A gift and a new funding campaign from Loui Pappas (CivE 8T8, MASc 8T9) and his family will expand access to counselling and other services

When it comes to mental wellness, support from family is often vital. Now, one family in particular is working to extend that support across the entire U of T Engineering community. 

Loui Pappas (CivE 8T8, MASc 8T9) and Sandra Gionas are the parents of Elena Pappas (ChemE 2T2). Inspired by her father’s example and her experiences at outreach programs such as the DEEP Summer Academy, Elena set her sights early on a career in engineering. 

“I had great summers at those programs, and I really got hooked on the idea of solving complex problems through math and science,” she recalls. 

“I was always dead set on being an engineer.” 

After successfully achieving admission to U of T Engineering, Elena quickly made lots of friends among her fellow first year students. She enjoyed being part of the community but she soon found that the actual classwork was presenting more of a challenge than she had expected. 

“I was really struggling to keep up, and during my final exam in first year, I had a full-blown panic attack,” she says. 

“I failed that course, and others. I wasn’t able to meet the goals I set out for myself.” 

Despite these challenges, her father Loui says that withdrawing was never an option for her. 

“It was difficult seeing your child struggle that first year, but Elena was adamant that she was going to get through it somehow, and with help and by her own resilience, that’s exactly what she did,” he says.  

Thanks to a referral by a friend, Elena ended up receiving a diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The discovery enabled her to better understand where her challenges were coming from and to develop new learning and coping strategies. 

She began second year as a part-time student, and soon was back on track, hunkering down the next few years and ultimately completing her degree in 2024. Today, she works in Calgary, Alberta as a Junior Project Coordinator at Lanmark Engineering Inc. 

After graduating from U of T Engineering, Loui Pappas had spent more than three decades as a business leader at Morrison Hershfield, a Canadian-based multidisciplinary engineering firm originally founded in 1946 by two U of T Engineering professors. The firm was acquired by Stantec in early 2024 — and as a longstanding shareholder, Pappas now had the means to make a new kind of legacy contribution to U of T Engineering. 

“Throughout my career, I have always enjoyed maintaining a relationship with and volunteering at the Faculty,” he says. 

“I’ve spoken to students at career fairs, participated in the Faculty’s broad-based assessment program, contributed to scholarships and many other fundraising initiatives . I have also seen the impact to students that alumni have in giving back, and I always knew I too wanted to create a legacy at U of T Engineering. Elena’s experience again became top of mind.” 

Sandra, a Trinity College graduate and former TV Ontario journalist, had covered mental health extensively in her research and reporting. 

“It’s one of the most overlooked areas of health,” she says. “Cancer and heart disease raise a lot of money, but mental health doesn’t always inspire the same level of generosity. Elena’s generation has done tremendous work in breaking the stigma, and we wanted to contribute to that momentum, and recognize her efforts specifically.” 

The family found the perfect fit in Skule™ Mental Wellness a student-run initiative within the Engineering Society that Elena herself once helped to establish. 

Together, they are strengthening the Skule™ Mental Wellness Bursary, which was created by student, for students, back in 2021. The bursary provides financial aid to students facing challenges related to mental health. The award has helped dozens of students so far, but demand for the bursary far outpaces the current funding. 

“The more we got into this, and had the chance to discuss the issue with Dean Chris Yip, the more we realized that immediate need is there in supporting mental health,” says Gionas.  

“We are also strongly supportive of the fact that, as a student-run initiative, the students themselves can rally behind and socialize it to further grow the bursary. 

“We’ve provided $20,000 initial funding for operational costs for two years, so that more students have immediate access to much needed counseling and support services. On top of that, we’ve also created a matching campaign to build up the bursary for the future, so that no students have to be turned away in the long term”.  Donations to the bursary are open now, and will be matched by the Pappas family up to a maximum of $50,000 over the course of the next year.  

“We know that the best and brightest kids from Canada and around the world are coming to U of T Engineering, the #1 program in Canada.” says Loui. 

“We want to help keep them in the faculty, and not have them leave the profession because of challenges that can be overcome with support and perseverance. I personally want to know that I did whatever I could to leave my engineering profession in good hands.” 

For Elena, the initiative closes the circle on her own experience. “At the end of the day, what students are dealing with when studying Engineering isn’t just school, it’s their lives,” she says. 

“This project is about making sure that they can get where they want to. That’s been a huge theme in my personal story. It just makes me feel incredible that future students will be able to get that help as well.” 

