Features

Refugee initiative from U of T startup helps newcomers navigate Canada’s health-care system

sgupta — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 07:50:09 +0000

Refugee initiative from U of T startup helps newcomers navigate Canada’s health-care system sgupta Tue, 04/12/2016 - 03:50

Olivia Tomic

Author legacy

Olivia Tomic

Features

Startup

Health

Entrepreneurship

BBCIE

After living amid the Syrian refugee crisis in Turkey for a year after graduating from the University of Toronto, Nouhaila Chelkhaoui knew she wanted to help make a positive impact on the lives of newcomers.

Her return to Toronto gave her the opportunity to do just that, as she joined U of T startup iamsick’s newest initiative, which helps refugees navigate Canada’s complex healthcare system.

iamsick is a digital health platform that focuses on providing people with access to healthcare services. Whether it’s a doctor accepting new patients, a walk-in-clinic that’s open late, a pharmacy, a diagnostic lab or nearby emergency room, iamsick shows users their nearest healthcare option anytime, Canada-wide.

Read about the U of T medical community's efforts to support refugees

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To address this, in addition to building new features to help newcomers, iamsick has been working closely with a number of local partners to maximize their impact by sharing resources and information on multiple levels – from government to grassroots organizations.

“A main component of iamsick’s refugee initiative is its partners,” said Ryan Doherty, co-founder of iamsick. “Our partners not only make us stronger and help us spread the word, but they offer feedback and suggestions as experts in refugee settlement work.”

WelcomeHomeTO, an initiative spearheaded by U of T alumna Derakhshan Qurban-Ali together with a team of engaged citizens, is among the partners collaborating with iamsick.

“Working with WelcomeHomeTO has been meaningful for me particularly,” said Chelkhaoui (pictured below at right with Doherty).

“Derakhshan comes from a family who were Afghan refugees,” Chelkhaoui said, “and myself being an international student from Morocco, I believe this kind of partnership represents the student body from a newcomer background and we hope it serves to inspire and empower students from all backgrounds to go after their dreams to make an impact.”

iamsick is also working with Toronto Local Immigration Partnerships (LIPs), regional umbrella offices for immigration efforts and organizations that are helping newcomers settle.

Through discussions with partners such as WelcomeHomeTO, and LIPs as well as the refugees themselves, iamsick also plans on expanding its search filters to include gender, mental health services, community health centres and even Interim Federal Health Program providers for those who are not covered by Ontario’s health insurance program.

“The important thing to think about is continuation,” explained Doherty. “There’s a strong focus on supporting refugees when they arrive, but after a number of months they will be settling into their new homes and may begin to experience challenges navigating their new environment. Having a website and app like this, which focuses on language barriers and showing what’s available, is extremely useful to them as it is to any Canadian trying to navigate our complex healthcare system.”

While the initiative was inspired by the newly arriving Syrian refugees, iamsick has identified healthcare professionals across Canada who speak more than 80 languages, in a bid to make the platform friendly to refugees, newcomers and Canadians alike.

iamsick is based in U of T’s Best Institute and has received startup support from the Impact Centre, one of the university’s nine campus-linked accelerators. To learn more about entrepreneurship at U of T visit the Banting & Best Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship.

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Your chance to see – and give feedback on – the future of U of T's downtown Toronto campus

sgupta — Fri, 08 Apr 2016 06:01:54 +0000

Your chance to see – and give feedback on – the future of U of T's downtown Toronto campus sgupta Fri, 04/08/2016 - 02:01

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Is this still the vision for King's College Circle? You can see updates at the open house April 12 at Hart House (all images courtesy: KPMB Architects and Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates)

Arthur Kaptainis

Author legacy

Arthur Kaptainis

Topic

Subheadline

All members of the public can view updated design proposals, see presentations at open house April 12

KPMB Architects, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) and Urban Strategies – tasked with restoring and beautifying the central spaces of the University of Toronto's St. George campus – have revised their master plan.

The consortium won the Landscape of Landmark Quality competition in December based on preliminary designs shared with the public last fall.

Find out more about Landmark

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Earth Sciences undergrads get field work insights in Spain

sgupta — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 14:00:19 +0000

Earth Sciences undergrads get field work insights in Spain sgupta Wed, 04/06/2016 - 10:00

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Students Holly Kuzmyn and Adam Brudner at a quartzite quarry near Marbella, Spain (all photos by Benjamin Moulton)

Peter McMahon

Author legacy

Peter McMahon

Global

Undergraduate Education

Faculty of Arts & Science

International

Features

“We can talk about all these tectonic events and floods, but until you see it for yourself, you can’t make all the interpretations you need to,” says University of Toronto Earth Sciences PhD student Benjamin Moulton.

He's trying to convey the impact of a hands-on field trip to Spain with second and fourth year undergraduates.In February, Moulton, U of T Earth Sciences professor Grant Henderson and Masters candidate Cheyenne Sica led 20 students on a rockhound’s dream.They explored the waters of the Rio Tinto (Red River) in Andalusia, the multi-layered Ronda Peridotite, the soaring cliffs of Gibraltar, and the breathtaking beauty of the Alhambra UNESCO World Heritage Site (pictured below).

