Mahmoud Rashid 0:00 10 rapid fire questions with Dean Yip. Favorite novel? Chris Yip 0:03 Foundation series by Asimov. Mahmoud Rashid 0:05 Favorite movie? Chris Yip 0:06 Alien. Mahmoud Rashid 0:06 Text or call? Chris Yip 0:07 Text. Mahmoud Rashid 0:08 Favorite car maker? Chris Yip 0:09 Volvo. Mahmoud Rashid 0:10 Favorite band? Chris Yip 0:11 Rush. Mahmoud Rashid 0:12 Cats or dogs? Chris Yip 0:13 Dogs. Mahmoud Rashid 0:14 Handwriting or typing? Chris Yip 0:15 Handwriting. Mahmoud Rashid 0:15 Sweet or savory? Chris Yip 0:17 Savory. Mahmoud Rashid 0:17 Favorite motivational quote? Chris Yip 0:19 Be honestly curious. Chris Yip 0:20 Welcome to Tell me more: Coffee with Chris Yip, the official podcast of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering at the University of Toronto. Each month, I sit down with someone from our vibrant global community to talk about what places them at the heart of designing bold solutions for a better world. You'll meet alumni, students and professors who are making a difference across a range of fields, including some where you may not expect to find them. Mahmoud Rashid 0:54 All right, today we're doing something a little bit different on the podcast. We're turning the tables on Dean Yip. My name is Mahmoud Rashid, and I'm a third-year undergraduate student in the Department of Material Science & Engineering here at U of T and I'll be asking Dean Chris Yip a few questions to help us get to know him a little better through his journey through engineering and what he likes to do in his spare time. Mahmoud Rashid 1:15 Dean Yip, are you ready? Chris Yip 1:17 I'm all set. Looking forward to the conversation. Mahmoud Rashid 1:19 Awesome. So where did you grow up, and what first sparked your interest in chemical engineering? Chris Yip 1:27 So I'm a native Torontonian. Grew up here in Toronto, in North Toronto. I don't know what sparked my interest in engineering. I'm gonna say it was probably your grade, your high school chemistry teacher, one of which was an engineer. (Mahmoud: Okay.) Was a chem. eng, taught me grade 12 chemistry, and kind of got sparked the interest, it was just kind of fun. Mahmoud Rashid 1:50 Awesome. And what, what about it that you find interesting? Like, what inspired you like from...? Chris Yip 1:55 In the high school side, or just? Mahmoud Rashid 1:56 Yeah, from the teacher. Like, what did you see from that and that kind of, you know, had a driving force. Chris Yip 2:02 Driving force to go to do chem eng, or do? I think it was, it was his style. And actually, my grade 13 teacher, she was awesome as well. So it was a combination of the two, and just having fun teachers get you inspired about the course, about the material, you know, the classic, collect hydrogen in a test tube and then ignited in class, which you probably these days, you wouldn't do without safety equipment, but that sort of stuff, right? Having fun in class, not always about the tests, but just enjoying class, right? So I think that's really what was the driver. Mahmoud Rashid 2:33 I'm curious to know, if you weren't in engineering, what will be your second career, and why? Chris Yip 2:39 Oh, I was, I think it would still be in the sciences. It might be in the biological sciences, given what our lab does now, because I'm super intrigued. I kind of wish I had learned about this field when I was an undergrad, which may have skewed me if I did an undergrad, maybe I would switch to engineering now in my career (Mahmoud: Yeah.) but it might be in that sort of interface of sort of biology and physics in a sense, which is a pretty cool space, very engineering like. Mahmoud Rashid 3:08 I agree. Chris Yip 3:09 Yeah. Mahmoud Rashid 3:09 Definitely. Okay, so you did end up choosing engineering at U of T, (Chris: Yep.) So what were some of your favorite moments and like memories from your undergraduate experience? Chris Yip 3:20 Oh, I how long do we have to do this podcast? There are multiple moments I guess throughout undergrad. I would actually say, you know, some of the most memorable moments would probably be like that first day. Our orientation. The things you remember out of that, right? It's the community feel from the upper you know, the other students who welcomed you there, the chance to meet people that you never knew that are now in your frosh group, which is just amazing. I, you know, I'll pass on remembering the food poisoning I got, but which people thought I actually quit engineering because you were gone, like, three days later, and it didn't show up for another week. But what was interesting, I guess, frame about that you actually had met people for two or three days and you were in class and you didn't, these are people you just met, right? And then I got sick, and then I came back, and they were all like, "Where did you go? We thought you quit. And like, can we help you? Because you missed, you just missed, like, a week of class." And, like, I