Geography and Planning

Faculty of Dentistry

Hospital for Sick Children

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Research & Innovation

��ϲ�� Scarborough

University Health Network

Subheadline

The new and renewed chairs at ��ϲ�� and its hospital partners were part of a broader research funding announcement by the federal government

At the ��ϲ��’s Faculty of Dentistry, Karina Carneiro and her team are working on developing new treatments to regenerate bone with DNA-based biomaterials.

Karina Carneiro (photo by Jeff Comber)

The researchers are exploring ways to use synthetic materials, created using DNA nanotechnology, to help bones regenerate and support the body’s efforts to heal them naturally.

That’s in contrast to current bone repair treatments, which involve taking bone tissue from another part of the body and breaking it into little pieces that can be inserted into the defect.

“Using a DNA-gel for this purpose could be an effective treatment option as it can be injected to fill the defect size fully,” says Carneiro, an assistant professor in the faculty.

“What we believe to be the difference between our DNA gel and other materials being developed is that over time, the DNA can degrade into molecules that promote our own body’s healing mechanism to further regenerate the bone.”

Carneiro is one of three researchers at the Faculty of Dentistry to be awarded a new or renewed Canada Research Chair in the latest round – and one of 36 across ��ϲ��’s three campuses and hospital partners (see list below).

Established in 2000, the prestigious federal program aims to recruit and retain top researchers and scholars in the country. It invests more than $300 million annually to enable world-class researchers to reach new heights in disciplines spanning engineering, health sciences, humanities and social sciences.

“Congratulations to all the researchers at the ��ϲ�� who received new or renewed Canada Research Chairs in the latest round,” says Leah Cowen, ��ϲ��’s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives.

“From using AI to improve medicine and health care to better understanding Indigenous geographies and environmental dispossession, the work by ��ϲ�� investigators supported by this important federal program is pushing the boundaries of research and innovation – and promises to have a big impact in Canada and around the world.”

Anil Kishen (photo by Jeff Comber)

Professor Anil Kishen, who is also at the Faculty of Dentistry, will use the funding associated with his Tier 1 Canada Research to advance his work in oral health nanomedicine.

He and his colleagues in the Kishen Lab are using multifunctional bioactive nanoparticles to study how cells communicate with each other and how wounds heal – in particular, how nanoparticles can be used to help save infected natural teeth and treat wounds and ulcers in individuals with diabetes.

Kishen says one of the reasons chitosan-based nanoparticles, which are optimized for different therapeutic applications, are so promising is because they’re derived from a naturally occurring molecule that is readily available.

“Affordability is important when developing a treatment to reach the masses,” Kishen says.

Massieh Moayedi (photo by Jeff Comber)

Massieh Moayedi, an associate professor in the Faculty of Dentistry, is receiving funding to pursue research in pain neuroimaging as a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair.

“There’s tenuous evidence that body image might be involved in some types of chronic pain,” Moayedi says, adding that his end goal is to understand how pain works so he can improve patient outcomes.

He’s already shown that people with arthritic hands who see the limb looking healthier through a special device experience improvements in pain, so he’s now trying to understand which brain regions are involved.

“This chair will give me funding and the capacity to allow me to investigate these questions, and to really understand the relationship between pain and body image.”

Randy Boissonnault, minister of employment, workforce development and official languages, announced the CRCs at a press conference on Aug. 29 on behalf of François-Philippe Champagne, minister of innovation, science and industry, and Mark Holland, minister of health.

He also revealed the researchers and projects receiving funding through a diverse array of programs administered by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI).

They include the recipients of the SSHRC’s Partnership Grants, Partnership Development Grants and Insight Grants, as well as the recipients of the CFI’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund (JELF), which helps institutions to recruit and retain outstanding researchers, and provide them with the necessary tools and technology to perform their work. Named after a former ��ϲ�� president, JELF supports projects that deal with a range of pressing issues. This year’s recipients include 35 researchers at ��ϲ�� and its hospital partners sharing a total of more than $11 million for projects ranging from an assessment of plant responses to environmental change to the development of an ultra-sensitive cryogenic detector for dark matter and neutrino experiments.

“The federal government’s ongoing support for research through all of these programs – from the John R. Evans Leaders Fund, to the NSERC and CFI grants and the Canada Research Chairs – is critical to supporting the kind of research that ultimately improves lives through new knowledge and innovations,” Cowen said.

Here is the full list of new and renewed Canada Research Chairs at ��ϲ��:

