Invention

Invented here: sphynx cat, insulin, among the U of T innovations celebrated in new book

Romi Levine — Thu, 30 Mar 2017 16:57:28 +0000

Invented here: sphynx cat, insulin, among the U of T innovations celebrated in new book

Romi Levine Thu, 03/30/2017 - 12:57

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Did you know that the Sphynx cat breed was invented by a U of T almunus? (photo by Anders Lejczak via Flickr)

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'Ingenious' is written by Governor General David Johnston and alumnus Tom Jenkins

From John Tuzo Wilson originating the concept of plate tectonics to Frederick Banting and Charles Best’s discovery of insulin, the University of Toronto has always been at the forefront of innovation.

Now, some of U of T's great – and quirky – feats are being featured in a new book, Ingenious, written by Governor General David Johnston and alumnus Tom Jenkins, the chair and former CEO of OpenText.

“We’re all really fortunate that two of the great innovation pioneers of Canada have decided to collect all these stories for Canada 150,” said Ilse Treurnicht, CEO of MaRS, speaking at the Ingenious book launch. “They know, probably better than most of us, what becomes possible – if we can draw from those stories and create the future that future generations deserve.”

Governor General David Johnston (middle) and Tom Jenkins (right) speak with CTV news personality Marci Ien at the book launch of Ingenious (photo by Romi Levine)

The book explores the many inventions and discoveries that have come out of Canada and gone on to improve lives around the world. It also profiles the people behind the ideas, such as U of T’s Elsie MacGill, the barrier-busting engineer and aircraft designer – and famed media theorist Marshall McLuhan whose writings on technology and culture are still relevant today.

Read about more U of T inventions

Johnston put great emphasis on the need to take risks in order to innovate.

“For me, the biggest danger of all is complacency, and that is largely the lack of curiosity,” he said.

Proceeds from the book will go to the Rideau Hall Foundation, which promotes innovation initiatives across the country.

Could C-M-P-F make diabetes G-O-N-E?

lavende4 — Tue, 17 May 2016 16:58:27 +0000

Could C-M-P-F make diabetes G-O-N-E? lavende4 Tue, 05/17/2016 - 12:58

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A nurse tests patients at a diabetic health check up camp in Hyderabad, India (Getty Images)

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[embed_content nid=14110 (class="additional class")/]

With more than 420 million people globally diagnosed with diabetes and rising, the demand has never been greater to predict, prevent and better treat this chronic disease.

Tracking – and blocking – an obscure, naturally occurring substance known as CMPF from creating havoc on pancreatic beta cells could be the key.

Already, Kacey Prentice, a U of T PhD graduate, and her partners, Professor Michael Wheeler and research associate Feihan Fay Dai of the department of physiology, have developed tests using CMPF to more quickly predict people at risk of developing diabetes.

That work was recognized on May 17 when CMPF was named one of four U of T Inventions of the Year. The awards, which recognize their uniqueness, potential for global impact and commercial appeal, were presented at the university’s third annual U of T Celebrates Innovation event in front of an estimated 200 guests, including Ontario Lt.-Gov. Elizabeth Dowdeswell.

“Having our work recognized by the university through this award is an incredible honour,” says Prentice. “Such amazing work is produced by the faculty and students at the University of Toronto every year that being selected among this group is a very humbling experience.

“The university was – and continues to be – a fantastic support system,” she continues. “We approached them in the early stages of our research and they helped us to develop the patent and identify industry collaborators who could support our work.”

The support and dedication of her university colleagues was critical when spending hours analyzing blood samples and planning experiments shut away in a lab. They relieved stress by bonding over a shared love of food, involving everything from lab potlucks to team lunches out on Baldwin Street.

They first noticed the importance of CMPF after measuring the byproducts of metabolism (sugars, fats and amino acids) in blood taken from women with gestational diabetes. When comparing those results with the blood of normal pregnant women, CMPF popped up.

It was the most altered metabolite produced by the women with gestational diabetes tested and had never been noticed in diabetes research before.

“Thankfully, I was able to purchase some purified CMPF from a drug company to test on beta cells in culture. When I demonstrated that CMPF impaired insulin secretion we knew we had found something of significance,” says Prentice.

Now, they’re working with industry partners and clinical collaborators to analyze blood samples from large, ethnically diverse populations to spot changes in their CMPF levels before they develop diabetes, as well as determining how it changes with diabetic status. And, they’re looking at ways to block the effect of CMPF to protect the beta cells in the early stages of diseases.

