LaShawn Murray (MIE PhD candidate) comes from a long line of engineers and educators — and though she grew up in Toronto and Oakville, she always felt connected with her family’s roots in the Caribbean and South America.

“My family taught me the importance of understanding my identity and being proud of who I am and the legacy of my community,” she says.

“I have been reminded that I am here to make a difference in the lives of others.”

That motivation led Murray toward the health sciences. She recently completed her master’s degree in health informatics at DePaul University in Chicago. It was there that she first became aware of the field of human factors engineering in healthcare.

“I took a course called System Design in Healthcare, taught by Professor Enid Montague,” she says.

“My research for the course examined unintentional acetaminophen errors and overdose in children through a system analysis of the role of parents and caregivers in the home administration of acetaminophen. This project demonstrated the interdisciplinary nature of human factors engineering.”

Murray is one of three 2023 recipients of the IBET Momentum Fellowships, along with fellow graduate students Raylene Mitchell (MIE PhD candidate) and Chantel Campbell (BME PhD candidate). Fellowship recipients receive financial support, mentorship, training and networking opportunities to foster a robust professional community.

For her PhD at U of T, she will once again be working with Professor Montague, who joined U of T’s Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering in 2022. Murray will also work with Professor Myrtede Alfred (MIE), as both professors work through an equity lens to understand disparities and improve safety and outcomes in marginalized populations both within Canadian and American contexts.

“My proposed doctoral research aims to explore the role of human factors engineering in advancing health equity for marginalized populations with an intentional focus on the health of Black communities,” she says.

“Specifically, I’ll be examining the role of automation in primary care. Automating certain types of clinical work can improve clinician work life and professional well-being, mitigating burnout. This in turn can improve access to quality care for patients.

“But in order to decide what to automate and how to go about it, we need to first understand whether historically and currently marginalized communities have equitable primary care experiences, and then design our systems accordingly.”

Murray says that she is proud to be a recipient of the IBET Momentum Fellowship.

“I am appreciative that the University recognizes the historic and systemic barriers faced by Black and Indigenous students,” she says.

“This fellowship affords me the opportunity to deepen my scholarship through mentorship opportunities with industry leaders and professors whose work focuses on artificial intelligence and human factors engineering.”

In addition to her scholarly work, Murray says that helping to nurture the next generation will be a key focus of hers over the next few years.

“Working within the community is part of my lived experience, and I expect to continue with this endeavor through mentorship with young students who will be able to see this as a pathway for the future,” she says.

“I’m hopeful that through this fellowship and my doctoral studies, I can encourage others who look like me to pursue opportunities within the intersection of STEM and academia.”

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on September 13, 2023 by Tyler Irving.

The rise of generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT is prompting many educators to reimagine the role of technology in the classroom.

 

At the University of Toronto, Susan McCahan, vice-provost, academic programs and vice-provost, innovations in undergraduate education, has been on the front lines of the response to this fast-evolving technology.

McCahan, a professor of mechanical and industrial engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, says the proliferation of generative AI tools presents both opportunities and challenges for higher education.

Her office is supporting projects on the applications of generative AI in teaching and learning and providing guidance to help instructors navigate this emerging technology.

She recently spoke to U of T News about the lessons that have been learned about the academic implications of generative AI and the big questions that still remain.

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What are some of the ways generative AI is impacting teaching and learning?

Large language models have significant implications for how we teach coding and writing because it will change the way people code and write – particularly when it comes to routine tasks.

A lot of the writing I do in a day isn’t deeply intellectual. It’s the kind of writing that LLMs do pretty well. However, it’s probably not going to write as well as me when I’m writing an academic paper, because of my knowledge and understanding of the field and my own unique perspective.

Right now, the technology is pretty good at writing at the level of a first-year or second-year student, but it’s not up to what would be expected of a student in their third or fourth year.

The biggest challenge is making sure students are still progressing to that third- or fourth-year level if they are taking shortcuts in their first years of university – or even high school or middle school.

People have compared this to a calculator, but I don’t think that’s the right analogy because a calculator is a very domain-specific tool and generative AI has much broader applications.

There was an existential crisis in math education in the 1980s when calculators capable of symbolic manipulation came along. Educators questioned if we should teach our students how to do differentials and integrals if these programs can solve those complex equations. Yet, we came through that, and we still teach students how to add and subtract, multiply and divide, do differentials and integrals. We also teach students how to use these symbolic manipulation programs in ways that allow them to go deeper than if they were to do it all by hand.

