Mechanical &amp; Industrial Engineering

Sustainability

Undergraduate Students

Subheadline

Connor Isaac is embarking on a year-long work experience term with Walpole Island First Nation, where he will be focused on the community's renewable energy future

Growing up on Walpole Island First Nation, Connor Isaac experienced a creative impulse from an early age – a trait that ultimately led him to the University of Toronto where he's exploring sustainability solutions.

“I would take apart electronics, I would play with Legos, play puzzle games, different things like that – it kind of fostered this creative mindset,” he says of his childhood.

“My teacher recommended that I look into engineering, and I thought, ‘You know what? That’s not a bad idea.’”

Now a third-year mechanical engineering student in U of T’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, Isaac says he is preparing to give back to the community where he got his start.

He is embarking on a 12-month role working alongside Chief and Council on Walpole Island First Nation as part of the Professional Experience Year Co-op Program (PEY Co-op). As ��οEngineering’s flagship work-experience program, the co-op allows students to graduate with up to 20 months of meaningful work experience while earning a competitive salary and gaining professional skills in industry.

“I started working with Chief and Council last summer, sitting in their meetings and just kind of assessing projects on the island. I told them that I would be completing a PEY Co-op work term, and they said it would be great if I could come back,” Isaac says.

“This time my work is going to be more focused on Walpole Island First Nation’s renewable energy future. Since it’s a whole year, I’m hoping that it gives me a good idea of what it’s like working in industry.”

Isaac, who is Chippewa (Ojibwe) and Potawatom, and was raised between Walpole Island First Nation and the nearby town of Wallaceburg, Ont., says one of his biggest motivators for returning to Walpole Island is the chance to bring awareness of new, sustainable technologies to the community.

“I’m looking forward to helping the people living on Walpole Island First Nation understand what technology we’re using, because there’s a big disconnect,” he says. “I want to help inform the community about the various things that the Council is doing that will help them.”

Isaac’s commitment to sustainability goes beyond his PEY Co-op. He’s also involved in undergraduate research with David Sinton, a professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, and his team.

“I have been working with Professor Sinton on CO2 to ethanol research, which is a carbon capture clean technology where we capture CO2 from the air to be run through an electrolyzer. This will allow us to generate ethanol and other useful carbon-based products,” Isaac says.

He is also working alongside Tracy Galloway, an associate professor of anthropology at ��οMississauga, as a research assistant on the CANSTOREnergy project, a U of T-led collaboration that includes researchers from 11 Canadian universities. The team is developing clean energy technologies tailored to the needs of communities in the Yukon.

“Professor Sinton told me about the CANSTOREnergy project, and I mentioned that I have worked with my reserve during the summer, communicating similar ideas to the Chief and Council, but not so much to the community,” he says.

In the past, researchers have come into Indigenous communities to conduct studies without consulting the people affected, adds Isaac.

“We’re trying to avoid that.”

Upon graduation, Isaac hopes to pursue graduate studies.

“I am heavily considering a master’s degree, but I’m not too sure in which area. I don’t want to plan too far ahead because sometimes life gets in the way,” he says.

“My focus right now is helping the people that I grew up with and giving back to the community that raised me.”

What makes a chess move brilliant? Researchers use AI to find out

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 17:25:51 +0000

What makes a chess move brilliant? Researchers use AI to find out

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 08/07/2024 - 13:25

Cutline

��οEngineering researchers Kamron Zaidi, left, and Michael Guerzhoy, right, use game trees and deep neural networks to enable chess engines to recognize brilliant moves (photo by Safa Jinje)

Safa Jinje

Topic

Alumni

Artificial Intelligence

Subheadline

AI system developed by ��οresearchers is being used to study human creativity and make a chess computer that is more entertaining to play against

Researchers at the University of Toronto have designed a new AI model that understands how humans perceive creativity in chess.

In a recent paper presented at an international conference, researchers in U of T’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering describe how they used techniques such as game trees and deep neural networks to enable chess engines to recognize brilliant moves.

The development could lead to chess engines that can find the most creative and clever path to victory in game, rather than just making moves to maximize win rates. That, in turn, could have implications for other AI systems tasked with creative endeavours.

