Another cohort of outstanding students from across the Faculty have been presented with U of T Student Leadership Awards.

In 2022, 18 U of T Engineering students earned the honour, which recognizes leadership, service and commitment to the university. Their diverse activities include heading up co-curricular organizations such as Engineers Without Borders, leading design teams such as the University of Toronto Supermileage Team, directing the musical comedy revue known as Skule™ Nite, and taking on executive roles in the U of T Engineering Society. They are joined by 166 students from other Faculties across U of T.

The University of Toronto Student Leadership Award continues a long-standing tradition which began with the Gordon Cressy Student Leadership Award, established in 1994 by the University of Toronto Alumni Association in honour of Mr. Gordon Cressy, former Vice-President, Development and University Relations. During the award’s 25-year history, it celebrated the exemplary contributions of more than 4,000 students whose commitment and service had a lasting impact on their peers and the university.

U of T Engineering will celebrate this year’s UTSLA recipients with a virtual ceremony hosted by U of T Engineering Dean Christopher Yip, to be held April 27.

“Students like these embody everything that makes our Faculty so special,” said Dean Yip. “Through the activities and accomplishments we are celebrating today, they have made a positive impact on our community, while also discovering new strengths and abilities that will serve them well as they join the next generation of global engineering leaders. I’m so proud of them, and excited for what lies ahead.”

The 2022 UTSLA recipients are:

• Brohath Amrithraj (Year 4 ChemE)
• John Anawati (ChemE PhD candidate)
• Laura Berneaga (MechE 1T9 + PEY, MechE MASc candidate)
• Paul Chen (ChemE PhD candidate)
• Chetanya Choudhary (Year 4 MechE)
• Jacqueline Fleisig (Year 4 EngSci)
• Bipasha Goyal (Year 4 EngSci)
• Hannah N. Kozlowski (BME PhD candidate)
• Zachary Jager LaPointe (Year 4 ECE)
• Emily Macdonald-Roach (Year 4 ChemE)
• Aditi Maheshwari (Year 4 EngSci)
• Stephanie McDonald (Year 4 MechE)
• Joanna Melnyk (Year 4 EngSci)
• Joshua Aikohi Pius (Year 4 ECE)
• Kapilkumar Ramchandani (Year 4 MechE)
• Khadija Ishfaq Rana (BME PhD candidate)
• Rima Uraiqat (Year 4 EngSci)
• Christine Yaromich (Year 4 MechE)

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on February 25, 2022 by Tyler Irving

A married mother of two who lives in Winnipeg, “Shawna” struggles to afford rent, groceries and needs dental care – but she doesn’t have coverage through her part-time office assistant job and she isn’t sure if she is eligible for help.

At the moment, the next step for “Shawna,” a fictitious persona created by researchers, would involve contacting a social service and being assigned a case manager, or calling a helpline.

But that could soon be about to change.

In a project led by HelpSeeker Technologies in collaboration with Corsac Technologies and Microsoft, researchers from the University of Toronto’s Centre for Social Services Engineering (CSSE) are developing a platform that harnesses artificial intelligence to improve wayfinding for Canadians seeking social services. The platform also aims to optimize service delivery, improve decision making across the system and provide data that will help policy-makers fine-tune social programs.

The project – called Compass – is supported by Canada’s Digital Supercluster, a federal program to develop and accelerate digital technologies.

Mark Fox, founding director of the centre and a professor in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science, said U of T researchers Bart Gajderowicz. Daniela Rosu and Lester Lyu are creating an “ontology” of client needs and social services, a machine learning algorithm to populate a database of available social services and their eligibility requirements, as well as an intelligent system for matching client needs to social service outcomes.

“In order to do Compass successfully, we need to have a very rich representation of clients and of the service providers, and how the two interact with each other,” Fox said.

“That’s what we are providing. We’re providing an ontology – a standard – for representing client and social service information.”

The ontology is based on the “common impact data standard,” a system for organizing impact data developed by the centre and researchers at Carleton University, social investment measurement firm Sametrica and the Centre for Social Innovation.

Compass will consist of three hubs: one that matches clients with services, another for case managers and a third for policy-makers who seek to improve the system. “We started last year. The first deliverables are going to be [due] by the end of this year,” Fox said.

Compass has received $4.9 million in total funding, $3.4 million from industry and the rest from Canada’s Digital Supercluster, a federal program announced in 2018 to develop and accelerate digital technologies.

Cheryl Regehr, U of T’s vice-president and provost and a professor in the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, said the Compass project is an excellent example of how university researchers can collaborate with the social service sector, industry and government partners to find solutions to complicated issues.