I think we will come to a point where people recognize when it is useful to use AI to help and when is it not going to be very helpful. Hopefully, we will arrive in a place where it allows people to advance through the basics faster and move on to more complex writing and coding.

Does U of T consider the use of generative AI tools to be cheating?

We expect students to complete individual assignments on their own. If an instructor decides to explicitly restrict the use of generative AI tools, then their use would be considered an “unauthorized aid” under the Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters. This is considered an academic offence and will be treated as such.

Some might ask why we don’t classify this as plagiarism. One of the biggest misconceptions that people have is that LLMs take what’s on the internet, mash up the text and ideas and repackage it as a compilation. However, that’s not how the technology works.

Tools like ChatGPT are trained on large amounts of online materials to identify patterns of speech and make predictions about words most likely to go together. If I say, “one, two, three,” it knows that “four” probably comes next. It knows “four” is a noun, but it doesn’t associate the concept with a square or the horsemen of the apocalypse.

When you enter a prompt into ChatGPT, it’s not combing through information to produce sentences or paragraphs or ideas – it’s making word-by-word predictions that imitate patterns of speech around a subject. That’s why we don’t treat the use of these tools as plagiarism; we treat it as an unauthorized aid.

What resources are available to help instructors adapt to this emerging technology? Are there any best practices they should follow?

We’ve put together an FAQ addressing some of the considerations around generative AI, while providing instructors with resources to help them communicate what technology is – or isn’t – allowed in their courses.

I think we’re in a moment when it’s really important for faculty to be really clear on their syllabi about whether they explicitly allow it or explicitly don’t. If it is permitted, it should be clear how AI tools can be used, for what assignments and to what degree, and if students must explain, document or cite what tools they use and how.

This is new, and both faculty and students are not altogether clear if this will be the next Wikipedia of the world – where everyone uses it, but no one talks about it anymore. Or if it should never be used because it’s just unreliable.

What are some other considerations around the use of generative AI in an academic context?

LLMs often get things wrong – and very confidently wrong. For example, back in January, I asked ChatGPT for my biography. It told me that I had worked at the University of British Columbia and I was a leading researcher in biomedical engineering – things that seem believable, but are factually untrue. The technology has improved since then, but LLMs still get things wrong in ways that are not immediately apparent or obvious. These are called “hallucinations,” and they can be so subtle that they’re hard to detect unless you really know the subject.

Ultimately, the student is responsible for the material they submit, and if they’re submitting material that is factually wrong, they’re responsible for it. You can’t blame the chatbot, the same way the chatbot can’t take credit. It’s not like a team project where you’re working with another student, and you can say, ‘It wasn’t me, it was my partner.’ If your partner is AI, you are responsible for all of the work you submit whether or not there are parts that were co-created with AI.

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s U of T News on September 13, 2023 by Adina Bresge.

Starting in September 2023, U of T Engineering’s new certificate in Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Engineering will enable undergraduate students to strengthen their knowledge of concepts such as ethics, equity, justice and the interactions between technology and society.

“Social justice continues to be of great concern around the world: how do we ensure that we build societies that are as fair as we can make them?” says Professor Dionne Aleman, Associate Dean of Cross-Disciplinary Programs at U of T Engineering.

“Some people might think that engineering, due to its technical nature, is somehow immune to issues of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, but certainly it is not. Engineers, like everyone, are impacted by these issues, and they also have a direct impact on them through their work.”

To show how social issues are inextricably linked to the engineering ones, Aleman gives the example of siting a new water treatment plant.

“An engineer designing such a facility would consider the technical, economic and environmental factors. Social factors are very much part of that as well: how do your design decisions impact the communities who live near the site, versus those who are served by it? Are you considering the needs and concerns of those communities in fair balance?”

To earn the new certificate, students will enrol in three courses from an approved list. The courses are divided into three broad categories: equity and justice; technology and society; and ethics and broader considerations.

The courses are cross-disciplinary and are taught by professors from across the University of Toronto. Some are offered by divisions within the Faculty of Arts & Science, such as the Institute for the History & Philosophy of Science & Technology and the Women & Gender Studies Institute.