“A chess move can be perceived as brilliant, or creative, when the strategic payoff isn’t clear at first, but in retrospect the player had to follow a precise path in gaming out all the possibilities to see so far into the future,” says paper co-author Michael Guerzhoy, an assistant professor, teaching stream, of mechanical and industrial engineering and engineering science who wrote about the research on his Substack.

“We wanted our system to understand human perception of what constitutes brilliance in chess and distinguish that from just winning.”

Most of the current research into chess AI is focused on enabling moves that create a higher chance of winning. But this doesn’t always make for an exciting game.

Skilled human chess players, on the other hand, can play in a more dramatic or imaginative way by making moves that may break traditional rules –for example, sacrificing a piece in a way that may initially look like a mistake, but ultimately, paves the way to a win.

A chess board depicts a move from the “Game of the Century” in 1956, when future American chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer (black) sacrificed his queen in a move that was celebrated as brilliant (photo by Safa Jinje)

The team worked with Leela Chess Zero, a top chess engine that learns through self-play and has played over 1.6 billion games against itself. They also employed Maia, a human-like neural network chess engine developed by ��οcomputer science researchers.

“We used the two neural network chess engines to create our game trees at different levels of depth in a game,” says paper co-author Kamron Zaidi, a recent ��οEngineering graduate.

“Using these game trees, we extracted many different features from it. We then fed the features into a neural network that we trained on the Lichess database of online chess games, which are labelled by human users of the database.”

A game tree in chess represents the current state of a chess board along with all the possible moves and counter moves that can occur. Each board position is represented as a node and the game tree can be expanded on until the game is either won, drawn or lost.

The researchers began with small game trees then slowly increased the size, adding more nodes to the tree. They found that when the neural network looks at all the game tree features and makes a prediction as to whether the move is brilliant or not, it reached an accuracy rate of 79 per cent using the test data set.

The research – based on Zaidi’s undergraduate engineering science thesis, which was supervised by Guerzhoy – was presented at the International Conference on Computational Creativity in Jönköping, Sweden.

“There were people from all over the world presenting research on more traditional aspects of creativity, but we were all focused on the same thing, which is, ‘How can we use AI to enhance our interactions and understandings of creativity?’” says Zaidi. 

The work has also received media coverage in outlets, including New Scientist, where English chess grandmaster Matthew Sadler says that a model that can understand brilliance could be used as a training tool for professionals and potentially lead to a more entertaining engine opponent for amateur players.

The team sees their system as having broad applicability when it comes to perception of creativity and brilliance.

“One of the biggest areas that is of interest to me is characterizing what we perceive as creativity,” says Guerzhoy.

“Not just in board games but in other creative endeavours, including music and art, where there is a formal framework and rules that need to be followed. Highly creative work involves planning in advance and gaming out the possibilities.

“But everyone I’ve talked to since the paper came out wants to know when they can play against our brilliant chess engine. So, I think making that possible is the obvious next step for us.”

New contaminant-tolerant catalyst could help capture carbon directly from smokestacks

rahul.kalvapalle — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 16:45:48 +0000

New contaminant-tolerant catalyst could help capture carbon directly from smokestacks

rahul.kalvapalle Wed, 07/24/2024 - 12:45

Cutline

PhD students Rui Kai (Ray) Miao (left) and Panos Papangelakis (right) hold up a new catalyst that is designed to convert captured CO2 gas into valuable products (photo by Tyler Irving)

Topic

David Sinton

Sustainability

Subheadline

The research marks an important step towards developing economically viable techniques for carbon capture and storage

Researchers at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering have designed a catalyst that can efficiently convert captured carbon into valuable products – even in the presence of contaminants that degrade the performance of current versions.

The discovery, described in a paper published in Nature Energy, is an important step toward more economically viable techniques for carbon capture and storage that could be added to existing industrial processes.

“Today, we have more and better options for low-carbon electricity generation than ever before,” says David Sinton, professor in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering and senior author on the paper. “But there are other sectors of the economy that will be harder to decarbonize: for example, steel and cement manufacturing. To help those industries, we need to invent cost-effective ways to capture and upgrade the carbon in their waste streams.”

Sinton and his team use devices known as electrolyzers to convert CO2 and electricity into products such as ethylene and ethanol. These carbon-based molecules can be sold as fuels or used as chemical feedstocks for making everyday items such as plastic.

