Collaboration

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Climate Positive Energy

Faculty of Arts & Science

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

Political Science

School of the Environment

Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

A University of Toronto-led collaboration developing clean energy technologies that can be tailored to the needs of different communities – from Canada’s remote North to populous southern Ontario – will receive support from the federal government.

The CANSTOREnergy project brings together researchers from 11 Canadian universities, along with community, utility and industry partners, to develop technologies that convert carbon-based emissions into useful products, such as fuels and raw materials, and create a net-zero means of seasonal storage for renewable energy that meets specific community needs.

Led by researchers from �鶹��Ƶ’s Climate Positive Energy initiative, the collaborative effort is being supported by $24 million through the federal New Frontiers in Research Fund’s 2022 Transformation Competition.

The project will deliberately focus on two very different regions – Yukon and the southern Ontario city of Hamilton – in recognition that there is no one-size-fits-all approach in a vast country like Canada.

“We want to think about addressing these big global challenges such as climate change. But we don’t solve them at the global scale,” says Kate Neville, one of the project’s lead researchers and an associate professor in �鶹��Ƶ’s department of political science and School of the Environment in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

“You solve them by thinking about what those challenges look like in lots of places and working with communities to find solutions that meet multiple needs.”

The project’s two sites highlight the different challenges Canadian regions face when considering how carbon conversion technologies can be successfully adapted to existing infrastructure, economic forces and social goals.

Yukon, for example, is not included in the electrical grid that connects much of the U.S. and Canada, and seasonal extremes limit the availability of renewable energy. As a result, many communities need to import diesel fuel during the harsh winter months – which comes at a high cost both environmentally and financially.

Hamilton, by contrast, is a densely populated urban centre that is plugged into the main North American power grid. Heavy industry fuels the local economy, but the environmental costs, such as air pollution, are unevenly distributed and disproportionately impact low-income and marginalized communities.

“Science and research are essential to solving the greatest challenges facing humanity today and in the future,” says François-Philippe Champagne, minister of innovation, science and industry. “That’s why our government is committed to continuing support for researchers who are pushing the boundaries of innovation, by investing in transformative, high-risk / high-reward research that will address issues that impact Canadians in all sectors of our economy and society.”

At the core of the project is a commitment to engaging community members about their energy challenges and goals and how carbon conversion technologies could fit into their future.

_ _ _

_ _

David Sinton is the nominated principal investigator of CANSTOREnergy and academic lead of the Climate Positive Energy institutional strategic initiative (photo by Lisa Lightbourn)

This engagement could ultimately determine the success of carbon conversion technologies, says David Sinton, nominated principal investigator of CANSTOREnergy and academic lead of Climate Positive Energy, one of several �鶹��Ƶ institutional strategic initiatives, and a professor of mechanical engineering in �鶹��Ƶ's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

Technologies that perform in the lab don’t always work as well under real-world conditions, adds Sinton, who notes that the urgency of the climate challenge calls for an expedient way to pre-empt issues that may crop up during deployment.

“Too often, engineers – and I have experience in this – innovate while focusing on the technology, which is totally understandable. But when tech is developed without guidance from an end user … the subsequent iterations can be costly. 

“We don't have time for that decades-long iterative cycle that is the norm. We need a new approach and are testing that here.”

CANSTOREnergy’s research team comprises engineers, social scientists, economists and other experts from McMaster University, Yukon University, University of Waterloo, University of British Columbia, University of Victoria, University of Winnipeg, Toronto Metropolitan University, University of Calgary, Carleton University and Dalhousie University.

The researchers will receive guidance from stakeholders and advisers in industry, utilities, government and Indigenous nations.

"The University of Toronto welcomes the federal government’s critical support for this important research,” says Leah Cowen, �鶹��Ƶ's vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives. “Canada enjoys a global competitive advantage in the area of carbon capture research – and the CANSTOREnergy team, with its collaborative and interdisciplinary approach, will build on these strengths and help to optimize this technology to meet the needs of communities across the country.”

Since environmental justice is at the forefront of the CANSTOREnergy project, Neville says it’s vital that communities have a say in developing the clean energy systems that could power and empower them.

“It’s about imagining community futures in ways that meet the goals of equity and fairness,” says Neville.

“It’s thinking about how technology can help us undo some of the unjust systems that we have and help build something that is not only about climate change, but about a more just future.”

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A bitter truth: 30 years of child welfare data reveals systemic inequities, racism and harm

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 15:00:03 +0000

A bitter truth: 30 years of child welfare data reveals systemic inequities, racism and harm__

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 03/20/2023 - 11:00

Cutline

Participants hold a banner at Dundas Square in Toronto during a National Day of Truth and Reconciliation event on Sept. 30, 2021 (Photo by Shawn Goldberg/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images)

Topic

Indigenous

International partnerships

When the first Ontario Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (OIS) was published in 1993, province-wide knowledge of child welfare investigation rates and outcomes was scarce.