Other courses are offered by U of T Engineering’s Institute for Studies in Transdisciplinary Engineering Education & Practice, for example: TEP 324 Engineering and Social Justice or CME 259 Technology in Society and the Biosphere I.

“As the engineering student body becomes more diverse, a growing number of our incoming students want to be agents of social change, both for their own communities and for others,” says Mikhail Burke (MSE 1T2, BME PhD 1T8).

While serving as Associate Director, Access and Inclusive Pedagogy at U of T Engineering, Burke was one of the key architects of the new certificate. In January 2023, he became the Manager of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at U of T’s Division of Student Life.

“Engineering has always been a sociotechnical process — it both exerts social influence and is also shaped by a variety of social factors. The certificate leans into this notion, providing students with an avenue to broach these intersectional topics in the classroom, where learning and discourse can be collaborative in nature. This is something our students value.”

“The Canadian engineering profession’s North Star is to protect society’s wellbeing — this is the value proposition and why engineering is a regulated profession,” says Marisa Sterling, P.Eng., Assistant Dean & Director, Diversity, Inclusion and Professionalism at U of T Engineering. Sterling is also a past president of Professional Engineers Ontario.

“Engineering work done poorly can harm the public, the environment and society’s welfare. And while engineering problems may be viewed as technical in nature, they all will have an ultimate human consequence. We discuss justice in engineering as there are injustices in society. To increase knowledge of these, their history and root causes, helps engineering students better define the problems they are trying to solve and therefore produces engineering solutions that positively consider more people.”

“This certificate encourages students to mirror a practice that all licensed professionals adhere to, which is undertaking continuing competency and seeking out continuous practice evaluation and knowledge in fulfilling their duty to public protection.”

Five U of T Engineering graduate students working on a range of problems — from mitigating the issue of space debris to enhancing the affordability of diabetes monitoring — have been awarded Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships for 2023.  

Providing $150,000 in funding over three years, the scholarship recognizes PhD candidates at Canadian universities who demonstrate excellence in the areas of leadership, research impact and academics.   

This year’s recipients are:   

Craig Fernandes (MIE PhD candidate)  

Fernandes’s research applies mathematical optimization techniques to ‘superstar’ labour markets — such as sports and entertainment — where a select few workers earn disproportionately higher salaries compared to their peers.   

To address this income disparity challenge, he is using income pools as a risk-mitigation strategy.   

“An income pool involves participants voluntarily agreeing to share a portion of their future earnings with the group if they reach a specific salary level or career milestone,” he says.  

Co-supervised by Professors Timothy Chan (MIE) and Ningyuan Chen (Rotman Management), the team’s study is the first mathematical analysis of these pools, exploring the economic incentives, stability and optimality. 

“I’ve been interested in operations research ever since my undergrad studies in industrial engineering at U of T,” says Fernandes. “This interest has been further fostered by Professor Chan’s great mentorship.   

“I was really interested in how these methods could apply and help real-world, interesting scenarios, which is what led me to income pools.” 

Pedro Guerra Demingos (MSE PhD candidate) 

Guerra Demingos is supervised by Professor Chandra Veer Singh (MSE) and researches materials simulations at the atomic scale.  

“These models are a powerful tool to study new nanomaterials and how to enhance their properties, which is the focus of my PhD thesis.”   

Guerra Demingos is designing materials that show promise for a wide range of applications.    

“For example, some can be used in glucose detection and quantification, which can be leveraged for diabetes monitoring at lower prices than current technologies,” he says.  

As a child, Guerra Demingos watched his father sketch atomic structures on his notebook.  

“He was an established civil engineer, with a passion for research that led him to pursue a masters in material science,” says Guerras Demingos. “I knew then that I wanted to work on research on the same field.  

“It feels reassuring to receive a Vanier scholarship – it tells me that other people are as excited about my work as I am.”   

Muhammad Maaz (MIE PhD candidate)

Maaz is working in matching theory, a field that studies how to best match two sets of things, which can be used as a framework to design and study all sorts of markets.  

Inspired by healthcare applications of matching, he is particularly interested in studying what happens when matching algorithms have subpar performance. He is doing this through the lens of other fields of mathematics such as graph theory and combinatorics.   

“All markets with two sides can be thought of as matching problems: for example, connecting buyers and sellers on an online marketplace, pairing riders and drivers on ridesharing apps, or matching organ donors with patients,” says Maaz.  