New Canada Research Chairs

Stephanie Ameis at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and in the department of psychiatry in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in neuroimaging of autism and mental health in youth
Yvonne Bombard at Unity Health and in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Tier 2 in genomics health services and policy
Karina Carneiro in the Faculty of Dentistry, Tier 2 in DNA-based biomaterials
Jesse Chao at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and in the department of medical biophysics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in precision cancer diagnostics and artificial intelligence
Xi (Becky) Chen-Bumgardner in the department of applied psychology and human development in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Tier 1 in literacy development of bilingual and multilingual children
Mark Chiew at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and in the department of medical biophysics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in computational biomedical imaging
Sarah Crome at University Health Network and in the department of immunology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in tissue-specific immune tolerance
Michelle Daigle in the department of geography and planning in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Tier 2 in Indigenous geographies and environmental dispossession
Karen Davis at University Health Network and in the department of surgery in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 1 in acute and chronic pain research
Rahul Gopalkrishnan in the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science and department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in computational medicine
Housheng (Hansen) He at University Health Network and in the department of medical biophysics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 1 in RNA medicine
Margaret Herridge at University Health Network and in the department of medicine in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 1 in critical illness outcomes and the recovery continuum
Anil Kishen in the Faculty of Dentistry, Tier 1 in oral health nanomedicine
Bowen Li in the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, Tier 2 in RNA vaccines and therapeutics
Iacovos Michael at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and in the department of medical biophysics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in tumor biology and precision oncology
Massieh Moayedi in the Faculty of Dentistry, Tier 2 in pain neuroimaging
Faiyaz Notta at the University Health Network and in the department of medical biophysics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in pancreatic cancer and cancer evolution
Valeria Rac at the University Health Network and in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Tier 2 in health system and technology evaluation
Fahad Razak at Unity Health Toronto and in the department of medicine in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in health-care data and analytics
Clinton Robbins at the University Health Network and in the department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 1 in cardiovascular immunology
Lena Serghides at the University Health Network and in the department of immunology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 1 in maternal-child health and HIV
Catriona Steele at the University Health Network and in the department of speech language pathology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 1 in swallowing and food oral processing
Bo Wang in the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science and department of laboratory medicine and pathobiology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, tier 2 in artificial intelligence for medicine

Renewed Canada Research Chairs

Angela Cheung at University Health Network and in the department of medicine at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 1 in musculoskeletal and postmenopausal health
Xi Huang at the Hospital for Sick Children and in the department of molecular genetics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in cancer biophysics
Cendri Hutcherson in the department of psychology at the ��ϲ�� Scarborough, Tier 2 in decision neuroscience
Joanne Kotsopoulos at Women’s College Hospital and at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Tier 2 in hereditary breast and ovarian cancer prevention
Arthur Mortha in the department of immunology in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in mucosal immunology
Kelly O’Brien in the department of physical therapy in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in episodic disability and rehabilitation
Trevor Pugh at the University Health Network and in the department of medical biophysics in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in translational genomics
Diego Restuccia in the department of economics in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Tier 1 in macroeconomics and productivity
David Sinton in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, Tier 1 in energy and fluids
Olivier Trescases in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical and computer engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, Tier 2 in power electronic converters
Joel Watts in the Tanz Centre for Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, Tier 2 in protein misfolding disorders
Michael Widener in the department of geography and planning in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Tier 2 in transportation and health
Stephen Wright in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology in the Faculty of Arts & Science, Tier 1 in population genomics

A big, boxy part of Canada's heritage: The untold story of Toronto's suburban banquet halls

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 21 Nov 2022 20:53:17 +0000

A big, boxy part of Canada's heritage: The untold story of Toronto's suburban banquet halls

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 11/21/2022 - 15:53

Cutline

A woman rubs colorful powder on the face of Kanak Bhalla during the holi Indian festival at the National Banquet Hall in Mississauga (photo by Lucas Oleniuk/Toronto Star/Getty Images)

Cynthia Macdonald

Topic

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Graduate Students

In the Greater Toronto Area, the phrase “heritage building” might bring to mind a Georgian mansion or a pre-Confederation church. But as Sneha Mandhan’s work reveals, it may be time to add banquet hall to the list.

Banquet halls, explains Mandhan, are sites of key importance to many immigrant communities throughout the Greater Toronto Area and elsewhere – including the South Asian diaspora. Big and boxy on the outside, they are colourful, vibrant and richly decorated within. And their uses are many.

Sneha Mandhan

“They might host religious wedding ceremonies and receptions,” says Mandhan, a PhD candidate in the ��ϲ��’s department of geography and planning in the Faculty of Arts & Science. “But there are also engagements, bridal and baby showers, and birthday parties. Also school graduations and celebrations of religious festivals like Diwali and Eid, trade conventions and conferences.

“So they’re really catering to a wide set of needs.”

Mandhan, whose research is supported by the School of Graduate Studies' Connaught PhDs for Public Impact Fellowship Program, says “banquet hall” is a term used by the public, but it hardly covers the many purposes of these ubiquitous buildings. Mississauga alone is home to more than two dozen.

“In a lot of planning policy, they’re called event spaces or places of assembly which are more accurate terms,” says Mandhan, an urban planner, urban designer and architect who studies the relationship between physical spaces and cultural activity.

“But in some ways, that language takes away from how important they are as community and social spaces.”

Spaces like these are essential to newcomers. In the 20th century, European immigrants to Toronto were well-served by places like the Hungarian House on St. Clair Avenue West or the Ukrainian Cultural Centre on Christie Street. In addition to hosting celebrations and life cycle events, such locales allowed new Canadians to make much-needed contact with each other. And crucially, they were located close to residential areas.

But in the downtown area, Mandhan notes, “land values have risen, so developers have come in and pushed out a lot of the older uses which were not profit-making enterprises. Now, these kinds of places have all been relegated to what the province calls ‘employment lands’ outside the city.”

Banquet halls in "employment lands" such as the Sagan Banquet Hall and Convention Centre in Mississauga, often have a bare-bones boxy façade (photo courtesy of Mandhan)

Employment lands are commercial and industrial spaces located outside the city’s centre. They are often the site of warehouses and auto-body shops, as well as places of worship and banquet halls. They can be inaccessible for anyone without a car, which is a problem for many of the people who wish to attend events serving the South Asian community – including seniors or young guests, and minimum-wage workers.

