February 6, 2018 – At the Olympics, being a tenth of a fraction slower to react can be the difference between winning a medal and missing the podium. Grad student Amol Rao (MIE MEng candidate) is making sure Team Canada has an extra edge.

“Our main goal is to help people sleep, something that is especially important for elite athletes,” says Rao.

Rao is the co-founder of Somnitude, a startup that develops special glasses that help people get the rest they need to perform their best. Their technology filters out a blue wavelength emitted by phones, tablets and laptops — devices most people habitually check right before bed — that disrupts circadian rhythms and has an adverse effect on natural sleep patterns. By wearing the glasses two to three hours before bed, users can mitigate the effects of blue light and get a better sleep.

“Sleep affects so many ways an athlete can perform,” says Rao. “Lack of sleep affects mood, ability to focus, physical recovery time, response and reaction times, as well as memory consolation and learning.”

Rao’s company is working with the director of sports science at Freestyle Canada, a Calgary-based program training freestyle skiers for the Olympics. Somnitude shipped glasses to 30 of their athletes a month before the games.

He hopes that by wearing the glasses and promoting better sleep, Team Canada’s freestyle skiers will focus better, train better and improve their times and performance. “We hope it helps them get that extra boost, that extra fraction of a second to win a medal,” says Rao.

And although top-tier athletes are used to travelling and competing around the world, Rao points out that it would also be beneficial for athletes to arrive at their destination without feeling jetlagged — especially with the time difference between South Korea and Canada ranging from 12.5 hours in Newfoundland to 17 hours in British Columbia.

In January, the company launched Chronoshift, a mobile app to help ease jetlag. “What an athlete could do is put in where they’re leaving from, where they are going to — in this case, South Korea —  and in the days before their travel, they would get suggestions on how they can shift their schedule, using light, our glasses, waking and sleeping times, to align with the sleep schedule of South Korea,” says Rao.

“They get to their destination without experiencing jetlag. They’re ready to train, they’re ready to win.”

When the Winter Olympics begin next week, Rao will be paying extra attention to Team Canada’s freestyle ski team. If the athletes find the glasses helpful during the competition, Rao plans to step up his partnership with Freestyle Canada. “Maybe in a few years, we can extend our partnerships and help athletes in the Summer Olympics, too,” says Rao.

February 6, 2018 – MIE Professors Andreas Mandelis, David Steinman and Yu Sun are among nine U of T researchers sharing almost $820,000 in funding this year from the Connaught Innovation Award, aimed at accelerating the development of promising technologies and promoting knowledge transfer arising from the university.

The projects awarded were:

– Andreas Mandelis for  “Development of dynamic lock-in carrierography (LIC) imaging technology as a quality control tool for the electronics wafer process cleaning industry.”

– David Steinman for “A real-time, dynamic ultrasound simulator incorporating tissue motion and deformation.”

– Yu Sun for “A novel system for non-invasive selection of single spermatozoa with high DNA integrity for clinical in vitro fertilization (IVF).”

“We’d like to congratulate the recipients of this year’s Connaught Innovation Award. The Connaught Fund continues to support cutting-edge research at the University of Toronto,” said Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president of research and innovation. “The range of research and innovation activities receiving support is incredible, from new treatments for multiple sclerosis to testing ways to automatically assess dementia from speech, and it showcases the breadth and depth of research at the university.”

The internal award is made possible through the Connaught Fund, the largest internal university research-funding program in Canada. Since its creation in 1972 from the sale of the Connaught Laboratories, which produced vaccines, antitoxins and insulin after its discovery by U of T researchers Frederick Banting and Charles Best, the Connaught Fund has awarded more than $160 million to U of T scholars.

 

February 2, 2018 – For the last three years, Professor Amy Bilton (MIE) has brought teams of engineering students to Nicaragua to work with local communities on projects aimed at improving crop irrigation. Now, with the help of external partners, she aims to offer this international experience to even more students.

“I think there are a lot of students who have an interest in projects with a global dimension,” says Bilton, who is the associate director of the Centre for Global Engineering (CGEN). “I certainly did when I was a student, which is part of the reason I do what I do today.”

The Nicaragua project came about organically, after Bilton was contacted by the external Winds of Change initiative. The team worked closely with Seeds of Learning, an NGO with a strong presence in Latin America, as well as the local community of Pedro Arauz. With this work gaining traction, other groups are starting to get in touch as well.