think that really sort of testament to kind of the community feel, that you develop almost instantaneously. And this is, don't forget, this was, you know, many decades ago and I think we see this now in the students coming in, right? It's really phenomenal. Mahmoud Rashid 4:33 I agree. And as you stated, like, orientation, frosh, always has that striking impact. You know, first impression matters and even I could definitely relate with orientation. Amazing community and I was like, I belong here. Chris Yip 4:46 Yeah, exactly. And then, so I'll bookend it. I'll give you the opposite end, which is still memorable, but it's at the opposite end of chem. So for those who are listening, if any alums in Chem, Eng, you know, we do this plan design project, and back then, you were assigned a project in September of your last year. You're just given an envelope, and here are your team members, and you don't get to pick, these are the people you're gonna work with on the project for the next 10-12 weeks and here's an envelope telling you what the project is. What I remember most about that was just the two teams, the eight people, working on similar projects but we got together on that last weekend, and we were at my friend, and I'm hoping Heiko will hear this. We're at my friend, Heiko's house in Etobicoke, (Mahmoud: Yeah.) and we basically took over his basement, and we spent the whole weekend working on the plan design project, the write up, everything. We moved stuff over everything. We basically took an entire basement of his house. His mom made us food. And I think what was amazing was we got the project done. We stopped in the middle of the afternoon, started playing football on the street, which is just a ton of fun. And then I remember, this was back in the day with an old printer, dot matrix printer, making a ton of noise, falling asleep next to the printer, while it's printing, waking up, looking into how it printed everything, and looking around the room, and there's just people fast asleep. We got the project done handed in, but that was like, that's ingrained as something you did with your classmates. So it was, it was fun. Mahmoud Rashid 6:20 So thank you for that. And like the you did join some clubs. Did you... Chris Yip 6:26 Actually know what? No, I didn't, to be honest, I didn't do I had a separate core things I did outside of U of T Engineering when I was undergrad. But what I did do during undergrad, the last couple years, I did do intramural, interdivisional, interfaculty water polo. So that was actually a ton of fun. You very quickly realized that engineering students playing like, not inner tube water polo, like actual water polo, you will not do well against students from KPE but it was a ton of fun. Again, same thing. You get to meet people from other disciplines, different years and it was, it was, that's, I had lots of good memories from that too. Mahmoud Rashid 7:06 For me, like, as a U of T Engineering student, I really love the community atengineering. Amazing support, amazing, you know, relationship, friends. What do you think makes U of T Engineering specific, like, what distinguishes it from, like other university from your experience? Chris Yip 7:25 Oh, yeah, you know, I heard this. We had a recruitment thing. I heard this from, from a parent coming to as well. I think it really is U of T Engineering is really a unique, you said this, unique community, unique small community inside a very large, diverse university entity, right? 106,000 students, like, we're an enormous University, (Mahmoud: We are.) and you could feel lost in it, because it is so big. At the same time, you don't feel lost in engineering, because even though we're big — 13,000 students — we are even bigger than some universities in the US, we feel small, right? You feel like you know people and people want to help you, whether staff, their faculty, their other students, senior students, alumni in particular, (Mahmoud: Yes.) they we all feel a link to the faculty. You will just be there to help others, right? You can call up an alum 20-30 years later, reconnect with them, and it's like that time was, like you never lost that time, right? Yes, people look older, but they you know, they're there to help. They're there to be conversations. And you could be people that were from your class, that maybe you never talked to in class and then you've reconnected later and you realize, okay, there's actually a sheer, a shared experience that back in the day, we didn't realize the value of, and now, later on in life, we've realized, okay, this is, this was an important, formative time for us, and we all now we're united again, right? And I think that's, that's something that's really special, you know? And people give back in all sorts of different ways, right? People are, you know, I find our alumni are amazingly generous with their time. You know, not everyone has resources to support at, you