Economics

‘Not in my wildest dreams’: Refugee Jaivet Ealom on his journey to become a U of T grad

mattimar — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 14:05:45 +0000

‘Not in my wildest dreams’: Refugee Jaivet Ealom on his journey to become a U of T grad

mattimar Mon, 06/24/2024 - 10:05

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Jaivet Ealom, who arrived in Canada in 2017 after fleeing Myanmar four years earlier, stands in front of U of T’s Convocation Hall (photo by Lisa Lightbourn)

Mariam Matti

Topic

Global Lens

Convocation 2024

Economics

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

Political Science

University College

Subheadline

A member of the persecuted Rohingya minority in Myanmar, Jaivet Ealom fled the country in 2013 and travelled across three continents in search of asylum – surviving a near-drowning and several detentions along the way

As a teenager in Myanmar, Jaivet Ealom says he could hardly have imagined one day graduating from the University of Toronto with a double major in economics and political science.

“Not in my wildest dreams,” he says, noting that he’s now taking steps “to bring everything I’ve gained and learned” to help others who are suffering around the world.

Ealom’s incredible journey to U of T’s Convocation Hall began in 2013 with a harrowing escape from the Southeast Asian country where, as a member of the persecuted Rohingya minority, he faced systemic discrimination and was denied citizenship rights.

He left everything he knew behind, travelling through six countries and across three continents in search of asylum – and surviving a near-drowning and multiple detentions along the way.

(photo by Lisa Lighbourn)

Arriving in Canada in 2017, Ealom later began studies in U of T’s Faculty of Arts & Science as a member of University College. He also co-founded the Rohingya Centre of Canada and a refugee-focused non-profit called Northern Lights Canada, is a member of the Refugee Advisory Network of Canada and has attended forums for the UN Refugee Agency on resettlement.

Amid his advocacy work, he also found time to write his first book: Escape from Manus Prison: One Man’s Daring Quest for Freedom, detailing his triumphant journey.

As he crossed the stage inside Convocation Hall last week, Ealom says a sense of relief washed over him – the closing of one chapter and beginning of another.

He says his time at U of T has helped him make sense of his tumultuous journey – and define his goals for the future.

“I only understood the symptoms of the problem because I have been the one on the suffering side,” Ealom says, adding that he initially viewed the issue purely as a humanitarian one.

“Academia helped me understand that it’s also a political problem and the refugees are a result of policies and discriminatory law.”

(photo by Lisa Lightbourn)

After graduation, Ealom plans to dive into his policy work and advocate for representation of the Rohingya people in Myanmar’s politics following decades of persecution and disfranchisement.

He is currently working with a group of about 40 to form the Rohingya Consultative Council, which is hoping to feed into the National Unity Consultative Council – an advisory body to the National Unity Government of Myanmar.

“The Rohingya are the only group who don’t have a representative body there,” says Ealom, adding that through the Rohingya Consultative Council he hopes to achieve two goals: have a seat at the table; and define and build capacity for who sits in that seat.

He says he feels a sense of responsibility to use his privilege – and his U of T education – to do what other members of his community may not be able to do on their own: achieve equality and justice for the Rohingya community in Myanmar.

From building bone to children’s literacy: 36 U of T researchers awarded Canada Research Chairs

lanthierj — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 17:51:06 +0000

From building bone to children’s literacy: 36 U of T researchers awarded Canada Research Chairs

lanthierj Tue, 08/29/2023 - 13:51

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Karina Carneiro, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Dentistry, is one of 36 researchers at U of T and its partner hospitals to receive a new or renewed Canada research chair (photo by Jeff Comber)

Topic

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Canada Research Chairs

Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

Computer Science

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Ecology & Evolutionary Biology

Economics

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Dentistry

Geography and Planning

Hospital for Sick Children

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Research & Innovation

U of T Scarborough

University Health Network

Subheadline

The new and renewed chairs at U of T and its hospital partners were part of a broader research funding announcement by the federal government

At the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Dentistry, Karina Carneiro and her team are working on developing new treatments to regenerate bone with DNA-based biomaterials.

Karina Carneiro (photo by Jeff Comber)

The researchers are exploring ways to use synthetic materials, created using DNA nanotechnology, to help bones regenerate and support the body’s efforts to heal them naturally.

That’s in contrast to current bone repair treatments, which involve taking bone tissue from another part of the body and breaking it into little pieces that can be inserted into the defect.

“Using a DNA-gel for this purpose could be an effective treatment option as it can be injected to fill the defect size fully,” says Carneiro, an assistant professor in the faculty.

“What we believe to be the difference between our DNA gel and other materials being developed is that over time, the DNA can degrade into molecules that promote our own body’s healing mechanism to further regenerate the bone.”

Carneiro is one of three researchers at the Faculty of Dentistry to be awarded a new or renewed Canada Research Chair in the latest round – and one of 36 across U of T’s three campuses and hospital partners (see list below).

Established in 2000, the prestigious federal program aims to recruit and retain top researchers and scholars in the country. It invests more than $300 million annually to enable world-class researchers to reach new heights in disciplines spanning engineering, health sciences, humanities and social sciences.

“Congratulations to all the researchers at the University of Toronto who received new or renewed Canada Research Chairs in the latest round,” says Leah Cowen, U of T’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives.

“From using AI to improve medicine and health care to better understanding Indigenous geographies and environmental dispossession, the work by U of T investigators supported by this important federal program is pushing the boundaries of research and innovation – and promises to have a big impact in Canada and around the world.”

Anil Kishen (photo by Jeff Comber)

Professor Anil Kishen, who is also at the Faculty of Dentistry, will use the funding associated with his Tier 1 Canada Research to advance his work in oral health nanomedicine.

He and his colleagues in the Kishen Lab are using multifunctional bioactive nanoparticles to study how cells communicate with each other and how wounds heal – in particular, how nanoparticles can be used to help save infected natural teeth and treat wounds and ulcers in individuals with diabetes.

Kishen says one of the reasons chitosan-based nanoparticles, which are optimized for different therapeutic applications, are so promising is because they’re derived from a naturally occurring molecule that is readily available.

“Affordability is important when developing a treatment to reach the masses,” Kishen says.

Massieh Moayedi (photo by Jeff Comber)

Massieh Moayedi, an associate professor in the Faculty of Dentistry, is receiving funding to pursue research in pain neuroimaging as a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair.

