Engineering

After 12 years of study, lifelong learner John Bond graduates from �鶹��Ƶ Mississauga at 76

siddiq22 — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 17:12:54 +0000

After 12 years of study, lifelong learner John Bond graduates from �鶹��Ƶ Mississauga at 76

siddiq22 Thu, 06/08/2023 - 13:12

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John Bond – the oldest �鶹��Ƶ Mississauga graduate this spring at 76 – acknowledges the applause at Convocation Hall during his graduation ceremony (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Kate Martin

Topic

Our Community

Convocation 2023

Graduate Stories

Classics

Engineering

History

Seniors

�鶹��Ƶ Mississauga

Subheadline

Embracing the idea that "there's always something to learn," the retired engineer and travel enthusiast returned to �鶹��Ƶ for a third degree

The thing about history is, it takes a while to happen.

In John Bond’s case, about 12 years, to be exact.

During the University of Toronto Mississauga convocation ceremony on June 7, Bond graduated with a double major in history and classical civilization after a dozen years of study. At 76, Bond is the oldest �鶹��Ƶ Mississauga grad this spring – and among the oldest gradates at the university this year.

It was his third �鶹��Ƶ graduation, having picked up a degree in engineering from the St. George campus in 1968, followed by a master’s degree in applied engineering.

A career as a civil engineer for a railway company followed, where he designed and inspected bridges for almost 40 years.

“Because of that, I was always interested in structures and the civil engineering of cities,” he said. “Then, when I went to Rome and saw the aqueducts, I wanted to know more.”

An avid traveller, Bond began reading about the places he would visit, which in turn led to more travel ideas for himself and his wife of 54 years, Lynda.

“I’d always had an interest in history, and we travelled to Europe and New York and there were so many interesting ancient sites and stories,” he said. “I wanted to get more acquainted with what I was seeing.”

John Bond walks across the stage at Convocation Hall (photo by Johnny Guatto)

As his personal research expanded, Lynda – who met John at �鶹��Ƶ in the late 1960s, when she was majoring in history at Victoria College – made a suggestion.

“The advice from my wife was to ‘read with a purpose,’” he said.

And so, six years before retiring from his civil engineering job, Bond began taking courses at �鶹��Ƶ Mississauga.

“I took one or two a semester, trying to do all the reading and assignments while still working,” he said.

“It wasn’t always easy to stay focused and interested, keeping up with the studying and combining what I have to do around the house,” he added jokingly. “Always have to help in the kitchen.”

His professors say he balanced it all well.

“John has been an excellent student – diligent with his research, curious to learn new things and always interested to hear what the other students think,” said Mairi Cowan, associate professor, teaching stream, in �鶹��Ƶ Mississauga's department of historical studies.

Cowan noted that while she’s happy Bond is graduating, she’s going to miss having him in class.

“The other students and I have learned a lot from being with John in our courses,” she said. “Not only about the content of history, but also about how to approach our studies with enthusiasm and openness."

Though most of his classmates were closer in age to his two grandkids, Bond said interacting with them on campus was energizing.

“It’s great being among the young people,” he said. “They really make things interesting.”

And they enjoyed having him around as well, said Christopher Petrakos, associate professor, teaching stream, in the department of historical studies.

“The students in class seemed to gravitate towards him because of his intellect and wisdom,” Petrakos said.

“John Bond is the kind of student that every professor wants to teach – he is genuinely interested in learning, possesses an informed worldview and questions established interpretations of the past.”

Although Bond had been a �鶹��Ƶ student before, quite a few things have changed since then, he notes.

“Everything is computers now for class,” he said with a laugh. “In the ’60s, it was all handwritten. Computers then came with boxes of punch cards.”

Once Bond retired, he was able to increase both his course load and his travelling – a combination which occasionally led to serendipitous opportunities.

“I missed a few classes in order to travel,” Bond recalls. “So I have fond memories of logging on to Quercus from hotel lobby computers in London and Rome to take the required quizzes. One Classical Civilization quiz that I answered in the Rome hotel was about sites and events in Rome.”

It also gave him chances to do his homework where it meant the most.

“I read Homer's Odyssey for a Classics course while sitting on our hotel patio overlooking the blue Mediterranean on the Amalfi Coast,” he said. “That’s the way to do it.”

Inspired by his studies and armed with a list of places to see, Bond and his wife are once again ready to explore the world. But he admits he may still have some studying left in him.

“Don’t think I need another major, but there are still some classes I’d like to take,” he said.

“You should never give up – always go for more education; get as much as you can. There are always new things to learn.”