“Banquet halls are extremely important employment centres,” says Mandhan, “because they employ service workers directly and many others indirectly, such as those supplying décor, videography, music and food. But they’re not commuter friendly, especially during weekends and late-night hours when events are commonly hosted. So accessibility is important to think about.”

Initially, Mandhan wasn’t aware just how important banquet halls were to the South Asian community.

“In the early stages of research for my PhD dissertation, I started off doing exploratory phone interviews to try and understand the kinds of spaces that the South Asian diaspora was using for rituals and celebrations,” she says. “I remember having this long conversation with someone who went to 10 to 15 weddings per year pre-COVID, which was just mind-blowing to me. And so I started doing research on banquet halls just to see how people were talking about it. And what I found was that the public narrative around these spaces was essentially absent.”

Interior of Sagan Banquet Hall and Convention Centre in Mississauga decorated for an event (photo courtesy of Mandhan)

As a Connaught PhDs for Public Impact Fellow, Mandhan will direct information derived from her PhD research toward two projects.

“The first is an op-ed that will question how cultural heritage historically has been related more to colonial history: a lot of the buildings that are preserved for that reason are colonial buildings. How do we flip that narrative and start to understand what heritage looks like for immigrant communities? It might not always involve beautiful architecture. There are other studies being conducted, such as the work being done around the designation of Little Jamaica as a cultural district, that really are starting to question how we might move from understanding cultural heritage as colonial buildings, to understanding what cultural uses are worth preserving.”

Mandhan’s second project is a photo exhibit documenting the stories of celebration in banquet halls that she hopes will have a physical presence for a short period. “But I’m hoping for it to live online for a longer period, as something that can grow and evolve,” she says.

Though her work concentrates on the South Asian diaspora, she says that guests from many cultural backgrounds use the services of banquet halls and attend celebrations there, making her research potentially attractive to anyone with an interest in Toronto’s ever-evolving cultural landscape.

Broadly speaking, Mandhan’s project argues for a better consideration of the needs that immigrant groups have for celebration, gathering and connection – needs that were better fulfilled in earlier times when such spaces were accessible, central and located close to other community services.

“I want to bring banquet halls into the public discourse because these are important spaces that we need to be thinking more about,” says Mandhan. “Right now, they’re just considered from a purely functional point of view as spaces where many people will congregate. But these places have a lot of emotional and cultural value to people. We need to start incorporating that idea into the decisions we make about planning in our cities.”

With her podcast, Alexandra Lambropoulos tells the stories of urban innovation in Africa and beyond

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 13 Oct 2022 14:52:29 +0000

With her podcast, Alexandra Lambropoulos tells the stories of urban innovation in Africa and beyond

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 10/13/2022 - 10:52

Cutline

A master's student in urban planning at ��ϲ��, Alexandra Lambropoulos created a podcast dedicated to researchers and community leaders driving projects that are transforming cities in Africa and elsewhere (photo courtesy of Alexandra Lambropoulos)

Tina Adamopoulos

Topic

Our Community

Black Research Network

School of Cities

Global

Graduate Students

When Alexandra Lambropoulos conducts research, she also seeks out the stories behind it.

Lambropoulos, a master’s student pursuing urban planning at the ��ϲ��, picked up the idea during her first trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo to see her family a few years ago.

There, she was inspired by the urban developments and creativity in her family’s hometown to further pursue urban planning.

“I was amazed to see the city and all these creative interventions being done by people to make their communities better in any way possible,” Lambropoulos says.

From there, she did some digging on different aspects of urban planning, finding groups, organizations and case studies in Africa dedicated to urban growth, art and sustainability across various countries. When she came back to Toronto, Lambropoulos discovered that Africa wasn’t a focus of study in her undergraduate courses.

So she decided to tell these stories herself.

Enter Urban Limitrophe, a podcast dedicated to researchers and community leaders driving projects that are transforming cities across Africa and the diaspora. Launched at the height of the pandemic, the podcast is nearing almost 20 episodes, with countless urban planning innovations – including initiatives in education, the arts and climate change – in countries ranging from Ghana and Kenya to Peru and France.

Urban Limitrophe is co-sponsored by the department of geography and planning in the Faculty of Arts & Science and the School of Cities, an Institutional Strategic Initiative (ISI) at ��ϲ�� dedicated to building resilient and inclusive urban spaces.

For Lambropoulos, the podcast is a unique way to mobilize knowledge about urban planning in Africa for a Canadian audience, while securing its presence in academia.

Conversations with guests on Urban Limitrophe have even informed her ��ϲ�� research, which spans the intersection of culture, community and economic development, as well as arts and urban planning. That includes featuring initiatives like Surf Ghana, a non-profit organization building skateparks in Accra, as well as Justice Defenders, an organization providing equitable access to justice across Africa. The project also includes CLUSTER, a non-profit in Cairo, Egypt whose work analyzes urban informality in the city, and the Abibiman Project’s efforts to celebrate African cuisine and tackle food insecurity in Toronto.

“The podcast has really shaped my approach with the way that I conduct research. It’s allowed me to take a different lens and look for the stories that are not being told,” Lambropoulos says.