“There’s tenuous evidence that body image might be involved in some types of chronic pain,” Moayedi says, adding that his end goal is to understand how pain works so he can improve patient outcomes.

He’s already shown that people with arthritic hands who see the limb looking healthier through a special device experience improvements in pain, so he’s now trying to understand which brain regions are involved.

“This chair will give me funding and the capacity to allow me to investigate these questions, and to really understand the relationship between pain and body image.”

Randy Boissonnault, minister of employment, workforce development and official languages, announced the CRCs at a press conference on Aug. 29 on behalf of François-Philippe Champagne, minister of innovation, science and industry, and Mark Holland, minister of health.

He also revealed the researchers and projects receiving funding through a diverse array of programs administered by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI).

They include the recipients of the SSHRC’s Partnership Grants, Partnership Development Grants and Insight Grants, as well as the recipients of the CFI’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund (JELF), which helps institutions to recruit and retain outstanding researchers, and provide them with the necessary tools and technology to perform their work. Named after a former U of T president, JELF supports projects that deal with a range of pressing issues. This year’s recipients include 35 researchers at U of T and its hospital partners sharing a total of more than $11 million for projects ranging from an assessment of plant responses to environmental change to the development of an ultra-sensitive cryogenic detector for dark matter and neutrino experiments.

“The federal government’s ongoing support for research through all of these programs – from the John R. Evans Leaders Fund, to the NSERC and CFI grants and the Canada Research Chairs – is critical to supporting the kind of research that ultimately improves lives through new knowledge and innovations,” Cowen said.

Here is the full list of new and renewed Canada Research Chairs at U of T:

New Canada Research Chairs

Stephanie Ameis at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and in the department of psychiatry in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in neuroimaging of autism and mental health in youth
Yvonne Bombard at Unity Health and in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Tier 2 in genomics health services and policy
Karina Carneiro in the Faculty of Dentistry, Tier 2 in DNA-based biomaterials
Jesse Chao at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and in the department of medical biophysics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in precision cancer diagnostics and artificial intelligence
Xi (Becky) Chen-Bumgardner in the department of applied psychology and human development in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Tier 1 in literacy development of bilingual and multilingual children
Mark Chiew at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and in the department of medical biophysics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in computational biomedical imaging
Sarah Crome at University Health Network and in the department of immunology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in tissue-specific immune tolerance
Michelle Daigle in the department of geography and planning in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Tier 2 in Indigenous geographies and environmental dispossession
Karen Davis at University Health Network and in the department of surgery in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 1 in acute and chronic pain research
Rahul Gopalkrishnan in the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science and department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in computational medicine
Housheng (Hansen) He at University Health Network and in the department of medical biophysics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 1 in RNA medicine
Margaret Herridge at University Health Network and in the department of medicine in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 1 in critical illness outcomes and the recovery continuum
Anil Kishen in the Faculty of Dentistry, Tier 1 in oral health nanomedicine
Bowen Li in the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, Tier 2 in RNA vaccines and therapeutics
Iacovos Michael at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and in the department of medical biophysics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in tumor biology and precision oncology
Massieh Moayedi in the Faculty of Dentistry, Tier 2 in pain neuroimaging
Faiyaz Notta at the University Health Network and in the department of medical biophysics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in pancreatic cancer and cancer evolution
Valeria Rac at the University Health Network and in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Tier 2 in health system and technology evaluation
Fahad Razak at Unity Health Toronto and in the department of medicine in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in health-care data and analytics
Clinton Robbins at the University Health Network and in the department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 1 in cardiovascular immunology
Lena Serghides at the University Health Network and in the department of immunology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 1 in maternal-child health and HIV
Catriona Steele at the University Health Network and in the department of speech language pathology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 1 in swallowing and food oral processing
Bo Wang in the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science and department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, tier 2 in artificial intelligence for medicine

Renewed Canada Research Chairs

Angela Cheung at University Health Network and in the department of medicine at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 1 in musculoskeletal and postmenopausal health
Xi Huang at the Hospital for Sick Children and in the department of molecular genetics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in cancer biophysics
Cendri Hutcherson in the department of psychology at the University of Toronto Scarborough, Tier 2 in decision neuroscience
Joanne Kotsopoulos at Women’s College Hospital and at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Tier 2 in hereditary breast and ovarian cancer prevention
Arthur Mortha in the department of immunology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in mucosal immunology
Kelly O’Brien in the department of physical therapy in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in episodic disability and rehabilitation
Trevor Pugh at the University Health Network and in the department of medical biophysics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in translational genomics
Diego Restuccia in the department of economics in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Tier 1 in macroeconomics and productivity
David Sinton in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, Tier 1 in energy and fluids
Olivier Trescases in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical and computer engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, Tier 2 in power electronic converters
Joel Watts in the Tanz Centre for Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in protein misfolding disorders
Michael Widener in the department of geography and planning in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Tier 2 in transportation and health
Stephen Wright in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Tier 1 in population genomics

U of T economist unpacks soaring inflation – and how Canadians can cope

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 03 Aug 2022 17:23:23 +0000

U of T economist unpacks soaring inflation – and how Canadians can cope

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 08/03/2022 - 13:23

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(Photo by Zou Zheng/Xinhua via Getty Images)

Geoffrey Vendeville

Topic

Our Community

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Economics

Economy

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

Rotman School of Management

With inflation at its highest level in decades, are storm clouds gathering on Canada’s economic horizon?

Inflation hit 8.1 per cent year over year in June, eating away at Canadians’ savings amid rising prices for everything from gas to groceries.

The following month, the Bank of Canada responded by hiking its benchmark lending rate by a full percentage point, the largest such increase in more than two decades – and more tightening is likely on the way. Rising rates, in turn, have implications for anyone who borrows money, including businesses, consumers and homeowners. In one ominous sign for the tech sector, Ottawa-based Shopify cut 1,000 jobs, equal to 10 per cent of its workforce, last week.

Yet, despite some predictions that Canada is hurtling toward a painful recession, University of Toronto economist Peter Dungan remains optimistic that sunnier days are ahead. In his research, he uses computer simulations to forecast the short- and long-term trajectory of Canada and Ontario’s economies.

