Electrical & Computer Engineering

Founded by the Climate Positive Energy institutional strategic initiative, the Grid Modernization Centre will help accelerate integration of novel green technologies

The University of Toronto has received $10-million in federal funding in support of the Grid Modernization Centre, a state-of-the-art facility in Toronto’s Downsview area that aims to accelerate progress towards a decarbonized, decentralized and digitalized power system for Canada.

Founded by Climate Positive Energy, a U of T institutional strategic initiative, the centre will serve as a hub that provides utilities, regulators, municipalities and enterprises with the equipment and expertise needed to test, develop and commercialize a range of green technologies.

The Government of Canada announced the investment – which includes $5 million apiece from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario) and Natural Resources Canada – at U of T's Myhal Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship on Friday, July 26.

“On behalf of the University of Toronto, we thank FedDev Ontario and Natural Resources Canada for their $10-million investment in the Grid Modernization Centre,” said Leah Cowen, U of T’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives. “By convening stakeholders across the electricity ecosystem, Climate Positive Energy and their partners will help ensure the electrical grid remains safe and reliable, while supporting the development of clean technologies and jobs.”

Leah Cowen (left), U of T's vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives, was joined by Ya'ara Saks (centre), minister of mental health and addictions, and Julie Dabrusin (right), parliamentary secretary to the minister of the environment, at the $10-million funding announcement for U of T's Grid Modernization Centre (photo by Liz Beddall)

The first facility of its kind in Canada, the Grid Modernization Centre will foster innovations pertinent to electricity demand, which is estimated to double in the next 30 years according to Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator.

“Through initiatives such as the Grid Modernization Centre here at U of T, we are collaborating to unlock a brighter future for our energy systems on the path to net-zero,” said Julie Dabrusin, parliamentary secretary to the minister for environment and climate change and the minister of energy and natural resources.

“By supporting advancements in clean energy technologies, we are not only protecting our environment but also positioning Canada at the forefront of the clean energy revolution,” said Ya’ara Saks, minister of mental health and addictions and MP for York Centre, who attended the announcement on behalf of Filomena Tassi, the minister responsible for FedDev Ontario.

Ya'ara Saks and Julie Dabrusin speak with Associate Professor Ali Hooshyar during a tour of the Centre for Applied Power Electronics (photo by Liz Beddall)

Ontario’s existing grid faces a number of challenges, including extreme weather events, the increasing popularity of electric vehicles and concerns around capacity, reliability, and security.

To address these challenges, the Grid Modernization Centre will enable an array of green technologies – from electric vehicle charging stations to battery energy storage systems – to be tested and refined before they are integrated with the grid.

It will also provide training opportunities for students and thought leadership on policy, regulatory and climate financing models.

Prior to Friday’s announcement, MP Saks and Parliamentary Secretary Dabrusin enjoyed a tour of the Centre for Applied Power Electronics led by Ali Hooshyar, associate professor and Canada Research Chair in Electric Power Systems in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical and computer engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. The centre specializes in research and development around electric power systems in areas such as integration of renewable resources into power grids and energy storage and distribution in microgrids.

(L-R) Chris Yip, dean of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, and Deepa Kundur, chair of the Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical and computer engineering, said the Grid Modernization Centre will help address crucial challenges around sustainable energy (photo by Liz Beddall)

Professor and chair of the department Deepa Kundur hailed the Grid Modernization Centre as a “crucial step” toward a safer and more sustainable society. "At ECE, we actively contribute to the technological landscape by addressing challenges in vehicle electrification, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity. This new centre represents U of T's proactive response to society's energy needs, and I'm thrilled about its potential impact,” Kundur said.

Professor Christopher Yip, dean of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, described the clean energy transition as arguably the most important shift facing companies and communities today. “U of T has responded to this challenge by developing the Grid Modernization Centre," Yip said.

"Today’s investment is key in supporting the centre and propelling us towards a reliable, resilient and sustainable electricity grid that will power a clean energy future for generations.”

Read the Climate Positive Energy story

U of T researcher leads effort to protect power utilities from quantum attacks

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 23 May 2024 20:12:49 +0000

U of T researcher leads effort to protect power utilities from quantum attacks

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 05/23/2024 - 16:12

Cutline

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering researcher Deepa Kundur, second from right, is leading a collaboration between academia and industry that’s focused on developing solutions to protect power utilities from cyberattacks using quantum technologies (photo by Neil Ta)

Matthew Tierney

Topic

Our Community

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Quantum

Quantum Computing

Research & Innovation

Sustainability

Subheadline

“Technology is always changing the threat landscape. And quantum computing, which is becoming more feasible and practical, is a powerful tool that will make our classical defences obsolete”

A researcher from the University of Toronto is leading a multidisciplinary research group that aims develop quantum-based technology solutions to defend power utilities against future cyberattacks.

With the support of a first-of-its-kind NSERC Alliance-Mitacs Accelerate grant worth $1.45 million, the group is working at the intersection of quantum, cybersecurity and critical infrastructure.

“We have to stay ahead of the game,” says group lead Deepa Kundur, professor and chair of U of T’s Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical and computer engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

“Technology is always changing the threat landscape. And quantum computing, which is becoming more feasible and practical, is a powerful tool that will make our classical defences obsolete.”