First stop was an open pit along the Rio Tinto, an area that’s been mined for more than 2,000 years for copper, iron, manganese, gold and silver.

“The whole area was spectacular,” says Moulton. “Students got to see Roman-age slag — the melted glass-like by-product left behind after gold was extracted — directly beside a modern open pit.”

Acid mine drainage from heavy metal concentration and the acidity of the rock in the area has turned the waters of the Rio Tinto river blood red.

“This mining area has been an environmental disaster for some time,” says Moulton. “Part of the problem is man-made from centuries of mining activity. But another part is the rocks themselves. They’re particularly acidic; the water pH is about 2, which means that only extremophiles live in it.”

The Rio Tinto mine closed in 2001, but the EMED Tartessus mining company started a project using the previous company’s open pit, which needed to meet modern standards for environmental impact and reclamation.

“That was a big part of what made the trip so fascinating,” says Moulton. “It was an impressive show of a modern mine carrying out its environmental responsibilities to the highest degree and one of the best communication connections to the community I’ve ever seen. It really helped give context and honesty to the students’ conversations around the impact of the mine.”

Day two brought the exploration of the Ronda Peridotite, a slice of the Earth’s mantle that has protruded into a massif under a thin layer of crust in a series of tectonic events.

Younger than other similar peridotites around the world, the Ronda Peridotite has three distinct levels of structure that allow study of the mechanical behaviour of the mantle during mountain formation.

“It just has great exposure, from what’s above it to what’s underneath the full peridotite sequence, which is so rare,” says Moulton.

“You can see what your textbook says you’re supposed to see, right in front of you, standing in the field. It’s an amazing cross section of the continental crust.”

After touring the Alhambra UNESCO World Heritage site, an Islamic palace (rumoured to be the place where Christopher Columbus got the nod from Isabella and Ferdinand to start his voyage of discovery) on day three, the students toured the famed limestone promontory of Gibraltar on day four to learn the geologic history of the Mediterranean.

In an arid environment with a high rate of evaporation, the Mediterranean dried up during the Messinian salinity crisis.

“Then about 5.3 million years ago, the Zanclean flood caused water from the Atlantic Ocean to fill the Mediterranean Sea through the Gibraltar Strait,” says Moulton.

“Estimates are that the flood had a volume three orders of magnitude (or a thousand times) more than the discharge of the Amazon River.”

For their final day in the field, students returned to the Ronda Peridotite, with fourth years showing second years how to take measurements in the field and evaluate rocks in different contexts, including their economic potential and scientific interest.

The day was the culmination of a trip that solidified several students’ academic plans, with several mentioning that they learned more in these five days than they did in the previous semester.

“For most students thinking of going into geology, this was their first opportunity to be in the field,” says Moulton. “When they get out here, some people find it’s not for them, others love it.”

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Student Voice Project provides safe space for mental health awareness and discussion

sgupta — Tue, 05 Apr 2016 13:53:22 +0000

Student Voice Project provides safe space for mental health awareness and discussion sgupta Tue, 04/05/2016 - 09:53

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Untitled", a painting by Priscilla Zheyue, was part of the Student Voice Project showcase

Arthur Kaptainis

Author legacy

Arthur Kaptainis

Picture about 70 students in the Wilson Lounge of New College. Some are tapping at their laptops. Some are chatting with friends. Many are there to participate in the Student Voice Project Showcase.

“Student Voice Project is for everyone,” says Jill Charnaw-Burger, ‎associate director of student life and leadership at New College and the facilitator of this three-year-old program dedicated to undergraduate mental health and awareness.

“We look at things on a wellness continuum. Students find themselves at all points on that continuum.”

SVP takes place at a quiet time at the University of Toronto: reading week in February. On three consecutive days the participants address two critical questions: What is my story? What am I here to advocate for?

Answers arise through group discussion but other means as well. Some participants create zines, self-published folded folios brimming with words, pictures and creative montages. Some voice their thoughts and feelings through spontaneous, spoken poetry.

Many use the medium of painting. Several examples were on display in the Student Voice Project Showcase, a retrospective gathering. Most were abstract but sunlight, shadows, flowers and expressively contoured human figures were often discernable.

Question, a painting by Freya Gandhi from U of T Mississauga, places a bold question mark in the middle of a flurry of colours.

“Colours meshed together signify how people who are not mentally well tend to feel,” reads her accompanying inscription. “They feel many emotions at once and are often confused as to how to interpret them.

“They feel invalidated and this painting is dedicated to them. It’s okay to be confused and it’s okay to feel many emotions at once.”

Five students from New College spoke at the Showcase about their positive Student Voice Project experience.

Madeline Peters (above) is a third-year student and third-time participant who remarked on the upward trajectory of her experience. “The first year reminded me that I had a lot of work to do,” she said. “I opened my eyes. The second year, I was going to do my zine and it would be about how I overcame so much. I started writing and thought, ‘Oh, this is actually not resolved.’

“It was resolved this year and I was in a much better place. It was special to be able to come back and see the progress I have made and put that into art.”

“SVP is really close to my heart,” said Ola Skudlarska, a fourth-year student. “Finding a genuine space where students can open up about things, a space to be a little messy, is something many try to accomplish but not so many succeed.