“If we have a recession, it will be from a state at which the economy actually is in very good shape in terms of low unemployment and a high level of output,” says Dungan, an associate professor emeritus of economic analysis and policy at the Rotman School of Management who is cross-appointed to the department of economics in the Faculty of Arts & Science and the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

U of T News recently spoke with Dungan about the state of the Canadian economy, where it’s headed, and how households and students can cope with sky-high inflation.

Peter Dungan (photo by Rick Madonick/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

What, exactly, is inflation?

Inflation is a change in the average price level. Inflation can be temporary in the sense that if the price level goes up, but then doesn’t keep rising, then inflation goes up and comes back down.

We’ve seen a significant change in the price level for a number of key items recently: oil, gas, wheat, stuff like that. But if the prices of things don’t keep rising – even if they stay where they are – the inflation rate goes back down again. It’s only if prices keep rising faster than they have before that you get a rise in the inflation rate.

Why would that happen? It could be the world keeps throwing disasters at us. The other big danger is people expect inflation to rise, so they keep bidding up their wages and demands, and that gets built into higher prices and then you’re into a “wage-price spiral,” as they call it. That second scenario isn’t happening yet. That’s not what's causing our inflation so far – and, so far, the evidence seems to be that expectations in the longer term are not rising significantly.

How did we get here?

There’s no easy answer.

In a way, if you allow an economist to use demand and supply, like we always do, this is a supply-side shock. This is something coming from weakness of supply, or a shortage of something. There was a certain amount of that having to do with microchips, and all kinds of other key ingredients that were being held up at ports or in China because of COVID-19 lockdowns there. To some extent, that’s still happening.

But it’s also fairly clear – at least in some countries – there’s what is called “demand pull” going on as well. Coming out of the [pandemic-induced] recession, people have started to buy things again – goods and services. The economy was in fairly good shape before we went in and it was well supported – as it had to be, at least in Canada and the U.S. – when we were in the pandemic, but that’s left people with a lot of money to spend as we once again emerge.

When you have a relatively large number of people pursuing a limited supply of goods, that tends to cause prices to increase. So, we have a mixture of “cost-push” and “demand-pull” inflation going on at the same time in varying degrees in different countries.

For example, there’s a bit more demand pull going on in the U.S. than in Canada because they had somewhat more expansionary fiscal policies more recently because they were worried about Omicron. On the other hand, in Europe – where there’s also significant inflation – it’s less about demand pull and more of a supply problem related to oil and natural gas due to the war in Ukraine.

Unfortunately, there’s no simple answer.

Why are some experts predicting a recession at the same time as we are experiencing record-low unemployment?

One of the things to distinguish is level versus change. A recession, technically speaking, is a change in the state of your economy. If it doesn't grow at its usual amount – especially if it contracts – then we call it a recession. But the state of the economy could be very high or very low when the change occurs.

As it happens, if we have a recession, it will be from a state at which the economy is actually in very good shape in terms of low unemployment and a high level of output. That would be much less serious than a recession that occurred when the economy was already weak because we hadn’t recovered from a previous recession, or there were other problems affecting the economy.

By the way, a recession can be -0.1 per cent growth or it can be minus five per cent. And there’s a huge difference between those two. It’s only indicative of the direction the economy is heading as opposed to the scale.

A lot of people who are talking about a recession – not all, but some – are only talking about something that would be much milder than either the one induced by the pandemic or the recession that’s sometimes called the Great Recession that started in 2008-2009.

There are some people who are ringing alarm bells, saying it’s going to be a bad recession. I do not happen to agree with them myself. But there’s all kinds of possibilities out there and it depends on what happens in the geopolitical realm, too.

What’s the economic forecast for Canada?

On the inflation front, I am very confident that we will eventually get back to two per cent. It’s the Bank of Canada’s target, they have the tools to be able to achieve it, and they seem to be determined to do it. The thing is, it will take longer than we thought because there was more of this “cost-push inflation.” Before the Ukraine war broke out, nobody saw that coming: the huge increase in oil, gas and food prices occurring as a result. That’s just a nasty surprise.

How much damage has to occur to the economy to get back to two per cent? That’s a more open question. If, in effect, there’s no more supply shocks and the Bank of Canada’s and other central banks’ rate hikes cool demand, then we may be able to that low inflation rate in two or three years with relatively modest losses in employment and GDP.

On the other hand, if shocks to the supply side of the economy keep coming at us, we’re in different territory. Then you really need to push on the demand side to weaken inflation. The big question in the backs of central bankers’ minds, is: Is high inflation getting into people’s expectations of the future and their wage and price bargaining? Once that happens, then you’re in the nasty world of the late 70s and early 80s. Those decades required a huge recession to literally bleed the inflation out of the system. And nobody wants to go there.

Many Canadians haven’t experienced high inflation, but you were in university during the hyperinflationary 1970s. How did that compare to now?

The similarity, though it’s extremely limited, is that we’re temporarily getting back to rates of inflation we haven’t seen since that period. So, yes, that was a time in which inflation was like eight, nine, 10 per cent per year for a number of years. But I don’t think that’s going to happen this time around.

There’s a big difference, too. Nowadays, central banks have clear inflation targets and are determined to hit them. That’s a policy goal that only began in the 1990s, partly in reaction to the failures from before.

Unless there's an absolute, major change in the way our central banks operate or are allowed to operate – which I consider highly unlikely for North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand – we’re going back to low inflation.

The other major difference between then and now is that, in those days, because central banks didn’t have a target for inflation, and because inflation was all over the map for a significant period, people’s expectations were, in a sense, unanchored. When unions went into wage bargaining, they didn’t know what inflation was going to be – only that it was likely to be high. So, of course, they bargained for a big wage increase. That gets passed through into other prices, which then validates the inflation and then: “Oh my God. We’re in trouble.”

Today, so far as we can tell, people expect inflation to be high for a year or two, but the expectation for the longer term doesn’t seem to be moving yet. People still trust that this is temporary. If that that changes, then it’s a new world – or maybe I should say old world. We’re back to the 70s and 80s again. And it would take higher levels of unemployment and more significant recessions to get inflation down and convince people to drop thier expectations. But we aren’t seeing it yet.

What tools do countries have to rein in inflation?

