt that such an intimate build should be led by a group of women, all Blue and Gold did this year was provide tools and expertise. We planned, coordinated and brought the build to life. I am, of course, one of the Blue & Gold co-chairs, but for me, this project was about more than that.  

For this build, we wanted our leadership to be showcased. It was about being a woman, stepping out of the shadows and taking charge. 

Gregorski: Growing up in the U.S., I didn’t know about December 6, or the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, until my first year in university. But afterwards, I talked with my mom about it.  

My mom was in her senior year of her first engineering degree in 1989, when the massacre happened. She told me how terrifying that was, as someone who was in the same exact situation as those young women. 

But what I found really powerful, in talking to her about it, is she did it anyway. And when I said ‘Mom, this is what I want to do,’ she encouraged me. She said, ‘If that’s what you want to do, you go do it.’  

We can’t let fear stop us. At the end of the day, that’s not how progress is made. 

From your experience, what do you think are some of the barriers that would prevent girls or women from pursuing an education or career in STEM fields? 

Gregorski: Obviously, we are incredibly fortunate to live and study in a country like Canada where broadly speaking, women’s rights have come a long way even if they do still have a long way to go. 

I’m from the United States — there, we see backtracking on that every single day such as limiting access to health care and reproductive rights, and specifically the stigmatizing of women’s health.

And then you have other countries. In Iran, we see a mass uprising about women’s rights. The condition of women in many countries has so far to go. I think we all have a role to play in making sure that all women everywhere have the same rights that we do.  

But even within Canada, not being able to see people who look like you [in STEM fields] and feeling that you don’t really belong or not feeling supported, I would say are still big barriers. 

Ng: One barrier that comes to mind is that we limit women who do go into STEM and discourage prevent them from staying in the fields. I feel like I have to put in 120% to be perceived as putting in 80.  

I recall a time in high school when I was entering a robotics competition. I was so excited to join the team. It was all guys and me and one other woman. And the teacher that was in charge looked at all of us and pointed to me and the other woman and said, ‘Do you to want to be in charge of fundraising?’ I felt that so deeply. But I also thought, ‘Well, now I have to do everything better than all of these people combined.’ 

Narimatsu: I also fundraised for my robotics team — for the exact same reason! 

What advice do you have for girls who are interested in pursuing STEM in university? 

Narimatsu: Just do it! You might have to carve a path for yourself, make that space and be loud. But at the end of the day, if that’s what you want to do, go for it. 

Gregorski: Don’t be afraid to ask for help. There are people who will support you. We may have a long way to go in terms of making these fields equal for women, but people are blazing that path. 

Ng: There are people like you out there and they want to see you succeed as well. Just do what it takes — what other choice do we have?  

Espinosa-Merlano: You don’t necessarily have to be cynical or pessimistic but try to have that sense of critical thinking: knowing what’s right for you and being confident in who you are and what you are worth. 

On January 27, Neha Basra (MechE 2T2+PEY), along with her teammates Alton Rego (Chem), Kim Watada (Chem), Mary Daka (CivMin), and Matthew McArthur (Architecture) placed 2nd at the RBC “Tech for a Greener Future” Innovation Challenge winning $25,000 in prize money and access to resources to further develop their concept “Nebula.”

Over the past three months, the team researched, designed, and prototyped their solution as part of the competition. Twenty-five teams consisting of undergraduate and graduate students submitted their designs and ideas. The top four teams were selected to present their design to a panel of industry experts and judges on January 27.

Problem being solved

Rural and remote communities across Canada are facing a water crisis. Inadequate funding and aging infrastructure make it difficult for residents in these communities to have reliable access to clean drinking water despite Canada having some of the largest freshwater reserves in the world. This is also a global issue – the World Health Organization estimates that over 2 billion people live in water-stressed communities worldwide, a figure expected to worsen due to climate change.

Details on Nebula

Nebula was created to help water-stressed communities source clean drinking water in a time of crisis. The design leverages a unique combination of proprietary active and passive atmospheric water harvesting technology to convert humidity in the air into potable water for domestic uses. It has been designed to be significantly cheaper than alternatives in the market today while being net-zero in emissions.

A team of U of T Engineering researchers, led by Professor Kevin Golovin (MIE), have designed a solution to reduce the amount of microplastic fibres that are shed when clothes made of synthetic fabrics are washed.   