Kundur’s project is a collaboration between academia, Hydro-Québec and Xanadu, one of Canada’s most successful quantum computer startups. A second team – headed by Associate Professor Atefeh Mashatan of Toronto Metropolitan University and involving quantum solution leaders Crypto4A and evolutionQ – will build a road map for the classical-to-quantum migration for power grids in preparation for a future transition.

Quantum enhancement is the next stage in the evolution of today’s smart grids, so-named because they incorporate information-communication technology (ICT) into their operations. ICT has allowed smart grids to adapt to changing conditions and electricity load, as well respond more efficiently to natural disasters in order to meet society’s increasing power needs in an intelligent, sustainable way.

“ICT and its advanced sensors generate more data than before,” says Kundur. “We transport this data to different parts of the grid to start co-ordinating information to make decisions based on synchronized information and enhanced situational awareness.”

One potential downside of a data-driven smart grid, however, is the introduction of new vulnerabilities since attackers can now target not just the physical infrastructure, but the information that flows through it.

That’s because a smart grid’s connectivity increases opportunities for access. Also, ICT adds a level of complexity that results in emergent properties that are difficult to predict and can be challenging to safeguard. And the standards and policies put in place to mitigate operational variations mean there’s a level of interoperability between working grids that hackers can use to their advantage.

While cybersecurity experts have so far incorporated layers of defences into our smart grids, Kundur warns that those safeguards are not ready for quantum technologies.

“Algorithms and cryptography that are incredibly difficult for classical computers to crack become solvable with a quantum computer,” she says. “And then other questions arise. For example, when the power utilities themselves start to use quantum sensors, is this quantum-enhanced information better for attack detection or does it give attackers an ability to hide themselves?”

The question is tough to answer when you consider that quantum sensors of this nature – and the quantum data they would generate – don’t exist yet.

“We’ll take classical data, use models to predict what quantum versions of the information would appear to be, and then perform anomaly and attack detection on it,” says Kundur.

“We’ll be experimenting with quantum machine learning for better pattern recognition to detect a cyberattack. This is a highly exploratory project.”

Even if it’s decades before manufacturers integrate quantum attack-detection algorithms in their devices, Kundur says foundational research that she and her team will carry out in the next few years is a valuable endeavour.

“Security is a process. It’s very much a dynamic interaction,” she says. “And though we can never get to 100-per-cent protection, it’s something we have to continually try to achieve.”

Making waves: U of T entrepreneur uses quantum chemistry, AI to purify drinking water

rahul.kalvapalle — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 19:51:46 +0000

Making waves: U of T entrepreneur uses quantum chemistry, AI to purify drinking water

rahul.kalvapalle Tue, 04/23/2024 - 15:51

Cutline

U of T's Diana Virgovicova, the founder and CEO of XAtoms, is using quantum computing and AI to discover water-purifying molecules in a bid to improve access to clean drinking water around the globe (photo courtesy of Diana Virgovicova)

Rahul Kalvapalle

Topic

Our Community

Entrepreneurship Week

U of T Entrepreneurship

Artificial Intelligence

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Lester B. Pearson International Scholarship

Quantum Computing

Startups

Subheadline

At age 17, Diana Virgovicova discovered a molecule that can eliminate pollutants from water when exposed to sunlight

It’s not a bullet point that appears many resumes, let alone one belonging to a teenager: “Utilized quantum computing to discover a molecule that could revolutionize water treatment.”

But that’s exactly what Diana Virgovicova accomplished at age 17 when she modelled a molecule that can eliminate pollutants from water when exposed to sunlight.

Originally from Slovakia, Virgovicova later made her way to the University of Toronto to study computer engineering on a Lester B. Pearson International Scholarship and founded Xatoms, a startup using quantum computing and AI to discover water-purifying molecules in an effort to solve a long-standing global health problem.

“We want to be the leading water purification company in the world, offering affordable and efficient solutions and reaching some of the most vulnerable communities in the world,” says Virgovicova.

The young company is already making waves.

In March, Xatoms took home the top prizes for early-stage startups at the Desjardins Startup Prize and Pitch With a Twist competitions at U of T’s annual Entrepreneurship Week. A few days later, it was selected for the inaugural Compute for Climate Fellowship awarded by the International Research Centre on Artificial Intelligence, an organization backed by Amazon Web Services and UNESCO.

Virgovicova’s growing list of accolades also includes being selected for the NEXT 36 entrepreneurship program, the 776 Climate Fellowship (backed by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian) and a Stockholm Junior Water Prize, which she received from Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria.

She says she first recognized the urgency of the global water crisis when she was 14. She and her mother travelled to India, where she was confronted with a heavily polluted beach in Mumbai. “It really made me think about how we can solve this problem,” she says. “I decided to make cleaning polluted water my life’s mission.”

Upon returning home, Virgovicova contacted the University of Slovakia to enquire about water treatment research. A professor told her how quantum chemistry could be used to identify photocatalysts – materials that use sunlight to kickstart a chemical reaction that degrades pollutants.