“There is something to be said for the kind of community we created in three days.”

SVP started in 2014 with 14 participants. Almost 40 enrolled last year. Enrolment this February was close to 60.

“Some students come to campus with a diagnosis and are looking for additional support and ways to find a community,” Charnaw-Burger says. “Some get a diagnosis while being a student here.”

Others have a family member or loved one who is touched by mental illness. The object of SVP is to provide a safe space for anyone who wants talk about what it means to be well and feel well.

Second-year student Arman Sadrzadeh emphasized the fight against stigma. Sarah Wong was impressed by the point made by a poetry coach: “Don’t dull your story with doubt.”

A growing success, the Student Voice Project is now on the verge of expanding. “As we have reached a near-maximum capacity for our February reading week program, we are now exploring other ways and times of year where we might be able to offer the initiative,” Charnaw-Burger said.

“We do not have anything confirmed at this point, but we have heard from students that they want more opportunities like this.”

The New College initiative, which is open to all U of T students, is one of many on all three campuses devoted to mental health and health awareness.

Mental health support at Trinity College got a boost in December with a $1.5 million donation by alumna Dr. Anne Steacy. The Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education has launched the Mental Health and Physical Activity Research Centre (MPARC), which is dedicated to the promotion of mental health through exercise. At the University of Toronto Scarborough the Flourish program encourages students to use their “signature strengths” to overcome adversity. Across all campuses, Exam Jam sessions offer the chance to create art, plant flowers, play with friendly dogs and more.

Ruffling feathers and challenging consensus: Humanitarianism under the microscope at U of T

sgupta — Tue, 05 Apr 2016 09:43:51 +0000

Ruffling feathers and challenging consensus: Humanitarianism under the microscope at U of T sgupta Tue, 04/05/2016 - 05:43

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A mother and child cross the border as they flee the Syrian civil war (Photo by UNHCR via flickr)

Terry Lavender

Author legacy

Terry Lavender

Topic

Global Lens

Features

Students

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Global

People interested in learning about and debating humanitarianism had a choice of events at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs earlier this year.

In one part of the building, students from the Trudeau Centre for Peace, Conflict and Justice were staging a two-day conference called “Humanitarianism Exposed: Non-governmental and private sector perspectives on aid and development.” Down the hall, other U of T scholars were holding a symposium called “Crisis and the Humanitarian Present: Thinking through the 2015 Nepal earthquake.”

And if you weren’t able to attend either of the Munk events, there’s always the upcoming World Humanitarian Summit being held in Istanbul next month. The first of its kind, the summit was organized by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon “to propose solutions to our most pressing challenges and set an agenda to keep humanitarian action fit for the future,” according to the summit website.

Humanitarianism is in the news – and on conference agendas – these days, partly because of the Syrian crisis. But humanitarianism is not a new concern for the world community, said Wendy Wong, director of the University of Toronto’s Trudeau Centre for Peace, Conflict and Justice. “If we look back in history, we’ve had lots of humanitarian crises. So is this any more important than Ethiopia in the 1980s or Biafra before that?”

According to Wong, the difference is that the world has more access to information about Syria than it did about Ethiopia or Biafra. Also, she said, the world has come to realize that humanitarianism requires more than just a short-term response. “We’ve reached a point in the 21st century where it’s very clear that a lot of these conflicts are protracted. They’re not just humanitarian crises in the conflict sense, but in other ways as well, such as development, and access to essential things like food, water, shelter and medical attention.”

Conference organizers Bushra Nassab, Jahaan Pittalwala and Brian Malczyk were pleased with the event. “A lot of academic conferences have the idea that you should come away with the lowest common denominator, with everybody happy and satisfied,” Pittalwala told U of T News. “We wanted to challenge that.

"We thought people weren’t having the conversation that we think they should be having, so we pushed the speakers to talk about things that they wouldn’t necessarily mention if they were reaching for consensus. And that led to a lot of side conversations and a lot of ruffled feathers, which was exactly what we wanted.”

Pittalwala said world humanitarianism has a lot of functional problems that aren’t being talked about. For example, an appropriate humanitarian response in one part of the world might not work elsewhere.

The need to be aware of local circumstances was also discussed at the symposium on humanitarianism and Nepal. Symposium organizer Katharine Rankin, a U of T geography professor and interim director of the Centre for South Asian Studies, said the humanitarian crisis in Nepal resulted because the earthquakes occurred at a time of political turmoil. “Seismic instabilities and political instabilities compounded one another. It underscores the relationship between political and natural elements,” she said.

The earthquakes killed thousands and left many more homeless, Rankin said. The world responded with aid – food, medicine, construction materials and other resources, as well as volunteers. But, Cornell University professor Kathryn March told the symposium, often that aid was either ineffective or misdirected. Some hard-hit regions received less assistance than less affected areas and the aid was often inadequate or inappropriate. Part of the blame lay with Nepalese politicians and bureaucrats, she said, but logistical factors and long-standing ethnic tensions also played a part.

