When the opportunity arose to hire a new assistant professor at U of T Engineering’s Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, the search committee didn’t want to follow the same old formula.

“Attracting a diverse pool of applicants was very important for us,” says Professor Greg Jamieson (MIE), who co-chaired the hiring committee alongside Professor Birsen Donmez (MIE). “We’ve seen the tremendous value in embracing a diversity of perspectives in the field of engineering, especially when the voices of underrepresented groups are amplified. The impact is remarkable.”

To increase equity in their search, the hiring team explored a number of approaches, such as undertaking inclusivity training and working to increase representation on the hiring panel. As a result of these changes and others, they ended up fundamentally re-thinking their typical search process — with outstanding results.

Before launching the search, Professor Markus Bussmann, Chair of the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at the time, encouraged the search committee to join the Inclusive Practices in Recruitment workshop run by U of T’s Toronto Initiative for Diversity & Excellence (TIDE). The team signed up, and Jamieson hoped that it would go beyond the implicit bias training he had already completed.

“I had attended sessions on unconscious bias in the past; I know that about myself. I know that about our institutions,” says Jamieson. “I was ready to actually do something about it.”

This training session provided a set of concrete strategies, recommended processes and templates that became the framework for the committee’s recruitment efforts.

“It was great because we came out with actionable ideas,” says Jamieson. “Our entire search was informed by the learnings from that TIDE workshop.”

The workshop — run by TIDE co-chairs Professors Maydianne Andrade (Biology) and Bryan Gaensler (Astronomy and Astrophysics) — is one of several offered by the TIDE team, a group of professors from across U of T who volunteer their time through talks, training sessions and sharing of resources in support of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI).

“I think that a failure of a lot of equity training is that you get people sitting there with their arms crossed thinking, ‘Good for them for presenting this, but this just doesn’t reflect how my unit works and the presenters clearly don’t understand our culture,’” says Gaensler. “We wanted to get away from that.”

“Each of our presentations includes data that contextualizes the training for that particular unit attending the workshop, to show what representation actually looks like, what promotion looks like, who’s graduating in that field — if we have the data for it — and then what Canada looks like,” says Andrade. 

“Then we talk about some of the often unintentional or unconscious processes that may be subverting some of the formal ways in which we apply policy if we’re not actually considering how bias might play into it.”

Participants analyze their approach to hiring, from writing the job ad, to raising awareness of the position, all the way through to the interview and making the offer. The training covers practical tips backed by research, such as comparing all candidates against a set of fixed criteria and not against each other, as well as reading reference letters last to minimize bias.

“The message is about levelling the playing field and never about hiring for diversity quotas,” says Gaensler. 

The hiring team wanted to invite an alumnus to join the search committee, both to increase diversity and representation, and deepen expertise on the panel. Jamieson reached out to Herman Colquhoun (IndE MASc 2T0), Design Principal at IBM, who is one of the leaders of the Racial Equity in Design initiative at the company and is also the co-chair of the IBM Canada Black Experience.

Colquhoun brought evidence-based recommendations, including integrating wording from U of T’s Diversity Statement all through the posting, and challenging the hiring panel to set a goal of shortlisting at least two candidates from racialized groups and two women.

“Research shows that if a hiring pool has only one underrepresented person, then the chance of hiring that the person is almost zero,” he says. “However, if an effort is made to bring in at least two or more underrepresented people, the probability of hiring from the group grows significantly.”

The hiring team cast a wide net to encourage candidates from beyond their professional networks and industry associations. This included leveraging Colquhoun’s network within the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) in the U.S., to expand their outreach.

“We were very explicit in asking ourselves, ‘How are people going to find out about this role?’ and this shift to active promotion — along with all our other efforts — contributed to our amazing results,” says Jamieson.

“We exceeded our goals and were blown away by the calibre of the applicants that made the shortlist. In the end, we found a way to extend offers for two professorial positions instead of one, because we just couldn’t part with either of the exceptional finalists.” 

Professor Myrtede Alfred (MIE) joined the Faculty in August last year and Professor Enid Montague (MIE) began last April.

Alfred says she noticed the search committee’s emphasis on EDI throughout the hiring process and credits this attention to inclusivity for influencing her decision to join U of T Engineering.

“I remember telling the hiring committee that I would push to attract and recruit more underrepresented students to join my research lab,” she says. “And the department chair immediately responded, ‘That’s great! Let me know how we can help you.’ That unhesitant reply and support was so important to me.” 

Jamieson is looking forward to the deep experience and research expertise that the two new professors bring to the human factors engineering program.

