Connaught

The technology behind self-driving cars has been racing ahead – and as long as they are cruising along familiar streets, seeing familiar sights, they do very well.

But the University of Toronto’s Florian Shkurti says that when driverless vehicles encounter something unexpected, all that progress can come screeching to a halt.

He offers the example of a self-driving car that is following a large truck on a winter road.

“There’s a wind gust – and now the snow is coming at you, so you can’t see anything,” says Shkurti, an assistant professor in the department of mathematical and computational sciences at �Թϱ�� Mississauga who runs the Robot Vision and Learning (RVL) lab. “And suppose your LIDAR (light detection and ranging system) misperceives the snow as an array of objects, so it thinks there are a million small objects coming at the car.”

Shkurti’s research extends far beyond self-driving cars to autonomous systems in general. How do they learn? How we can make them learn better? How they can successfully navigate complex environments at the service of humans? That includes making sure that robots can handle so-called “edge cases,” like the snowy truck example – cases where the robot “comes across a rare scenario, for which there’s little or no training data.

“Then you have to either collect more data, or you have to accept that there will be these rare events that your perception system won’t recognize,” Shkurti says.

Simulation is an important training tool. Self-driving cars, for example, can be trained on simulated roads and highways before they’re let loose on actual city streets. But scalability remains a challenge. If an autonomous system has to be specially trained for every possible scenario it might encounter, progress will be haltingly slow; there will be no way to take what’s been learned from one scenario and scale it up so that the system can handle more general cases.

In an ideal world, Shkurti says, a robot could learn similar to the way a human would.

Take, for example, robots that help scientists collect data underwater – an effort Shkurti has been involved with for several years. A human diver “has to collect data manually, one data point at a time, one location at a time,” Shkurti says. “It’s painstaking work; it’s not scalable.”

An autonomous robot, on the other hand, could take over the data collection process if it’s capable of maneuvering underwater and equipped with a camera and other sensors. “If the robot could understand what it’s doing – if it has a model of what the scientist thinks is important to pay attention to in a particular environment – then the robot could collect data on behalf of the scientist.”

Such an approach has many benefits, according to Shkurti: It’s much cheaper to deploy additional robots than to train more scientists; and it frees up the scientist to look after higher-level tasks. “The scientist can give the robot some hints as to where to collect the data – but then the robot can take care of the rest,” he says.

Shkurti, who did his undergraduate studies at �Թϱ�� before earning his PhD in computer science at McGill in computer science, was hired by �Թϱ�� in 2018. He recently received a Connaught New Researcher Award for a project titled “Robotics and Machine Learning in the Wild: New Directions in Automated Environmental Monitoring.”

Hey says that while everything about computer science fascinates him, the field of robotics holds special appeal.

“Robotics lets you play in different ‘playgrounds,’ like control, perception, and machine learning,” he says. “It allows you to examine these different fields, and I really valued that – and I still value it.”

As for the lofty philosophical questions that sometimes crop up when people talk about advanced computer systems – such as whether machines could learn to “think” – Shkurti prefers to stay focused on the science. Machines can reason, he says, and they can try to act optimally as they strive to achieve their goals.

“If that’s thinking, then they’re doing it,” he says. “But I don’t spend very much time worrying about ‘consciousness.’ I have enough other things to worry about.”

Courage and sacrifice: A look back at �Թϱ�� during the First World War

noreen.rasbach — Fri, 09 Nov 2018 16:26:41 +0000

Courage and sacrifice: A look back at �Թϱ�� during the First World War

noreen.rasbach Fri, 11/09/2018 - 11:26

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Postcards sent home from France during the First World War by Gerald Blake, �Թϱ�� alumnus and grandson of Edward Blake, former �Թϱ�� chancellor and premier of Ontario (Postcards from �Թϱ�� Archives; photo by Romi Levine)

Topic

At the outset of the First World War in 1914, an unfinished theatre in the basement of Hart House was commandeered for trench warfare drills. The set – painted to depict a battered Belgian village –provided the backdrop for rifle practice by students who had enlisted in the Canadian Officers' Training Corps. The set designer, Lieutenant Lawren Harris, would go on to become one of the famed landscape artists in Canada’s Group of Seven.

It was one of the more fascinating periods of the University of Toronto's storied history, as recounted in The University of Toronto: A History by author Martin L. Friedland, University Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Law. In his chapter on the Great War, Friedland captures not only the heroics and sacrifices of those who saw active service, but also the ingenuity and enterprise of students and faculty who supported the war effort from home. By Nov. 11, 1918,“the long agony was over,” Friedland writes, quoting from the �Թϱ��'s official Roll of Service.

But there were profound and lasting effects. On the 100^th anniversary of the end of the First World War, his account provides a compelling refresher:

While no amount of training could prepare young �Թϱ�� recruits for the horrors they would face, there were incredible acts of courage. Major Thain MacDowell (pictured left, courtesy of �Թϱ�� Archives) won the Victoria Cross for his actions at Vimy Ridge, where, despite being separated from the rest of his unit, he and two other men took control of two German machine guns. They chased a fleeing gunner down a tunnel, only to encounter 77 more German soldiers. “MacDowell convinced them they were surrounded by a larger force, and so brought about their surrender,” Friedland writes.
Physicians put themselves in the line of fire to deliver new treatment methods to the ill and wounded. Surgeon Bruce Robertson, a �Թϱ�� medical graduate, took his modern blood transfusion knowledge to the front lines at a time when physicians from allied countries were still routinely replacing lost blood with saline solutions. Two influential articles by Robertson, published in the British Medical Journal, changed attitudes about the use of blood transfusions for saving lives, Friedland writes.