(Visit flickr to see the original of the refugee photo used at top)

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Poverty can both hinder and stimulate entrepreneurial creativity, says U of T prof

sgupta — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 10:44:12 +0000

Poverty can both hinder and stimulate entrepreneurial creativity, says U of T prof sgupta Fri, 04/01/2016 - 06:44

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poverty can help stimulate entrepreneurial creativity, but also hinder it (photo by World Bank via flickr)

Terry Lavender

Author legacy

Terry Lavender

Topic

Breaking Research

Features

Rotman School of Management

Does poverty hinder or encourage market creativity? That’s the question Laura Doering, an assistant professor at U of T’s Rotman School of Business, set out to answer when she travelled to Panama to interview poor entrepreneurs.

Doering’s research was recently written up in the Sunday New York Times and will soon be published in the journal Sociology of Development. In the paper she writes that entrepreneurs are both catalyzed and constrained by conditions of poverty. Ultimately, poverty limits entrepreneurs’ capacity to profit from the creativity they bring to the marketplace, Doering concludes. She discussed her findings with U of T News recently.

How did you get interested in the relationship between poverty and entrepreneurship?

Before I went to graduate school to study sociology, I worked in international development, mostly in Latin America, and so that got me interested in the effects that development programs were having on poverty. I became curious because often they weren’t effective or the effects were different from what was intended. I was originally interested in how relationships between loan officers and their clients shaped microfinance outcomes. So it was through the lens of microfinance that I became interested in poverty and entrepreneurship. I realized that a big part of what I was interested in was the way that business and entrepreneurship could potentially be a tool for fighting inequality and so I did up an additional degree in business. That’s the long story of how it all connects.

What were your conclusions regarding poverty and entrepreneurial creativity?

At first, poverty is something that helped people in Panama to overcome the barriers to creativity. Creativity is always in some ways more difficult than replication of existing business ideas. What I found was that individuals were migrating quite a bit for work and education and through that they gained access to lots of different ideas and were talking with people who had migrated. That migration helped or facilitated the creative process. Later on, conditions of poverty made it very difficult to sustain those creative ventures.

You went to Panama to interview people for your study. Did you encounter any practical difficulties doing your research?

There were a lot of challenges. I interviewed 41 low income entrepreneurs for the Sociology of Development article, as well as many higher income individuals for another study, so it was difficult logistically coordinating hour-long interviews with almost 100 people, especially since a lot of my interviewees were in rural areas. So I would take a bus out to this far-flung community and it would be pouring rain and I would get there and the person would say, “Oh I’m sorry, I forgot about this interview today, can we reschedule?,” and so there was a lot of time often lost in those transactions.

Is Panama representative of other Latin American countries with regards to poverty and entrepreneurship?

The rates of entrepreneurship among low income populations in Panama are quite representative and so in that sense it’s very similar to other countries in the region. I think it’s also different in some ways, in part because much of the Latin American financial sector is located in Panama City. Panama is also one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America. I think what that does is facilitate migration processes because you have lots of people from rural areas who are spending some time in Panama City where there are lots of opportunities and then going back to their home communities. In that way it fuels this import-export of ideas. What’s unique to this study that you might not see in other places is how much people are moving around.

In your article you suggest governments use business incubators and cash grants to help poor entrepreneurs. Are there other ways these people can be helped?

The idea for incubators and cash grants is very much aimed at helping people to develop their creative ideas and to keep those creative businesses alive. In my opinion, that would be the best way of developing novel businesses, but that said, there are lots of ways to support micro-entrepreneurs that don’t involve cash grants and incubators. For example, some short-term training programs have been shown to be quite effective, especially among people who are extremely poor and even more effective when used in combination with cash grants.

Are you doing any follow-up research?

Not at the moment, although I’ve been in touch with a few organizations interested in implementing and testing these ideas. Right now I’m looking at a public housing complex in Colombia, where people have been randomly assigned to housing. My colleague and I are looking at how an individual’s location in the housing project affects whether or not they start a microenterprise and how much they earn from their business.

What has the reaction been to the New York Times article?

Many organizations that work with micro-entrepreneurs have reached out to me to ask for advice, asking for suggestions for ways they might integrate a cash grant incubator system. I’ve also heard from a few organizations who say that they run incubators and trainings, but that they don’t target entrepreneurs who have novel businesses. It seems that there’s a possibility in the future for potentially collaborating with organizations that are working on the ground on these issues. So that was a pleasant surprise that came from this, how many organizations reached out to me.

Have you gone back to see how the people you interviewed in Panama are doing now?

I haven’t been able to follow up with everyone, but I went back a few times during the course of the research to see how people were doing. Often the updates are disheartening. A lot of the time people have abandoned their businesses or something really bad has happened in their family and they’ve had to move. But one of my interviewees won a major award for micro-entrepreneurs and that really launched her onto the national scene. She got lots of attention and received lots of capital. So that was really exciting.

(Visit flickr to see the original of the photo at the top)

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Revolution in medicine part 2: U of T students

sgupta — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 08:47:40 +0000

Revolution in medicine part 2: U of T students sgupta Fri, 04/01/2016 - 04:47

Carolyn Morris

Author legacy

Carolyn Morris

Artificial Intelligence

Imagine you’re one of the 50,000 people in Ontario addicted to opioids. You have a panic attack in the middle of the night. You may live in a remote area with little access to counselling services — but even if you have regular access to a therapist, no one’s around at that moment to talk you through it.

