A Message from Dean Cristina Amon

In this issue of the Engineering Newsletter, we celebrate another remarkable year of accomplishments and progress at U of T Engineering.

As we work together to achieve the ambitious goals outlined in our five-year Academic Plan, we have exceeded expectations on many fronts. Our record-high undergraduate applications (11,132) and first-year entrance average (93 per cent) demonstrate our ability to attract some of the world’s most exceptional students. Our pioneering research and learning opportunities have sparked graduate enrolment numbers (2,064) that surpassed our Academic Plan goal (2,000 by 2015) two years early. And we experienced remarkable support for our unwavering pursuit of research excellence, with Tri-Council funding ($26.3M) that surpassed our Academic Plan goal ($25M per year by 2015), and major philanthropic commitments that nearly doubled the previous year’s amount to over $20M.

Our Faculty continues to foster global engineering leaders. Throughout this newsletter, you can explore the many initiatives, programs and offerings that enable our undergraduate and graduate students to be makers and innovators. We also provide them with unique opportunities to expand their horizons, collaborating with industry partners, across fields, in multidisciplinary capstone projects and with peers from as far away as Brazil and China.

Our focus on developing multidisciplinary and collaborative research has never been stronger. This year we launched two new EDU:Cs – one in advanced manufacturing and another in transportation – to further enhance research impact in key areas central to our economic prosperity.

Looking forward, our Faculty’s plans to build the Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CEIE) are progressing well. Over the past year, faculty, students, staff and alumni have all rallied behind our vision, recognizing the boundless opportunities the new CEIE will provide for students and researchers alike. It is invigorating to experience such tremendous support as we, together, take this next leap forward for the future.

I would like to express my deep thanks to our entire community for your ongoing contributions and for your continued commitment to the Faculty and our goals. I wish you all a rewarding and relaxing summer and look forward to what we will accomplish together in the coming year.

July 3, 2014

Volume 7, Issue 10
In this issue:

Year in Review

A Year in Photos
Planning
Students
Education
Research
Community
Friends
Governance
Infrastructure
New Colleagues
Archives

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A Year in Photos

A Year of Reflection and Looking Forward: Annual Report and Academic Plan

Our Faculty continues to make outstanding progress toward achieving the ambitious goals identified in our Academic Plan 2011-16.

The Year Two: Progress and Achievements Report and Annual Report 2013: Performance Indicators, published last fall, measure and assess the progress of our activities in our continual pursuit of excellence. The externally-focused Year in Review: 2013 Annual Report provides a high-level summary of our Faculty’s most significant achievements for alumni, donor and industry audiences. Look for updated versions of these reports this fall.

A Year for Students: Recruitment, Admissions and Pre-University Outreach

Undergraduate:

At U of T Engineering, our strong programs and international reputation continue to draw the brightest future engineers from around the world.

The number of first-year applicants for fall 2014 rose to a record number of 11,132 students, representing a 10 per cent increase from the previous year. This enabled us to be more selective in our offers of admission. The mean average for students accepted to our programs from Ontario high schools was 93 per cent – the highest ever recorded for the Faculty.

We continue to enrich our undergraduate learning environment with diverse and global perspectives. Currently, more than 35 per cent of students this fall are coming from outside Canada, and 30 per cent of our incoming first-year class are female.

Our first- to second-year retention rate rose to 94.6 per cent. This reflects the effectiveness of programs within the Faculty that support students, such as First-Year Foundations, Success 101, first-year math support and an extensive advising program that provides embedded counsellors, an international transition advisor, a learning strategist and a wellness coordinator.

Pre-University Outreach

The Faculty’s outreach activities are designed to inspire the next generation of engineers, while encouraging them to study at U of T Engineering. For example, this year we welcomed 31 high school students from Kazakhstan for an inaugural two-week mini-DEEP program, providing them with experiential learning opportunities on the U of T campus.

This year’s GLEE (Girls Leadership in Engineering Experience) empowered and inspired 95 female applicants – 76 of whom accepted their admission to U of T – by connecting them with women faculty, students and alumni. Engineering also partnered with Google Canada and Actua to host an outreach workshop for 125 girls from grades three to six.

Graduate:

U of T Engineering attracts diverse and exceptional graduate students, demonstrating our reputation as a global leader in engineering research, education and innovation.

The Faculty reached an all-time high of 2,064 graduate students, an increase of nearly 40 per cent over the last five years. This surpasses our Academic Plan goal, two years early, of 2,000 graduate students by 2015.