Read: From heartbreaking letters to triumphant trophies: 12 objects that tell the story of �Թϱ�� during the Great War

Then and now: Take a look at these photos of the First World War on campus

Neither upbeat nor sombre: �Թϱ�� alumnus commissioned to compose new carillon piece to mark First World War

Where and when to attend Remembrance Day events across �Թϱ��'s three campuses

Crates containing serums made by Connaught Laboratories, created en masse to assist the war effort (photo courtesy of �Թϱ�� Archives)

Public health pioneer John FitzGerald, founder of Connaught Laboratories, overcame the �Թϱ��’s initial reluctance to become involved with a commercial venture and incorporated his development of antitoxins into the department of hygiene. Robert Falconer, �Թϱ�� president at the time, received $5,000 in support from the federal government – the first grant ever received by �Թϱ�� from the federal government for laboratory work. It went towards production of tetanus antitoxin, as well as smallpox and typhoid vaccines, and, according to the �Թϱ�� hygiene professors, reversed the trend of more Canadian men dying of disease than of wounds in France.
On the home front, with so many of their male classmates and professors enlisting in the medical army corps or working in field hospitals, the number and proportion of women in the Faculty of Medicine increased considerably. At Victoria College, women outnumbered men by the end of the 1916 academic year and the number of women in junior faculty positions at the university had increased from 15 to 60 by the end of the war. Almost all of the students who remained on campus during the war years signed up for national service, taking on the work of men who had gone overseas. Classes ended a month earlier than usual so female students could plant, harvest and sell farm crops.
Throughout, students became accustomed to unusual sights – a Sopwith Camel aircraft in front of University College, for instance. The campus had become a training ground for the British Royal Flying Corps and tent cities cropped up to accommodate the airmen. Canada did not have its own air force at the time, so Canadians and Americans had to join the British outfit if they wanted to fly. American novelist William Faulkner, who was 20 at the time, trained at �Թϱ��, where some of the lectures were delivered by members of the engineering faculty.
The Faculty of Engineering engaged in organized industrial research for the first time. Many professors also contributed directly to the war effort, using their expertise and lab equipment to test chemical explosives or the steel casings of shells. In 1918, the faculty of engineering obtained Canada’s first wind tunnel, which allowed the testing of aircraft by simulating flight without risk to the pilot.
Overseas, the casualties were horrendous. Friedland writes that about 10 per cent of the 6,000 �Թϱ�� people who went to war lost their lives and likely an equal number were wounded, gassed or captured. As the veterans returned to campus, �Թϱ�� psychology professor E.A. Bott developed rehabilitation methods to treat not only the physical wounds, but also the mental wounds. His colleagues in the engineering faculty became involved in the rehab efforts, training more than 300 women as occupational therapists. Surgeon Alexander Primrose, who helped form the Ontario Society for Occupational Therapists shortly after the war, wrote that the work of the therapists helped shorten the patients’ recovery time.
One hundred years ago at �Թϱ��, on Nov. 11, “the buildings were closed, and for a day, all gave themselves up to common rejoicing,” records the Roll of Service.

Read more about the First World War at �Թϱ��:

56 rising �Թϱ�� research stars awarded Connaught New Researcher Awards

lanthierj — Fri, 02 Jun 2017 13:41:05 +0000

56 rising �Թϱ�� research stars awarded Connaught New Researcher Awards

lanthierj Fri, 06/02/2017 - 09:41

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The University of Toronto Scarborough is home to 12 of the assistant professors recognized with Connaught New Researcher Awards this year (photo by Ken Jones)

Jennifer Robinson

Author legacy

Jennifer Robinson

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Our Community

Connaught

Research

An alarming one in five university students will turn to self-harming behaviours like cutting and burning to cope with stress, anxiety and sadness. But why students choose self-harm over other coping behaviours remains a mystery, says lifespan development psychologist Chloe Hamza.

Understanding and eventually disrupting this cycle of self-abuse, which increases later risk of suicidal behavior by two to four per cent among students, is the focus of an ambitious research project by the assistant professor in the department of applied psychology and human development at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Her research is receiving support from the Connaught New Researcher Award.

The annual awards are only provided to �Թϱ�� assistant professors within the first five years of a tenured-stream academic appointment to help them establish strong research programs. This year the Connaught Fund is awarding a total of $994,000 to 56 researchers across a range of disciplines. See below for a full list of recipients.

“Congratulations to this year’s winners of the Connaught New Researcher Award on their well-deserved achievement,” said Professor Vivek Goel, �Թϱ��’s vice-president of research and innovation.

“This funding is designed to help some of the best up-and-coming �Թϱ�� researchers get their vital projects off the ground and position them to go after and secure external funding to continue and expand their research down the road.”

Hamza (pictured below) just joined �Թϱ�� last July. She is over the moon about the funding – her first research grant to do her own independent study on such a surprisingly understudied area of mental health.

“It’s very exciting,” she says about receiving the $35,000 in Connaught funding. “I think this also underscores the university’s recognition of the importance (and prioritization) of funding research that can serve to inform efforts to promote positive mental health and well-being among students on campus.”

Non-suicidal, self-injury refers to direct and intentional self-harming without lethal intent, Hamza explains. Although cutting by women has received a fair amount of attention by media, non-suicidal, self-harming behaviours, or NSSI for short, are used by both sexes, albeit the behaviours differ.

“Men are more likely to use burning or self-hitting,” she says, “while women are more likely to engage in cutting and scratching. That’s why when we survey people, like students, we need to ask about a whole spectrum of behaviours.”

And, for reasons that remain unclear to researchers at this time, university students are more likely to engage in NSSI than peers their same age who are not in post-secondary education, Hamza says, adding that’s one of the reasons it’s so important for �Թϱ�� to engage in this kind of research.

