Past Events

At the CGEN Forum, we will showcase some of the transformative research projects being carried out at the University of Toronto. More information »

Join Dean Cristina Amon and the U of T Engineering community to launch the academic year in our newest building, the Myhal Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship. Explore the Myhal Centre's state-of-the-art fabrication facilities, tech-enhanced auditorium and learning spaces, multidisciplinary research hubs, student club spaces — and spectacular campus and city views you won't want to miss. Registration is now open! Sign up, here.

Thinking about Graduate School? University of Toronto Engineering is proud to host a graduate studies fair and networking event! Meet with representatives from: University of Toronto University of Alberta University of British Columbia McGill University McMaster University Queen’s University University of Waterloo York University Ryerson University Please bring your Student ID for registration. Register, here.

Dean Cristina Amon and the Engineering Society invite all Engineering undergraduates to join in a discussion on topics of importance to students. This is your chance to ask questions and provide input for the Faculty’s continued improvement. Lunch provided. Registration not required.

Eric Mazur, Harvard University. Nanotechnology has enabled the development of nanostructured composite materials (metamaterials) with exotic optical properties not found in nature. In the most extreme case, we can create materials which support light waves that propagate with infinite phase velocity, corresponding to a refractive index of zero. This zero index can only be achieved by simultaneously controlling the electric and magnetic resonances of the nanostructure. We present an in-plane metamaterial design consisting of silicon pillar arrays, embedded within a polymer matrix and sandwiched between gold layers. Using an…

Discover how your U of T education can take you in directions you never expected. BizSkule and You’re Next Career Network are proud to present “Forge a New Path,” featuring an expert panel of Engineering alumni whose degrees opened the door to careers considered unconventional for an engineer. Learn from alumni who have found success in consulting, entrepreneurship, finance, law and medicine. Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to make important connections, network with fellow U of T alumni, and to…

SUSAN DUMAIS, Microsoft Traditionally web search engines returned the same results to everyone who asks the same question.  However, using a single ranking for everyone in every context at every point in time limits how well a search engine can do in providing relevant information.  In this talk I present a framework to quantify the “potential for personalization” which is used to characterize the extent to which different people have different intents for the same query.  I describe several examples of…

YOSSI LUZON, University of Toronto Appointment Booking (AB) processes are commonly employed for managing service systems such as law court rooms and hospital surgical units that have limited resources and high rates of demand. Since various service types are typically involved, as well as demand and service duration variability, these processes are highly complex to efficiently control. In practice, the platform through which the AB process is applied is the system ’appointment book’. Relying on modern data technologies, which offer a vast amount of data of past demand and system performance statistics, the objective of this research is to establish an effective Preplanned-Appointment-Book (PAB) design via mathematical programming methods. The PAB design must adhere to some…

RICHARD REINER Richard will talk about the experience of building a high-growth startup in Canada, drawing on the stories of half a dozen high-tech startups he has led, including companies now owned by Intel, Dell, and Trend.  Richard will talk about the (many) mistakes he made along the way, surviving the resulting near-death experiences, navigating through exits and life post-acquisition, and a few lessons learned. Dr. Richard Reiner is a serial entrepreneur and company builder, active as an executive, investor,…

Join us this month as Prof. Piero Triverio discusses about his mathematical models to understand and design complex electrical systems. The methods developed by his group have been applied to integrated circuits, meta surface antennas and power cables. In the final part of the talk, Prof. Triverio and his collaborator, Dr. Laura Jimenez Juan, will speak about their joint effort to develop mathematical models for blood flow in the human body, which can help physicians understand the root causes of cardiovascular diseases. Prof.…

JEAN GOTMAN, McGill University The EEG is commonly used to help diagnose epilepsy and to localize the region of the brain from which seizures are likely to originate. The spatial resolution of EEG is however not very high and the EEG cannot see deep in the brain because of the attenuation of the electrical field with distance. If the EEG is recorded during functional MRI scanning (fMRI), it is possible to study the metabolic changes caused by these epileptic discharges (increases…

WARREN POWELL, Princeton University The problem of making sequential decisions under uncertainty spans a wide range of applications that arise in science, engineering, business, transportation, energy, health and finance.  In contrast with deterministic optimization that enjoys a widely used canonical framework, the academic study of decisions under uncertainty is a fragmented field.  Communities working on these problems (broadly known as stochastic optimization) include operations research (stochastic programming, Markov decision processes, simulation optimization, decision analysis, bandit problems), computer science (reinforcement learning, bandit…