As a project officer at the Infrastructure Institute at the School of Cities, Lambropoulos and a team of researchers examined the role of exhibitions to promote urban-related topics, focusing on mixed-use buildings to support community resilience. The project is part of the Creative Mixed-Use Initiative at the School of Cities, which has propelled partnerships to build mixed-use projects since 2019.

Mixed-use buildings are seen in city infrastructure, such as adding restaurants or other services to residences — and often facilitate partnerships between private, public and non-profit organizations to nurture deep community ties and vibrant neighbourhoods.

In July, the group launched its first exhibit, called +(Plus), at the World Urban Pavilion in Regent Park. The virtual and in-person exhibition traced the history of mixed-use buildings in Toronto, using examples like the North Toronto Collegiate Institute / Republic, a four-storey high school with two condominium towers situated above it. They also reimagined what the future of mixed-use buildings could look like in Toronto – such as adding housing above fire stations.

Earlier this year, Lambropoulos was one of several recipients of the Geography & Planning award for Black students, which recognizes outstanding academic and professional achievements within the department and recipients’ work to eliminate anti-Black racism and advance systemic change within the university and the field.

“It was so great to be recognized. I appreciate the support that comes from the Black Research Network and my department to help me fulfill this dream to work in this sector,” Lambropoulos says.

“Sometimes things like this are a reminder that you’re on the right path.”

With her sights set on completing her degree, Lambropoulos will continue to work at the Infrastructure Institute to help curate more exhibitions. As for the podcast, Lambropoulos has received invitations to visit cities across Africa from people she’s interviewed — and hopes to travel and bring the podcast to them one day.

Listen to the podcast:

How ��ϲ��’s School of Cities is helping reimagine a Toronto fire station: The Globe and Mail

mattimar — Wed, 18 May 2022 15:51:50 +0000

How ��ϲ��’s School of Cities is helping reimagine a Toronto fire station: The Globe and Mail

mattimar Wed, 05/18/2022 - 11:51

Cutline

An artist’s concept of mixed-use development comprising residential housing and fire station on Bloor Street East in Toronto (rendering courtesy of Infrastructure Institute, School of Cities)

Topic

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

School of Cities

Matti Siemiatycki, director of the Infrastructure Institute at the ��ϲ��'s School of Cities, is on a mission to create development that blends residential, commercial and other uses in new and old buildings throughout the city.

In a column in the Globe and Mail, Siemiatycki meets with writer Dave LeBlanc to tour 441 Bloor Street East, a two-story Toronto Fire Station that is surrounded by high-rises and is ripe for redevelopment. The roof of the fire station is already used by the Glen Road Early Learning & Child Care Centre, but Siemiatycki told the Globe that the School of Cities is in the early stages of talks with CreateTO, the city’s real estate agency, and the fire department to reimagine how to use the site. The plan is to “reuse the site in a way that we’re going to put the station back in,” Siemiatycki told the Globe. “And then build housing above, and my preference would be affordable housing, and we’ll see how the economics work; the nice thing is there’s a real interest in seeing how far we can push this.”

School of Cities recently rolled out a three-pronged, city-building plan emphasizing mixed-used development with the help of a donor. Siemiatycki told ��ϲ�� News he wants to “morph this into the norm rather than the exception and bring partners together intentionally, to turn into a model of creative mixed-uses designed for a social purpose, because that’s what enables growth to drive community benefits.”

Going places: Students work with Toronto Public Space Committee to address city's lack of public washrooms

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 06 May 2022 13:17:55 +0000

Going places: Students work with Toronto Public Space Committee to address city's lack of public washrooms

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 05/06/2022 - 09:17

Cutline

Graduate students from ��ϲ��'s department of geography and planning spent months investigating the lack of public washrooms in Toronto, a problem exacerbated by COVID-19 when many retail outlets restricted access to their facilities (photo by David Lee)

Rebecca Cheung

Topic

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Graduate Students

What do you do in Toronto when you have no place to answer nature’s call?

The lack of public washrooms in Canada’s largest city is a real and ever-present concern for many – particularly for unhoused populations, families with young children and those living with incontinence.

The pandemic has only exacerbated the situation. As restaurants and retail outlets closed or began restricting access to their facilities, many essential workers, including delivery drivers and public transit operators, found themselves with no place to pull over for a pit stop during the work day.

“I think it’s a problem everyone in Toronto has felt, especially this past summer during the pandemic when our only options for seeing people was to gather outdoors,” says Alycia Doering, a master’s student in the ��ϲ��’s department of geography and planning in the Faculty of Arts & Science. “There are not a lot of places for people to go.”

In the summer of 2021, the Toronto Public Space Committee was eager to make headway in its GottaGoTO campaign, advocating for increased public washroom access across the city. So, Igor Samardzic, a member of the steering committee and a ��ϲ�� alumnus, turned to his former graduate program at the department of geography and planning for help.

The department accepted his pitch to include GottaGoTO as a project for students in the Workshop in Planning Practice course, which has student teams partner with an external client to tackle a real-world planning problem.

Doering and fellow master’s students Sawdah Ismail, Siobhan Kelly, Emily Power and Rameez Sadafal spent months looking into the issue – and their work promises to go a long way in supporting the Toronto Public Space Committee’s mission to make the city more liveable.

“We wanted to give talented students an opportunity to make a real impact with us,” says Samardzic, who earned his honours bachelor of arts as a member of Trinity College and his master of arts degree from the department of geography and planning. “This was not going to be a project where they wrote a dense report that would collect dust on a city planner’s desk.”