know, financially, but people are always willing to help out from the time, you know, the networking opportunities. And I think that's even more valuable, you know, we talk to alums all the time. Hey, I got a student who has a question about this. You happen to be the field. Can you help? We're going to be visiting. There's going to be PEY students in this city. Anyone in that city able to meet with the students, have a coffee, tell them about, that sort of stuff. And that always organically leads to all sorts of stuff. We just did a thing with the 30th anniversary of the Blue Sky, the solar car. (Mahmoud: Oh, interesting.) And you know, just unveiled the the Gen 12 car, and there's alums that are there from, like, you know, the '95 class, right? That was the first time that came out. And it's sort of, they see that, and they come back because they want to see what, what's happening now, like, oh, this was a, this was a formative thing for me as an undergrad. And it's that kind. A networking community that is so valuable. Mahmoud Rashid 10:04 And so you eventually became a professor. And before becoming Dean, you served at U of T's Associate Vice President International Partnership. I'm curious to know, what did you learn from that role? Chris Yip 10:17 Lots of stuff. I think obviously the role was very focused on building international opportunities for the university. So there was a lot of learning about what the what the global perspective is on things. I think that was great. I think the, probably the most important thing I got of that was because now you represent the university, is learning about the university. You spend your entire career in engineering, in your department, or departments, or maybe they're cross talk of my research into medicine, but I didn't know about law, I didn't know about social work, I didn't know about Mississauga, I didn't know about Scarborough campuses. I didn't know about KPE. And in the role of AVP international partnerships, you're building partnerships on behalf of the entire institution, and so you're at events, you're in meetings, you're in discussions with other institutions who are interested in other departments and faculties. So it was really a chance to get a fullsome sense of what is U of T. Understand how the Munk School worked, understand how Arts & Science worked, understanding Engineering's place within the university, obviously the impact it has but also the impact of other faculties on us, and also the broader impact of U of T, U of T's brand, and what people are doing and how it's viewed globally. That's a lot of what I learned, but also the interaction that university has with every sector, industry, government, foreign governments, like it was, it was a phenomenal role. But, yeah, learning a lot about what, what is U of T, which I think is a, it's something that everybody should learn about. Mahmoud Rashid 11:49 Hmm that's an interesting point. And I could also relate it, relate to that as a student, because when I came first in engineering, I worked at CIE, and I really got to understand, like, the amount of resources Uof T has to offer for students. It's a lot, right? And sometimes you just need a person to kind of guide you to where those are. And just visiting other buildings around campus, you're like, wow, U of T is huge. Chris Yip 12:17 It's so huge. There's so much going on. There's so many things you can work with others to collaborate on projects like that's such an important thing to realize is that, oh, that that resource isn't in your building, in your lab, in your department. Oh, must not exist. It's, it exists, it's around, figure out how to access it and leverage it and be part of the network for others. I think that's another thing which is so important, is to be like to be truly, authentically collaborative is really important. Mahmoud Rashid 12:48 So I'm curious to know, what do you find the most rewarding about your current job of being dean. Chris Yip 12:56 Having conversations with you and people can't see me doing this, but it's putting you in quotation, air quotes, right? I think the most rewarding part of this job is actually having conversations, ideally in-person conversations, but text conversations also work. Having conversations with people in general and learning about what they're doing, right? And that's not just I mean, students are super important, learning about what students want to do, what brought them here. They're the largest, obviously, population of what makes up u of t, but also talking to faculty, talking to colleagues, talking to staff, talking to everybody, right? Mahmoud Rashid 13:32 I agree, and I could, I could definitely relate to that. You know, as an international student coming here, having those, you know, genuine conversation with other students from all over the world, you know, just allows you to become globally conscious and just appreciate that diversity, which