“It was very gratifying to achieve these results in our search, and to then go back to Professor Andrade and Professor Gaensler to say, ‘It really worked!’ The TIDE workshop was probably one of the most effective training sessions in my 20 years as an academic.” 

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on August 31, 2022 by Fahad Pinto

Professor Greg Jamieson is a is a Professor and Clarice Chalmers Chair of Engineering Design in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. He received Bachelor of Science degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Psychology (with Distinction) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Masters of Applied Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Human Factors Engineering from the University of Toronto. He joined the Department as a faculty member in 2002 and is currently serving as Interim Chair.

What do you enjoy most about working in the Department?

MIE is a great place to work for many reasons, and a big one for me is the ability to pursue the teaching and research I am most interested in. There is so much support from both faculty colleagues and department staff to engage in rewarding work and explore my areas of interest.

What excites you about the Interim Chair position?

One of the appeals of the Interim Chair position was the opportunity to learn more about what makes the department “work”. I’m looking forward to playing a bigger part in enabling our outstanding faculty and staff to succeed at the work they do. The Interim Chair position will allow me to be a part of creating opportunities for staff and faculty to grow and for the Department to continue to evolve and meet the needs of our community.

Do you have any advice for students joining MIE this fall?

I want to tell students that as they join MIE they are both becoming a member of our community and a part of continuing to build on that community. Everyone in the department plays a role here and having new students, faculty and staff joining helps renew and build upon the great community we have here. Know that you belong here and are an essential part of shaping our department.

What are you looking forward to most in the 2022-2023 academic year?

I’m most excited for the two academic searches the Department will be conducting. Bringing new faculty members into the department is a very important and rewarding process. It’s exciting to meet professors with new ideas and perspectives that will contribute to MIE’s student experience, research output and community.

Do you have any favourite spots on campus to take a break?

We are fortunate to have many wonderful communal spaces on campus and when I’m walking around I often think about the MIE connection to those spaces – Professor Emeritus and former MIE Chair Ron Venter had a strong involvement in developing university common spaces, like the Philosopher’s Walk, as well as the Myhal Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship.

How do you like to spend your free time?

I’m a huge soccer fan. While I don’t play much anymore I love watching. I’m a season ticket holder for the Toronto Football Club and love talking soccer with faculty, staff and students who are also fans. I’m looking forward to catching World Cup games in the Graduate Student lounge beginning in November!

-Published August 29, 2022 by Lynsey Mellon, lynsey@mie.utoronto.ca

Professor Kamran Behdinan (MIE) is the recipient of the 2022 Ruth and Joel Spira Outstanding Design Educator Award. This prestigious award given by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) recognizes an individual who “exemplifies the best in furthering engineering design education through vision, interactions with students and industry, scholarship and impact on the next generation of engineers” and a person whos serves as a role model to other educators.

ASME recognized this achievement at the recent International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering (IDETC-CIE) Conference held August 14-17, 2022 in St. Louis, Missouri.

Professor Behdinan is the NSERC Design Chair in “Multidisciplinary Design and Innovation – UT IMDI” and the founding director of the “University of Toronto Institute for Multidisciplinary Design and Innovation”, an industry-centred project-based learning institute in partnership with major aerospace and automotive companies. He has dedicated his career to developing innovative and impactful multidisciplinary engineering design programs and courses for students in Canada and around the globe. He is the past President of the Canadian Society of Mechanical Engineering (CSME), served as a member of the technical and scholarship committees of the High Performance Computing Virtual Laboratory (HPCVL) and a member of the Design Division of the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute (CASI).

Since joining the Department in 2011, Behdinan has supervised 28 PhDs, 110 Masters’, and 34 Post-Doctoral Fellows and Scholars. He has also published more than 330 peer-reviewed Journal and Conference papers, and 9 book chapters. He has been the recipient of many prestigious awards and recognitions such as the Research Fellow of Pratt and Whitney Canada and Fellows of the CSME, ASME, the Canadian Academy of Engineering, EIC, AAAS, as well as Associate Fellow of AIAA.

When Selina Tong (Year 4 IndE) was in high school, she didn’t know what she wanted to study at university. 

Her strongest subjects were math and science, so she debated between business, architecture and engineering. But even though she was fortunate to be exposed to engineering from an early age — her father is an electrical engineer, and her sister went into computer engineering — she did not know what people did in the profession.   

“I was uncertain about my future, but I knew that getting an engineering degree would open up more possible career paths,” she says. “The skills you can gain are so vast that you have a lot of options if you decide that you don’t want to be a professional engineer.” 

