The following is part of a series introducing CivMin's undergraduate summer students to the Department and our greater community.
We explore the students' projects, motivation and challenges, while providing insights into who they are, and what motivates them, beyond academia. It also highlights the multitude of ways summer research opportunities are approached and implemented under the guidance of our industry-leading CivMin professors.
This summer, Haobo Zhao (CivE, Year 4) will be exploring the mine tailings problem and how to predict when mine tailing mountains might fail, under the supervision of Professor Mason Ghafghazi. Working in the Mechanics and Geotechnical Lab, Haobo is assisting Lizhi Qi (PhD candidate) with a number of tests to assess the strength of mine tailings. This work is contributing to the larger body of knowledge related to preventing the liquefaction of mine tailing mountains. Read more...
Sheen Patel (CivE, Year 3) has always been interested in concrete. He started exploring this research area in his first year when he joined U of T's Concrete Toboggan Team. This summer, he's collaborating with Exact Technology to develop a concrete sensor which will identify moisture levels at different depths over time, under the supervision of Professor Doug Hooton. His contribution to this project brings it one step closer to creating a user-friendly version of this device to be used by industry. Read more...
Rohan Wongkee (CivE, Year 3) has a talent for data analysis and a strong interest in the transportation research area. This summer, he’ll be exploring train delays and their impact on passengers within Toronto’s public transportation system, under the supervision of Professor Amer Shalaby. As a frequent TTC user himself, Rohan experiences these delays firsthand. His research will be contributing to improving overall user experience on public transportation. Read more...
Rain Ferrer (MinE, Year 3), Anass Janah (Work-Study Student,Civil Engineering,Year 4, CESI de Bordeaux, France) and Madhavan Premrajka(Mining Engineering, Year 4, IIT Kharagpur, India) are all doing research under the supervision ofProfessor John Harrisonthis summer. When Rain heard about the research opportunity with Prof. Harrison, heimmediately knew it was a position he couldn’tmiss out on.
Anass and Madhavanjoin the team this summer as part of the Mitacs Global Research Initiative, whichconnects students with post-secondary institutions around the world for unique learning opportunities.Anass is pursuing a career in Civil Engineering in France, whereas Madhavan is pursuing Mining Engineering in India. India has been involved in thisMitacsinitiative for years, and this is the first year France has participated. Read more...
Chris Kim (EngSci, Year 2) and Catherine Ye (CivE, Year 4) are doing research about buildings and building systems this summer under the supervision of ProfessorSeungjae Lee. Both students are passionate about investigating and exploring the realm of building science. Chris is drawn to this research area because of its complexity and how interesting this makes the problem space, whereas Catherine is fascinated by the artificial intelligence and sustainability elements of building science. Read more...
From her first taste of transportation research, Lisa Guseva (CivE, Year 4) knew she wanted to pursue a career in the area. This summer, Lisa will be exploring e-cargo tricycle parking, under the supervision of Prof. Matt Roorda,Usman Ahmed (Postdoctoral Research Fellow leading the program with Purolator) and Farah Ghizzawi(PhD candidate researching commercial vehicle parking and behaviour simulation). Lisa's work will be part of a larger project, in partnership with Purolator, examining the performance of e-cargo bikes from a business, environmental and safety perspective. Read more...
In the courseIntroduction to Civil Engineering (CIV201), Terry Liang (CivE, Year 3) and Ollie Zhao (CivE, Year 3) had the opportunity to tour campus and visit various professors and research groups. This is when they first learned about Professor Daeho Kim's research and knew it was an avenue they wanted to pursue. Prof. Kim ended up being Terry and Ollie's construction management professor, providing plenty of opportunity for inquiry about potential research opportunities. This summer, Terry and Ollie will be exploring the world of construction management and AI, under the supervision of Prof. Kim. Read more...
With various interests, Maria Vetrici (CivE, Year 2) originally started at U of T in the math and statistics program. After discovering her passion for urban geography and planning, Maria transferred into Civil Engineering. This summer, Maria is diving into the world of transportation and ride-sourcing services under the supervision of Prof. Khandker Nurul Habib. Read more...
