Peter Wen (Year 4 MechE) shows off the Telehex, the multipurpose hex-key tool he designed and launched through The Entrepreneurship Hatchery. Wen says he spent over a thousand hours developing his first prototypes — something that will be much easier for students working in the forthcoming Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship. (Credit: Marit Mitchell)

December 14, 2017 – Peter Wen (Year 4 MechE) does his best problem solving when he gets in a room with other entrepreneurs.

Wen launched his company, TeleHex, out of The Entrepreneurship Hatchery in 2015. After running a successful Kickstarter campaign that almost doubled its target, it was time for Wen and his co-founder Rishi Persad to start fabricating and fulfilling orders of their unique telescoping hex-key tool.

But when they received their second shipment of TeleHex parts from the manufacturer, the quality wasn’t up to Wen’s standards. Disappointed with the vendor but unsure what to do, he consulted his fellow founders at a student entrepreneurship pitch competition. Many had experienced something similar, and by the end of the day he had a promising recommendation for a new provider.

“It’s been a recurring theme for me,” says Wen. “The most important business troubleshooting sessions have happened face-to-face, with likeminded people who are experiencing many of the same things I am.”

The Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CEIE), U of T Engineering’s newest building, is designed to spark organic collaborations like these. When it opens in April 2018, it will be a new home for the Hatchery, providing space for aspiring entrepreneurs to meet, design and fabricate their first prototypes — enabling students to move from idea to product more rapidly.

Wen had to fabricate his first TeleHex prototypes in the machine shop of the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering — he estimates he spent upwards of a thousand hours there. Now, students will have direct access to laser cutters, state-of-the-art 3D printers and a full suite of tools in the CEIE. “If they say it takes 10,000 hours to become expert at something, I’m almost an expert on the lathe,” says Wen. “Having tools and equipment right there will be a game-changer… I’m envious of the next generation.”

Read the full article.

December 11, 2017 – The television show 30 Rock once joked Toronto is “just like New York but without all the stuff.” But the same can’t easily be said when comparing the two cities’ startup scenes.

At least, that was what Huda Idrees (IndE 1T2 + PEY) took away from her recent visit to New York City as part of Toronto Mayor John Tory’s two-day trade mission to promote the idea of a cross-border tech corridor to rival Silicon Valley.

Idrees, founder and CEO of health records startup Dot Health, says many seemed shocked to learn Toronto added more tech jobs between 2015 and 2016 than New York City and Silicon Valley combined.

“It was quite a surprise for most of the people there,” says Idrees, a U of T engineering grad who worked at several local startups before launching her own.

“That’s because, to them, Toronto probably feels like, ‘Yeah, it probably has a tech sector, but it’s probably not very big.”

In reality, Toronto has painstakingly built an expansive innovation ecosystem in recent years – including the one built around U of T, local hospitals and the neighbouring MaRS Discovery District – and is now enjoying a tech boom that’s attracting some of the world’s biggest companies.

The New York trade mission, which included more than a dozen representatives from local startups, was part of Tory’s effort to further capitalize on the city’s momentum.

Tory’s trip included a visit to Sidewalk Labs, the Google affiliate that recently announced it will bebuilding a “smart city” on Toronto’s waterfront.

The delegation also spent time at Grand Central Tech, an innovation hub in the heart of Manhattan, where the Toronto entrepreneurs gave presentations on their startups.

Idrees spoke about Dot Health’s efforts to give Canadian’s easy access to their medical histories. The event’s attendees also heard from U of T alumnus Allen Lau, who is the co-founder and CEO of online story-telling platform Wattpad, Karl Martin, the founder and CEO of Nymi, which makes a wearable device that uses your heartbeat as a biometric identifier, and Farhan Thawar, who is a co-founder of corporate video message firm Helpful.com.

There were also representatives from startups spun out of Toronto’s – and U of T’s – fast-growing artificial intelligence, or AI, scene, a field that’s expected to revolutionize everything from transporation to health care.

“We had a lot of artificial intelligence visibility, which is good because we have such a deep talent pool, compared to some of the other ecosystems,” Idrees says.

“Instead of officials getting up there and just saying, ‘Toronto is cool.’ It was getting founders who work and run businesses to get up there and talk about it. It was different and I found it really powerful.”

Read the full article.

December 6, 2017 – Artificial intelligence (AI) will be deployed as part of a collaboration involving the University of Toronto and IIT-Bombay to make Pune a truly smart city.

This will be among the first of the projects to be tackled under a recent memorandum of understanding signed by the Pune Smart City Development Corporation Ltd, IIT-Bombay and University of Toronto (UofT).