Overall applications to our master’s and PhD programs rose 12 per cent since this time last year, with an increase of 17 per cent in domestic applications. Interest in our professional master’s program is growing. Applications to our Master of Engineering (MEng) program rose by 35 per cent compared to last year.

The increasing interest we receive in our graduate programs is due in part to our ongoing strategic recruitment activities. This year we partnered with the top Canadian engineering school to launch the first Canadian Graduate Engineering Consortium. Events were held across the country to connect with high quality domestic applicants and encourage them to learn more about our programs. We also hosted department events, such as ChemE’s Graduate Research Weekend, that allow prospective students to meet professors whose research interests them.

The diversity of our research and learning community continues to increase. Enrolment of women in our graduate programs was relatively on par with last year at 25.9 per cent, while our international enrolment rose over the past four years to an all-time high of 24.6 per cent in 2013-14. We also expanded our involvement in the Science without Borders program to offer new scholarship options to Brazilian PhD students.

A Year of Enriching Education

This past year, our faculty members have devoted tremendous efforts to enhancing our curriculum, exploring new teaching pedagogies and offering experiential learning opportunities to prepare the next generation of global engineering leaders.

Undergraduate:

Innovative Teaching

Through the Engineering Instructional Innovation Program (EIIP), U of T Engineering faculty are leading eight projects that engage new teaching methods. Five projects began earlier this year, including the creation of mixed-media teaching resources for MSE courses and a retrofit of the IBBME Undergraduate Teaching Laboratory to enhance curriculum delivery. Three new EIIP projects will start this fall.

In addition to EIIP, we piloted the inverted classroom approach for the second year, developed two online calculus with engineering applications courses and created our first massive open online course (MOOC), Our Energetic Earth. A second MOOC on sustainable energy will launch this fall.

New this year, we also adopted the University-wide online course evaluation system that allows us to better gather course and curriculum feedback from students. We are now able to share quantitative response data directly with our students while continuing to provide quantitative and qualitative feedback to instructors and department chairs.

Hands-on Learning

At U of T Engineering, we nurture the next generation of engineers to be makers and innovators through collaborative, hands-on learning opportunities. Students in capstone design courses across the Faculty synthesize the knowledge and competencies developed throughout their studies and apply them to open-ended design problems.

This year we launched our first Multidisciplinary Capstone Projects course in collaboration with industry partners such as Bombardier, Defence Research and Development Canada, Magna and others. Teams of students – each from a different department – worked together on new solutions, such as software that helps pilots manage jetlag or new treads on an all-terrain vehicle.

Select undergraduates in our mechanical and industrial engineering programs collaborated with students at Peking University in Beijing, China, for their capstone course. Teams of students from both countries worked together on client-based projects with companies that have operations both in Canada and China, such as Siemens and Litens Automotive. There were two in-person meetings, in Beijing and in Toronto, and the remaining interactions were virtual.

At the ECE Design Fair, this year’s projects included a drone helicopter that can find any charging station, a power grid that can sense its own flaws, a surgeon’s scope that detects internal abnormalities and an app that helps a child deal with cancer.

This spring’s MIE Design Showcase also featured innovative projects such as an app to help patients navigate hospitals, better sales planning tools and a machine that throws the elusive knuckleball.

Students in their first year of the Engineering Science (EngSci) program also collaborated on real-world designs this winter through their annual Praxis design course. They worked with communities across the GTA to solve eight of Toronto’s persistent challenges, like refrigerating meat at farmers’ markets and inventing a mop to eliminate repetitive strain injuries.

More Programming Opportunities for Undergraduates

Our Faculty also introduced new certificates and a minor for undergraduate students to further customize their degree and receive recognition for their focus in specific areas:

• A new Biomedical Engineering Minor prepares students for direct entry into the applied biomedical engineering industry, offering courses on the technologies, systems and policy in the field. Launching next September, this is the first minor to include supporting co-curricular activities.
• A Certificate in Engineering Leadership encourages students to enhance their team skills, as well as their knowledge of organizational processes and their personal leadership styles.
• A Certificate in Renewable Resources, offers interdisciplinary courses, in collaboration with the Faculty of Forestry, in sustainable resource management, bio-economics, sustainable energy production, product manufacturing and sustainable communities.

The Entrepreneurship Hatchery offers students dedicated space and guidance to develop fledgling business ideas. Thirty seven student teams are participating in this year’s program, which doubles our four-year goal – in less than three years – of 20 student teams, further embedding our culture of entrepreneurship at U of T Engineering.

