Robotics Institute

Students from Ukraine take part in U of T's computer science summer research program

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 19 May 2023 15:03:38 +0000

Students from Ukraine take part in U of T's computer science summer research program

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 05/19/2023 - 11:03

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��οresearcher Brokoslaw Laschowski, left, speaks with Anton Zaliznyi and Bohdan Pikula at a recent event to welcome students from Ukraine who are participating in a computer science summer research program (photo by Polina Teif)

Mariam Matti

Topic

Global Lens

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Robotics Institute

Computer Science

Faculty of Arts & Science

��οMississauga

Subheadline

Initiative provides computer science students from Ukraine the chance to do cutting-edge research with top ��οfaculty

Anastasiia Pedan has faced many challenges as an undergraduate student at the National Technical University of Ukraine – starting with the global pandemic, when her classes were moved online and she was unable to meet classmates in-person.

Then came the Russian invasion.

“There were alarms, bombings and death all around us,” says Pedan, who was in her second year, studying systems analysis. “It was really hard to concentrate on studying when you are literally living through historical events.”

Anastasiia Pedan arrived in Toronto in May to participate in U of T's summer research program for Ukrainian students (photo by Polina Teif)

Today, Pedan is in Toronto to participate in the University of Toronto’s summer research program in computer science for students from Ukraine – one of 21 students selected from over 400 applicants this year.

The program – one of several initiatives at the university focused on supporting students from Ukraine – began in 2022 when Brokoslaw Laschowski, research scientist at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute and an assistant professor in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, and Michael Brudno, chief data scientist for the University Health Network and a professor of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science, asked their colleagues at universities in Ukraine what they could do to support students during the war.

“They suggested one of the best things we can do is provide a temporary safe haven for students to continue their research and education,” says Laschowski, who is also an affiliate faculty member at U of T’s Robotics Institute.

“That’s exactly what we started doing.”

With support from U of T’s department of computer science, the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence, the Robotics Institute and the department of mathematical and computational sciences at ��οMississauga, the initiative gives Ukrainian computer science students the opportunity to work and study with top ��οfaculty engaged in cutting-edge research. Each student is paired with a supervisor for four months and costs related to travel expenses, on-campus housing accommodations and a research stipend are fully covered.

This week, organizers held a welcome event at Myhal Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship on the St. George campus to introduce incoming students to each other and to last year’s cohort. Brudno and Laschowski were there to greet their students, along with Melissa Judd, vice-president of research operations and academic partnerships at the Vector Institute, and Hallie Siegel, managing director of strategy and partnership at U of T’s Robotics Institute.

“This isn't charity. The mathematics and computer science programs in Ukraine have the potential to be world leading,” Laschowski told the crowd.

“The technical abilities and problem-solving skills of these students are incredible. By us investing in the future of Ukrainian education, we are in investing in the future of robotics and artificial intelligence.”

The welcome event brought together last year's cohort of students to meet the newcomers (photo by Polina Teif)

For her part, Pedan says she is looking forward to spending her summer conducting research about neural radiance fields with Igor Gilitschenski, an assistant professor in the department of mathematical and computational sciences at ��οMississauga.

“It’s been an emotional roller coaster,” she says. “But it’s an honour to have been selected.”

UHN’s Michael Brudno, who helped get the program off the ground, welcomes the new cohort of students to U of T (photo by Polina Teif)

Anton Zaliznyi, meanwhile, will spend his summer researching surgical robots with Lueder Kahrs, an assistant professor at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and in the department of mathematical and computational sciences at ��οMississauga.

“The end goal is to help create robots that can help surgeons operate,” Zaliznyi says. “We are a long way away from using it in real life, but I think it will be very impactful.”

In Ukraine, Zaliznyi managed to complete his undergraduate degree in software engineering and his first year of his master’s program in computer science despite the war. But everything had changed.

"You live day by day and it's really hard to think about the future," he says. "It was practically impossible to do any kind of research. I wasn't able to complete what I initially envisioned and planned for my thesis."

He says he is excited for the opportunity to engage with the research community at U of T.

Oleksii Tsepa, left, and Roman Burakov, right, presented the research they conducted with Assistant Professor Brokoslaw Laschowski, centre, who was their supervisor last year. (photo by Polina Teif)

“University of Toronto is probably the best university in the world when it comes to research,” he says. “I honestly think that there are very few universities who can compete.”