Inside the electrolyzer, the conversion reaction happens when three elements — CO2 gas, electrons and a water-based liquid electrolyte — come together on the surface of a solid catalyst.

The catalyst is often made of copper but may also contain other metals or organic compounds that can further improve the system. Its function is to speed up the reaction and minimize the creation of undesirable byproducts like hydrogen gas, which reduce the efficiency of the overall process.

While several high-performing catalysts have been developed around the world, nearly all of them are designed to operate with a pure CO2 feed. But if the carbon in question comes from smokestacks, the feed is likely to be anything but pure.

“Catalyst designers generally don’t like dealing with impurities, and for good reason,” says Panos Papangelakis, a PhD student in mechanical engineering and a co-lead author on the paper.

“Sulphur oxides such as SO2 poison the catalyst by binding to the surface. This leaves fewer sites for CO2 to react, and it also causes the formation of chemicals you don’t want.

“It happens really fast: whereas some catalysts can last hundreds of hours on a pure feed, if you introduce these impurities, within minutes they can be down to five per cent efficiency.”

Although there are well-established methods to remove impurities from CO2-rich exhaust gases before feeding them into the electrolyzer, these require substantial time, energy and expense. Furthermore, in the case of SO2, even a little bit can be a big problem.

“Even if you bring your exhaust gas down to less than 10 parts per million, or 0.001 per cent of the feed, the catalyst can still be poisoned in under two hours,” says Papangelakis.

In the paper, the team describes how two key changes to a typical copper-based catalyst can make it more resilient to SO2.

On one side, they added a thin layer of polyteterafluoroethylene, also known as Teflon. This non-stick material changes the chemistry at the catalyst surface, impeding the reactions that enable SO2 poisoning to take place.

On the other side, they added a layer of Nafion, an electrically conductive polymer often used in fuel cells. This complex, porous material contains some areas that are hydrophilic, meaning they attract water, as well as other areas that are hydrophobic, meaning they repel water. This structure makes it difficult for SO2 to reach the catalyst surface.

The team then fed this catalyst with a mix of CO2 and SO2, with the latter at a concentration of about 400 parts per million, typical of an industrial waste stream. Even under these tough conditions, the new catalyst performed well.

“In the paper, we report a Faraday efficiency — a measure of how many of the electrons ended up in the desired products — of 50 per cent, which we were able to maintain for 150 hours,” says Papangelakis.

“There are some catalysts out there that might start at a higher efficiency, maybe 75 per cent or 80 per cent. But again, if you expose them to SO2, within minutes or at most a couple of hours, that drops down to almost nothing. We were able to resist that.”

Papangelakis says that because his team’s approach doesn’t affect the composition of the catalyst itself, it should be widely applicable. In other words, teams that have already perfected high-performing catalysts should be able to use similar coatings to confer resistance to sulphur oxide poisoning.

Although sulphur oxides are the most challenging impurity in typical waste streams, they are not the only ones, and it’s the full set of chemical contaminants that the team is turning to next.

“There are lots of other impurities to consider, such as nitrogen oxides, oxygen, etc.,” says Papangelakis.

“But the fact that this approach works so well for sulphur oxides is very promising. Before this work, it was just taken for granted that you’d have to remove the impurities before upgrading CO2.

“What we’ve shown is that there might be a different way to deal with them, which opens up a lot of new possibilities.”

��οgrad ‘moves mountains’ to earn engineering degree

mattimar — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 13:44:40 +0000

��οgrad ‘moves mountains’ to earn engineering degree

mattimar Wed, 06/12/2024 - 09:44

Cutline

Vishakha Pujari, who receives her bachelor’s degree in applied science on June 18, shows off the iron ring that’s often worn by engineering graduates (supplied image)

Mariam Matti

Topic

Global Lens

Convocation 2024

Global

India

Joseph Wong

Subheadline

Vishakha Pujari says she is the first person from her rural village in India to attend a foreign university

Vishakha Pujari is profoundly committed to paying it forward.

The first student at the University of Toronto to be supported by a Karta Catalyst Scholarship, Pujari arrived at ��οin 2019 from the small Indian village of Walandi – about a five-hour drive from Hyderabad – to study industrial engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

In addition to her schoolwork, she found time to host workshops for students from her high school and even donated some of her scholarship money back to the Karta Initiative – an organization dedicated to providing equitable access to higher education to India’s low-income rural youth.