In a world swamped by fast fashion — an industry that produces a high-volume of cheaply made clothing at an immense cost to the environment — more than two-thirds of clothes are now made of synthetic fabrics. 

When clothes made from synthetic fabrics, such as nylon, polyester, acrylic and rayon, are washed in washing machines, the friction caused by cleaning cycles produces tiny tears in the fabric. These tears in turn cause microplastic fibres measuring less than 500 micrometres in length to break off and make their way down laundry drains to enter waterways.   

Once microplastics end up in oceans and freshwater lakes and rivers, the particles are difficult to remove and will take decades or more to fully break down. The accumulation of this debris in bodies of water can threaten marine life. It can also become part of the human food chain through its presence in food and tap water, with effects on human health that are not yet clear.  

 Governments around the world have been looking for ways to minimize the pollution that comes from washing synthetic fabrics. One example is washing machine filters, which have emerged as a leading fix to stop microplastic fibres from entering waterways. In Ontario, legislative members have introduced a bill that would require filters in new washing machines in the province.  

“And yet, when we look at what governments around the world are doing, there is no trend towards preventing the creation of microplastic fibres in the first place,” says Golovin.  

“Our research is pushing in a different direction, where we actually solve the problem rather than putting a Band-Aid on the issue.”   

Golovin and his team have created a two-layer coating made of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) brushes, which are linear, single polymer chains grown from a substrate to form a nanoscale surface layer.  

Experiments conducted by the team showed that this coating can significantly reduce microfibre shedding of nylon clothing after repeated laundering. The researchers share their findings in a new paper published in Nature Sustainability. 

“My lab has been working with this coating on other surfaces, including glass and metals, for a few years now,” says Golovin. “One of the properties we have observed is that it is quite slippery, meaning it has very low friction.” 

PDMS is a silicon-based organic polymer that is found in many household products. Its presence in shampoos makes hair shiny and slippery. It is also used as a food additive in oils to prevent liquids from foaming when bottled. 

Dr. Sudip Kumar Lahiri (MIE), a postdoctoral researcher in Golovin’s lab and lead author of the study, had the idea that if they could reduce the friction that occurs during wash cycles with a PDMS-based fabric finish, then that could stop fibres from rubbing together and breaking off during laundering.  

One of the biggest challenges the researchers faced during their study was ensuring the PDMS brushes stayed on the fabric. Lahiri, who is a textile engineer by trade, developed a molecular primer based on his understanding of fabric dyes.  

Lahiri reasoned that the type of bonding responsible for keeping dyed apparel colourful after repeated washes could work for the PDMS coating as well.  

Neither the primer nor the PDMS brushes work separately to decrease the microplastic-fibre shedding. But together, they created a strong finish that reduced the release of microfibres by more than 90% after nine washes.  

“PDMS brushes are environmentally friendly because they are not derived from petroleum like many polymers used today,” says Golovin, who was awarded a Connaught New Researcher award for this work.  

“With the addition of Sudip’s primer, our coating is robust enough to remain on the garment and continue to reduce micro-fibre shedding over time.”  

Since PDMS is naturally a hydrophobic (water-repellent) material, the researchers are currently working on making the coating hydrophilic, so that coated fabrics will be better able to wick away sweat. The team has also expanded the research to look beyond nylon fabrics, including polyester and synthetic-fabric blends.  

“Many textiles are made of multiple types of fibres,” says Golovin. “We are working to formulate the correct polymer architecture so that our coating can durably adhere to all of those fibres simultaneously.” 

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on January 26, 2023 by Safa Jinje

Professor Markus Bussmann and Professor Goldie Nejat have been elected as Fellows of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME). The distinction of Fellow is bestowed upon ASME members who have 10 or more years of active practice and membership in recognition of significant achievements in the engineering profession.

Markus Bussmann is a Professor with the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering (MIE) at the University of Toronto. He earned BASc and MASc degrees from the University of Waterloo, and a PhD (2000) from the University of Toronto. He then spent 2½ years as a postdoc and staff member at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, joined U of T in 2002, served as Graduate Coordinator of MIE from 2009-2013, and as Vice-Dean of Graduate Studies for the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering from 2013-2017. Professor Bussmann was named a fellow of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering in 2011, and was awarded the CSME Robert Angus Medal in 2019. In addition to research and admin work, Professor Bussmann also greatly enjoys teaching and has won a couple of MIE Teaching Awards.