When asked what tips she’d give other researchers toying with the idea of commercializing their research, she says it’s important to not give into the fear that publishing papers becomes increasingly difficult, if not impossible, once work becomes commercialized.

“I think it is important to know that this isn’t necessarily the case,” Prentice says. “The university was incredibly supportive of our project and worked with us towards publication together with pursuing commercialization.”

Printem revolutionizes the printed circuit board

lavende4 — Tue, 17 May 2016 16:55:27 +0000

Printem revolutionizes the printed circuit board lavende4 Tue, 05/17/2016 - 12:55

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They started here: U of T recognizes top inventions

Some of the most inventive minds at the University of Toronto are stepping into the limelight.

From alarm clocks, to smartphones, to complex satellites: Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) lie at the core of all electronic devices.

While crucial to electronics, PCBs are expensive, time-consuming and require the use of specialized equipment. That’s no longer the case thanks to the University of Toronto startup Printem. With just two items – Printem’s custom designed film and any home or office printer – anyone can create a fully functional printed circuit board.

On May 17, Printem was among four products recognized as U of T Inventions of the Year. The awards, which recognize their uniqueness, potential for global impact and commercial appeal, were presented at the university’s third annual U of T Celebrates Innovation (link to story) event in front of an estimated 200 guests, including Ontario Lt.-Gov. Elizabeth Dowdeswell.

“Simply put, Printem does for the making of electronic circuits what Polaroid instant film did to traditional photography,” said Varun Perumal Chadalavada, co-founder of Printem and computer science PhD student.

“Just as Polaroid took a multi-step process of developing photographs in a dark room and condensed it into an instant point and click process, Printem allows users to create PCBs in less than two minutes.”

Users simply print their desired pattern onto the Printem film, expose it to the light for approximately 30 seconds and peel off the top layer to reveal a fully formed and functional PCB underneath.

By removing the equipment and cost barriers to producing these key electronic components, Printem has the potential to change hardware development, prototyping and the mass production of electronic devices.

“Similarly to how the ubiquity of affordable and capable personal computers has galvanized the development of software, enabling almost anyone, anywhere with the tools to create and deploy software, Printem could enable people all over the world to quickly create and prototype hardware,” explained Chadalavada.

Chadalavada along with his co-founder Daniel Wigdor, assistant computer science professor, has been working on Printem since 2014.

“We’re very honoured to win this award,” said Chadalavada. “When you’re working in academia you’re working in a narrow space and the people you’re interacting with are people who are mostly in that fixed space. For me winning this award is really encouraging because it means that my work is of interest and will benefit a much larger audience.”

Here comes the sun for Phantin

lavende4 — Tue, 17 May 2016 16:53:10 +0000

Here comes the sun for Phantin lavende4 Tue, 05/17/2016 - 12:53

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Cheng Lu at the SkySolar Canada plant in Brampton

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They started here: U of T recognizes top inventions

By 2017, it’s estimated Canada will have enough working solar panels to fill 55,000 football fields and generate 6GW of electricity each year.

Across the globe, vast fields of solar panels are growing China’s solar market by more than 10 GW of power every year.

Enter Cheng Lu, the brains behind Phantin, a dust-repelling, self-cleaning nanomaterial coating that keeps solar panels clean, boosts their energy production and requires less maintenance.

On May 17, Phantin will be among four products recognized as U of T Inventions of the Year. The awards, which recognize their uniqueness, potential for global impact and commercial appeal, were presented at the university’s third annual U of T Celebrates Innovation event in front of an estimated 200 guests, including Ontario Lt.-Gov. Elizabeth Dowdeswell.

“It’s exciting to be able to see your product out in the world,” says Lu, a research associate in U of T’s department of chemistry. “I started working on this as a hobby and now it’s more serious. This award will give us more attention, find more partners and attract more investors.”

“It’s a great validation of what Cheng has been doing,” adds his co-inventor, chemistry professor Cynthia Goh.

Already, in testing near Toronto, Phantin has improved solar electricity generation by four percent. That may not sound like a lot but with the solar market in Canada estimated to produce 6.3GW of power by 2020, Phantin could generate an extra 0.45 billion kWh of electricity annually, worth $200 million – or more in areas that are drier and dustier.