Researcher develops sustainable solution for removing phosphate and ammonium from wastewater

siddiq22 — Wed, 24 May 2023 14:54:48 +0000

Researcher develops sustainable solution for removing phosphate and ammonium from wastewater

siddiq22 Wed, 05/24/2023 - 10:54

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PhD candidate Sara Abu-Obaid designed a new solution that uses membranes with inorganic particles to recover valuable nutrients from wastewater (photo by Safa Jinje)

Topic

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Research & Innovation

Subheadline

New study by �鶹��Ƶ Engineering PhD candidate examines how to recover nutrients for future use

Sara Abu-Obaid believes that the entire wastewater management industry is due for a paradigm shift.

The PhD candidate in chemical engineering and applied chemistry in the University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering specializes in membrane fabrication for wastewater treatment, with a focus on water reuse and resource recovery.

“We need to move from seeing wastewater as a nuisance to recognizing its potential as a resource,” she says. “It can provide us with water, nutrients, energy and other things of value that can be harvested and utilized to move towards a circular economy.”

Abu-Obaid, who is supervised by Ramin Farnood, the faculty's vice-dean of research and a professor in the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry, is the lead author of a new paper published in the Chemical Engineering Journal. The study introduces a sustainable solution for removing phosphate and ammonium from wastewater in a way that recovers the nutrients for future use.

Her new method uses advanced membranes incorporating inorganic particles for the uptake of phosphate and ammonium from wastewater. By recovering these substances in a cost-effective way, the method creates a new source of materials that can be used by manufacturers of agricultural fertilizers.

Used water from bathing, toileting, laundry and other sources flows down drains to sewers that lead to wastewater treatment plants, where it is cleaned so it can be safely discharged into nature without impacting the environment.

The key objectives of the treatment process include removing solids, organic matter, pathogens and nutrients, such as those that derive from household products and excreta – waste matter discharged from the body. Among these nutrients are phosphate and ammonium, two essential ingredients in agricultural fertilizers.

While phosphorous is essential for thriving plant life, too much of the chemical can cause eutrophication – a complex process that begins when an environment becomes overly enriched by nutrients, leading to an explosion in the growth of algae. These harmful algae blooms deplete the availability of oxygen in the water, creating “dead zones” where aquatic organisms suffocate. Long-term exposure to ammonium can also be toxic to aquatic life.

Current wastewater treatment facilities have established processes for removing phosphate and ammonium during the treatment process. Typically, a chemical treatment converts the phosphate into a solid form that settles at the bottom of the water, where it is then collected as sludge and sent to landfill. Ammonium is traditionally removed using biological treatment, where bacteria consume it and turn it into nitrate and then to nitrogen gas.

“These are two high-value products that are key ingredients in fertilizers, but current wastewater treatment processes treat these nutrients as waste,” Abu-Obaid says.

“My solution is to extract the nutrients from the water completely, and so it can be used as a source for fertilizer production.”

Many scientists have warned that the current rate of agricultural phosphorus consumption could lead to critical shortages, which would disrupt food supplies globally. Abu-Obaid’s new method could help boost supply by turning wastewater into a viable source of these nutrients.

While many membranes used for water filtration rely on carefully designed pores to filter their target substances out of the water, Abu-Obaid’s approach is different. Her membrane contains tiny particles made of the minerals akaganeite and zeolite 13X (a type of molecular sieve) with high affinities for phosphate and ammonium adsorption (where a solid holds molecules of a solute as a thin film).

“We’re not removing the things that we want to remove through size exclusion or by applying large pressures,” Abu-Obaid says. “Rather, it is the particles within the membrane that are doing the removal, and it’s the membrane’s job to hold them in place.”

While the particles could do the job on their own, Abu-Obaid says that the difficulty would lie in removing them from the wastewater and fear of them leaching. Using a membrane to hold them in place opens up the possibility of two-phase operation: first the particles adsorb ammonium and phosphate from the wastewater, then the membranes are washed using a sodium hydroxide solution to simultaneously recover the nutrients and regenerate the particles.

In the study, the membranes were able to capture phosphate and ammonium ions under dynamic water flow conditions, resulting in the removal of 84 percent of ammonium and 100 percent of phosphate from synthetic wastewater – even in the presence of other competing ions.

While Abu-Obaid believes that her experiments have shown the method to have a great potential for this application, she sees a need for further studies to investigate design considerations for the large-scale application of such systems.

“This is a non-traditional use of membrane technology, which is more commonly used for size-exclusion-type filtration,” she says.

“It can also be challenging to justify why we are using this technology to recover nutrients that are not yet so scarce that current supply chains are threatened. But we believe that we can benefit from being ahead of the issue and establishing potential sustainable sources for the future.”

Until then, Abu-Obaid hopes that this new solution, along with other innovative technologies to recover nutrients from wastewater, can gain more support.

“We need further techno-economical studies, long-term stability and pilot studies to demonstrate the utility of this technology for creating a more sustainable future for wastewater management," she says.

