Department of Materials Science & Engineering

Twelve researchers at the University of Toronto are receiving Connaught Innovation Awards to help accelerate the development and commercialization of promising technologies with strong socio-economic potential that will have a positive impact on society.

“The University of Toronto congratulates this year’s recipients, whose work is addressing some of society’s most important challenges,” said Leah Cowen, U of T’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives. “From energy-saving windows to the use of plant hormones as appetite suppressants or the development of therapeutic targets that hold promise for a broad range of neurodegenerative diseases, these researchers’ inventions have the potential to make life-changing impacts here in Canada and around the world.”

This year's recipients are:

Julie Audet, Institute of Biomedical Engineering: A tool to optimize complex formulations based on evolutionary computation accelerated by artificial neural networks
Denise Belsham, department of physiology: The use of a plant hormone CX as an appetite suppressant
Alan Cochrane, department of molecular genetics: Development of broad-spectrum, host-directed antivirals
Kevin Golovin, department of mechanical and industrial engineering: Reducing microplastic fibre pollution using low friction polymer brush as textile coatings
Glenn Gulak, department of electrical and computer engineering: A hardware accelerator for fully homomorphic encryption-based machine learning applications
Patrick Gunning, department of chemical and physical sciences, University of Toronto Mississauga: Development of an artificial intelligence-driven platform to explore the undruggable genome
Benjamin Hatton, department of materials science and engineering: Smart building facades for scalable operational energy management
Ronald Kluger, department of chemistry: Production and evaluation of hemoglobin-bis-tetramers for oxygen transport to increase supply of lungs for transplant by enhancing ex vivo perfusion of donor lungs
Eugenia Kumacheva, department of chemistry: A platform for safety evaluation of chemical agents
Janice Robertson, department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology: Targeting TDP-43 aggregation as therapeutics for TDP-43 proteinopathies
Paul Yoo, Institute of Biomedical Engineering: Novel electrodes for non-invasive electrical nerve stimulation
Yu Zou, department of materials science and engineering: Autonomous additive manufacturing system

The Connaught Innovation Award, which provides one-time seed funding to support the development and commercialization of the researchers’ innovative technologies, is backed by the Connaught Fund – the largest internal university research funding program in Canada. Established 50 years ago through the sale of Connaught Medical Research Laboratories, which is known for the discovery and production of insulin, the fund supports U of T scholars through programs such as the Connaught New Researcher Award, the Connaught Community Partnership Research Program, the Connaught Major Research Challenge for Black Researchers, the McLean Award and international doctoral scholarships.

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U of T Engineering professors recognized with Synergy Award for Innovation

lanthierj — Wed, 17 Nov 2021 14:48:52 +0000

U of T Engineering professors recognized with Synergy Award for Innovation

Research & Innovation

lanthierj Wed, 11/17/2021 - 09:48

Faculty

St. George

Department of Materials Science & Engineering

Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

NSERC

Synergy Award for Innovation

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Professor Yu Sun (Photo by Sylvie Li/Shoot Studio)

Four University of Toronto professors from the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering are being recognized with a Synergy Award for Innovation from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) for their longstanding partnership with Hitachi High-Tech Canada (HTC).

The award was presented to Professor Yu Sun today. Key principal investigators from U of T Engineering involved in the collaboration also include Professors Jane Howe, Tobin Filleter and Doug Perovic.

Focused on nanoscale electron microscopy and robotics, the collaboration between U of T and HTC has strengthened the Ontario Centre for the Characterization of Advanced Materials (OCCAM), a unique facility that contains leading-edge equipment for imaging, analyzing and manipulating materials with nanometre-scale precision. It has led to numerous scientific discoveries and commercialized products – including the TNI LifeForce nanomanipulation system, which enables samples to be manipulated with extreme precision while inside a scanning electron microscope. LifeForce was licensed to HTC and is commercialized worldwide.

“When I first started working with Professor Sun, I quickly realised that he has only two modes of operation on and on even more!” says Ian Cotton, a board member and former President at HTC. “His lab is like an Aladdin’s cave of engineering, which led to one of the best product concepts we have ever delivered. The results speak for themselves: an elegant design with flawless execution.”

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Morris Huang wins Troost ILead Difference Maker Award

lanthierj — Wed, 28 Apr 2021 18:42:14 +0000

Morris Huang wins Troost ILead Difference Maker Award

Community

lanthierj Wed, 04/28/2021 - 14:42

Students

St. George

Troost ILead Difference Maker Award

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Department of Materials Science & Engineering

landscape

Fourth-year student Morris Huang has been recognized with the Difference Maker Award for his leadership through the student-run non-profit, Global Spark. (Photo courtesy Morris Huang)

Morris Huang, a fourth-year student in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering at the University of Toronto, has been named the first recipient of the Troost ILead Difference Maker Award for his leadership through the student-run non-profit, Global Spark.

The $50,000 award was established in 2020 by the Bodhi Tree Fund, a private giving foundation, to support a graduating student with a vision to make a positive difference in their communities and beyond.