At the welcome event, Roman Burakov and Oleksii Tsepa presented research they worked on last summer with Laschowski as their supervisor.

“I am very grateful for this opportunity,” says Burakov.

“We had our work accepted to the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), which is the top tier robotics conference. Without this program, I would have never done that. It opens a lot of pathways for my future.”

As for Pedan, she has already met with her supervisor, visited the ��οMississauga campus and Robarts Library on the St. George campus. She’s looking forward to seeing more of ��οand the city.

“As far as adjustments go, it’s been relatively quick,” she says.

“I’ve had to adjust to so many different situations and settings over the last two and a half years – so this is one is a walk in the park.”

Robotic nano-surgery shown to be effective at treating brain cancer in pre-clinical models

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 14:45:25 +0000

Robotic nano-surgery shown to be effective at treating brain cancer in pre-clinical models

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 04/14/2023 - 10:45

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(Photo by BSIP/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)

Topic

Breaking Research

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Hospital for Sick Children

Research & Innovation

Robotics

Researchers at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and the University of Toronto Robotics Institute – an institutional strategic initiative – have teamed up to develop a new treatment option for patients diagnosed with glioblastoma (GBM).

Glioblastoma is the most common and aggressive form of brain cancer – the average life expectancy after a diagnosis is around 15 months.

Yu Sun, a professor in U of T's department of mechanical and industrial engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, and Xi Huang, a senior scientist at SickKids and an associate professor in the department of molecular genetics at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, hope to change this dire statistic with the help of magnetically guided robotic nano-scalpels that can precisely target cancer cells and kill them. Findings from their research were recently shared in a new study published in Science Advances.

For decades, scientists have searched for ways to treat GBM, including conventional surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and targeted therapy. GBM cells quickly reproduce and invade nearby brain tissue and are notoriously difficult to eradicate by conventional surgery. These cells also develop resistance to chemotherapy or targeted therapy. As a result, patients usually relapse after undergoing currently available treatment protocols.

Sun and Huang believe that a mechanical nano-surgical approach targeting tumour cells could provide a new and effective treatment option.

Sun, who is joint appointed to the department of electrical and computer engineering as well as the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts and Science and is director of the ��οRobotics Institute, has spent more than 20 years developing micro- and nano-robotic systems – including infertility treatment systems that can select sperm with high DNA integrity and inject it into a human egg. Huang, whose lab at SickKids specializes in developmental and stem-cell biology, investigates the physical properties and mechano-electrical-chemical signaling of brain cancer to develop new therapeutic strategies.

Together, they designed a precision control system that applies a rotating magnetic field to mobilize magnetic carbon nanotubes (mCNTs) filled with iron oxide particles and demonstrated that mCNT swarms could be activated inside a single cell to function as nano-scalpels.

They showed that mechanical stimulations provided by mobilized mCNTs inside GBM cells disrupt cancer cells’ internal structures leading to cell death. Importantly, the team demonstrated that the nano-surgical treatment reduced tumour size and extended the survival of mice bearing chemotherapy-resistant GBM.

With evidence from multiple preclinical models confirming the effectiveness of their approach, the researchers are next optimizing the material compositions of mCNTs, the control strategy and the treatment protocol.

As a PhD student at U of T Robotics Institute, Xian Wang worked with Professor Yu Sun to develop a magnetic nano-scale robot that can be moved anywhere inside a human cell (photo by Tyler Irving)

Xian Wang – a former post-doctoral researcher in Huang’s lab and a recent graduate of Sun’s lab, where he began this work building magnetic nano-tweezers – is the first author of the paper. His work developing the nano-tweezers is what laid the research foundations for the nano-scalpels used in the current study. He recently joined Queen’s University as an assistant professor.

“In addition to physically disrupting cellular structures, mechanically mobilized mCNTs can also modulate specific biomedical pathways,” Wang says. “Based on this, we are now developing a combination therapy to tackle untreatable brain tumours.”

While there is still more research to conduct before human trials are initiated, this innovation in mechanical nano-surgery is giving patients, families and the medical community hope that new treatment options are on the horizon for an otherwise untreatable disease.

The research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, among others.

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