�鶹��Ƶ Remembers: Former professor Neville Moray published seminal paper on 'cocktail party effect'

noreen.rasbach — Fri, 11 May 2018 04:00:00 +0000

�鶹��Ƶ Remembers: Former professor Neville Moray published seminal paper on 'cocktail party effect' noreen.rasbach Fri, 05/11/2018 - 00:00

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Neville Moray had an “inquisitive and fecund mind,” says �鶹��Ƶ Professor Emeritus John Senders, a friend and former colleague (photos courtesy of family)

Topic

Neville Moray was a pioneer in exploring the interaction between humans and machines by combining the disciplines of psychology and engineering. His work is still influential today in the development of technologies such as self-driving cars and social network algorithms.

Moray had two stints at the University of Toronto – from 1970 to 1974, when he was professor of psychology, and from 1981 to 1988, when he was a professor of industrial engineering. He died in December at his home in the south of France, at the age of 82, after a long battle with pulmonary fibrosis.

Aside from his academic achievements, Moray had a broad intellectual curiosity, a playful sense of humour, and in later years became an accomplished artist.

Moray’s love of parties may have helped inspire some of his early research into what is known as the “cocktail party effect,” where people tune out crowd noise to concentrate on one conversation. He published a seminal paper on the subject in 1959, which showed that usually the only thing that will break this concentration barrier is if a person hears their own name said somewhere else in the room.
While Moray spent two decades focusing on cognitive psychology and auditory attention, he shifted direction after spending a sabbatical at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There he met engineers working on human-machine interaction and transferred his focus to that topic, known as human factors or ergonomics. From then on he deftly combined the two disciplines of engineering and psychology.

John Lee, one of his former graduate students who is now an engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin, says Moray’s attitude had a huge impact on people who worked with him. “He had a curiosity and passion for doing interesting stuff,” Lee says. “He had fun doing research, and that has really stuck with me. Sometimes that gets lost in the worry about publication and grant dollars and funding students, but in the end it’s really important.”

One of Moray’s central areas of research concerned the trust that people place in automated systems, and what level of trust is appropriate to ensure automation is supervised and applied effectively.

While Moray’s work focused on automation in manufacturing plants, Lee says, his findings set the foundation for later studies of issues that are top-of-mind today, such as the reliability of self-driving cars. It even influences work on social networks that make use of automated algorithms to send advertising to users.

Moray also did visionary analysis of mental workload – a field that examines how many simultaneous tasks people can perform effectively. This, too, is a subject that is more relevant than ever, particularly with current concerns over distracted driving. “His work still informs that area of research,” Lee says.

Moray liked to work on practical problems in the real world. In a profile he wrote about himself for the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, he says the two consulting projects he was most proud of concerned safety in the nuclear industry, and the human factors that needed to be taken into account when destroying stocks of chemical weapons.

Moray always had a broad, interdisciplinary view of human factors. In 1994 he gave a seminal lecture on the subject, where he insisted that ergonomics should foster a better quality of life, not just make workplaces tolerable and productive.

Peter Hancock, a psychology professor at the University of Central Florida, says Moray was working on a toxic waste handling issue when he had to shave off his beard to fulfill the safety requirements of an on-site breathing apparatus. That was a big sacrifice for someone who loved his facial hair, Hancock says. “It took some time for Neville to become Neville again.”

Hancock said Moray had an “unquenchable intellectual curiosity about all that was around him.” Talking to him was energizing “not simply about science but about life.” Moray was particularly good at helping graduate students “whose trepidation was calmed…by his genuine interest and his virtually unparalleled mentoring skills,” Hancock says.

Neville Peter Moray was born on May 27, 1935 in London, England, but he spent four of his early years as a child evacuee in Toronto during the Second World War. In a personal memoir he wrote about his fond memories of that period, from 1940-1944 when he lived with a family in Forest Hill. In Canada “there is a freedom and an encouragement to make the most of one's talents in everyday life that is very different from middle-class life in England,” he wrote. “I ended up very self-confident, certain that I could tackle anything I wanted to, and full of enthusiasm and willing to try anything. Had I stayed in England I would have had a very different personality.”

Back in England, at age 13 Moray began studying physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics at Ampleforth College, a boarding school in North Yorkshire. In 1953 he won a scholarship to Worcester College at Oxford University, where he initially planned to study medicine, focusing on virology. But his interest was piqued by courses in philosophy, psychology and physiology, and he eventually got a graduate degree in experimental psychology. In 1959 he took one of Oxford’s earliest courses in computer programming, and he was a pioneer in using computers in psychology research.

For 10 years, Moray taught psychology at the University of Sheffield, and in 1965 he married his first wife, art historian Gerta Glasser. They moved to Toronto in 1970, where he joined �鶹��Ƶ and worked on issues related to attention and skills, influenced by Professor Emeritus John Senders, who was a pioneer in engineering psychology.

Senders, now 98, says Moray “found his calling” at �鶹��Ƶ, where it became clear to colleagues he had a “inquisitive and fecund mind.” The two became lifelong friends who spent decades “talking and thinking together

"We drank, ate, and sang songs together, and made clever puns and insulting jokes about one another – the mark of a genuine friendship of equals.”