Hamza hopes her search for answers, which will start this fall with a study of �Թϱ�� students who have engaged in NSSI, will help clinicians create better interventions and lifelong coping strategies for struggling students.

According to emotional cascade theory, some people experience negative emotions intensely, leading to rumination and more negative emotions (an emotional cascade). NSSI may serve as one way to disrupt this “vicious feedback loop,” while other healthier coping strategies may not provide enough distraction “to interrupt that emotional cascade for some students.” Finding an intervention to disrupt that feedback loop could help people engage in less destructive, more positive behaviour.

She says she also hopes to someday do a large-scale survey, arising out of this foundational study, to follow her student subjects as they age. Perhaps like binge drinking in the early years of university, NSSI behaviour tapers off with age?

In addition to Hamza, the recipients of this year’s Connaught New Researcher Award are:

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

• Emily Seto of the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation for “Telemonitoring in an integrated chronic disease management clinic: A new model of care for complex patients with multiple chronic conditions”

Faculty of Arts & Science

• Anabela Alves dos Santos Rato of the department of Spanish & Portuguese for “the role of cross-language phonetic similarity and articulatory difficulty in L2 speech learning”

• Susana Bejar of the department of linguistics for “the syntax of Georgian pseudoclefts”

• Arthur Blouin of the department of economics for “the dynamics of diversity: evidence from ancestral migration”

• Irene Boeckmann of the department of sociology for “fatherhood and men’s earnings from a cross-national perspective”

• Elisa Brilli of the department of Italian studies for “Dante among Augustine's readers. Humankind, earthly city and theology of history”

• Murat Celik of the department of economics for “the effects of misallocation of resources on economic growth, innovation, and inequality”

• Joseph Clarke of the department of the history of art for “open office design and the acoustics of the knowledge economy, 1960-1980”

• Thom Dancer of the department of philosophy for “what we owe to children”

• Roger Grosse of the department of computer science for “scalable and flexible Bayesian learning”

• Alec Jacobson of the department of computer science for “robust geometry processing for big dirty data”

• SeungJung Kim of the department of the history of art for “a phenomenology of time in the visual culture of ancient Greece”

• David Levin of the department of computer science for “big data for fast and accurate numerical simulation of mechanical structures”

• Aleksandar Nikolov of the department of computer science for “geometric methods in discrepancy and privacy”

• Guillaume Thomas of the department of linguistics for “building a Mbyá treebank”

• Yurou Zhong of the department of East Asian studies for “socialist scripts and scripting socialism in the early PRC”

Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

• Rachelle Ashcroft for “patient perspectives of the incentives and disincentives for quality mental health care in Ontario family health teams”

• Bryn King for “developmental disruptions: adolescent involvement in the child welfare system in Ontario”

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

• Erin Bobicki of the department of materials science and engineering for “reducing water and energy use in mineral processing”

• Eric David Diller of the department of mechanical and industrial engineering for “minimally-invasive surgery through miniaturized magnetic surgical tools”

• Tobin Filleter of the department of mechanical & industrial engineering for “micro-mechanical studies of MoS2 dry lubricated contacts for space applications”

• Jonathan Kelly of the Institute for Aerospace Studies for “seeing the light: advancing visual sensing for robust and reliable robot navigation and manipulation”

• Edmond Young of the department of mechanical and industrial engineering for “development of microfluidic airway-on-a-chip for studying lung epithelial and smooth muscle cell interactions”

Faculty of Dentistry

• Karina Carneiro for “DNA nanostructures as scaffolds for hard tissue regeneration”

• Massieh Moayedi for “elucidating the role of the hippocampus in pain perception”

Faculty of Law

• Richard Stacey for “the privatization of honour: Delegating to industry the Crown’s duty to consult Aboriginal peoples”

Faculty of Medicine

• Arthur Mortha of the department of immunology for “development of anaerobic culture methods for the ex vivo study of intestinal protozoa”

Joseph L. Rotman School of Management

• Olivier Dessaint for “the determinants of M&A decisions and their welfare implications”

• Daehyun Kim for “CEO stock performance-based compensation manipulation through timing of news disclosure”

• Azarakhsh Malekian for “partial co-operation in societies and local grim trigger strategies”

• Ryan Webb for researching the question “does context-dependent choice arise from the principles of neural computation?”

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

• Robert Bonin for “elucidating molecular mechanisms of reconsolidation to reverse pathological pain”

University of Toronto Mississauga

• Andrew Beharry of department of chemical and physical sciences for “small molecular probes for fluorescence-guided photodynamic therapy”

• Katharina Braeutigam of the department of biology for “the relationship between genome, epigenome and plant performance in trees”

• Jacopo De Simoi of the department of mathematical and computational sciences for “fast-slow dynamical systems”

• Teddy Erclik of the department of biology for “spatial and temporal patterning of neural stem cells in the developing fruit fly brain”

• Keisuke Fukuda of the department of psychology for “EEG-based memory monitoring and intervention for older adults”

• Dehan Kong of the department of mathematical and computational sciences for “novel statistical models for imaging genetics data”

• Marie-Paule Lory of the department of language studies for “awareness of language program: adopting a plurilingual paradigm to engage students to learn French as a second language in English elementary schools in Ontario”

• Akwasi Owusu-Bempah of the department of sociology for “the representation of black criminality and street gangs in Toronto: 2000-2015”

• Xu Tian of the department of economics for “the macroeconomic implications of financial frictions”

• Liye Xie of the department of anthropology for “labour mobilization for early Bronze Age urban construction at Erlitou, China”

University of Toronto Scarborough

• Sandro Ambuehl of the department of management for “incentives for complex transactions – bridging economics and ethics”

• Stefanos Aretakis of the department of computer and mathematical sciences for “mathematical problems in general relativity”