 

 

 

Goldie Nejat is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto, and the Founder and Director of the Autonomous Systems and Biomechatronics (ASBLab) Laboratory. Dr. Nejat is also an Adjunct Scientist at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. She received both her BASc and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Nejat is a world renowned expert in developing intelligent service/personal robots for applications in health, elderly care, emergency response, search and rescue, security and surveillance, and manufacturing. A major goal of her research is to develop and integrate intelligent socially assistive robots for assistive human-robot interactions (HRI) in healthcare facilities, private homes and for high stress and dangerous jobs. Dr. Nejat’s research is leading the development of intelligent assistive robotic aids that can meet the challenges posed by an aging population. She collaborates with international researchers, healthcare experts and healthcare facilities to develop robots and devices that can be effectively transferred and integrated into people’s everyday lives. Dr. Nejat is helping to change the face of robotics and her work is at the forefront of robotics research. Her research is constantly pushing the envelope of the capabilities of current robots.

In 2008, Dr. Nejat received an NSERC University Faculty Award. She also received the 2012 Professional Engineers of Ontario Young Engineer Medal and the 2013 Engineers Canada Young Engineer Achievement Award, both awards are for her exceptional achievements in the field of robotics at a young age.

 

 

U of T Engineering’s newest research centre will develop innovative ways to meet the urgent and growing need for infrastructure — without further exacerbating the climate crisis.

The Centre for the Sustainable Built Environment brings together seven researchers from across U of T, as well as a dozen companies in construction and related industries. The goal is to identify strategies that will lower the environmental footprint of new infrastructure across the board by reimagining how they are designed, where they are built and even what materials they are made of.

“In Canada, and around the world, we have a huge housing deficit, a huge infrastructure deficit — there’s a big social need to build much more than we have right now,” says Professor Shoshanna Saxe (CivMin), who holds the Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Infrastructure.

“At the same time, construction resource use accounts for up to a third of total global greenhouse gas emissions each year, a problem that is getting worse. It’s been estimated that if we continue current ways of construction, by 2050 the emissions due to new housing alone will cause us to blow past two degrees of global warming.

“If we want to avoid that, let alone reach net zero by 2050, we need to find ways to do more with less.”

Saxe and her collaborators plan to approach this complex challenge from several different angles. Some efficiencies can be found by looking at where new housing is built, as well as what it looks like.

“The average person living in a city consumes fewer resources than the average person living in a suburb, because in a city you have more people per kilometre of sewer, road or electrical infrastructure. There are big rewards for well-designed cities,” says Saxe.

“The shape and types of buildings we build is also important. For example, Toronto has a lot of long skinny apartments, where a lot of the space is in the hallway. If we design differently, we can better use that space to provide more housing, or avoid it all together and save materials, emissions and cost.”

Saxe and her team have also shown that large concrete basements account for a high proportion of the emissions due to construction; building more of the structure above ground could improve the environmental bottom line. Other potential solutions involve alternative building materials, for example, new types of concrete that are less carbon intensive than those in common use today.

In addition to Saxe, the new Centre includes six other professors from across U of T with a wide range of expertise, from carrying out life-cycle analysis of construction projects to defining national carbon budgets. They are:

• Professor Evan Bentz (CivMin)
• Professor Chris Essert (Law)
• Professor Elias Khalil (MIE)
• Professor Heather MacLean (CivMin)
• Professor Daman Panesar (CivMin)
• Professor Daniel Posen (CivMin)

The multidisciplinary team will address issues well beyond the traditional bounds of engineering. For example, the team plans to explore the legal frameworks that translate established housing rights into practical built spaces.

“It’s absurd to say that the right to housing means that everyone has to live in a space the size of a closet,” says Saxe. “But it’s also absurd to expect everyone to have their own 3,500-square-foot house. Can we find a middle ground where everyone can live in dignity, without consuming in a way that threatens the planet?”

In addition to these professors, the partnership includes 12 external companies in the construction sector: Colliers; the Cement Association of Canada; Chandos Construction; Mattamy Homes; Northcrest; Pomerleau; Purpose Building, Inc.; ZGF Architects; Arup; SvN Architects + Planners; Entuitive; and KPMB Architects.

