Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

��ϲ�� grad ‘moves mountains’ to earn engineering degree

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

��ϲ�� grad ‘moves mountains’ to earn engineering degree

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

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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

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Global

India

Joseph Wong

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

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 ��ϲ�� to be supported by a Karta Catalyst Scholarship, Pujari arrived at ��ϲ�� in 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 ��ϲ�� and possibly have dinner with friends.

Reflecting on her time at ��ϲ��, 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 ��ϲ�� and 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 ��ϲ��.

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, ��ϲ��’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 ��ϲ��.

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 ��ϲ�� student. “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 ��ϲ��’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.”

��ϲ�� undergraduate students explore the use of AI to treat speech disfluency

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

��ϲ�� undergraduate students explore the use of AI to treat speech disfluency

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

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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

Our Community

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

Mental Health

Research & Innovation

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 ��ϲ��’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 ��ϲ�� – 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 ��ϲ�� Aerospace Team (photo courtesy of SpaceX)

Safa Jinje

Topic

Our Community

Aerospace

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Graduate Students

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

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 ��ϲ��’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 ��ϲ�� 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 ��ϲ�� Engineering 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)

Tyler Irving

Topic

Our Community

Equity

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Graduate Students

Health

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

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 ��ϲ��’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 ��ϲ��, Murray will once again be working with Montague, who joined ��ϲ��’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)

Tyler Irving

Topic

Breaking Research

Climate Positive Energy Initiative

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Climate Change

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

Research & Innovation

Sustainability

Subheadline

The ��ϲ�� Engineering 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 ��ϲ��'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 ��ϲ��'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.

��ϲ�� Engineering 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.”

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

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

��ϲ�� Engineering 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)

Tyler Irving

Topic

Breaking Research

Nuclear Power

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Materials Science

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

Research & Innovation

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 ��ϲ��'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 ��ϲ�� Engineering's 'grads to watch' in 2023

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

Meet five women who are among ��ϲ�� Engineering'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

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Materials Science

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

As students from the ��ϲ��'s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering celebrated their convocation this week, they looked ahead to a future where they will draw on their education to address pressing challenges around the world.

They now join a global network of ��ϲ�� Engineering alumni whose creativity, innovation and global impact embody the spirit of the faculty and the ��ϲ�� community.

Here are five inspiring women from the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering's annual Grads to Watch list – each selected by their home departments and institutes.

Maeesha Biswas

Bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering plus professional experience year co-op

During her time as an undergraduate industrial engineering student, Maeesha Biswas’ academic interests were focused on health-care systems, human factors, technology and design geared at understanding people better.

She also devoted more than 2,000 hours to various activities and organizations, including planning the Undergraduate Engineering Research Day (UnERD) in 2020 as co-chair; and co-founding and co-hosting 1% Inspiration, a podcast that features stories and wisdom from the ��ϲ�� Engineering community, including faculty, alumni and current students.

“After UnERD 2020 – which was held online due to the COVID-19 lockdown – we observed some students miss out on career development and networking opportunities due to a lack of on-campus interactions,” she says. “We created the podcast in response and since it launched, it has received over 1,100 listens over 22 episodes.”

After graduation, Biswas is looking forward to working on a startup with some of her fellow graduates to build generative artificial intelligence tools for media creators.

“I began learning to be a software developer during my co-op at PocketHealth – a company which helps patients share their diagnostic imaging records and own their medical information,” she says.

“I want to continue to enrich human lives and experiences through software technology, and I believe my most important life’s work will be here.”

Michelle Lin

Bachelor’s degree in materials science and engineering, plus professional experience year co-op

As a commuter student, Michelle Lin made a great effort to balance her academics with extra-curriculars and part-time work. She participated in intramural ultimate frisbee starting in her ﬁrst year and has held mentorship and outreach roles within the faculty.

During her co-op work term, she had the opportunity to hold two positions at Li-Cycle, a North American leader in the recovery and recycling of lithium-ion batteries, which was co-founded by a ��ϲ�� Engineering alumnus.