Moray returned to Britain in 1974 to work at the University of Stirling in Scotland, but he was back at �鶹��Ƶ in 1981, this time in the industrial engineering department rather than the psychology department.

In 1988, he began a seven-year stint at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, then taught for a couple of years in France, and finished off his career as a professor of applied cognitive psychology at the University of Surrey.

A truly international academic, Moray lectured in China, collaborated with researchers in Japan, and taught applied engineering subjects in French at the Université de Valenciennes et du Hainaut-Cambrésis in France.

As well as being fluent in French, he could read Greek and Latin, says his daughter Nerissa.

She described her father as “really a renaissance man” who was interested in art and loved to compose songs, in addition to his science work. “He had such a fierce intellectual curiosity about everything,” she says, and was “incredibly gentle and fun and warm.”

One of his great outside interests was sailing, and in 1983 he and three friends accomplished the feat of navigating a 31-foot yacht across the Atlantic Ocean. “It was a kind of crazy idea,” Nerissa says, accomplished before the days of satellite phones or GPS.

After he retired in 2001, Moray moved to the south of France with his third wife Angela Rhodes James. There, he took up painting, working every day in his studio in what he called a “neo-pop-art style.”

He leaves his wife Angela, his sister Francesca, two daughters Nerissa and Clea, four grandchildren, two previous wives and several step-children and step-grandchildren.

Vector Institute points to Toronto as the global hot spot for AI research

ullahnor — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 00:42:44 +0000

Vector Institute points to Toronto as the global hot spot for AI research

ullahnor Tue, 03/28/2017 - 20:42

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Front, from left: Roger Grosse, Richard Zemel, Brendan Frey, Raquel Urtasun and David Duvenaud. Back, from left: Jordan Jacobs, Ed Clark, Geoffrey Hinton, Sanja Fidler and Tomi Poutanen (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Jennifer Robinson

Author legacy

Jennifer Robinson

Topic

City & Culture

Artificial Intelligence

Vector Institute

Computer Science

Engineering

Subheadline

�鶹��Ƶ researchers core of new independent centre

A team of globally renowned researchers at the University of Toronto is driving the planning of a new institute staking Toronto’s and Canada’s claim as the global leader in AI.

Geoffrey Hinton, a University Professor Emeritus in computer science at �鶹��Ƶ and vice-president engineering fellow at Google, will serve as the chief scientific adviser of the newly created Vector Institute based in downtown Toronto.

“The University of Toronto has long been considered a global leader in artificial intelligence research,” said �鶹��Ƶ President Meric Gertler. “It’s wonderful to see that expertise act as an anchor to bring together researchers, government and private sector actors through the Vector Institute, enabling them to aim even higher in leading advancements in this fast-growing, critical field.”

Read about the six degrees of separation from Hinton

Coffee shops, 24-hour ATMs are the best locations for life-saving AEDs, �鶹��Ƶ research shows

ullahnor — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 20:57:33 +0000

Coffee shops, 24-hour ATMs are the best locations for life-saving AEDs, �鶹��Ƶ research shows

ullahnor Mon, 03/20/2017 - 16:57

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Timothy Chan (left) and Christopher Sun (right) studied data on cardiac arrest locations in Toronto to determine a list of “Top 10” businesses where placing automated external defibrillators would save lives (photo by Marit Mitchell)

Liz Do

Author legacy

Liz Do

Topic

Subheadline

�鶹��Ƶ Engineering team creates list of top 10 businesses where placing automatic external defibrillators would save lives

ATMs and coffee shops such as Tim Hortons, Starbucks and Second Cup make ideal locations for placing automated external defibrillators (AEDs), says a new study led by �鶹��Ƶ Engineering Professor Timothy Chan and PhD candidate Christopher Sun, in collaboration with St. Michael’s Hospital.

When a patient suffers cardiac arrest, every second counts — the chances of survival decrease by 10 per cent each minute. Responding quickly can be the difference between life and death, and that means having immediate access to a nearby AED.

“Previous research on AED placements had focused on broadly defined location categories, like shopping malls or office buildings,” said Sun. “But these categories generalize many individual businesses, which have different hours, activities performed, and other unique properties that meant we could be missing critical insight on which locations are really high risk. So we wanted to get more specific: which individual locations or businesses could AEDs be placed to make sure they are accessible to the largest number of people throughout the day.”

Their findings are already making headlines.

See the CBC story

See the Toronto Star story

See the CNN story

Their new study, published today in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, looked at where cardiac arrests occur, to find locations where AEDs would be most valuable.

Map of the facilities of the Top 5 ranked businesses in terms of actual coverage in all of Toronto (image courtesy of Sun & Chan)

First, the researchers identified all businesses with 20 or more locations in Toronto – facilities such as Tim Hortons coffee shops or libraries that would make good candidates to place AEDs in.