By working closely with this core group, Saxe and her collaborators aim to speed up knowledge translation, ensuring that the insights gained through their research can be applied in industry.

“The conversations we have with our partners can inform their design and construction, as well as the conversations they then have with their clients, raising everyone’s level of knowledge and awareness,” she says.

“We hope that by giving people — policymakers, designers and builders — the tools they need to address these challenges of building more with less emissions, we can improve outcomes across the built environment and create a more sustainable future for everyone.”

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on January 16, 2023 by Tyler Irving

A new catalyst design created by U of T Engineering researchers could significantly improve the practicality of an electrochemical process that converts captured CO₂ into multi-carbon molecules, which represent some of the key building blocks of the chemical industry.

“We need alternative routes to everyday products that do not require fossil fuel inputs,” says Professor David Sinton (MIE), senior author on a new paper published in Nature Energy.

“With recent advances in carbon capture, there is an opportunity to use CO₂ to replace core chemical feedstocks on which the modern world relies.  By developing cost-effective ways to upgrade this carbon into products we already need, we can increase the economic incentive to capture, rather than emit, CO₂.”

One way to upgrade carbon involves electrochemistry, in which electricity is used to drive forward a desired chemical reaction. The conversion is carried out in devices known as electrolyzers, in which electrons combine with the reactants at the surface of a solid catalyst.

The team has a proven track record of successfully developing innovative ways to improve the efficiency of electrochemical CO₂ conversion.

In their latest published work, the researchers focused on a variant of the process known as ‘cascade CO₂ reduction.’ In this two-step process, CO₂ is first dissolved in a liquid electrolyte, then passed through an electrolyzer, where it reacts with electrons to form carbon monoxide (CO).

The CO is then passed through a second electrolyzer where it is converted into two-carbon products such as ethanol, which is commonly used as fuel, and ethylene, which is a precursor to many types of plastics, as well as other consumer goods.

It is at this second step where the team found inefficiencies they believed could be overcome. These challenges were related to selectivity, which is the ability to maximize production of the target molecules by reducing the formation of undesirable side products.

“One of the key issues is the poor selectivity under low reactant availability,” says postdoctoral researcher Adnan Ozden (MIE PhD 2T2), one of four lead authors on the new paper.

“This, in turn, leads to a trade-off between the energy efficiency — meaning how efficiently we use the electrons we pump into the system — versus the carbon efficiency, which is a measure of how efficiently we use CO2 and CO.”

“There are ways to achieve high energy efficiency, and there are ways to achieve high carbon efficiency, but they are usually approached separately,” says former MIE postdoctoral fellow Dr. Jun Li, another of the lead authors, who is now an Associate Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

“Achieving both in a single-operation mode is the key.”

The team investigated the reasons for this trade-off and found that it originates from excessive accumulation of the positively charged ions, known as cations, on the catalyst surface, as well as the undesirable migration of the negatively charged ions, known as anions, away from the catalyst surface.

To overcome this challenge, they took inspiration from the design of supercapacitors, another electrochemical system where the transport of ions is critical. They added a porous material, known as a covalent organic framework, onto the surface of the catalyst, which enabled them to control the transport of cations and anions in the local reaction environment.

“With this modification, we obtained a highly porous, highly hydrophobic catalyst layer,” says Li.

“In this design, the covalent organic framework interacts with the cations to limit their diffusion to the active sites. The covalent organic framework also confines the locally produced anions due to its high hydrophobicity.”

Using the new catalyst design, the team built an electrolyzer that converts CO into two-carbon products with 95% carbon efficiency, while also keeping energy efficiency relatively high at 40%. This performance represents a new high-water mark in the design of such systems.

“When you look at what has been achieved so far in the field, the various approaches have tended to focus either on getting really high energy efficiency, or really high carbon efficiency,” says Ozden. “Our new design shows that it’s possible to break this trade-off.”

There is still more work to be done. For example, while the prototype device maintained its performance for more than 200 hours, it will need to last even longer if it’s to be used industrially. Still, the new strategy shows potential in terms of its ability to improve the value proposition of upgrading captured carbon.