All U of T Engineering faculty, librarians and staff are welcome. This one hour lunch and learn session aims to introduce and help attendees explore fundamental concepts linked to equity, inclusion and diversity. Through presentation, case studies, and activities, attendees will leave with tips and techniques to apply in their lecture hall, courses, workplaces and advising appointments. RSVP today. Lunch provided. Galbraith Building, Room 202

VIVIENNE SZE, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Edge computing near the sensor is preferred over the cloud due to privacy and/or latency concerns for a wide range of applications including robotics/drones, self-driving cars, smart Internet of Things, and portable/wearable electronics.  However, at the sensor there are often stringent constraints on energy consumption and cost in addition to throughput and accuracy requirements. In this talk, we will describe how joint algorithm and hardware design can be used to reduce energy consumption while…

Join members of the Engineering Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Action Group for an open discussion and opportunity to share your thoughts about how the Faculty could create a community that is more welcoming and inclusive for all members.  RSVP today. All members of U of T Engineering are welcome. Lunch provided. Galbraith Building, Room 202

METIN SITTI, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems Soft functional active materials could enable physical intelligence for small-scale (from a few millimeters down to a few micrometers overall size) devices and robots by providing them unique capabilities, such as shape changing and programming, physical adaptation, safe interaction with their environment, and multi-functional and drastically diverse dynamics. In this talk, our recent activities on design, manufacturing, and control of new shape-programmable active soft matter and untethered soft robots at the milli/microscale are…

We invite all members of the U of T Engineering community to share their thoughts on how the Faculty could create a more welcoming and inclusive community for students, faculty, staff and alumni.  This month, we will be discussing the findings of Professor Donna Riley’s research in equity and inclusion in engineering education and practice. If you are interested in learning more about Professor Riley’s research, she will be facilitating a seminar at U of T Engineering on Jan. 23…

RANDY HERRMANN, University of Manitoba What over 30 years of experience has taught us about Indigenous learners in the STEM educational system. Public event. All are welcome. Randy Herrmann is the Director of the Engineering Access Program at the University of Manitoba.  Herrmann applied the skills he learned in university at a consulting engineering firm, but was soon working as the Technical Services Advisor for the Ogemawahj Tribal Council. He later became a Project Manager for the Rama First Nation, where…

Dr. Giuseppe Romano NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT romanog@mit.edu Date/TimeFebruary 6, 2019 / 12:00pm-1:00pm Location: Dean's Conference Room, BA 2001 44 St George Street, Toronto ON M5S 2E4 Abstract Despite Fourier’s law has been conceived almost two centuries ago, it is still valid in most scenarios. However, advances in fabricating nanostructured devices and thermal conductivity measurements have revealed that thermal diffusion theories fail at the nanoscales. In fact, when the characteristic length of a material becomes comparable…

JEFF SHAMMA, King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST) In cooperative multi-robot systems, there is a group of robots that seek to achieve a collective task as a team. Each individual robot makes decisions based on available local information as well as limited communications with neighboring robots. The challenge is to design local protocols that result in desired global outcomes. In contrast to a traditional centralized control paradigm, both measurements and decisions are distributed among multiple actors. This talk…

We invite you to our Faculty’s next “Open Discussion on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion” event, which is taking place Monday, February 25, 12-2pm in GB 202.  At these discussions we invite all U of T Engineering community members to share their thoughts on how the Faculty could create a more welcoming and inclusive environment. Since lunch is included, if you do plan to attend, please register here.  While this will be an open discussion, there will be a focus on…

Positive Space is excited to participate in this year’s Pink Shirt Day, which will take place on February 27, 2019. We hope to raise awareness and start conversations to help combat homophobia and transphobia and create positive, inclusive spaces at the University of Toronto. Positive Space is setting up a Booth in Sid Smith Lobby to commemorate Pink Shirt Day 2019!  Bring your friends, wear a pink shirt (if you have one), and tell us what Pink Shirt Day means to you…