Then they looked at the number of cardiac arrests that occurred within 100 metres of each location, during the businesses’ operating hours. Using this data, Chan and Sun calculated the “spatiotemporal cardiac arrest coverage” provided by each location or business. The specific locations and businesses were then ranked to determine a “Top 10” list of prime spots to place AEDs.

“We found that coffee shops and ATMs ranked highly across several related metrics, and that those rankings were stable over the years,” said Chan, who is the director of the Centre for Healthcare Engineering at U of T and a Canada Research Chair in Novel Optimization and Analytics in Health.

“What we found really interesting is that ATMs, as opposed to the more traditional businesses, are often standalone or outdoors, and are often available 24/7. They’re also universally recognizable and already have an electronic and security infrastructure – hypothetically, if we were to have AEDs paired with ATMs, it would be very beneficial,” said Sun.

Three coffee shop chains – Tim Hortons, Starbucks and Second Cup – as well as five of the big banks with many ATM locations, including RBC and Scotiabank, made the top 10. Tim Hortons was ranked first, with more than 300 shops in Toronto. These locations alone would have provided AED coverage for more than 200 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests over an eight-year period.

The researchers hope this new study could soon lead to AEDs placed in these optimal locations.

“Health organizations, foundations and policymakers aiming to develop public access defibrillator programs could use our rankings to identify promising businesses to develop partnerships for AED deployment,” added Chan.

Chan’s lab has a number of ongoing research projects on AED placements, including using drones to deliver AEDs, and optimizing AED placements in high-rise buildings.

“Ultimately, we want to get AEDs in the right locations so they are accessible when needed most,” said Chan.

Sun says cardiac arrests are unique because in the early stages they can be treated as effectively by untrained responders as by paramedics.

“That’s why finding out the best placements for AEDs is so important,” said Sun. “We have the opportunity to save lives based on our level of preparation and organization.”

Top 10 locations for AEDs based on coverage

Tim Hortons
RBC ATMs
Subway restaurants
Scotiabank ATMs
CIBC ATMs
TD ATMs
Green P public parking lots
Starbucks
BMO ATMs
Second Cup

The invisible clean-up crew: Engineering microbial cultures to destroy pollutants

ullahnor — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 17:32:57 +0000

The invisible clean-up crew: Engineering microbial cultures to destroy pollutants

ullahnor Thu, 02/23/2017 - 12:32

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Chemical engineering professor Elizabeth Edwards and her team develop microbial cultures that can destroy harmful pollutants and clean up contaminated sites (photo by Jen Hsu)

Tyler Irving

Author legacy

Tyler Irving

Topic

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

�鶹��Ƶ engineering professor Elizabeth Edwards is internationally recognized for using biotechnology to clean up industrial solvents in soil and groundwater. Her technique earned her the prestigious Killam Prize in 2016 and has already been used to restore more than 500 sites around the world.

One way to decontaminate industrial sites involves digging up the soil, but this costly technique is impractical once solvents have seeped into groundwater. At some sites,
Edwards noticed that anaerobic microbes – bacteria that live without oxygen – were breaking down the solvents naturally. But no one understood how.

After sequencing their DNA, Edwards discovered that different microbe species collaborate to break solvents down in stages. She and her colleagues grew a culture of these microbes, pumped them into contaminated groundwater and proved they could clean it up inexpensively, effectively and safely. These invisible allies can also be used to create biodegradable plastics and even capture energy from waste. As Edwards says, we’ve only just begun exploring “the enormous, untapped potential of anaerobic microbes.”

Edwards spoke with �鶹��Ƶ's Tyler Irving about her research.

Can you briefly describe the problem you’re trying to solve?

As careful as humans try to be, every industrial site – whether it’s an oil refinery or a dry-cleaning facility – has contamination from pollutants that have leaked onto the ground. These pollutants can affect not only the site itself, but also groundwater that travels through the soil.

In the past, people were not as aware of the risks of these chemicals, so there is a legacy of thousands of contaminated sites around the world. Industry and government have a responsibility to clean them up so they can be used for other purposes.

How does your research help clean up contaminated sites?

We started by just looking at the natural processes that affect the contaminants over time. It turns out that most of them do slowly transform, as a result of action by various microorganisms living in the soil or water. One way to speed up this process is to add oxygen, either by pumping air into the ground or digging up the underlying earth. That does encourage the growth of certain toxin-degrading microbes, but it takes a lot of energy.

Our work focuses on anaerobes – organisms for whom oxygen is poison – that do wonderful biochemistry and actually degrade these harmful compounds without the need to dig up or aerate the earth. Relatives of these organisms exist everywhere, but a given industrial site might not have just the right ones for the compounds they are dealing with.

