March 30, 2016 — This year, 19 student teams took on industry challenges that were as diverse as their engineering disciplines. After eight months of collaborating with their industry clients, the fourth-year engineering undergraduates displayed their final design solutions at the Multidisciplinary Capstone Design Projects (MCP) Showcase on March 24.

The MCP course, now in its third year, has enabled 240 students from across all undergraduate engineering programs in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering to work together on projects proposed by industry partners. This year’s roster of industry clients included Astronauts for Hire, Bombardier, Defence Research & Development Canada (DRDC), Royal Bank of Canada, Sunnybrook Hospital, and more.

Here are three of the innovative projects presented at this year’s showcase:

A portable, battery-powered elevator for the elderly and disabled

If you have limited mobility, you can add accessibility features to your house—but what about when you go over to a friend’s for dinner? Now you can take accessibility with you.

Students designed an inexpensive, portable lift prototype that can be placed atop stairs to help people with mobility issues get in and out of front doors.

Working with clients at St. John’s Rehab at Sunnybrook Hospital, the scissor-lift design is made of a 12-volt-battery-powered air pump, and two foldable lifts, with one that lifts up and down to get users on and off the platform. The design, which would cost approximately $1,900 and lasts up to six years, can then be folded back into a suitcase shape to allow users to carry it from one location to another.

“It can be carried over from their house to a friend’s place, or over to a mall or hospital,” said group member Changyue Wu, (Year 4 MechE). The team also designed a two-layer cover for the portable lift, ensuring it can endure the outdoor elements.

Microgravity experiments to improve astronaut training and student education

Astronauts for Hire, a non-profit organization training commercial astronauts for spaceflight, asked a team of MCP students to design, prototype and test several experiments that could be conducted in zero gravity and in suborbital flights.

The team developed three experiments, testing them through drop tests in the three-storey atrium of the Sanford Fleming. The first experiment analyzes capillary action — the ability of a liquid to flow freely through narrow channels without the assistance of gravity. “It’s similar to seeing what would happen when fluids are sloshing around during suborbital flight,” explained Sana Abdurahman (Year 4 ElecE).

The second experiment studies how an object with a stable axis would rotate in free fall, while the third experiment demonstrated the effects of pendulum motion and magnetism during free fall.

The experiments will help assess the focus, dexterity, accuracy and mobility of astronaut candidates, in addition to providing a teaching tool for high school students learning physics concepts.

Modernizing battle-planning simulation and education

Today, Canadian soldiers learn to navigate and map unfamiliar terrain using only a pencil and a blank piece of paper, according to Henry Chen (Year 4 CompE). His team was enlisted by Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) to develop a more modern approach to teaching its Land Navigation course to the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF).

The team’s solution was to replace the paper with a touch-screen surface and the pencil with 3D-object recognition. And instead of a physical map, they’ve replaced it with GeoPDF, a plug-in that displays digital maps containing embedded geographical information.

The team’s goal was to not only modernize the teaching tools, but also enable a better learning experience and quality of the education for CAF recruits and instructors.

“Instead of the class having to huddle around a piece of paper on the floor, we wanted to create a much more forward-thinking, more interactive classroom experience for the CAF, something to keep them engaged,” said Chen.

“Each year, our students showcase their outstanding work at this event, demonstrating their dedication and superb engineering skills,” said Professor Kamran Behdinan (MIE), Director of the University of Toronto Institute for Multidisciplinary Design & Innovation (UT-IMDI). “This year is no exception. Their work exemplifies the strength that comes from collaboration and innovative engineering design.”

March 30, 2016 — Today the University of Toronto unveiled its plan for taking action on climate change in a bold report, Beyond Divestment: Taking Decisive Action on Climate Change.

“The University’s most valuable and effective contributions to the global effort to avert and mitigate the consequences of climate change will flow from our fundamental role as an institution of research and education,” said University of Toronto President Meric Gertler.

Read more about the 14-point plan.

These five projects are just a few underway in U of T Engineering that are helping make the world greener, from the fields of Nicaragua to the nearest airport.

Building windmills in Nicaragua

A group led by Mechanical & Industrial Engineering Professor Amy Bilton is partnering with residents of Pedro Arauz, Nicaragua to design and construct a water-pumping windmill, providing critical irrigation during the area’s long dry season.