By Tyler Irving

This story originally published by Engineering News

Join the Pappas family in supporting engineering student mental health. Thanks to the generosity of the Pappas family, all donations will be matched dollar-for-dollar up to a campaign total of $50,000, and new monthly gifts will be matched for one year. 

The Globe and Mail | October 6, 2025

From pop-up idea to walk-through pavilion: Robot Made 2025 explores rapid-deployable timber structures with Digital Fabrication.

A new sculptural item greeted students arriving to campus this fall – a wooden dome. The unique structure, erected in front of Galbraith Building on the St. George Campus, is the fruition of collaborative efforts between faculties and students. The U of T researchers and students assembled, on site, the prototype full-scale “reciprocal frame” pavilion which was designed on computers, fabricated by robots and assembled by hand.

Robot Made 2025 was led by Nicholas Hoban from Daniels Architecture and Professor Aryan Rezaei Rad (who prefers Professor Rad) from the Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering. The project continues a growing tradition at U of T that blends computation, structural thinking, and “making” following last year’s Robot Made 2024 pavilion and the ROB|ARCH 2024 workshops hosted in Toronto.

The 19 researchers and students from Engineering and Daniels Architecture teamed up this summer to design, robotically fabricate and assemble a full-scale timber pavilion based on reciprocal systems – an interlocking structural strategy where each member supports, and is supported by, its neighbours. The result is a striking walk-through installation demonstrating how digitally fabricated wood components can be rapidly deployed for spatial structures such as pop-up classrooms, festival canopies, or emergency shelters. Over an intensive two-week run, engineering and architectural teams designed, fabricated, and erected full-scale prototypes demonstrating how kit-of-parts thinking and robotic fabrication can turn concept sketches into robust, reusable structures.

Teams worked from parametric definitions to generate reciprocal patterns, optimize member counts and connection geometry, and export shop-ready toolpaths. In the lab, students used CNC milling and an industrial 7-axis KUKA robot to produce precision cuts designed for measurement-free assembly before a fast, scaffold-free, on-site structure. On the Galbraith Building forecourt area, the team erected the modules – comprised of 110 bespoke elements – using simple hand tools, validating that the parts “found” their positions as intended.

Having hands-on experience with using a robot to produce the pieces required for the project was integral to the learning outcome and envisioning future large-scale projects. “I was particularly interested in the robotic fabrication of each component of our structure,” says CivMin MEng student Myriam Bobe. “It’s a new and developing approach to construction. I know it’s been applied in different areas of the industry, but to see it used for manufacturing members, pre-drilling holes, cutting, especially for complex reciprocal structures, was really fascinating.” Elaborating further about the technical aspects, she added, “There’s a lot of background code in Grasshopper and Rhino that we don’t usually see, and watching how that translates from concept to fabrication and then to the construction of an actual structure was very interesting.”

Students learned by doing. “One of the main things that interested me the most was the hands-on experience and being able to build at a one-to-one scale,” says CivMin MEng student Sydney Nguyen. “From my undergrad, it was very hard to get that kind of opportunity and I feel like it’s such a valuable thing to learn. Throughout the project you realize how important each step is in the process. In a design-build project like this, you see how construction matters more than we expect and how the initial preliminary design is just as important. Everything is very intertwined.”

“Reciprocal frames are perfect for rapid deployment: they go up quickly, need no temporary support, distribute forces effectively, and can be disassembled and redeployed with almost no waste,” says CivMin Prof. Rad, who co-led the workshop. “Pair that with CNC and robotic workflows, and the researchers and students experience the full loop from parametric design to on-site assembly.”

The structure is scheduled to be on display in front of Galbraith Building until November 2025.

WATCH THE ROBOT MADE VIDEO:

LEADS: Nicholas Hoban, Aryan Rezaei Rad
STUDENT PARTICIPANTS: Kenny Vo, Nathania Nagarajah, Tony Yang, Shannon Dacanay, Melina Elefteriadis, Elina Parkhomenko, Myriam Bobe, Micha Fairfax-Angod, Tilija Leskauskaite, Yagmur Ceylan, Habib Yosufi, Sydney Nguyen, Keira Fraser, Jack Simon, Ryan Yee.

CivMin PhD student Keagan Rankin has been selected as one of the recipients of the 2025-2026 Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships (Vanier CGS) awarded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). 