U of T has a bunch of so definitely. And of course, there must you know they're also not so rewarding things. For example, it can be long flights over overseas. So I'm curious to know, how do you spend your time on those long flights? Chris Yip 14:02 A lot of it's actually spent working, I mean, to be honest, right? You you have it, you know, especially if you're flying a route which doesn't have internet access, you know, then you can't check your email. You can't be doing that. And so you have a chance to actually sit and focus a little bit without the external distraction, right? So you've got a 16-hour flight to Seoul or to something like that. You have basically in a two day, two working days to sit on a plane where you can finish that manuscript, you can work on a position paper, you can be reviewing program proposal, that sort of stuff. So it's kind of good downtime, you do get a lot of stuff done. I will say the worst thing to do on that, though, is when you land and if you haven't been able to clear, you now have a day's worth of email, of stuff that's now piled back up and you're now completely out of sync of conversations. So that's a downside ofthat. Mahmoud Rashid 14:57 I see. Okay and you know, we all know that you're a runner. You love running. So the next few questions are gonna be about your running. Chris Yip 15:06 Sure. Mahmoud Rashid 15:06 So I wanted to know, how did it start, you know? How did you get into it? Was it a person who inspired you? Or... Chris Yip 15:13 So during undergrad, I got into cycling and did a lot of races during that, during when I was working, and during grad school, I raced when I was in the States, and when I came back to Canada, it was trying to get back into cycling. We did a lot of 24-hour mountain bike races and mountain bike stage races and stuff, which was a ton of fun. But then you realize it's a lot of time to be spent training for that stuff. So you switch to running. And it was really a friend's wife who said, "Hey, I'm going to run this half. Do you want to run with me?" I'm like, Okay. And so I ran the half with her, and it was fun. Got it done. And then people said we should try running a full. So ran a full. It's very painful, but then you, kind of, you sort of got into it. And this was, this was back in like 2000 so, like quarter, 25 years ago, and it was sort of very much like I did it once. Could I do it better? Could I go faster? Could you qualify for Boston, that kind of, so you, you started that very slippery slope of getting better, getting faster, and now it's about maintaining, right? I see, can you be as fast as you were 20 years ago? Not really. But can you still be stubborn enough to finish stuff? Mahmoud Rashid 16:29 What's your favorite spot to run here in Toronto, or anywhere? Chris Yip 16:34 I mean, Toronto's got a lot of good running spots, right? The park system, right? Because I live in North Toronto so it's like going through Sunnybrook, going through Earl Bales, going the Don Valley type stuff is always nice because it's it's not in traffic. But I have all sorts of routes throughout the city. Running the Beltline is kind of nice. There's a lot of people in the Beltline, but what I like to do when I'm traveling, it also beats the jet lag, is run wherever I land, (Mahmoud: Yeah.) So literally, every city I've gone into, I've always, I've just taken my running stuff and I've just gone and out and back, you know, do a circle, whatever it is. You get rid of the jet lag, you get to explore the city. You learn a lot. It's a ton of fun. Mahmoud Rashid 17:13 I agree. And you like, how is the terrain like in different places on the world? Like, is it? Chris Yip 17:19 Oh, yeah, it's totally different. I mean, when I'm in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, you don't realize how hilly it is. Usually we stay in Hong Kong, near central all the you don't run in the city because it's all it's too many streets. I mean, it's too busy, so you run up, yeah, so it's like going up the hill in order to run. So it's, like, kind of challenging when the first thing you had to do is spend 20 minutes running up a hill. But yeah, like Sydney running across the bridge inand Sydney, running around the the Opera House. Singapore, running around Marina Bay. In Tokyo. It's, it's the same thing. Japan, running around some of the castles, Imperial Palace. Mahmoud Rashid 17:52 Well, that's cool. Chris Yip 17:53 Yeah, it's great. Mahmoud Rashid 17:55 Okay, interesting question, can you do engineering problem sets while running? Chris Yip 18:00 I can't write them down. I do. So, okay, so this is one of the things I use the running for. So I don't listen, I don't listen, I don't have headphones on. The reason I run is actually because you can your brain is just free to do whatever, right? There's lots of times where I've actually solved, or come up with a solution to a problem while you're running. Mahmoud Rashid 18:19 