The project was launched as part of a fourth-year course in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering. Over the last two years, three different teams of undergraduate students have worked closely with members of the local community as well as the Winds of Change initiative to make the windmill a reality.

The area has plenty of groundwater and dug wells, but hand pumps — currently the most widespread pump technology — are simply not powerful enough to produce the thousands of gallons of water required for crop irrigation. The use of diesel and electrical pumps is limited by a lack of infrastructure, high cost and difficulties with the importing of goods. By contrast, wind pumps can be built and maintained using locally available materials, and the climate in Nicaragua is windy enough to provide the required energy.

“From the beginning, it was engineering students working together with community members who provided great suggestions in terms the local practices and available resources,” said Bilton. “Everyone was so kind and so welcoming. I think that was really what moved the students and helped motivate them as they worked on the project.”

Growing ‘pond scum’ for fuel

Need green energy? Someday you may need to look no further than the green scum coating the nearest puddle.

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering Professor David Sinton’s research focuses on optimizing the growth of algae and cyanobacteria — often considered ‘pond scum’. Algae and cyanobacteria are photosynthetic microorganisms that can use solar energy to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) into chemical products and ultimately fuels. Among the fastest-growing photosynthetic organisms on earth, some species accumulate high levels of fat and oil that could be refined into biofuels, or sugars that could be fermented into ethanol.

Despite decades of research, there is still much uncertainty about the exact conditions that each species needs to grow at its optimal rate, or accumulate the most product. The number of variables — light intensity, light spectrum, nutrient and CO2 levels, temperature and more — makes designing experiments to cover all possible combinations both difficult and costly.

Sinton and his team are addressing that problem using their expertise in microfluidics and optofluidics, two fields that look at how fluids and light can be conducted through very small channels or optical conductors. They recently designed a “lab on a chip” that contains hundreds of individual chambers in which the microorganisms can grow.

Read more at U of T Engineering News.

March 23, 2016 — From wind turbines and solar power to fuel cells and hydroelectricity, sources of sustainable energy are as diverse as the researchers working in this area. Professor Aimy Bazylak (MIE), Director of U of T Engineering’s Institute for Sustainable Energy (ISE), sees this diversity as a strength of both the Institute and the field.

Next year, ISE will move into its new home on the eighth floor of the Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship, increasing opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration that will catalyze energy solutions for the future.

Q: What was the motivation for creating ISE?

A: Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering professors Jean Zu and Olivera Kesler and Dean Cristina Amon laid the groundwork for the ISE back in 2010, and in 2013 David Sinton transformed us into a Faculty-wide Institute. The idea was to elevate and showcase the world-class research into sustainable energy that is going on at U of T. We wanted to build new relationships with our industry partners and attract the top students who are looking to make a difference in sustainability.

Today we have more than 50 faculty members, including geographers, mathematicians and policy experts. Partnerships from outside our Faculty are critical for us because the most challenging problems in clean energy don’t confine themselves to one discipline — you really need the expertise that everyone brings to the table.

Q: Can you give an example of a project that relies on collaboration?

A: One of our projects involves Professor Mary Pugh from the Department of Mathematics, working with Professor Francis Dawson in The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Together, they are looking at the molecular-scale changes that happen within a battery as it cycles, with the ultimate goal of improving its lifetime. As a mathematician, Professor Pugh is able to bring new tools to integrate into Professor Dawson’s computer models, which will result in improved understanding and better batteries.

Q: What else are ISE researchers working on?

A: It’s hard to capture everything because we really do have stellar researchers in all areas, from the device level to the systems level. But here are some examples:

• Professor Tim Bender (ChemE) and Professor Ted Sargent (ECE) are looking at new materials — organic solar cells and quantum dots — that can increase the efficiency of solar power while reducing cost.
• Professor Geoffrey Ozin (Chemistry) was recently awarded a Connaught Global Challenge Award to develop chemical catalysts that can produce fuels from carbon dioxide. These fuels would be carbon-neutral, but could be used with existing infrastructure.
• Professor Amy Bilton (MIE) studies sustainable systems integration — for example, using passive solar aerators to improve the productivity of fish farms, making this important food source more sustainable.

There are many other examples: my own research looks at fuel cells for automotive transportation. We also have experts such as Professor Tamer El-Diraby (CivE), who is studying how to design more sustainable communities within cities.