Our Faculty also recorded the highest enrolment yet for the Professional Experience Year. Over 63 per cent of third-year students participated in the program, with 70 per cent of them returning to their degree with a job offer in hand.

Graduate:

Collaboration Across Disciplines

Graduate-level multidisciplinary research and education increased last year, offering graduate students opportunities to collaborate across the Faculty and the University.

We developed Canada’s first collaborative program in Engineering Education (EngEd) program at the master’s and PhD level, launching this September. In partnership with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, the program enables students and faculty to explore learning concepts as they apply to engineering and education.

The Centre for Global Engineering (CGEN) brought together graduate students from across U of T to develop innovative solutions to global challenges. The projects in the course Interdisciplinary Approach to Addressing Global Challenges focused on childhood malnutrition in Bangladesh. Students developed integrated solutions that combined expertise from U of T Engineering, the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, the Rotman School of Management and the Munk School of Global Affairs.

Students from across the Faculty also worked collaboratively to devise different sustainable design solutions in the MSE course Nanomaterials in Alternate Energy Systems. Competing against other groups, the winning team – which included students from MSE, ECE and two international students from the Brazilian Science without Borders program – created a new type of eco-friendly, zero-emission soybean harvester.

New Graduate Programming Opportunities

To meet the needs of a rapidly changing global society, our Faculty now offers more graduate program options. The new Master of Engineering (MEng) in Cities Engineering and Management prepares students to address the challenges associated with an increasingly urban world, while MIE’s MEng certificate in Financial Engineering equips engineers with the tools to better handle business risk and ensure financial stability.

Two new MEng emphases, Advanced Water Technologies & Process Design and Sustainable Aviation, provide students with in-depth knowledge of water-treatment methods and the development of sustainable aircrafts, respectively.

Our Faculty expanded the flex-time PhD option – introduced to mechanical and industrial engineering students in 2012 – to students in both the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry and the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS).

We also awarded five Heffernan Commercialization Fellowships to further foster a culture of entrepreneurship. These fellowships enable graduate students to commercialize their research outcomes and spark new technology companies.

A Year of Research Impact

At U of T Engineering, we pursue research excellence, enhance collaborations and make tremendous advances in addressing some of the world’s most significant challenges.

For example, Professor Andreas Mandelis (MIE) is using lasers to help diagnose breast cancer and to pinpoint flaws in various industrial processes – research which garnered him a 2014 Killam Prize. Professor Peter Zandstra and PhD candidate Emanuel Nazareth (both IBBME) have made important inroads into regenerative medicine and drug development, with their findings published in Nature Methods. Likewise, Professor George Eleftheriades and PhD candidate Michael Selvanayagam (both ECE) created much excitement when they developed an invisibility cloak that can make objects undetectable to radar.

The Faculty actively encourages diverse approaches through partnerships with other departments, Faculties and the wider community. We amplified our thriving multidisciplinary and collaborative research environment this year by creating two additional EDU:Cs:

• The newly established Toronto Institute of Advanced Manufacturing (TIAM) will explore the pioneering technologies, materials, and manufacturing methods to help companies compete in today’s global marketplace;
• And, the University of Toronto Transportation Research Institute (UTTRI) brings together researchers from different fields to improve how our society transports people and goods.

To enhance our collaborations with industry, we created a second corporate partnership position. Along with the existing role, these two positions engage potential partners through meetings between researchers and industry, and strengthen ties through participation at events such as departmental open houses, company-specific research days and our Faculty-wide reception for industry partners.

Our cutting-edge research continues to receive considerable support from government agencies, including two CREATE projects (“Manufacturing, Materials and Mimetics” and “The Program in Clean Combustion Engines”) totaling $3.3M over six years, six NSERC Strategic Projects Grants and four Grand Challenges grants.

We have also achieved $26.3 million in Tri-Council funding, surpassing our Academic Plan goal of $25 million per year in Tri-Council funding by 2015.

Select Research Stories From Across the Faculty:

• A tale of two guts: Joint study discovers digestion mechanism
• “Asia’s richest philanthropist,” major Silicon Valley firm invest in engineering alumni’s Nanoleaf light bulb
• Bio-inspired design may lead to more energy efficient windows
• Can epileptic seizures be predicted and prevented?
• ChemE prof brews a life-saving tea
• DNA-built nanoparticles safely target cancer tumours
• From bio-fuels to molten steel: How U of T engineers are curbing carbon emissions
• Health grants advance research in dental disease and cancer therapy
• ‘Invisibility cloak’ demonstrated for first time
• Predicting the fate of stem cells
• Turbulence: New research ends decade-long debate
• U of T researcher talks trash in Nature commentary

Our Faculty is strengthening our diverse and exceptional community by improving peer engagement, enhancing our communication and celebrating our successes.

