Kai Chen (Year 1 MechE) has twin passions for aviation and the environment.

Chen grew up in Saskatoon, near the airport, where he developed his love of aviation and even worked on a ground handling team. As a high school student, he and his friend co-founded SK Eco-Solutions, a non-profit that collected plastic bottles and recycled them into 3D printing filament.

“We were, I think, the first people in North America to do this,” he says. “We found sponsors, purchased the machine, and gave the filament away to schools in our city. When we graduated, we decided to hand over the project to our school’s environmental team, who will keep it going.”

Chen is one of five U of T Engineering recipients of a 2022 Schulich Leader Scholarship at the University of Toronto. The Schulich Leaders combine skills in the STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — with leadership experience, and they’re all energized to problem-solve for a better world.

The community leadership, innovation and tech know-how embodied in Chen’s story are the characteristics that define the Schulich Leaders. The four-year scholarships, valued at $80,000 for science, technology or mathematics students and $100,000 for engineering students, were founded by philanthropist Seymour Schulich through the Schulich Foundation. Starting in 2023, the values will rise to $100,000 and $120,000, respectively.

Seymour Schulich made his entrepreneurial mark in the finance and mining industries, and became one of Canada’s most generous philanthropists. Since establishing the Schulich Leaders program in 2011, he has donated $200 million to the scholarship endowment. Supporting young people is his passion and proudest achievement — and his book, Get Smarter: Life and Business Lessons, is full of mentoring advice for young entrepreneurs.

“This scholarship completely changed my life,” says Chen. “It’s a massive confidence booster because obviously somebody believes in me. It also relieves so much financial pressure.”

The Schulich support not only helped him finance the move to Toronto, but also gives him the opportunity to explore U of T Engineering’s stellar suite of extracurricular opportunities related to his passions, such as the Aerospace Team.

“The University of Toronto is delighted to welcome our 2022 Schulich Leaders,” says Meric Gertler, president of U of T. “They are Canada’s future researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs — leaders who will make a mark on our world for the better. We’re so grateful to Seymour Schulich and the Schulich Foundation for the opportunities they are providing to these outstanding young learners.”

Meet all of U of T Engineering’s 2022 Schulich Leaders.

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on December 7, 2022 by Janet Rowe

The Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering (CSME) has announced the recipients of the 2023 Technical Awards. The Technical Awards honour society members for outstanding contributions to specific disciplines of mechanical engineering in Canada. Professor Javad Mostaghimi is the recipient of the 2023 Emerging Technologies Medal. The award is bestowed upon a member who demonstrates “exceptional research and innovation contributions to the field of thermal plasma in Canada”.

Professor Mostaghimi is a Mechanical Engieering professor and the founding director of the Centre for Advanced Coating Technologies (CACT). He received his BSc degree from Sharif University, Iran and MSc and PhD degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1978 and 1982, respectively. Before joining the University of Toronto, he held positions at Pratt & Whitney Canada and the University of Sherbrooke.

His main research interests are in plasma processing and thermal spray coating. Professor Mostaghimi is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and 7 other societies and the recipient of many awards, including the NSERC Brockhouse Canada Prize and the Heat Transfer Memorial Award of the ASME. He is an inductee of the ASM Thermal Spray Hall of Fame.

He is also a member of the editorial board of Plasma Chemistry and Plasma Processing and the International Review Board of the Journal of Thermal Spray.

The CSME awards will be presented at the 2023 CSME International Congress taking place from May 28-31, 2023 at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec. Professor Mostaghimi will deliver a plenary lecture at the congress along with the other Technical Award recipients.

View the CSME news release.

(Pictured: Truchla making a save against McMaster | Photo by Seyran Mammadov)

When you take the time to reflect on 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic, words need not be spoken to understand all the different hardships and challenges that it brought. For Varsity Blues third-year water polo goalkeeper, Hana Truchla, she was one of the many students making the transition from high school to post-secondary in the height of lockdowns and restrictions.

With so many unknowns all around her, while also trying to adapt to a new university setting, an online one at that, the adjustment was a difficult one for the mechanical engineering major.