“I was able to gain different perspectives on the business and all the work it takes to ensure that the different sectors are functioning cohesively towards the same goal,” she says. “It’s an evolving industry, and it was amazing to see the rapid growth the company and industry experienced in just 16 months.”

Lin will be starting a master’s in material science and engineering in the fall, which will allow her to gain more knowledge and expertise on materials characterization.

“I hope to be able to contribute positive change in the sustainability space and promote engineering and STEM to younger generations, especially girls and women,” she says. “I would love to be a source of inspiration for other women in engineering the same way my role models were for me.”

Anaïs Poirier

Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, plus professional experience year co-op

In studying engineering, Anna Poirier found an opportunity to effect real change – and that is how she plans to use her degree.

For her PEY co-op, Poirier moved to Kentucky to work as a software engineering intern at Space Tango, a microgravity research company.

During this time, a colleague suggested she apply for the Zenith Canada Pathways Fellowship, Canada’s first space fellowship, which aims to build a more inclusive Canadian space sector.

“I was selected as a fellow in the inaugural class, leading to a summer internship at GHGSat,” Poirier says. “I got to experience the positive global impact that working in the space industry can have.”

Poirier will be moving to San Francisco after graduation to work as a software engineer at Zipline, where she will test flight hardware. The company, which manufactures drones that serve as eco-friendly delivery vehicles, delivered over a million COVID-19 vaccines to Ghana.

“I am excited to be working in a multi-disciplinary role that will use both the electrical and computer sides of my degree, and for a company whose mission I strongly believe in,” she says.

Saskia van Beers

Bachelor’s degree in engineering science, plus professional experience year co-op

While her engineering classes taught Saskia van Beers how to learn and think critically about the world around her, she was able to put those concepts into practice in her extracurricular activities.

"My worldview shifted greatly through all the initiatives I got to be a part of,” she says. “I definitely feel like I have undergone a lot of personal growth.”

From her role as co-president of Engineers Without Borders to co-chairing both the Engineering Science Club and the Sexual Violence Education and Prevention group, van Beers has worked tirelessly to help make all students feel welcome and seen.

Along with her classmate Savanna Blade, she ran a virtual consent culture town hall that brought together more than 80 of her fellow engineering science students to discuss all aspects of consent and the kinds of change they would like to see within their community.

After graduation, van Beers plans to pursue the collaborative specialization in engineering education program at the master's level at ��ϲ��, with research focused on the intersectionality between equity advocacy work and the fundamentals of engineering education.

“I have been a longstanding believer that diversity within the engineering field allows for better engineering progress,” she says. “I would like to continue to make a positive impact on the changing culture of engineering.”

Kim Watada

Bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering plus professional year experience co-op

Kim Watada is graduating with nearly two years of experience in sustainability consulting, research and investing already under her belt.

“There are a lot of ways you can work in sustainability, and coming from an engineering background has given me the chance to explore many different paths,” she says.

“I’ve built a cleantech startup, worked in decarbonization strategy and studied renewable energy in Iceland. With each new perspective, I’ve been able to hone where my interests lie in sustainability and climate action.”

This spring, Watada and her team – the only one from Canada – won the Emerging Markets prize at the Climate Investment Challenge, a graduate-level climate finance design competition run by Imperial College London.

All this experience will come in handy after graduation, as Watada completes an internship with the United Nations’ Circular Economy and Resource Efficiency Unit in Vienna before taking up a position in management consulting for the Boston Consulting Group.

In the future, Watada hopes to leverage her knowledge to bridge the gap between environmental need, clean technology and tangible climate action.

“The greatest skill I have learned at ��ϲ�� is how to be curious,” she says. “Being intrinsically open to learning new things is the key to solving problems in whatever field you choose.”