Four areas have been identified for the long-term partnership — affordable housing, rural immigrants arriving in large numbers in Pune, cyber security and digital systems interoperability.

The objective, according to a the statement from the university, is to “focus on finding solutions to urban problems by tapping into technology-based ‘smart solutions’ that aim not only to improve economic growth for the city of approximately six million but also to create a more sustainable and resilient region”.

That project is being headed by Mark Fox, distinguished professor of urban systems engineering at the university, and will use AI to standardise the sheer volume of data generated by the city. “The development of data standards could help Pune and other Indian cities improve the analysis, design and delivery of city services.”

In an interview at his office in Toronto, Fox, who has been in the AI field since 1974, said a virtual “Tower of Babel” currently exists in terms of how data related to urban services is available. Creating “knowledge representation” that is “logical” will help to better “analyse and optimise” how the public is served, he added

“These definitions are machine understandable and we can build intelligent systems that use those definitions to do analysis,” he said.

Read the full article.

December 6, 2017 – Every year on Dec. 6, people across the country remember the victims of École Polytechnique shooting and raise awareness about gender-based violence. At U of T, events are taking place across all three campuses for the National Day of Remembrance & Action on Violence Against Women.

On Dec. 6, 1989, an armed man entered the École Polytechnique in Montreal. He shot 28 people, killing 14 women, before turning the gun on himself. The shooter proclaimed his hatred for feminists, targeting female engineering students for pursuing a career he believed should be occupied exclusively by men.

The killer failed to scare women out of the sciences. This year, for example, a record number of female students enrolled in U of T’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

For the past two years, women have made up 40 per cent of first-year engineers at U of T – the highest proportion in Canada. The number of female engineering faculty members has also doubled in the past decade.

U of T Engineering students Elizabeth White (Year 4 ChemE) and Julia Filiplic (Year 4 MechE) say they are fortunate to have families who encouraged them to pursue a career about which they were passionate.

“I was really lucky in a sense that no one told me I couldn’t do it,” says White.

But both students say they have female friends and classmates who were discouraged by their families from studying engineering or male-dominated engineering disciplines.

In class, Filiplic says some of her male classmates would dismiss her ideas while White has overheard male students calling a female student “bossy.”

“Some people are afraid of change and are afraid of having new perspectives and being told that their idea of something is maybe a little bit outdated,” says Filiplic. “To be able to go forward and know you’re changing things and you have the support of other women and other people – it’s exciting and it’s better when you know you can do it safely.”

White and a group of engineering students are creating a monument to honour victims of violence against women – this year focusing on missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people. The structure will be on display on King’s College Circle on Dec. 6.

November 29, 2017 – A build-it-yourself robot kit, a revolutionary pressure cooker and a first-of-its-kind universal hex key are just a few of the items — all designed by U of T Engineering alumni and students — that we feel should be on everyone’s holiday shopping list. Here are two from MIE that made this year’s 2017 Holiday Gift Guide.

Kamigami Robots

Shortly after Andrew Gillies (MechE 0T7) graduated with a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley, he co-founded Dash Robotics, Inc. with the mission of creating affordable, educational robots designed to inspire students to get involved in robotics and engineering. The company’s six-legged Kamigami Robots are easy to fold and snap together from flat sheets into insect-like creations — no tools required. The free companion smartphone app enables users to remotely control their robot, battle with friends, play interactive games and more. They’re perfect for the budding maker (or future engineer) on your list.

TeleHex Allen Key Set

Peter Wen (Year 4 MechE) has been a serious cyclist for many years and his company, TeleHex, aims to make bike repair easier — not just for pros like himself, but for newbies as well. Wen has designed a unique telescoping tool that automatically adjusts to fit the metric bolt sockets on most bikes. The device is half the weight and volume of products currently on the market. And it’s not just for bikes — rumour has it that the TeleHex hex key comes in handy when putting together Ikea furniture.

Read the full list here.

November 22, 2017 – Professor Goldie Nejat was recently featured in a news article focusing on eldercare by NBC News. Casper, a robot designed to work with institutionalized patients suffering from dementia, was developed in Professor Nejat’s Autonomous Systems and Biomechatronics Laboratory.

“There’s been some research which suggests that you can delay the onset or progression of dementia through repeated cognitive stimulation and social engagement,” Nejat says. “So we thought, can you use a robot to increase the amount of stimulation these people get?”

How does Casper do it all? The robot features numerous sensors, including laser scanners that let it navigate its environment and avoid obstacles as well as 3D optical scanners that recognize everything from bingo cards to kitchen utensils. It also has microphones that can decode human speech even in noisy environments.