“As first year was all online, I started second guessing myself pretty soon and I was unsure that I picked the correct degree,” Truchla said. “I didn’t know anyone in my program and it was difficult feeling like I was the only one struggling with certain concepts that were core to my discipline.”

“It was difficult to connect with people in my program and I started to seriously consider changing my field of study, however, I eventually decided to stick with mechanical engineering and see what would come of it.”

Fortunately for the Toronto native, she had a couple of things going for her as she worked her way through. First, and most importantly, she had her family in her corner. Both of Truchla’s parents studied engineering, making the academics very relatable. She also had a sense of optimism that her second year would look much different.

Focused on family and future, Truchla was able to persevere through that first year and hope that getting on campus for year two would make all the difference.

“Second year was the first year where I was absolutely sure that I was in the correct degree,” she said. “I met my classmates in person and we began to actually design things in our courses. I soon realized that I find a lot of joy in designing parts and systems and would love to do this as a future career.”

“A lot of the subject matter I learned in the classroom, I could see every day in the real world. It was something really special to be able see components and machines working together and be able to figure out exactly how they operate and what they do, everywhere around me.”

(Truchla during her summer co-op work term with Victaulic)

Having the chance to now be around all of her classmates  and enjoy much more of the traditional university experience, being on campus also opened the door for Truchla to join other university groups as well. In the summer of 2022, she joined the University of Toronto’s Formula 1 racing team, which really brought her engineering visions to life.

“Growing up, I can remember my dad watching Formula 1 on Sundays and I would always pass by the television but would never really quite understand it,” she said. “When I entered my first year at university, my passion of the sport only increased as I had many friends who loved it, and I could finally start understanding the impressive engineering aspects more as my academic career progressed.”

“I joined the U of T formula racing team recently in hopes of learning more about the inner workings of the car. I think the best part of being part of a design team is being able to apply the things I have learned in class and create components and systems that will be included on a running car. Seeing that my skills have real use in practice is one of the most satisfying experiences in my time at U of T engineering.”

More specifically, when it comes to creating components and systems, Truchla helped design steering system supports for this year’s car. She is also currently working on designing mounts on the suspension for tire temperature sensors that will be used for testing in the winter.

Meanwhile, away from the track and the classroom, Truchla and her Varsity Blues water polo teammates are currently preparing to defend their NCWP championship over the November 26-27 weekend. After having her first year as a Blue cancelled due to the pandemic, these opportunities are something she does not take for granted. In fact, she says her favourite Varsity Blues moment was getting to celebrate the team’s perfect season and NCWP title last year, following the cancelled 2020 season.

Now into her third year overall and second year on campus, Truchla knows that whether she is competing in the pool, learning in the classroom or working on a car, she is exactly where she wants to be -and it is largely because of her personal optimism and her family values.

“Growing up, my parents placed a great emphasis on teaching my sister and I and how the world works,” she said. “As a kid, the things I loved most was playing with Legos and watching shows like ‘How it’s Made’, a lot of activities that indirectly made me very curious about engineering and I didn’t even know it.”

“My dad would come home to show me projects he worked on, and I remember he would get very excited if he saw his projects in real life, so he shared it with the whole family. It means the world to me that now that I’m older and I understand more, I can talk to my family about their work and share our passion on a deeper level.”

-This story originally posted on the U of T Varsity Blues news site on November 24, 2022

U of T Engineering Dean Christopher Yip receives a vaccination administered by Lisa Dolovich, Dean of the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, at the Discovery Pharmacy (Photo: Aaron Demeter)

On December 1, members of the U of T Engineering community can access free flu vaccines in the Bahen Centre for Information Technology (40 St. George Street), courtesy of a partnership with the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy.   

The clinic is being run by the Discovery Pharmacy, University of Toronto’s dedicated campus pharmacy, which provides interdisciplinary health services to the U of T community. 

“The health and safety of our community is our top priority,” says Christopher Yip, Dean of U of T Engineering. 

“Getting a flu shot is a simple, effective way to protect yourself, protect others and reduce the load on our health-care system. We’re really pleased to be able to partner with Discovery Pharmacy to make this important public health measure as simple as possible for our faculty, staff and students.”  