Read about all 15 of ��ϲ�� Engineering’s ‘grads to watch’ 2023

��ϲ��-led collaboration to develop community-tailored clean energy technologies

lanthierj — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 13:57:30 +0000

��ϲ��-led collaboration to develop community-tailored clean energy technologies

lanthierj Tue, 04/25/2023 - 09:57

Cutline

It’s important to develop clean energy systems that meet the needs of individual communities, says Kate Neville, one of the lead researchers of the CANSTOREnergy project (photo by Kate Harris)

Adina Bresge

Topic

Breaking Research

Climate Positive Energy

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Arts & Science

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

Political Science

Research & Innovation

School of the Environment

Sustainability

A ��ϲ��-led collaboration developing clean energy technologies that can be tailored to the needs of different communities – from Canada’s remote North to populous southern Ontario – will receive support from the federal government.

The CANSTOREnergy project brings together researchers from 11 Canadian universities, along with community, utility and industry partners, to develop technologies that convert carbon-based emissions into useful products, such as fuels and raw materials, and create a net-zero means of seasonal storage for renewable energy that meets specific community needs.

Led by researchers from ��ϲ��’s Climate Positive Energy initiative, the collaborative effort is being supported by $24 million through the federal New Frontiers in Research Fund’s 2022 Transformation Competition.

The project will deliberately focus on two very different regions – Yukon and the southern Ontario city of Hamilton – in recognition that there is no one-size-fits-all approach in a vast country like Canada.

“We want to think about addressing these big global challenges such as climate change. But we don’t solve them at the global scale,” says Kate Neville, one of the project’s lead researchers and an associate professor in ��ϲ��’s department of political science and School of the Environment in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

“You solve them by thinking about what those challenges look like in lots of places and working with communities to find solutions that meet multiple needs.”

The project’s two sites highlight the different challenges Canadian regions face when considering how carbon conversion technologies can be successfully adapted to existing infrastructure, economic forces and social goals.

Yukon, for example, is not included in the electrical grid that connects much of the U.S. and Canada, and seasonal extremes limit the availability of renewable energy. As a result, many communities need to import diesel fuel during the harsh winter months – which comes at a high cost both environmentally and financially.

Hamilton, by contrast, is a densely populated urban centre that is plugged into the main North American power grid. Heavy industry fuels the local economy, but the environmental costs, such as air pollution, are unevenly distributed and disproportionately impact low-income and marginalized communities.

“Science and research are essential to solving the greatest challenges facing humanity today and in the future,” says François-Philippe Champagne, minister of innovation, science and industry. “That’s why our government is committed to continuing support for researchers who are pushing the boundaries of innovation, by investing in transformative, high-risk / high-reward research that will address issues that impact Canadians in all sectors of our economy and society.”

At the core of the project is a commitment to engaging community members about their energy challenges and goals and how carbon conversion technologies could fit into their future.

_ _ _

_ _

David Sinton is the nominated principal investigator of CANSTOREnergy and academic lead of the Climate Positive Energy institutional strategic initiative (photo by Lisa Lightbourn)

This engagement could ultimately determine the success of carbon conversion technologies, says David Sinton, nominated principal investigator of CANSTOREnergy and academic lead of Climate Positive Energy, one of several ��ϲ�� institutional strategic initiatives, and a professor of mechanical engineering in ��ϲ��'s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

Technologies that perform in the lab don’t always work as well under real-world conditions, adds Sinton, who notes that the urgency of the climate challenge calls for an expedient way to pre-empt issues that may crop up during deployment.

“Too often, engineers – and I have experience in this – innovate while focusing on the technology, which is totally understandable. But when tech is developed without guidance from an end user … the subsequent iterations can be costly. 

“We don't have time for that decades-long iterative cycle that is the norm. We need a new approach and are testing that here.”

CANSTOREnergy’s research team comprises engineers, social scientists, economists and other experts from McMaster University, Yukon University, University of Waterloo, University of British Columbia, University of Victoria, University of Winnipeg, Toronto Metropolitan University, University of Calgary, Carleton University and Dalhousie University.

The researchers will receive guidance from stakeholders and advisers in industry, utilities, government and Indigenous nations.