In our lab, we start with soil or water from contaminated sites and grow enriched cultures of the anaerobic microbes that live there. By selecting the best performers over many generations, we create enriched cultures that are very good at degrading specific pollutants. We can then add these cultures back to the contaminated sites and speed up the natural degradation process. This is called bioaugmentation.

How did you commercialize your work?

I worked for an engineering consulting company for three years after finishing my PhD. I made a network of friends and colleagues in that community, and we continued to work together when I became a professor at �鶹��Ƶ.

Consultants are the ones working with companies on clean-up, so they had access to the sites I needed to study. They could also tell us whether what we were doing in the lab was relevant to the problems they were dealing with. And when we finally sniffed something interesting – when we found a culture that seemed to be good at degrading these compounds – they were there to help turn it into a business.

In 2001, we founded SiREM, an environmental engineering consulting company. They grow and distribute our bioaugmentation cultures, as well as providing testing, monitoring and all the other services needed to clean up these sites.

What’s next for your lab?

Our earlier microbial cultures focused mostly on chlorinated solvents, which are chemicals used primarily in dry cleaning and industrial degreasing. Over the years, we have also developed anaerobic cultures that can degrade benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene – collectively known as BTEX – which are often found in sites contaminated by oil and gas.

We have finally figured out who are the most critical members of these microbial communities. Because their numbers are often low at contaminated sites, we are working with SiREM to grow up large quantities of these cultures and test them in the field to boost numbers and accelerate degradation rates. If it works, it will greatly expand the number of sites we can treat.

We also study the organisms that grow in anaerobic digesters. These are large facilities that process organic waste from farms or cities and turn it into methane, which is then burned to generate heat and electricity. It turns out that many of the same organisms we studied in groundwater and soil also exist in these anaerobic digesters. If we can help that process work even better, we can generate lots of renewable, clean energy.

Why did you choose to be a professor at �鶹��Ƶ?

When I was working in industry, I missed the interactions with students and constant streaming of new ideas and buzz that happens at a university. I missed going to seminars, but most of all I really missed doing lab work – I wanted to test stuff out for myself, not just read papers others had published.

My boss in consulting, Dr. David Major, realized that I was wishing for a lab of my own and encouraged me to apply to academic positions. I began my career at McMaster, then joined �鶹��Ƶ in 1997. What began as a series of informal collaborations with colleagues both inside and outside the university eventually grew into BioZone, a multidisciplinary centre that focuses on applied work at the intersection of biology and engineering from idea to commercialization.

We now have a critical mass of equipment, tools and institutional knowledge in this area, which ensures that we don’t have to re-invent the wheel every time we gain a new student. Instead, we have this collaborative, friendly atmosphere where we talk about the things that don’t work, and try to solve difficult problems together. Our researchers are limited only by their imagination.

Elizabeth Edwards is the director of BioZone, a professor in the department of chemical engineering & applied chemistry and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Her anaerobic biotechnology is just one example of extraordinary innovation and impact at �鶹��Ƶ. Learn more at utoronto.ca

Cristina Amon reappointed Dean of �鶹��Ƶ Engineering

ullahnor — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 18:33:47 +0000

Cristina Amon reappointed Dean of �鶹��Ƶ Engineering

ullahnor Thu, 01/26/2017 - 13:33

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Dean Cristina Amon talks with students at the site of the new Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship, a vibrant hub for engineering education, innovation and commercialization by entrepreneurship (photo by Roberta Baker)

Topic

City & Culture

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Engineering

Dean Cristina Amon

Subheadline

Special third term builds on a decade of leadership and innovation in engineering education and multidisciplinary research excellence at Canada’s premier engineering school

Professor Cristina Amon has been reappointed as Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering at the University of Toronto for a special third term to June 30, 2019.

In addition, Dean Amon will serve in the role of Provostial Advisor on Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) at the university for the period of July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018. In this new role she will be advising Professor Cheryl Regehr, �鶹��Ƶ’s vice-president and provost, on matters related to women in STEM at the university and will work with the vice-provosts and divisions to develop strategies for recruitment, retention and professional development.

“With a relentless pursuit of excellence, Dean Amon has taken the country’s premier engineering school to new heights, and will lead the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering through the opening of its vibrant new facility,” said Professor Regehr, chair of the reappointment committee. “We are delighted that she will serve a third term and see the faculty’s vision for the highly anticipated Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship become reality.”

Under Dean Amon’s direction the Faculty has risen to preeminence among the world’s engineering schools. Central to this achievement is a sustained focus on multidisciplinary education and research collaboration that addresses key global challenges from improving human life to sustainably meeting our growing energy needs.

Her leadership has been the catalyst in many new cross-faculty research hubs such as the Institute for Sustainable Energy, the TRCHR Transitional Biology and Engineering Program and the Centre for Global Engineering, which bring researchers across the faculty and university together with like-minded experts from around the world, sparking new ideas, discoveries and innovations. The integrated approach provides rich experiential learning opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, enabling them to apply strong technical, leadership, communications and design competencies to develop global fluency and address the 21st century’s most pressing challenges.