The clinic will run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., in the Bahen Centre. Attendees should be prepared to present proof one piece of government-issued identification and are welcome to bring family members. Appointments to receive flu vaccine are encouraged, but walk-ins will also be accepted. 

While the December 1 clinic will focus only on vaccinations against influenza, other vaccines — such as bivalent COVID-19 booster shots, and vaccinations against HPV, shingles, hepatitis A/B, pneumonia and meningitis — are available to U of T community members by appointment at the Discovery Pharmacy. Other services, such as prescriptions and health services orientation for international students, are also available.  

“The Discovery Pharmacy team is working to make vaccines available and easily accessible for the U of T community,” says Jon Nhan, the Pharmacist Lead at U of T Discovery Pharmacy.   

“The opportunity to host a clinic with U of T Engineering is a great way to make getting the seasonal flu vaccine convenient and will support your health and the health of others.” 

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on November 21, 2022 by Tyler Irving and Safa Jinje.

Professor Alison Olechowski (MIE, ISTEP); front row, far right) leads the Ready Lab, which aims to improve engineering design with a focus on leading-edge tools, such as computer-aided design. (Photo: Alison Olechowski)

Computer-aided design (CAD) software has been a tool used by engineers and designers for decades, but according to Professor Alison Olechowski (MIE, ISTEP) a better understanding of how it’s used could help these workers level-up their skills — with knock-on effects across a range of industries.  

“CAD is now used to design every manufactured object in our lives — from medical devices to cars to toys to furniture,” says Olechowski. “Mastery of CAD unlocks the potential for faster and higher quality design. But believe it or not, we don’t yet fully understand what an expert user does differently than a novice.”  

Olechowski’s Ready Lab aims to enhance engineering design and education with a focus on how people learn to use leading-edge tools such as CAD and leverage them to collaborate with each other on projects. They use cloud CAD platforms as an experimental laboratory to study these processes.  

By collecting and analyzing data from industrial CAD users, student teams and competitions, they are able to understand users’ behaviours in a way that has been previously unexplored.  

The team defines an expert CAD user as someone with extensive experience using CAD software in a professional setting, while a novice user has skills equivalent to having completed one CAD course.  

“One of my former students, James Chen (MechE 1T7 + PEY, MASc 2T1), who now works at Apple as a product design engineer, kickstarted this project through an experiment with expert CAD participants,” says Olechowski. “We found some interesting trends there that deserved a deeper dive.”  

One trend the team observed was that expert CAD users set themselves up for success from the start of a project by anticipating the end model better and strategically planning early features. This results in them having to do fewer revisions later in the design process.    

Funding for this project comes from the Connaught New Research Awards, which helps early-career faculty members establish their research program. Olechowski is one of more than 50 researchers from across U of T supported in the latest round.  

“The award is a great boost as I seek out other sources of research funding. The discoveries we make with this project will lay the foundation for our next series of studies, which we are expanding to consider collaboration,” says Olechowski, who recently won a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to study tools for distributed, collaborative engineering design work.   

The other two projects from U of T Engineering supported by the Connaught New Researchers awards are: 

• Fae Azhari (MIE, CivMin) — Smart bridge decks 
• Kevin Golovin (MIE) — A novel synthetic textile finish to mitigate the formation of the microplastics fibres 

Professor Aimy Bazylak (MIE) has taken up the Canada Research Chair in Clean Energy. She is one of three U of T Engineering professors who received new or renewed Canada Research Chairs in the latest round. (Photo: Jeremy Sale)

As renewables — such as solar and wind power — increase their share within our energy mix, the need for new technologies to efficiently store electrical energy is growing as well. Professor Aimy Bazylak (MIE) and her team are on the case. 

Bazylak is one of three U of T Engineering researchers awarded new or renewed Canada Research Chairs today. As the Canada Research Chair in Clean Energy, Bazylak advances technologies such as fuel cells, water electrolyzers and carbon dioxide electrolyzers. 

“These are all types of electrochemical energy conversion technologies,” says Bazylak. “This means that they transform one type of energy into another type without using combustion — and no combustion means no harmful greenhouse gas emissions.” 