Ultimately, Tong decided to enroll in U of T Engineering’s TrackOne to keep as many doors open as possible.  

TrackOne is an undeclared first-year program that lets students explore the many fields of engineering offered at U of T, before choosing a disciplinary major at the end of the winter term. Students take courses that prepare them to join any Core 8 program — Chemical, Civil, Computer, Electrical, Industrial, Materials, Mechanical or Mineral Engineering — for the remaining three years of their BASc degree and have the support of a dedicated TrackOne advisor.  

“These are not students who can’t make up their minds. They know they are interested in engineering, but want to keep their options open to make an informed decision,” says Professor Susan McCahan (MIE), who currently serves as the U of T’s vice-provost, academic programs and vice-provost, innovations in undergraduate education. 

“We did find that quite a few students came in thinking they were going to pursue one program and ended up going into a different field — one they may not have even known about when they were in high school.” 

McCahan, who served as chair of first year when U of T Engineering admitted the first group of TrackOne students in 2007, witnessed an immediate sense of community among the group as they picked their own Engineering Society class representative and organized social and networking events, just like students in the Core 8 programs.   

“The first cohort of students decided that the magic eight ball was going to be their symbol, because when you ask one a question and turn it over, it sometimes says, ‘Ask again later,’” she says. “And eight, because at the end of their first year, they pick one of the Core 8 programs.”  

Samantha Butt (Year 3 MechE) has always enjoyed being challenged academically, which is what attracted her to the idea of studying engineering.  

“I didn’t know anyone who could tell me about the profession and what it could be,” she says. “I knew that engineers solve problems, and I consider problem-solving to be one of my greatest strengths.” 

After being accepted to U of T Engineering, she attended an event for female-identifying high school students called Girls Leadership in Engineering Experience (GLEE). 

“I saw firsthand how strong the U of T Engineering community is and that I would be amongst women who were also passionate about STEM,” she says. “I really felt like I belonged in this community.”  

Butt applied to TrackOne to give herself more flexibility and spend her first year of university discovering which engineering discipline aligned best with her interests.   

When she took the Introduction to Engineering course (APS 191H1), she discovered how versatile each of the Core 8 programs could be. And even though she initially thought she would choose to study computer engineering, she was won over by mechanical engineering’s mechatronics stream.  

“I learned about a fourth-year course called Mechatronics Principles (MIE 444), where you get to build a robot that navigates its way through a maze,” she says. “I remember being so mesmerized that I could have all the skills and knowledge to build something like that once I reached fourth year!”  

This summer, Butt is starting her Professional Experience Year Co-op Program (PEY Co-op) at Safran Landing Systems, an aircraft-equipment manufacturing company that produces landing gear, avionics and navigation systems.  

“Mechanical engineering has a lot of PEY Co-op opportunities within aerospace — and I haven’t been exposed to the aerospace industry yet in any of my courses,” she says.  

“I’m really excited to see how I can apply what I’ve learned in my degree and how I can learn even more from this opportunity.”

Alumnus Albert Huynh (ChemE 1T2 + PEY) enrolled in TrackOne because he loves to collect input and information before making big decisions. 

“Having the option to delay the choice to pick a program while I learned more about the discipline was very much in line with my personality style,” he says. 

During that first year, Huynh was struck by engineering’s focus on design and applying knowledge of mathematics, sciences and technology into ways that could solve global problems. His interest in sustainable energy led him to choose chemical engineering at the end of his first year, but extracurricular opportunities within the Faculty would eventually ignite his passion for engineering education.  

After his studies, Huynh spent six years working at the Troost Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering (ILead) at U of T Engineering. And this past July, he started a new role as the North American lead for learning experience design at Shopify.   

“There are so many ways of approaching problems and designing solutions,” says Huynh. “I’ve learned that the specific discipline you pick doesn’t actually matter all that much in terms of where you end up, but rather determines the approach that you take.” 

As for Tong, she opted to study industrial engineering for its focus on human-centred design, and because it pairs well with a business minor. She completed her PEY Co-op as a trade floor technology consultant at Scotiabank this past spring, and is wrapping up an internship as a technical program manager at Braze in New York City this summer.  

“I was very attracted to the diversity of the degree,” she says. “I have been able to tailor my course selection to my interests, whether that be design, human factors or artificial intelligence.” 

“While students choose a field of engineering to study at the end of their TrackOne year, what we really want them to know is that the field they choose will not necessarily dictate their career path,” says McCahan. 