Like, a eureka moment? Chris Yip 18:20 Yeah, kind of the eureka moment. And you're like, then you realize you don't have a piece of paper with you, but, but, yeah, like, I think that's actually one of the reasons to do it, is that you can do a reset, a mental reset, and your brain will continue to think about stuff while you're not focused on it. I think that's huge. Mahmoud Rashid 18:38 I love that. Okay, okay, so we hear you like to bake. So I guess the first question is, what, what do you like to bake? Chris Yip 18:45 Okay, so the baking thing kind of started because the pandemic, right? Nobody got into sourdough stuff. So then it sort of...it works. So now I'm in the mode of trying to perfect my ability to make sourdough, because I have a starter that I started during COVID, and it's a very robust starter. So if anyone wants starter, let me know. And now I've got to point where I've actually memorized how to make what I want to make, so it works really well. Yeah, I just like trying different things, right? Whoever sort of inspires my mind to try so I've done everything. Mahmoud Rashid 19:18 And do you think, like, this is going to be like a slippery slope, just like how you got into running. Do you think you're gonna delve into baking? Chris Yip 19:24 Yeah, so baking a lot then therefore forces you to run, because you can't keep sampling without adverse effects, right? It's an equilibrium equation. (Mahmoud: Fair, oh.) Right? It could be, I mean, I yeah, I think so. Because it you start wanting to try to make different things. Like, I'm not into making fancy, a very rustic type of stuff. Like, you know, you start making barbecues, so I want to make pizzas and stuff like that. Like, I like to cook so, but I don't, I'm not a fancy Cook. I'm very, I'm probably more just, like, what's in the fridge, let me try to make something with this type of approach. Mahmoud Rashid 19:25 Improvise. Chris Yip 19:25 Yeah, improvise. Like not necessarily follow recipes. Chris Yip 19:44 So obviously people know the podcast is coffee with Chris Yip. (Chris: Yep.) So I wanted to know who would be your dream guest to have on the podcast, and why? Chris Yip 20:14 Oh, man, like one of our, I mean, that's a, that's a really tough one. I have lots of people that I would love to talk to and have a conversation with. Like, I think there's lots of our alums are super successful alums that I would love to just chat and in the normal, just kind of casual conversation. Like, I actually think all of our alumni are fascinating people to talk to, right? How do they get to where they are? You know, and success is always in the eyes of the individual, right? And I think hearing from them about what made them successful, I think is, to me, is really important. In terms of who would I pick out of the blue to talk to that I've never talked to before? I mean, there's the classic ones you could say, like, I'd love to have talked to Carl Sagan, right? Isaac Asimov. I mean, these are people that sort of inspire a lot of science stuff. Gene Roddenberry would actually be a really interesting person to talk to. Like, what inspired you to think about Star Trek, right? And because the classic story, everything happened in Star Trek now becomes reality, because people got inspired by what was there and now built stuff, right? Like that. I think is actually that to be to be honest, there is a club that I think started engineering recently, or they were looking to start one which was really film inspired innovation, and then trying to make those things that they saw actually become reality. And you think about it, right? Cell phone, transport, all that kind of stuff, right? So people like that, I think talking to people who are super creative would be something that you'd want to, you know, people who invented things. Yeah. Mahmoud Rashid 21:52 This next question is about AI, so do you think it will replace human beings? Chris Yip 21:57 My answer to that is, no. There's always that worry that it's going to be smarter, because it's the collective wisdom of whatever it replaces. I think that it depends. I mean, that's always a classic answer, right? I think it's very useful for helping people decide what directions to go, if you give it the right data to look at. And I think, you know, in the research space, it's great collect a bunch of data related to a problem, and have it help you decide which direction to go for your problem. (Mahmoud: Yes.) I have questions about when you use it to analyze, take data from all sorts of different places where you don't know the quality of it, and then use it to guide you. I think that's a problem. And I do have a fundamental problem, and maybe partial Luddite on this. I do not like the idea of having an AI or having Grammarly or whoever tune your writing, you know, fix this because I wanted to sound better, because then it's like, you know. And I think the challenge there is just not