Emaan Fatima (EngSci, Year 3) and Christopher Zuccaro (CivE 2T2 + PEY, MASc candidate), both in different stages of their educational journey, found an interest in water and energy systems. With a passion for equity-based research, Emaan hopes she can help people and make a difference. Christopher began Civil Engineering with the intent of becoming a civil engineer but once he took Professor Bryan Karney's course, CIV 250 - Hydraulics and Hydrology, he knew he wanted to pursue a future career involving the topic of water. This summer, Emaan and Christopher are both working as research students in CivMin, under the supervision of Prof. Karney. Read more...
Undergraduate students Freddy Fisher, Fabio Karanja and Flora Thang all found themselves drawn to Structural Engineering. They all took Structural Analysis I (CIV214), taught by Professor Oh-Sung Kwon, and are now doing summer research under the co-supervision of Professors Kwon and Evan Bentz. Freddy, Fabio and Flora will be supporting two graduate students' research on nuclear containment structures leakage and the impact of high temperatures on certain materials. They've also been assigned their own personal projects. Read more...
Gordon Tan’s father is a civil engineer. He grew up learning about indoor air quality, sparking his interest in this area. Now, as an undergraduate student, Gordon is doing summer research on mycotoxins and its impact on indoor air quality, under the supervision of Professor Sarah Haines. The literature on this research area is limited; for Gordon, this is motivation to further explore this topic area. He hopes to shine a spotlight on the importance of examining exposures in our indoor environment and to spark further research on mycotoxins. Read more...
Undergraduate students Noureen Abdelhalim and Abdul Moiz Syed both took an interest in material science after taking Professor Ibrahim Ogunsanya’s CIV209 - Civil Engineering Materials class. Both are now diving deeper into this area as research students in CivMin this summer, under the supervision of Prof. Ogunsanya. Though they have differing career aspirations, they share a deep appreciation for the importance of materials - a part of engineering often overlooked and forgotten about. Read more...
Congratulations to the Class of 2T3 and 2T2 + PEY – our newest alumni!
Convocation ceremony on Tuesday, June 20, 2023.
The original Class of 2T3 …1923!
The Civil Engineering Class of 2T3 (1923) during their summer at Camp (then known as Survey Camp) on Gull Lake August 1921. The framed photo is on display at Camp in the dining hall. (Photo by Phill Snel/CivMin)
The original Class of 2T3 from 1923 during their summer at Camp in August of 1921.
You’re now joining a network of over 50,000 U of T Engineering Alumni.
Please do stay connected with the CivMin community as a member of the Engineering Alumni Association, which offers many alumni benefits and supports. Keep your contact info up-to-date through U of T Engineering CONNECT to stay informed about special events and opportunities in your region.
To find social media posts, please follow the hashtags: #UofTGrad23 #Classof2T3 #CivMin
The following CivMin students were recognized with USRAs:
Sophie Costantino (Year 2 CivE)
Rain Ferrer (Year 3 MinE)
Freddy Fisher (Year 2 CivE)
Tyler Hu (Year 3 CivE)
Sepehr J. Javidan (Year 4 CivE)
Askar Khasanov (Year 2 CivE)
Tianyu Liang (Year 2 CivE)
Sheen Patel (Year 2 CivE)
Nikola Ristic (Year 2 CivE)
Abdul Syed (Year 3 CivE)
Rohan Wongkee (Year 2 CivE)
Laura Xu (Year 3 CivE)
Catherine Ye (Year 3 CivE)
Yanbo Zang (Year 2 CivE)
Haobo Zhoa (Year 3 CivE)
Jingyun Zhong (Year 2 CivE)
The University of Toronto Excellence Award (UTEA) was awarded to three CivMin undergraduate students. The UTEA’s purpose is to provide undergraduate students with the opportunity to gain direct research experience, learn investigative methodology and foster an interest in research. Students propose a research project and are selected based on research project quality, academic excellence, clear learning outcomes and level of supervisor engagement.