"The ��ϲ�� welcomes the federal government’s critical support for this important research,” says Leah Cowen, ��ϲ��'s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives. “Canada enjoys a global competitive advantage in the area of carbon capture research – and the CANSTOREnergy team, with its collaborative and interdisciplinary approach, will build on these strengths and help to optimize this technology to meet the needs of communities across the country.”

Since environmental justice is at the forefront of the CANSTOREnergy project, Neville says it’s vital that communities have a say in developing the clean energy systems that could power and empower them.

“It’s about imagining community futures in ways that meet the goals of equity and fairness,” says Neville.

“It’s thinking about how technology can help us undo some of the unjust systems that we have and help build something that is not only about climate change, but about a more just future.”

_ ___ _

��ϲ�� researchers help design the future of nuclear waste management

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 16:27:55 +0000

��ϲ�� researchers help design the future of nuclear waste management__

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 02/15/2023 - 11:27

Cutline

Flex-time PhD researcher Grant Minor, a senior engineer at the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, holds a CANDU fuel bundle replica (photo courtesy of NWMO)

Safa Jinje

Topic

Our Community

Nuclear Power

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Graduate Students

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

Research & Innovation

Sustainability

Researchers at the ��ϲ�� are collaborating with the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) to optimize the design and layout of a new plant for processing used nuclear fuel packages.

By leveraging a technique known as multidisciplinary design optimization, the project aims to further enhance Canada’s long-term management of used nuclear fuel.

“The Used Fuel Packaging Plant will be the first of its kind in Canada,” says Grant Minor, a senior engineer at NWMO and a flex-time PhD candidate in the lab of Kamran Behdinan, a professor in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “It is a huge infrastructure investment for Canada.”

At present, 19 Canadian deuterium uranium (CANDU) reactors provide about 15 per cent of Canada’s electricity. The proportion is even higher in Ontario, which is home to three out of Canada’s four operating nuclear plants and currently sources 56 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power.

Canada’s nuclear waste management plan, called Adaptive Phased Management, is being implemented by the NWMO, a not-for-profit organization formed in 2002 through the federal government’s Nuclear Fuel Waste Act. The organization is responsible for designing and implementing Canada’s plan for the safe long-term management.

CANDU reactors are fuelled by a reaction using natural uranium, which is moderated by deuterium, a constituent of heavy water. The fuel goes into pressure tubes that are held by a large cylindrical vessel called the calandria, which holds approximately 5,000 fuel bundles when it is operating, depending on reactor configuration. Each CANDU fuel bundle — around the size of a fireplace log — contains about 20 kilograms of uranium and can power 100 homes for a year. These bundles stay in the reactor for 15 to 18 months.

Once the used fuel is removed from the reactor, it first goes into wet storage where it sits for seven to 10 years before being moved to dry storage. There are about 3.2 million used CANDU nuclear fuel bundles in Canada, which are distributed between the nuclear reactor sites.

The Adaptive Phased Management plan – funded by Ontario Power Generation, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, Hydro-Québec and NB Power – requires used fuel to be contained and isolated in a deep geological repository. But before that can happen, the used nuclear fuel needs to be received from nuclear reactor sites, inspected and repackaged into used fuel containers. This will happen at the Used Fuel Packaging Plant – a key surface facility at the repository site.

Minor’s PhD research is focused on finding an optimal design and layout for this facility, where employees will control every aspect of the process using remote handling techniques, robotics and automated systems.

“The key operation in the Used Fuel Packaging Plant is the handling of highly radioactive nuclear material, so it will have to operate very reliably,” says Minor. “Protection of the environment, public safety and worker safety is and will be NWMO’s highest priority during design, development, construction, commissioning and future operations and maintenance.

“I saw an opportunity to apply multidisciplinary design optimization to a nuclear facility. Professor Behdinan, a leading expert in [multidisciplinary design optimization], has many years of experience in this technique.” 