“Whenever I tried to go get data, I couldn’t. It literally did not exist,” said Nico Trocmé, a professor at McGill University who led the first OIS study after spending several years on the frontline at a child welfare agency.

Barbara Fallon

Researchers have since produced a new Ontario study every five years, with the seventh iteration – led by Barbara Fallon, a professor in the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work – launching later this year.

The remarkable 30-year research undertaking, which includes four Canada-wide studies and two studies specific to First Nations, has revealed hard truths related to racism and deep inequalities for First Nations as well as Black, Latin American and other racialized communities.

“These data aren’t everything, but they’re certainly foundational to understanding how we can serve children and families in a more responsive way,” says Fallon, who stepped into the role of principal investigator of OIS after serving as project manager on the 1998 study. Fallon is also �鶹��Ƶ’s associate vice-president, research and Canada Research Chair in Child Welfare.

Working in collaboration with community partners, the studies’ researchers have shown that not only are families in racialized communities much more likely to be investigated by child welfare agencies, but their children are also removed at disproportionately higher rates than in investigations involving white families.

By compiling and analyzing hundreds of thousands of child maltreatment investigations across the province and country, the studies also show how these disparities are getting worse.

Across Canada in 2008, First Nations families were four times more likely to be investigated and almost 12 times more likely to have their children removed from the home at the conclusion of a child maltreatment-related investigation than non-Indigenous families in sampled agencies. In 2019, a First Nations child was a staggering 17 times more likely to be placed in care.

The wide-angle view of these studies has enabled researchers, community leaders and policy makers to recognize problems and needs at a societal level.

“So often in child welfare, we codify the wrongdoing at the level of the parent,” says Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the Caring Society and a professor at McGill University’s School of Social Work. Blackstock earned a PhD in social work from �鶹��Ƶ in 2009 and received an honorary degree from the university in 2018. “And I will hold parents’ feet to the fire for things they can change. But in so many of these cases, it’s actually things beyond their control.

“This type of data allows us to push for change at those systemic levels often held within government policies and legislation.”

Read the full story at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

'Breaking down barriers': �鶹��Ƶ opens Blue Door to external partnership opportunities

siddiq22 — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 15:44:48 +0000

'Breaking down barriers': �鶹��Ƶ opens Blue Door to external partnership opportunities

siddiq22 Tue, 01/17/2023 - 10:44

Cutline

Executives from LG join �鶹��Ƶ's Christopher Yip, left, to announce an expansion of their partnership at the Collision tech conference in Toronto in 2019 (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Tabassum Siddiqui

Topic

Global Lens

Blue Door

Artificial Intelligence

Medicine

partnerships

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Startups

Technology

Partnering with University of Toronto has emerged as a key strategy for many companies, non-profits and government to achieve their most important goals – from furthering research and developing new products and services, to figuring out solutions to specific problems.

Alex Mihailidis (left) and Illan Kramer (photos supplied)

And many of �鶹��Ƶ’s 600-plus partners access world-class talent and expertise via the university's new Blue Door portal.

A point of entry for organizations who want to work with the university, Blue Door is an online portal that helps potential – and existing – partners identify opportunities across the three campuses and connects them with the right people and departments.

“We often hear from prospective partners: ‘How do I partner with �鶹��Ƶ? How do I find the right person to work with there?’ So, we wanted to ensure there weren’t barriers to us growing great new partnerships,” says Alex Mihailidis, associate vice-president of international partnerships and a professor in the department of occupational science and occupational therapy in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine.

Mihailidis, along with Illan Kramer, director of international research partnerships, developed the Blue Door initiative over the past two years – with significant input from �鶹��Ƶ divisions – and officially launched it last February.

They recently spoke to �鶹��Ƶ News about how the initiative helps streamline the partnership process and ensure both existing and emerging partnerships can evolve and grow.

What is the Blue Door?

Mihailidis: Simply put, it is a portal into the university. Within four clicks, a new partner or existing partner can be connected to the right person at �鶹��Ƶ who will help them make further connections within the university to achieve their business goals. At a higher level, it’s a new philosophy in the way that we do corporate partnerships here at the university – a more collaborative approach across all the different divisions, campuses disciplines and departments.

�鶹��Ƶ President Meric Gertler (front left) and Shigeru Sasaki, CEO of Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., sign a memorandum of understanding in 2017 (photo by Lisa Lightbourn)

Why was it important for Blue Door to include an online portal for partners?