Sadafal says the team quickly discovered there are many gaps in Toronto's current public washroom network. “It’s also a multifaceted issue,” Sadafal says. “Our main challenge was figuring out how to summarize the issue so a decision-maker could fully appreciate the problem.”

The students completed a rigorous review and jurisdictional scan, which involved poring over policy documents and analyzing strategies undertaken by other cities, including implementing automated public toilets and arranging agreements with commercial businesses.

“We did a deep dive into all aspects of public washroom planning,” explains Doering. “We really needed to understand all angles of the issue.”

The team toured Toronto neighbourhoods, paying close attention to gaps in public washroom access. They spoke directly to stakeholders, including community groups, City of Toronto staff members and city councillors.

“I am really proud of what this group was able to accomplish on behalf of the Toronto Public Space Committee at a time when the topic is especially charged with a sense of urgency and political debate,” says course instructor Michelle Berquist, manager of area transportation planning at the City of Toronto. “This group took on a project with an ambitious scope, looking critically at the state of practice in our city and its shortcomings. It was a job well done.”

Ultimately, the effort paid off. The students delivered a comprehensive report and presentation to the Toronto Public Space Committee in December, when the workshop wrapped, and a few students hope to continue their engagement with the GottaGoTO program in the future.

“We were truly impressed by the work, and we’re excited to have a report, backed with evidence, that we can make public and create buzz around the city on this issue,” says Samardzic.

Improving water equity in India: Research team one of 17 to receive support from ��ϲ��'s Data Sciences Institute

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 16 Feb 2022 20:29:17 +0000

Improving water equity in India: Research team one of 17 to receive support from ��ϲ��'s Data Sciences Institute

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 02/16/2022 - 15:29

Cutline

(Photo by Atul Loke via Getty Images)

Fanni Barocsi

Safa Jinje

Topic

Global Lens

Data Sciences Institute

Resarch & Innovation

Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

A multidisciplinary team at the ��ϲ�� is developing tools and metrics to improve water equity in India by empowering water planners, communities and activists.

While India has made gains in expanding access to water distribution networks, rapid urbanization and inadequate infrastructure have resulted in systems that provide water for less than four hours per day in some regions, impacting 390 million people.

To cope, residents invest in water storage infrastructure and seek alternative water sources, imposing significant financial, environmental, educational, health and time costs, especially on women and girls.

“The level of complexity and inequality is staggering,” says David Meyer, an assistant professor in the department of civil and mineral engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “Since 2018, I have been exploring options for visualizing and learning from water supply schedules.”

Meyer is leading the project alongside Nidhi Subramanyam, an assistant professor in the department of geography and planning in the Faculty of Arts & Science, and Carmen Logie, an associate professor in the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work.

It is one of 17 projects receive Research Catalyst Funding Grants through ��ϲ��’s Data Sciences Institute.

With their project, “Harnessing Data to Visualize and Mitigate Urban Water Inequities within the Cauvery River Basin, India,” Meyer, Subramanyam and Logie bring together diverse disciplinary perspectives on water and data – including a deep understanding of water engineering, water governance and equity.

“Water is a cross-cutting theme that flows through so many disciplines, geographies, technologies and aspects of our lives,” says Subramanyam. “Any study about water must engage different kinds of data, expertise and knowledge systems.” 

“Professor Subramanyam has helped me realize that data cannot be interpreted properly without considering the data generation process and the data generators themselves,” adds Meyer. “Understanding the context and incentives for water utilities to report and curate data will prove key to leveraging it on an ongoing basis.” 

All projects supported by the Catalyst Grants fund multidisciplinary research teams focused on using the development of new data science methodology or the innovative use of data science to address questions of major societal importance.

“The Data Sciences Institute is committed to fostering new opportunities to cultivate multi-disciplinary collaborations between data science methodologists and researchers in various application domains,” says Timothy Chan, a professor in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering who is the Data Sciences Institute’s associate director of research and thematic programming. “This is just the beginning. With this inaugural round, we received 70 highly competitive proposals, which were carefully assessed by a multidisciplinary review panel.”

The Data Sciences Institute Catalyst Grants are supported by the ��ϲ�� Institutional Strategic Initiatives program and external funding partners, with two of the 2022 Catalyst Grants co-funded by Medicine by Design directed to finding solutions to challenges in regenerative medicine.

See the full list of grant recipients at the Data Sciences Institute

Scientists find evidence of a warming planet high in the Earth’s atmosphere

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 21:14:04 +0000

Scientists find evidence of a warming planet high in the Earth’s atmosphere

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 11/23/2021 - 16:14

Cutline

(Illustration by Buradaki/istockphoto)

Chris Sasaki

Topic

Breaking Research

Climate Change

Global

Research & Innovation

An international team of scientists has provided further evidence of climate change by measuring the expansion of the troposphere – the lowest layer of the Earth’s atmosphere – which is being driven by rising temperatures.

The researchers tracked the altitude of the upper limit of the troposphere, called the tropopause, from 1980 to 2020. They found that it has risen an average of 50 to 60 metres per decade over the last 20 years, a rate slightly higher than the previous two decades and in stark contrast to pre-1960, when the altitude of the tropopause was generally stable.

The scientists subtracted the effect of natural forces and determined that roughly 80 per cent of the increase in the temperature of the troposphere since 2000 was due to anthropogenic – or human-caused – warming driven by growing levels of greenhouse gases.

