February 21, 2025 | Daily Commercial News
Uniting research academics with those responsible for matters of policy and implementation at the municipal, provincial and even federal levels can lead to benefits for the public good.
The recent Planning Advancements in Transportation and Housing Conference (PATH 2025) in Toronto on Tuesday, February 11, hosted by the Mobility Network, allowed the sharing of a broad scope of research and partnerships with regional stakeholders. With a nearly even split of academics and government representatives over the 150 attendees, the event fostered the network of those assembled to explore evidence-based decision-making and innovative solutions.
The goal of the conference was to be the first step in building a robust, interdisciplinary knowledge community looking to create a more sustainable and equitable future for the Greater Golden Horseshoe. Overall, it allowed bringing all the moving parts together involving research projects and allowing sharing of data, policy recommendations and more to enhance the ability of local governments to implement best practices and contribute to the region's long-term success.
Topics ranged from sustainable infrastructure planning, to transit-oriented development to AI and data-driven innovation.
The speakers for many of the concurrent sessions were firmly representative of CivMin faculty and research-stream students, with Professors Baher Abdulhai, Marianne Hatzopoulou, Eric Miller, Khandker Nurul Habib, Shoshanna Saxe and Amer Shalaby providing guidance as moderators.
The day's formal portion was capped with a debate topic selected to polarize opinions. The debate, Cars Are Still the Future of Mobility in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, drew upon CivMin's Prof. Shoshanna Saxe to oppose and Prof. Murtaza Haider of TMU supporting the motion. The event was not all barbs and sparks, as several instances saw humorous moments and even moderator Prof. Steven Farber, the Mobility Network's interim director, asking the audience to weigh on the "truthiness" of views and statistics provided on the fly.
Speaker Professor Daniel Rodriguez from UC Berkeley was the academic who travelled the furthest for the gathering, while a Government of Canada representative, coming from Ottawa via train, was the policy-maker who made the longest trek. Representatives from Hamilton, Peterborough and many other municipalities made up the 10 regions who attended, complementing the six educational institutions involved.
By Phill Snel
Given the opportunity to showcase their creative talents, students express their thoughts with a wide array of visual deliverables as solutions for sustainability problems
During the Fall 2024 term, undergraduate students in Engineering and the School of Environment had a chance to explore their solutions to sustainability problems through telling personal stories and visual representation.
Students were given an assignment and asked to consider at least two pillars of sustainability in their group project, comprising environment, social, economic and professional responsibility – the written portion to be accompanied by a medium of their choice, such as a graphic, video, infographic, comic strip, skit, etc. Further, they were asked to use personal experiences to communicate their submission.
The rationale being that practicing engineers are often required to work in teams and communicate ideas to various stakeholders, at times presenting to stakeholders about ways and means to advance sustainability.
Sometimes changing up the normal academic approach can yield pleasant, and surprisingly imaginative, results. During the first term of the year, CIV300 instructor and alumna Sherry-Ann Ram (CivMin PhD 2T4) did just this and dared to try something different, resulting in delightful visual deliverables from her students. Students were told by Ram, “This is your opportunity to dream big, use your imagination, and come up with novel solutions that may not already exist.”
By changing the format of assignments and tests for the Terrestrial Energy Systems class, she allowed groups of students to explore and express the topic in amazingly diverse ways. “The idea was for students to draw upon personal experience, sustainability pillars and course concepts to come up with solutions to a sustainability issue,” Ram explains.
“I made a shift in the way the students were assessed during the term by having just two closely supervised exams – one as a midterm – and a [larger] group project,” she says, outlining the overall view. “The group project featured diverse student groups of thee to five people, and was comprised of three components: a short written summary, a creative component and a reflection.”
The resulting creative components from the groups yielded impressive work ranging from infographics to comic strips to a story book. The collaborative efforts showcased the students’ thoughts and creative endeavours while still adhering to the desired academic outcomes.
The theme of sustainability is told in several ways, showcasing different cultural experiences. In one way it’s described through the narrative of an annual snowman’s demise in the illustrated story “Snowball” and in another of a girl, Safa, who endures seasonal monsoon flooding in Dhaka and encountering a flood fairy in the story “What Can I Do?” illustrated via an e-book. In a poster format, often seen displayed as a capstone project, another group showed in graphic form their “Mitigating the Urban Heat Island (UHI) Effect” composite.
“I have always enjoyed TAing for CIV300 because it offers some insights into how fundamental algebraic principles, so familiar to engineers, explain global patterns in climate and landscapes,” says the teaching assistant grading the project, PhD student Jay Gordon (BSc 2011). Gordon was quite impressed with some of the creative component outputs, “Now it is pushing further than offering a foundational understanding of Earth’s processes. It is also translating these ideas into an understanding of how we make energy choices – from the obvious utility of oil to the transformations of potential energy required to bring solar, wind and wave energy online.”
Group 25: Poster – Mitigating the Urban Heat Island (UHI) Effect
Kirtan Patel, Sean Shen, Terry Yao and Alp Zeytinoglu
“The environment is where we all meet; where we all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share.”
~Group 25
Group 30: What Can I Do? online storybook
Hoda Eissa, Izza Farhan, Sharanpreet Ghotra, Rusafa Rahman and Sandhya Sookhoo
“We are grateful to be given an opportunity to display all that we learned. It was a rewarding experience to work in a team with diverse backgrounds and experiences to create our storybook, integrating core course concepts and highlighting the importance of sustainability in the future.”