The following CivMin students were recognized with UTEAs:
The J. Edgar McAllister Undergraduate Summer Fellowship was awarded to Matthew Ye (Year 3 MinE).
June 19, 2023 | NewsTalk 1010
With U of T Engineering’s convocation ceremonies on June 20, 2023, our students mark the end of one journey and the beginning of another.
Having enriched the U of T Engineering community as undergraduate and graduate students, they will join our vibrant, global network of Skule™ alumni, where they will continue to address pressing challenges around the world and inspire the next generation.
This year’s 15 Grads to Watch — selected by their home departments and institutes — embody the spirit of U of T Engineering. Their stories illustrate the creativity, innovation and global impact that define our community. Watch their next steps!
Among the 15 graduates our two CivMin grads to watch are:
INNOVATING DATA SCIENCE
Sanjana Hossain (CivMin PhD 2T3)
Sanjana Hossain. (Photo submitted)
Hossain will always appreciate the diversity of people and ideas that she found at U of T Engineering.
“I got the opportunity to work with researchers from various backgrounds, teach classes to a multicultural student body and make friends with people from different countries around the world,” she says.
“These experiences have shaped my values and principles and made me more respectful towards others.”
Her thesis, under the supervision of Professor Khandker Nurul Habib, investigated the feasibility of synthesizing travel data from multiple sources to generate more comprehensive and representative information to support disaggregate travel demand modelling.
“This research will help transportation planners, demand modellers and policy makers by producing rich and accurate input data for evidence-based transportation planning in the emerging context,” she says.
During her PhD, Hossain worked as a data science intern on the Policy, Research & Economics team at Uber Technologies Inc.
She was also the recipient of many scholarships, including the Ontario Trillium Scholarship, the Transport Canada Scholarship and the graduate student fellowship from U of T’s School of Cities. In 2021, she was awarded the Jim Davey Award by the Canadian Transportation Research Forum for her paper, which explored the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on bicycle-sharing demand in Toronto.
After graduation, Hossain will be taking up a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University in Chicago, under the supervision of Professor Hani Mahmassani, and supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
“I will be investigating a variety of empirical and methodological research questions, such as what is the potential demand for urban air mobility services in the state of Illinois, what are the long-lasting effects of the pandemic on travel behaviour and demand, and what factors contribute to sample attrition in panel surveys,” she says.
“I hope that these topics will help diversify and extend my research experiences further.”
“I would like to thank all my friends and colleagues at the Travel Demand Modelling group of U of T. They not only provided an engaging and productive research environment but also helped me navigate through the tough PhD journey. They also helped me enjoy my life in Toronto to the fullest.“
MODERNIZING MINING TECHNOLOGY
Alec Gilvesy. (Photo submitted)
Alec Gilvesy (MinE 2T2 + PEY)
Gilvesy says his time at U of T Engineering has been a great balance between fun extracurricular activities, academic challenges and hands-on work.
“I have been fortunate to take part in a lot of different groups over my time at the University,” he says.
He was a member of the Min Club, and as president this past year, the team was recognized as Discipline Club of the Year by EngSoc. He was also part of the U of T Canadian Mining Games Team, the Skule ™ Nite Band and the Blue & Gold Committee, and he held the role of vice-archivist for the Skule™ Archives.
“All my courses have featured knowledge sharing of state-of-the-art technologies impacting the field of mining, which were delivered by some of the top leaders in the field,” he says.
“It has been exciting to see some of these technologies implemented during my PEY Co-op at Agnico Eagle’s Macassa mine, and I hope to continue to see these innovations shape the field over my career.”
After graduation, Gilvesy will be returning to the Macassa mine in Kirkland Lake, Ont., to work as an engineer-in-training.
“The Macassa mine and Agnico Eagle align with a lot of my personal values and interests,” he says. “The company puts a big emphasis on mining sustainably and supporting the local community, which I believe are crucial for mining companies as we move forward.
“Macassa has been in operation more or less continuously since 1933, so there is a lot of history there that I hope to continue to learn from and apply and adapt it to more modern technology and techniques.”
