Honours

It was a big year for University of Toronto students – they reached the Olympic podium, won Rhodes scholarships, designed cooling vests for labourers in the Middle East and marched at the head of Toronto's Pride Parade.

U of T News looks back on some of our student highlights from this year, checking in with some students for their aspirations for the coming year.

Rhodes scholars

Stephanie Gaglione’s professors always knew she had a bright future. This fall, the chemical engineering major, rock climber and Varsity figure skater was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. The prestigious annual scholarship covers up to three years of postgraduate study at the University of Oxford.

She joins James Flynn, Jessica Phillips and Kaleem Hawa, U of T students who won the scholarship last year and were set to begin their studies at Oxford this fall. Flynn is a political science student and former managing editor of The Varsity who wants to pursue a master's degree in social science of the Internet as well as a public policy degree, Phillips hopes to study penguins in Antarctica, and Hawa plans to study immunology and global governance and diplomacy, learning more about pandemic threats such as Ebola and SARS.

“In the new year, I hope to continue learning and growing in my academic and personal life,” Flynn said. “I also plan to continue giving back to my community including people at the University of Toronto who have offered me so much guidance and support.”

Writers

Benson Cheung, who majored in history and political science, was one of five U of T students who were invited to the Undergraduate Awards summit in Ireland (photo courtesy of Benson Cheung)

Five U of T undergrads travelled to the Emerald Isle to attend a summit with other bright young minds from around the world after being commended for writing insightful essays on topics like the American political climate after 9/11 through the lens of monster blockbusters and using modern data analysis to review an influential 19th-century linguistics book.

Leah Brainin, Benson Cheung, Anna Deregowski, Anneliese Mills and Hilary Pang were invited to the Undergraduate Awards summit in Ireland after their essays made the top 10 per cent of submissions in their category. The awards recognize creative and outstanding undergraduate coursework.

In the coming year, Pang wants to organize a public policy campaign with the U of T chapter of the Heart and Stroke Foundation to reduce sugary marketing to kids.

Future systems engineers

The National Academy of Engineering honoured two University of Toronto undergrads – Rachel Andrade and Clara Stoesser – with a first-place award for their video “Refugee Crisis,” which explored how systems engineering can be applied to the plight of refugees.

Stoesser, a fourth-year student in industrial engineering, and Andrade, a third-year student in media studies at U of T Scarborough, examined how engineers can help improve everything from conditions in refugee camps to supports for newcomers in host countries.

Pride ambassador

In her late 20s, Jordyn Samuels has already worked with LGBTQ community groups for more than a decade. At 16, she volunteered at a community health centre, training in equity and anti-oppression. More recently, she has worked for a community development program at the Sherbourne Health Centre for queer and trans spectrum youth.

In recognition of her contributions to the LGBTQ community, the equity studies and sexual diversity studies double-major was chosen to be Pride Toronto’s Youth Ambassador.

“Oh my goodness, my mother is coming to the Pride Parade to watch me co-lead it!” she tweeted the day of the event. “What is the magic that is this weekend?”

Class of 2016

Clive Davies, a retired police officer, graduated from the history specialist program this year. He was 59 years older than his youngest classmates. (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Who can forget U of T's spring 2016 grad Clive Davies? A former Toronto police officer, he started studying history at U of T in 1977.

That’s when he took a break – one which lasted a quarter century.

He stood out at Convocation this spring. But although he has graduated, he isn’t finished with school just yet - he plans to come back in January to take a language course.

“Since I’m going to Lisbon in June, I might try learning a little Portuguese,” he said.

For Mihil Patel, it was while he was at his grandmother’s bedside in India in her dying days, that he decided to become a doctor. She was able to say goodbye to her family thanks to the treatment she received.

The U of T Scarborough student got one step closer to his goal after graduating last summer and receiving the John Black Aird award for the top undergrad at the university.

Helping disability advocate Kathleen Forestell graduate this fall and walk across the stage at Convocation Hall to receive her master's degree in counselling psychology was her guide dog, Tiffany, a two-year-old black Labrador retriever.

“I’m going to very proud to walk across the stage with her,” she says. “I want people to see, ‘Yes, we’re here, and yes, you can do this, too!’”

