April 29, 2015 — When Patricia Sheridan (MechE 0T9, MASc 1T1, ILead PhD Candidate) was an undergraduate student in mechanical engineering at U of T, she loved working on team projects. Most of her fellow classmates, however, were less than enthused.

That’s when Sheridan had an idea.

Now four years into her PhD in Engineering Leadership at U of T, Sheridan has turned that idea into the Team-effectiveness Learning System (TELS), a unique online tool that’s designed to enhance teamwork and leadership skills among engineering students.

TELS helps students organize, learn and practice cooperative skills during their school projects, and it also sets them up to succeed in their engineering careers in either academia or industry—both environments where successfully working in a group is essential.

“Teamwork is critical because engineering is a team-oriented profession,” Sheridan said. “Yet many technically savvy students struggle with the ‘softer’ science of how to work effectively with others in a group.”

Sheridan’s research is being conducted through the Faculty’s Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering (ILead), a multidisciplinary hub that offers innovative learning opportunities that help engineering students develop critical competencies in leadership, collaboration, communication and problem solving.

Professor Doug Reeve (ChemE), ILead’s director, said what he hears from industry echoes Sheridan’s experience. Sometimes smart, technically savvy engineers fall short in their ability to translate their knowledge into a workplace setting.

“It is the ability to translate technical knowledge to real-world situations that we are developing,” said Reeve.

How TELS works

TELS creates a personalized learning environment that provides students with lessons, exercises and self- and peer-assessments throughout the duration of a project. It offers students individualized training based on their current level of competency in a range of specific team-effectiveness behaviours.

For example, TELS is used in the first year engineering design courses, where formal team projects can account for up to 75 per cent of a student’s grade. At the beginning of the project, students are introduced to TELS and different models that can be used to help facilitate effective teamwork.

Throughout the semester, students are asked to complete online assessments of themselves and others. This feedback is then shared confidentially with each team member, and they are encouraged to develop weak areas through tailored exercises that TELS provides. The instructors also get a report—called a sociogram—that shows how the different team members perceive each other’s effectiveness.

“In the [instructor’s] diagram, if you start seeing three members that are really tightly clustered together and one member that’s really far out, we’ll flag that as a team where it looks like the four members aren’t working effectively together,” she said.

The tool has already been fully integrated into several team-based courses at U of T Engineering for the last two years. This has provided data that Sheridan can analyze—such as the differences between student assessments and teaching assistant assessments—to determine how TELS is working and how to improve it in the time ahead.

National recognition

Since its development, TELS has already captured the attention of Canada’s research community. This spring, Sheridan received a scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)—an honour that is very unusual for engineers, who are typically funded through more technical-oriented funding bodies.

Sheridan said she hopes the SSHRC award will not only elevate the status and credibility of her research, but also the status of ILead and U of T Engineering “as a place that conducts world-class leadership research, in particular, on engineering and about engineers.”

Using findings from TELS trials and other activities, the team at ILead is also designing a resource kit for instructors to help them teach teamwork more effectively and develop more confidence in teaching effective teamwork. This project is being funded through the Faculty’s Engineering Instructional Innovation Program and has been underway for nearly one year.

Programs like TELS have great value, said Reeve, because they help students learn how to become leaders by developing self-awareness and increasing their capacity to apply their knowledge.

“And that’s important not only for the success of the individual engineer, but also for the success of the enterprises they join, for the country, and for that matter, the world,” said Reeve. “We have a lot of issues to deal with in the world and engineers are extremely well placed to bring solutions to those challenges—but they need an additional set of skills beyond the technical.”

April 29, 2015 — On March 30, fourth-year students from departments across U of T Engineering displayed their innovative solutions to industry challenges in the second-ever Multidisciplinary Capstone Design Projects (MCP) course.

The showcase was the grand finale for 20 multidisciplinary student teams who spent eight months collaborating with clients from Bombardier, Magna, Defence Research & Development Canada, Toronto Rehab and other organizations on it

Experience three of this year’s projects:

Students engineer new database workflows (Hamilton Professional Firefighters Association)

Students Design New Helmet that Avoids Neck Strain (Defence Research & Development Canada) 

Inventing a New Portable Ramp for Mobility Scooters (Toronto Rehab) 

Learn more about the Multidisciplinary Capstone Projects course:

The MCP is a unique experiential learning opportunity organized by Professor Kamran Behdinan (MIE), director of the Faculty’s Institute for Multidisciplinary Design & Innovation. Now finished its second year, the program brings together engineering students from different departments to solve challenges proposed by prominent industry partners.

Learn more about the Multidisciplinary Capstone Projects course.

April 28, 2015 — Congratulations to Hussein Djirdeh, Hassan Djirdeh (MinE 1T4+PEY), Nithin Mathew and Aravind Raman and Shamail Rizwan for taking first place at the Harvard International Consulting Competition (HICC)!