I’m a total believer in having a portfolio of different technologies. That’s not because I’m hedging my bets; it’s because community needs vary so widely. Toronto is different from Prince George, B.C., so you can’t say that everyone needs the same thing. And when we’re all doing amazing work in different areas, we get the unexpected discoveries that lead to transformative development.

Q: How does the ISE build robust and diverse industry partnerships?

A: One initiative I’m really excited about is our third-annual Research Symposium, which will take place on March 29. In the past, we’ve showcased work from our students and faculty, which was great, but this year we’ve turned the tables a bit: we invited prominent industry partners to talk about the challenges they face.

Our guests include partners from major engineering firms like H.H. Angus & Associates Ltd. and Hatch, as well as energy companies such as Constant Power, who will will talk about how energy can be delivered in more sustainable ways. We want to open up the discussion and see what tools ISE faculty members have that can be used to address those problems.

As academic researchers, we are able to ask and answer questions that industry may not have time to ask because they have to stay focused on the next product cycle. It’s in asking those unusual questions and challenging what we already know that we get those game-changing insights.

Q: What will the ISE’s new home in the CEIE mean for you?

A: The CEIE will be a springboard for the ISE to strengthen and enrich our collaborative ties across campus by providing a common physical space for our faculty and students to meet and work together. By bringing our ISE community together, the CEIE will provide an exciting new platform for the cross-pollination of ideas that will lead to new discoveries for clean energy and sustainability.

Q: What’s the best part of leading ISE?

A: I get enormous gratification from facilitating the growth of people around me. Every day our students are taking intellectual risks and asking exciting questions. What I love is connecting those minds with companies or investors who have an interesting idea and helping all of them to realize their vision together.

In the coming years, I’d really like us to build on the expertise we have and construct even stronger teams and sub-groups to take on interesting problems in partnership with industry. By strengthening these relationships, growing the community from within and working together, we have the opportunity to really build a vision and shape the potential of clean energy, both in Canada and abroad.

March 23, 2016 — Population growth, climate change and environmental degradation are intensifying pressures on global water supplies, hastening the need for innovations that will improve access to clean water for drinking, food production and sanitation.

Researchers at U of T Engineering are leading the development of new technologies to improve water conservation, purification and reclamation both in Canada and around the world. The Institute for Water Innovation (IWI), which will be part of the Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship when it opens in summer 2017, unites the expertise of more than a dozen engineering professors across multiple disciplines to tackle this key global challenge.

Here are three examples of innovative solutions engineered by IWI researchers:

Oil-absorbing sponge

Tailings ponds from oil sands mining operations in Alberta contain enough liquid to fill 390,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Much of that liquid still has small amounts of oil in it. But because the oil is emulsified — tiny droplets of it are suspended in water — it takes decades for it to either settle to the bottom of the pond or float to the surface where it can be skimmed off.

Pavani Cherukupally (MIE PhD Candidate), along with her supervisors, mechanical engineering Professors Amy Bilton and Chul Park, is testing a polymer foam that was originally designed to absorb sound vibrations to see if it can soak up the oil. “Oil droplets tend to have an electric charge on them, and it happens that this foam surface has a complementary charge,” says Bilton. “The pores have an appropriate size too — small enough to provide lots of surface area, but large enough to have a good uptake rate.”

By understanding exactly how the foam absorbs oil while excluding water, the team hopes to be able to design foams that absorb oil even more effectively. When the foam is “full,” the oil can be squeezed out and the foam re-used. The idea is to use these foams to filter the oil droplets from the tailings water as it is produced, without waiting years for it to sink or float. “In the future we could even design these foams to be made of biodegradable polymers to further reduce the environmental impact,” says Park.

Using foams to clean water in enormous tailings ponds could make a big difference to the landscape of the oil sands region. “This is potentially an environmentally friendly alternative to some of the methods currently used to treat that oil sands process water,” says Bilton.

Read more at U of T Engineering News.

March 23, 2016 — Omar Haggag (Year 4 MechE) is one of three undergraduate students who are making sustainability and the environment core components of their education.

Population growth, the depletion of natural resources and environmental degradation are straining our global society like never before. As the world increasingly looks to engineers to advance solutions to these critical challenges, U of T Engineering offers a diverse range of minors and certificates that prepare undergraduate students to make sustainability a key part of their engineering practice.

