May 3, 2023 | Toronto Star

May 1, 2023 | Toronto Star

Sandy Chen (CivE MASc candidate) was awarded an American Concrete Institute (ACI) Foundation Scholarship along with a US$5,000 educational stipend. American Concrete Institute Foundation supports students’ education, research, and innovation throughout the concrete industry to contribute to keeping the industry at the forefront of technological advances in material composition, design, and construction.

I am very honoured to receive the American Concrete Institute (ACI) Foundation Scholarship. Since pursuing civil engineering in undergrad, ACI has always been a notable organization in my field of study. Therefore, receiving this scholarship motivates me to continue my research.

I want to express my gratitude to [Cornell] Professor Ken Hover for introducing me to concrete half a decade ago and [CivMin] Professor Douglas Hooton for his continuous support as my Master’s supervisor.

Congratulations to Diane McCartney on receiving Agnes Kaneko Citizenship Award and Michelle Deeton for being recognized with Harpreet Dhariwal Emerging Leader Award!
Diane and Michele are in the top ten of U of T Engineering faculty and staff to be honoured for their outstanding contributions to the Faculty. These awards recognize exceptional faculty and staff members for their leadership, citizenship, innovation and contributions to the Faculty’s teaching, service and research missions.

Diane McCartney
Agnes Kaneko Citizenship Award

Recognizing a staff member who has served with distinction and made contributions to the Faculty’s mission above and beyond their job description over a long period of time.

Currently a clerical/financial assistant in CivMin, Diane McCartney joined the department in 1982 as a secretary and has been a dedicated member of the Engineering community ever since. As the department moved from typewriters to computers to online technologies, McCartney was always an early adopter and played a leading role in training other staff.

Throughout these changes she has continued to be a role model in her above-and-beyond contributions to the department, both professionally and personally. Despite a heavy workload, McCartney consistently makes time to support our students, staff and faculty members. For example, she collects coupons for meal providers around campus and leaves them in a bowl for students to pick up, helping them to stretch their budgets.

McCartney’s office door is always open, and anyone is welcome to drop by to ask a question, look for help, or just dip into the candy jar she keeps on her filing cabinet. She is incredibly generous of her time and will always try to solve a problem for a student or colleague, whether or not it falls within the boundaries of her job. She also goes out of her way to foster an inclusive and welcoming community and acts as an unofficial goodwill ambassador for the department.

Michelle Deeton
Harpreet Dhariwal Emerging Leader Award

Recognizing a staff member who leads by example in their dedication to the Faculty’s mission and demonstrates potential to assume a more senior leadership role.

Michelle Deeton joined CivMin in 2017 as the Director of Finance and Administration, after serving as Acting Director for the Office of the Dean for nearly three years. Upon joining CivMin, Deeton faced the challenge of taking on a newly created leadership role at a time when the department’s business office was experiencing significant operational issues, including a near total turnover of staff. She quickly rose to the challenge and set about reorganizing the business office in a way that has made it considerably more effective.

Deeton has gone well beyond her job description to become the go-to person in CivMin for all policies related to human resources and finance, helping every community member strategically solve problems in these areas. Perhaps most importantly, she has led her team to completely change the culture of the business office, transforming it into a unit that is focused on providing support and guidance in following University policies, rather than simply enforcing those policies. In this way, her leadership has positively impacted faculty, staff and students across CivMin.

Deeton also plays a leadership role amongst her counterparts across the Faculty, promoting improvements to administrative procedures that affect all departments.

April 27, 2023 | Daily Commercial News by ConstructConnect

University of Toronto Alumni Association (UTAA) awarded Praveen Siluvai Antony, a CivMin’s PhD Candidate under the supervision of Prof. Daniel Posen, with a University of Toronto Student Leadership Award (UTSLA). The annual award was presented by Christopher Yip, the Deen of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, at a Graduating Student Awards In-Person Celebration in the Faculty Club on Wednesday, April 26.

Praveen is pursuing research in the area of “Life cycle assessment, Biofuels, and Public policies” in the CivMin Department. See a past story on the CivMin website, where we chatted with Parveen about the award and his current work right after the nomination announcement: CivMin’s Praveen Siluvai Antony (PhD candidate) wins a UTSLA

April 26, 2023 | University of Toronto Magazine

Congratulations to Gonzalo Martínez Santos of the University of Toronto, who was awarded second place prize by Esri Canada for the 2023 Esri Young Scholars Award program. Martínez Santos is supervised by a faculty affiliate of the Smart Freight Centre.

Gonzalo Martínez Santos is a 4th-year student of Engineering Science at the University of Toronto majoring in Machine Intelligence Engineering and working on his undergraduate thesis project under the supervision of Professor Matthew Roorda.

Gonzalo is passionate about cities, mobility, and urbanism. His computational background and his experience with city modelling and visualization allows him to contribute to the development of urban generative design tools at the University of Toronto.

Gonzalo is grateful for this recognition by Esri Canada and says this award will further motivate his career aspirations:

“I am delighted to have been awarded the second-place prize for the Esri Young Scholar Award. This recognition further motivates me to pursue my aspiration of contributing to the future of city planning and design.”

Gonzalo appreciates the support of everyone involved in his research project:

“I would like to thank Sara Wagner (PhD Candidate at UofT) for allowing me to participate in her research project, Dr. Sara Diamond (OCAD) for her continuous ideas and input, David Kossowsky (Esri Canada Limited) for developing the CityEngine visuals, and Dr. Matthew Roorda (UofT) for supervising this project.”

This research was funded by Esri Canada Limited and the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Professor Roorda expects future applications of this generative design tool in a variety of urban design applications including the optimization of freight access in communities, community health and social justice, and enhancing the public participation process for urban design.

This story first published by U of T’s Smart Freight Centre.

April 19, 2023| Driving.ca

April 18, 2023 | University of Toronto Engineering News