Sprayed on in an ultrathin transparent layer – often by Lu himself – Phantin is different from existing self-cleaning coatings. Along with stopping dust from settling, it also doesn’t require water and breaks down organic material through photocatalysis. That means improved energy production and less harm to the environment.

The product can be applied to existing panels or become part of the production process, he says. And someday, he hopes everyone can buy it in their local grocery store and spray it on their home solar panels themselves.

The research of a scientist like Lu can go in any number of directions. It could be publishing a paper or it could be translating their science into a product, explains Goh, who is also a director at U of T’s Impact Centre, one of nine campus-linked accelerators and more than 60 entrepreneurial program and course offerings under the umbrella of the Banting and Best Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship.

“We teach scientists on how to relate to the business world and we encourage them to see what the world needs and use that as pathway in their research,” she says, adding proudly: “Cheng will be the model of our future professors.”

A big reason Cheng thought of commercializing his product was because of an intensive summer program called Techno he took at the Impact Centre a few years. That support has continued at the university ever since as he worked to get Phantin off the ground.

“It’s been a chance to get to know the real world,” says Lu, who quickly corrects anyone who calls him a businessman. He remains a scientist first and foremost and has a partner that handles the business end of Phantin. “It’s a collaboration. We need scientists and businessmen to work together.”

DeepBind crunches data to find patterns behind origins of disease

lavende4 — Tue, 17 May 2016 16:43:15 +0000

DeepBind crunches data to find patterns behind origins of disease lavende4 Tue, 05/17/2016 - 12:43

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Babak Alipanahi and Andrew Delong

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They started here: U of T recognizes top inventions

Some of the most inventive minds at the University of Toronto are stepping into the limelight.

The origin story of DeepBind begins like so many inventions: with a question and then a leap.

Co-creators Babak Alipanahi and Andrew Delong were chewing the fat and wondering why no one had thought to marry deep machine learning with computational biology to figure out why some mutations lead to disease and why others don’t.

“We were both talking about this idea, and both wondering why no one seems to have tried it [but] Babak was the one with the confidence to say ‘You want to do it? Well, let’s just do it!’” recalls Delong.

Delong is the guy in the lab who questions everything, Alipanahi explains. “He’s a curious researcher and very meticulous. If a question is likely to be asked, he wants to be able to answer it.”

The end product of those conversations – DeepBind – took more than a year to create with the support of professor Brendan Frey of U of T’s department of electrical and computer engineering. All three work together at Deep Genomics, one of the University of Toronto’s best-known and successful startups of recent years.

On May 17, DeepBind was among four products recognized as U of T Inventions of the Year. The awards, which recognize their uniqueness, potential for global impact and commercial appeal, were presented at the university’s third annual U of T Celebrates Innovation event in front of an estimated 200 guests, including Ontario Lt.-Gov. Elizabeth Dowdeswell.

The award is “a great honour,” says Alipanahi.

“It’s really encouraging to see a computational technique regarded as an invention,” Delong says. “We view DeepBind as just a proof of concept. It’s a conversation starter in the community. There will be more exciting stuff to come. I’m working on some of it but I’m just one small person at the leading edge of a growing wave.”

DeepBind, which combines artificial intelligence and genomic medicine, is the first-ever deep learning application to study mutations linked to diseases that have proven difficult to analyse in the past because of their complexity, such as haemophilia and skin cancer.

For example, skin cancer is caused by more than one gene. However, having these genes does not necessarily mean a person will develop melanoma. Scientists must also consider UV exposure, which can damage the DNA in skin cells, leading to cancer-causing mutations.

The software modules, which are available free for academic use, are able to handle millions of sequences per experiment and can create “mutation maps” to reveal how genetic variations can cause disease.

The goal of their work, Alipanahi says, was to create a powerful algorithm that was fast and accessible to biologists studying these diseases.

Sometimes this type of work is viewed as a “black box. Like a magical tool that is very powerful but you don’t know much about how it works. We tried to help biologists peer into the box and understand it,” he says.

“We were trying to strike a balance,” Delong elaborates. “We wanted a model that was familiar enough so that the results could be interpreted and the biologists could have confidence. But we also wanted to be innovative. Now that more people are onboard with this research direction, we can really let loose creatively.”