“Sustainability—whether environmental, economic or social—is surely the most pressing issue of our time,” says Professor Bryan Karney (CivE), Associate Dean of Cross-Disciplinary Programs. “We want our students to be both deeply motivated and well-equipped with the latest tools for addressing these challenges, whether they pursue a career in aerospace engineering, cloud computing, water resources or alternative energies.”

The Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering offers minors in Environmental Engineering and Sustainable Energy, and a certificate in Renewable Resources Engineering. These programs give students competencies in areas ranging from environmental impact and risk assessments, to alternative energy systems, energy policy and green urban infrastructure. Students must complete a minimum of six half-courses to earn a minor and three half-courses for a certificate.

More than 600 undergraduate students have earned minors in Environmental Engineering and Sustainability Energy — among the seven minors the Faculty offers — since they were introduced in 2008. Here are three undergraduate students who are making sustainability and the environment core components of their education.

Omar Haggag (Year 4 MechE) grew up in Abu Dhabi, “a place where the energy industry is a focal point in the economy.” This experience inspired him to enhance his studies in the Energy and Environment stream in Mechanical & Industrial Engineering (in addition to the Solid Mechanics and Machine Design stream) with a minor in Sustainable Energy. “Sustainability is an approach that will help us move in the right direction towards what is best for our planet,” says Haggag. “It’s a long-term initiative and a core value that must be ingrained in our generation and in generations to follow.”

Haggag is applying his education in sustainability to his MIE capstone project. Alongside three other students and under the direction of Professor Shaker Meguid(MIE), he is working to design a battery electric-powered vehicle (EPV) for the Mechanics and Aerospace Design Laboratory. The team hopes to provide a viable alternative to conventional internal-combustion engine vehicles and to improve the aesthetics, cost and safety of EPVs.

March 22, 2016 — Haya Elaraby (Year 3 IndE) and Katherine Lonergan (Year 3 MechE) are among 10 recipients of the Ontario Professional Engineers Foundation for Education scholarship.

On Tuesday, March 15, members of the Foundation presented two admission scholarships and eight in-course scholarships totalling $15,000 to students at a reception held in the Bahen Centre for Information Technology.

“We are honoured to be able to give 10 scholarships this year to U of T Engineering students,” said Marisa Sterling (ChemE 9T1), president of the Foundation. “The Foundation was created to ensure that students are getting the financial assistance they need and we’ve been fortunate to sustain it. The scholarship money and the commitment to student success is coming from the over 80,000 professional engineers in Ontario to further the profession.”

Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO) established the Foundation in 1959. Today, it is managed by an independent board of directors comprised of staff and engineer members of both PEO and the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers (OSPE). Over the past 56 years, the Foundation has contributed over $2.6 million of student funding to more than 3,000 engineering students in Ontario.

Professor Brenda McCabe (CivE), chair of the Scholarships and Awards Committee at U of T Engineering, said that presenting students with scholarships is a highlight of her committee work.

“But it wouldn’t be possible without the support of organizations like the Foundation, PEO and OSPE that come together to help students both professionally and financially,” McCabe said.

Haya Elaraby (Year 3 IndE)

Haya Elaraby is a third-year industrial engineering student who is minoring in bioengineering. Last summer, she held a research assistant position at U of T. Since second year, she has been actively involved in AIESEC. She is currently mentoring first-year students as a peer-assisted study session leader and is volunteering as an MIE Ambassador. She aspires to use her engineering background to make a positive impact on society.

Katherine Lonergan (Year 3 MechE)

Katherine Lonergan is in her penultimate year of mechanical engineering. She has been very involved throughout her university career, competing with both the Varsity Blues volleyball team and University of Toronto Track Club, as well as chairing the Council of Athletics + Recreation, directing Blues Engineering, and working as an NSERC research student and T.A. mentor. She hopes to graduate with a minor in sustainable energy, and pursue a career in a fast-paced, multidisciplinary field.

Read more at U of T Engineering News.

March 3, 2016 — After the computer and the smartphone, robotics is the next big technology that will change our lives,” Professor Goldie Nejat (MIE) told a hushed crowd of 12 journalists assembled in her lab. “We focus on developing the intelligence and interactive capabilities of robots.”