"Our research provides another piece of very important evidence of anthropogenic climate change and proof that can be observed even in the tropopause,” says Jane Liu, an associate professor in the ��ϲ��’s department of geography and planning in the Faculty of Arts & Science, and corresponding author of a paper describing the result published in the journal Science Advances.

“It shows that fossil fuel consumption is leaving its fingerprints — not just on the planet’s surface with extreme weather, sea level rise and retreating glaciers — but everywhere, even high above our heads.”

The paper’s lead author is Lingyun Meng is from Nanjing University in China, while the co-corresponding author is William Randel from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. Other authors include researchers from Canada, Austria and China.

(Image via the Faculty of Arts & Science)

The tropopause is roughly 10 kilometres above sea level at the poles and 20 kilometres above sea level at the equator. The researchers analyzed the data on the altitude of the tropopause in the northern hemisphere between 20 degrees and 80 degrees latitude.

The natural forces they accounted for included major volcanic eruptions of El Chichón in 1982 and Mount Pinatubo in 1991, as well as warming in the Pacific Ocean due to the climate phenomenon known as El Niño.

Liu and her collaborators used data collected by instruments carried high above the Earth by weather balloons that measure temperature, pressure, humidity and wind. Additional data came from a technique known as radio occultation in which signals from global positioning system (GPS) satellites pass through the atmosphere and are received by satellites on the other side of the planet.

In addition to their main finding, Liu and her collaborators saw a change in the forces driving the rise in the tropopause.

Between 1980 and 2000, the rise was the result of both warming of the troposphere and cooling of the stratosphere, which is the layer above. Stratospheric cooling prior to 2000 was the result of a depletion of atmospheric ozone caused by the proliferation of chemicals like chlorofluorocarbons, commonly used in refrigeration and air conditioners.

Yet, after 2000, the stratospheric cooling subsided as the concentration of chlorofluorocarbons dropped. According to Liu, this is a sign that the atmosphere’s ozone layer is recovering as result of the 1987 Montreal Protocol that curtailed the use of chlorofluorocarbons.

While the slowdown of stratospheric cooling is a positive sign, the rise in the tropopause has not slowed, meaning that greenhouse-gas-driven tropospheric warming has more than made up for that turnaround.

“Still, this shows that the Montreal Protocol has worked,” says Liu. “And we can do the same with global warming.”

The results were published while representatives from around the world assembled in Glasgow, Scotland for the COP26 summit to address the climate crisis. The gathering is being viewed by many as the last, best chance to address the global threat and Liu hopes that those in attendance will pay attention to this result and all the scientific evidence.

“I think this research sends a very clear message to the delegates at COP26, as well as to anyone who still has doubts about anthropogenic climate change and what’s happening to our planet.”

Experts from ��ϲ��, city and other post-secondary institutions meet to discuss pandemic recovery

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 15:03:16 +0000

Experts from ��ϲ��, city and other post-secondary institutions meet to discuss pandemic recovery

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 11/19/2021 - 10:03

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(Photo by Evgeny Klein/EyeEm via Getty Images)

Ravisha Mall

Topic

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

School of Cities

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Dublin Awards. Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

School of Continuing Studies

��ϲ�� Mississauga

��ϲ�� Scarborough

University Health Network

Students, faculty and staff from eight post-secondary institutions, including the ��ϲ��, will meet with officials from the City of Toronto for a free, two-day virtual event focused on developing an equitable and inclusive pandemic recovery policy framework.

Karen Chapple

The CivicLabTO Academic Summit, to be held on Nov. 23-24, will focus on issues such as public health, housing, transit, transportation, climate change, green recovery and the future of public space. It will tap leading experts from the city and local post-secondary institutions to share best practices.

The event, hosted by York University, will also examine potential partnerships, innovations and solutions through the lens of equity and inclusion.

Writer Ravisha Mall recently spoke with Karen Chapple, director of ��ϲ��’s School of Cities and a professor in the department of geography and planning, about the impetus for the broader partnership between the city and the eight post-secondary institutions and the potential for such events to contribute to the development of a “Toronto School” of urbanism.

Why is this type of discussion happening now?

Crises of all kinds produce openings for radical change. Yet, this particular moment is not just the simple convergence of multiple crises – pandemic, climate change, income inequality, resurgent nationalism and systemic racism – but a juncture that is reaffirming the need for collective action. As much as we hate the masks and distancing, dread the climate extremes and feel upset or oppressed by the ongoing political, economic and cultural polarization, we still share hope. And we can take comfort in the fact that our institutions continue to push on. We are in it together, we learn and that’s inspiring.

How have you seen cities and academic institutions collaborate effectively to create real change?

One obvious example is the University of Chicago’s civic engagement program, which makes sure that disadvantaged high school students have a pipeline into college, builds civic capacity in the community and ensures that local universities procure from local businesses. I love this example because a university that was the birthplace of urban sociology 100 years ago continues to this day with intense empirical urbanism that has transformed both how we think about cities and how we empower their communities. As I look at the many disciplinary perspectives coming together in CivicLabTO to address urban challenges, I get excited about the potential for a “Toronto School” that is just as transformative as the Chicago School.

I would also note that, during the pandemic, ��ϲ�� also found many ways to support municipalities, including hosting vaccination clinics across the tri-campus, rethinking aging apartment towers and supporting small businesses.