But what makes Casper really special is its ability to make complex decisions and to learn based on the reactions it elicits in the sometimes severely compromised humans with whom it interacts. The key is the robot’s “brain,” a microchip that’s programmed to observe patients’ speech, facial expressions, and body language and quantify their emotional states.

“To deal with these type of patients, it’s really important that the robot is emotionally sensitive to some degree,” Nejat says. “These patients can have good days and bad days so the robot has to be aware that now may not be the right time, and to try again on a different day.”

Read the full article on NBC News.

November 21, 2017 – Research-industry partnership to premiere first products on December 7 at Baycrest Hospital in Toronto

A patient at an Ontario Long Term care facility uses Abby, an interactive activity centre designed by industry partner Ambient Activity Technologies working with Professor Mark Chignell, Postdoc Andrea Wilkinson, and other researchers at the Interactive Media Laboratory (Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering) . (Credit: Ambient Activity Technologies)

More than half a million Canadians live with dementia — and that number is expected to almost double in the next 15 years.

Dementia is a degenerative disease described by symptoms including memory loss and difficulties with thinking, problem-solving or language. Some patients also develop mood changes and problem behaviours such as agitation, aggressiveness and delusions. Professor Mark Chignell (IndE) is applying his expertise in industrial engineering to design a solution that provides people in long-term care facilities an opportunity for mental and physical activity that prevents and reduces these behaviours.

“There’s a huge need out there,” says Chignell. “I think that people in long-term care are extremely bored and feel like they have no sense of purpose. I hope this gives them a sense of purpose, because it’s the right thing to do.”

The challenge is personal for Chignell: he has seen firsthand how a cognitive illness and living in long-term care can take away a person’s autonomy. “I had an older sister who was diagnosed with schizophrenia in her late teens. Toward the end of her life, she spent the last few years in long-term care even though she was relatively young. I got to see that even in a caring and well-run home, the residents had few opportunities to initiate activity.”

Chignell partnered with the company Ambient Activity Technologies (AAT) to develop their first product, called Abby. Abby is a large wall-mounted activity station that integrates a screen with wheels, switches and textures. The platform is designed to adapt to a range of puzzles, games and challenges designed to accommodate and stimulate people’s remaining cognitive abilities, prompting them to touch, listen, and respond.

To study its effectiveness, Abby was placed in six Ontario long-term care homes, where results were very positive — after one month of use, it significantly reduced problem behaviours and improved quality of life for residents. “One gentleman used it for hours at a time,” says Chignell.

Watch a video of residents in long-term care engaging with Abby

He notes that one of the problems in long-term care homes is that therapeutic recreationists, who are outnumbered by patients at a ratio of 1 to 20 on average, can only spend a limited time working one-on-one with residents. For those with dementia, the lack of stimulation in their environment then leads to confusion and anxiousness — Abby provides a much-needed outlet that residents can use independently.

“Many of the emotional parts of the brain, and the parts that respond to rewards, are working just fine, so we should focus on what remains,” says Chignell. “Even if they can’t read, or have trouble talking, there are still ways to engage people and to give them meaningful activities that they can perform.”

Chignell and his research team are also developing a second unit, the Centivizer. While Abby is targeted at people with late stage dementia, the Centivizer system is more interactive, featuring reward-focused games and levers. The team designed it as a resource for aging in place and early stage dementia, helping the elderly maintain physical and cognitive functioning. “There’s a whack-a-mole game, which works as a form of cognitive assessment. There’s Simon Says, flashing lights and buttons that play music. There’s a lever for a slot machine game…the idea is to get people moving and thinking, to engage them cognitively through these activities.”

Both units will be showcased on December 7 at the The Centre for Aging & Brain Health innovation at Baycrest Hospital, the official Abby product launch hosted by Chignell and AAT. Chignell and Wilkinson will discuss the research behind Abby and Centivizer with the wider healthcare community with attendees, including frontline healthcare workers, such as therapeutic recreationists, representatives from the long-term care industry, and local health integration networks.

In the near future, Chignell plans to commercialize the Centivizer system. “I want to have people using these. These targeted products with sensory-motor interactions will make a positive difference.”

November 20, 2017 – Professor David Sinton of the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society. This honour recognizes his “distinguished contributions to the field of mechanical engineering, particularly in developing microfluidic methods for applications in energy and the environment.”