Instead of reaching for pills, though, you turn to the support of your “pocket counsellor,” right on your smartphone. This virtual counsellor will have an actual conversation with you — asking questions, and “listening” to your responses.

“It asks intelligent questions depending on your answers just as any human would do in a real conversation,” says Dr. Raad Yameen, a recent medical school graduate and master’s student in the Faculty of Medicine’s new Translational Research Program. Yameen is one of three U of T students in medicine and engineering working on the artificial intelligence counselling app through their startup dubbed Project MIToc. By recognizing “change talk” — any expression like “I really need to,” “I should,” “I have to do something” — the app can pick up on that and even remind you of some of the reasons you’d given in the past for wanting to stop using.

Yameen and his team now have $5,000 to help develop their idea further. They were one of a selected group of young innovators gathered at U of T this week to pitch their ideas as part of the HealthEDGE initiative, led by U of T-based accelerators in medicine, engineering and computer science. With a panel of judges including entrepreneurs and industry leaders in health — and six fellowships of $5,000 each for the top ideas — it was akin to a “Dragons’ Den” competition for health care.

“We want to help get these creative ideas for improving health care off the ground,” says Professor Joseph Ferenbok, co-director of the Health Innovation Hub (H2i), the Faculty of Medicine’s accelerator. “We started the year-long initiative with an open call for people to submit challenges, ingenuity gaps, or ‘bugs’ in the health care system. Then we invited students and other innovators to find solutions.”

Yameen, along with Project MIToc co-founders — software engineers and computer engineering master’s students Didier Landry and Dustin Kut Moy Cheung — hope their theory-driven, evidence-based and patient-centric technology will lead to better support for addicts, and cost-savings to the health system.

Other winning ideas included a tool for the early detection of diabetes-related vision loss dubbed “iProbe,” which allows psychiatrists to monitor patients with schizophrenia for worsening symptoms based on their social media and other online communications; a personalized drug profiling technology for patients with cystic fibrosis and other conditions serving as a personalized “clinical trial in a dish”; a mobile video health program that would connect rural youth with mental-health support; and a robotic rehabilitative exoskeleton for kids with cerebral palsy. The iProbe project also won the community choice award.

With iSchool entrepreneurship instructor and HealthEDGE 2016 coordinator Adriana Ieraci moderating the event, the judges challenged each presenter with questions on feasibility, privacy concerns, pricing and competitors. Leading up to the event, mentors from H2i, The Entrepreneurship Hatchery and the Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab (DCSIL) coached the teams and helped them refine their pitches.

But the work doesn’t end here. A central goal of the HealthEDGE initiative is to help turn these ideas into reality. With the fellowship money, along with a network of contacts and potential backers through community, health care and industry partners — including the University Health Network, Rouge Valley Health System Foundation, Johnson & Johnson Innovation (JLABS), Autodesk and IBM — the winning innovators are given resources to put their smart solutions to work. They’ll be presenting their proofs of concept at a HealthEDGE demo day in the fall.

Winning Projects:

ReX: a robotic exoskeleton suit to help children with cerebral palsy learn to walk
VideoHealth: a new mobile way to connect rural youth with little access to mental health care to urban mental health providers, including psychiatrists using asynchronous video communication.
Project MIToc: a mobile solution for motivational counseling and commitment enhancement for people suffering from opioid addiction.
XVIVOS Biosciences: a high-throughput, personalized drug profiling technology for patients with certain rare & neglected diseases
Project Nash: a modular tool that allows psychiatrists to collect feedback from members of a patient's support network, as well as automatically analyze patient's audio logs and social media for inconsistencies that could be a warning sign of relapse
iProbe: a sensing device for pre-symptomatic ocular disease detection

Judges:

Professor Paul Santerre, Co-Director, Health Innovation Hub
Andris Lauris, Mentor-in-Residence, Health Innovation Hub
Merry Wang, Senior Research Scientist, Autodesk
Gail Garland, President and CEO, Ontario Bioscience Innovation Organization (OBio)
Jonathan Rezek, Business Development, IBM Canada
Kendra Delicaet, Managing Director, OpenLab, TGH
Katherine Schwenger, Co-Chair, Institute of Medical Science Students Association (IMSSA)

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Q & A with President Meric Gertler on U of T's 14-point plan, Beyond Divestment

sgupta — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 11:05:12 +0000

Q & A with President Meric Gertler on U of T's 14-point plan, Beyond Divestment sgupta Wed, 03/30/2016 - 07:05

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The University of Toronto Asset Management Corporation will “systematically search for those firms that are best-in-class when it comes to their environmental, social and governance practices,” President Gertler says

Elizabeth Church

Author legacy

Elizabeth Church

Subheadline

“The University of Toronto must go beyond an approach based on the blunt tool of divesting from fossil fuel companies”

Universities have a crucial role to play in helping to meet the global challenge of climate change, says University of Toronto President Meric Gertler – and as a publicly supported academic institution, U of T has a responsibility to take decisive action.

Gertler outlined his vision for that role in Beyond Divestment: Taking Decisive Action on Climate Change, U of T's 14-point plan to address climate change released March 30.