April 27, 2015 — The team, which includes Professor Yu Sun (MIE), used live imaging and computer models to study the links between mechanical forces, changes in cell shape and cell movement in embryos. Read more.

April 17, 2015 — Four MIE students are among  this year’s 16 U of T Engineering winners of the Gordon Cressy Leadership Award.

The prestigious award was established in 1994 and is named after Gordon Cressy, former U of T vice-president of development and university relations. It recognizes students who have made outstanding extra-curricular contributions to their college, faculty or school, or to the university as a whole.

“We are tremendously proud of our Cressy Award winners for their leadership and contributions to our Engineering community,” said Dean Cristina Amon. “We strive for excellence in the student experience and these students help us realize that goal through their leadership in co- and extra-curricular activities. Their engagement beyond the classroom enriches experiential learning for all students. With their broad perspectives, talent and potential, they are well-positioned to be the global engineering leaders of the future.”

Marissa Goldsmith (Year 4 IndE + PEY)

During her time at U of T Engineering, Marissa proved to be an asset to many clubs and sports teams. She was the captain of the U of T Engineering Iron Dragons and played a vital role in the success and motivation of the dragon boat team. Marissa also provided new opportunities and encouraged her engineering peers to get involved through her role as president of the U of T Engineering Athletics Association. As the high school outreach director for Women in Science & Engineering (WISE), she showed determination and commitment to youth outreach through the successful re-launch of the WISE High School Outreach program.

Amanda Santos (Year 4 MechE)

Amanda is an exceptional leader and a true example to her peers. In 2012, she founded the University of Toronto Ironsports Club, which developed out of the transformative impact strength sports had on her own life. In just three years, the club expanded to more than 300 members. Amanda designed and delivered budgeting and financial management workshops twice per semester for student groups and organizations through ULead. She was also the business leader on U of T’s Formula SAE Racing team.

Gordon Tang (Year 4 IndE + PEY)

Gordon is a dedicated leader who has contributed extensively to career development for the U of T community. Under Gordon’s leadership as president, the You’re Next Career Network—a student-run organization that connects students with employers—organized the Startup Career Expo, Canada’s largest fair for startup careers. He was also vice-president external of EngSoc. In addition to serving students, Gordon has also created multiple opportunities for alumni to engage and stay connected with the university.

Ananya Tandon-Verma (Year 4 IndE + PEY)

Ananya has excelled as a leader and as an engineering student. As president of the Nspire Innovation Network, she managed 80 executives across 15 campuses. As chair of Canada’s National Business and Technology Conference, she led a team to deliver 20 hours of programming for 450 young professionals. She has also served as chapter president for the Institute of Industrial Engineers, director of corporate relations for Social Spark and VP professional events for WISE.

Read more at U of T Engineering News.

April 14, 2015 — Eighty-nine engines revved in Motor City this weekend, but they weren’t racing for gold—they were racing for green.

The University of Toronto Supermileage team won this year’s Shell Eco-Marathon Americas in Detroit, Michigan, with an efficiency of 3,421 miles per gallon—the equivalent of 6.82 millilitres of gasoline per 10 kilometres. That’s less than five tablespoons of gas to drive from the foot of Yonge Street in Toronto to Barrie, Ontario.

U of T squeaked out a win in the very last run of the event to upset the dominant Al Erion team from Université Laval. A perennial favourite, Laval took home the title at the past two events, and five out of six previous years in the highly competitive Prototype Gasoline category.

“Even on that last run I don’t think most of us believed we would come in first, we just thought we might improve,” says Mengqi Wang (ElecE 1T3, MASc 1T6), co-president and electrical lead of the Supermileage team. “It was literally the last possible moment—we were the final car on the track—and we just sneaked past them.”

The surprise win couldn’t have been more dramatic: the team thought they’d had their last run around the 1.4-kilometre track, and were in the fuelling tent having their gas consumption measured and logged with only five minutes left before the track was slated to close.

“We’d already done media interviews about coming in second, and being happy about improving on last year’s performance,” says Prashanth Murali (MechE 1T3+PEY, UTIAS MASc 1T6), the team’s mechanical lead credited with designing and fabricating a much lighter aerobody for this year’s 34-kilogram vehicle. “We were resigned to our fate.”

Then they realized there were only two cars in line at the start. “The official at the start line told us if we lined up right now we could get another run in,” remembers Wang. “We sprinted back to the tent and dragged the car over.”

They finished the run and went back in the fuel tent to measure the vehicle’s temperature and consumption, but because they were the very last car, they had to wait for the official rankings. “We could tell our consumption was low, but we didn’t know where we’d placed,” says Wang. “Half the team was screaming, half the team was trying to get us to calm down.”