Town Halls

In October and February, Dean Cristina Amon hosted town hall meetings with the Engineering Society to engage students in dialogue about their experiences at U of T Engineering. Flowing from these gatherings, we initiated new programming and appointed a task force to examine undergraduate professional development services.

Celebrating Excellence

Across our Faculty, our community had another extraordinary year of awards and honours, both nationally and internationally, including: the Killam Prize, the John S. Bates Medal, Engineers Canada Awards, the Alan Blizzard Award, ASEE Awards and the LeSueur Memorial Award. We continue to receive prestigious fellowships, including the Steacie Fellowship and others from the Engineering Institute of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Engineering.

In April, our community came together to celebrate our accomplishments and recognize faculty and staff for their teaching excellence, research innovation and outstanding contributions to the University.

Media Recognition

Our Faculty’s research and education excellence continues to receive exposure around the globe. Some highlights include:

• U of T Engineering students think outside the box to tackle TTC problems at ILead event (Toronto Star)
• U of T inventors unveil invisibility cloak (Popular Mechanics, Brisbane Times, UK Daily Mail)
• How tiny robots from mechanical engineers at U of T can help make babies (Globe and Mail)
• Engineers brew life-saving tea with an iron punch (CTV News, GOV.UK, Globe and Mail,
• Bionym: Tomorrow’s wearable tech gear from U of T alumni (USA Today, MSN, Financial Post)
• U of T researchers engineer smarter traffic lights (Toronto Life, Globe and Mail, Global News)
• Turbulence: new research from U of T engineers ends decade-long physics debate (Phys.Org)

A Year of Boundless Progress: Advancement and Alumni 

At U of T Engineering, we have received remarkable support worldwide for the ambitious goals in our $200-million component of Boundless: The Campaign for the University of Toronto. We also made significant progress in strengthening our alumni network across the globe.

The forthcoming Centre for Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CEIE) is at the heart of our vision. This building will enable a leap forward in how we drive innovation, foster entrepreneurship and cultivate global engineering leaders. It moves beyond traditional design concepts towards areas that are flexible and collaborative, such as:

• The adaptable 500-seat Lee & Margaret Lau Auditorium that can swiftly convert from a lecture hall into interactive, small-group spaces.
• Classrooms that are wired with the latest technology to engage students with interactive, hands-on learning.
• Light fabrication facilities that will allow students to turn their ideas into working prototypes.
• New labs and workspaces for our Faculty’s multidisciplinary research groups and institutes.

Over the past year, alumni and future alumni have rallied to show their overwhelming support for the project:

• On behalf of all engineering undergraduates at U of T, the Engineering Society pledged $1 million to establish a dedicated space for student clubs to socialize, hold events and collaborate on group projects.
• Alumni groups in Asia Pacific are showing their enthusiastic commitment by donating towards named nationality spaces in the CEIE building. The Singapore alumni group has already exceeded their fundraising goal of $250,000 by close to $85,000. Hong Kong alumni have raised over $4 million of their $5 million goal, while alumni in Taiwan have raised $125,000 of their $300,000 goal to date.
• Alumnus Gerald Heffernan (MMS 4T3) donated $5 million to the Faculty this year. Half of the funds are allocated for the Heffernan Commercialization Fellowships, and half for the Entrepreneurship Hatchery space in the new CEIE.

In Engineering, we actively foster our alumni community internationally. This year, we hosted two Bizskule events in Toronto and one in California, as well as Skule Lunch & Learns for alumni to interact with current students and researchers, lecture events and Spring Reunion for those graduating from years ending in ‘4’ or ‘9’.

A Year of Governance and Influence

A Year of Rethinking Space: Infrastructure Renewal

In Engineering, we are creatively addressing the challenges of our existing space, while actively working towards creating newer spaces, such as the forthcoming CEIE building.

A Year with New Colleagues: Faculty and Staff Appointments

Our Faculty is honoured to welcome new colleagues, recognize promotions and salute this year’s retirees on our 2013-14 Faculty & Staff Appointments page.  

Newsletter Archives

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The Engineering Newsletter is a monthly summary of key headlines, events and opportunities for faculty and staff in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. If you have questions or comments, please contact: communications@ecf.utoronto.ca.

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