Beyond Divestment is a response to the President’s Advisory Committee on Divestment from Fossil Fuels which, last December, recommended that the University adopt a strategy of targeted and principled divestment as well as a number of initiatives in the broader field of sustainability.

Gertler says U of T’s financial investments must take into account environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors – including climate-related risks – when appraising long-term performance. In addition, he stresses the University needs to take a leadership role in research, teaching and its own use of resources to respond to what has become the most pressing environmental issue of our generation.

Listen to the president on CBC Radio's As it Happens

The president also discussed his response to the advisory committee’s report with U of T News, and shared his vision for the University’s role to address climate change.

What is Beyond Divestment recommending?
I believe it is important that the University of Toronto takes real action to meet the global challenge of climate change. One of the ways we can do this is by making a commitment to responsible investing. But we can do much more than that.

I am calling for the University of Toronto Asset Management Corporation to revise U of T’s investment strategy to include a systematic consideration of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors. There is a growing consensus in the investment industry that prudent managers can best uphold their fiduciary responsibility to the beneficiaries of trusts such as pension funds and endowments by taking climate-related risks and opportunities, as well as a broader range of ESG factors into consideration when they appraise the long-term performance of individual investments. The ESG approach I am asking UTAM to adopt would apply not only to the assessment of our direct investments in fossil-fuel producing firms, but also to U of T’s direct investments in fossil-fuel consuming firms. Moreover, over time, it could also apply to our indirect investments – that is, those investments we make through pooled and indexed funds.

Further, we will launch a series of special funding programs and initiatives that enable our scientists, scholars and graduate and undergraduate students to pursue environment- and energy-related research, education and industrial partnerships and educational programs. Finally, as a large operation, we already have a stellar record on all three of our campuses in reducing energy and water use and our carbon footprint. In fact, U of T earned a Canada’s Greenest Employer designation in 2015. The actions I’ve outlined in my response ensure we will continue to perform even better.

Universities are relatively small players in the investing world but the University of Toronto is a leader in research and teaching – and it’s there where we can have a tremendous impact. I want to make sure we are supporting the efforts of faculty and students, and we are walking the talk on our own campuses by taking action to reduce our carbon footprint.

Is the University of Toronto divesting from fossil fuels?
The committee indicated that a blanket divestment strategy would be unprincipled and inappropriate, and I agree with them. The challenge with fossil fuels divestment is that it only addresses – at most – one-quarter of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions, and ignores those activities such as transportation, manufacturing, construction and buildings that collectively generate the bulk of our emissions. If we’re serious about addressing climate change, we need a strategy that alters behaviour and encourages more progressive practices across the entire economy and society.

The committee recommended a targeted and dynamic approach to guide the university’s investment decisions. It advocated a firm-by-firm (targeted) approach, instead of a blanket approach that classifies an entire sector as off-limits. It singled out a subset of the fossil fuels sector that it judged to be particularly unhelpful in supporting our collective effort to abide by the 1.5 degree C threshold enshrined in the Paris Agreement. It singled out some individual companies by name. But it also advised that, if such a company were to change its practices significantly in a way that helps us achieve the Paris Agreement goals, it should be considered eligible for investment. This is what I mean by a dynamic approach.

U of T does not hold direct investments in the companies that the committee singled out in its recommendations. As UTAM moves to adopt an investment strategy guided by ESG factors, its investment managers will systematically search for those firms that are best-in-class when it comes to their environmental, social and governance practices. This would likely include fossil fuel producing firms as well as those firms that consume fossil fuels. I believe that, over time, as this active, ESG factor-based investment strategy is employed, the results in terms of the investments held by the university will be consistent with the essence of the committee’s recommendation.

This ESG approach could ultimately apply not only to the assessment of direct investments, but also to U of T’s indirect investments, through pooled and indexed funds. We will look to the experts and international standards to guide us as we incorporate ESG factors into our investing.

The University of Toronto must go beyond an approach based on the blunt tool of divesting from fossil fuel companies. We have a crucial and unique role to play in helping to meet the challenge of climate change. As a publicly supported academic institution, we feel a strong sense of social responsibility to take action.

Why is the University of Toronto not divesting from the companies recommended by the committee?
The University does not have any direct investments in the companies the committee named for immediate divestment.

In regard to our other direct holdings, I am asking the University of Toronto Asset Management Corporation, which manages our pension and endowment, to develop a set of principles by July 1 to guide investments in a way that takes environmental, social and governance factors into consideration.

What will happen to the committee’s recommendations?
First I want to thank the committee for their dedication to this work, and for offering thoroughly researched and thoughtful recommendations. I’ve also been impressed with the work of the student representatives of Toronto350, and with their ongoing engagement and collegiality. They’ve really represented U of T with integrity, and they are both to be commended for advancing discussion and action in a constructive way.

I gave the committee’s recommendations serious consideration and my response very much embraces the spirit of those recommendations. I believe the actions I’ve outlined reflect an even broader and more impactful approach to the question of investment and fossil fuels.