Professor Kamran Behdinan holds the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Chair in Multidisciplinary Engineering Design (photo by Ray Cheah)

Multidisciplinary design optimization is a methodology that is used to create systems where multiple engineering disciplines are integrated, such as mechanical, electrical, controls and automation, manufacturing, process, and reliability engineering. It provides a holistic approach to solving multidisciplinary design problems.

Over the past few decades, multidisciplinary design optimization has traditionally been used in the aerospace and aviation industry and has proven crucial in the structural design of aircraft and their many parts. More recently, Behdinan has applied the approach to automotive, advanced manufacturing and biomedical designs as well.

“This method is very effective when you are dealing with a very complex system,” says Behdinan, who holds the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Chair in Multidisciplinary Engineering Design.

“It is a structured way of interacting between these engineering disciplines – not only for optimization, but to see how design variables within these disciplines interact and affect each other. This allows us to analyze and assess the parts that will be integrated into the overall design of a big system like an aircraft.”

In the case of an aircraft, where every gram of weight matters for fuel efficiency and to maximize the payload – passengers, baggage and cargo – engineers use MDO to evaluate each of their design decisions.

By exploring the mathematical optimization equations used by different engineering disciplines simultaneously, researchers like Behdinan and Minor can see how they relate to each other to create safe and reliable designs that operate as efficiently as possible.

“NWMO is accountable to the public for the safe and reliable design and operation of this Used Fuel Packaging Plant,” says Minor.

“The plant has to process about 120,000 used fuel bundles each year. It has to operate for 250 days a year, while being reliable and cost effective. The facility design must also comply with Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission regulations, other applicable laws, regulations, codes and standards, and engineering best practices.” 

Minor has developed an initial framework for a simplified study of the processes that will take place in the Used Fuel Packaging Plant, looking at three disciplines: radiation analysis, cost analysis and reliability analysis.

For example, there will be remotely controlled machinery in the packaging plant to close the used fuel containers and that machinery will have to operate sequentially to perform the processes on each container. The team is looking at the best way to split the equipment in the processing cells – from setups where all the equipment is in one line to every single piece of equipment in its own isolated enclosure.

The design targets include minimization of the risks associated with management of the used nuclear fuel in the plant – for example, reduction of unnecessary fuel handling steps and unnecessary transfer of used fuel between environments would be a focus.

Minor and Behdinan will be collaborating to create new optimization techniques for nuclear fuel disposal facilities that aim to increase safety, improve operations and relability and cut costs.

“We haven’t seen the application of [multidisciplinary design optimization] in the nuclear waste management field,” says Behdinan.

“But there are so many disciplines involved in the overall design of the nuclear waste management system, and this creates many design variables. We want to optimize them because we want to get the best out of the plant. Optimization is always about better solutions.”

Researchers develop coating that prevents synthetic fabrics from shedding harmful microplastics in the wash

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 17:44:36 +0000

Researchers develop coating that prevents synthetic fabrics from shedding harmful microplastics in the wash

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 01/30/2023 - 12:44

Cutline

(photo by iStock)

Safa Jinje

Topic

Breaking Research

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

Plastics

Research & Innovation

Sustainability

A team of researchers at the ��ϲ�� have designed a solution to reduce the amount of microplastic fibres shed when washing synthetic fabrics.

In a world swamped by fast fashion – an industry that produces a high-volume of cheaply made clothing at an immense cost to the environment – more than two thirds of clothes are now made of synthetic fabrics, such as nylon, polyester, acrylic and rayon.

When clothes made from synthetic fabrics go in the washing machine, the friction caused by cleaning cycles produces tiny tears that cause microplastic fibres – measuring less than 500 micrometres in length – to break off and make their way down laundry drains to enter waterways, where the particles can be difficult to remove and take decades or more to fully break down.

But ��ϲ�� researchers say the slippery solution to this problem could already be in your cabinet: a silicon-based organic polymer coating found in many household products.

Kevin Golovin, an assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, and his team have created a two-layer coating made of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) brushes, which are linear, single polymer chains grown from a substrate to form a nanoscale surface layer.