“My work can be used by market designers to increase the performance of such markets, thereby ensuring more people are matched, or finding higher quality matches.”  

Maaz is especially grateful to be supervised by Professor Timothy Chan, who is world-renowned for his work in optimization and healthcare, he says. 

Stefan Mladjenovic (BME PhD candidate) 

Delivering nanoparticles to targeted areas of the body can help clinicians treat cancer while leaving healthy cells alone. Mladjenovic’s research focuses on the barriers that these nanoparticles still face in terms of their ability to target tumours.   

“Currently, only about 0.7% of injected nanoparticles reach tumours,” he says.   

Supervised by Professor Warren Chan (BME), Mladjenovic is working to better understand the biology of solid tumours and the barriers that impede drug delivery.   

“This improved understanding may guide us to design nanoparticles that can bypass these barriers so that more drugs in nanoparticles can reach tumours and improve clinical outcomes,” he says.   

“We may also be able to screen tumour biopsies to evaluate which nanoparticle drugs will be useful for treatment.”  

Mladjenovic became interested in cancer research during his mother’s six-year battle with cancer. She passed away less than a month before he began his undergrad studies.   

“Being a Vanier Scholar connects me with a network of peers across Canada who care about helping their communities and are committed to leadership and research,” he says.  

Sean Wolfe (UTIAS PhD candidate) 

Wolfe, who is supervised by Professor Reza Emami (UTIAS), is researching space debris and minimoons, which are small asteroids that briefly become a second moon.  

“Space debris is a big concern for the aerospace community,” he says. “Researchers believe that if we can remove the biggest pieces of debris — those that when they collide with other debris create much more debris — then the problem can be mitigated in its entirety.   

“Minimoons, on the other hand, are a completely new concept.” 

Wolfe is investigating the use of a new 4D light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensor to better characterize space debris. His research team is also planning a mission to a minimoon to learn how to better detect them.  

“Currently, bringing back several hundred grams of asteroid costs around $1 billion US,” he says.   

“By targeting minimoons, we would be bringing back metric tons of asteroid — hopefully at a fraction of the cost.” 

 

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on August 29, 2023 by Safa Jinje.

Professor Enid Montague (MIE) aims to engineer a better health-care experience and help ease the current stress on the system using an approach known as human-centered automation. 

Canada faces a critical doctor shortage that has left more than six million Canadians without a primary care physician — and the after-effects of COVID-19 have only magnified the strain. But Montague notes that the burden is not shared equally.  

“The challenges of having too few physicians have disproportionately affected equity-seeking groups, particularly individuals who are racialized, or come from low-income or rural environments,” she says.  

“We can use engineering tools to help our health-care systems do more with fewer resources — and build systems that are equity-focused, while also meeting the demands of our aging population.”   

Montague’s project Automation and Equity in Healthcare Laboratory is one of seven from U of T Engineering — and 35 from across the University of Toronto — being supported in the latest round of funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund (CFI JELF).  

Montague doesn’t see her work as designing artificial intelligence (AI) tools to replace humans. Instead, it’s about using AI to free up human attention for more important work, such as spending time with patients.  

Her work includes designing systems that leverage AI to assist physicians with clerical tasks, leaving them more time for clinical duties. She is also building applications that use virtual agents known as chatbots to help patients seek out health care or manage their medication. 

“This support from CFI means everything,” says Montague. “I’ll be able to have a physical laboratory where we can do human-centred participatory design. A big part of understanding how to automate is understanding human capabilities and limitations.  

“I’ll be able to take data from clinical settings and analyze it in the lab to look for opportunities for automation and build models that can predict the effectiveness of those automation scenarios.”  

Montague is also developing human-centred guidelines for automation in health care. These provide safeguards for the tools and ensure that they lead to better equity and access to care for all people seeking treatment.  

Growing up in a rural part of the United States, Montague witnessed the stark reality experienced by people who live without access to health care. This motivated her at an early age to find solutions that enable equitable health care for all.  

“We are already starting to see the consequences of not having enough primary care doctors in Canada, including poor diagnoses, and overcrowded emergency rooms with patients who have missed their window for early disease intervention,” she says.  

“While automation isn’t always the answer, it can help free up resources and allow us to take full advantage of our global infrastructures.  

“I want my work to help physicians avoid burn out and feel less burdened, and I also want to expand access to care for more communities in a way that is more equitable.”   