What happens next?
I am asking UTAM to take a number of actions:

develop principles by July 1 that will enable consideration of ESG factors in undertaking direct investments;
make the University of Toronto among the first Canadian universities to become a signatory to the Carbon Disclosure Project.
evaluate signing the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment Initiative;
determine ways in which it can vote proactively and deliberately on shareholder resolutions aimed at reducing climate-related risk for firms in which they are directly invested;
evaluate signing the Montreal Carbon Pledge, which commits investors to measuring and publicly disclosing the carbon footprint of their investment portfolios every year; and,
report annually on its efforts to assess ESG factors in making investment decisions.

What will this mean to investment returns?
We have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize the investment returns of our pension funds and endowments, subject to acceptable levels of risk. A growing body of international evidence indicates that good investment returns can go hand and hand with being environmentally responsible: this is not an either/or proposition. We’re going to look to international standards as our guide to consider environment, social and governance factors – including climate-related risks and opportunities – as part of our investing strategy.

What are you doing beyond investments?
The University’s investments play a small part in the influence we can have on the global response to climate change. Our most effective contributions will come from our role in research and teaching. I’m recommending we take several actions, including more funding for climate change related research and education initiatives. Our campuses also should be a test bed for new technologies and a leader in adopting energy-saving and alternative energy technology.

I’m proposing a number of actions:

a tri-campus clean-tech challenge to encourage environment- and energy-related entrepreneurship;
$750,000 distributed over three years for climate-change related research and education initiatives;
prioritizing climate change-related themes in selected programs and curricula;
increasing the Utilities Reduction Revolving Fund by 50 percent, from $5 million to $7.5 million, to encourage more extensive implementation of energy-saving retrofits in our buildings;
formally adopting substantially more rigorous energy efficiency standards for capital projects;
pursuing opportunities to use U of T facilities for environmental and sustainability research;
investigating the potential of other renewable energy projects;
establishing a U of T committee on the environment, climate change and sustainability with a mandate to coordinate and advance U of T’s environmental research, innovation, education and energy consumption initiatives.

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Belgrade for Reading Week: U of T students’ research takes close look at refugee crisis

sgupta — Tue, 29 Mar 2016 15:28:06 +0000

Belgrade for Reading Week: U of T students’ research takes close look at refugee crisis sgupta Tue, 03/29/2016 - 11:28

Cutline

“One of our professors always says that geography is destiny,” says Jelena Djuric, pictured on the left with Silviu Kondan. All photos courtesy of Jelena Djuric.

Elaine Smith

Author legacy

Elaine Smith

Features

Subheadline

Students use Dean’s Student Initiatives Fund to research refugees and migrants transit zones in Serbia

While many of their fellow University of Toronto students hit the books during Reading Week, Jelena Djuric and Silviu Kondan hit the streets of Belgrade instead.

Djuric and Kondan, fourth-year students in peace, conflict and justice studies, spent ten days in Serbia learning about how various government agencies, grassroots organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are working together and handling the migrants and refugees streaming through the country en route to Western Europe. Their research project was funded by the Dean’s Student Initiatives Fund in the Faculty of Arts & Science and overseen by Professor Christina Kramer of slavic languages and literatures.

“One of our professors always says that geography is destiny,” Djuric said. “This part of the world is between Western Europe and the Middle East, and we learned how they manage masses of people in a transit zone.”

The two undergraduates banded together to write a research proposal after Djuric saw a Facebook post by Kondan looking for others interested in doing first-hand research during Reading Week. Both students have Serbian roots – Djuric’s parents emigrated from Serbia to Canada, while Kondan was born in Serbia to Romanian parents – so an interest in the region came naturally to them.

Excited by the possibilities, they submitted their proposal and began planning their project immediately. They did a number of interviews with local NGO representatives and set up a schedule of interviews in Belgrade with representatives of the organizations working directly with migrants.

Before leaving for Belgrade, the pair also organized an online fundraising effort so they could help the refugees whose plight they were studying.

“We didn’t want to pursue our research empty-handed,” said Kondan. “We donated the money we raised to the Asylum Information Centre in Belgrade, where it was used to buy necessary food and clothing.”

Once in Belgrade, they found the situation for refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq and elsewhere was changing daily.

“Serbia is a transit zone and people were supposed to continue on from there, but because of constantly changing policies people were getting stuck in legal limbo,” Kondan said.

Djuric said the staff from aid organizations were coping with shifting circumstances as best they could. “We heard a lot of the same narrative from different organizations,” she said. “There was a domino effect. If something happened in Germany, it would affect Austria, then Central Europe, then Eastern Europe, then Turkey – or the other way around.

“A couple of days before we returned to Canada, there were intensive Russian airstrikes in Syria, so people began fleeing to Turkey. The humanitarian organizations work in a very hectic environment and they are always developing a variety of contingency plans. They need to work quickly and be responsive when they find out that three boats of refugees just landed in Greece and will be heading their way.”

Communication about the latest developments happened so quickly that official channels couldn’t keep up. Workers used text messages and apps to keep each other informed of changes.

“During the middle of one of our interviews, the woman we were meeting got a text telling her one of the borders had just closed,” Djuric said. “Nothing official was sent. She heard it from one of her colleagues.

“The grassroots organizations said the crisis is pushing their limits and capacity, but it is also bringing them new energy and skills and connections that will be helpful in the future.”