Virgovicova says she began teaching herself to use quantum chemistry software and, within three years, used it to model a novel photocatalytic molecule.

How does it work? Most existing photocatalytic substances required ultraviolet (UV) radiation, but the structure that Virgovicova modelled works when exposed to simple visible light. “What I did was to remove this necessity of having an expensive UV reactor by modelling structures which would work when exposed to radiation from the sun,” she says.

The next step was to explore creating a company based around the discovery, which Virgovicova says influenced her decision to come to U of T. “I knew I wanted to build a company in the water space, so I chose U of T because it’s one of the best research-based universities in the world when it comes to entrepreneurship,” she says.

Xatoms, which was part of The Bridge accelerator program at U of T Scarborough, builds on Virgovicova’s photocatalyst discovery by incorporating AI to discover more – and more efficient – materials and molecules. “It’s now much more advanced and it’s not just about one material – it’s about multiple [materials] because different types of environments will need different types of materials to clean the water,” she says.

Xatoms now comprises a three-person team that includes co-founder and chief technology officer Kerem Topal Ismail Oglou, a computer engineering student at U of T, and chief operations officer Shirley Zhong, a Western University student.

The goal is to create two product lines: an industrial water-treatment powder that can eliminate viruses, pesticides and bacteria, and a portable water filter for consumer use. To that end, the company is collaborating with Alexandra Tavasoli, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of British Columbia, to synthesize photocatalytic molecules in the lab – a process that Virgovicova estimates will take several months.

Xatoms is also pursuing partnerships with water treatment organizations in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and India, and working with foundations in the U.K. and the Netherlands.

Virgovicova says access to safe drinking water isn't just a health issue but one of gender equality since women and girls often shoulder the burden of securing water for their households in many parts of the world.

“We want to see the number of people who lack access to clean drinking water to be reduced, and to see fewer women and girls investing their time – up to eight hours [a day] in some cases – to bring home a single container of water,” Virgovicova says. “Our goal is to have a big impact and introduce more and more solutions to reach as many people as possible.”

U of T researcher's AI model could help optimize e-commerce sites for users who are colour blind

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 15 Apr 2024 17:23:10 +0000

U of T researcher's AI model could help optimize e-commerce sites for users who are colour blind

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 04/15/2024 - 13:23

Cutline

Parham Aarabi, an an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, built an AI model that simulates how users interact with images on an e-commerce site – including those experiencing colour blindness (photo by Matthew Tierney)

Matthew Tierney

Accessibility

Artificial Intelligence

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Research & Innovation

Subheadline

Parham Aarabi found that, in general, users experiencing colour blindness are 30 per cent more likely to click on a monochrome image

University of Toronto researcher Parham Aarabi has created an artificial intelligence model that mimics how users navigate e-commerce websites – and it may be able to help retailers optimize their sites for people experiencing colour blindness and other conditions.

Called PRE, the AI-generated tool sees virtual users browse, pause on a page, add items to cart and click on discounted items.

While the tool shows that users tend to be drawn to colourful images, Aarabi also wanted to see how those experiencing full and partial colour blindness might respond.

“Around eight to 10 per cent of the population has a type of colour-blindness,” says Aarabi, an associate professor in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical and computer engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “There are a number of ways the eye can be confused by colour, commonly between red and green or blue and yellow.

“I wanted to see how this might impact web navigation.”

Aarabi set up an experiment. He altered a retail clothing website to simulate how it would appear to someone with protanomaly, or a reduced ability to perceive red light. One might think of it as applying a filter, or lens, which Aarabi then modified to approximate eight other variations of colour deficiency.

For each variation, Aarabi initiated one million navigation sessions with AI virtual users and tracked the image click rates. He found that, in general, someone with colour-blindness is 30 per cent more likely than a colour-abled user to click on a monochrome image. The results will be presented in a paper at the 46th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society this summer.

A screenshot shows all nine versions of Aarabi’s test website, each filtered to simulate a variation of colour-blindness. The bottom-right version is weak protanomaly, or a reduced ability to perceive red light (image by Parham Aarabi)

The boost factor that website designers count on with colour doesn’t translate to everyone, notes Aarabi.

“When people are designing sites or presenting products, they need to stay cognizant that eight per cent of the population is not going to be impacted. You need to add better descriptions and more textual information to guide users through the shopping process.”

Aarabi sees this study as one of many that can benefit from PRE, whose neural net took two years to train with data from 110,000 real-life user sessions.

“To measure its accuracy, we set up a sample site and predicted what actions the AI virtual users will take – what percentage would add to cart, what percentage would buy a particular product, and so on – and also ran a test of the site with people,” says Aarabi. “PRE correctly mimics a human user’s actions 90 per cent of the time.”

There are benefits with using AI virtual users for a study. One can run experiments more quickly, on a larger scale, and can recreate as many sessions as desired. The AI model eliminates the need, for example, to locate and coordinate many thousands of willing colour-blind participants.

Aarabi has plans to use PRE to test other barriers to accessibility, such as dyslexia or motor impairments. His long-term goal is provide an auditing service for companies that allows them to test a web design’s impact on users with various conditions before or after launch.

Such goals are part of Aarabi’s research effort to mitigate negativity about AI.