“I’d really like to thank my team at MinClub for their hard work over the past year: Shaan Hudani (MinE 2T2 + PEY), my VP Social; Peter Anderson (MinE 2T2 + PEY), my VP Finance; Raymond Bhushan, my VP Academic; and Komal Mann (MinE 2T2 + PEY), my VP Industry, and right hand in everything with MinClub this year. You’ve all really made an impact on the students in the Lassonde Mineral Engineering program, and I can’t wait to see what you all do next!“
Story by Safa Jinje & Tyler Irving
This story originally published (with all 15 grads to watch) by Engineering News
June 13, 2023 | Toronto Star
Graduate Fellowship in Sustainable Urban Mobility
Mwendwa Kiko, a PhD candidate under the supervision of Professor Eric Miler, received the 2023 Roschlau Graduate Fellowship in Sustainable Urban Mobility.
He will undertake primary research on the topic “Electric Vehicles and Gas Stations: Applying a Travel Demand Model to the Study of their Mutual Effects” from September 2023 to April 2024.
The Roschlau Graduate Fellowship in Sustainable Urban Mobility is the first fellowship of its kind at the University of Toronto. It was established in 2023 thanks to a generous donation from Michael W. Roschlau, U of T alumnus and former President & CEO of the Canadian Urban Transit Association. Read more about Mwendwa Kiko and his research project, and the Roschlau Graduate Fellowship.
Aly Abdelaziz, a PhD candidate under the supervision of Professor Giovanni Grasselli, is the winner of the Murty Devata Graduate Student Scholarship
Established in 2023 by family, friends, and colleagues of late Murty Devata, this scholarship was awarded to Aly from Canadian Geotechnical Society-Sothern Ontario Section (CGS-SOS) as the elected geotechnical/geomechanical/geo-environmental graduate student from one of the following universities: Toronto Metropolitan University, University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, Western University, McMaster University, York University.
Aly’s exceptional academic achievements, remarkable extracurricular involvement, and a strong commitment to making a positive impact in our community set him apart as a deserving recipient.
New research from CivMin Professor David Meyer and his team highlights how water supply scheduling leads to inequity between rich neighbourhoods and poorer ones in two Indian megacities
A new study from U of T Engineering Professor David Meyer (CivMin, ISTEP) shows that between the cities of Delhi and Bengaluru, customers are supplied water on 3,278 different schedules, ranging from nearly continuous to only about 30 minutes per week. (Photo: wirestock, via Envato Elements)
In North American cities, the water supply is typically available 24 hours per day. In other parts of the world, the average can be far less — but according to Professor David Meyer (CivMin, ISTEP) even that reported average can mask a lot of complexity and inequity.
“You might hear a water authority say that on average, their customers receive between three or four hours of water supply per day,” says Meyer.
Prof. David Meyer
“What they don’t tell you is that the average is derived from thousands of individual supply schedules that vary wildly from one neighbourhood to another. Some might have water nearly all the time, while others might get it only once per week.
“What time you get water, how much you get, and how long you must prepare to go without impacts your quality of life. There is a huge need to understand that complexity and the inequity it leads to.”
Meyer estimates that more than a billion people around the world get their water from intermittent systems, in which the supply is regularly turned on and off throughout the day or week. For the past several years, he and his team have been studying various aspects of these systems.
Their latest research paper, published in Science of the Total Environment, represents the first in-depth study into the complexity and inequity within the water supply systems of two Indian megacities: Delhi, with a population of more than 32 million, and Bengaluru, which has more than 13 million people.
Between them, Meyer and his team found 3,278 different water supply schedules, ranging from nearly continuous to as little as 30 minutes per week. While the pattern of supply was extremely complex and differed significantly between the two cities, in general, affluent neighbourhoods tended to have better water schedules than poorer ones.
The research was sparked in part by an experience Meyer had during his PhD thesis.
“Basically, I wanted to find a reference for the average number of hours per day that water is supplied to customers in Delhi, and I couldn’t find one online,” he says.