Global Engineering Week presents: Hack the Globe! Join 150 bright, passionate students in leveraging open data to innovate solutions to Canada’s most pressing social challenges. Apply in teams of 4 or solo by Feb 10: https://geweek.com/hacktheglobe Unlike traditional hackathons, hackers will come together in teams of 4 and have two weeks to ideate and formulate a solution. March 2nd is Kickoff Day, where you will pair up with a mentor from the Boston Consulting Group and have an exclusive chance…

Artificial intelligence and advanced analytics are changing the way we live, the way businesses operate, and how the most complex problems in the world are tackled. Disease prevention, global refugee crisis mitigation, flood forecasting, marine protection, detecting diseased crops and fighting deforestation, are just a fraction of the applications of artificial intelligence in the developing world. Truly addressing these challenges will not only require the use of state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms and excellent data quality, but strong partnerships between the…

DUNCAN CALLAWAY, University of California, Berkeley As prices for solar photovoltaics and battery energy storage plummet, grids around the globe are undergoing tremendous changes.  How should we design and operate grids in the future in the presence of these technologies? This talk will cover some of my group’s recent efforts to answer this question.  First, I will focus on a new approach to decentralized network optimization – a variant of the primal-dual subgradient method – that can be used to…

EDWARD GUO, Columbia University Bone Bioengineering Laboratory is developing innovative technology in microstructural assessments, biomechanical modeling, multiscale and mechanobiological approaches in skeletal research.  Bone Bioengineering has both basic science and clinical significances in many medical fields, such as osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, or intervertebral disc degenerations.  I will highlight our development of a three-dimensional imaging analysis and modeling technique for trabecular bone microstructure, its applications in basic science research of bone mechanics, and clinical applications in osteoporosis and osteoarthritis.  In parallel to…

ADA S. Y. POON, Stanford University Miniaturized electronics, when placed inside the body, can wirelessly monitor and modulate internal activity and thus hold promise as a new class of treatments for disorders. The development of such bioelectronic medicines requires wireless interfaces that are tiny and operate deep in a complex electromagnetic environment. In this talk, I will describe a new method for electromagnetic energy transfer that exploits near-field interactions with biological tissue to wirelessly power tiny devices anywhere in the…

We invite you to our Faculty’s next “Open Discussion on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion” event, which is taking place Thursday, March 28, 12-2pm in GB 202.  At these discussions we invite all U of T Engineering community members to share their thoughts on how the Faculty could create a more welcoming and inclusive environment. Since lunch is included, if you do plan to attend, please register here. Drop-ins are welcome; if you are unable attend the full two hours, feel…

Engineering Science and Engineering Physics graduates are invited to the 19th Annual Engineering Science Dinner. Join fellow alumni, faculty members and students for a lively cocktail reception at 5:30 pm where student clubs will show off their newest creations, followed by a festive dinner at 7:00 pm in the beautiful Great Hall at Hart House--this year with a special entertainment! We are delighted to welcome EngSci alumnus Professor Donald Sadoway (7T2) as our keynote speaker. To learn more, visit the…

CARY YANG, Santa Clara University Continuous downward scaling in silicon integrated circuit technology into the sub-20 nm regime has created critical challenges in chip manufacturing, among them, reliability and performance of on-chip interconnects. Current interconnect materials, Cu and W, face increased reliability challenges in the nanoscale as a result of electromigration failures at high current densities. Materials such as nanocarbons, metal silicides, cobalt, ruthenium, and metallic nanowires are being considered as potential replacements for Cu and W. In particular, due…

From left: Jacqueline Fleisig, Cassandra Chanen and Zhengbang Zhou pose for a photo with the Naloxone kit that they created iduring the Praxis Design Fair at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario on April 13, 2018.Photo by Laura Pedersen/Engineering Strategic Communications Come out and see what our first year students have been up to! Praxis II is a Year 1 course that allows Engineering Science students to refine and apply their engineering, design, and communication skills. The students are…

KARON MACLEAN, University of British Columbia Today’s advances in tactile sensing and wearable, IOT and context-aware computing are spurring new ideas about  how to configure touch-centered interactions in terms of roles and utility, which in turn expose new technical and social design questions. But while haptic actuation, sensing and control are improving, incorporating them into a real-world design process is extremely difficult and poses a major obstacle to adoption into everyday technology. In this talk I’ll overview highlights chosen from of…