Learn more about the Winds of Change project

“International development companies and NGOs have a lot of technical challenges, but they don’t necessarily have a lot of technical staff,” says Bilton. “Partnering with engineering schools like ours is one way for them to address technical issues.”

In addition to the ongoing partnership in Nicaragua, Bilton and her students teams are working with World Vision on two projects in Kenya, including developing a power system for a small, mobile classroom. Both the Kenya and Nicaragua projects are part of MIE 490: Capstone Design, a course taken by fourth-year students in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering.

Similar projects are incorporated into graduate-level courses. This year, through a partnership with the Public Health Foundation of India, selected teams of students in JCR1000Y: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Addressing Global Challenges travelled to India to meet with stakeholders and organizations related to a project on food security.

Through CGEN, and with the support of the Dean’s Strategic Fund, Bilton is spearheading a drive to expand international partnerships for such courses. Potential collaborators include Asheshi University in Ghana, ACF Canada in Guatemala, and Global Medic in the Philippines.

“It’s definitely been easy to be able to get people interested, both from the partner side and the student side,” she says. “Many organizations already have a challenge they’re thinking about. Having our students collaborate with the organizations to develop a solution gives them the opportunity to put themselves in that context, to interact with people who are dealing with these challenges every day. You learn so much more than you would from a textbook.”

CGEN is one of the many multidisciplinary institutes that will soon have a new home in the forthcoming Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship. Learn more about the building.

February 2, 2018 – In October, Ashley McIlvena (MechE 1T7 + PEY) boarded a plane for her first-ever trip to China. Along with her teammates — Milan Yang, Alice Wolfe and Jelica Bornath (all MechE 1T7 + PEY) — McIlvena met up with a team of engineering students from Beihang University in Beijing, with whom they had been collaborating for the last three months.

“Most of our team had never even been anywhere in Asia before so it was a very new experience for us,” says McIlvena.

The trip was part of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering’s international capstone course, in which teams of students from U of T Engineering and its partner universities — which this year include Beihang University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Tsinghua University — work collaboratively across continents and cultures on industry-sponsored engineering projects.

McIlvena and her collaborators are designing a pod for a Hyperloop, a concept introduced by Tesla CEO Elon Musk in 2013. Hyperloops are essentially high-speed trains operating in a tube from which air has been partially evacuated, enabling speeds of up to 1,200 kilometres per hour. At that pace, the train travel time from Toronto to Montreal would be reduced from the current average of approximately 5 hours down to 30 minutes.

Since September, the two teams have been collaborating online, using Skype and other tools to exchange ideas. But McIlvena says that nothing compares to a face-to-face meeting.

“It was extremely beneficial for us to collaborate in China,” she says. “Our project is primarily focusing on the aerodynamics and structure of the pod which will be propelled inside the tube. It was very helpful to hear input from the Beihang University students, since their whole institution is focused on aerospace engineering.”

In total, four U of T Engineering teams totaling 16 students went to China this year, supervised by Professor Kamran Behdinan (MIE). Though the trip lasted only four days, the students were still able to fit in some sightseeing.

“The highlight was probably seeing Summer Palace and its gardens from the Qing dynasty,” says McIlvena. She is already looking forward to hosting the students from China at U of T when they meet again to present their final design in February. “Since they’re coming in the winter they were really excited to try skiing. We may also take them to Niagara Falls and some cool spots around Toronto.”

Behdinan says that the international capstone course provides valuable experiences for students on both ends of the partnership.

“We live in a global marketplace where companies around the world are competing for top talent,” he says. “When our students get the chance to work in another country and experience another culture, and those students get a chance to come here, they develop a sense of global fluency that will serve them well, whatever path they choose after graduation.”

This story was originally posted on U of T Engineering News.

January 18, 2018 – Noureddin Chahrour’s successful 2015 appearance on CBC’s Dragon’s Den was a key turning point for his research-based startup Adrenalease Posture Apparel – but not in the way you might think.

Chahrour, a University of Toronto alumnus, agreed on-air to hand over 30 per cent of Adrenalease, which makes posture-enhancing garments, in exchange for $90,000 from three of the program’s panel members.

However, he later backed out of the deal after advisers at the Impact Centre, one of nine U of T entrepreneurship hubs, suggested he was selling himself short.