“What I did find was 42 different posted supply schedules, none of which were in a format where the data could easily be parsed by a computer. I ended up spending a day and a half typing them into a spreadsheet so I could work out an average.”
While water authorities in Delhi and Bengaluru say they are working toward a 24/7 water supply, they post their current intermittent neighbourhood water supply schedules online as an interim measure. This practice makes good sense, as Meyer explains.
“If you live in an intermittent water supply, it’s transformative to know when the water is going to turn on,” he says.
“Now you can leave your house, or send your kids to school, or go to work without worrying that you’re going to miss water. What was surprising to me was that even within the posted schedules, there is a huge amount of variability and inequity.”
Meyer and his graduate students scoured the websites for the cities of Delhi and Bengaluru, extracting numbers to expand and complete the dataset he began during his thesis. They then developed tools to visualize and analyze the patterns they found.
In Delhi for example, about 2% of households get a water supply that is close to 24/7, but on the other end of the scale, there’s another 2% that only gets 30 minutes per week of supplied water. In total, nearly 5% of households get less than an hour of water per day, with many of these getting water only once every few days.
Timing also matters. In Delhi, more than 60% of the city gets water in the early morning hours, between 6 and 8 a.m. Another peak occurs between 6 and 8 p.m., reaching nearly 50% of the city. But in off-peak hours — most of the day and night — the water supply is off for more than 90% of the city.
Bengaluru doesn’t show this same temporal pattern. In that city, many neighbourhoods must wait until inconvenient times – for example, 2 a.m. – before they can get water. For most households it is only supplied on alternate days, or even less frequently.
Analysis of water schedule data shows that in Delhi, most customers get water at least once per day, but that this supply is concentrated in the early morning and early evening. In contrast, Bengaluru supplies water every other day, or even less frequently. About 2% of households in Delhi get a nearly continuous supply of water, while most get far less, with about 2% getting only 30 minutes per week. (Images: David Meyer)
“Frequency and duration of supply are equity issues,” says Meyer.
“If you only get water in the morning and at night, you need to invest in enough storage to last the other 10 hours. But if you only get water every other day, or every third or fourth day, you need even more storage. That costs money, takes up room in your house, gives more time for the microbes to grow in your storage tank and generally decreases your quality of life.”
The team measured inequity by looking at three factors: how many piped connections a given neighbourhood had, how long the supply lasted when it was on and how long residents had to go between scheduled supply periods.
“In both cities, rich neighbourhoods have more piped connections to homes,” says Meyer. “In Bengaluru, we also found that the rich neighbourhoods had better supply schedules, meaning that they were scheduled to receive water more frequently and for longer. This forces poorer households to invest in more water storage than rich ones.”
Meyer says that his hope for the study is that it will focus attention on the inequity that can be obscured by city-wide averages.
“Having such an enormous number of different supply schedules is already a problem, because it makes the system much more complex than it needs to be,” says Meyer.
“But given that this is the system we have, my hope is that we can unlock the learning potential from the supply schedules. If people can clearly see how unfair the current system is, I hope it will drive them to demand better regulation and more accountability for water utilities to deliver higher quality service.”
This summer, 
Sheen Patel
Rohan Wongkee (CivE, Year 3) has a talent for data analysis and a strong interest in the transportation research area. This summer, he’ll be exploring train delays and their impact on passengers within Toronto’s public transportation system, under the supervision of 
Rain Ferrer
Chris Kim (EngSci, Year 2) and 
In the
With various interests, 
Emaan Fatima (EngSci, Year 3) and 
Gordon Tan’s father is a civil engineer. He grew up learning about indoor air quality, sparking his interest in this area. Now, as an undergraduate student, Gordon is doing summer research on mycotoxins and its impact on indoor air quality, under the supervision of 
Established in 2023 by family, friends, and colleagues of late Murty Devata, this scholarship was awarded to Aly from Canadian Geotechnical Society-Sothern Ontario Section (CGS-SOS) as the elected geotechnical/geomechanical/geo-environmental graduate student from one of the following universities: Toronto Metropolitan University, University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, Western University, McMaster University, York University.