What is the School of Cities’ role in all of this?

We are the School of, for, and by Cities. We build and translate knowledge about cities, we connect communities and stakeholders around the world to support sustainable urbanism and we make sure that our urban residents have the capacity and power to create their own communities. To borrow from Toronto’s own David Miller, the former mayor, we see the cities as the solution to the crises we face. So, we teach the world why cities matter so much for our future.

Leveraging the work being done across the university’s divisions, the School of Cities curated a list of speakers for the event – many of whom contributed to public policy during the pandemic and are providing advice in the recovery.

Here is a list of members of the ��ϲ�� community, including students and faculty, who are scheduled to appear at the summit:

Matti Siemiatycki, department of geography and planning, Faculty of Arts & Science
Catherine Chandler-Crichlow, School of Continuing Studies
Mark Campbell, department of arts, culture and media, ��ϲ�� Scarborough
Beth Coleman, Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology, ��ϲ�� Mississauga
Andrew Boozary, Dalla Lana School of Public Health and University Health Network
Andrew Bond, department of family and community medicine, Temerty Faculty of Medicine
Shoshanna Saxe, Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering
Menilek Beyene, PhD student at ��ϲ�� Scarborough
Zahra Ebrahim, department of geography and planning, Faculty of Arts & Science

Five startups to watch from ��ϲ�� Engineering’s 2021 virtual Demo Day event

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 21:10:06 +0000

Five startups to watch from ��ϲ�� Engineering’s 2021 virtual Demo Day event

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 09/28/2021 - 17:10

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Nightingale.ai, an AI-enabled platform that enables physiotherapists and their patients to connect remotely, is one of five startups that won prizes at The Entrepreneurship Hatchery's annual Demo Day event (photo courtesy of Nightingale.ai)

Tyler Irving

Topic

Our Community

Institute of Biomedical Engineering

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Alumni

Artificial Intelligence

Entrepreneurship Hatchery

Computer Science

Entrepreneurship

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Hospital for Sick Children

Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

Mathematics

Rotman Commerce

Rotman School of Management

Startups

University College

University Health Network

Urban Studies

UTIAS

From crowdsourcing new treatments for rare diseases to catalyzing the work of urban planners, five ��ϲ�� startups are one step closer to commercial viability after participating in The Entrepreneurship Hatchery’s virtual Demo Day 2021.

A total of 17 teams competed in the Hatchery’s NEST process, an experiential learning opportunity that instills and nurtures an entrepreneurial mindset in participating ��ϲ�� students and faculty.

Over the summer, participants met potential co-founders, developed their business plans and connected with mentors who offered support in various areas, including market research, branding and securing intellectual property. The program culminated on Demo Day, with teams pitching their startup ideas to a panel of judges, including entrepreneurs and investors – some of whom are themselves former Hatchery participants.

The five winning teams will share $80,000 in seed funding, which will help take their companies through the next phase of their development.

“Hatchery Demo Day is my favourite way to kick off a new academic year,” says Chris Yip, dean of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, where the Hatchery program is housed. “I’m always impressed by the creativity, the professionalism and the energy of these dynamic students, and I look forward to watching them grow in the years to come.

“On behalf of the faculty, congratulations to all the teams that participated this year, as well as to Joseph Orozco and his whole team at the Hatchery for making this possible.”

Here are this year’s winning teams:

Civvic – AI-enabled web platform for developers and urban planners

Civvic has designed a web-based platform to bring together all the diverse information required by urban panners in one place. (Image courtesy of Civvic)

Planning a new urban development is complex. It requires assembling information about the historical, social and economic attributes of a particular site or neighbourhood – plus liaising with a wide range of stakeholders. Civvic aims to streamline the research process by bringing all of this information together in a single platform.

“The process of getting ready for Demo Day has been one of the most challenging, yet rewarding, activities our team has faced,” says CEO Lewis Walker, a former University College student who recently graduated from ��ϲ��’s departments of human geography and planning and urban studies in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

“We realized that there’s often a gap in what we think is going on versus what is actually happening out in the field. Being willing to learn and able to pivot on the go has been critical for our team.”

Civvic plans to continue development of its online platform through the end of 2021 and is looking to hire new members for its team.

In addition to Walker, Civvic includes recent ��ϲ�� graduates Michelle Zhang (urban studies, peace, conflict and justice, human geography); David de Paiva (urban studies, political science); Khaled Elemam (bioinformatics and computational biology); Patrick Thang (Rotman Commerce, Rotman School of Management); and master’s student Ian Hwang (geography and planning).

Fovea — Wearable sensors for people living with blindness

Using an array of 100 coin-sized vibrating motors, Fovea aims to translate visual information into tactile signals for people who are blind (image courtesy by Fovea)

Fovea aims to help people who are blind by translating visual information into tactile signals relayed via a wearable vest.

Embedded within the vest is an array of 100 coin-sized motors – each of which is capable of vibrating based on input from a wearable camera. The system can provide certain basic information upon entering a room, including the number of objects and roughly how far away they are from the user.

“We provide an alternative to photonic-based sight in order to allow blind people to neuro-spatially sense their surroundings, better orient themselves and become more independent,” says Alaa Shamandy, a machine learning researcher at University Health Network’s Peter Munk Cardiac Centre and a member of the Fovea team. “With our non-invasive technology, we are working towards a more accessible world.”