Widely regarded for her strategic leadership, Dean Amon developed a collaborative vision for the faculty guided by a comprehensive Academic Plan. To achieve these goals, she built a highly effective academic and administrative leadership team and established new offices to oversee cross-disciplinary programs, honours and awards, strategic communications, corporate and industry partnerships, and advancement. She has fostered a strong sense of community and pride within �鶹��Ƶ Engineering and nurtured a culture of philanthropy at all levels: since the 2011 launch of Boundless: The Campaign for the University of Toronto, the faculty has surpassed its $200-million goal, including more than $80 million secured for the forthcoming Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship.

Dean Amon has also fostered a rich culture of diversity and inclusivity among �鶹��Ƶ Engineering and within the profession: �鶹��Ƶ Engineering’s first-year class reached 40.1 per cent women in 2016, the highest proportion in Ontario. This increased the overall proportion of women across all �鶹��Ƶ Engineering undergraduate programs to more than 30 per cent. With enhanced recruitment and outreach strategies, the first-year figure has nearly doubled during her tenure, up from 20.2 per cent in 2006. In the same period, the number of women faculty members has more than doubled from 21 to 55. With these advances, �鶹��Ƶ Engineering is driving Engineers Canada toward its ‘30 by 30’ objective: 30 per cent female representation among newly licensed engineers by 2030.

Dean Amon spearheaded the creation of the forthcoming Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CEIE), currently under construction on the University of Toronto’s St. George Campus. The CEIE embodies �鶹��Ƶ Engineering’s core values of excellence in collaborative research and experiential education. It will launch a new era for the faculty by providing flexible, dynamic spaces where students, faculty members and industry partners can meet, build prototypes and exchange ideas that lead to new ventures. With a 500-seat auditorium, Technology Enhanced Active Learning (TEAL) Rooms and fabrication facilities, as well as state-of-the-art sustainability features including solar panels and passive heating, the CEIE will serve as a vibrant hub for engineering education, innovation and commercialization by entrepreneurship. In 2016, the CEIE received an investment of $15 million from the Government of Ontario.

“We know that entrepreneurship is central to a vibrant and resilient economy in Ontario,” said the Honourable Deb Matthews, deputy Premier and Minister of Advanced Education and Skills Development for the Government of Ontario. “�鶹��Ƶ Engineering’s excellence in undergraduate and graduate education, and the university’s access guarantee are making world-class programs accessible to a new generation of innovators who will drive our economy in every sector.”

In addition to her transformational leadership in the faculty, Dean Amon’s research advances the faculty’s standing as an international research powerhouse. Her pioneering work has resulted in 16 book chapters, more than 350 refereed articles and numerous keynote lectures worldwide. In 2015 she received the Ontario Professional Engineers Gold Medal and in 2016, the Engineering Institute of Canada’s Sir John Kennedy Medal, the institute’s highest honour. She has been inducted into the Canadian Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Canada, the Hispanic Engineer Hall of Fame and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and elected fellow of all the major professional societies in her field.

First in Canada: �鶹��Ƶ Engineering offers course and new certificate in Forensic Engineering

geoff.vendeville — Mon, 02 Jan 2017 16:34:22 +0000

First in Canada: �鶹��Ƶ Engineering offers course and new certificate in Forensic Engineering

geoff.vendeville Mon, 01/02/2017 - 11:34

Cutline

The 2008 Sunrise Propane plant explosion in Toronto is one of the case studies to be taught in Professor Doug Perovic’s Forensic Engineering course (photo by Michael Gill via Flickr)

Krista Haldenby

Author legacy

Krista Haldenby

Topic

Our Community

Engineering

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Education

Learning

Subheadline

Expert Doug Perovic, leader of more than 500 investigations, will teach students how to analyze and prevent disasters

When the Sunrise Propane plant exploded in August 2008, killing plant worker Parminder Saini, police, fire and ambulance were called first – and then forensic engineers.

Forensic engineers are trained to find and analyse data from disasters, accidents and failures, and present an unbiased assessment of what the underlying cause may have been.

“Unlike some witnesses, physical evidence has no opinion, no bias and never lies,” says forensic engineer Doug Perovic, a professor in the department of materials science and engineering at the University of Toronto.

The Sunrise Propane explosion is one of the cases taught in Perovic’s Forensic Engineering course. Other cases include the Radiohead stage collapse in 2012, falling glass from the Shangri-La hotel in Toronto, and the painful fracture of an Ottawa woman’s prosthetic hip implant.

The course is the first of its kind in Canada and now core to a new Certificate in Forensic Engineering offered by the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. The certificate will be offered to undergraduate students starting in 2017-2018.