CivMin PhD student Keagan Rankin (MASc 2T3) has been selected as one of the recipients of the 2025-2026 Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships (Vanier CGS) awarded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). 

Providing $150,000 in funding over three years, the scholarship recognizes PhD candidates at Canadian universities who demonstrate excellence in the areas of leadership, research impact and academics.  Rankin is supervised by Professor Shoshanna Saxe and Professor Daniel Posen. 

The Vanier CGS program plays an important role in fulfilling the Government of Canada’s Science and Technology strategy to promote the development and application of leading-edge knowledge, support the development of a world-class workforce, and attract and retain the world’s top graduate students. Each year, these highly prestigious scholarships are offered to doctoral students who have demonstrated strong leadership skills and a high standard of scholarly achievement in graduate studies in the social sciences and humanities, natural sciences and engineering, and health. 

CivMin had a chat with Rankin to talk about becoming a Vanier Scholar and more. 

Congratulations on winning a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship. Can you please tell us a little bit about yourself.

I’m from Fredericton, New Brunswick – on the East Coast of Canada – where I did my undergrad in structural engineering. Then I realized I did not like structural engineering, or at least the job prospects – it just wasn’t for me. Keep in mind, this is during the pandemic.

I decided to pivot into something I found personally more interesting, which was climate mitigation. I just happened to apply to a few places and Shoshana’s [Saxe] research, and Daniel’s [Posen] research fit exactly what I wanted to do. So that’s how I got here, and then I did my master’s here, and now I’m doing my PhD.

My PhD topic is about building enough within climate limits. Specifically, looking at construction and construction materials – construction materials are a huge part of climate change that we don’t think about a lot. By total mass the built environment, the stuff we build, is larger than anything else. More than agriculture, cars, other goods and services. It’s about 10 to 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and it’s really hard to reduce those emissions. This is a big problem – my thesis is looking at how we can start to solve this problem.

I just finished a project where we determined the upper limit of how much CO₂ we can emit from constructing in the future. We looked at a ton of cities and how could they build the housing and infrastructure they need while still staying within global climate limits. The next project I’m starting is looking at how all these materials affect the energy sector? Or how, when we change the energy sector, does it change the types of materials we can make?

Is this like you’re doing in construction? A full LCA [life cycle assessment] on materials in terms of GHG. 

A lot of those LCAs, most of the time, rely on basically what’s called a background system. For example, if one makes a kilogram of concrete in Canada, we assume something about the trucks that are driving the aggregate to site and the cement to site. We assume something about the electricity mix that was used to power the plant that created the cement. In most studies, these background assumptions are simple. They just assume a number along the lines of x number of kilograms of CO2 per kilowatt hour. But what we’re looking at is actually modelling that background system. Daniel [Posen] has led the creation of an energy systems model for Canada called CANOE (Canadian Open Energy Model). Our plan is to use this model to determine how changes in the energy system effect material production and vice-versa.

You’re looking to disrupt the whole model?

We’re trying to set up a specific scope for it, because you can’t model everything. You have to pick and choose what to model so we don’t run into uncertainty and computation problems. The idea is to combine the background, really look at the energy system in depth, and then combine it with the foreground knowledge that we have about the amount of materials we need to gain some insights.

Can you give us an everyday example? You mentioned concrete, but is there something people can identify with? 

A great example is housing size. If you just build a smaller home, there’s some research out there that shows it can use much less materials. That’s also a controversial one, because people don’t want to live in smaller homes, necessarily.

Another example would be structural design. There’s a lot of research out there showing most structures are overdesigned, just because engineering firms want to err on the safe side. But you can stay within the building code while making a lot of buildings 30% more efficient, so using 30% less material. Imagine scaling this to the national level – all of Canada. We could start constructing buildings with 30% less concrete or 30% less steel. This would have effects on the amount of energy we actually need to produce that concrete and steel. We would need much less energy for that, which would mean potentially cheaper concrete and steel, and then cheaper homes, or more ability to power that production through alternative fuels such as solar and wind or hydrogen, for steel specifically.

In front of the Galbraith Building is a big timber structure [for Robot Made 2025]. Is timber also something that you look at as alternative materials? 

Timber is interesting. It has lower GHG life cycle and GHG emissions than most other building materials. But it’s kind of tricky because you’re running into questions around the land-use and life-cycle of forestry. There can be accounting issues with timber, because researchers doing life-cycle assessments will account for the carbon sequestration of the tree, but they won’t account for the end-of-life release of that carbon. It gets complicated, but timber is generally low emissions. It just requires a bit more care than concrete or steel in the (LCA).