“They said I would be crazy to give up that kind of equity,” says Chahrour, who received a bachelor’s degree with honours in kinesiology two years ago.

“That’s honestly not a lot of money. If you want to raise a real round [of funding], you’re looking at $500,000-plus.”

Fast forward two years and Chahrour is not only still in business, he’s preparing to launch Adrenalease’s latest product – a posture-enhancing sports bra – with the help of a Kickstarter campaign and MIE engineers.

Adrenalease’s sports bra, like its previous T-shirt and tank top, is equipped with adjustable, Velcro straps that pull a user’s shoulders back into an upright position, helping promote muscle memory and better posture. The design is based on research that shows better posture can help reduce stress and pain in the shoulder and neck area.

A successful launch of the sports bra promises to dramatically broaden the potential market for Adrenalease. But Chahrour and his team aren’t planning to stop there. Bolstered by a $45,000 grant, they’re now working with Professor Hani Naguib‘s lab to investigate the use of a smart plastic, which could conceivably allow future Adrenalease users to adjust the tension in their tops with a touch of a smartphone.

This story originally appeared in U of T News.

January 12, 2018 – Professor Jason Bazylak (MIE) remembers what it was like to be an Indigenous student arriving at university to study engineering.

“My first year was particularly rough on me,” he recalls.

He struggled to keep up academically. He had good grades in high school but the demands of his engineering program were something else entirely.

Most of all, he and his brother were the first in his family to attend university and there were few supports or mentors to help him. “I didn’t know any engineers, not a single one,” he says.

Today Bazylak, a member of the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan, is an associate professor, teaching stream, in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and a recipient of the Hart Teaching Innovation Professorship for his research on identifying barriers for Indigenous students entering the field.

Along with Wendy Mortimer, director of Engineering Pathways and Indigenous Partnerships, Bazylak is a co-chair of the Eagles’ Longhouse, a new committee working on a blueprint to improve U of T Engineering’s relationship with Indigenous peoples. The name draws on the symbols of both the majestic bird messenger of wisdom and the place of community and learning.

“We want to change the culture of engineering to be welcoming of Indigenous faculty, staff and students,” says Bazylak.

The Eagles’ Longhouse was formed in response to U of T’s Truth and Reconciliation steering committee, which early last year year released a final report with 34 calls to action for the university. Dean Cristina Amon of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering took up the charge and tasked key staff and faculty members including Bazylak — her adviser on Indigenous initiatives — with creating a “Blueprint to Action,” with ideas on how U of T Engineering can address the calls to action.

The Eagles’ Longhouse plans to deliver that blueprint early this year.

The committee will focus on four key areas: adding Indigenous spaces, including more Indigenous curriculum, hiring more Indigenous faculty and staff, and improving access for Indigenous students. The committee is made up of Indigenous Elders, faculty members and staff. Oneida Nation Elder Kim Running Bear McDougall is on the committee, as is Erin Bobicki (MSE, ChemE) assistant professor in the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry, and Joan DaCosta, manager, Director’s Office, University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies.

Bazylak says that coming up with effective solutions is not clearcut and that the Eagles’ Longhouse is being careful to keep in mind the great diversity in Indigenous experiences and perspectives. “There’s the Métis student raised on Bloor Street in Toronto, there is the First Nations student who grew up in a remote reserve, there is the Inuit student who grew up north of the Arctic Circle,” he says. “To say we can come up with one method that’s going to support all these Indigenous people in their journey to come to U of T is not feasible.”

Bazylak says Engineering needs a plan that can be flexible enough to meet the individual and unique needs of each Indigenous student.

The Eagles’ Longhouse has smaller, specialized working groups who are consulting with external experts and Indigenous partners to come up with ideas for how to better address such diverse student needs, from not having all the required courses to coming from a remote location and being a mature student with a family.

Opening up and expanding opportunities for Indigenous students to enter engineering is something Bazylak says is essential to expanding the field and creating solutions to contemporary problems facing Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in Canada and beyond. “For me, being an engineer is about community building,” he says.

This story originally appeared on U of T News.

January 3, 2018 – In late 2016, a ghost truck rumbled down a Colorado highway carrying 50,000 cans of Budweiser beer.