“If I am getting something, I should make sure I am giving back,” Pujari says.

On June 18, Pujari is set to cross the stage in Convocation Hall – and then head back to her new job as a software design analyst in Montreal. While her parents are unable to attend due to the cost of flying to Toronto, they hope to watch the convocation livestream. Pujari, meanwhile, says she plans to meet up with her mentors at ��οand possibly have dinner with friends.

Reflecting on her time at U of T, which included a one-year co-op, she recalls the initial culture shock of moving from Walandi to Toronto – a city that she had never visited before.

“It was the second time I was on a flight,” she says. “I’m from a village so we don’t see many tall buildings there. My residence had 28 floors, so it was all a new experience.”

Pujari grew up the youngest of three siblings on her family’s sugarcane and soybean farm. She learned the value of hard work from her parents, who woke up at 5 a.m. each day to tend to their land before going to neighbouring farms to earn extra money.

When she was 12, she attended a government-run school, located about 80 kilometres from Walandi, and spent nine months of the year living on the campus – a long period of separation from her parents.

Pujari first learned about the Karta Initiative when she was 16 – and says the program’s emphasis on integrity, perseverance and community service resonated deeply.

She became a member after undergoing a rigorous selection process and, over the course of two years, received mentorship, academic support, and opportunities for personal development.

Receiving her acceptance to ��οand the Karta Catalyst Scholarship was a life-changing moment – one that meant all her hard work and sacrifices paid off.

“It was really exciting and scary,” she says. “My parents were really happy because no one from our village has gone to study at a foreign university.”

Karta Scholars receive funding for tuition and living expenses, personal and professional development, internship placements, and career transition support. In addition to working with their academic advisers, scholars are also connected with a faculty mentor and participate in numerous enrichment activities with other scholarship students at U of T.

Although she was accustomed to living apart from her family, being in Toronto brought new challenges.

“The classes I was used to had no more than 40 students,” she says. “When I came here, I was like, ‘Oh my God, there are so many people.’ For a moment, I was like, ‘Am I an introvert?’”

She worried that her English-speaking skills weren’t up to par.

“It was exciting to meet students from different countries, but at the same time overwhelming,” she says.

At the same time, she was unable to travel back to India to see her parents and siblings for three years due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Pujari found guidance and reassurance in the form of mentors. In her first year, she met Joseph Wong, U of T’s vice-president, international, and a professor in the department of political science and the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy in the Faculty of Arts & Science, and the two kept in touch with throughout Pujari’s time at U of T.

They would discuss everything from challenges Pujari was facing to her future plans – which she says may include pursuing a master’s in business administration and starting her own business.

“Her resilience is so impressive,” Wong says, noting the many obstacles Pujari overcame to become a ��οstudent. “It’s pretty incredible what she’s done, and to hear now that she’s graduating and has a job lined up is really gratifying.”

Pujari also received mentorship from Chirag Variawa, director, first-year curriculum and associate professor, teaching stream, in U of T’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering. He says her “unbridled curiosity, determination, and intelligence” is nothing short of inspirational.

“Over the years, I've seen her grow into a professional who moves mountains not just with the strength of her character, but the goodness of her heart as well – and that's exactly what the world needs,” he says.

Through it all, Pujari says her family has been among her biggest supporters.

“My father used to come with me to workshops in Mumbai, which is 12 hours away from our village,” she says. “My sister was also really supportive and helped me with my English.”

“They’re really excited and happy I’m graduating.”

��οundergraduate students explore the use of AI to treat speech disfluency

rahul.kalvapalle — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 14:00:00 +0000

��οundergraduate students explore the use of AI to treat speech disfluency

rahul.kalvapalle Mon, 02/26/2024 - 09:00

Cutline

Assistant Professor Michael Guerzhoy, top left, meets virtually with a team of undergraduate students who are developing a reinforcement learning-based system to help clinicians predict medication outcomes and adjust dosage accordingly (image courtesy of Michael Guerzhoy)

Selah Katona

Topic

Mental Health

Undergraduate Students

Artificial intelligence, including machine learning systems, could help mental health clinicians optimize treatments for speech disfluency, or interruptions in the regular flow of speech.