Is this all theoretical, or are there actual projects you’re looking at and advising on, or contributing to? Is there anything out there in the real world that’s being changed by this research?

Yes, we’ve actually worked on a first project. We came up with what’s called a carbon budget, which is basically like an estimate of how much CO2 can we emit in the future to meet the world’s climate goals. And we came up with those budgets for 1,000 cities around the world.

Actually, this whole project started because we were creating a budget for the City of Toronto – we worked with them in a consulting role. I was an intern there. And, because they have this target of wanting to be net zero by 2040, they need to know how they can  go from point A – where they are now – to point B, where we want to be (net zero or very close to it). They have looked a lot at production emissions, like out of the tailpipes of vehicles in Toronto, but we expanded that to scope construction emissions. This budget can help the City of Toronto create a science-backed plan to meet their net-zero goal, so it can definitely help inform policy, especially local policy.

How much would you aspire to reduce the GHG by for the average home. Is there a target? You’re a reasonable goal and a lofty goal? 

The goal, ultimately, is Net Zero. Is that reasonable, even within the next 25 years? I don’t know. I don’t think anyone can really say, but what we find is energy can do a lot. Shifting to electrification and renewable energies – wind and solar and other newer technologies reduce the energy emissions of buildings. The other part is material efficiency – that’s the broad term for reducing the size of housing, designing it better, changing materials. Material efficiency can get you halfway there with the materials, but then you obviously need some materials to build houses. And the unfortunate thing with materials is there’s always some residual emissions. There are these inherent emissions when you make materials that are very hard to reduce, and so you’ll never really hit net zero. If you just electrify and become more efficient, you have to do some sort of other offset, so you need to plant extra trees, or do carbon capture and storage or direct air capture.

Now, is there anything as well human behaviour wise, that would be good to change, or that you are hoping to change? Perhaps.

If we stick to the construction side, it’s tricky, because we don’t necessarily have control over what contractors are building. But, research has shown that living in a smaller space, promoting more multi-unit housing can help. There’s a lot of other lifestyle things that people can do to reduce emissions that are outside the scope of my project. Stuff like eating less meat, flying less – those are the two big ones.

Daniel [Posen] said, if people gave up eating meat, perhaps only one day a week, it would do more than getting rid of all the single-use plastics.

There are some very well-known lifestyle changes that people can make to reduce their emissions. A good example is air travel – air travel is maybe 5% of global emissions, or something very small. If we grounded all planes today, we wouldn’t make a dent in global emissions. At the same time, if you go down to the personal level, as a single person flying on a plane, it is one of the worst things you can do for your personal footprint. Which is a bit of a paradox.

One last thing at the home level is, if you’re a homeowner, installing a heat pump is another big thing you can do. Especially if you use natural gas to heat your home, and you replace that with a heat pump, then that reduces a lot of emissions.

What attracted you to U of T in the first place?

Honestly, it was a bit of dumb luck. Sometimes I volunteer for panels to inform people who are interested in grad school. My advice is always carefully choose your supervisor. But when I applied for my masters, I didn’t do that. I just applied to a few spots across Canada and the UK and I wrote my statement that I was really interested in sustainability infrastructure and data science. Shoshana reached out to me based on the statement, and said, “Hey, I do all the things you listed.” I was like, great. I went to an interview with her and Daniel. It was, that part was, just luck. And it turned out great.

For my PhD I, again, applied to a few places, but this time it was really hard to beat Shoshana, Daniel and our research group in general. The Sustainable Systems group is awesome. Everyone’s really, really smart. Daniel and Shoshanna are probably the two smartest people I’ve met.  As supervisors, they’re constantly pushing all of us to improve our research. How can you do it better? How can you communicate it better? What are the practical implications?

In the end, I think the number one thing is the supervisors. U of T also has a great reputation and great facilities, So I am confident they are giving me the best training I could possibly get.

What have you found about Toronto and U of T that you’ve really liked, or perhaps found surprising? 