Largely, the job falls on the central bank. It uses higher interest rates to slow down particular parts of economic activity like housing and purchasing cars and things like that. That’s your first line of defence.

If it wanted to help, a federal or provincial government could also raise taxes or cut spending, but it’s very politically difficult to do that – and it’s not clear at this point that it’s necessary. It’s not that serious a problem. Some provincial governments are actually throwing money at people. I don’t mind that if it’s going to people who are more affected by inflation, including those living on fixed incomes, low-income people and others who are suffering. But you don’t want across-the-board tax cuts or spending programs to boost the economy. The economy is boosted already. The unemployment rate is at historic lows. We don’t need boosting. If anything, we need to un-boost.

What do you make of the news that Shopify laid off 10 per cent of its staff?

Shopify’s problem was that they took a real boost during the pandemic because, of course, there was more online shopping. What we didn’t know coming out of the pandemic – regardless of whether there was going to be recession and inflation-fighting – was whether people were going to go back to brick-and-mortar stores or continue shopping online. It looks like Shopify was excessively optimistic about how much online would occur. So, they’re cutting back. I have a feeling that would have happened anyway.

What can the average person and household do to protect themselves from inflation? What about students?

There’s no magic wand on this one. It’s possible some prices will come down in the future, in which case it’s much less of a problem. But to the extent that some things cost more because of ongoing problems in Europe – if the Ukraine war is going to continue, isolating Russia as a major supplier of oil, gas and wheat – what this means is that the world is not going to be quite as generous as it was before to a student or household. Some things are just going to be more expensive, including food items and fuel. It may not keep getting worse, but it may not get back to the way it was a year ago either.

That pain has to be recognized. It’s a cost that has to be borne. The world is not making wheat available for us to buy burger buns and oil – and then to move the burger buns around between restaurants – as generously as it was before, so there’s going to be a hit.

What that means is you’ll have to review your budget. Review what’s important to you and make changes to move away from the more expensive things and toward the less expensive things –realize that the budget is tighter than it was before. There’s really no way around it.

Again, I’ll hold out the small hope that there will be some adjustment on the supply-side effects as time goes by, so that we may be able to see perhaps even lower rates of inflation than two per cent in times to come. Certain things that we really like might get cheaper again. That’s definitely a possibility, but it depends on how the world evolves.

U of T sues Easy EDU tutoring company

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 11 May 2022 14:40:18 +0000

U of T sues Easy EDU tutoring company

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 05/11/2022 - 10:40

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(Photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Rotman School of Management

U of T Mississauga

The University of Toronto and three of its professors have launched a lawsuit against a tutoring business alleging it routinely copies, without authorization, lecture slides, course syllabuses, tests and exams and sells them in “coursepacks” to post-secondary students on its website in violation of Canada’s Copyright Act.

The suit against Easy Group Inc. and related companies, operating variously as Easy EDU, Easy Education, Easy 4.0, and ez4edu, also cites the serious consequences faced by students who are sanctioned for receiving unauthorized academic assistance from the company.

Under U of T’s intellectual property policy, faculty members own the copyright in their classroom materials.

“Our faculty spend hours creating materials for their courses that are often based on their leading-edge research,” said Heather Boon, U of T’s vice-provost, faculty and academic life. “These materials are created for our students and for use in the faculty members’ classrooms.

“We will not permit private companies to make money from the unauthorized sale of our professors’ copyrighted materials. We are also concerned that this company creates a perception that the university and the professors have authorized the use of these materials and partnered with this for-profit tutoring service. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Easy EDU, purportedly founded in 2014 by Yuwei (Jacky) Zhang, claims to be one of North America’s largest education companies. It has offices across Canada as well as in China.

The lawsuit cites instances of copyright infringement by Easy EDU involving three U of T professors, who are acting as plaintiffs together with the university in the lawsuit: Robert Gazzale, an associate professor, teaching stream, of economics; Lisa Kramer, a professor of finance; and Ai Taniguchi, an assistant professor, teaching stream, of linguistics. The company’s online store of tutoring materials indicates that coursepacks from many other U of T courses are also being sold by the company.

The university’s lawsuit is seeking monetary damages, the return of the copyrighted materials and an injunction to stop any further copyright infringement. U of T has also asked for a full accounting and disgorgement of all revenues earned directly or indirectly from the sale of all products that contain university material, as well as an award of punitive and exemplary damages. U of T has committed to use any funds obtained from the lawsuit for student academic supports.

According to the company’s website, it offers more than 1,000 Canadian university course offerings every term and has served more than 210,000 students at universities across Canada. “Weekly course packages” are priced as high as $1,449.

The website states that Easy EDU offers its services to students at all three U of T campuses, as well as at the University of Waterloo, York University, McGill University, the University of British Columbia, the University of Alberta and other higher education institutions across Canada.

The statement of claim alleges the company also infringed the professors’ moral rights by creating the impression within the educational community, and among students who have purchased Easy EDU’s services, that the professors and the university have endorsed the company to use their work.

“I have devoted years to preparing materials for my students. To have a company profit from the unauthorized use of my intellectual property is incredibly wrong. It is theft,” said Gazzale. “I am also saddened that tutoring companies are pushing the approach of trying to game the system, as opposed to trying to help students learn the material.”

Gazzale added that, during the pandemic, the economics department put extra effort into helping students who were facing challenges by offering extended online office hours and adjusting the hours of its free peer tutoring services to better serve students abroad.

U of T, meanwhile, provides a range of academic supports which students can access as part of their tuition, including 14 writing centres that offer one-on-one support, learning strategists, organized study groups, old exam banks, workshops and an academic success centre. International students also have access to additional workshops upon arrival and throughout the year.

The lawsuit alleges that Easy EDU also unfairly exploits students who, in good faith, pay significant fees for tutoring that can lead to life-altering consequences stemming from sanctions for academic misconduct. U of T alleges that in providing tutoring services, Easy EDU may in some cases be providing students with unauthorized academic assistance where it is not permitted, an offence under the university’s Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters. That can lead – and has led – to sanctions for academic misconduct and cheating, including suspensions. For international students, suspensions can lead to cancellation of their study permits and a forced return to their home country.

Assistant Professor Taniguchi, whose linguistics courses attract many international students, expressed disappointment that Easy EDU preys on students’ fears of not doing well in an unfamiliar setting and potentially disappointing their family.