“My own area of research is social work,” said Regehr said at a launch event this week. “As a result, I am all too aware of how the challenges of social services delivery can have deleterious effects on our communities.”

Regehr added that the project will play a key role in improving Canada’s social safety net at a time when many people are counting on it to deliver.

“At a time when the pandemic has highlighted more than ever the cracks in our health and social services systems – and the people that fall into them – this project is critical and has the potential to improve and save lives,” Regehr said.

“Moreover, this real-world application of Dr. Fox’s research will make important contributions to understandings of complex systems-change across the social and natural sciences – contributions that will lead to better societal outcomes.”

François-Philippe Champagne, minister of innovation, science and industry, said in a statement that the project exemplifies Canada’s commitment to advancing social innovation through transformational digital technologies.

“Supporting the needs of our most vulnerable populations is critical to improving the health, wellbeing and safety of all Canadians,” he said.

The project is being developed and validated through partnerships with the City of Lethbridge, Medicine Hat Community Housing Society and Homeward Trust in Edmonton, as well as the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

Sue Paish, CEO of the Digital Technology Supercluster, said in a statement that the Compass project shows how digital innovation technology can be used to serve the greater social good while transforming any sector in Canada.

“Canadian-made technologies like this show the world that Canada is poised to own the podium in digital innovation,” she said.

The word ‘robot’ usually conjures up an image of a metal machine, but according to Professor Mihai Duduta (MIE), in the future these devices could have an altogether different look.

Duduta and his team are experts in soft robotics, developing stretchable, elastic devices for a range of applications.

“You can imagine novel medical devices designed to be compatible with the human body, adaptable buildings that change with environmental conditions, or new ways to harvest or store energy,” says Duduta. “The field also includes collaborative or assistive robotics used in advanced manufacturing, and even personal robotic companions.”

The common thread is the need for new types of materials, ones that are more flexible than metal, but retain the ability to provide the electricity that robots need to run.

“Finding a material that is as stretchable as a rubber band and can still conduct electricity is a major challenge,” says Duduta.

New funding announced today by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) could help address that. Duduta’s project — Fabrication and characterization of soft, conductive materials for sensing, actuation and energy storage — is one of three at U of T Engineering that received support from CFI’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund.

“Through this project we will identify new materials and discover new classes of artificial muscles, soft sensors, and even stretchable batteries,” says Duduta.

Another funded project — Computational biomarkers indicative of swallowing and gait functional declines — is headed by Professor Ervin Sejdić (ECE).

Sejdić’s research team and clinical partners aim to harness the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence help Canadians who have difficulty swallowing or walking.

“Canada’s population is aging, and chronic conditions such as swallowing and gait functional losses are on the rise,” says Sejdić. “Between seven and eight million Canadians are predicted to suffer from these disorders by 2031.”

These disorders are currently difficult to assess and manage, in part because there are few established protocols for doing so. Sejdić and his team plan to create novel human-machine interfaces that will capture and process multiple physiological signals.

By analyzing the data generated from these devices using advanced machine-learning methods, the team hopes to develop what they call ‘computational biomarkers’ that can be used to predict the continuum of functional losses.

“Our work innovatively combines rehabilitation, physical therapy, speech-language pathology, geriatrics, cyber-physical systems and data analytics,” says  Sejdić. “This support will enable this highly multidisciplinary team to acquire the necessary equipment and complete research that will one day be translated into clinically applicable tools.”

The third U of T Engineering project is Picture This: A multi-organ imaging bank for childhood disability-specific protocols and outcomes, led by Professor Tom Chau (BME).

In total, today’s announcement from CFI includes a total of 150 projects at 43 universities, colleges, cégeps and polytechnics across Canada, funded by both the JELF and the College-Industry Innovation Fund.

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on February 22, 2022 by Tyler Irving

Each Thursday, varsityblues.ca will highlight a U of T student-athlete and their academic pursuits. Each of these students achieved first class honours with an AGPA of at least 3.50 in the previous academic year. These are our Student-Athlete Stories.

There is no doubt that the Covid-19 pandemic has caused numerous issues and a plethora of challenges for nearly everyone around the world. Unfortunately, the same can certainly be said for Varsity Blues veteran swimmer, Graeme Aylward. Not only did Aylward lose his junior year on campus and in the pool, but he also had to cope with the loss of his father. Despite going through the most difficult of circumstances, the fourth-year industrial engineering student, who also minors in artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as business, was able to find light in all of the dark by aspiring to become, not only the best student or swimmer that he can be, but also the best person.