The cab of the truck was empty but the truck hewed to the dotted highway lines with eerie precision. If it alarmed any passing motorists, no one piped up about it and, to be fair, anyone with sharp vision would’ve spotted a man crouched in the back, keeping an eye on things.

The driverless truck is just one instance of the supernatural normalcy we can expect as artificial intelligence invades everyday life.

AI — perhaps more accurately called machine learning — is already doing a lot more than just publicity stunts. If you’ve noticed that voice recognition and real-time translation have gotten a lot better recently, you can thank the Canadians who developed the Deep Learning techniques powering them.

The management consulting firm McKinsey & Company estimates that automation brought about by AI could boost productivity more than the steam engine did in the 19th century and the IT revolution did in the 1990s.

…

Goldie Nejat, the director of the Institute for Robotics and Mechatronics at the University of Toronto, said it’s likely that “fetch and carry” helper robots are the next stage. For elderly people in the early stages of cognitive impairment it could allow them to live in their homes longer.

A robot could nudge the person to have dinner at 6 p.m., take their pills or look through a recipe book with them to help get motivated. That would leave the more compassionate — or uniquely human — duties to healthcare workers and free them from the repetitive jobs.

Read the full article here.

December 20, 2017 – As 2017 winds down and U of T students get a much-deserved holiday hiatus from their studies, there are a number of cool courses awaiting them when class starts up again. Specialized non-technical courses, known as APS courses, are administrated by U of T Engineering and cover many different – and important – areas of interests for engineering students.

Whether a student wants to get inventive, get a better understanding of how engineering can solve global challenges, or develop leadership and team-building skills, U of T Engineering has it covered.

Here are just a few cool APS courses to look into for Winter 2018:

APS 1041: Inventrepreneurship (Invention + Entrepreneruship)

 

In APS 1041, Professor Steve Mann (ECE), prolific inventor and founder of the field of wearable computing, wants to be your inventor-mentor.

“There is a lot of innovation that comes from entrepreneurship, it’s a common blend. But what I’m bringing is a blend of invention and entrepreneurship,” said Professor Mann who will teach alongside a team of world-class collaborators and entrepreneurs.

Open to graduate students, Professor Mann hopes to instill the art and science of invention and entrepreneurship, with the final deliverable of the course being a working prototype and patent application relating to a new invention in wearable computing, phenomenal augmented reality, or sensory augmentation.

“The intention is to bring these inventions forward to market,” said Professor Mann. “My goal here is to mentor students to become inventors and take something – a product that matters – into the world.”

 

APS 343: Engineering Leadership

Taught through the Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering (ILead), APS 343 gives students a running start for when they graduate and join organizations of engineers working together towards a common goal.

“Leadership skills continue to be sought after in industry and have become a large differentiator in hiring,” said Professor Alison Olechowski (MIE, ILead), who will be co-teaching a second section of the course with Professor Doug Reeve (ChemE, ILead), while Professor Patricia Sheridan will teach the first section.

Throughout the course, students work in teams with peers from the different engineering disciplines, with much of the learning taking place through discussion, activities and reflection. The course includes a project where students are paired with a CEO of an engineering-intensive organization to interview.

“This is an active course – it is not the kind of course where you can just show up, copy the notes, and do well,” added Professor Sheridan. “The skills students develop in this course around understanding others, building relationships, and influencing change, give them the foundation to develop a meaningful understanding of the context of their work.”

 

APS 530S: Appropriate Technology and Design for Global Development

 

Open to undergraduate and graduate students, APS 530S is taught by Professor Amy Bilton (MIE) and focuses on designing technology to aid in global development.

“Nearly 10 per cent of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day. Due to the large market and the potential impact, engineering in the area of global development is a growing area,” said Professor Bilton. “This course will provide students a chance to get involved.”

Over the years, the course has been highly reviewed because of its uniqueness and the kinds of skills students develop, blending the technical content with social content. Students get to explore aspects of social, cultural, economic, environmental and political aspects important for design, and then apply this in a design project focused on different development challenges.

By the end of the course, students would have a fully developed prototype. Previous student teams have taken their projects forward with grants through Grand Challenges Canada and worked with World Vision Canada towards field evaluation of their concepts.

December 14, 2017 – Researchers from MIE and ECE are working collaboratively to design the automotive battery of the future.