“Easy EDU exploits that fear and leads students down the path of possible academic offences,” she said. “Students are much better off asking for help from their U of T professors or teaching assistants than paying for a tutoring service that is violating copyright law.”

Before launching the lawsuit, U of T met with a representative of Easy EDU in October 2020 to discuss issues of academic infringement and integrity. In December 2020, Easy EDU stated in an email to the university that it would review its materials and “ensure there is absolutely no copyright infringement.”

According to the statement of claim, however, Easy EDU continued to create and sell tutoring packages that infringed copyright. The university’s lawyers sent a letter to Easy EDU in April 2021 asking the company to stop its unlawful use of teaching materials. No response was received.

Easy EDU has 30 days to file a statement of defence.

Highway death toll signs associated with more crashes, researchers find

geoff.vendeville — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 16:49:53 +0000

Highway death toll signs associated with more crashes, researchers find

geoff.vendeville Fri, 04/22/2022 - 12:49

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A recent study co-written by U of T's Jonathan Hall suggests that death toll messages on highways can have the opposite of their desired effect (photo courtesy of Jonathan Hall)

Munk School Staff

Topic

Breaking Research

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Economics

Faculty

Global

International Collaboration

Research

Electronic billboards displaying traffic fatalities to encourage safer driving may actually contribute to an increase in crashes, a recent study co-authored by the University of Toronto's Jonathan Hall suggests.

Jonathan Hall

Using years of highway data from Texas, Hall – an assistant professor in the department of economics in the Faculty of Arts & Science and the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy – teamed up with Joshua Madsen, of the University of Minnesota, to test the effectiveness of this strategy to reduce accidents.

They found that a message advertising the number of traffic deaths was linked with a 4.5 per cent uptick in crashes over the next 10 kilometres. That’s an increase comparable to raising the speed limit by between roughly 5 and 8 kilometres per hour or reducing the number of highway troopers by 6 to 14 per cent.

“Our back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that fatality messages cause an additional 2,600 crashes and 16 fatalities per year in Texas alone, with a toal social cost of (US) $377 million per year,” the researchers said.

Extrapolating to a nationwide figure, the researchers say safety messaging causes an extra 17,000 crashes across the U.S. and 104 deaths per year, with a social cost of US$2.5 billion.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Hall said he and Madsen were surprised by their findings. "We did not start this project thinking these signs hurt, we thought they helped," he told the paper. "I think a reasonable takeaway would be that state departments of transportation should test their messages and track which of these messages are too distracting and which are helpful."

The researchers suggest that efforts to reduce traffic fatalities by way of electronic messaging may be backfiring because they are temporarily distracting and lead drivers to make mistakes.

Hall and Madsen took their data from Texas because messages there were consistently displayed one week a month. They compared highway data from the time of the campaign, from 2012 to 2017, to the two years prior, comparing weekly differences within each month.

“The messages increased the number of multi-vehicle crashes, but not single-vehicle crashes,” Hall said. “This is in line with drivers with increased cognitive loads making smaller errors due to distraction, like drifting out of a lane, rather than driving off the road.”

Moreover, the researchers found that the effect is worse as the year progresses and the traffic fatality count displayed on message boards increases. The largest number of additional crashes was recorded in January, when the fatality number was the highest. Hall and Madsen suggest that more sobering, in-your-face messaging could be even more distracting and harmful.

“Driving on a busy highway [and] having to navigate lane changes is more cognitively demanding than driving down a straight stretch of empty highway,” said Madsen, who teaches at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. “People have limited attention. When a driver’s cognitive load is already maxed out, adding on an attention-grabbing, sobering reminder of highway deaths [can] become a dangerous distraction.”

But the researchers did find that the safety messages fulfilled their intended purpose when the number of displayed deaths was low and when the interventions occurred on less busy highways. Madsen says this may be because these messages were not as taxing on drivers' attention.

While safety campaigns vary from place to place, the researchers say authorities should consider other ways to promote road safety.

“One of the key takeaways from this research was that fatality message campaigns increase the number of crashes, so stopping these campaigns is a low-cost way to improve traffic safety,” Hall says.

“This study illustrates why it is so important to study the effects of ‘nudges’ and other behavioural interventions. Just because a policy is well-intentioned doesn’t mean that it will result in a good outcome.”

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.

With undergraduate's help, U of T economist uses AI to supercharge his research on Canada's economic history

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 17:16:20 +0000

With undergraduate's help, U of T economist uses AI to supercharge his research on Canada's economic history

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 11/22/2021 - 12:16

Cutline

Using machine learning, undergraduate student Dev'Roux Maharaj (left) helped Nicholas Zammit (right), of U of T Mississauga's department of economics, speed up his research on Canada's economic history (handout/photo of Zammit by Blake Eligh)

Blake Eligh

Topic

Breaking Research

Artificial Intelligence

Economics

machine learning

Research & Innovation

U of T Mississauga

Nicholas Zammit of the University of Toronto Mississauga is aiming to shed light on Canada's economic history circa the First World War by drawing on mountains of government data including everything from labour and steel to beer kegs imports.

For years, Zammit had been manually entering trade volume data into spreadsheets, a format that allowed him to do an economic analysis. It was a process so cumbersome he estimates it would have taken one researcher more than 50 years to process a small segment of his sample data.

“We’ve got the price and quantity of every good traded between Canada and every other country,” said Zammit, an assistant professor, teaching stream in U of T Mississauga's department of economics. “But it’s a very big dataset with a lot of data points.”

Then Dev'Roux Maharaj came along. The undergraduate student in economics and political science, who worked part-time at Amazon's Mississauga operations, helped adapt a web-based machine learning tool developed by the online retail giant for its business clients to help with Zammit's research. The result was nothing short of transformational, Zammit said.

“We were going to focus on the war period, but given how successful the software is for us, we might go back to 1870,” he said. “It’s blossoming, hopefully, into multiple papers.”

Maharaj, now a research assistant on Zammit's project, had worked with Amazon’s customer service team before moving to Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing arm of the company. It was there he saw an opportunity to apply AWS technology to Zammit’s data conundrum.

The solution was Textract, an AWS tool used by organizations, such as insurance companies, to automate and standardize collection of data from forms and other documents.