“Simply put, during the bulk of the pandemic, while I was lucky enough to still be training, I really did not have much else to do,” Aylward said. “I channeled some of that boredom and frustration with being locked down into the courses I was taking and found that really immersed myself in my studies was something that I enjoyed and could excel at.”

“I also had a great group of friends and teaching staff in engineering who were very supportive which helped a lot. When my father passed away in early February [of 2021], they all gave me time to be with my family, which was extra challenging during covid and helped me get right back on top of school. Losing my dad also added to my fuel of wanting to succeed academically as I know that it was something he valued greatly.”

That ‘added fuel’ became very important for the reining 100m and 200m breaststroke OUA champion as his university years progressed. Like many students who are making the transition from high school to university, Aylward admittedly had his struggles during his first-year.

“I was always one of the “smart kids” in high school so I got away with some pretty lack luster study habits,” he said. “When I came to U of T it was a huge shock in terms of workload and material, and it took me a while to find the right balance between succeeding in the classroom, in the pool, and being happy while doing it.”

“I remember nervously refreshing my student account at a training camp in my first year to see if I would have the minimum GPA required by the school to be allowed to compete for the [swim] team.”

Trying to make the adjustment to university classes, while competing with arguably the top swimming program in U SPORTS, Aylward was also trying to cope with and digest his father’s health battle, which included multiple bouts with cancer. As you would expect, all of it took a toll on the Varsity Blues swimmer.

“I was having a hard time coping with my father’s illness as his health was declining rather quickly by the time I got into first-year,” he said. “The psychological stress on top of everything else did not help with focusing on school.”

Queue the pandemic. With the world beginning to shut down in March of 2020, Aylward was once again having to deal with circumstances that come with no instruction booklet. However, despite all of the challenges, Aylward said he was able to use that time away from campus to really focus on his studies and develop better working habits.

Not wanting to simply scrape by, but rather excel at whatever he is doing, Aylward’s extra time spent on his work habits during the pandemic paid off almost immediately as he continues his post-secondary journey.

“When my father passed away, it was very difficult for me and my family,” he said. “However, despite that, I have found a much better balance in my life which has culminated in me landing a dream Co-op placement next year as a data science analyst for a private equity firm.”

“I also received an award for the top grades in industrial engineering as well as other leadership awards through the faculty.”

Having gone from nervously checking his GPA, to receiving the William Ian Mackenzie Turner Scholarship in industrial engineering for top marks in third-year engineering, Aylward has definitely found himself excelling in the classroom, and has now set his sights on trying to make positive change in healthcare.

“There are all sorts of blocks in the various information pipelines throughout our healthcare system and optimizing system performance is the calling of an industrial engineer,” he said. “I want to be able to contribute to reducing wait times for surgeries, ER’s, hospital beds, etc., help distribute money to where it is really needed and to patch the broken communication channels throughout all the moving parts of healthcare in Ontario.”

“It is a tall task and many are working on it but a lot more people are needed and I want to be able to contribute to the betterment of peoples health. Working with such a complex system you need to be able to have a wholistic understanding of what forces are at play and I believe that my experience in modeling, stats, business, and optimization will put me in a position to do that.”

Although Aylward’s goal may seem quite complex and will no doubt require a lot of work and determination, he will always have something of the upmost meaning to draw on for inspiration.

“I just want to do [my dad] proud,” he said. “He believed in me in everything I did, so whether it’s in school, in the pool or in my work, I want to excel in a way that would make him proud.”

“I want to leave a mark that he would have been able to look back at and have been proud to say “my son did that”.

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Varsity Blues site on February 10, 2022 

Peter Serles (MIE PhD candidate) recently had this amazing image accepted as part of U of T’s Research Revealed initiative. Research Revealed is a virtual gallery that showcases impactful images that reflect the areas of research by undergraduate students, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in the U of T community.

Below is the excerpt for Peter’s submission to the Research Revealed gallery:

The CNano Tower, Canada’s Smallest Freestanding Structure

Researchers at U of T Engineering have designed a new catalyst that can efficiently convert waste carbon into 1-propanol. The innovation could offer a more sustainable route to manufacturing high-value commodity chemicals, and a boost to the emerging field of carbon capture and upcycling. 

“Work from our group and others has shown that we have the technology to capture waste carbon and upgrade it into commodity chemicals,” says Professor Ted Sargent (ECE), who led the multidisciplinary team along with Professor David Sinton (MIE). 

“But proving that we can do it isn’t enough: we also need to show that our methods are cost-effective, and that they address real industry needs. Our new technique for making 1-propanol illustrates how we can offer a strategic advantage over the status quo.” 