• Hilary Kathryn Brown of department of anthropology for “maternal diabetes and perinatal mental illness: a population-based study”

• Andrea Charise of the department of anthropology for “novel remedies: literature, health and the creative recovery of the humanities”

• Mike Ekers of the department of human geography for “financializing forests in British Columbia: land, governance and the ecological fix”

• Brett Quaid Ford of the department of psychology for researching the issue “can emotion regulation counteract the harmful effects of stress exposure? The role of reappraisal in protecting individual's emotional and physiological outcomes”

• Diana Xuan Fu of the department of political science for “reaching for half the sky: explaining China's new wave feminist movement”

• Mariana Khapko of the department of management for “markets of tomorrow: blockchain trade settlement and liquidity”

• Pamela Milagros Medina Quispe of the department of management for “exploring barriers of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to international market access through e-commerce”

• David Bartzoon of the department of arts, culture and media for “app studies: exploring the political economy of mobile media platforms”

• Stefan Renckens of the department of political science for “transnational private sustainability governance as interest community”

• Giulio Tiozzo of the department of computer and mathematical sciences for “ergodic theory of low-dimensional dynamical systems”

New, no-needle prenatal genetic disease test at �Թϱ�� gets Connaught Fund support

ullahnor — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 20:16:07 +0000

New, no-needle prenatal genetic disease test at �Թϱ�� gets Connaught Fund support

ullahnor Tue, 01/31/2017 - 15:16

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Professor Aaron Wheeler is among nine �Թϱ�� researchers from a variety of faculties receiving funding from the Connaught Fund

Jennifer Robinson

Author legacy

Jennifer Robinson

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Breaking Research

Connaught

Innovation

Research & Innovation

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Dentistry

Faculty of Pharmacy

Subheadline

Among nine innovative research projects at �Թϱ�� sharing $790,000 in funding through 2016-17 Connaught Innovation Award

Imagine a simple prenatal diagnostic test that checks for genetic diseases such as Down syndrome but has zero risk for the mother and unborn baby.

Aaron Wheeler, a chemistry professor at the University of Toronto who collaborates with experts in prenatal screening at Mount Sinai Hospital, says he believes his team’s digital microfluidic laser cell lysis platform holds great promise as an alternative to amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling (CVS) – the current gold standards in prenatal diagnosis, both of which are invasive procedures.

“We believe we’ll be able to test for many genetic diseases but at no risk,” he explains. “There’s also reason to believe we’ll be able to conduct these tests five to six weeks earlier.”

Currently, CVS tests can be done after 13 weeks and amnio after 15 weeks, giving parents vital information to help make decisions about the pregnancy.

This month, Wheeler is among nine researchers from a variety of faculties sharing $790,000 in funding from the Connaught Fund as part of the annual Connaught Innovation Award.

See below for a full list of this year’s recipients.

“I’d like to congratulate all of the recipients of this year’s Connaught Innovation Award,” said Professor Vivek Goel, �Թϱ��’s vice-president of research and innovation.

“It’s not only a recognition of the excellence of the work, it’s also an important boost by the Connaught Fund to help accelerate the development of promising technology that has a potential for great impact, as well as support its commercialization.”

Wheeler and his team, who are known for developing lab-on-a-chip techniques for applications in chemistry, biology and medicine, have joined forces on the project with Dr. Elena Kolomietz, Dr. David Chitayat and others at Mount Sinai, which is one of nine �Թϱ�� affiliated hospitals in Toronto.

Finding a non-invasive way to implement a comprehensive prenatal diagnostic test is an important mission for the hospital, which delivers approximately 7,000 babies each year, the highest volume of births in Ontario. It’s also one of the largest perinatal centres in North America.

“This would be the ultimate prenatal diagnostic test,” says Kolomietz, who is also an associate professor in laboratory medicine and pathobiology at �Թϱ��.

For the past four years, her team has been collecting cervical mucosal specimens – taken in a similar manner to a Pap smear – which are “a perfect test case for our new technology,” Wheeler says.

These specimens, collected five to 14 weeks after conception, contain fetal cells from placenta that is shed into the uterus. Even a small number of intact cells should be sufficient for a comprehensive whole genome analysis.

But the wrinkle is that the specimens contain both maternal and fetal cells. “It is a needle in a haystack problem,” Wheeler says.

Isolating the individual fetal cells – without contamination from the maternal cells or damage to their DNA – is tricky. Using existing methods met with limited success for Kolomietz and her team. So she looked for an alternative solution and up popped Wheeler’s work.

“I sent Dr. Wheeler an email and we had a meeting and he was immediately excited about the project,” she recalls. “It’s been a delight to work with his group.”

Using Wheeler’s digital microfluidic laser cell lysis platform, the fetal cells will adhere in situ and grow on a specially designed microfluidic device rather than using suspended cells in flowing tubes. The researchers will stain and mark the fetal cells and a laser will blast the cells to break them open. Tiny fluid droplets containing the cells’ contents will be collected and analyzed for genetic anomalies.

“It sounds a little science fictiony,” he admits but says “optimistically” the technology could be widely available in five years’ time for pregnant women if the tests function well.

Kolomietz is hopeful it could be even sooner.

“Once we solve the problem of cell isolation, everything else is in place,” she said, envisioning a future that sees women having the specimens collected by a nurse or family doctor during a regular Pap smear as soon as their pregnancy is confirmed.

And, the platform’s prenatal usage is only the beginning.

“We propose that this system may be useful for evaluating adherent-cell heterogeneity for a wide range of applications,” Wheeler says. “That is one of the reasons that we are grateful for this funding from the Connaught Foundation, which will allow us to explore.”