Michael Guerzhoy, an assistant professor, teaching stream, in the division of engineering science and the department of mechanical and industrial engineering in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, and a team of undergraduate students are developing a “reinforcement-learning-based” system that uses machine-learning algorithms to help clinicians predict medication outcomes and adjust dosage accordingly.

By contrast, many clinicians currently adjust medications based on expensive and sparse observations, making it difficult to identify if a specific drug is working optimally. That’s because patients respond to medication differently and its effects can be subtle or only visible over a long period of time. The effects can also be difficult to distinguish from other factors affecting patient behaviours.

Guerzhoy says complex symptoms like speech disfluency – characterized by chronic and repeated problems with continuous speech – can be particularly challenging to treat.

“Studies show that there is a correlation between mental health conditions like anxiety and depression and speech disfluency,” he says. “I believe that patient care can be substantially improved in situations where low-cost frequent observations are possible through making use of reinforcement learning systems to help prescribe and adjust medications.”

The team outlined their research in a recent paper presented at the Machine Learning for Cognitive and Mental Health Workshop at the Conference of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

The first component of the system features a module that detects and evaluates speech disfluency on a large data set. The second is a reinforcement learning algorithm that automatically sources and recommends medication combinations. To support the two modules, the team built a plausible patient-simulation system.

Guerzhoy compared this system to the idea of a computer playing chess. “We all know that computers are excellent at playing chess,” he says. “Our hope is that these computer-based reinforcement learning models will help clinicians become sort of chess grandmasters in their field.”

By exploring the potential of automating and fine-tuning medication regimes for patients, the team hopes to provide a pathway to improve the way we treat mental health. Harnessing AI to pick up on small changes in behaviour in more frequent increments would give clinicians another tool in their toolkit, says Guerzhoy, especially since the high cost of sessions is a significant factor in a patient’s treatment.

Guerzhoy emphasized the crucial role played by the team of undergraduate students, which included: Michael Akzam, Micol Altomare, Lauren Altomare, Nimit Amikumar Bhanshali, Kaison Cheung, Jiacheng Chen, Andreas Constas, Pavlos Constas, Vhea He, Aditya Khan, Asad Khan, Heraa Murqi, Matthew Honorio Oliveira, Youssef Rachad, Vikram Rawal and Najma Sultani – all undergraduate students at ��ο– and Carrie Chen from Cornell University.

“Having such a large team of undergraduate students involved that are passionate about the research was essential.”

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

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

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

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

Cutline

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

Safa Jinje

Topic

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Aerospace

Graduate Students

Space

Undergraduate Students

UTIAS

Subheadline

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

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

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

The feat was entirely student funded with support from ��οEngineering through student levies and UTAT-led fundraising efforts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PhD candidate aims to advance health equity for marginalized populations

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 26 Sep 2023 19:10:14 +0000

PhD candidate aims to advance health equity for marginalized populations

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 09/26/2023 - 15:10

Cutline

For her PhD research, LaShawn Murray will examine the role of automation in primary care – with an eye to making sure it’s designed in a way that benefits marginalized populations. She says plans to focus in particular on the health of Black communities (photo by Tyler Irving)

Topic

Equity

Graduate Students

Health

Subheadline

“I am here to make a difference in the lives of others”

LaShawn Murray comes from a long line of engineers and educators – and though she grew up in Toronto and Oakville, she always felt connected with her family’s roots in the Caribbean and South America.

“My family taught me the importance of understanding my identity and being proud of who I am and the legacy of my community,” says Murray, who is a PhD candidate in the University of Toronto’s department of mechanical and industrial engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

“I have been reminded that I am here to make a difference in the lives of others.”

That motivation led Murray to the health sciences. She recently completed her master’s degree in health informatics at DePaul University in Chicago. It was there that she first became aware of the field of human factors engineering in health care.

“I took a course called System Design in Healthcare, taught by Professor Enid Montague,” she says.

“My research for the course examined unintentional acetaminophen errors and overdose in children through a system analysis of the role of parents and caregivers in the home administration of acetaminophen. This project demonstrated the interdisciplinary nature of human factors engineering.”

Murray is one of three 2023 recipients of the IBET Momentum Fellowships, along with fellow graduate students Raylene Mitchell and Chantel Campbell. Fellowship recipients receive financial support, mentorship, training and networking opportunities to foster a robust professional community.