Maharaj looked to apply Textract’s machine learning abilities to the information contained in the trade volume tables. He connected with the Cloud Innovation Centre at the University of British Columbia, which was working to refine Textract’s data collection capabilities, to test the technology with the trade volume information.

What used to take Zammit three years of tedious data entry can now be accomplished in four months. “We can scan 500 documents in less than 45 minutes,” Maharaj said.

With just two clicks, the research team can now quickly and easily upload the trade volume PDFs and convert the information for use in an Excel workbook. The process also gives the researchers the ability to easily filter the results.

“Now the data is organized in the exact format that we need it to be,” Maharaj said. “The cloud has enabled us to put this project on steroids.”

Zammit noted that the project has also created research opportunities for students to participate and gain valuable experience working with economic data.

The project's growing team of 175 volunteer research assistants manage quality assurance by conducting comparative spot checks. Maharaj estimates Textract’s accuracy rate to be between 93 and 95 per cent.

For his part, Maharaj has been able to parlay skills learned on the project into an internship with RBC.

“Making training plans, looking at Excel data and macros – it’s the same thing – process automation,” he said. “These skills are very applicable to the workforce, and we’re giving students those skills as well.”

Zammit’s current research, which focuses on trade diversion and loss in the British dominions during the First World War, draws on primary sources like the Canada trade volumes. The digitized federal government documents span nearly 100 years, from 1870 onwards.

The economic historian hopes to shed new light on how costly trade diversions or sanctions can be for countries engaged in war.

Zammit says the digital tool has reduced the cost of collecting information and increased the volume of available data, offering the researchers new opportunities to compare with modern economic phenomenon.

The researchers hope to release preliminary results from their analysis early next year.

In just four hours, U of T alumnus Zain Manji co-created an app to help Canadians find vaccine clinics

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 31 May 2021 19:01:40 +0000

In just four hours, U of T alumnus Zain Manji co-created an app to help Canadians find vaccine clinics

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 05/31/2021 - 15:01

Cutline

Working with co-developer Ashish Yelekar, U of T alumnus Zain Manji developed an app that allows Canadians to text their postal codes to receive information about the three nearest vaccine clinics (photo by Yiu Yu Hoi/Getty Images)

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Innis College

Equipped with a computer science and economics degree and driven by an urge to help, University of Toronto alumnus Zain Manji recently set out to see how quickly he could solve some of the confusion around COVID-19 vaccine availability.

Just four hours later, Find My Vaccine was born.

“The response has been really, really great,” says Manji, who earned his honours bachelor of science in 2016 as a member of Innis College and developed Find My Vaccine with Ashish Yelekar.

“We get a ton of messages daily thanking us for making this tool, saying it’s made it so much easier to book a COVID vaccine. All these messages really make us feel great and it's super, super fulfilling.”

Zain Manji

Find My Vaccine is simple: Users input or text their postal code to 1-833-356-1683 and immediately receive the addresses of the three nearest vaccine clinics. The site launched May 7 in Ontario and British Columbia and expanded to the rest of Canada on May 12, racking up more than 130,000 users in the first five days alone. Word spread in part through media coverage in the Toronto Star and CTV News.

It’s his first pandemic-related app, but, since 2019, Manji has been putting his computer science and economics background to good use with Lazer Technologies, the company he founded. With a team of product engineers with backgrounds from Facebook, Google, Instagram, Apple and more, Lazer has built digital products for such companies as the Weather Network, RBC and Air Miles.

Before that, he co-founded – and since sold – Fiix, a company that brought licensed mechanics to people’s homes for car repairs.

“Over the years, people absolutely loved the service,” Manji wrote of Fiix in September 2019. “We serviced over 8,000 customers, received over 500 5-star reviews, landed clients like Uber and Car2Go, helped mechanics earn twice the industry average, and overall, made the process of getting your car fixed significantly better than the standard.”

In 2017, he was one of four U of T developers named to the Developer 30 Under 30 list. The list, which celebrates Canada's next generation of software stars, was put together by Plastic Mobile and developers were profiled in Canadian Business magazine.

U of T wasn’t all work and no play, though. Manji was also the 2016 University of Toronto Male Athlete of the Year and the 2013-2016 Ontario University Tennis Singles Champion.

Today, he credits the combination of his two majors at U of T for much of his success.

“Computer science and economics are a great pair. When you're building an actual business, those two come in handy quite a bit – how to build a product but also how to grow a product,” he says.

“On the computer science side, you can really relate well because you know how to build a product and to build it in the right way – you learn how to build a product so that users love it. And on the economic side, you have everything that supplements the growth of your product. And both of those things really, really match well.”

Despite the success of Find My Vaccine, Manji says he hopes it’s the only COVID-19 app he makes.

“I'm hoping this whole COVID thing ends soon, so I don't want to plan another app, to be honest.”

Thinking inside the box? U of T researchers find most CEOs are internal hires

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 11 May 2021 18:03:30 +0000

Thinking inside the box? U of T researchers find most CEOs are internal hires

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 05/11/2021 - 14:03

Cutline

(Photo by VM via Getty Images)

Cynthia Macdonald

Topic

Global Lens

Economics

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

Research & Innovation

When hiring a new chief executive officer, companies tend to draw from a surprisingly small pool of candidates – most of whom are insiders.

While it’s easier than ever for CEOs to move from one firm to another – leadership skills can be remarkably similar across firms – the majority of CEOs of companies in the S&P 500 index are actually current or former employees of the firm.

That’s according to research by Peter Cziraki, assistant professor of economics in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Arts & Science, and Dirk Jenter, an associate professor at the London School of Economics.

Their work, outlined in a recent working paper, suggests that more than 80 per cent of CEOs at S&P 500 companies during the period 1993 to 2012 had entered their positions as employees or board members. The figure rose to 90 per cent when outsiders with a prior or board connection were factored in. Only about three per cent arrived at a company after having been poached from another firm.

Jenter and Cziraki say they were initially curious not about how CEOs came to companies – but why they’d left them.

“In research presentations, we’d heard it proposed that maybe it’s not that they got fired, but that they got a job at another company,” Cziraki says. “We knew from the data and from talking to practitioners that that’s not what happens. But we didn’t have a paper to point to as a reference.”