“There’s a lot of worry, even within the tech community, about AI taking over or replacing us in some capacity,” he says. “If we can make AI more humanlike in some way, build in some empathy and have it mirror the reactions that humans have, we could dispel some of those concerns.”

“Professor Aarabi has been a pioneer in the application of AI, from past research cautioning against bias in training data sets to this current project, which uses the AI advantage to address accessibility issues,” says Professor Deepa Kundur, chair of the department of electrical and computer engineering. “Parham brings a valuable, forward-thinking approach to leveraging AI for positive outcomes.”

U of T researcher’s data-driven platform aims to predict when emergencies will happen

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 15:02:23 +0000

U of T researcher’s data-driven platform aims to predict when emergencies will happen

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 03/22/2024 - 11:02

Cutline

(photo by Matthew Tierney)

Matthew Tierney

Topic

Our Community

Cities

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Research & Innovation

Subheadline

Alberto Leon-Garcia is collaborating with Edmonton Fire Rescue Services and TELUS to support first responders in Alberta's second largest city

A University of Toronto researcher is working with Edmonton Fire Rescue Services and TELUS, through its Data for Good program, to predict when emergencies are likely to occur in Alberta’s second largest city.

The tool being developed by Alberto Leon-Garcia, a professor in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical and computer engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, and the two partners leverages data to more efficiently allocate municipal emergency resources and help first-responders.

Leon-Garcia says many emergency events can be predicted because people’s behaviours tend to follow certain patterns.

“The pulse of the city is driven by people and their activity,” he says, “and their activity exhibits seasonality.”

Leon-Garcia’s platform uses data from 11 years of emergency calls, which provide the time and approximate location of each event as well as the type of emergency – house fire, medical emergency, traffic accident and so forth – in addition to other relevant data points.

“For the city of Edmonton, we look at the neighbourhood level, at demographics, land use, transportation capabilities, population density,” says Leon-Garcia. “We consider the timing of the events, how they vary by season, month, day of the week, hour.

“This can allow you to predict the rate of events in the vicinity of each fire station in the next week or month, for example. Right there, that’s a valuable input to resource allocation – how many trucks, how many people you assign and where.”

Creating the model required collecting the necessary data and then refining it so it was free from errors and standardized, possibly transformed or aggregated. Next, researchers needed to determine the most useful way to analyze it.

“Deep neural networks were not appropriate in this instance,” says Leon-Garcia, referring to the machine learning techniques behind such tools as ChatGPT. “You can try – and we did – but we did not have the volume of data to train a neural network.”

Instead, he turned to “well-established advanced analytics.”

The data analysis will generate various graphs, heat maps and other tables that display the type and mixture of emergency events that the model considers normal in and around Edmonton for a given time and place while taking into account variables such as weather.

By following events in real time and comparing them to what is anticipated, researchers can detect anomalies and potential vulnerabilities in the model.

“For example, one time we noticed that the fire event numbers in a neighbourhood didn’t correspond to the models,” says Leon-Garcia.

“It was later confirmed that an arsonist was active during that period.”

Over the years, Leon-Garcia has applied his predictive models to various road transportation systems, including in Toronto and the San Francisco Bay Area. He has also applied his anomaly detection systems to detect faults in computer networks and cyberattacks.

Given that each partner in such a project typically has its own goals and unique data collection processes, Leon-Garcia says it’s critical to take a collaborative approach.

“You can’t come in and say, ‘I have this neat platform, you have to change the way you do things,’” he says. “It doesn’t work that way. You have to pull together, factor in their long-term goals, their privacy concerns, their flexibility. They generally see the usefulness of the approach and [then] it’s more a question of how you get from here to there.”

Professor Deepa Kundur, chair of the electrical and computer engineering department, says Leon-Garcia has consistently demonstrated how data streams hold the key to creating smarter, safer cities.

“His partnership with Edmonton FRS and TELUS has the potential to greatly enhance life-saving initiatives and will, no doubt, serve as a catalyst for future collaborations.”

U of T researchers develop rapid MRI technique for better cancer detection and therapy

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 19:30:43 +0000

U of T researchers develop rapid MRI technique for better cancer detection and therapy

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 02/23/2024 - 14:30

Cutline

(photo by Willie B. Thomas/Getty Images)

Matthew Tierney

Topic

Breaking Research

Institute of Biomedical Engineering

Cancer

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Research & Innovation

Subheadline

“We create images every second, and sometimes less, and those images are not going to suffer from low resolution”

Researchers at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering have developed a rapid magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique to help doctors better detect and diagnose tumours.

The new approach – by Hai-Ling Cheng, a professor in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and the Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical and computer engineering, and PhD candidate Alex Mertens – could provide physicians with guidance during surgery and other therapeutic interventions.

Based on novel analysis of raw patient data collected from imaging sessions with standard MRI equipment, the algorithm Cheng and Mertens developed reduces the duration between each image acquisition from more than 20 seconds to one second without sacrificing image sharpness.

“People in the field have been trying to get high spatial resolution concurrently with temporal resolution for the past 25 years,” says Cheng.