Both Djuric and Kondan said their university coursework was relevant to their research, but agreed that theoretical knowledge could only take them so far.

“We have a rich body of academic literature to consult, which is valuable, but what you see on the ground is how the work by individuals shapes the destinies of the migrants,” Djuric said.

The two students are finishing a paper about their experience, and they will be presenting it at the University of Pittsburgh’s Europe East and West Undergraduate Research Symposium, an opportunity they sought for themselves.

“This was an amazing opportunity to see how organizations work during a crisis as it is unfolding,” Djuric said. “We were exhausted by the end of each day, but we gained more than we lost.”

Elaine Smith is a writer with the Faculty of Arts and Science

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Biologist Belinda Chang’s lab offers insight on how animals see

sgupta — Tue, 29 Mar 2016 13:18:50 +0000

Biologist Belinda Chang’s lab offers insight on how animals see sgupta Tue, 03/29/2016 - 09:18

Cutline

The garter snake, whose habitat stretches from the central US to Central America, is active only in daylight and has previously been found to have only cones in its retinas. ©iStock.com | Dantesattic.

Sean Bettam

Author legacy

Sean Bettam

Features

Subheadline

“Being able to see well means the difference between catching your prey and going hungry.”

Humans sometimes describe eyes as the window to the soul, but for most animals, eyes are all about survival.

Evolutionary biologist Belinda Chang leads a lab that is devoted to understanding how animals see, and how their vision evolves and changes based on their need to adapt to the environment.

One area of particular focus for the lab is the visual pigments in the retina’s photoreceptor cells that absorb light and enable vision. The activation of a visual pigment is the first step in a chain of events that sends a signal to the brain that light, and therefore an image, has been perceived. When there is a change in the properties of visual pigments, it can have profound consequences on an animal’s ability to see and survive.

“Most animals, including humans, have two types of photoreceptor cells – rods and cones – in their retinas,” said Chang, an associate professor in the departments of ecology & evolutionary biology and cell & systems biology. “Rods contain a visual pigment called rhodopsin and are sensitive to dim light, while cones differ in their molecular machinery, including different opsins, that allow them to operate under bright conditions.

“This combination of visual pigments allows animals to see in both bright and dim conditions. However, there are unusual exceptions. In some animals, only one type is present.”

This is the case, for example, with the Western ribbon garter snake, the subject of a paper by Chang’s group published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This animal, whose habitat stretches from the central United States south to Central America, is active only in daylight and has previously been found to have only cones in its retinas.

Photo below, left to right: Associate Professor Belinda Chang; PhD students Sarah Dungan and Nihar Bhattacharya; and James Morrow, a postdoctoral fellow. Seated at computer: PhD student Ryan Schott. Photo by Diana Tyszko.

Chang’s group – which comprises a combination of undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral researchers – had been intrigued by a 70-year-old theory that through evolution, rods could transform into cones and vice versa in a process known as “transmutation.” They wondered if such a process led to the absence of rods in the snakes, hypothesizing that somewhere along the line they sacrificed their ability to see well in dim light in order to improve their daylight vision. Given that the origin of all-cone retinas in this particular snake was still a mystery, Chang decided to test that theory.

“At some point in its evolution, this garter snake lost two of four ancestral cones,” said Ryan Schott, a PhD candidate in Chang’s lab. “This likely happened during an early, possibly burrowing underground phase of snake evolution, long before they came to have all-cone retinas. Living in dim light, they would have been more reliant on rhodopsin found in their rod cells.”

Using a variety of experimental approaches, Chang and her team tested two competing hypotheses to determine what had happened to those rods when the snake later evolved into an above-ground creature. They found two surprising things. First, rhodopsin, which is only supposed to be found in rods, was indeed present in some of the snake’s cone cells. Second, those cone cells had structural features that were remarkably similar to those found in rods.

“The results suggest that they are not true cones, but are in fact modified rods.” said Nihar Bhattacharya, a PhD candidate in Chang’s lab.

But there was another twist: the modified cone-like rods may have enabled snakes to see colour in daylight, restoring a functionality that disappeared with the loss of some ancestral cones during an early burrowing phase.

Chang says the rare transformation has implications for how complex cellular types can arise in sensory systems.

“Physiological constraints imposed by historical losses can actually be shaped by selective forces to produce remarkable evolutionary benefits.”

Chang is known for being especially adept at recreating the ancestral genes of an animal. This enables her to get the picture of a genetic structure at a specific point in time and so better understand how evolutionary changes contribute to an animal’s overall fitness and survival.

The snake eyes study was only one in a series of successive advances by Chang and her colleagues in understanding the evolution of vision across the animal kingdom. In another study published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, the team described how the rhodopsin protein evolved in killer whales to improve their ability to see underwater in the predominantly blue-tinted light.

Sarah Dungan, another PhD candidate in Chang’s lab and lead author of the paper elaborates: “whales are particularly reliant on rhodopsin because light fades very quickly as they swim deeper. But the majority of light in the ocean is also blue, so for a diving animal, the fact that rhodopsin is extra-sensitive in the blue part of the spectrum enables the eyes to make the most of the scarce light.

“And being able to see well means the difference between catching your prey and going hungry.”

Sean Bettam is a writer with the Faculty of Arts & Science

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