Experiments conducted by the team showed that this coating can significantly reduce microfibre shedding of nylon clothing after repeated laundering, according to findings published in Nature Sustainability.

“My lab has been working with this coating on other surfaces, including glass and metals, for a few years now,” says Golovin. “One of the properties we have observed is that it is quite slippery, meaning it has very low friction.”

PDMS is used in shampoos to make hair shiny and slippery, and is also used as a food additive in oils to prevent liquids from foaming when bottled.

Sudip Kumar Lahiri, a post-doctoral researcher in Golovin’s lab and lead author of the study, reasoned that reducing the friction that occurs during wash cycles with a PDMS-based fabric finish could prevent fibres from rubbing together and breaking off during laundering.

One of the biggest challenges the researchers faced during their study was ensuring the PDMS brushes stayed on the fabric. Lahiri, who is a textile engineer by trade, developed a molecular primer based on his understanding of fabric dyes.

Lahiri figured the type of bonding responsible for keeping dyed apparel colourful after repeated washes would work for the PDMS coating as well.

Neither the primer nor the PDMS brushes work separately to decrease the microplastic-fibre shedding. But together, they created a strong finish that reduced the release of microfibres by more than 90 per cent after nine washes.

“PDMS brushes are environmentally friendly because they are not derived from petroleum like many polymers used today,” says Golovin, who was awarded a Connaught New Researcher award for this work.

“With the addition of Sudip’s primer, our coating is robust enough to remain on the garment and continue to reduce micro-fibre shedding over time.”

Images, taken by a scanning electron microscope, of uncoated (top left, right) and coated (bottom left, right) nylon fabrics after nine washing cycles (Image courtesy of Sudip Lahiri)

Since PDMS is naturally a water-repellent material, the researchers are currently working on making the coating hydrophilic so that coated fabrics will be better able to wick away sweat. The team has also expanded the research to look beyond nylon fabrics, including polyester and synthetic-fabric blends.

“Many textiles are made of multiple types of fibres,” says Golovin. “We are working to formulate the correct polymer architecture so that our coating can durably adhere to all of those fibres simultaneously.”

Governments around the world have been looking for ways to minimize the debris that comes from washing synthetic fabrics since it can accumulate in oceans, lakes and rivers, threatening marine life and entering the human food chain through its presence in food and tap water. One example is washing machine filters, which have emerged as a leading fix to stop microplastic fibres from entering waterways. In Ontario, legislative members have introduced a bill that would require filters in new washing machines in the province.

“And yet, when we look at what governments around the world are doing, there is no trend towards preventing the creation of microplastic fibres in the first place,” says Golovin.

“Our research is pushing in a different direction, where we actually solve the problem rather than putting a Band-Aid on the issue.”

Mechanical & Industrial Engineering

������ϲ����� grad ‘moves mountains’ to earn engineering degree

������ϲ����� undergraduate students explore the use of AI to treat speech disfluency

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

PhD candidate aims to advance health equity for marginalized populations

Electrochemical process could boost efficiency of capturing carbon directly from air

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

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

Maeesha Biswas

Michelle Lin

Anaïs Poirier

Saskia van Beers

Kim Watada

Read about all 15 of ������ϲ����� Engineering’s ‘grads to watch’ 2023

������ϲ�����-led collaboration to develop community-tailored clean energy technologies

������ϲ����� researchers help design the future of nuclear waste management

Researchers develop coating that prevents synthetic fabrics from shedding harmful microplastics in the wash

Read more about the role of washing machines in microplastics pollution

��ϲ�� grad ‘moves mountains’ to earn engineering degree

��ϲ�� undergraduate students explore the use of AI to treat speech disfluency

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

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

Read about all 15 of ��ϲ�� Engineering’s ‘grads to watch’ 2023

��ϲ��-led collaboration to develop community-tailored clean energy technologies

��ϲ�� researchers help design the future of nuclear waste management