I didn’t know if I was going to like Toronto when I first moved here. In Fredericton, where I grew up, I can look out my bedroom window and see the hospital that I was born. It has just over 60,000 people, so very small, and I’ve lived there my whole life. Moving to Toronto is a very big change, especially to downtown. I love how you meet so many cool people here, especially in grad school – it’s the best way to meet people from all over the world. You have all of these brilliant people from everywhere coming to one building. Toronto is a super, super diverse city. You get to try all this great food, and just a much wider net, and space of experiences, than you get somewhere like Fredericton.

Have you had any classes, or professors besides your supervisors, that have stood or made an impression?

I really liked [Professor] Sebastian Goodfellow’s data science class I took when I first got here, and also [Professor] Nurul Habib’s statistics class. they really helped me think differently about the quantitative side of research. When I did undergrad, I did statistics, and I thought: this suck and it’s super boring. Why would anyone like this? Then I came to grad school and did graduate statistics, and thought wow, this is really cool – I should have done my undergrad in this.

What do you like to do for fun?

I read a lot. No, I tend to listen to a lot of audio books. Because, in a PhD you’re constantly reading things, and the last thing you want to do is go home and pick up an actual book and continue to read. So, I’ve been listening to a lot of history books.

I read a great book recently called Imperial Twilight. It was about Chinese-British relationships leading up to the Opium War. It’s very cool, because historians have some of the earliest records of people from Britain interacting with people from China. It only happened really in the 1700s-1800s, so we have the written accounts of events like the first English man who met the Dalai Lama.

Do you have a hidden talent, or some other hobby?

I play guitar a bit. And when I was younger, I used to row. I rowed somewhat competitively and went to the Canada Games. Then again in university when I was and then stopped for a while.

I just got back from an exchange in Cambridge, England. Cambridge is a rowing hub, so I took it up again. Cambridge University is made up of 31 colleges, and each one has a boathouse on the river. There’s a big race at the end of the year called Bumps, where everyone lines up and competes in this big race.  It was super fun. It’s something I’m still doing here – not competitively, but just to stay fit. It’s very enjoyable.

I was a bigger cyclist at home in New Brunswick, before moving to Toronto, and I’ve done a couple of longer biking trips – I’ve biked across Prince Edward Island, and also halfway across New Brunswick with a good friend of mine.

By Phill Snel

On September 3, the University of Toronto welcomed MP Karim Bardeesy, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry, for a briefing on the Lassonde Institute of Mining’s (LIM) innovative training, upskilling and research programs.

Mining supplies advanced materials needed for everyday essentials and a wide range of sectors – from electric vehicles to health to advanced manufacturing. The demand for minerals and metals is expected to increase as Canada and the world shifts to a zero-emission, tech-driven economy.

However, Canada’s mining industry is experiencing a labour shortage, with approximately 80,000 workers needed by 2030 to meet the growing demand for critical minerals. At the same time, for professionals working in remote mine sites across the country, in-person professional development poses a barrier.

For the past 25 years, LIM has been a leading centre for mining talent development and research. Today, U of T Mining is housed within the Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering – in the heart of the global mining finance capital – and ranked third in Canada and 12^th globally.

“LIM is actively addressing the mining industry’s talent needs,” explains Sebastian Goodfellow, Director of the Lassonde Institute of Mining.

At the undergraduate level, the department introduced a seminar course where industry professionals share their career paths with students. It also introduced a field trip course to active mines, helping students connect classroom learning to real-world challenges. It also partnered with NORCAT in Sudbury – a leader in mining training – to revamp a fourth-year field course to offer cutting-edge, hands-on learning opportunities.

“Our students are at the centre of these changes. Combined with a growing recognition of mining’s importance, these efforts have resonated with students, leading to a doubling of enrolment in recent years,” Goodfellow notes.

For students interested in gaining exposure to industry and building their network, U of T’s Professional Experience Year (PEY) Co-Op Program allows third- and fourth-year mineral engineering students to complete up to 20-months of work experience during their degree.

For professionals working in the mining industry, the Mining Industry Management Program (MIMP) developed by Kamran Esmaeili, Professor and Associate Chair of Lassonde Mineral Engineering Undergraduate Program, is also attracting a growing number of participants.

“As the mining industry evolves, professionals must continuously expand their knowledge and skills to remain competitive. The MIMP helps participants adapt to emerging technologies, environmental regulations, and sustainable practices,” explains Esmaeili.

By working with industry partners including Agnico, Rio Tinto, Teck, and Deloitte, the department developed five online courses covering exploration and resource management, economics and finance, environmental, social and governance (ESG), construction and development of mining projects, and mine operations (under development). Courses are taught by experts in their field, allowing participants to gain insights from practitioners and expand their network.