Global Spark, which began as Global Engineering Week at U of T in 2017, helps students connect what they learn in the classroom with on-the-ground work in areas such as climate change, renewable energy and, most recently, vaccine distribution. Its material is included in more than 100 courses at eight universities around the world.

“We don’t just want to teach students, we want them to mobilize in tackling some of these big problems by engaging them through course curriculum, implementing new course content, assignments, activities and tutorials,” says Huang.

Global Spark also organizes design competitions, student fairs and Canada’s largest social impact hackathon, Hack the Globe, to help students explore the application of their own global development solutions.

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Mansoor Barati recognized with Connaught Innovation Award

lanthierj — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 19:14:02 +0000

Mansoor Barati recognized with Connaught Innovation Award

Research & Innovation

lanthierj Mon, 03/29/2021 - 15:14

Faculty

St. George

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Connaught Innovation Award

Department of Materials Science & Engineering

landscape

(Photo courtesy of Mansoor Barati)

Professor Mansoor Barati of the department of materials science and engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering has received a Connaught Innovation Award to support his team’s work on a more environmentally sustainable process for extracting nickel.

At one time, nickel smelters in Sudbury emitted more sulphur dioxide than anywhere else in the world, “leaving blackened rocks that are still seen,” Barati says. Although smelting operations are much cleaner today, thanks to the investment of billions of dollars in methods to capture the sulphur dioxide produced, Barati says, his team is determined to move the mining world a giant step further.

“Our group has successfully demonstrated, through extensive empirical tests and theoretical calculations, that nickel extraction from sulfide ores can be achieved by a novel process that eliminates SO2 emission entirely,” Barati says. “Further, the operating temperature in the new process is considerably lower than the conventional smelting techniques; hence the promise of lower energy consumption and plant capital cost.”

The new process has been tested and proven feasible through a three-year research program.

“The next step for our team will be to move the technology to the next level, and test it in a larger scale than laboratory testing,” Barati says. “Through this Connaught Innovation Award, the team plans to work on testing that aids the design of a commercial reactor; the first step in taking the research to real-world.”

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Professor Benjamin Hatton receives Connaught Innovation Award

lanthierj — Tue, 10 Mar 2020 14:54:55 +0000

Professor Benjamin Hatton receives Connaught Innovation Award

Research & Innovation

lanthierj Tue, 03/10/2020 - 10:54

Faculty

St. George

Connaught Innovation Award

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Department of Materials Science & Engineering

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With inspiration often drawn from biological materials, such as plant leaves, fish scales and insect wings, Professor Benjamin Hatton and his team are interested in developing new materials with unique surfaces that can actively change their properties in response to stimuli.

Now, Professor Hatton of the department of materials science and engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering has received a Connaught Innovation Award for developing robotic grippers inspired by octopus suckers.

His fascination with the ability of an octopus to regulate the grip of its tentacles inspired the invention of smart pads that can be digitally controlled for dynamic adhesion. The researchers are able to move microscale surface features on the small pad to mimic the on-off adhesion of individual octopus suckers.

“We are hoping the smart ‘finger pads’ can help robotic grippers grasp more efficiently,” says Hatton. “Current gripper designs, such as prosthetic hands, have limited control at the material surface, which generally leads to objects slipping or being crushed.”

Hatton and his team plan to use these smart pads to increase sensitivity and dynamic control of robotic grippers. Connaught Innovation Award funding will allow his team to integrate their work into technological applications within industry, and on a larger scale.

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Professor Glenn Hibbard receives Connaught Innovation Award

lanthierj — Tue, 10 Mar 2020 14:41:07 +0000

Professor Glenn Hibbard receives Connaught Innovation Award

Research & Innovation

lanthierj Tue, 03/10/2020 - 10:41

Faculty

St. George

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Department of Materials Science & Engineering

Connaught Innovation Award

landscape

Professor Glenn Hibbard of the department of materials science and engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering has received a Connaught Innovation Award in recognition of his work inventing a sustainable industry material for the circular economy.

“We weren’t trying to make just the strongest material, or make it the most light-weight,” says Hibbard. “We wanted it to be the greenest structural material we could build, and so sustainability was a part of the design of our material right from the beginning.”

The Hibbard Group has invented a new melt-stretching technique to manufacture thermoplastic sandwich panels – a flexible three-layer material used in a range of industries, including automotive, aerospace, construction and shipping. The new product is called FLYCORE. It is lighter and fully recyclable, unlike current sandwich panels on the market, which are energy intensive to produce and destined for the landfill after one use.

“We simplified the development process from six steps to one and use just a single recyclable material to make the entire panel,” says Hibbard. “The panel can be crushed to collapse and then re-melted and re-stretched without any loss of performance.”

Commercial interest in FLYCORE is picking up in the multi-billion dollar sandwich panel market. Hibbard and his team will use the Connaught Innovation Award funding to transition from testing FLYCORE in the lab to getting it market-ready for interested industry partners.

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