For her PhD at U of T, Murray will once again be working with Montague, who joined U of T’s department of mechanical and industrial engineering as an associate professor in 2022. She will also work with Assistant Professor Myrtede Alfred. Both professors are working to understand disparities and improve safety and outcomes in marginalized populations both within Canadian and American contexts.

“My proposed doctoral research aims to explore the role of human factors engineering in advancing health equity for marginalized populations with an intentional focus on the health of Black communities,” Murray says.

“Specifically, I’ll be examining the role of automation in primary care. Automating certain types of clinical work can improve clinician work life and professional well-being, mitigating burnout. This in turn can improve access to quality care for patients.

“But in order to decide what to automate and how to go about it, we need to first understand whether historically and currently marginalized communities have equitable primary care experiences, and then design our systems accordingly.”

Murray says that she is proud to be a recipient of the IBET Momentum Fellowship.

“I am appreciative that the university recognizes the historic and systemic barriers faced by Black and Indigenous students,” she says.

“This fellowship affords me the opportunity to deepen my scholarship through mentorship opportunities with industry leaders and professors whose work focuses on artificial intelligence and human factors engineering.”

In addition to her scholarly work, Murray says that helping to nurture the next generation will be a key focus over the next few years.

“Working within the community is part of my lived experience, and I expect to continue with this endeavor through mentorship with young students who will be able to see this as a pathway for the future,” she says.

“I’m hopeful that through this fellowship and my doctoral studies, I can encourage others who look like me to pursue opportunities within the intersection of STEM and academia.”

Electrochemical process could boost efficiency of capturing carbon directly from air

siddiq22 — Thu, 10 Aug 2023 16:14:21 +0000

Electrochemical process could boost efficiency of capturing carbon directly from air

siddiq22 Thu, 08/10/2023 - 12:14

Cutline

A researcher works on an electrochemical device in Professor David Sinton's lab (photo by Tyler Irving)

Topic

Climate Positive Energy Initiative

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Climate Change

Sustainability

Subheadline

The ��οEngineering team working on optimizing electrochemical pathways recently published their findings and placed in the top 60 of the global XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition

A team from the University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering has invented a device that leverages electrochemistry to increase the efficiency of direct air carbon capture. Their alternative strategy aims to accelerate the widespread adoption of this emerging technology.

“The technology required to pull carbon directly out of the air has been developing for decades, but the field is now accelerating with governments and industry investing in the infrastructure required to actually do this at scale,” says David Sinton, a professor in the faculty's department of mechanical and industrial engineering and senior author on a paper published in Joule that outlines the new technique.

“One key barrier is that current processes require a lot of energy, and indeed emit a fair amount of carbon themselves," says Sinton, who holds a Canada Research Chair in microfluidics and energy and is academic director of the Climate Positive Energy Initiative, one of U of T's Institutional Strategic Initiatives.

"If we can offer a more efficient strategy, we can make the case to scale this technology to climate-meaningful levels.”

The specific carbon capture technique that Sinton and his team are working to improve is known as a pH swing cycle. It begins when air is pumped through a liquid solution that is strongly alkaline, meaning that it has a high pH. CO2 in the air reacts with the alkaline solution and is captured in the form of carbonates.

To regenerate the capture liquids, chemicals are added to precipitate the carbonates as a solid salt. In the typical process, this salt is heated by burning natural gas to turn the carbonates back into CO2 gas which can be injected underground or upgraded into other carbon-based products.

��οEngineering researchers have created devices that can rapidly switch between electrolyzer mode and fuel-cell mode, increasing their overall efficiency at regenerating the liquid solutions needed for carbon capture
(photo by Tyler Irving)

“If you conduct a life-cycle analysis of this entire process, you see that for every tonne of CO2 you capture, you generate the equivalent of around 300 to 500 kilograms of CO2,” says Yi (Sheldon) Xu, who worked on the project as a PhD candidate and a postdoctoral fellow in Sinton’s lab.

“You’re still coming out ahead, but the energy inputs – particularly the heating step – cost a lot in terms of overall carbon efficiency,” says Xu, who is now at Stanford University.

To overcome this challenge, the team turned to electrochemistry – electrolyzers use electricity to drive forward chemical reactions that would not happen otherwise. Fuel cells do the opposite, generating electricity from chemical reactions.