Mihailidis: One of the things you always hear from partners is that “the university is so big – it’s so complex.” We’re kind of like a federated model – multiple divisions with multiple goals – but we are one university at the end of the day, even across three campuses.

We started talking early on about, “Well, what if we can provide a concierge-style model?’ Through these four clicks online, you’re connected with someone, and that one person becomes your contact at the university. In that way, we’re ensuring that �鶹��Ƶ is not seen as this big place that’s complicated to navigate, but straightforward and easy to work with.

Why do so many organizations want to partner with �鶹��Ƶ?

Kramer: When you look at �鶹��Ƶ’s size and our quality, we’re pretty much peerless globally. And one of the consequences of being such a big, world-class institution is that you have disparate communities of expertise that can talk to one another in interesting and creative ways. It’s why sometimes you'll see an automotive company come to us and you think, “Oh, they're going to want to talk to a mechanical engineer or an electrical engineer.” But it turns out that the people whose work resonates with their needs might be child psychologists or kinesiology experts. The big research and development challenges that these companies are looking to us to help solve are interdisciplinary. And at �鶹��Ƶ, we have that kind of interdisciplinarity baked into our size and quality.

Mihailidis: These companies realize that partnering with University of Toronto just adds strength from a variety of levels – whether it’s research, accessing our talent or other areas to help their objectives. All that provides them with a competitive advantage at the end of the day.

In partnership with Moderna, Assistant Professor Omar F. Khan (back row, second from left) and his lab team focus on diseases that are currently incurable and untreatable (photo by Safa Jinje)

What are some examples of successful �鶹��Ƶ partnerships?

Kramer: One longstanding partnership is with [Japanese electronics company] Fujitsu. They established a Toronto R&D hub in the Myhal Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship where grad students and Fujitsu researchers work elbow-to-elbow on new inventions and innovations. Since then, we’ve been expanding that collaboration to multidisciplinary applications by applying their microelectronics expertise to other fields like traffic engineering, financial modelling, surgical scheduling and beyond – touching on expertise that exists across the entire university.

Another impactful partnership is with [South Korean conglomerate] LG Electronics. One of the coolest things about this partnership is that it doesn't start and stop at collaborative research – it also includes elements of professional development. We’ve developed what we call an “inverted internship,” where LG scientists embed themselves with �鶹��Ƶ research teams for four months to upskill their own AI abilities.

More recently, we launched a really exciting partnership with [American pharmaceutical and biotechnology company] Moderna, a company that a lot of people became familiar with in the last couple of years. Moderna recognized a huge level of expertise, especially in mRNA and regenerative medicine research, at �鶹��Ƶ and wanted to do something comprehensive that would help them expand beyond the COVID-19 vaccine to a host of other potential applications. They’ve since launched a project with Omar Khan, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering, and have had several early successes already. So that’s a partnership where we really see the opportunity to be on the leading edge of something that has the potential to impact millions – maybe even billions – of people around the world.

�鶹��Ƶ President Meric Gertler (left) and I.P. Park, the president and CTO of LG Electronics, sign a five-year collaborative AI research agreement in 2018 (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

What is the value of these partnerships to �鶹��Ƶ?

Mihailidis: They obviously bring funding to the university to support the work that is happening here. But it also brings our faculty, researchers and students together with cutting-edge, world-leading companies to help them accelerate the development of their research and move their findings into the real world, where they can have maximum impact.

Of course, there are always questions around protection of intellectual property and appropriate handling of confidentiality. These considerations are handled in an up-front and transparent way through contractual agreements, each of which takes into account our partner’s motivations as well as the motivations and expectations of the professors who may get involved in the partnership. That way, professors and their research teams can still benefit from groundbreaking innovations, while our partners can improve upon their own products and services. Ultimately, these partnerships give us access to other experts around the world and help grow the reputation of the University of Toronto and our community.

Kramer: There's no shortage of ambition among �鶹��Ƶ's research community. Our researchers are world-class – they do work that is excellent and excellence doesn’t come for free. If we want to do big things, we need to have world-class facilities; we have to attract the best professors, postdocs and graduate students – in general, we need to be able to outfit our labs with the right equipment and expertise in order to do that research.

Bringing industry on board helps ensure �鶹��Ƶ remains a cutting-edge institution. I’ve seen professors’ labs transform with a key industry partner where they went from, “Hey, this is kind of neat work that our academic peers are paying attention to,” to “Oh my God, I'm literally impacting millions of people now.” That’s incredibly exciting.