1-Propanol is valuable on its own as a solvent and a component in high-performance engine fuels. However, it can also be easily converted into propylene, another commodity chemical which is used to make everything from durable plastics — such as those used in reusable water bottles, outdoor clothing, auto parts and more — to personal care products and detergents. 

With a market value of more than $84 billion US, propylene is among the most widely-produced commodity chemicals in the world. But lately, it has been squeezed by both rising demand and falling supply. 

“In the past, propylene was produced mainly as a byproduct of naphtha steam cracking for ethylene production,” says Dr. Xue Wang, a postdoctoral researcher in Sargent’s lab group and lead author of a new paper published today in Nature Energy.  

“However, the rise of shale gas extraction has resulted in the expansion of an alternative ethylene production process, one that produces much less propylene as a byproduct. So the supply of propylene is falling at exactly the same time that demand is rising, creating a gap.” 

In the paper, the team outlines a new way to bridge that gap using an electrically driven chemical reaction. At the heart of the innovation is an electrocatalyst made of copper, silver and ruthenium. When carbon monoxide (CO) and water arrive at the surface of this catalyst, they undergo a series of electrochemical reactions that result in the production of 1-propanol. 

“There are already established and cost-effective ways to convert CO2 to CO, as well as 1-propanol to propylene,” says Josh Wicks, a PhD student in Sargent’s lab group. “The missing link in the chain was going from CO to 1-propanol. That’s what Dr. Wang and the rest of the team have now demonstrated.” 

The innovation builds on the team’s previous work designing catalysts to convert waste carbon into other chemicals, including ethylene. Wang says that part of the challenge stemmed from the fact that 1-propanol contains three carbon atoms, whereas ethylene contains only two. 

“You have to carry out two carbon-carbon coupling steps in one reaction,” she says. “First you have to convert CO, a one-carbon molecule, into a two-carbon intermediate, and then convert that two-carbon intermediate into a three-carbon product. Along the way, it’s very easy to end up making side products that you don’t want, so you have to design a catalyst that selects against that.” 

The catalyst design was informed by theoretical calculations. Using a chemistry concept known as density functional theory, the team built computer models to test out several potential combinations of metals. This helped them narrow the field to those that were most likely to be effective. The theory was then validated by building a physical prototype in the lab. 

Though it is not the first electrocatalyst capable of converting CO to 1-propanol, its performance offers significant improvements over the competition. In the paper, the team reports that its selectivity — the proportion of electrons which end up as part of a 1-propanol molecule, as opposed to some other side product — was 36%, achieved with a current density of 300 milliamperes per square centimetre of catalyst. 

“This is about twice the selectivity of previously published catalysts,” says Wang. “The current density, which is a measure of how fast we are producing 1-propanol, is about three times as high.” 

The team also carried out a technoeconomic analysis of the system to predict the financial viability of the process if it could be brought up to an industrial scale. The analysis assumed a price for CO that factored in the cost of producing it from captured CO2, as well as a price for electricity that takes account of renewable generation. The model predicted profitability.  

“Going forward, we will work to further increase the selectivity and production rate,” says Wang. “And we could benefit from incentives for recycling carbon. But what our analysis showed is that even without all of that, our process as it stands can still make a profit. That was very interesting and exciting for us.” 

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on February 10, 2022 by Tyler Irving

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.

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.

The Globe and Mail recently featured Professor Nejat’s work on assistive robots being used at the Yee Hong Centre for Geriatric Care in Scarborough, Ontario.

The robotics team at the University of Toronto (U of T) that programmed Pepper, alongside a fellow robot named Salt, certainly tried their best to design it to fit in.

The robots have facial expressions and can gesture with their arms and head, says Goldie Nejat, Canada research chair in robots for society, who leads the U of T’s Autonomous Systems and Biomechatronics Laboratory.

“They use the same verbal and non-verbal communication we use, and they have some emotional intelligence, so they can detect emotions and respond to them,” Dr. Nejat says.

The notion of robots caring for aging people may sound like science fiction, but the Pepper pilot shows the future is closer than most people realize.

“We’re about five years away from seeing robots more commonly used in the home or at [seniors’] residences,” Dr. Nejat adds.

Read the full profile titled ‘How robots can make aging in place more enjoyable’ on the Globe and Mail website.

When Professor Jim Wallace (MIE) joined U of T Engineering back in 1978, one of the first people he met was Professor Frank Hooper (MIE).

“I took over a course that Frank had been teaching a while, and he was gracious enough to give me a copy of his notes,” says Wallace. “Not long after that, he and his wife had me over for dinner. He was so supportive and helpful to the new guy.”

Hooper, who passed away in May 2021, was known as an accomplished researcher in energy systems, and his legacy includes seminal work on ground source heat pumps. Today that technology is being demonstrated on an unprecedented scale at the centre of U of T’s St. George Campus.