The team’s key insight was creating a single device that could operate in both directions – as both a fuel cell and an electrolyzer. This innovation enabled them to open up a new pathway to regenerating the alkaline solutions needed for carbon capture.

“Both electrolyzers and fuels cells have a positive electrode and a negative electrode,” says team member Jonathan Edwards, a PhD graduate in mechanical engineering.

“In our device, the positive electrode of the fuel cell and the electrolyzer are one and the same. We switch the mode of operation every second, so that two different reactions can happen at the surface of the same electrode.”

In the first of these two reactions, the electrolyzer uses electrical current to extract alkali metal ions and regenerate the strongly alkaline solution needed for air capture. The electrolyzer also produces hydrogen, which is recycled back to the fuel cell side of the device, where it reacts to produce electricity, which in turn is fed back into the electrolyzer.

(Graphical abstract from research paper in Joule)

The fuel cell produces an acidic solution, which reacts with carbonate salts from the air-capture unit to release CO2 gas. After the CO2 is released, the resulting solution is fed back to the electrolyzer, thus completing the cycle.

The process offers several advantages. First, it circumvents the energy-intensive heating step entirely. Second, it uses electricity as opposed to natural gas – this electricity could be obtained from low-carbon sources such as solar, wind or nuclear energy.

Finally, the fact that two reactions happen at a single electrode cuts down on what are known as mass-transfer limitations – bottlenecks in how fast the reactants can diffuse to the electrode surface – which increase the amount of energy needed to drive the reaction.

“When we ran the life-cycle analysis on our process, we saw that it only generates about 11 kg of CO2 equivalent per tonne of CO2 captured,” says Shijie Liu, a PhD candidate in mechanical and industrial engineering. “That’s about 40 times less than the current thermal process.”

The team's research has already attracted international interest: they placed in the top 60 of the global XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition held last year. Now that their work has been published, they are hoping that more researchers will join them to further optimize this electrochemical pathway.

“At the moment, we’re focusing on improving the capture fluid and further reducing process energy consumption – ensuring that it’s made of sustainable and low-cost substances, as well as scaling it up to industrial levels,” Xu says.

“But there are other places, such as electrode design, where there could be more innovations to discover. We’d love to see this become a viable new platform for carbon-capture plants that are less energy-intensive to build and operate than what we have today. That would give us a powerful new tool to mitigate the impacts of climate change.”

��οEngineering research aims to improve design of small-scale modular reactors for the nuclear industry

siddiq22 — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 19:27:08 +0000

��οEngineering research aims to improve design of small-scale modular reactors for the nuclear industry

siddiq22 Tue, 07/18/2023 - 15:27

Cutline

PhD candidate Xiao Shang works with a metal 3D printer in Assistant Professor Yu Zou’s lab (photo by Neil Ta)

Topic

Nuclear Power

Materials Science

Subheadline

Over the next three years, researchers from the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering will lead projects that could shift how and where nuclear power is used

Small modular reactors (SMRs) represent a new paradigm that could change how and where nuclear power is used to meet our energy needs – and research from the University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering could help point the way forward.

Professors Greg Jamieson in the department of the department of mechanical and industrial engineering, Oh-Sung Kwon in the department of civil and mineral engineering and Assistant Professor Yu Zou in the department of materials science and engineering, recently received funding from the NSERC-CNSC Small Modular Reactors Research Grant Initiative.

Over the next three years, each of them will be leading a project that seeks to improve the design of SMR technology, from the materials used in manufacturing to the ways in which they are operated.

“Canada has a long history in the nuclear space, and a lot of experience building and operating nuclear power plants,” says Jamieson, who holds the Clarice Chalmers Chair of Engineering Design and is co-director of the Cognitive Engineering Laboratory.

“So far, these have all been large facilities designed to meet the needs of major population centres. But we also have many communities and natural resources that are located hundreds or thousands of kilometres away from these big cities. With a geography like that, SMRs start to make a lot of sense.”

While there are currently no SMRs in commercial operation, several companies and organizations around the world are working on pilot facilities to demonstrate proof of concept. For example, Ontario Power Generation has begun site preparation activities for an SMR project at its existing Darlington site in the Greater Toronto Area.

These plants would be small – producing less than 300 megawatts of power, as compared to two or three times that amount from Canada’s existing plants – and built with pre-fabricated components that could be shipped to remote locations and assembled on site.