This made-in-Ontario collaboration is creating next-generation parts for electric vehicles

lanthierj — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 21:48:50 +0000

This made-in-Ontario collaboration is creating next-generation parts for electric vehicles

lanthierj Mon, 12/19/2022 - 16:48

Cutline

Ontario Energy Minister Todd Smith (second from left) examines a prototype electric vehicle as Professor Olivier Trescases (second from right) and Geoffrey Ryeland (far right) look on (Photo by Aaron Demeter)

Topic

A partnership between Professor Olivier Trescases of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and Ontario-based Litens Automotive Group is unlocking new levels of performance for electric vehicles (EVs) by developing advanced battery systems and technologies.

The partnership is supported in part by funding from the Ontario Centre of Innovation, which connects researchers and industry partners to commercialize the next generation of made-in-Ontario solutions. Ontario Minister of Energy Todd Smith visited the lab in early October.

“Our government’s Driving Prosperity strategy has positioned Ontario’s automotive sector as a North American leader in developing and building the car of the future,” said Smith.

“We’re continuing to transform and grow the auto sector by capitalizing on our many advantages, including our best-in-class research, our talented workforce, as well as innovative partnerships between universities and industry. �鶹��Ƶ’s collaboration with Litens is a great example of how expertise from our world-class universities is helping to ensure that our auto sector is successful, competitive and ready to meet shifting global demand.”

As the market for EVs becomes increasingly competitive, automotive companies are shifting the focus of their research and development accordingly. Partnerships with academic research labs can help them hit the ground running.

By 2019, Litens had made the decision to transition all their new product engineering groups into the EV space. Late that fall, some of their leading designers came for a tour of the University of Toronto Electric Vehicle (UTEV) Research Centre, where Trescases serves as director.

UTEV brings together a core of multi-disciplinary researchers with wide-ranging expertise in EV technologies. Companies collaborating with UTEV gain access to leading-edge research while providing commercial resources and industry expertise that tie the research to the real world.

“It seemed like a really natural partnership,” says Geoffrey Ryeland, director, electromotive engineering at Litens.

The first order of business was to create a test vehicle in which new components and systems could be validated. The team opted for a pickup truck – an off-the-shelf Ford Ranger that they converted into an EV by hand – as it provided the largest amount of space for the electric motor and battery components.

Trescases’ team on the project included recent graduate Zhe Gong, PhD candidate Seyed Amir Assadi, and research associate Nick Cusimano.

Both Gong and Cusimano had been part of the Blue Sky Solar Racing team, which inspired them to delve deeper into the world of electric vehicles. They had also completed their final-year capstone projects under the supervision of Trescases, getting to know his research team and their work under UTEV. For his part, Assadi had done his capstone project with the University of Toronto Formula Racing team, later joining UTEV to build on his passion for performance vehicles.

“Professor Trescases was my capstone supervisor, so I knew I would enjoy working with all the smart people in his lab,” says Cusimano, who is now a senior electrical designer at Litens. “I designed a lot of software and hardware for their prototype electronics system in the truck, especially in the battery management system.”

The battery management system (BMS) is made of hardware, such as microchips, sensors and controllers, as well as software. Together, they control how power is being drawn from across the 4,400 individual lithium-ion cells that make up the battery pack. Ryeland says that innovation in this system has great potential to improve overall performance.

“Lithium-ion cells are great, but they require some care: they like to be at the same temperatures that humans like to be at, and they have to operate within certain voltage ranges to avoid any safety concerns,” says Ryeland.

“In order to keep the cells healthy, designers tend to play it very safe, and as a result, the battery management systems are very conservative. That’s fine, but the practical effect is that you end up with more battery capacity in the vehicle than you really need, which makes the vehicle heavier and more expensive.”

Using EV batteries to their limits while keeping them healthy requires accurate models of their thermal and electrical behaviour. The �鶹��Ƶ-designed BMS incorporates an advanced measurement system that can automatically generate these models through a procedure called electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS).

Backed by theoretical and experimental work by Gong, Assadi and Cusimano, the EIS-powered BMS will act as a test bed for new ways of operating the battery pack.

“EV technology is still at its relative infancy,” says Trescases. “If you think about how far traditional internal-combustion cars have come since the '60s and '70s, you can imagine the scale of improvements that EVs are poised to achieve in terms of driving range, energy efficiency, sustainability and safety, not to mention emerging aspects such as bi-directional power (vehicle-to-grid integration) and wireless charging.”

“That’s what makes it an exciting time to be working in this area – there is so much innovation ahead of us, so it’s very rewarding to work with industry partners within the Ontario automotive ecosystem, nurturing the local talent in electrical engineering that is in high demand.”