The group visited three labs in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering on Monday, March 1 to learn about the University of Toronto’s expertise in robotics and automation, part of a four-day tour organized by Ontario’s Ministry of Economic Development, Employment and Infrastructure.

Nejat is the Canada Research Chair in Robots for Society, as well as director of the Institute for Robotics and Mechatronics (IRM), which unites multidisciplinary researchers and industry partners working in the fields of robotics and automation. One of her research areas focuses on addressing our changing demographics and concentrates on developing social robots that can provide needed assistance with activities of daily living for the elderly in order to promote aging-in-place and improve their quality of life.

“The whole idea of this lab is to help and support people with daily activities that get harder as we get older,” said Nejat. A reporter asked her how long we have to wait before humanoid robots are working inside our homes. “We are now at the point where we can make that prediction,” she said. “More personal robots are about five to ten years from deployment — it’s very close.”

From robots that can look you in the eye, to robots you can barely see: Professor Yu Sun (MIE, ECE, IBBME), Canada Research Chair in Micro and Nano Engineering Systems, is developing a fleet of minuscule robots to perform tasks from performing surgery on a cell and inside a cell, to improving high-throughput drug testing for personalized medicine.

One of Sun’s projects involves using robots to select the best individual sperm for fertilization, tapping it with a tiny needle to immobilize it, picking it up, and injecting it into an egg cell to fertilize it.

“This is medical robotics at the cellular level, in many ways like the da Vinci surgical robot at the tissue level,” said Sun, referring to the sophisticated system of robotic arms surgeons use to perform complex surgeries less invasively. “Robots can perform these precise manoeuvres more consistently than humans can, and assisting surgeons with robotic systems can greatly improve the outcome for the patient.”

Meet a few of the IRM robots that may someday help you at home or in the hospital:

Tangy

Tangy is a socially assistive robot designed to facilitate recreational activities and promote social interaction among people with degenerative cognitive conditions, such as dementia. Tangy tells jokes and leads individuals or groups in games of Bingo, which exercises memory, recognition and fine motor skills. “Unfortunately, a lot of nursing homes are understaffed and recreational activities are sometimes where those cuts are felt,” said Nejat. “We’re using the robot as a rehabilitation or cognitive intervention tool to see if such robots are effective in prolonging the onset or progression of cognitive impairments while also encouraging social interactions.”

 

 

 

 

Search & Rescue Assistant Robots

After a natural disaster, the clock is ticking: the first 72 hours following a devastating earthquake or tsunami are the most critical for finding and rescuing survivors. Search and rescue robots can be used to explore and map collapsed buildings in three dimensions while looking for victims, in order to assist rescue workers in such stressful and time-critical situations. Robots can be sent into unknown environments where it maybe just too dangerous for rescue workers. Robots tag the location of survivors on a map they generate and rescue workers can use these maps to isolate their search efforts to increase the number of victims found.

 

 

 

 

LifeForce: the Nano Robot

Part of understanding the causes of genetic disorders is finding out why certain genes prefer to reside in specific locations inside the cell nucleus. This ultra-precision nano robot is capable of extracting a single chromatin from within a cell nucleus without disturbing the rest of the nuclear structures, to 3D map preferred locations of genes. “It’s like a nanometer-sized shovel,” says Sun. “It can robotically shovel target genetic materials out of a single cell nucleus, to understand gene location variations under normal and disease conditions.”

March 1, 2016 — MIE Professor Aimy Bazylak is among six funded projects announced. Strategic Partnership Grants to help U of T engineers address some of the greatest challenges facing Canada and the world.

New funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) will advance U of T Engineering research in sustainable energy, telecommunications and more.

On March 1, NSERC announced six Strategic Partnership Grants to help U of T engineers address some of the greatest challenges facing Canada and the world. The projects include new technologies to extract valuable minerals from hazardous mine tailings and systems to enable cities to repurpose stormwater more effectively. In total, the program invested more than $2.8 million in U of T Engineering and more than $4.8 million across the entire University.

Read more at U of T Engineering News.

February 22, 2016 — A team of scientists injects a tiny mechanical device into the human body, where it swims to the site of a potentially fatal blood clot and removes the blockage, saving the patient’s life. That may sound like the plot of a science fiction film, but in Professor Eric Diller’s (MIE) lab at U of T Engineering’s Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, such ideas are getting closer to science fact.