The four-year multidisciplinary research project is bringing together Professor Olivier Trescases (ECE), a power electronics expert; Dean Cristina Amon (MIE), a thermal management expert; and Havelaar Canada, a Toronto-based electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer behind the world’s first all-electric pickup truck.

The collaboration will address several key hurdles that currently limit the widespread manufacturing of EVs. Namely, the high cost and limited performance of today’s conservatively-designed lithium battery packs, which ultimately dictate the EV driving range and longevity.

The team aims to design a next-generation battery pack that is lower in cost, is more reliable, safer and lasts longer. A vital part in accomplishing this is by improving the thermal management of batteries. That is where the MIE expertise comes in.

The operating temperature of a lithium battery cell strongly influences its performance and lifespan. High temperatures improve performance but degrade the battery, while low temperatures increase the internal resistance of the battery and lower its capacity.

“Thermal management in batteries is crucial,” said postdoctoral fellow Carlos Da Silva (MIE PhD 1T6). “Whether it’s charging or discharging, the battery heats up. Those temperatures can reach very high, and if we don’t control the temperature, it can be catastrophic for the EV operation,” said Da Silva.

Researchers from MIE, under the supervision of Professor Amon, are developing a cooling system that will tightly control thermal performance, not only to keep the battery temperature within a safe range but to extend the lifespan of the battery.

This project is one of two – conducted under the umbrella of the University of Toronto Electric Vehicle Centre (UTEV) – to secure a $9 million investment through The Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council (NSERC)’s Collaborative Research and Development Grants awards and Havelaar Canada’s industry contributions.

“We are grateful to have the support of NSERC and Havelaar Canada in providing us with this generous funding,” said Dean Amon. “This investment, and partnership with UTEV, will enable us to address pressing sustainability challenges within the automotive industry, and to further research and development of the electric vehicles of the future.”

Developing the next generation of EV battery packs is already a significant engineering challenge, but the team is also looking to take sustainable innovation even further.

“We want to design battery modules that can be recycled after their capacity is no longer suitable to operate in an EV,” said Da Silva. “We call it the ‘Second Life’ concept, where these batteries will not only be useful for EVs, but that can be recycled to work for stationary applications – such as an energy storage system for houses.”

The researchers have already built two battery module prototypes and plan to have a final version of their first-generation battery pack by early next year. They hope to test this battery pack in Havelaar’s electric pickup truck, before being commercialized.

In order to get there, Da Silva says that the multidisciplinary collaboration between ECE and MIE has been crucial. “This type of project requires very sophisticated and complex knowledge on the electrical side; however this project cannot be done without the mechanical and thermal expertise that we bring.”

December 14, 2017 – The new Paramount Pictures film Downsizing stars Hollywood A-list actors Matt Damon, Kristen Wiig and Christoph Waltz. But U of T Engineering students who look closely at the film’s trailer may notice some other familiar faces: Professors Javad Mostaghimi (MIE) and Mark Kortschot (ChemE) both appear as extras in the movie.

U of T Engineering asked the two professors about their Hollywood debut; here’s what MIE’s resident star, Professor Mostaghimi had to say:

How did this come about?

I responded to the open call and was invited to go to the casting studio. We got to meet director Alexander Payne, which was a big honour for me, as he is a three-time Oscar winner. I guess it went well, because we were then invited to participate.

What was the shoot like?

It took two days. We had to be there by 6 a.m. and we finished around 6 p.m. It was done in the auditorium of beautiful Agha Khan Museum, here in Toronto.

When you first saw the trailer, what was your reaction in being so prominently featured as an extra?

I was contacted by Mark that I have been prominently shown in the trailer. He sent me the link. Obviously I was happy to see it as I did not expect to be in the trailer.

What has been the reaction from your students and colleagues?

Many of my MIE230 students came to me asking me if I am the person in the trailer. They were happy to know that I was. In my last lecture, I showed a clip of the trailer for those who did not know about it. It was a lot of fun.

What are your thoughts on the premise of the movie? As an engineer, do you watch science fiction movies a bit differently?

The premise of shrinking living beings is obviously not realistic. However, the movie brings to our attention yet again the problem of accumulation of waste and that we should do something about it!

Are you going to see the film?

The Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering is planning to organize a visit to the theater in January. I am also going to see it with my family during the holidays.

Do you see a future in Hollywood?

It is not a question of planning a future career in Hollywood — I am already there!

Read the full article here.