“If this process is going to be adopted commercially, we need to be able to show that we can accomplish the conversion in a way that’s scalable and cost-effective enough to make economic sense,” says Sinton. “I think our approach demonstrates that this is a goal within reach.”

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on January 12, 2023 by Tyler Irving

Two MIE professors have been recognized by the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC) for their distinguished contributions to engineering.

Professor Michael Carter (MIE) has received the Julian C. Smith Medal for “achievement in the development of Canada,” while Professors Natalie Enright Jerger (ECE) and Xinyu Liu (MIE) have been elected EIC fellows for “excellence in engineering and services to the profession and to society.”

Carter, who is the founder of U of T’s Centre for Healthcare Engineering, is a recognized leader in systems engineering approaches to health care, influencing health policy and practice across Canada through his leadership positions, educational initiatives and work with health-care organizations. He is using simulation modelling and other operations research tools to help the health-care industry make decisions that improve quality of care, reduce costs and increase efficiency. He has helped demonstrate the important role of engineering in Canada’s health-care system, and the tools he has created are used by government and health-care organizations throughout the country.

Carter also developed Canada’s first health-care engineering courses and led the creation of the MEng Certificate in Healthcare Engineering at U of T. He is a fellow of EIC, the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS), the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and garnered the Canadian Operational Research Society Award of Merit for lifetime contributions to operations research. He has also received the Northrop Frye Award and the President’s Impact Award from U of T, as well as many teaching awards.

 Liu is internationally recognized for his innovative contributions in paper-based microfluidics, microrobotics, and flexible/stretchable sensors, with applications in disease diagnostics and treatment, basic biology research and wearable electronics. Most notably, he has developed a series of paper-based microfluidic biosensors for rapid point-of-care diagnosis for diseases such as HIV, hepatitis, prostate cancer, cardiovascular disease and COVID-19. Liu has published 106 articles in high-impact journals, as well as 84 conference papers, three books and 13 book chapters. He is a co-inventor on 13 patents, with six licenced to industry.   

Prior to joining U of T, Liu was the Canada Research Chair in Microfluidics and BioMEMS while at McGill University. His many awards include the Douglas R. Colton Medal for Research Excellence and eight best paper awards from major engineering and medical conferences. He is a fellow of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Liu is co-chair of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Technical Committee for Micro/Nano Robotics and Automation. He has served on the editorial boards of eight international journals and organized several IEEE/ASME conferences.  

“On behalf of the Faculty, congratulations to Professors Carter, Enright Jerger and Liu on these well-deserved honours,” says U of T Engineering Dean Christopher Yip. “This recognition by the Engineering Institute of Canada reflects the wide-ranging contributions and impact of our faculty members as researchers, innovators and educators.” 

– Excerpts from the article published on U of T Engineering News on January 10, 2023 by Carolyn Farrell

Professor Michael Carter is the recipient of the prestigious 2023 Julian C. Smith Medal from the Engineering Insititute of Canada. This award is bestowed upon an individual for their exceptional achievements in the development of Canada.

Professor Carter first joined the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto in 1981 and is the Founding Director of the Centre for Healthcare Engineering (in 2009).

Since 1989, his research focus has been in the area of health care resource modeling. As of October 2021, he has supervised 28 Ph.D. students and 109 Masters and directed more than 313 undergraduate engineering students in over 139 projects with industry partners. Professor Carter has over 150 former students working in healthcare in Toronto. He is cross appointed to the Institute of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation.

He is the recipient of many awards including the Annual Practice Prize from the Canadian Operational Research Society (CORS) four times (1988, 1992, 1996 and 2009, the CORS Award of Merit for lifetime contributions to Canadian Operational Research (2000), the Northrup Frye Award for Teaching Excellence from the University of Toronto Alumni Association (2019) and the U of T “President’s Impact Award” for his contributions to improving healthcare in Canada (2021).

He is on the editorial board for the journals “Health Care Management Science”, “Operations Research for Health Care”, “Health Systems” and “IIE Transactions on Healthcare Systems”. He is an Adjunct Scientist with the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto and a member of the Faculty Advisory Council for the University of Toronto Chapter of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). He is member of the Professional Engineers of Ontario. In 2012, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and in 2013, he was inducted as a Fellow of The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). In 2018, he became a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

Professor Carter will be presented with the award at the 2023 EIC Awards Gala in April. View the EIC news release.