The other six U of T Engineering principal investigators and their associated projects receiving support from CFI JELF are:  

• Professor Ali Dolatabadi (MIE) — Advanced Cold Spray Facility 
• Professor Sarah Haines (CivMin) — The Indoor Microbiology and Environmental Exposures Laboratory 
• Professor Xilin Liu (ECE) — Integrated Circuits for Wireless Brain Implants with Multi-modal Neural Interfaces 
• Professor Emma Master (ChemE) — Accelerating Biomanufacturing Innovation Through Enhanced Capacity for Scale-up and Downstream Bioprocess Engineering 
• Professor Ibrahim Ogunsanya (CivMin) — Establishment of Metallurgical Materials and Corrosion Laboratory Group for Corrosion Microscopy Studies 
• Professor Yu Zou (MSE) — Multifunctional Materials for Biomedical Applications 

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on August 29, 2023 by Safa Jinje.

This fall, Raylene Mitchell will begin her studies as a PhD candidate in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at U of T — and while engineering was not where she expected to find herself, she hopes that her experience will help change that expectation for others.

Mitchell grew up in Makkovik, an Inuit community of about 350 people on the coast of Labrador that is only accessible by air in winter, or by sea in summer.  

“Growing up in such a small place, I had never met any engineers, and I didn’t really know what engineering was,” she says.  

“What I did know was that there had been many large engineering projects built in Labrador, and that many of them had later failed. And I knew that none of these projects had included any proper channels to incorporate the community into the early stages of the design process.” 

About a decade ago, Mitchell moved to Newfoundland. She enrolled at Memorial University, where she initially chose to major in commerce. However, she didn’t find her courses very fulfilling. Despite having been told earlier that STEM wasn’t for people like her, in her third year she decided to switch into electrical engineering. 

“I didn’t tell my parents at first, because I wanted to be sure it was what I wanted to do,” she says. 

“But I found that I could actually do it; it just took a little more work. And I found myself falling into this place of understanding, that this is a way I could change how engineering is done in northern and Indigenous communities. That really inspired me to keep going.” 

Mitchell is one of three 2023 recipients of the IBET Momentum Fellowships, along with fellow graduate students LaShawn Murray (MIE PhD candidate) and Chantel Campbell (BME PhD candidate). Fellowship recipients receive financial support, mentorship, training and networking opportunities to foster a robust professional community. 

For her PhD, Mitchell will be working with Professor David Sinton (MIE), who she initially met through Professor Michael Ross, the NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Northern Energy Innovation at Yukon University. 

“I had been working with Dr. Ross as a research assistant for nearly two years, building wind turbine models for Indigenous communities in the Yukon. I told him I was thinking about doing a PhD, and he connected me with Professor Sinton. I’m planning to be co-supervised by both of them.” 

Mitchell’s thesis will focus on the challenges of building renewable energy infrastructure in Northern Canada and Indigenous communities. 

Currently, many of these communities rely on diesel generators for their power. Augmenting or replacing these with solar cells or wind turbines could lower emissions, but it also raises issues around intermittency: many northern communities do not receive any sunshine for months at a time, and while wind is plentiful, it is also unpredictable. 

Professor Sinton and his team have been developing new ways to convert excess renewable electricity into fuels that could be stored for months or years. As these new methods mature, the research focus is pivoting toward scale-up and demonstration, including in challenging environments such as the Canadian North. 

But if the team is to build a demonstration facility, Mitchell says they will need to work carefully to avoid making the same mistakes as the large-scale engineering projects that she remembers from her childhood in Labrador. 

“We want to understand how an energy storage solution — especially one based on a new, emerging technology — could impact the community,” she says. 

“Does the community want this?  What kind of social framework are we working with? How are we going to fairly include the community into an open discussion that includes the current need, but also the future risks?” 

The project encapsulates the kind of change that Mitchell hopes to effect, both in terms of mitigating the damage of climate change, but also in terms of renegotiating the relationships between large-scale engineering projects and the communities they work with.  

The timing could not be better: earlier this year, a multidisciplinary team of researchers from across Canada — including Sinton and Ross — kicked off a national research project on energy storage called CANSTOREnergy, funded by New Frontiers in Research Fund Transformation Program. 