“There is a wide diversity of career paths open, no matter what field of engineering they choose.”

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on August 17, 2022 by Safa Jinje

 

Professor Timothy Chan (MIE) has been appointed the University of Toronto’s associate vice-president and vice-provost, strategic initiatives for a five-year term, beginning on September 1, 2022.  

In this role, Chan will lead the Institutional Strategic Initiatives (ISI) portfolio, which works to launch, grow and sustain large-scale interdisciplinary strategic research networks. With more than 20 ISIs, Chan’s focus during his term will be helping the networks build on their momentum as they increase their efforts in areas of societal importance. 

“I have been involved in strategic initiatives at U of T, so I am excited for this big challenge of stepping up to help teams across the University expand on their success and make their initiatives more sustainable,” he says. “I want to be a part of their journey and growth.”  

Chan, who is the Canada Research Chair in Novel Optimization and Analytics in Health, moves into this role after serving as the director of the Centre for Analytics and Artificial Intelligence Engineering (CARTE), and associate director, research and thematic programming of the Data Sciences Institute (DSI) — both positions end on August 31. He was also previously the director of the Centre for Healthcare Engineering and is an affiliate of the Vector Institute, University Health Network and Unity Health Toronto.    

“As the founding director of CARTE, it’s been an incredible experience to see it grow from an idea to building an engaged group of faculty and students, and helping them activate resources for new projects,” he says.   

“I am especially proud of the seed fund we launched for high-impact, multidisciplinary research. One faculty member wrote me recently to let me know that they just won a big Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) grant, which stemmed from a project that was catalyzed by our fund.”  

Chan received his BSc in Applied Mathematics from the University of British Columbia, and his PhD in Operations Research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before coming to Toronto, he was a Chicago-based Associate at McKinsey and Company, a global management consulting firm. His role included advising leading companies in the fields of medical device technology, travel and hospitality, telecommunications, and energy on issues of strategy, organization, technology and operations.  

Chan remains committed to his research, which focuses on the development of novel optimization methods and their application to solve complex decision-making problems in healthcare, medicine and sports.   

“In my new role, I will have a much higher-level view of all the research happening across the University,” he says. “I hope to learn about new ideas that can lead to new collaboration in my own work.”  

“Professor Chan is internationally recognized as a pioneering researcher, with a proven track record for inclusive leadership and dedication to teaching and guiding the next generation of engineering students,” says Christopher Yip, dean of U of T Engineering. 

 “As the chief architect driving the creation of CARTE, and now his leadership within DSI, he is uniquely positioned to lead the ISI portfolio across the University’s three campuses through the period of tremendous expansion and acceleration ahead.” 

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on August 5, 2022 by Safa Jinje

Congratulations to Professor Yu Sun (MIE) on the Technical Achievement Award from the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Prof Sun received this prestigious award for “foundational contributions to robotics and automation at micro-nano scales and pioneering contributions to robotic cell manipulation.”

Yu Sun was among the first to invent robotic approaches for automated cell manipulation. He established a framework for autonomous robotic cell manipulation that assimilates high resolution, low depth-of-field microscopy visual feedback, high-precision position feedback, and nanoNewton force feedback. His work is widely used in robotic micro- and nano-manipulation and paved the way for further development in automated cell manipulation. He developed the first robotic human sperm and oocyte surgery system with minimal invasiveness for clinical in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment. He pioneered magnetic micromanipulation technologies for performing precise untethered manipulation and measurement inside a single cell and deep in tissue. He also invented the world’s first fully closed-loop controlled nanorobotic system for operation inside electron microscopes, with which he realized automated measurement of nanomaterials and biomaterials, and achieved targeted extraction of DNA from a cell nucleus for gene mapping. Sun is the founding Director of the Robotics Institute at the University of Toronto, home of the largest and most diversified robotics research program in Canada.

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto Robotics Institute’s News Site on August 2, 2022 by Aidan Samuels

Professor Lidan You (MIE) was recently elected to the 2022 Class of Fellows of the American Society of Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR). ASMBR Fellows are recognized as having made outstanding contributions to the field of bone and mineral science.

Professor Mihai “Mishu” Duduta (MIE) is among the recipients of the Banting Research Foundation’s 2022 Discovery Award. The Discovery Award provides new researchers at Canadian universities and research institutes with a one-year grant of up to $30,000 for innovative health and biomedical research projects. Duduta is among the six award recipients for 2022.

Duduta’s research project is entitled Smart micro-catheters based on electro-mechanical artificial muscles was awarded the University of Toronto 100th Anniversary Discovery of Insulin Banting Award.