In addition to Wheeler, the recipients of this year’s Connaught Innovation Award are:

Robert Bonin of the Faculty of Pharmacy for “Automated behavioural platform for rapid in vivo pharmaceutical testing”

David Fleet of the department of computer science for “Advanced algorithms to discover protein structures for drug design”

Glenn Gulak of the department of electrical & computer engineering for “Secure homomorphic search for confidential approval and verification of bank card and online purchases”

Donald Kirk of the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry for “Electrochemical glycerol carbonate production”

Cindi Morshead of the department of surgery for “Promoting neurorepair via novel biphasic electrical stimulation therapy”

Paul Santerre of the Faculty of Dentistry for “ReFilx: A soft tissue filler for the reconstruction of breast tissues defects”

Xiao Yu (Shirley) Wu of the Faculty of Pharmacy for “Intelligent nanoparticle theranostics for CNS diseases”

Andrei Yudin of the department of chemistry for “An enabling macrocyclization technology for the development of pharmaceutical agents”

Toward the quantum Internet: Amr Helmy and the Connaught Global Challenge Award

sgupta — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 16:56:03 +0000

Toward the quantum Internet: Amr Helmy and the Connaught Global Challenge Award sgupta Thu, 01/07/2016 - 11:56

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Professor Amr Helmy received a Connaught Global Challenge award to research quantum computing and digital security

Marit Mitchell

Author legacy

Marit Mitchell

Topic

Breaking Research

Our Faculty & Staff

Security

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Connaught

Research

Subheadline

“My personal vision is for a quantum Internet that can go beyond quantum-based security”

After terror attacks last year in Europe and Africa, speculation swirled that the plotters may have been using smartphone apps to encrypt their communications.

Now, Professor Amr Helmy of the University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering is leading research that could break open such encryption while ensuring the security, privacy and confidentiality of legitimate communications.

Helmy's work is supported by a Connaught Global Challenge Award. The award, funded by �Թϱ��’s Connaught Fund, was established in 2011 to support interdisciplinary approaches to problems of global significance. Proposals come from the �Թϱ�� research community, involve large teams from multiple disciplines and are subjected to the highest level of international peer review.

Could carbon dioxide be the solution to climate change?

sgupta — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 08:55:18 +0000

Could carbon dioxide be the solution to climate change? sgupta Thu, 11/26/2015 - 03:55

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Artist's rendering of Australia's daily carbon dioxide emissions (image courtesy Carbon Visuals via Flickr)

Patchen Barss

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Patchen Barss

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Subheadline

Connaught Global Challenge Award goes to solar fuels cluster

In the drama of climate change, carbon dioxide has long played the role of arch-villain.

Now, though, Canada Research Chair of Materials Chemistry and Nanochemistry and University Professor of Chemistry Geoffrey Ozin wants to recast the infamous greenhouse-gas scoundrel in the role of hero, placing it centre stage in the development of carbon-neutral, renewable energy.

And thanks to an investment of $1 million from the Connaught Global Challenge Award program, he is setting out to do just that.

“The public has heard of carbon capture and storage,” Ozin says. “They haven’t heard about carbon capture and utilization.”

Carbon dioxide, it turns out, plays many roles other than heating the planet. It’s used to manufacture industrial chemicals and polymers. It’s a component in urea, a key part of many fertilizers.

And, it can be used to make methane and diesel fuels.

“Carbon dioxide already forms the basis of a megaton industry for making chemicals, materials, cement and fertilizers,” says Ozin. “Why not use it as much as you can? You could build a global economy on a resource that’s all around us. And if you happen to use Gigatons every year, then you could keep atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at sustainable levels indefinitely.”

Ozin (pictured at right) is leading a multidisciplinary team, dubbed “The �Թϱ�� Solar Fuels Cluster” on a quest to develop a process for converting carbon dioxide into an energy-rich renewable fuel, using a carbon-neutral cycle.

Ozin’s approach fits the nature of the Global Challenge Award perfectly. The award was created in 2011 to bring together the university’s leading researchers from multiple disciplines with innovators from other sectors to enhance �Թϱ��’s contributions to issues facing global society. Proposals come from the �Թϱ�� research community, involving large interdisciplinary teams and are subjected to the highest level of international peer review.

The Connaught Fund is currently valued at more than $105 million. It was founded in 1972 from the sale of the Connaught Laboratories for $29 million. The labs had produced vaccines and, notably, insulin after it was discovered by �Թϱ�� researchers Frederick Banting and Charles Best in 1921. The Connaught fund has since awarded more than $135 million to �Թϱ�� scholars.

“The Connaught Fund has always been focused on enabling research relevant to society,” says Professor Vivek Goel, �Թϱ��’s vice-president, research and innovation. “The goal of the Global Challenge Award provides a level of funding that helps our researchers go very deeply into a problem that affects everyone on the planet and create progress on solutions to that problem.

“These challenges demand experts from a wide range of areas coming together – no sole scholar can do it alone. The focus of the Ozin team on renewable energy will addressone of the great problems of our time. The Connaught Committee believes the wide range of expertise on Geoff’s team can deliver important advances on this vital topic.”

Ozin is joined in the project by

Charles Mims, chemical engineering and applied chemistry (CEAC)
Nazir Kherani, materials science and engineering (MSE) and electrical and computer engineering (MSE)
Douglas Perovic, MSE
Cathy Chin, CEAC
Ben Hatton, MSE
Chandra Veer Singh, MSE
Zhenghong Lu, MSE

Ozin says people tend to view carbon dioxide as a waste product because it’s what’s left over after burning fuel or breathing air. It’s a very stable molecule, which doesn’t react easily with other materials. But given the right catalyst, it can be broken up and transformed into carbon monoxide, methane, methanol, ethylene, formic acid and other highly useful chemicals.