Cheng and Mertens, with the help of the U of T Innovations and Partnerships Office, have applied for a patent and are partnering with companies to bring their MRI technique to market.

“In practice, doctors always follow up imaging results with a biopsy for definitive confirmation to more accurately determine the grade of cancer and its stage,” Cheng says.

“Our technique is not meant to displace the biopsy. But by better characterizing the underlying pathology at the vascular and cellular level, we can mitigate randomness in the sampling when the doctor goes in with a biopsy needle.”

Professor Hai-Ling Cheng, pictured, and ECE PhD candidate Alex Mertens have developed a novel method to analyze data acquired from magnetic resonance imaging (photo by Matthew Tierney)

MRI is used to scan soft tissues like muscle or fat because it offers the best contrast compared to other modalities such as X-rays and ultrasounds. The contrast allows doctors to discern different cell types and identify small cancerous growths.

“Let’s say you’ve got a liver and a kidney, and you want to image them both in the same area of the body,” says Cheng. “If you were to take an X-ray, you would get one contrast level – one grey scale specific to the liver and one grey scale specific to the kidney.”

With MRI technology, however, there’s different physics at play that allows for refined gradients. An MRI scanner produces a strongly magnetized field inside the patient’s body into which it pulses a radio frequency, or RF, wave. The wave affects the water protons in soft tissues, which react to the pulse and emit signature return signals.

“The data from the return signal doesn’t tell you the shape of an object but the frequency content of the object,” says Cheng. “We structure that return RF signal into a matrix, which we can then convert into a high resolution image.”

Researchers can change the magnetic strength and the frequency of the pulse to obtain different contrasts, much like a music producer can increase and decrease the volume of individual tracks in a song.

To enhance the RF signal further, a contrast agent is intravenously injected into the patient beforehand: usually gadolinium, which is non-radioactive. The dynamics of the gadolinium distribution – that is, the speed of its uptake and washout in cells – give doctors additional information about the malignancy of the tumour.

“Tumours not only have a larger blood volume, but because their blood vessels are very messed up and tortuous, they also tend to be very, very leaky,” says Cheng.

However, the MRI procedure is notoriously slow. The scanner must repeatedly acquire frequency domain data at different coarse and fine-grain resolutions. Typical temporal resolution is 20 seconds and gadolinium washout in a tumour can take as little as 10 seconds.

“Typically, it takes 256 acquisition lines to create one image,” says Cheng. “Rather than reconstructing a full image every 20 seconds or every minute – that’s kind of pointless, because you’re missing the dynamics – our algorithm extrapolates information based on successive sampling of just one acquisition line.

“We create images every second, and sometimes less, and those images are not going to suffer from low resolution.”

“The work that Hai-Ling and her team are doing is a testament to how electrical and computer engineering technologies can impact the health-care sector,” says Professor Deepa Kundur, chair of the electrical and computer engineering department in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “Hai-Ling and Alex have spent years building on their knowledge of MRI physics and human biology, demonstrating how interdisciplinary perspectives in engineering save lives. Well done.”

EV systems course prepares U of T students for fast-growing field

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 19:29:15 +0000

EV systems course prepares U of T students for fast-growing field

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 01/25/2024 - 14:29

Cutline

Sessional lecturer Zhe Gong looks over the components that make up the electric vehicle lab station in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering’s Energy Systems Lab (photo by Matthew Tierney)

Matthew Tierney

Topic

Our Community

Electric Cars

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Sustainability

Subheadline

“Our objective is to prepare our students to be innovation leaders to meet society’s needs”

The University of Toronto is offering a graduate course in electric vehicle systems that combines a theoretical background in power and energy flow with hands-on experience.

As demand grows for automotive engineers in the fast-growing electrification field, the multidisciplinary course –offered through the Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical and computer engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering – aims to give graduate students a solid understanding of the concepts needed to design high-performance EV systems. It also discusses EV subsystems, with a focus on energy modelling and efficiency.

The new course, launched in fall 2023, comes amid efforts to build Stellantis-LGES and Volkswagen battery plants in Ontario, creating the need for more engineers with EV technology skills.

“The grad course was a pilot to explore how a hands-on EV course could fit into our curriculum,” says alumnus Zhe Gong, the course’s sessional lecturer.

“We’re making sure that we understand the hardware requirements, that we can frame a meaningful scope of experiments and that students can experience sufficient hands-on time through the lab sessions.”

The number of EV models available on the market doubled from 2018 to 2022 to a total of 500, according to the International Energy Agency. And the number of zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) on the road is slated to increase dramatically in the next decade. Within Canada, this will be spurred in part by the federal government’s emissions reduction plan, which would require ZEVs to comprise all light-duty vehicles sales by 2035.

“Our objective is to prepare our students to be innovation leaders to meet society’s needs,” says Professor Deepa Kundur, chair of the electrical and computer engineering department. “This is especially the case when it comes to sustainability, and a new course offering in electric vehicles helps build a robust talent pipeline to provide the electrification industry with people ready to make a difference.”