Academic-industry partnerships will be a key driver of that innovation, as well as providing a path for both ideas and highly trained personnel to find their way into industry.

“Something like this battery management system would have taken us years to do on our own. It was the expertise in Professor Trescases' lab that got us up that learning curve faster,” says Ryeland.

“We’ve got a lot of really great ideas — what we’re doing with this partnership is connecting with the best people who can execute on them and drive that future forward with us.”

Using quantum-inspired computing, �鶹��Ƶ Engineering and Fujitsu discover improved catalyst for clean hydrogen

lanthierj — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 19:26:58 +0000

Using quantum-inspired computing, �鶹��Ƶ Engineering and Fujitsu discover improved catalyst for clean hydrogen

lanthierj Fri, 12/16/2022 - 14:26

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�鶹��Ƶ Engineering PhD candidates Jehad Abed (left) and Hitarth Choubisa with a vial of the newly synthesized catalyst for hydrogen production, which was discovered with the help of a new quantum-inspired computing technique (photo by Tyler Irving)

Tyler Irving

Topic

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Materials Science

Quantum Computing

Faculty of Arts & Science Staff

Researchers from the University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and Fujitsu have developed a new way of searching through ‘chemical space’ for materials with desirable properties.

The technique has resulted in a promising new catalyst material that could help lower the cost of producing clean hydrogen.

The discovery represents an important step toward more sustainable ways of storing energy, including from renewable but intermittent sources, such as solar and wind power.

“Scaling up the production of what we call green hydrogen is a priority for researchers around the world because it offers a carbon-free way to store electricity from any source,” says Ted Sargent, a professor in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical and computer engineering and senior author on a new paper published in Matter.

“This work provides proof-of-concept for a new approach to overcoming one of the key remaining challenges, which is the lack of highly active catalyst materials to speed up the critical reactions.”

Today, nearly all commercial hydrogen is produced from natural gas. The process produces carbon dioxide as a byproduct: if the CO2 is vented to the atmosphere, the product is known as ‘grey hydrogen,’ but if the CO2 is captured and stored, it is called ‘blue hydrogen.’

By contrast, ‘green hydrogen’ is a carbon-free method that uses a device known as an electrolyzer to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gas. The hydrogen can later be burned or reacted in a fuel cell to regenerate the electricity. However, the low efficiency of available electrolyzers means that most of the energy in the water-splitting step is wasted as heat, rather than being captured in the hydrogen.

�鶹��Ƶ Engineering PhD candidates Jehad Abed (left) and Hitarth Choubisa with an electrolyzer capable of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen gas. The newly discovered catalyst could increase the efficiency of this reaction (photo by Tyler Irving)

Researchers around the world are racing to find better catalyst materials that can improve this efficiency. But because each potential catalyst material can be made of several different chemical elements, combined in a variety of ways, the number of possible permutations quickly becomes overwhelming.

“One way to do it is by human intuition, by researching what materials other groups have made and trying something similar, but that’s pretty slow,” says department of materials science and engineering PhD candidate Jehad Abed, one of two co-lead authors on the new paper.

“Another way is to use a computer model to simulate the chemical properties of all the potential materials we might try, starting from first principles. But in this case, the calculations get really complex, and the computational power needed to run the model becomes enormous.”

To find a way through, the team turned to the emerging field of quantum-inspired computing. They made use of the Digital Annealer, a tool that was created as the result of a long-standing collaboration between �鶹��Ƶ Engineering and Fujitsu Research. This collaboration has also resulted in the creation of the Fujitsu Co-Creation Research Laboratory at the University of Toronto.

“The Digital Annealer is a hybrid of unique hardware and software designed to be highly efficient at solving combinatorial optimization problems,” says Hidetoshi Matsumura, senior researcher at Fujitsu Consulting (Canada) Inc.

“These problems include finding the most efficient route between multiple locations across a transportation network, or selecting a set of stocks to make up a balanced portfolio. Searching through different combinations of chemical elements to a find a catalyst with desired properties is another example, and it was a perfect challenge for our Digital Annealer to address.”

In the paper, the researchers used a technique called cluster expansion to analyze a truly enormous number of potential catalyst material designs – they estimate the total as a number on the order of hundreds of quadrillions. For perspective, one quadrillion is approximately the number of seconds that would pass by in 32 million years.

The results pointed toward a promising family of materials composed of ruthenium, chromium, manganese, antimony and oxygen, which had not been previously explored by other research groups.

The team synthesized several of these compounds and found that the best of them demonstrated a mass activity – a measure of the number of reactions that can be catalyzed per mass of the catalyst – that was approximately eight times higher than some of the best catalysts currently available.