~Group 30.
Group 31: Snowball comic book
Saffron Brown, Sabryn Di Paola, Lex Piunno and Samantha Troendle
“The creative component of our CIV300 summative assignment was an exceptional educational opportunity because it permitted each of our team members to convey their knowledge and ideas in a way that best suited their communication style. Our team members who had previously struggled with the strict confines of academic communication were able to fully let their ideas shine in the context of this assignment!”
~Group 31.
February 9, 2025 | Toronto Star
February 6, 2025 | The Narwhal
The University of Toronto’s Concrete Toboggan Team won first overall at this year’s 2025 Great Northern Concrete Toboggan Race (GNCTR).
Beating out 18 other universities involving over 400 engineering students, the entry came first overall supported by several key assessments and accumulating the top score at the illustrious competition. The team of 100, representing almost every department from U of T Engineering, had 30 travel to Montreal for this year’s efforts. The on-hill component of the event was held at Groupe Plein Air Terrebonne, a Montreal-area ski resort.
The Beatles-inspired “Yellow Submarine” entry nicknamed “Ringo”, though not the fastest down the hill, did very well with a solid performance by the team. “We were the second-fastest toboggan down the hill. We had excellent braking speed and a great steering design – on the steering race, we made it through all three of the slalom gates. We also placed for some design awards: second-best geometric profile for our skis, third place in superstructure design,” says co-captain Tobin Zheng (Year 4 MSE).
Co-captain Amélie Smithson (Year 4 MechE) relays the surprise of realizing the team’s winning final score, “Saturday night, the night of race day, they went through and announced all the results of each assessment – none of this had been released beforehand. I would say we were quite surprised, because we weren’t the fastest team down the hill, and we weren’t really expecting it at all. I think the team was very excited to find that out.”
Previous noticeable innovations for the team’s toboggan design included the addition of a carbon fibre shell, making it lightweight; this year’s iteration involved not using a chassis and several other, otherwise hidden, modifications.
“Ever since 2020, the T-Bog design has been slowly evolving. The reason they look similar is because we’ve kind of nailed the aerodynamic structure of the body. Although, functionally, the toboggans are not all the same; we change up the braking and steering system every year, as well as the concrete mix and the ski design. Those are things that are not the most observable, but they do develop and innovate,” Zheng shares.
Smithson adds, “One thing that does definitely change, even though it may look similar, is the fabrication process itself. Using different materials and molds, trying to figure out what’s the easiest and fastest way to make the design, so that it results in a very smooth design. There’s innovation every year.”
The co-captains provided shoutouts to CivMin’s Olga Perebatova, a Concrete Materials Technician, who was very helpful for concrete pours and testing, and to MIE’s Jeeth Anayat, in the MC78 Machine Shop, for his assistance with mechanical work.
WATCH: U of T CONCRETE TOBOGGAN IN ACTION
Founded in 1974, the GNCTR is held annually at various sites across Canada. It is the largest and longest-running undergraduate engineering competition in Canada. Representing a multidisciplinary challenge, teams construct a toboggan with a fully concrete running surface (usually skis), steering and braking systems, as well as a roll cage. Designs must weigh less than 350 lbs and accommodate five riders safely
U of T last won the GNCTR in 2020, shortly before the pandemic shutdown, with a Canada Post-inspired entry. The winning 2020 Concrete Toboggan is on display in the Myhal Centre lobby.
By Phill Snel
CivMin Professor Emeritus Paul Young is to be awarded the King Charles III Coronation Medal.
The medal is awarded to those who have made a significant contribution to Canada or to a particular province, territory, region or community of Canada, or have made an outstanding achievement abroad that brings credit to Canada. The Coronation Medal commemorates the Coronation of His Majesty King Charles III as King of Canada. The medal is administered by the Chancellery of Honours at Rideau Hall.
The citation from the Royal Society of Canada reads:
“I am pleased to inform you that, in recognition of your exceptional and sustained contributions to the mission and goals of the Royal Society of Canada, you have been awarded the King Charles III Coronation Medal”
Young is an engineering geophysicist who has focused his research and engineering career on developing seismic methods and instrumentation to monitor fractures and rock quality. Over the past 40 years, he has pioneered techniques for monitoring and interpreting induced seismicity in the mining, energy and nuclear waste disposal industries. Through his research groups at Queen’s University and the University of Toronto, Canada, Keele University and Liverpool University, UK, as well as through spin off companies such as ESG, Canada and Applied Seismology Consultants, UK, innovative scientific advances have been made in applied seismology and rock mechanics.
He has published over 275 scientific papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings, supervised over 45 PhD students and postdoctoral research fellows and developed innovative instrumentation systems for induced seismicity/acoustic emission monitoring. He continues to develop geophysical imaging techniques for rock fracture and investigate the synergy with numerical modeling and further facilitate the movement of science from the laboratory to industry.
He has been awarded many honours for his research and innovation, notably, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Willet G. Miller Medal of the Royal Society of Canada for his research in Earth Sciences, the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for services to Canada, and the John A. Franklin Award for Rock Mechanics by the Canadian Geotechnical Society. He is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining and is a Chartered Engineer.
A presentation ceremony will be held in Ottawa on March 27.
January 29, 2025 | CBC News
January 28, 2025 | CBC