Three U of T Engineering students, who worked as summer students at CivMin for Professor Minghan Xu, have won awards at the annual Undergraduate Engineering Research Day, known as UnERD.
UnERD 2026, which took place Tuesday, August 25, at the Myhal Centre, is an annual conference where undergraduate U of T Engineering students gather to present their research to a broad audience of fellow students, faculty, and industry professionals. UnERD aims to promote collaboration and networking, as well as the exchange of innovative solutions across a wide breadth of global challenges.
Awards were presented by CivMin Professor Evan Bentz, Engineering’s Vice-Dean Undergraduate (VDU).
Award winners include:
Helen Li (Year 3 ElecE) – Best Poster in Environmental Engineering & Sustainability
- NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Awards (2026)
- Title: Optimization of Small Modular Reactors as Renewable Energy Sources for Mines in Canada
Keira Kawada (Year 2 EngSci) – Future Researcher Award Winner
- CivMin Undergraduate Summer Fellowship (2026)
- Title: Evaluation of airflow measurement techniques in underground mining tunnels – A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study
Boyan Gao (Year 3 MechE) – Most Innovative Runner-up
- Summer Undergraduate Data Science Fellowship (2026)
- Title: Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) for solving two-phase Stefan problems