Finding the right catalyst involves more than identifying substances that can coax reactions out of CO2. Ozin researches how to shape materials on a nanoscopic scale, creating structures a few billionths of a metre in size. Nanostructuring can do things like maximize the surface area where gas and catalyst interact. More surface area means more chemical reaction.

“A carbon dioxide economy will depend on nanostructured forms of semiconductors and metals,” Ozin says. “We foresee a sunlight-assisted conversion of gaseous CO2 to fuel, using catalysis to create a ‘solar refinery’ that is, critically, predicated on existing industrial infrastructure and combustion processes.”

Ozin first turned his attention to this problem seven years ago when he was 65 years old. He says it sometimes feels odd to be working on something so tied to immediately pressing global challenges, where mere discovery is only a part of the recipe on a long road to success.

“I’m an academic used to doing basic science,” he says. “But for global industry, you have to create materials that are not just different from what already exists, but that do a particular job better. You have to boil things down to simpler, scalable components that are abundant, low-cost, and stable under every imaginable condition – in varying sunlight levels, at different temperatures, and under reaction.”

Despite the challenges, he remains convinced that science and engineering can reform CO2 into a productive part of global society.

“I believe that carbon dioxide should be viewed as more than a combustion waste product of fossil fuel,” he says. “We should think of it as a chemical resource to be harvested and recycled into renewable fuel.”

His mantra is “solar fuels from the sun not fossil fuels from the earth”.

The support from the Connaught Fund runs from September 2015 to December 2017.

The Connaught Committee also made a $170,000 Global Challenge Award to a second interdisciplinary team led by Professor Amr Helmy of electrical and computer engineering for his project entitled The Quantum Internet: Charting the Critical Path. �Թϱ�� will post a feature on this project soon.

(See the original image of Australia's carbon emissions from Carbon Visuals on Flickr)

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What nature can teach us about solar energy

sgupta — Mon, 29 Sep 2014 13:11:26 +0000

What nature can teach us about solar energy sgupta Mon, 09/29/2014 - 09:11

Cutline

Solar energy expert Ted Sargent is leading the upcoming symposium, Bio-Inspired Ideas for Sustainable Energy

Sydney Goodfellow

Author legacy

Sydney Goodfellow

Features

Engineering

Connaught

Subheadline

Solar energy experts to gather at �Թϱ��

Two thousand metres below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, tiny bacteria survive in near darkness by harvesting the dim light released from hydrothermal vents.

As humans increasingly look to the sun as a renewable energy source, what better model than these bacteria and other remarkably efficient organisms found in nature?

From October 8 to 9, a group of world experts in solar cell research are gathering at the University of Toronto to explore the question: what can plants teach humans about solar energy?

Hosted as part of the $1-million 2014 Connaught Global Challenge, the symposium, Bio-Inspired Ideas for Sustainable Energy, includes invited talks, poster sessions, industry networking and a public talk by special guest Sir Richard Friend of Cambridge University.

To learn more about the event, �Թϱ�� Engineering’s Sydney Goodfellow spoke with Ted Sargent, �Թϱ�� Engineering’s vice-dean, research.

Finding new solutions to our global energy crisis is no easy task – why is the Connaught Global Challenge symposium unique?

This symposium is exciting because great minds from around the world are converging in Toronto, and it’s a whole new combination of brainpower. These aren’t just leaders from one field, they’re from a whole range of different fields, and they’re coming here to learn from each other, to work towards a common goal.

People in the field of quantum biology and photobiology – specialists in the mechanisms underpinning photosynthesis – have been saying for a long time that we should look to nature to make our energy production more efficient, but nobody’s been asking how. At this symposium, we are coming together to learn from each other. Our goal is to see projects and partnerships emerge from it that will lead to further progress in solar energy – both electricity and stored fuels.

With all of these world experts converging in Toronto, could you share who at the University of Toronto and across the city may benefit from attending?

The symposium is very inclusive. Many of the attendees will be engineering and science graduate students, but it’s open across campus and appeals to a number of different fields. The more people who join from different academic and professional backgrounds the better, from physicists to materials scientists to political and environmental science students interested in energy policy.

Part of the symposium is a public lecture with Sir Richard Friend. Who is Sir Friend and what can we expect from his lecture?

[Sir Richard Friend] is a pioneer in plastic electronics, or flexible electronics. He’s had a tremendous amount of global success with turning flexible plastic materials into active devices for displays, lasing and energy conversion.

Sparked by the ideas of photobiologists, Richard says in the abstract for his lecture that, when it comes to solar energy, nature has us beat every time: they reproduce and propagate naturally with only the power of the sun; they’re extremely efficient at using a broad spectrum of light and they remove carbon dioxide from the air in the process.

He is both inspiring and inspired by the general thrust of the symposium. We invited him to think big, to lay out the vision for the next few decades of energy generation, in particular in the role of renewable resources and natural energy production.

What are the intended outcomes of this conference?

We seek to spark a new field. This symposium is, at its core, a conversation between some of the world’s energy leaders, and the next stage will be to begin collaboration across traditional [research] boundaries to solve problems together. When the conference is done, we’ll set to work towards these goals – advances in clean energy technology that are crucial to society’s future.

In my research group, we create solar cells based on plastic flexible spray coating. We make cells that are particularly good at absorbing more of the sun’s spectrum, from the visible into the infrared. We get our inspiration from nature, because nature is great at harvesting the full rainbow spectrum of sun. Algae, for example, stack themselves in layers – a green layer, a blue layer, and so on – until they make up the full spectrum. They’re extremely efficient in handling the sun’s broad spectrum, and we gain inspiration and learn from them.

In addition, we work with soft materials that you spray down as a coating. But because they’re soft, they have all sorts of imperfections. This makes it hard for electrons to travel across their surface, but plants have these same imperfections and they transport energy very well. We’re trying to improve our electron transport abilities by looking at how nature does it. We’re also looking into antenna technology, modeling again off of plants, which will increase the rate at which our materials are able to absorb light.