One incentive to hire internally may be that such hires are generally paid less. That’s because outsiders often need to be lured away from comfortable situations and may also be fielding offers from other companies. But Cziraki says the pay difference is not as significant as some might think. Internal hires received, on average, $2 million less per year during the period under analysis, which is less than one per cent of an S&P 500 company’s annual market value during the study period.

Familiar faces also reduce a company’s exposure to risk.

“Initially, when a search process starts, everybody’s most interested in finding someone who thinks outside the box,” Cziraki says, citing numerous conversations he’s had with industry insiders. “But then towards the end, when it’s down to two or three candidates, the risk angle really kicks in … it’s very rare that you get credit on the upside for a hiring decision, but you do get a lot of blame on the downside. So naturally you’re going to be risk averse.”

When corporate boards do hire from outside, Cziraki continues, it’s usually because a company is underperforming. At that point, the concept of bold and disruptive thinking may seem more attractive, he says.

While Cziraki and Jenter analyzed a period that ended almost a decade ago, the researchers are confident their findings will continue to hold up today.

“I think that, since 2012, the way that CEO hiring is conducted has not changed dramatically in terms of procedures,” he says. “In our sample period, there was also a tremendous variation in market and industry conditions” – for example, the 2008 global financial crisis, the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the dot-com bubble – “so we know we were looking at a period with lots of economic ups and downs.”

There have, however, been important changes in the economy over the last decade, which Cziraki plans to explore in further research. Two major changes that could affect how future CEOs are hired: the convulsions caused by the pandemic and a greater move toward diversity.

“There is still a staggering under-representation of women as CEOs, though by the end of our sample it rose from under two per cent to roughly five per cent,” he says.

Though the pressure on CEOs is enormous and the hours long, the highest-level executives often prefer to stay with their companies.

Cziraki says it’s not unheard of for a CEO to step down and assume the role of executive chairman, as Jeff Bezos recently did at Amazon, but it’s also not uncommon to return.

“Sometimes what ends up happening is that the former CEO peers over the shoulder of the new person a little bit too much,” says Cziraki, “and then they actually come back. Some people just can’t let go.”

Texting tool built by U of T alumnus helps Canadians find nearest vaccine clinic: Toronto Star

wangyana — Tue, 04 May 2021 16:13:09 +0000

Texting tool built by U of T alumnus helps Canadians find nearest vaccine clinic: Toronto Star

wangyana Tue, 05/04/2021 - 12:13

Cutline

Zain Manji, who studied computer science and economics at U of T, and business partner Ashish Yelekar built a text-based service to help Ontario residents find the nearest vaccine clinic (photo courtesy of Zain Manji)

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Vaccines

Ontario residents can now find the nearest COVID-19 vaccine clinics by typing a short text message.

Inspired by a similar service in the United States, Zain Manji and Ashish Yelekar, the founders of Lazer Technologies, developed a service that allows Ontarians to instantly receive a list of the three nearest vaccine clinics by texting their postal code to 1-833-356-1683, the Toronto Star reported.

Manji graduated from the University of Toronto with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and economics. His company is a digital product studio whose clients have included The Weather Network and Royal Bank of Canada.

He told CTV News that he and Yelekar “whipped up” the texting tool in a matter of hours. The messages mirror information made publicly available by the government.

The service is currently accessible to those with postal codes in Ontario and British Columbia, and the pair are working on expanding to more provinces and providing more information about eligibility and vaccine type in their text messages, Manji wrote on Twitter.

After launching last Friday, more than 85,000 people texted in over the weekend, he told the Star.

U of T driver attention study could help cities turn the corner on road safety

rahul.kalvapalle — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 20:31:50 +0000

U of T driver attention study could help cities turn the corner on road safety

rahul.kalvapalle Mon, 02/22/2021 - 15:31

Cutline

To better understand vehicle accidents involving cyclists and pedestrians, researchers at U of T are working with the City of Guelph to study how drivers' attention and gaze are affected at intersections (photo by Massimo Colombo/Getty Images)

Rahul Kalvapalle

Topic

Our Community

Coronavirus

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Cities

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Economics

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Arts & Science

Geography and Planning

History

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Psychiatry

Research & Innovation

Ted Sargent

Motorists preparing to turn at an intersection must quickly process several pieces of information before making their move: traffic signals, traffic signs, pedestrians, cyclists and, of course, other vehicles.

But if drivers become overloaded with information, the results can be deadly – and it’s often pedestrians and cyclists who pay the price.

Canadian and international studies show that driver inattention is a leading cause for collisions with pedestrians and cyclists – including those who were later identified as having right of way.

“It’s apparent that at certain intersections, we’re hitting the limits of drivers’ information-processing abilities,” says Professor Birsen Donmez of the University of Toronto’s department of mechanical and industrial engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

“There are so many things one has to pay attention to – and drivers are failing to do so given the issues we’re seeing with pedestrian and cyclist crashes.”

Donmez, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Human Factors and Transportation, leads an interdisciplinary research team that is collaborating with the City of Guelph to evaluate driver attention and gaze towards pedestrians and cyclists at intersections. The experiment will use eye-tracking equipment to better understand the interplay between driver attention, infrastructure design and collisions.

Funded by $25,000 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s (SSHRC) Partnership Engage Grants program, the study will see Donmez team up with Professor Jay Pratt of the department of psychology in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Associate Professor Paul Hess of the department of geography and planning in the Faculty of Arts & Science and Liraz Fridman, transportation safety specialist with the City of Guelph and adjunct professor in U of T’s department of mechanical and industrial engineering.

“Addressing society’s biggest challenges often requires researchers to work across disciplines and, importantly, in partnership with stakeholders beyond academia,” says Professor Markus Bussmann, chair of the department of mechanical and industrial engineering.

“Professor Donmez’s study on road safety – an issue of importance to each one of us – exemplifies the approach by combining innovative use of technology with interdisciplinary scholarship and collaboration with a municipal partner.”

It’s one of six U of T-led initiatives to receive one-year Partnership Engage Grants, which are awarded quarterly to help researchers conduct timely and short-term research with a partner organization from the public, private or not-for-profit sectors. Four of the U of T projects received funding via the Partnership Engage Grants COVID-19 Special Initiative, which aims to support social sciences and humanities research on the impacts of the pandemic.

“I look forward to the outcome of this important project – and indeed all of the U of T-led projects that have received support from the SSHRC’s Partnership Engage Grants program,” says University Professor Ted Sargent, U of T’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives.