Fluids play a major role in global energy and its associated environmental implications. Sinton and his team have shown that microfluidics —a set of tools and techniques aimed at controlling and manipulating fluids on the sub-millimetre scale — has much to contribute in this important field. His contributions address three main areas. The first is using microfluidics to screen optimal growing conditions for algae, photosynthetic organisms that can accumulate oil or other valuable bioproducts within their cells. The second is analyzing the properties and interactions of chemical additives, surfactants, solvents, industrial CO₂ streams and crude oil to improve the economic and environmental performance of current oil and gas operations. Finally, Sinton and his team are researching the capture and storage of CO₂, including its use in resource extraction, as well as the environmental impact of elevated CO₂ levels combined with local environmental stressors.

The impact of Sinton’s research is reflected in his many awards and accolades. In 2013 he received the University of Toronto’s McLean Award. In 2015 he was awarded an E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship from the Natural Sciences and Research Council of Canada – given to only six researchers nationwide per year. In 2016 he was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. Sinton has also been elected a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering, and the Engineering Institute of Canada.  In 2016 he co-founded the start-up company Interface Fluidics Ltd. to commercialize microfluidic screening technology that improves the economic and environmental performance of current energy operations.

“Professor David Sinton’s groundbreaking research in microfluidics for energy is providing us with innovative new tools for solving some of our most pressing energy-related challenges,” said Dean Cristina Amon. “On behalf of our Faculty, heartfelt congratulations on this richly-deserved recognition.”

Sinton joins 395 other AAAS members from around the world being inducted as Fellows in the latest round in recognition of their efforts toward advancing science applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished. The honour will be officially bestowed February 17, 2018 at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas.

November 14, 2017 – “The global fibrosis network” led by Professor Craig Simmons (MIE/IBBME), U of T Distinguished Professor of mechanobiology,  is one of five ambitious global research projects at the University of Toronto that will share $1.23 million this year from the Connaught Global Challenge Award.

The internal award, funded by the Connaught Fund, is designed to support new collaborations involving leading U of T researchers and students from several disciplines, along with innovators and thought leaders from other sectors. This year, external collaborators include multiple prestigious universities, Indigenous community health organizations, global corporations and justice-minded non-profits.

The Connaught funding will help these programs get off the ground and boost efforts to find external funding to further develop solutions to global challenges, as well as possibly create new research-oriented academic programs.

Fibrotic diseases, which affect multiple organs and can cause severe pain, affect 2.5 billion people worldwide and cost health-care systems an estimated $200 billion. World-leading scientists and clinicians at U of T and its affiliated hospitals have made significant strides in fibrosis research. They’ve now joined forces to share their findings to tackle fibrosis together. With the help of the Connaught funding, this local fibrosis network will go global to foster pioneering research and strengthen innovation and training capacity.
Simmons’ team includes fellow U of T scholars who specialize in matrix dynamics, public health economics, diabetes complications, as well as collaborators from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford, the University of Cincinnati, University of Bergen, Norway, The French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), University of Paris, and major global industrial partners to come.

Read more at U of T News

November 14, 2017 – University of Toronto Electric Vehicle Research Centre (UTEV) has secured a major investment to support collaborative research into next-generation electric vehicle (EV) technologies with its founding partner Havelaar Canada.

The Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council (NSERC)’s Collaborative Research and Development Grants awards and Havelaar Canada’s industry contributions total more than $9.1 million over four years for two projects, jointly led by Havelaar and Professors Olivier Trescases and Peter Lehn (both ECE). Trescases and Lehn also received support for their work from the University of Toronto’s Major Research Project Management fund.

“EVs hold enormous promise as an established, practical solution to move people sustainably while minimizing the need for new infrastructure,” said Trescases, who serves as UTEV’s director. “This support will further accelerate our progress toward lower-cost and more efficient vehicles that can integrate into the smart transportation networks of the future.”

The two CRD grants will support multidisciplinary projects that target disruptive technologies in both electric vehicles and associated charging infrastructure to make the next generation EVs more accessible, affordable and intelligent. UTEV brings together researchers from across U of T Engineering, including Professors Josh Taylor and Sean Hum (both ECE) and Dean Cristina Amon (MIE). The research scope also includes autonomous vehicles in collaboration with research teams at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies.

UTEV was launched in 2016 with five years of major infrastructure and project funding from Havelaar Canada. The partnership takes a holistic approach to corporate-university collaborations, including supporting talented engineering students, addressing global technical challenges and building a commercialization pipeline for academic research outcomes.

“We are really excited about this partnership,” said Tony Han, president of Havelaar Canada. “Not only we are creating one of the top centres that can become the face for Canadian EV innovation, we are also building a collaboration platform that will bring global resources together to advance EV technology.”

UTEV is currently expanding its  research laboratory with an additional state-of-the-art facility in the Faculty’s Engineering Annex building. Expected to open in 2018, the dedicated space will include power test infrastructure for battery management and power electronics prototype development.