This is the third year the Supermileage team has competed in the Shell Eco-marathon, each time in the Prototype Gasoline class, the biggest category at the two-day event. In 2014 they came second after jockeying for the lead with Laval all weekend. “We were neck and neck with them the entire competition,” says Wang. “We knew exactly what we needed to do to get the extra mileage, but we just couldn’t get the last run in.”

That year the team also won a technical innovation prize for their custom-built engine, the only custom engine in the entire competition. They hope to continue to improve on their engine, as well as perfecting a reliable clutch and making improvements to the vehicle’s aerodynamics, including wind-tunnel testing. Wang says the team also has plans to break into the Battery Electric category.

Founded in 2013, the Supermileage team is composed of 25 undergraduate and graduate students from U of T Engineering, and is supervised by Professor Kamran Behdinan (MIE) of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering. Wang and Murali both say they can’t wait to realize the many improvements they have in store for next year’s Eco-marathon—the competition returns to Detroit in 2016, where they hope to defend their title on the same track.

“The Supermileage Team is comprised of dedicated, multidisciplinary students, committed to the success of the team,” says Professor Behdinan. “As the faculty advisor, I had the privilege of knowing the team’s realistic objectives to go beyond  last year’s great success, and achieve first rank in the competition.”

“Our actual goal is to beat the North American record and see how far we can push the record,” says Wang. “All of us were a little disappointed by how close we were with Laval—just like last year, either team could have won. So the goal for us is to really set the bar for the field.”

The international event, which celebrated its 30^th anniversary this year, drew 113 teams from more than 1,000 universities and high schools across the Americas, including participants from Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico and the United States. In addition to gasoline, teams entered futuristic vehicles running on diesel, ethanol, electricity, compressed natural gas, gas-to-liquid fuel and hydrogen power. Teams competed for awards in best fuel economy, safety, design and team spirit.

“In Detroit, I was amazed by our team’s excellent engineering execution under the extreme pressure of a tough competition,” says Behdinan. “I would like to congratulate all of them for their remarkable achievement.”

April 13, 2015 — Professor Chul Park (MIE) has been named a University of Toronto Distinguished Professor, an honour that recognizes individuals with outstanding career achievements and promise.

Awarded by the U of T Office of the Vice-President and Provost, Park will hold the title of Distinguished Professor of Microcellular Engineered Plastics for a five-year term, beginning July 1, 2015. He will be one of only 20 U of T faculty members, and four Engineering professors, that will actively hold this distinction.

Park is founder and director of the Microcellular Plastics Manufacturing Laboratory(MPML), one of the world’s leading research centres in the refining of plastics foaming technology. Foamed plastics allow manufacturers to create products that can be lighter, more durable and better insulated, but with less raw materials. They’re increasingly used in packaging, upholstery, thermal insulation, building panels, toys and more.

Founded in 2013, the MPML is a commercialization centre for Park’s innovative microcellular technology. He and his team collaborate extensively with partners from the public and private sectors, focusing on  advancing scientific discovery, accelerating technology transfer and training younger engineers.

Park also leads both the Consortium for Cellular and Microcellular Plastics, which currently has about 20 member companies, as well as the NSERC Network for Innovative Plastic Materials and Manufacturing Processes, which involves 20 professors from 11 universities.

“On behalf of the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, I would like to congratulate Professor Chul Park on this prestigious recognition,” said Jean Zu, chair of MIE. “This honour—one of the highest distinctions U of T can convey —is yet another example of the high level of excellence at MIE.”

Park has an international reputation as a leader in the development of innovative and industrially viable technologies for the manufacture of microcellular foamed plastics that have superior mechanical and insulation properties. He is the author or co-author of over 900 publications, including two books, 240 journal papers and 560 conference papers, and holds 30+ patents.

Technology he developed has been licensed by hundreds of companies, and his research has had a major impact on industry. Most notably, it has allowed various metallic components to be replaced by plastic ones, reducing production and operational costs and allowing for lighter, more fuel-efficient vehicles.

His research also played a major role in replacing environmentally hazardous HCFC-based blowing agents with inert-gas based blowing agents.

Park has received approximately 30 major awards and honours over the course of his career. He is a fellow of three national academies—the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the Korean Academy of Science and Technology—as well as the Engineering Institute of Canada, the Society of Plastics Engineers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering.

April 13, 2015 — MIE Associate Professor Lidan You has been named Fellow by the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering (CSME). The distinction recognizes those who have shown excellence in mechanical engineering and has actively contributed to the progress of their profession and society.