The new catalyst has other advantages too: it operates well in acidic conditions, which is a requirement of state-of-the-art electrolyzer designs. Currently, these electrolyzers depend on catalysts made largely of iridium, which is a rare element that is costly to obtain. In comparison, ruthenium, the main component of the new catalyst, is more abundant and has a lower market price.

There is more work ahead for the team: for example, they aim to further optimize the stability of the new catalyst before it can be tested in an electrolyzer. Still, the latest work serves as a demonstration of the effectiveness of the new approach to searching chemical space.

“I think what’s exciting about this project is that it shows how you can solve really complex and important problems by combining expertise from different fields,” says electrical and computer engineering PhD candidate Hitarth Choubisa, the other co-lead author of the paper.

“For a long time, materials scientists have been looking for these more efficient catalysts, and computational scientists have been designing more efficient algorithms, but the two efforts have been disconnected. When we brought them together, we were able to find a promising solution very quickly. I think there are a lot more useful discoveries to be made this way.”

Intensive agriculture turned a wild plant into a pervasive weed, study finds

lanthierj — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 22:52:36 +0000

Intensive agriculture turned a wild plant into a pervasive weed, study finds

lanthierj Tue, 12/13/2022 - 17:52

Cutline

Lead author Julia Kreiner performing DNA extractions of historical herbarium samples in the ancient DNA lab in Tuebingen, Germany (all photos courtesy Julia Kreiner/University of British Columbia)

Topic

Agriculture

Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

Faculty of Arts & Science

New research published in Science shows how the rise of modern agriculture turned a North American native plant, common waterhemp, into a problematic agricultural weed.

An international team led by researchers at the University of British Columbia with colleagues at the University of Toronto, compared 187 waterhemp samples from modern farms and neighbouring wetlands with more than 100 historical samples dating as far back as 1820 that had been stored in museums across North America.

Much like the sequencing of ancient human and neanderthal remains has resolved key mysteries about human history, studying the plant’s genetic makeup over the last two centuries allowed the researchers to watch evolution in action across changing environments.

“The genetic variants that help the plant do well in modern agricultural settings have risen to high frequencies remarkably quickly since agricultural intensification in the 1960s,” said study lead author Julia Kreiner. A postdoctoral researcher in UBC’s department of botany, Kreiner completed her PhD at �鶹��Ƶ with study co-authors John Stinchcombe and Stephen Wright, both professors in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology in the Faculty of Arts & Science at �鶹��Ƶ.

Waterhemp occurring in natural habitats, the sandy merging of a lake in southern Illinois.

The researchers discovered hundreds of genes across the weed’s genome that aid its success on farms, with mutations in genes related to drought tolerance, rapid growth and resistance to herbicides appearing frequently.

“The types of changes we’re imposing in agricultural environments are so strong that they have consequences in neighbouring habitats that we’d usually think were natural,” said Kreiner.

The findings could inform conservation efforts to preserve natural areas in landscapes dominated by agriculture. Reducing gene flow out of agricultural sites and choosing more isolated natural populations for protection could help limit the evolutionary influence of farms.

A 155-year-old waterhemp herbarium specimen from the Missouri Botanical Garden Herbarium

Common waterhemp is native to North America and was not always a problematic plant. Yet in recent years, the weed has become nearly impossible to eradicate from farms thanks to genetic adaptations including herbicide resistance.

Notably, five out of seven herbicide-resistant mutations found in current samples were absent from the historical samples. “Modern farms impose a strong filter determining which plant species and mutations can persist through time,” said Kreiner. “Sequencing the plant’s genes, herbicides stood out as one of the strongest agricultural filters determining which plants survive and which die.”

Waterhemp carrying any of the seven herbicide resistant mutations have produced an average of 1.2 times as many surviving offspring per year since 1960 compared to plants that don’t have the mutations.

Herbicide resistant mutations were also discovered in natural habitats, albeit at a lower frequency, which raises questions about the costs of these adaptations for plant life in non-agricultural settings.

“In the absence of herbicide applications, being resistant can actually be costly to a plant, so the changes happening on the farms are impacting the fitness of the plant in the wild,” said Kreiner.

“While waterhemp typically grows near lakes and streams, the genetic shifts that we’re seeing allow the plant to survive on drier land and to grow quickly to outcompete crops,” said co-author Sarah Otto, Killam University Professor at UBC. “Waterhemp has basically evolved to become more of a weed given how strongly it’s been selected to thrive alongside human agricultural activities.”

Agricultural practices have also reshaped where the weedy variety of common waterhemp can be found to grow on the North American continent. Over the last 60 years, a weedy southwestern variety has made an increasing progression eastward, spreading their genes into local populations as a result of their competitive edge in agricultural contexts.