you're no longer authentic, right? And it's not Mahmoud speaking to me, it's now the AI that you use to generate the text, and now that text is a compilation of the world's text, and so now it's everybody sounds the same. (Mahmoud: Yeah.) Right? And so you lose authenticity, and I worry about that, right? Like I would rather read your essay complete with your framing, the words you use, your grammatical constructs than to read one in an AI generate which is grammatically correct, following the Oxford strategy or whatever, right? Because that's not you. And I worry about that, because then when you have an authentic conversation with someone, it doesn't match with the writte. You can work with an editor, like a human editor, yeah, and they will work with you dynamically to say, I think this sounds better, what do you think? So, I think in certain things, you really want the human behind it, right? Maybe you can make it sound human, but it's not going to sound like you. Mahmoud Rashid 23:52 I agree. I agree. I believe that like what makes us unique is basically how imperfect we are. We all different, and that comes with, you know, interesting taste like, and I, because I'm material science, I love to use this analogy. Our professor once stated, like, you know, materials, you know, they're not perfect. They have like, deformations, but they can become stronger, and they have this really cool properties. So from imperfections, it really comes, like, it brings interesting results. Chris Yip 24:21 I think you're right, like, I think that's what makes you, makes us us, and also our engagement with that, in a sense, that's one of the reasons I don't like online meetings all the time. If you can make an in-person meeting, because you're on campus and you're down the hall, get up and come down to the meeting in person, because the in-person engagement, the read the room, read the, read the personality you can't pick up from a two dimensional image, and especially someone staring off in a corner, right? So I think there's that element is something that I think it's going to rebound. People will start realizing this and saying, Okay, we're going to cut this off at some point. I get the value of it for sure. Yeah, but I worry that there's some stuff that it...yeah. Mahmoud Rashid 25:05 That's pretty interesting. And you know, with your experience and the knowledge that you have gathered, obviously comes with wisdom. So... Chris Yip 25:13 [Laughs] Mahmoud Rashid 25:14 It come, it does come with wisdom! I do believe that. And if you could go back, you know, to like, when you were a student, for the first year. What advice would you give to yourself? Chris Yip 25:23 So I think it's to have this honest curiosity about things, like to always stay curious about things. I think sometimes people lose that they get so focused on a certain goal that they lose, they lose interest in other things. Like they just get they're just, I mean, almost tunnel vision, right? And the idea of staying curious, being interested in lots of things, and being receptive to ideas coming from different areas, I think, is something that's really important, something I learned later in life, I think. Like, I had no interest in business back when I was undergrad, like, you know, because who would go to, why would you do an MBA? Like, that sort of question. Like, as an undergrad, we just you were focused in engineering. Yeah, you had engineering economics. I was like, okay, great, present value of money and, okay, whatever. But then in my role now, you realize how important the business world is to what you're doing, and you realize the factors which drive it right, which in engineering, you sort of tend to sit back and you focus on the technical goal, and then you realize, now, the geopolitics, economic politics, all that sort of stuff, plays a role. So how understanding of those work and impact decisions is important, but you only get that because you, if you're you're willing to listen. I think that's the key, right? Mahmoud Rashid 26:40 100%. Thanks Dean Yip, this has been a wonderful conversation. Chris Yip 26:44 Yeah, no problem. Enjoyed it. It was a ton of fun. Chris Yip 26:50 Thanks again for listening to Tell Me More: Coffee with Chris Yip. If you want to catch up on past episodes and to make sure you don't miss the next one, please subscribe. We're on Apple Podcast, Spotify and more. Just look for Coffee with Chris Yip. You can also check out @uoftengineering on Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn for more stories about how our community is building a better world. And finally, if you'd be inspired to join us, we'd love to welcome you. If you're thinking of taking a degree or working with us on our research projects, you can find us online at engineering.utoronto.ca or you can visit our beautiful campus in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I hope I can join you for coffee soon.