Gong says that the lab setup, situated in the department’s undergraduate Energy Systems Lab, took six months to develop and incorporated research from the University of Toronto Electric Vehicle (UTEV) Research Centre into the hardware and software requirements. The setup includes a dynamometer that simulates how the road applies loading force to the vehicle propulsion system, a lithium-ion battery, hardware switches to selectively connect the battery to motor and charger – and a power supply to act as the on-board charger.

EV working components are arranged on lab tables to provide full access, “as if a bench-top electric vehicle,” says Gong.

“We also have something that’s quite unique for an EV lab – EV supply equipment, something you would actually see in a home. We customized the connection between our charger and power distribution panel to allow students to step through the communications interface required for the vehicle to engage the charging sequence.”

Components in the EV experimental lab setup (photo by Zhe Gong)

“Over the years, a lot of the equipment in the Energy Systems Lab has been designed by profs, research associates, grads, as well as undergrad students,” says Afshin Poraria, director of teaching labs, in reference to the collaborative approach between faculty members, UTEV and undergrad lab managers in creating the lab setup.

“We build whatever we can to feed and expand the student experience. Before long, we’ll likely have undergrad students using this equipment.”

UTEV Director Olivier Trescases, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, says that the “all-hands-on-deck” approach and the creative solutions to equipping the labs are necessary to provide the best possible learning environment for students.

“Over the past few decades, ECE has made major investments to design and deploy custom infrastructure to deliver a unique training experience that is simply not possible with off-the-shelf equipment.”

With three degrees from U of T Engineering, Gong says he’s happy to play a role in the course.

“Through my undergrad days to now, I’ve always known ECE’s labs to be collaborative ones. It’s very exciting for me to be contributing to a new stage, building custom equipment and now teaching the students about electric vehicles – something that I’m passionate about,“ he says. “It’s like coming full circle.”

With the launch of its first satellite, student team charts a course to new knowledge

rahul.kalvapalle — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 17:44:03 +0000

With the launch of its first satellite, student team charts a course to new knowledge

rahul.kalvapalle Fri, 01/19/2024 - 12:44

Cutline

A Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Nov. 11, 2023, carrying a satellite designed and built by the University of Toronto Aerospace Team (photo courtesy of SpaceX)

Safa Jinje

Topic

Our Community

Aerospace

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Graduate Students

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

Space

Undergraduate Students

UTIAS

Subheadline

“We worked on this project for so long with such a narrow focus that actually seeing it deployed was very rewarding”

Students in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering recently gathered in the basement of the Sandford Fleming Building – known to many as “The Pit” – to witness the deployment of HERON Mk. II into space.

The 3U CubeSat satellite, built and operated by the space systems division of the University of Toronto Aerospace Team (UTAT), was launched into orbit on a Falcon 9 rocket on Nov. 11, 2023 as part of SpaceX’s Transporter-9 rideshare mission that lifted off from the Vandenberg Space Force Base near Lompoc, Calif.

The feat was entirely student funded with support from U of T Engineering through student levies and UTAT-led fundraising efforts.

“The experience of the launch was very surreal,” says master’s degree student Benjamin Nero, HERON’s current mission manger.

“We worked on this project for so long with such a narrow focus that actually seeing it deployed was very rewarding.”

“There are any number of things that could go wrong that might prevent a satellite from deploying,” adds Zachary Teper, a fellow master’s degree candidate who is part of the technical development team working on HERON’s ground station.

“So, watching each of the call outs coming out of the SpaceX mission control, seeing the rocket go up and meet every one of its mission objectives and then finally seeing our satellite get ejected out of the dispenser in the correct trajectory was a big relief – because we knew that it was finally in space and on the right path.”

Members of the UTAT space systems division gather on the sixth-floor roof of the Bahen Centre for Information Technology with the fully assembled ground station (photo by UTAT Space Systems)

Launching HERON – short for High frequency Educational Radio communications On a Nanosatellite – was the culmination of years of teamwork that brought together the efforts of more than 100 students.

HERON Mk. II, the second iteration of UTAT’s spacecraft, was originally designed and built between 2016 and 2018 for the fourth edition of the Canadian Satellite Design Challenge. Since space systems division was formed in 2014, many of the students who worked on the initial HERON design and build have since graduated. But the current operations team continued to develop the satellite and renew the student levy that allowed them to secure their space launch.

“The original objective for HERON was to conduct a biology experiment in space,” says Nero, who joined the team in 2019 during his second year of undergraduate studies. “But because of delays in the licensing process, we were unable to continue that mission objective. So, we re-scoped and shifted our focus to amateur radio communication and knowledge building.”

From left to right: HERON Mk. I (2016), HERON Mk. II Prototype (2018), HERON Mk. II Softstack (2020), HERON Mk. II Flight Model (2021) (photos by UTAT Space Systems)

Once the satellite’s final assembly was completed in 2021, the team began flight model testing and assembling a ground station, while also managing the logistics of the regulatory approvals needed to complete the launch.

“It’s difficult to put something in space, both technically and bureaucratically,” says Nero. “There are a lot of different governments that care about what you’re doing and want to know when and how you’re doing it.”

Getting to space was a significant milestone for the team, but it’s still only the beginning of their work.