Learn more about the Connaught Global Challenge Symposium: Bio-Inspired Ideas for Sustainable Energy.

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Origin story: how the Dalla Lana School of Public Health began

sgupta — Fri, 02 May 2014 15:33:25 +0000

Origin story: how the Dalla Lana School of Public Health began sgupta Fri, 05/02/2014 - 11:33

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Dean Howard Hu with portrait of Gerry FitzGerald

Nicole Bodnar

Author legacy

Nicole Bodnar

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Subheadline

Fighting germs, manufacturing vaccines and distributing them for free

One hundred years ago, in a city rife with infectious disease, Dr. John Gerald (“Gerry”) FitzGerald opened a small laboratory in the basement of �Թϱ��’s Medical Building.

The lab succeeded in controlling and even eradicating deadly infectious diseases such as diphtheria and smallpox – and it planted an early seed for Canada’s publicly-funded health care system.

May 1, 2014 marks the centenary of the founding of that lab: the University of Toronto Antitoxin Laboratory, predecessor of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. In his award-winning book, What Disturbs Our Blood, James FitzGerald, the grandson of “Canada’s public health visionary,” traces the full story.

“My grandfather and his colleagues,” he writes, “transformed the field of public health from an isolated grassroots movement into a modern, specialized, state-run bureaucracy, stretching like a giant safety net from the Atlantic to Pacific Oceans.”

Gerry FitzGerald’s fascination with the emerging germ theory of disease — the concept that conditions are caused by micro-organisms or pathogens that infect a host — propelled him into medical school at age 16 in 1899. After studying at elite international medical institutions including Harvard, Berkeley and the Pasteur Institute, FitzGerald returned home in 1913 to pitch a radical idea to the University of Toronto Board of Governors: he would manufacture vaccines and antitoxins for free distribution to all Canadians as a public service.

“He had the values of a scholar, the drive of an entrepreneur and a highly developed social conscience,” said James FitzGerald.

With the epochal discovery of insulin by Banting and Best at �Թϱ�� in 1922, the young lab — now renamed the Connaught Laboratories — drew international attention and fresh philanthropic support. The Rockefeller Foundation donated $1.2-million (equivalent to roughly $30-million today) to establish the University of Toronto School of Hygiene, serving as the academic arm of the labs.

Opening on College Street in 1927, it was only the third school of hygiene in North America at the time, alongside Johns Hopkins and Harvard.

FitzGerald’s vision for the Connaught Labs and the School of Hygiene was three-pronged: the preparation of a host of low-cost, high quality preventative medicines for free national distribution through government departments of health; a research arm to develop new products to meet the constant threat of infectious diseases; and undergraduate and graduate education to pass on the torch of knowledge to future generations of public health workers.

By the mid-1930s, the School was a world leader in sanitation science, nutrition and vaccine development. Not only did all provinces distribute Connaught products, but the lab built a thriving export market in countries as distant as New Zealand, China and the Caribbean.

As the first commercial drug firm operated by an academic institution, the Connaught Laboratories helped establish Canada as number one in the world in preventative medicine and public health. By 1940, the year of FitzGerald’s death, Hamilton and Toronto were declared the first cities in the world to be diphtheria-free. FitzGerald truly delivered on his vision of health care “within reach of everyone.”

Over the ensuing decades, the Connaught Labs and School of Hygiene added to its list of global achievements, including the ongoing mass production and world-wide distribution of insulin; the production of penicillin during World War II; the Jonas Salk polio vaccine in the 1950s and the invention of multivalent vaccines; and spearheading the conquest of smallpox in the 1970s.

The 1970s signalled change on many fronts. When communicable diseases seemed vanquished by vaccines and antibiotics, the Connaught Laboratories spun off into private industry in 1972, and �Թϱ�� transitioned the School of Hygiene into a community health department in the Faculty of Medicine. The Faculty of Medicine integration helped to ensure that all medical students received public health education and provided a framework for community health centers and advocacy for health and social reform.

“In many ways, the public health challenges faced by FitzGerald’s generation are not much different than those we face today,” observes Howard Hu, dean of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

“Our world is crowded, diverse, aging, urbanized, polluted, hot, thirsty, hungry and debt-ridden. As William Foege, former director of the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, put it, health in the 20th century can be summed up in four words: spectacular progress, spectacular inequities,” said Hu.

The SARS crisis in 2003 led to a rebirth of public health academics in Canada. Endowed by the Dalla Lana family with an unprecedented $20 million gift, the Dalla Lana School of Public Health was established in 2008. Today, the School has more than 300 outstanding faculty members, 450 students and partnerships with institutions throughout Toronto.

“I feel humbled to carry the touch lit by Gerry FitzGerald. His ‘within reach of everyone’ mantra resonates deeply with me,” said Hu.

“I am proud to lead a new generation of public health, health policy and population health researchers and academics who are improving health in Toronto, Ontario, and globally.”

For more information about the roots of the Connaught Laboratories, watch a video by Sanofi Pasteur Canada.

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How basic research at �Թϱ�� saved a Mountie in Labrador

sgupta — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 13:12:11 +0000

How basic research at �Թϱ�� saved a Mountie in Labrador sgupta Thu, 02/06/2014 - 08:12

Cutline

Greg Bohaker in his red serge outside the Hopedale, Labrador detachment in November, 1963 just before he became ill. The photo was taken by a United States Air Force photographer, just before a memorial service for President Kennedy held at the US radar

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Research

An associate professor in the Department of History, Heidi Bohaker specializes in North American Aboriginal history (with a focus on the northeast and Great Lakes regions), pre-Confederation Canada and ethnohistorical research methodologies.