Mitchell also hopes that by taking up the IBET Momentum Fellowship, she can help to change the perception of what an engineer looks like.  

“I’m Inuit, not First Nations, and I come from Makkovik, not the Yukon, but there is a shared history and shared pain there in terms of what those from outside our communities have imposed on us,” she says. 

“Indigenous people are engineers at their core — we have been creating engineering solutions to living in challenging environments for hundreds of years. I have a unique standpoint, and I’m hoping that I can use it to help the communities that this technology is meant to serve.” 

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on August 24, 2023 by Tyler Irving.

 

An improved catalyst designed by an international team of researchers — including many from U of T Engineering — increases both the stability and efficiency of a system that converts carbon dioxide (CO2) into valuable products such as fuels or plastic precursors.

“By using electricity to efficiently upgrade captured carbon into products we already use, we can improve the economics of carbon capture, and encourage investment in this emerging technology,” says Professor David Sinton (MIE), senior author on a paper recently published in Nature Catalysis.

“This new catalyst overcomes some of the key limitations that are holding back the performance of such systems.”

Sinton and his team use devices known as electrolyzers to drive forward chemical reactions that would not otherwise be energetically favourable. In this case, CO2 gas and a liquid electrolyte containing dissolved ions are supplied over a solid catalyst through which the electricity is supplied.

When the electrons combine with CO2 at the catalyst surface, they react to form carbon-containing molecules such as ethylene or ethanol. These molecules can be sold as fuels or commodity chemicals, and are precursors to many commonly used materials, from cosmetics to plastics.

The pH of the liquid electrolyte has a big impact on the system’s performance. For example, most of the previously reported systems operate under alkaline conditions, meaning high pH. While some of the CO2 pumped into these systems gets converted to the desired products, the vast majority of it reacts with the electrolyte itself to make carbonate salts, an undesirable side product.

In 2021, Sinton and his collaborators reported a new system that can operate under acidic conditions, meaning low pH. By making some changes to the chemistry of the electrolyte and the operating conditions of the electrolyzer, they were able to greatly reduce the formation of carbonate and increase the overall carbon efficiency.

However, those improvements came at a cost in terms of the stability of the catalyst.

“In that system, we added cations — positively-charged metal ions — to the solution, creating a thin region of alkaline conditions next to the catalyst surface, while leaving the rest of the solution acidic,” says Jianan Erick Huang (ECE PhD candidate), a co-lead author on the previous study and one of five co-lead authors on the team’s new paper.

“But in that region, which is only 50 micrometres thick, we still have the same problem as before: the formation of carbonate salts. Over time, these accumulate on the surface of the catalyst, and act as channels to bring in water molecules. Since the catalyst surface is designed to be hydrophobic, water destroys its reactivity.”

In their latest design, the team replaced the dissolved cations with an ionomer: an organic molecule that carries a positive electric charge. The molecule they chose is known as benzimidazolium, and the team applied a thin layer of it to the surface of their copper-based catalyst.

“Immobilizing the positively charged molecules on the surface of the catalyst prevents them from joining with carbonate ions to create salts,” says Dr. Mengyang Fan, a postdoctoral fellow in Sinton’s lab group and another co-lead author on the new paper.

“This made a big difference in terms of stability. While the old version of the catalyst only lasted about 12 hours, we measured the stability of the new one at more than 150 hours, which is more than 10 times as long.”

The change had the additional benefit of reducing another unwanted side reaction. In the previous system, about 30% of the electrons ended up producing hydrogen gas. This reaction siphons away electrons that would otherwise end up in the desired multi-carbon products, reducing the system’s efficiency. The new catalyst reduced this to less than 10%.

The system will still require further improvements before it can be applied at scale: for example, the stability of the catalyst will need to be further extended to many times its current duration. But the team believes that the new design points to a promising way forward.

“We did all this using a standard copper-based catalyst,” says Rui Kai (Ray) Miao (MIE PhD candidate), another co-lead author on the paper.

“There is a lot of experimentation that can still happen in terms of its chemical formulation, and there are other ionomers that could be explored. But this insight of a coating, as opposed to changing the chemistry of the solution, is a new insight, and we think it’s the way to go for future designs.”

 

A team from U of T Engineering has invented a device that leverages electrochemistry to increase the efficiency of direct air carbon capture. Their alternative strategy aims to accelerate the widespread adoption of this emerging technology.