“The beauty of these technologies is that they are scalable. Our research can be applied on a smaller scale for electric vehicles and heavy duty vehicles, or a larger scale to provide stationary power to buildings.” 

In developing new materials for fuel cells and electrolyzers — especially the catalyst layer that speeds up the key chemical reactions — Bazylak and her team make use of synchrotrons and neutron imaging facilities. 

These facilities enable them to fire high-energy particles at the materials they’ve made and use specialized detectors to see what bounces off or passes through. Such tests enable them to characterize the performance of the materials and design even better ones for the next iteration. 

“The Canada Research Chair and its funding will strengthen the beam time proposals and enable us to visit these prestigious research facilities,” she says.  

“Holding this Chair fills me with tremendous gratitude for the privilege I have every day to work with superstar student scholars and researchers who very much feel the obligation of being global citizens. It helps me support their career trajectory in engineering, science and leadership, all while having an absolute blast doing research that will have positive impact on the world.” 

The other two Canada Research Chairs awarded in the latest round are: 

• Marianne Hatzopoulou (CivMin) — Canada Research Chair in Transport Decarbonization and Air Quality (Tier 1, new) 
• Arun Ramchandran (ChemE) — Canada Research Chair in Engineered Soft Materials and Interfaces (Tier 2, renewal) 

– This story was originally published on the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering News Site on November 16, 2022 by Tyler Irving

The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society recently held their 66th Annual Meeting where a number of individuals were recognized for their contributions to the field.

Professor Greg Jamieson and his co-author Dr. Gyrd Skraaning received the Jerome H. Ely Human Factors Article Award for their publication Human Performance Benefits of The Automation Transparency Design Principle: Validation and Variation. This award is given to the best paper published in  Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society in the previous year.

Charles Ward, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto

Charles Albert Ward was born in Bailey, Texas, on May 28, 1939, and passed away on October 12, 2022, in Bridgepoint Hospital, Toronto. He went to Magnolia High School and then took Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas. An excellent student, he was accepted as a PhD student at Northwestern University and was granted the degree in 1967. Seeking an academic position afterward, he was encouraged by a fellow Ph.D. student from Canada to consider the University of Toronto. He did, and joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering as an Assistant Professor on July 1, 1967, Canada’s centennial birthday.

Charles had a sparkling academic career, becoming a full Professor in 1977. He retired in 2004 at age 65, as required by the university at that time (mandatory retirement was eliminated later), and he was granted the honour of Professor Emeritus. He did not actually retire, though, for he continued in the Department with graduate-level teaching and his usual full program of research. He was an outstanding scientist in thermodynamics and received awards in that field. Chief among them were two prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Fellowships, which were held at the Technische Universität Munchen, and at Universität Erlangen-Nurnberg, Germany. He spent a year at each university, as well as a year at the CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) Laboratory in Meudon, France, as a Visiting Scientist.

His fundamental research, both theoretical and experimental, was conducted at the molecular level, much like the work of a physicist. Indeed, his many publications were generally in journals such as Chemical Physics and Physical Review. The high regard for his research was also recognized by substantial financial support from many sources, including the Canadian Space Agency, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and the Institute of Environmental Medicine. The grants and contracts enabled him to conduct wide-ranging research and to supervise many graduate students. Those students became devoted to the associated scientific fields, and to him. They appreciated his great teaching.

In the Department, he became the best dressed member – typically a suit and a signature bow tie, the attire of a southern gentleman. In fact, he fit that role well, for he was courtly, kind, and thoughtful; he spoke well, and was admired by his colleagues.

Charles met the love of his life, Barbara, in high school, and in 1959 they married. In Toronto they had a fine life, with a lovely home within an easy walking distance of the campus. She took the Cordon Bleu course in Paris while they lived in Meudon. Her haute cuisine at home was shared with others through marvelous dinner parties, with matching wines chosen by Charles. They enjoyed opera performances and visits to the Art Gallery of Ontario. His hobby was reading, especially the biographies of famous physicists. Barbara passed away in 2016, a huge loss for Charles.

He is survived by family members in Texas: brother, John and his wife Cissy; nieces, Susan and Delinda; and nephews, David (Clara) and Johnny (Nell). Charles’s sister, Delia, predeceased him.