But within Bohaker's personal history lies a deep connection to one of the most significant events in the history of the University of Toronto: the discovery and development of insulin.

Bohaker shared this story recently in a letter to Provost Cheryl Regehr. With Bohaker's permission, �Թϱ�� is republishing the letter here:

In 1963 my father was a 21 year old RCMP constable stationed in Hopedale, Labrador, in a two-man detachment responsible for policing a large region from Makkovik in the south to Davis Inlet in the north. In December of that year he developed a flu-like illness and lost weight rapidly. In two short weeks, he lost 35 lbs, a once strapping now gaunt 6'1" officer. In the first week of January he was shipped out for medical evaluation at the RCAF hospital in Goose Bay.

The base doctor thought he had just had a bad flu and recommended he return to work, but before Dad could fly back his condition worsened, and he was sent to see Dr. W. Anthony Paddon at the Grenfell Mission Hospital at North West River (about 30 miles east of Goose Bay). Dr. Paddon (who went on to become the Lieutenant Governor of Newfoundland) immediately realized that my father had actually developed Type 1 diabetes, a complete inability of the body to produce insulin and therefore to metabolize sugar.

This disease was once lethal but thanks to the Nobel prize-winning research conducted at the University of Toronto in 1921-22, diabetes had become a controllable condition through daily injections of insulin derived from cattle and pigs. My father received his first shot of life-saving insulin on Jan 14, 1964, half an hour after arriving at the Mission hospital. After a five-day stay he was then shipped out to hospital in St. John's, Newfoundland where he remained for three weeks before returning to duty. He later married my mother, whom he had met during his time in Hopedale. She was one of two local schoolteachers.

As a child I grew up hearing the remarkable story of the discovery of insulin, and I certainly knew that my own existence was due to the substance in the multiple needles that my father injected every day. On day trips to the Royal Ontario Museum from our home in Oshawa, we invariably walked through �Թϱ��'s campus as well, past the Medical Sciences Buildings which is the original location of Professor John MacLeod’s laboratory, where Dr. Frederick Banting conducted his experiments alongside research assistant Charles Best and biochemist Bertram Collip.

I also heard of course about the importance of �Թϱ��'s Connaught laboratory which was the first to mass-produce insulin, along with other life-saving medications and vaccines, and which made them available to all at affordable prices. My father did not complete high school before he entered the RCMP, but he certainly impressed upon both my brother and me the importance that basic research at universities contributes to society, and in particular of course research at the University of Toronto.

There was, therefore, extra cause for celebration when I was offered a tenure-stream position in History at the University of Toronto. And I remember phoning my father shortly after my arrival here with the exciting news that the initial research grant awarded to new faculty came from the Connaught fund, an endowment created by the University's sale of the Connaught laboratories in 1971 to the private sector. The discovery and production of insulin was continuing to fund new research.

On January 14th, 2014, I attended a reception held by the President and Provost to congratulate those of us who had achieved tenure in the past year. For me, it was a doubly special day – as the 14th was also the 50th anniversary of my father’s diagnosis and first insulin injection.

In the 1960s, insulin saved lives, but my father still knew and expected that his life would be shorter and full of additional medication complications as a result of his disease. We grew up anticipating that my father would be outlived by our grandfather. But years of continued research and refinements in diabetic treatment, and the development of humulin, synthetic human insulin, have significantly changed that original picture. My father, now 71, has recently had cataract surgery, and his knees are a bit arthritic. Not complications of diabetes, but now-welcomed signs of normal aging. And he's very much enjoying his nearly four-year old grandson.

At times of fiscal restraint and focus on applied research with immediate commercial applications, my father's story reminds me about the importance of universities as places that create the space for big "what if" and "I wonder" questions, like the one Dr. Frederick Banting asked, on a hunch, about the cause of diabetes. Basic research sometimes results in dead ends, but sometimes results in the kinds of remarkable discoveries that makes new and different futures possible, including, I am keenly aware, my own!

Professor Heidi Bohaker joined �Թϱ�� in 2007 following a SSHRC post-postdoctoral fellowship at Carleton University. Her own research questions include exploring the political significance of pictographic images by Great Lakes Anishinaabe peoples used as the equivalent to signatures on treaties (in a book The Politics of Treaty Pictographs forthcoming with the University of Toronto Press) and a new study that will examine the formation of treaty relationships in the context of land purchases in Upper Canada from after the American Revolution to the War of 1812.

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Connaught

Robots in the wild: �Թϱ���'s Florian Shkurti on overcoming 'edge cases' in machine learning

Courage and sacrifice: A look back at �Թϱ��� during the First World War

56 rising �Թϱ��� research stars awarded Connaught New Researcher Awards

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Faculty of Arts & Science

Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Dentistry

Faculty of Law

Faculty of Medicine

Joseph L. Rotman School of Management

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

University of Toronto Mississauga

University of Toronto Scarborough

New, no-needle prenatal genetic disease test at �Թϱ��� gets Connaught Fund support

Toward the quantum Internet: Amr Helmy and the Connaught Global Challenge Award

Read more about projects backed by the Connaught Global Challenge Award

Could carbon dioxide be the solution to climate change?

What nature can teach us about solar energy

Origin story: how the Dalla Lana School of Public Health began

How basic research at �Թϱ��� saved a Mountie in Labrador

Robots in the wild: �Թϱ��'s Florian Shkurti on overcoming 'edge cases' in machine learning

Courage and sacrifice: A look back at �Թϱ�� during the First World War

56 rising �Թϱ�� research stars awarded Connaught New Researcher Awards

New, no-needle prenatal genetic disease test at �Թϱ�� gets Connaught Fund support

How basic research at �Թϱ�� saved a Mountie in Labrador