“The technology required to pull carbon directly out of the air has been developing for decades, but the field is now accelerating with governments and industry investing in the infrastructure required to actually do this at scale,” says Professor David Sinton (MIE), senior author on a paper published in Joule that outlines the new technique.

“One key barrier is that current processes require a lot of energy, and indeed emit a fair amount of carbon themselves. If we can offer a more efficient strategy, we can make the case to scale this technology to climate-meaningful levels.”

The specific carbon capture technique that Sinton and his team are working to improve is known as a pH swing cycle. It begins when air is pumped through a liquid solution that is strongly alkaline, meaning that it has a high pH. CO2 in the air reacts with the alkaline solution and is captured in the form of carbonates.

To regenerate the capture liquids, chemicals are added to precipitate the carbonates as a solid salt. In the typical process, this salt is heated by burning natural gas to turn the carbonates back into CO2 gas which can be injected underground or upgraded into other carbon-based products.

“If you conduct a life-cycle analysis of this entire process, you see that for every tonne of CO2 you capture, you generate the equivalent of around 300 to 500 kilograms of CO2,” says Yi (Sheldon) Xu (MechE 1T6, PhD 2T0) who worked on the project as a PhD candidate and a postdoctoral fellow in Sinton’s lab. Xu is now at Stanford University.

“You’re still coming out ahead, but the energy inputs, particularly the heating step, cost a lot in terms of overall carbon efficiency.”

To overcome this challenge, the team turned to electrochemistry. Devices known as electrolyzers use electricity to drive forward chemical reactions that would not happen otherwise. Devices known as fuel cells do the opposite, generating electricity from chemical reactions.

The team’s key insight was creating a single device that could operate in both directions, that is, as both a fuel cell and an electrolyzer. This innovation enabled them to open up a new pathway to regenerating the alkaline solutions needed for carbon capture.

“Both electrolyzers and fuels cells have a positive electrode and a negative electrode,” says Jonathan Edwards (MIE 1T5 + PEY, PhD 2T1), another member of the team.

“In our device, the positive electrode of the fuel cell and the electrolyzer are one and the same. We switch the mode of operation every second, so that two different reactions can happen at the surface of the same electrode.”

In the first of these two reactions, the electrolyzer uses electrical current to extract alkali metal ions and regenerate the strongly alkaline solution needed for air capture. The electrolyzer also produces hydrogen, which is recycled back to the fuel cell side of the device, where it reacts to produce electricity, which in turn is fed back into the electrolyzer.

The fuel cell produces an acidic solution, which is reacted with carbonate salts from the air capture unit to release CO2 gas. After the CO2 is released, the resulting solution is fed back to the electrolyzer, thus completing the cycle.

The process offers several advantages. First, it circumvents the energy-intensive heating step entirely. Second, it uses electricity as opposed to natural gas; this electricity could be obtained from low-carbon sources such as solar, wind or nuclear energy.

Finally, the fact that two reactions happen at a single electrode cuts down on what are known as mass transfer limitations — bottlenecks in how fast the reactants can diffuse to the electrode surface — which increase the amount of energy needed to drive the reaction.

“When we ran the life cycle analysis on our process, we saw that it only generates about 11 kg of CO2 equivalent per tonne of CO2 captured,” says Shijie Liu (MIE PhD candidate), another member of the team.

“That’s about 40 times less than the current thermal process.”

The team has already attracted international interest: as Team E-quester, they placed in the top 60 of the global XPRIZE Carbon Removal held last year. Now that their work has been published, they are hoping that more teams will join them in further optimizing this electrochemical pathway.

“At the moment, we’re focusing on improving the capture fluid and further reducing process energy consumption, ensuring that it’s made of sustainable and low-cost substances, as well as scaling it up to industrial levels,” says Xu.

“But there are other places, such as electrode design, where there could be more innovations to discover. We’d love to see this become a viable new platform for carbon capture plants that are less energy-intensive to build and operate than what we have today. That would give us a powerful new tool to mitigate the impacts of climate change.”

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on August 2, 2023 by Tyler Irving.

The Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium is investing $1.05 million in innovative, cross-disciplinary research to tackle infectious threats and bolster preparedness against future outbreaks.