Over the past few years, Donmez and her team at the Human Factors and Applied Statistics Lab have been studying driver attention using tools such as driving simulators and eye-tracking wearables that examine where drivers look – and don’t look – when on the road. Their projects include a 2018 study, run in Toronto, in which eye-tracking equipment and glasses were used to assess where drivers allotted their visual attentions on the road.

However, the SSHRC-funded study is the first to involve a municipal partner.

“The City of Guelph has evidence on traffic conflict data – which is high-level data – but they want to understand the issue from driver behaviour and attention perspectives,” Donmez says.

The study will use eye-tracking equipment to monitor what drivers are looking at while they are behind the wheel (photo courtesy of Birsen Donmez)

For the Guelph study, around 50 participants will drive a pre-assigned route while wearing eye-tracking glasses in a vehicle fitted with cameras capturing internal and external scenes. Participants will drive for around 30 to 40 minutes each, with a break in between to prevent fatigue.

“We have a camera that faces the driver, which gives us information about their body position, head movement, emotional reactions and so on, and we have a road-facing camera which gives us a dashboard view to see objectively what the scene is in front of the vehicle as the person drives,” says Joelle Girgis, a second-year master’s student in Donmez’s lab who will be leading the data collection and analysis. “The most critical equipment would be the eye-tracking glasses. These glasses will give us a view of what drivers are looking at, even as they move their heads.

“This way, we know both what the objective road scene is in front of them, as well as where they’re gazing specifically.”

Once the data is collected, drivers’ turns at intersections will be coded according to whether they gazed at areas that were previously identified as being important.

“The question we’re asking is: Did they or did they not look at certain critical areas where a pedestrian or cyclist may appear?” says Girgis, whose master’s thesis will focus on the study. “So, we’ll view the videos and decide on whether the driver did or did not pay attention or directly gaze at a pre-determined area of importance.

“That gives us information that we can then turn into trends and statistics to see gaps. For example, drivers might not be checking their blind spot or right mirror when they’re stopped at a red light and need to turn right; maybe they’re overwhelmed; maybe there’s a lot of traffic coming from the left side; they’re also trying not to hit a pedestrian in front of them.

“So, there are all these things related to cognitive load that we might be able to infer based on the specific circumstance of where they are – and are not – looking.”

A camera facing the driver provides data about body position, head movement and emotional reactions. A road-facing camera, meanwhile, allows researchers to monitor the scene in front of the vehicle (photo courtesy of Birsen Donmez)

Girgis says driving routes and intersections will be chosen based on data about problem areas, as well as to cover different kinds of infrastructure and turn situations.

"There are certain intersections in Guelph where if a pedestrian or cyclist does get struck, the chances of them getting injured are high,” says Girgis, citing one particular Guelph intersection in which the nine vehicle-cyclist collisions reported between 2015 and 2019 all resulted in injuries to the cyclist.

“These are priority intersections where we’d like to understand what it is that’s causing the severity of collisions between vehicles and vulnerable road users.”

Girgis says the goal is to complete the driver data collection between April and September while respecting COVID-19 public health guidelines.

Donmez notes that driving data collected by the researchers still represents a “best-case scenario” since it won’t be able to take into account common in-car distractions such as cell phones and conversations with passengers.

“The participants aren’t doing anything else. They’re just focusing on their driving. Although it is an unfamiliar vehicle – so there’s that caveat there – I would expect that they have a lot less failures in our study compared to how they normally drive,” she says, adding that future studies may drill down on particular problem areas with the ultimate goal of informing policy and infrastructure design.

What might future solutions look like? Donmez says they generally come down to creating separation between drivers and vulnerable road users – both physically and in time.

“If you have barriers, you separate traffic,” Donmez says referring to the physical aspect. “But at intersections, the three modes of transportation will still merge. One of the issues is that cars can move at the same time as cyclists and pedestrians, so they’re not separated. In these cases, signals could be used to control traffic and decrease chances of conflict – that’s separation in time.”

She says her research shouldn’t be interpreted as blaming drivers. Rather, its focus is on finding ways to reduce the number of things competing for drivers’ attention – with the result being a safer environment for everyone.

“I walk everywhere in Toronto – or I used to a lot anyway, pre-pandemic – and over the years I’ve been starting to feel unsafe at certain intersections,” Donmez says, noting that Pratt, her research colleague, is an avid cyclist.

“I think we all have a stake in this as users of roadways and we all have a passion for this topic.”

The following U of T-led projects received SSHRC Partnership Engage Grants:

SSHRC Partnership Engage Grants

Birsen Donmez, department of mechanical and industrial engineering, Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, in partnership with the City of Guelph: Informing the design of safe intersections: An on-road instrumented vehicle study investigating driver attentional failures toward vulnerable road users
Lori Ross, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, in partnership with St. Stephen’s Community House: The political economy of precarious work: Stories of economic insecurity and work among sexual minority men

SSHRC Partnership Engage Grants COVID-19 Special Initiative

Cassie Brownell, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, in partnership with Be Loud Studios: Examining how children broadcast personal and community stories in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic and global demonstrations for racial justice
Max Mishler, department of history, Faculty of Arts & Science, in partnership with Focus Media Arts Centre: Interlocking histories of social inequality and public health in Regent Park
Michael Smart, department of economics, Faculty of Arts & Science, in partnership with the Canadian Tax Foundation: Fiscal policy implications of the pandemic
Sophie Soklaridis, department of psychiatry, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, in partnership with the Canadian Medical Association: Identifying and addressing intersecting barriers of gender, sex and race to academic productivity in Canadian faculties of medicine during the COVID-19 pandemic

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Read more about Jaivet Ealom in U of T Magazine

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Highway death toll signs associated with more crashes, researchers find

Read more about the study in the Los Angeles Times

With undergraduate's help, U of T economist uses AI to supercharge his research on Canada's economic history

In just four hours, U of T alumnus Zain Manji co-created an app to help Canadians find vaccine clinics

Thinking inside the box? U of T researchers find most CEOs are internal hires

Texting tool built by U of T alumnus helps Canadians find nearest vaccine clinic: Toronto Star

Read more in the Toronto Star

U of T driver attention study could help cities turn the corner on road safety