Professor You is the director of Cellular Biomechanics Laboratory at U of T. Her research is focused on solving biomechanical questions in muscular skeletal system at the cellular level. Specifically, her team is working on: the anti-resorptive effect of mechanical loading on bone tissue; pressure effect on bone cell mechanotransduction; osteogenic potential of high frequency low magnitude vibration on bone adaptation; angiogenesis involvement in initiation of bone resorption under disuse condition; the advanced microfluidic system for bone cell mechanotransduction study; the role of focal adhesion assembly in cell mechanosensitivity using micropatterned surface; and, the development of advanced artificial bone matrix by employing novel microfabrication technologies.

April 10, 2015 — Professor Timothy Chan (MIE) has been named the Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Novel Optimization and Analytics in Health.

Ed Holder, Canada’s Minister of State for Science and Technology, shared the news at University of Toronto’s Mississauga campus today, announcing $139 million in nation-wide funding for the CRC program. Chan is among 19 researchers from U of T who received a total of $17.6 million in this round of CRC funding.

Chan is director of the Centre for Healthcare Engineering, where he brings an interdisciplinary, systems engineering approach to improving how health care works both in Canada and abroad. Also an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering (MIE), Chan focuses on developing optimization models to help inform better decision-making in the health-care field.

In one area of his research, Chan focuses on how doctors can fine-tune radiation therapies to improve cancer outcomes. Using complex mathematical modeling, he and his team propose treatment strategies that better account for the various uncertainties that present during therapy—such as when the patient breathes during a blast of radiation to a lung or breast tumour.

Chan also develops optimization models for both emergency and pre-hospital medicine. Using  data on historical cardiac arrests, building layouts and current automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) locations, he’s built a computer simulation that recommends the ideal places to put life-saving AEDs.

“I’m really humbled by the CRC appointment and incredibly thankful to the students and postdocs I’ve work with over the years who have contributed to the success of my lab,” said Chan. “The CRC funding will enable me to continue attracting top students to my research group and pushing forward the boundaries of optimization and analytics in health care.”

Internationally, Chan is involved in a collaboration to improve emergency medical care in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Supported by a grant from Grand Challenges Canada, his team is developing models that use GPS data from cell phones to depict how traffic is moving in real time—recommending the best routes for ambulances to an emergency scene.

“We are grateful to the government of Canada for this investment,” said Professor Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president, research and innovation. “The CRC program has enabled universities across Canada, U of T among them, to attract and retain the best researchers from around the world. As such, the program is critical to the long-term prosperity of our nation.”

Chan has received an Early Researcher Award from the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation of Ontario (2012), Early Career Teaching Awards from both MIE (2012) and U of T Engineering (2013), second place in the INFORMS Section on Public Programs, Service and Needs best paper competition (2012) and first place in the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference research paper competition (2013).

Before coming to U of T Engineering, he was an associate in the Chicago office of McKinsey and Company, a global management consulting firm. During that time, he advised leading companies in the fields of medical device technology, travel and hospitality, telecommunications, and energy on issues of strategy, organization, technology and operations.

March 31, 2015 — Professors Kamran Behdinan and Sanjeev Chandra were recently honoured by the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering (CSME), winning the C.N. Downing Award for distinguished service to CSME over many years, and the Jules Stachiewicz Medal for outstanding contributions to heat transfer in Canada, respectively.

Professor Behdinan is the NSERC Chair in Multidisciplinary Engineering Design and the Director of the University of Toronto Institute for Multidisciplinary Design & Innovation (UT-IMDI). He was the President of CSME from 2010 to 2012. His research fields include: design and development of light-weight structures for aerospace, automotive, and nuclear applications, multidisciplinary design optimization of aerospace and automotive systems, as well as multi-scale simulation of nano-structured materials and composites at elevated temperature. He has also published more than 90 peer-reviewed journal papers and 140 conference papers, and six book chapters. He has been the recipient of many prestigious awards and recognitions such as the Research fellow of Pratt & Whitney Canada, fellow of the CSME, and the Ryerson FEAS research awards in 2004 and 2010.

Professor Chandra is known internationally for his research on the dynamics of droplets and sprays. His research spans the areas of combustion, fluid mechanics, heat transfer and materials science and has also been applied in spray coating, spray cooling, fuel combustion and waste heat recovery. He has published more than 200 papers in referred journals and international conference proceedings. In 2010, he was awarded NSERC’s The Brockhouse Canada Prize for Interdisciplinary Research for his outstanding collaborative research. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

“On behalf of the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, I would like to congratulate Professor Behdinan and Chandra on their prestigious awards,” said Jean Zu, MIE Chair. “Their recognition by CSME is a testament to the extraordinary contributions our faculty continues to make in the field of mechanical engineering.”

CSME award recipients will be honoured at the Congress Banquet on Monday, June 1, 2015, as part of the 2015 Canadian Congress of Applied Mechanics.