Waterhemp can drastically reduce corn and soy yields, as seen on the right in a corn field in Essex County, Ontario

“Understanding the fate of these variants and how they affect plants in non-farm, ‘wild’ populations is an important next step for our work,” says Stinchcombe.

The researchers also plan to delve further into their discoveries on the rate of plant evolution over different geographic and temporal scales, with the hope of uncovering how variation in land-use across changing landscape influences the evolution of native plants.

“These results highlight the enormous potential of studying historical genomes to understand plant adaptation on short timescales,” says Wright. “Expanding this research across scales and species will broaden our understanding of how farming and climate change are driving rapid plant evolution.”

Broadly speaking, the researchers say the findings mean greater consideration of the impact of farming practices on native plants is needed.

“On one hand, preserving natural areas within agricultural landscapes provides an important ecological service,” says Kreiner. “On the other hand, these natural populations will become quite genetically different from what they would have looked like in the absence of agriculture. How well these plants will be able to persist in their native habitats remains a mystery.”

With files from the University of British Columbia

Bioinnovation partnership: �鶹��Ƶ Engineering and Ford Canada introduce new, sustainable automotive material

lanthierj — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 16:17:30 +0000

Bioinnovation partnership: �鶹��Ƶ Engineering and Ford Canada introduce new, sustainable automotive material

lanthierj Fri, 01/07/2022 - 11:17

Cutline

“If we want to reach carbon neutrality, we have to find ways to have more energy-efficient processes that use fewer materials and fewer resources with enhanced functionality,“ says Professor Mohini Sain (Photo by University of Toronto)

Safa Jinje

Topic

Bioinnovation

Industry Partnerships

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

A collaboration between University of Toronto researchers and Ford Canada, led by the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering’s Professor Mohini Sain, has produced a new, sustainably-sourced, production-ready engine component for high-performance vehicles.

The Carbon Fibre-Composite 5.0L Engine Timing Cover reduces emissions by displacing fossil fuel-derived plastics with renewable alternatives that can be recycled and by decreasing vehicle weight, leading to improved fuel efficiency.

Five years in the making, the new part was developed through a partnership between Sain’s lab group and Ford Canada’s Powertrain Research and Development Centre (PERDC), led by Dr. Jimi Tjong, the technical lead at its Essex Engine Plant in Windsor, Ont., which is equipped with more than 20 design and process engineers.

The partnership was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Ontario Research Fund – Research Excellence.

“My goal is to not only do research; I want to be involved in the process from research to commercialization,” says Sain, a professor of mechanical and industrial engineering. “Our research group starts with the fundamental research and then we translate it into practice, going from concept to production-ready products.

“We constantly consult with our industry experts to bring synergy in our design engineering to develop optimal cost/performance balance. Pricing is a key factor in driving our innovation.”

The director of �鶹��Ƶ Engineering’s Centre for Biocomposites and Biomaterials Processing, Sain is a leading researcher in advanced low-carbon materials and sustainable bio-manufacturing.

The Carbon Fibre-Composite 5.0L Engine Timing Cover introduces a new sustainable material into the automotive industry. (Photo: Dr. Jimi Tjong/Ford Canada)

He has a track record of working with industry partners to create low-carbon, carbon-neutral, or carbon-negative products and advanced manufacturing processes that can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Sain previously commercialized bio-composites designed to be used in the interior of Ford vehicles. But focusing on the structure and the powertrain elements have a greater potential impact because these parts are among the heaviest components of a vehicle.

Engine timing covers, which are typically made of metals like aluminum or fossil-fuel-derived plastic, protect the timing components inside a vehicle’s engine.

By contrast, the material that Sain and his team created is a novel, multi-functional composite that combines engineered carbon material from sustainable sources with recycled carbon fibre that has a tunable carbon structure and interfacial chemistry, and engineered polyamides.

Simply making a “greener” engine component is not enough to bring about a change in the industry, says Sain. The new material must perform as well or better than what it is replacing.

“One of the challenges for us was competing with metal in terms of strain, structure, crashworthiness, esthetics and long-term stability. And metal is also very heavy,” he says.

“We also wanted to build a circular carbon economy so that the material we make from sustainable sources can be recycled at the end of its life.”

Sain and his team spent years collaborating with Tjong and the researchers at Ford to perfect the mechanical characterization and composite rheology of the new component. They also collaborated on developing the processes by which it is made.

“Since it’s a new material and new design, we were involved with designing the mould and the manufacturing process,” Sain says. “At each stage of development, we had to work closely with the Ford team on specifications to get the product to the marketplace.”