The funding, awarded through the Career Transition Awards, Convergence Postdoctoral Fellowships, New Connections Grants and Proof-of-Principle Grants, will support researchers and senior trainees at the University of Toronto and partner hospitals. The 12 funded projects span a wide breadth of research topics from organ-on-a-chip models of infection to new approaches that aim to improve disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

“A key part of EPIC’s mission is to enable new transformative research through training and research opportunities. The funding announced today will accelerate discoveries and provide critical support for the next generation of infectious disease research leaders,” said Scott Gray-Owen, academic director of EPIC and a professor of molecular genetics in U of T’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine.

“We were impressed by the number and quality of applications that we received to these four competitions, which is a testament to the strength and vibrancy of the infectious disease research community in Toronto. Thank you to our volunteer reviewers for supporting our peer review process and congratulations to all the recipients!”

Among the new grants announced today is the New Connections Grants, which provides $100,000 over two years to support projects led by researchers from at least two different research disciplines and who are coming together for their first significant research collaboration.

One of the two teams receiving a New Connections Grant is co-led by Nicole Weckman, an assistant professor of chemical engineering and applied chemistry at U of T, and Robert Kozak, a clinical microbiologist at Sunnybrook Research Institute. The two researchers first met when they were invited to be on the same panel at a symposium on antimicrobial resistance co-hosted by EPIC and bioMérieux in November 2022. Building on their combined engineering and clinical expertise, their new project aims to develop a rapid diagnostic test that can detect the drug-resistant fungal pathogen Candida auris and predict the drugs to which a specific strain is resistant.

“The past few years have really highlighted the need to collaborate across disciplines to develop innovative systems and tools for tackling pandemics and infectious diseases,” said Weckman. “This project has brought together my engineering and diagnostics expertise with the clinical microbiology expertise of Rob and our collaborators Allison McGeer, Julianne Kus and Xena Li in a new collaboration to develop technologies for addressing Candida auris, a deadly pathogen causing hospital outbreaks.”

“As a new professor at U of T, EPIC has proven to be a fantastic and welcoming interdisciplinary network of expertise that fosters new collaborations and supports creative ideas for improving our healthcare systems.”

Like the New Connections Grant, the Convergence Postdoctoral Fellowships aim to foster cross-disciplinary collaboration by providing funding support to postdoctoral fellows who will work on a project co-supervised by faculty members from at least two different departments and/or divisions.

Three fellowships, each worth $120,000 over two years, were awarded this year, including to Ying Wang, a postdoctoral fellow co-supervised by Milica Radisic, a professor of biomedical engineering at U of T, and Slava Epelman, a clinician scientist at University Health Network.

Wang’s project seeks to uncover why males are at a greater risk than females of developing inflammation of the heart muscle, or myocarditis, after contracting COVID-19. To answer this question, she is creating sophisticated heart-on-a-chip models that also take into account biological sex differences such as hormone exposure. Her project will leverage the Toronto High Containment Facility to study SARS-CoV-2 infection in the engineered heart models in a safe and secure way.

One of the unique funding programs that EPIC launched this year was the Career Transition Awards. Designed specifically for experienced postdoctoral fellows and research associates, the awards provide $120,000 in funding over two years to allow recipients to develop and lead an independent project.

Michael Litvack is a research associate working with Martin Post, a senior scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children, and one of two recipients of the Career Transition Awards. Litvack’s project builds on his previous work developing a specialized immune cell that is specifically adapted to the lungs. His earlier work demonstrated the potential of these specialized cells to target viral lung infections. Now, he will lead an independent project to test whether these cells can attack the flu virus and reduce the burden of respiratory disease experienced during the flu.

“The Career Transition Award is a unique opportunity that will enable me to progress in my scientific and academic career while taking advantage of the vast technological and expert resources that Toronto has to support infectious disease research,” said Litvack.

“This funding will help me establish my program of study amongst EPIC investigators and will promote a strong foundation for me as I strive to build a sustainable and independent program focused on immune modulation and infectious diseases.”

The 12 projects were selected for funding as part of EPIC’s inaugural round of funding competitions, which include the previously announced Doctoral Awards, GlaxoSmithKline EPIC Convergence Postdoctoral Fellowship in Antimicrobial Resistance, Inspire Summer Studentships and Researcher Mobility Awards.

For the full funding results, please visit our website.

– This story was originally published on the EPIC: Emerging & Pandemic Infections Consortium News Site on July 20, 2023 by Betty Zou.