“He’d be thrilled to see this coming to fruition,” says Wallace. “They’ve done an amazing job.”

Heat pumps are based on the same general principles as refrigerators and air conditioners. In all of these systems, a working fluid circulating in a closed loop transfers heat from one source to another through the addition of work via a compressor.

But while refrigerators and air conditioners work in only one direction, heat pumps are reversible: in the summer, they extract heat from inside buildings and push it outside, while in the winter they do the opposite.

“The challenge is that the bigger the temperature difference between the inside and outside air, the less efficiently the heat pump works,” says Wallace, whose areas of expertise also include energy systems.

“And once the outside air goes below zero degrees Celsius, you start to have problems with frosting. At a certain point, air-to-air heat pumps basically become useless, and that’s the case a lot of the time in Canada.”

Luckily, the atmosphere is not the only medium that can be used to exchange heat with the air inside buildings: the earth works as well. At sufficient depth — one or two hundred metres underground — the temperature remains constant year-round at about 10 to 12 C. This is an ideal level at which to reject waste heat in the summer, but also to recover it again in winter.

“Essentially, you’re using the earth as a storage battery, but not for electricity, for heat,” says Wallace.

Such systems are known as ground source heat pumps, geothermal heat pumps or geoexchange systems, and Hooper was among the first to prove that they would be feasible in the Canadian context.

In the late 1940s, Hooper collaborated with what was then called Ontario Hydro on a demonstration project. The team designed and installed a ground source heat pump for a newly built home in Port Credit, west of Toronto. The results were reported in a 1952 paper titled “An experimental residential heat pump” in the Canadian Journal of Technology.

“Hooper’s study was the first to show with actual data that ‘ground coils in suitable soils offer a satisfactory heat source in Ontario’,” says Wallace.

For more detail on this project, see this 2011 profile of Professor Hooper, published in GeoConneXion magazine.

The work was later continued by organizations such as the National Research Council of Canada, and Ontario Hydro led the creation of a Canadian Standards Association committee that developed technical standards for the design and installation of ground source heat pumps.

“One of the key things they were looking at was how to ensure that you get nice even contact between the pipe and the ground around it,” says Wallace.

“If you have voids, such as pockets of air, it makes the heat transfer less efficient, so you need to fill them with sand or other materials. Today, there are established standards for how do that, but back then it was pretty new.”

In modern buildings, both ground source heat pumps and the air-to-air variety are common. But a lot of historic buildings still in current use predate this technology — including many of those that make up the University of Toronto’s St. George Campus. Retrofitting them with efficient ground source heat pumps could make a big difference to their energy use.

Ron Saporta knows this well. As Chief Operating Officer, Property Services & Sustainability at the University of Toronto, he is overseeing the construction of the largest urban geoexchange system in Canada.

“This project represents the beginning of our transition to a climate positive future,” says Saporta. “It serves as a demonstration project for our city, to show how you can start to decarbonize not only new buildings, but even the most historic ones.”

Over the past two years, construction teams have drilled more than 370 wells underneath Front Campus, in the middle of King’s College Circle. Each one of them contains a U-shaped pipe that reaches a depth of 250 m, about half the height of the CN Tower. The total length of piping works out to 185 km, more than enough to stretch from Toronto to Buffalo, N.Y.

Eventually, this closed-loop piping system will be filled with a mixture of glycol and water, and connected through a new set of heat pumps to U of T’s existing building heating and cooling systems. By reducing the load on these systems, it is estimated that the new geoexchange system will prevent the equivalent of 15,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year from reaching the atmosphere.

The installation also offers a tremendous learning opportunity for engineering students, in the form of a new subterranean classroom.

“We’ve designed the mechanical room in such a way that we can actually host lectures in there,” says Saporta. “We’re also planning to colour-code the pipes so it will be easier to understand which one does what. In the future, engineering students won’t just read about geoexchange in textbooks, they’ll be able to physically see how it works.”

Saporta adds that although it is the largest of its type, the new geoexchange system is by no means the only one at U of T. Similar systems are already in place under the Environmental Science and Chemistry Building at UTSC and the Instructional Centre at UTM, and another one is under construction beneath what will be the new Varsity Blues soccer pitch.

Wallace knows that Hooper would approve of both the large-scale application of heat pumps and the chance to train a new generation of engineers in the technology.

“He was a wonderfully gracious man,” says Wallace. “Just so welcoming, so helpful and eternally optimistic. He’d be really pleased about what all this represents for the future.”

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on January 26, 2022 by Tyler Irving