“The goal for us as a design team is to start gathering institutional knowledge that we didn’t have before,” says Reid Sox-Harris, an undergraduate student who is HERON’s ground station manager and the electrical lead for UTAT’s next space mission, FINCH (Field Imaging Nanosatellite for Crop residue Hyperspectral mapping).

“We’ve never operated a satellite. So, we’re taking a lot of lessons learned with us through this process.” 

For example, when a satellite is deployed for the first time, the ground control team only has a rough idea of its movement and eventual location. They must simulate the launch to figure out exactly where it is before they can establish a connection. And when they receive new positional data, they must rerun their simulation.

“We have to take into account effects such as air resistance, or the sun’s solar cycles and the gravitational effects of the sun, the moon and the Earth – it’s a fairly complicated simulation,” Sox-Harris says.

Nero adds: “Part of the difficulty with a simulation is that a model is only useful for a certain period. An old estimate could result in as much as a few kilometres of drift from the satellite’s actual position per day.”

HERON’s ground station on the roof of the Bahen Centre (photo by UTAT Space Systems)

The team was not only tasked with designing a ground station capable of communicating with a satellite more than 500 kilometres away, but one that can survive a frigid and snowy Canadian winter.

“For any project, the most important thing you should be doing is testing,” says second-year student Swarnava Ghosh, who primarily works on the ground station software. “One challenge with our ground station currently is that there are too many variables that are not fully tested – and everything needs to be perfect in the chain for the communication to work. If the ground station is not pointing in the right direction, we won’t get a signal and we won’t establish communication. And if the amplifier is not working, then we won’t establish communication.” 

The team is confident that they will ultimately resolve any outstanding issues and establish communications with HERON. More importantly, they will be able to take what they’ve learned and apply it to the next mission.

“With FINCH, we want to make sure the ground station software and satellite can communicate on the ground,” says Sox-Harris. “Right now, there are over 500 kilometres between the satellite and ground station, so we can’t fly up there and test whether a command has worked.”

FINCH is set to launch in late 2025 on a rideshare rocket flight. Its current mission objective is to generate hyperspectral imaging maps of crop residue on farm fields in Manitoba from a low-Earth orbit.

There are many technical developments that are new to FINCH that weren’t applicable to HERON, the team says, including a novel optic system for remote sensing that is being developed by students.

“The risks associated with FINCH are mitigated by the work that is being performed by HERON right now. We’re learning many lessons that will be directly applicable to our next mission, and we’ll continue to learn from HERON for at least another year or more,” says Sox-Harris.

“This means the FINCH mission can be more complicated, it can move faster and ultimately we can have better reliability, which is something that we always strive for in aerospace.”

U of T course on brain-machine interfaces introduces undergrads to next-gen health care

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 15:18:55 +0000

U of T course on brain-machine interfaces introduces undergrads to next-gen health care

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 01/05/2024 - 10:18

Cutline

Assistant Professor Xilin Liu, standing, guides students Mona Murphy, left, and Nishant Kumar, right, as they analyze Kumar’s EEG (photo by Matthew Tierney)

Matthew Tierney

Topic

Our Community

Institute of Biomedical Engineering

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Undergraduate Students

University Health Network

Subheadline

“You start to look at the brain differently, the mechanisms of its disorders, what clinicians and neuroengineers are doing to treat them”

Undergraduate students taking a new University of Toronto course have to use their brains in more ways than one.

Called Interfacing and Modulating the Nervous System (ECE441), the course in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical engineering and computer engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering introduces fourth-year students to neuromodulation, a multidisciplinary area that draws on knowledge about signal processing, control theory, electronics and machine learning.

Devices employing neuromodulation deliver therapeutic stimulation to targeted areas of the brain and are used to treat a range of conditions, including chronic pain, neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy, depression, spinal cord injuries and hearing or vision loss.

During one recent lab session, students Jannis Gabler and Aurora Nowicki said they were amazed by what they could learn after they hooked up a team member.

“We were measuring electrical activity in his visual cortex,” Gabler says. “Just by extracting data from his signature, we could tell whether his eyes were closed or not.”

The course was developed through the combined efforts of faculty members Xilin Liu and Ervin Sejdić, as well as the CRANIA Neuromodulation Institute. Support from the department included the purchase of specialized equipment – biosensing headsets that allow students to acquire an electroencephalograph (EEG) – and technical support from Afshin Poraria, director of teaching labs, and lab manager Iman Makhmal Koohi.

Liu, an assistant professor in the electrical and computer engineering department, says hands-on work is a crucial component of the course, which exposes students to neural interfacing techniques and applications at a time when many are considering graduate research or starting their career.

While he notes that universities such as MIT and Stanford University offer similar courses, he says they tend to be geared toward graduate students.

“Introducing such a course at the ECE undergraduate level is quite a unique approach,” he says. “By leveraging the strengths of ECE labs, we implemented hands-on experiments enabling students to collect, analyze and modulate their own EEG signals in real-time.”

A student holds a biosensing headset during a lab session (photo by Matthew Tierney)

The course material combines Liu’s teachings on electronics and neural interfacing technology with Sejdić’s work on signal processing, control theory and machine learning. It also includes guest lecturers with various clinical expertise. They include Milos Popovic, a professor in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (BME), and Taufik Valiante, a scientist at the University Health Network and an associate professor of surgery in the department of surgery in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine with a cross appointment at BME – both early supporters of the course.