Read about the course in The Toronto Star

See the CBC story

Perovic is one of the top experts in his field, having led more than 500 product liability investigations over a 25-year career. In his course, students are exposed to investigative techniques such as how to conduct destructive and non-destructive testing, how to interpret the evidence left behind on a fracture surface or at the scene of a vehicle collision, and how to narrow down the origin and cause of a fire.

The course features renowned guest experts from Canada’s top forensic engineering firms to cover principles of investigation involving product failure, automobile and aircraft accident reconstruction, and fire and explosion. It concludes in a mock trail, with lawyers from top law firms participating in demonstrations of expert witness cross-examinations.

“Most importantly, this course teaches students how to apply their engineering knowledge to ask the right questions when investigating a complex, often messy, real-world problem from beginning to end,” says Perovic

(At right: experts inspect propane tanks; photo courtesy Doug Perovic)

Students will examine physical evidence using sophisticated lab equipment at the Ontario Centre for the Characterisation of Advanced Materials (OCCAM), jointly operated by the materials science and engineering department and the chemical engineering department. OCCAM’s scanning electron microscopes are a powerful tool for forensic engineers – they can produce high-resolution images of a fracture surface, which can help identify the fracture origin and indicate the mode and mechanism of failure.

Components from surgical implant failures, athletic equipment failures, corrosion investigations and foreign materials and residue analysis are a few examples of the evidence that has been brought to OCCAM for investigation by forensic engineers.

“This new certificate will create a unique opportunity for students to gain specialized expertise and recognition for a personal and professional commitment to enhanced engineering investigation skills,” explains Perovic. “Learning how to think more logically is crucial for the development of good forensic engineering skills.”

Blue Sky Solar Racing celebrates 20th anniversary

ullahnor — Thu, 17 Nov 2016 20:57:54 +0000

Blue Sky Solar Racing celebrates 20th anniversary

ullahnor Thu, 11/17/2016 - 15:57

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(photo courtesy of Blue Sky Solar Racing)

Alicia Sgromo

Author legacy

Alicia Sgromo

Topic

Blue Sky Solar Racing

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Over its two-decade history, the University of Toronto’s Blue Sky Solar Racing Team has faced its share of challenges and triumphs, but one thing has remained constant – the team keeps moving forward, always chasing the sun.

Established in 1996 as the “Blue Sky Project,” a group of intrepid �鶹��Ƶ Engineering students designs, builds and races a car thousands of kilometres, powered only by the sun’s rays.

On Nov. 18, current Blue Sky members, team alumni, sponsors, friends and family gather together to reflect on some key moments in the team’s evolution and toast its future.

The Blue Sky Solar Racing team's latest vehicle, Horizon, makes a test run in 2016. The team is currently working on its ninth vehicle, to race at the 2017 World Solar Challenge in Australia. (photo courtesy of Blue Sky Solar Racing)

This timeline chronicles key moments in the history of Blue Sky Solar Racing:

�鶹��Ƶ students win prize for engineering video

lavende4 — Tue, 11 Oct 2016 14:34:27 +0000

�鶹��Ƶ students win prize for engineering video lavende4 Tue, 10/11/2016 - 10:34

Topic

The National Academy of Engineering has honoured two University of Toronto undergrads – Rachel Andrade and Clara Stoesser – with a first-place award for their video “Refugee Crisis,” which explores how systems engineering can be applied to the plight of refugees.

Stoesser, a fourth-year student in industrial engineering, and Andrade, a third-year student in media studies at U of T Scarborough, examined how engineers can help improve everything from conditions in refugee camps to supports for newcomers in host countries.

The award was announced in Washington, D.C. The theme of the contest was Mega Engineering. Competitors were asked to submit 1- to 2-minute videos, introducing a particular mega-engineering project and highlighting its significance and contribution to society. They also had to suggest ways to further develop the project. Approximately 300 videos were submitted in four categories: middle school and younger (K-8), high school (grades 9-12), postsecondary (2-year college through graduate school) and the general public. Andrade and Stoesser won in the postsecondary or "tertiary education" category, receiving $5,000 for their efforts.

A judging committee chaired by Rob Cook, Pixar Animation Studios’ emeritus vice president of advanced technology, selected the winning videos based on the following criteria: creativity in the selection and presentation of content, anticipated breadth of public appeal and interest, and effectiveness in describing a mega-engineering project and its impact on people and society. The People’s Choice Award was chosen by the public through voting on the NAE website.

“It is so inspiring to see what students created for this year’s Engineering for You Video Contest,” said NAE President C. D. Mote, Jr. “The diverse projects and solutions touched the human spirit of engineering and its work on the world’s greatest challenges.”

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First in Canada: �鶹��Ƶ Engineering offers course and new certificate in Forensic Engineering

Read about the course in The Toronto Star

See the CBC story

Blue Sky Solar Racing celebrates 20th anniversary

�鶹��Ƶ students win prize for engineering video