Diller and his team build robotic devices that range in size from just less than one millimetre, down to a few microns, the size of individual bacteria. “Our big dream is to put these inside the human body, to do things like targeted drug delivery, and potentially some surgical or other medical procedures,” says Diller. Delivering drugs directly to where they are needed in the body can allow for lower doses and fewer side effects. This is particularly important for chemotherapy treatment, which aims to destroy cancer cells while leaving healthy ones alone.

The team’s tiny machines don’t necessarily look like robots as we traditionally think of them, but they are able to carry out some basic tasks, such as grasping and releasing nearby objects. A couple of years ago, Diller helped create a type of microbot capable of building tiny bridges.

 

Because the devices are so small, there is no room for batteries. Instead, they respond to the action of external magnetic fields. “I think of the robot as the whole system: the device, the external electromagnetic coils, the computer that controls them and the microscopes that track where they are,” says Diller.

The magnets used in the devices are made of alloys containing rare-earth elements such as neodymium and are extremely powerful. This means that only safe, low-strength magnetic fields are needed to move them through the body. External fields can also make the robot change shape — for example, opening and closing its claw — by causing magnets in the device to switch between attracting and repelling modes.

Some of Diller’s most recent work has focused on building machines that can efficiently swim through human blood. This is challenging because everyday physical forces have very different effects at the micro scale: to a miniscule robot, the attractive forces between individual water molecules make it feel like a much thicker liquid. “It’s like they’re swimming through molasses,” says Diller. “A tail that flaps from side to side like a fish is not a good strategy at this scale.”

In a recent publication, Diller and his team designed a microswimmer only one-tenth of a millimetre thick and about one millimetre long. It looks like a flat sheet, but contorts itself into undulating waves when subjected to a rotating magnetic field. Its movement is similar to a flounder or other flatfish. “It turns out to be a great way to move objects around at this size,” he says. “We can go forward or backward very easily, and even independently control two microswimmers at the same time.”

It will be some time before the team’s devices can undertake more complex operations, but their potential is vast. “The first medical applications of this research are going to be in augmenting the capabilities of minimally-invasive surgery,” says Diller. “This is particularly appealing for operations which require a lot of dexterity and precision such as in neurosurgery or work inside the eye. Then we’ll build on that to develop tools that can travel through the body under their own power. There are many challenges to solve along the way, but that’s what makes it so fascinating for us to explore.”

February 22, 2016 — Alumna Anne Sado (IndE 7T7) had already led a full and successful career when she decided to launch a new one.

The industrial engineer joined Bell Canada immediately following her graduation from U of T Engineering. After spending 25 years working her way up the corporate ranks, she decided she needed a change.

“I had the good fortune of being eligible for an early retirement,” Sado said. “I decided it would be great to think about a different future.”

She engineered that future around her love of learning: in 2004 Sado was named president of Toronto’s George Brown College.

“What I realized was that there was an amazing synergy between what I had been doing in my career — my background, the skills I built — and my interests in the city and applied education,” she said. “I was selected for the role. Here I am in my 13^thyear and I haven’t looked back.”

Under Sado’s leadership, George Brown College has doubled in size and established itself as a key part of Toronto’s social, economic and cultural fabric. The college has established strong community partnerships — including ties with at-risk communities — developed new programs in concert with arts organizations and industry, and advanced international and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Sado credits her engineering background for some of her success as an academic leader.

“My engineering education, especially in industrial, really made me think about things as a system and how everything fits together,” she said. “When I think of my leadership style and I look at the institution that I’m managing, I take a look at the big picture, how things fit together and what element or areas of expertise I require to make the entire system work.

“I let people run with their parts of the bigger picture so I don’t need to manage every bit of it. If I can see that it’s fitting together, it’s working. But if it’s not working, I can break it down and figure out where we need to focus some attention.”

Sado has served as a director of several professional organizations, including the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers and the Association of Canadian Community Colleges, and has been a member of the President’s Council of the University of Toronto Engineering Alumnae Association, Dean’s Advisory Board and Engineering Campaign Cabinet. In 2013, she was appointed Member of the Order of Canada, one of the country’s highest civilian honours.