During off-campus excursions to nearby hospitals and clinical settings, such as Toronto Western Hospital, the students hear from neurosurgeons and neuroscientists about real-world advancements in this field.

“The first lecture was one of the most interesting I’ve ever had at U of T,” Nowicki says.

“We learned early on how little we understand the brain. It’s incredibly complex,” adds Gabler.

Liu says we may never have an accurate general model of the brain, which means therapeutic determinations must be considered on patient-by-patient basis – a challenge for clinicians.

“You cannot keep people in the hospital for a long time just to monitor the progression of the disease,” Liu says. “And optimization done at the hospital might only be calibrated for the specific time of day, or might not work when they go back home, or while asleep.”

But wearable or implantable neural devices that use machine learning are ideally suited to address this challenge because they collect large amounts of data from patients over long periods of time. With this data, machine learning can learn the optimal timing and parameter configuration.

The field is growing so fast that the electrical and computer engineering department looks forward to expanding its course offerings in neurotechnology, says Deepa Kundur, a professor and department chair, who adds that this course helps build a strong foundation in the field.

“It’s an excellent example of how bringing awareness of cutting-edge applications into the classroom setting, through access to research labs and a diverse instructor team, allows students to see the incredible potential opportunities for their electrical and computer engineering skill set,” she says.

The department also plans to make equipment available to students outside the class. The instructors are working with the student club NeuroTECH to organize workshops and hands-on sessions.

Nowicki, for one, recommends the course to fellow students even if they’re not considering a future in health care.

“You start to look at the brain differently, the mechanisms of its disorders, what clinicians and neuroengineers are doing to treat them,” she says. “And so many people have friends or a family member who has experienced a disorder.”

U of T Engineering professor aims to reimagine the internet

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 20:52:57 +0000

U of T Engineering professor aims to reimagine the internet

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 11/16/2023 - 15:52

Cutline

Professor J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves aims to forge a smarter, more equitable internet (photo by Matthew Tierney)

Matthew Tierney

Topic

Our Community

Canada Excellence Research Chairs

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Research & Innovation

Subheadline

J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, who has been awarded a Canada Excellence Research Chair, says the internet runs on 50-year-old technology that hasn’t kept pace with advancements in other fields

For J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, the networks that make up the internet – both the physical layer of routers and switches, as well as the protocols and algorithms that distribute data – hold unused intelligence with the potential to foster major advances.

“The internet we are using today was designed 54 years ago. I mean, I wouldn’t drive a 50-year-old car. But that’s what people are doing,” says Garcia-Luna-Aceves, a professor in the University of Toronto's Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical and computer engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “There have been adjacent technological advancements over the years in radios, machine learning and the like. But the main algorithms used in the internet protocol stack haven’t followed suit.”

Garcia-Luna-Aceves was this week appointed a Canada Excellence Research Chair in Intelligent Digital Infrastructures, a position that will help him explore and tap into the resources that lie “under the hood” of computer networks. Awarded by the Government of Canada, the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) program aims to fund ambitious research projects that help position Canada as a global leader in innovation.

Garcia-Luna-Aceves points to the smartphone’s upward trajectory as a counterexample to that of the internet.

“Your smartphone is intelligent,” he says. “What makes it so? To act intelligently, one needs memory. Endowing network entities with vast amounts of memory capacity would allow us to rethink the routing protocols that are the backbone of the internet.”

Garcia-Luna-Aceves himself is responsible for sections of that backbone. In the late 1980s, he developed an algorithm to handle the fast communication demands of a flying network of missile interceptors. Although the algorithm was never used for that purpose, it was adopted by networking and communications giant Cisco as part of their Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), called DUAL, which is still widely used today.

“That technology was great for that time,” says Garcia-Luna-Aceves. “But we need to build routing tables that not only take into account policies, but the characteristics of the use – the content and the service being accessed and the intent for the communication.”

To get there, he says, we need to go back to first principles – which means forgetting the hardware and bandwidth limitations of 50 years ago, and asking ourselves how we would design the internet today.

That means we need to look at whom the technology is enabling and whom it is not.

“Any solution needs to be not only scalable but affordable and deployable in different settings,” he says. “There are areas, communities and industries today that the internet does not reach, where it has potential as a technology enabler – applications in agriculture, in fishery, you name it. And we can only learn about them by talking to those who have been disenfranchised in the past.”

Garcia-Luna-Aceves plans to launch a multidisciplinary research hub, called the Centre of Excellence for Networking Innovation in Toronto, that draws on international researchers and industry partners to further his vision.

“Professor Garcia-Luna-Aceves has his sights on an ambitious and impactful project. Everything in his distinguished career suggests he’s the person for the job,” says Professor Deepa Kundur, chair of the department of electrical and computer engineering. “I enthusiastically congratulate him on his CERC, a well-deserved recognition of his incredible talent.”

“It’s an opportunity like very few others,” says Garcia-Luna-Aceves. “It’s a clean slate to pursue my research. That I can do so in one of the best, most inclusive cities in North America is an added blessing.”