The final design not only introduces a new sustainable material into the automotive industry, but it is also seven pounds lighter than previous models, while providing a sleek appearance and functionality critical for reducing emissions and increasing the performance advantage for racing vehicles.

Ford’s Carbon Fibre-Composite 5.0L Engine Timing Cover featured at the 2021 SEMA New Product Showcase in Las Vegas this past November and was recognized by its Global Media Awards, which are chosen by the automotive industry’s top publications.

Sain hopes that the new timing cover can serve as a proof-of-concept that will enable further expansion of low carbon composites in electric vehicles.

“The larger benefit of this new material and manufacturing process is its application in lightweight structural battery pack and fuel cell packs, with added functionality such as electromagnetic interference shielding,” he says.

“If we want to reach carbon neutrality, we have to find ways to have more energy-efficient processes that use fewer materials and fewer resources with enhanced functionality. There are tremendous opportunities for transformative change.”

Learn more about industry partnerships at �鶹��Ƶ

How can lizards adapt to a changing climate?

lanthierj — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 21:02:00 +0000

How can lizards adapt to a changing climate?

lanthierj Fri, 10/22/2021 - 17:02

Cutline

A common wall lizard at a sun bath (Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann/Unsplash)

Topic

Faculty of Art & Science

School of the Environment

Trinity College

Undergraduate Students

Victoria College

Researchers at the University of Toronto and Ohio Wesleyan University are collaborating in a quest to find out how lizards can adapt to the world’s changing climate.

Sophie Berkowitz and Simone Collier, undergraduate students at Trinity College and Victoria College in the Faculty of Arts & Science, are using computational tools to analyze lizard movement and body temperature under the supervision of Vianey Leos Barajas, an assistant professor in the department of statistical sciences and the School of the Environment.

They’re working closely with ecologists at Wesleyan, Assistant Professor Eric Gangloff and undergraduate students Ciara Pettit and Sierra Spears, who cared for the lizards and provided the primary data of lizard movement and temperature.

The team’s research focuses on analyzing movements of lizards when placed in an arena with a “thermal gradient,” meaning an observation area where one end is warmer than the other. The sand-filled arena is one metre long and has a lamp as a heat source. Using open-source object-recognition software, statistical and environmental science student Berkowitz extracted movement data from hours of lizard footage to prepare a dataset for statistical analysis.

A key challenge was tracking the movement of the lizard when it crawled into the sand or attempted to crawl up the side of the observation arena, out of view of the camera, Berkowitz says.

“They try to bury themselves in the sand and get caught. Then the ecologists have to fish them out,” Berkowitz says. “Lizards have minds of their own, and our research definitely has to accommodate for that.”

With the dataset of lizard movements, body temperature and environmental temperature, mathematics and environmental science student Collier used hidden Markov models to gain insight into the lizards' movements and behaviour.

“What we're trying to do with these models is to determine their thermoregulation behaviours,” Collier says. “We want to find patterns in the lizards’ movement based on how they move between these different temperature zones.”

Lizards are ectothermic, which means they rely on the temperature of their environment to regulate their body temperature. One would expect, then, rising temperatures to affect a lizard’s behaviour. These changes in behaviour in turn hold important clues about how lizard species might be affected by climate change.

"It's really important for us as scientists to get a better understanding of how their thermoregulation works, and how it is affected by their environment,” says Berkowitz. “The hidden Markov models work on the premise that the observations are the product of an underlying behavioural process.

“If we can understand things that we can't readily observe, we can help understand the future of our lizard species in terms of climate change."

The research partnership highlights the intersection of statistics and ecology: Gangloff’s team of ecologists provided the primary data to the statistical and environmental sciences team at �鶹��Ƶ for further analysis.

“We get to do a lot of fun projects and work with a lot of diverse students that are quite capable. They are using their statistical skillset to expand the notion of what statistical sciences mean in practice,” says Barajas.

The team is continuing their modelling and plans to publish their results, along with their modelling tools.

In addition to contributing to the field, the two �鶹��Ƶ students say they enjoyed gaining hands-on research experience under the supervision of a professor while building important skills. Berkowitz and Collier encourage students to pursue research projects if they are interested in the topics.

“If you meet a professor that's researching something you're interested in, just reach out and see what comes of it. You never know,” says Collier.

Global study finds diet high in poor-quality carbohydrates increases heart disease and death

lanthierj — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 14:24:22 +0000

Global study finds diet high in poor-quality carbohydrates increases heart disease and death

lanthierj Mon, 03/01/2021 - 09:24

Cutline

(photo by Alexander Spatari via Getty Images)

Susan Emigh

Topic

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Insulin 100

Nutritional Sciences