“We’re excited to see the continued growth of the MIMP and are committed to supporting the learning and training objectives of employers, seasoned professionals, early career professionals, and recent graduates alike,” Esmaeili adds.

Since 2023, over 250 participants from across Canada and around the world have enrolled in this unique program.

“It was a pleasure hosting Parliamentary Secretary Bardeesy,” says Marianne Hatzopoulou, Professor and Chair of the Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering.

“With expertise across the entire mining lifecycle, the Lassonde Institute of Mining is uniquely positioned to support the sector’s training and research needs and, in so doing, Canada’s mining sector, energy transition, and net zero objectives.”

Reflecting on his visit with LIM, Parliamentary Secretary Bardeesy says “Post-secondary institutions are developing the talent needed to support critical sectors like mining. It was great to learn how U of T is partnering with industry to inspire the next generation of engineers and prepare them for in-demand careers that are vital to Canada’s economic prosperity.”

GRO extends its thanks to Professors Goodfellow, Esmaeili, and Hatzopoulou for sharing their expertise and Parliamentary Secretary Bardeesy for visiting U of T’s Lassonde Institute of Mining.

By Catrina Kronfli

This story originally published by the U of T Government Relations Office (GRO)

CivMin students shine in receiving 2025 TAC Foundation scholarships

The Transportation Association of Canada (TAC) has awarded TAC Foundation scholarships to CivMin students.

Since the TAC Foundation began awarding scholarships in 2005, 661 scholarships valuing $2.8 million have been provided at the graduate, undergraduate (university and college) and entrance level in transportation-related disciplines. For 2025, 16 scholarships valued at $71,950 were awarded by the Foundation.

From heritage joinery to high-tech robotics: Professor Aryan Rezaei Rad wins Connaught New Researcher Award to mainstream digitally fabricated mass timber construction. His research aims to turn centuries-old wood joinery into robot-made building parts for today’s construction.

CivMin Professor Aryan Rezaei Rad has won U of T’s Connaught New Researcher Award for a project that takes classic interlocking wood joints (i.e., the kind that snap together without metal fasteners) and supercharges them with modern robotics. Think “old-world woodworking meets robot shop.”

His team will craft full-size timber pieces, put them through their paces in the lab, and turn what they learn into kit-of-parts. The payoff is straightforward: faster builds, less waste, more affordable, and most importantly, structurally resilient.

“We’re translating proven craft into practical, build-ready timber solutions,” says Rad. “This award helps push a greener construction future from idea to job site.”

The University of Toronto has climbed one spot to 25th place globally in the latest edition of ShanghaiRanking Consultancy’s worldwide university ranking.

Among public universities, U of T was ranked sixth in North America and 14th overall in the closely watched 2025 Academic Ranking of World Universities. U of T remained Canada’s top-ranked university in the rankings.

ShanghaiRanking Consultancy evaluated more than 2,500 universities to determine the 1,000 included in this year’s publication.

“The University of Toronto’s outstanding performance in these global rankings reflects the exceptional breadth and depth of our academic excellence,” said U of T President Melanie Woodin. “It’s also yet another sign of the tremendous impact of our faculty and graduates in responding to the key challenges of our time.”

The Academic Ranking of World Universities is based on six weighted measures of research and academic performance collected from third-party sources. They include: the number of alumni and faculty winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals; the number of highly cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories; the number of papers published in the prestigious journals Nature and Science; articles cited in major science and social sciences citation indices; and each institution’s per capita academic performance across all faculty members.

U of T’s performance in the ranking was buoyed by a significant increase in the Award indicator, a direct consequence of University Professor Emeritus Geoffrey Hinton receiving the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for foundational contributions to the field of artificial intelligence.

Two other Canadian universities placed in the top 100: the University of British Columbia at 53rd and McGill University at 76th.

The five highest-ranked universities – unchanged from 2024 – were Harvard University, Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Cambridge and the University of California, Berkeley.

Overall, U of T continues to be ranked among the top 30 universities globally across the five most closely watched international rankings: QS World University Rankings, U.S. News & World Report’s Best Global Universities, Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings, ShanghaiRanking Consultancy’s Academic Ranking of World Universities and National Taiwan University World University Rankings.

This story originally posted by U of T News

Education News Canada | August 25, 2025