The following excerpt from the Banting Research Foundation website describes Duduta’s research project:

Professor Duduta’s team is working to develop solutions to unmet needs with soft robotics, including sensate prosthetics, mechano-therapy, artificial limbs, and endovascualr intervention tools.  Smart micro-catheters address a significant clinical need: long endo-vascular interventions because of slow navigation through tortuous anatomy.

With the device, and in collaboration with clinicians, the team will test a medical hypothesis: that the duration of an endovascular intervention can be reduced significantly if the clinician can steer the micro-catheter to navigate sharp turns. The team has also developed a novel fabrication method.

This project will produce a novel steerable catheter and demonstrate functionality in a tortuous anatomy phantom model. The device and performance in relevant anatomy will be used to engage clinicians and apply for additional funding for in vivo testing.

With the advent of the Internet of Things and other technologies, Toronto and other urban areas are looking to be “smarter cities” when tackling critical issues — from climate change to affordable housing.

There’s just one problem.

“Smart cities are only smart if they have relevant data,” says Mark Fox, a professor of industrial engineering in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and a distinguished professor of urban systems engineering.

Enter the Urban Data Centre at U of T’s School of Cities. Created last fall, the centre seeks to enable smarter cities by providing awareness and access to relevant urban data. “We’re creating a Canadian catalogue of urban data sets to allow people to discover relevant data, where it’s located and any restrictions on use,” says Fox, who holds a cross-appointment to the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

The centre is being supported by a commitment from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) of $1 million over five years to add core staff and expand operations.

One of the main challenges of achieving awareness is that datasets are spread across repositories, created by municipalities, provincial and federal agencies, NGOs and universities, making it difficult to find what is relevant.

“Getting data is hard work and it requires a lot of discipline,” says Raju Goteti, global vice-president of the TCS Co-Innovation Network.

“It requires innovation from multiple stakeholders and specific elements like the Urban Data Centre. The idea is to create new knowledge in the ecosystem, and we believe the School of Cities is a wonderful partner for this.”

Fox, for his part, says the TCS contribution will advance the centre’s work.

“We already have funding for some work streams within the centre, such as urban ontologies and standards, but this provides us with the funds to focus on core elements of our research program, such as the Urban Data Catalogue and Repository,” he says.

The school is building the capacity of urban communities to collect, analyze and visualize data to make cities more efficient and equitable.

“The TCS support will give our Urban Data Centre a jump-start in creating a data ecosystem for universities and cities around Canada,” says Karen Chapple, director of the School of Cities.

For all the buzz about using machine learning to build and operate smarter cities, not many people appreciate how much effort goes into pulling relevant data together, according to Fox.

“About 80 per cent of the time it takes to build a smarter-city application is spent on what’s called data wrangling, which is finding the data, cleaning it and integrating it, as opposed to actually building machine learning models.”

Creating the Canadian urban data catalogue is an enormous but crucial first step for the centre’s mission, providing a means for urban researchers, developers and planners to find the data they need, says Fox.

He says the centre is working to create standards for the catalogue system that will provide detailed information on each dataset listed.

“Once we have that standard, we’re creating the appropriate software so anybody who has a dataset can go to the web page, fill in the metadata for the set they are submitting, and then it goes into our catalogue.”

The next step will be creating a data repository. Fox says they will focus primarily on data from academic research. One potential treasure trove of smart city data is graduate student research on urban environments, which, at present, is often lost upon graduation. “It either sits on their laptop or gets wiped out,” Fox says. “We’ll make it known to academe that not only can they provide us with the metadata associated with their dataset for the catalogue, they can also download their dataset into our repository.”

The Urban Data Centre is also an integral part of the upcoming School of Cities node in India that is being set up in collaboration with Tata Trusts — a philanthropic organization associated with TCS.

Fox says the centre will work with the School of Cities Alliance in India — a network of Canadian and Indian researchers — to create an Indian catalogue and data repository.

“TCS has been focusing on several smart city initiatives for more than a decade,” says K Ananth Krishnan, executive vice-president and chief technology officer at TCS. “We believe the interplay between smart cities and industries will generate ‘innovation at the intersection,’ a core TCS philosophy. I am excited about the Urban Data Centre at the School of Cities, close to our collaboration hub, TCS Pace Port Toronto. I am sure this will offer deep insights for better citizen and customer experiences.”

“It’s all about making good decisions,” adds Fox. “And to make good decisions, you need to be aware of what data exists and where.”

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on July 12, 2022 by Peter Boisseau