Key to their work was a tremendous amount of public data generated by professor Tim Hughes and associate professor Quaid Morris of molecular genetics, not to mention the general atmosphere at the university where you can sit down and learn from world-renowned innovators like Geoffrey Hinton, considered by many as the “godfather” of deep learning, says Alipanahi.

“Being around them just gives you ideas. It gives you direction.”

It also helps to have great colleagues close at hand to bounce ideas off of, echoes Delong.

“One important lesson in all this is just having the right people sitting together, even if they’re working on different things,” he says. “Babak and I got to know each other and find common interest mainly because we were side-by-side every day, eventually finding a project we were both excited about.”

They started here: U of T recognizes top inventions

lavende4 — Tue, 17 May 2016 16:04:12 +0000

They started here: U of T recognizes top inventions

lavende4 Tue, 05/17/2016 - 12:04

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Cheng Lu, pictured at a solar farm in China, was one of the U of T innovators honoured at the U of T Celebrates Innovation event

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Some of the most inventive minds at the University of Toronto are stepping into the limelight.

This year, the U of T Celebrates Innovation event recognized four ground-breaking inventions – created here on our campuses – that have the potential for global impact and commercial appeal in medicine, electronics and energy production.

The event on May 17 also fêted the nine winners of the Connaught Innovation Award, who are sharing $750,000 in funding to accelerate the development of promising technologies at the university.

Helping celebrate and recognize these innovation leaders was special guest Ontario Lt.-Gov. Elizabeth Dowdeswell, who took part in the ceremony as part of her first official visit to the university. Nobel Prize winner and University Professor John Polanyi was also on hand to lend his congratulations to the winners.

Read about the visit

“Having our work recognized by the university through this award is an incredible honour. Such amazing work is produced by the faculty and students at the University of Toronto every year that being selected among this group is a very humbling experience,” says Invention of the Year Award winner Kacey Prentice.

The U of T PhD graduate and her co-inventors, Professor Michael Wheeler and research associate Feihan Fay Dai of the department of physiology, have created tests using a substance known as CMPF to help predict people at risk of developing diabetes much earlier than current methods allow. They believe CMPF could hold the key to possibly predicting and preventing diabetes.

Other inventions recognized this year include:

DeepBind, which combines artificial intelligence and genomic medicine in the first-ever deep learning application for determining the specificities of DNA- and RNA-binding proteins. The team behind the invention is postdoctoral fellows Babak Alipanahi and Andrew Delong, as well as Professor Brendan Frey of U of T’s department of electrical and computer engineering.

Phantin, an anti-dust, self-cleaning coating technology that can help keep solar panels clean, resulting in greater energy production and less maintenance. The team behind the invention is research associate Cheng Lu and Professor Cynthia Goh of U of T’s department of chemistry.

Printem, which enables anyone to manufacture electronic circuit boards with the patented Printem film and a standard office printer. The team behind the invention is PhD student Perumal Varun Chadalavada and Professor Daniel Wigdor of U of T’s computer science department.

With the growing amount of innovation activity across our campuses, determining the year’s top inventions is a challenge – which is great news, says Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president of research and innovation.

“We generate ground-breaking ideas at U of T – we always have. But we’re also committed to ensuring these ideas are applied to benefit society. One important way to help this happen is by supporting more and more of our researchers as they seek to take their ideas and commercialize them,” Goel explains.

“This year, we’re recognizing four outstanding inventions – and the teams behind them. The scope of these inventions and their potential to improve people’s lives around the world is truly limitless. We look forward to seeing where they go next.”

Since 2010, U of T and partner hospitals have emerged as leaders in the creation of research-based start-up companies. Helping fuel this growth are nine campus-linked accelerators and more than 60 entrepreneurial program and course offerings under the umbrella of the Banting and Best Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship.

In 2015 alone, these accelerators worked with more than 225 student-led startup teams and supported more than 80 new companies that attracted nearly $20 million in investment and generated $2.5 million in sales.

Invention

Invented here: sphynx cat, insulin, among the U of T innovations celebrated in new book

Read more about Elsie MacGill

Read about more U of T inventions

Could C-M-P-F make diabetes G-O-N-E?

Printem revolutionizes the printed circuit board

They started here: U of T recognizes top inventions

Here comes the sun for Phantin

They started here: U of T recognizes top inventions

DeepBind crunches data to find patterns behind origins of disease

They started here: U of T recognizes top inventions

They started here: U of T recognizes top inventions

Read about the visit