Shamandy says the team has developed a rudimentary prototype of the device. They will use the funding from The Hatchery to develop a second version and facilitate volunteer testing by individuals with blindness. They also plan to apply for pre-market approval from regulatory agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Health Canada.

“The Hatchery has been extremely helpful throughout our development – from weekly pitching in front of distinguished mentors and investors to helping us perfect our business models and cash flows, and everything in between. We are in a much better place than when we started.”

In addition to Shamandy, Fovea includes: Sai Spandana Chintapalli, a PhD candidate in biomedical engineering at University of Pennsylvania; and Kevin Fan, an emergency resident physician at Aventura Hospital & Medical Center in Miami. The company is also looking at expanding its team in Toronto.

Nightingale AI — Improving physiotherapy with vision-based AI tools

Nightingale.ai connects physiotherapists and their patients remotely, leveraging vision-based AI to analyze patient progress. The goal is to lower the cost of providing physiotherapy while enhancing outcomes, both in the near and long term. (Photo courtesy of Nightingale.ai)

Nightingale.ai is an online platform that can be used by physiotherapists and their patients who are rehabilitating following knee or hip replacement surgeries. It uses vision-based artificial intelligence to detect and analyze the same kinds of parameters that physiotherapists look for during in-person visits, including how the surgical incision looks, how the patient is walking and how a new joint is moving.

Using this information, the platform can recommend a treatment plan or schedule in-person appointments as needed. By facilitating more frequent interaction and a better exchange between physiotherapists and their patients, Nightingale.ai can improve outcomes while lowering the cost of care. It also provides rich data on recovery outcomes that can be used to further optimize care for future patients.

“As a group of clinicians, engineers and researchers who have worked in the physiotherapy field for many years, we are very familiar with the problems encountered by both patients and providers during the rehabilitation journey,” says Sameer Chunara, CEO of Nightingale.ai and an advanced practice physiotherapist and owner of a community clinic in Toronto.

“We have been surrounded by a team of advisers who have helped us focus on what is really important at this stage.”

The team plans to use the funding they received to augment their core team of engineers and continue developing and testing their platform. They hope to have a beta version in the next six months.

In addition to Chunara, Nightingale.ai includes: Donovan Cooper, manager of site operations at Altum Health; Assistant Professor Charlene Chu (Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing); Meng-Fen Tsai (biomedical engineering PhD candidate), and Chao Bian (biomedical engineering PhD candidate).

ParkinSense – Medical monitoring system for people living with Parkinson’s disease

ParkinSense is a medical monitoring system that uses wearables to provide detailed, real-time data on the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. It can be used to objectively determine the effectiveness of treatment. (Image courtesy of ParkinSense)

Parkinson’s disease is a neurological disorder that affects more than 100,000 people in Canada. One common symptom of the condition is a tremor, an involuntary quivering movement or shaking of the hand, leg or foot.

ParkinSense is creating a monitoring system that can provide continuous, real-time data about tremors that can expedite the treatment of Parkinson’s patients by enabling more effective interactions with physicians. It also provides a mobile application that can remind patients when it’s time to take their medications, as well as to track the effectiveness of those medications over time.

“Having like-minded, passionate people who wanted to see us succeed made the start of our journey very meaningful to us,” says Carolina Gorodetsky, a pediatric neurologist and movement disorder specialist at the Hospital for Sick Children. “The funding will help out with our prototyping and volunteer testing plans so that we can refine our product and launch it in the near future.”

In addition to Gorodetsky, ParkinSense also includes Akshata Puranik (a master’s student at the ��ϲ�� Institute for Aerospace Studies) and Christopher Lucasius (a PhD candidate in electrical and computer engineering).

Varient — Crowdsourcing treatment efficacy data for rare diseases

People suffering from rare diseases may resort to off-label use of existing drugs in a search for an effective treatment. However, this is often done in an undocumented way, meaning resulting data on whether or not the treatment is actually effective gets lost.

Varient aims to change this through crowdsourcing. The team has built an online platform that can collect and aggregate de-identified data on treatment effectiveness from groups of people who are all living with the same rare genetic condition or disease. The goal is to take the guesswork out of the process, pointing the way toward drugs that are most likely to be effective.

“Typically, rare-disease patients rely on word-of-mouth avenues to learn about helpful off-label medicines,” says Katheron Intson, a PhD candidate in pharmacology and toxicology at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine. “We can quantify the success of tried treatments and become a dynamic information provider to these populations.”

The team plans to use the funding to do comprehensive testing of their alpha product, with a goal of launching in 2022. Intson says the Hatchery provided a valuable bridge between technology and business.

“I’ve been a scientist for my entire professional life, and the rest of my team are software developers,” she says. “The business aspect of starting a company was a real blind spot to us. The Hatchery provided us with guidelines that helped us redefine where we focused our energy and effort.”

In addition to Intson, Varient includes: Chen Zong Lu (computer science); Zuoqi Wang (computer science); Jingyi Sun (computer science), Shukui Chen (applied mathematics); Yexiong Xu (computer science); and Siyang Liu (computer science).

Urban studies course gives ��ϲ�� students a peek at Toronto City Hall's inner workings

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 19:23:59 +0000

Urban studies course gives ��ϲ�� students a peek at Toronto City Hall's inner workings

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 09/22/2021 - 15:23

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(Photo by Steven Kriemadis via Getty Images)

Topic