Since they operate without producing any greenhouse gas emissions, SMRs are seen as a potentially cleaner replacement for the diesel generators that are currently the industrial standard in remote locations – and electricity isn’t all they produce.

“Like all nuclear plants, SMRs generate heat, which produces the steam that is used to run the turbines,” Jamieson says.

“But you could also use this heat in other ways – for example, district heating, or for industrial processes such as hydrogen generation or the early stages of oil sands processing. There are a lot of possibilities.”

(L-R) Greg Jamieson, Oh-Sung Kwon and Yu Zou are all leading new research projects that look at various aspects of small modular reactors (supplied photos)

As a human factors researcher, Jamieson will be focusing on how the plant’s operators will monitor and control the technology. His project builds on some of his previous experience with the nuclear industry, but also represents a contrast to current industry standards.

“Large nuclear plants have operating procedures oriented around a single crew of operators monitoring a single reactor,” Jamieson says.

“But small modular designs open up new possibilities – such as a single crew monitoring multiple reactors – which raises questions about how you distribute human attention.”

Many proposed SMR systems also include what is known as “inherently safe design.” This means that systems are designed to passively shut down if operating conditions deviate from normal.

“Inherently safe design is a good idea, but we want to understand if there are situations where operators, possibly as a result of misinterpreting data, might mistakenly override those systems,” Jamieson says.

“This is something that was a factor in previous nuclear accidents, such as at the Three Mile Island facility in the U.S.”

In addition to differences in their potential modes of operation, SMRs might also require the use of different materials than current reactors – those that can stand up to harsher working environments. This aspect is the focus of Zou’s research project.

“In today’s reactors, water is usually used as the cooling fluid,” says Zou, principal investigator of the Laboratory for Extreme Mechanics & Additive Manufacturing.

“But many SMR designs use molten salts as the coolant, which can be more corrosive than water. Other designs use water, but they operate at much higher temperatures and pressures than traditional reactors. This means that the pipes, heat exchangers and other components need to be able to stand up to much harsher conditions.”

Zou and his team are working with collaborators at Natural Resources Canada and Dalhousie University to study how various materials might react to these tougher conditions. These might include nickel or iron-based alloys in common use today, but they will also consider new materials – such as high-entropy alloys – that haven’t been used for these applications before.

Components for SMRs could be made via additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing. This method, which Zou’s team has expertise in, can significantly reduce the time from the development to the production.

The team will conduct physical experiments in the lab to test the mechanical properties of these materials, then feed the results into a set of computer simulations. Those simulations, in turn, will inform the development of future lab experiments in an iterative approach.

“Our goal is to build up a database that could be consulted by the designers of future SMRs,” Zou says. “It would also help regulators, as the lack of data about material behaviour under the relevant conditions makes it hard to assess safety.”

For their part, Kwon and his team are looking at how SMRs might react to seismic activity.

“Seismic analysis involves looking at how vibrations caused by seismic waves will affect a structure, including whether or not there are resonances that would amplify the effects of these vibrations,” Kwon says.

“In the case of a nuclear plant, we are interested not only in how vibrations might affect the building itself, but also the equipment within the building.”

One of the factors that Kwon and his team are focusing on is the properties of the soil underneath the reactor and containment buildings.

“Today’s plants undergo a lengthy site selection process that ensures they are seated on stiff, compacted soil that will not liquify in the case of a seismic event,” he says.

“But SMRs are designed to be shipped to remote locations, where there is less choice about where to situate them, so they may have to be designed to work on softer soils. In Canada’s North in particular, they might be seated on permafrost. If climate change causes that permafrost to melt, it could affect the seismic resilience of the facility.”

While SMRs are still a long way from widespread application, research from projects such as these can inform their development and keep Canada at the forefront of innovation in the sector.

Meet five women who are among ��οEngineering's 'grads to watch' in 2023

siddiq22 — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 21:06:04 +0000

Meet five women who are among ��οEngineering's 'grads to watch' in 2023

siddiq22 Thu, 06/22/2023 - 17:06

Cutline

Left to right: Kim Watada, Anais Poirier, Saskia van Beers, Maeesha Biswas and Michelle Lin (photo of Biswas by Dewey Chang, Lin by Mymy Tran, other photos supplied)

Topic

electrical engineering

Materials Science