Horizon, the solar car designed, built and raced by the University of Toronto’s Blue Sky Solar Racing team races across Missouri at the American Solar Challenge 2016 (photo courtesy of Blue Sky Solar Racing)

Racing innovators

University of Toronto's Blue Sky Solar Racing team won a bronze medal in the American Solar Challenge – an eight-day, rally-style solar car race. The event, which is divided into four stages, covers 3,178 kilometres through the American Midwest.

Horizon is an eighth-generation vehicle at U of T. It made the trip with an official time of 62 hours, 11 minutes and three seconds, powered only by electricity generated from sunlight.

Indigenous Students of the Year

Audrey Rochette and Atik Bird are top students, but that isn’t the only reason they earned the President’s Awards for Indigenous Student of the Year in December. Both have contributed to their Indigenous communities. Rochette has made a difference through her leadership in the Native Student Association and by organizing on-campus screenings of Indigenous films with the imagineNATIVE film and media arts festival. Bird was recognized for her work with at an Indigenous women's shelter in Toronto.

Scholars & Activists

Three U of T PhD students were among the 15 winners of the Trudeau Scholarship, widely regarded as the most prestigious doctoral award for the social sciences and humanities in Canada. The scholarship provides an annual grant of $60,000 for at least three years.

Christopher Campbell-Duruflé, who was an observer at the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21), hopes to use the scholarship to study a new emphasis on reporting and review mechanisms to compel states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Ido Katri has been a trans community advocate for a decade. He told U of T News he wants to use the scholarship “to bring those marginalized voices to the forefront of current and future public debates.”

Cynthia Morinville uses documentary filmmaking and photography to tell the stories of informal workers who extract rare metals from discarded electronic waste.

“Whenever you ask questions about environmental sustainability, you have to start with social justice and equality,” she said.

Chizoba Imoka, a PhD student at OISE, received the Clarkson Laureate for Public Service award for her work with Unveiling Africa (photo by Johnny Guatto)

After Chizoba Imoka moved from Nigeria to Alberta, she learned that many Canadians had misconceptions about her native country and Africa. As an undergrad at the University of Alberta, she started Unveiling Africa, an organization to counter misperceptions about Africa and a platform for African youth in diaspora to contribute to the continent’s development.

Now a PhD student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and junior fellow at Massey College, Imoka received the college’s highest honour in January – the Clarkson Laureate for Public Service – for her ongoing work with Unveiling Africa and for spreading awareness about the importance of diversity at Massey.

Entrepreneurs

Adam Sheikh’s eureka moment came watching a video of Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame put on a costume from the movie Aliens at a comic convention. The vest was meant to keep the actors cool under their heavy costumes.

Why not put that concept to work elsewhere?

He and fellow U of T students started the non-profit, Aegis, to equip construction workers in the Gulf region with vests to keep them cool despite the sweltering heat. Last summer, Aegis tested the vests in Qatar with migrant labourers working on infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup.

“In a one-month period, the number of workers who had high blood pressure dropped by 50 per cent,” Sheikh said.

And finally...the Olympians

Trampolinist Rosie MacLennan, a U of T alumna and master’s student in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, won Olympic gold for the second time at the Rio 2016 Games.

Rosie MacLennan, a U of T graduate who is now a master's student in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, competed at the Rio Games (photo by Sandy Nicholson)

The three-time Olympian became the first Canadian summer athlete to defend an individual Olympic gold medal. She was the only Canadian gold medal winner at the London Games in 2012.

Fellow KPE student and Varsity Blues swimmer Kylie Masse won the bronze in the 100-metre women’s backstroke. Masse earned praise from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Twitter.

Do you have a favourite student story from 2016? We’d love to hear about it!

U of T evolutionary biologist Stephen Wright takes Steacie Prize

geoff.vendeville — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 16:50:38 +0000

U of T evolutionary biologist Stephen Wright takes Steacie Prize

geoff.vendeville Thu, 12/15/2016 - 11:50

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Stephen Wright, a professor and Canada Research Chair in Population Genomics, was awarded the prestigious Steacie Prize (photo courtesy of the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada)

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“The genome itself is not this blueprint – it’s a society of genes where there is all this evolutionary activity going on in its own right”

Evolutionary biologist and world-renowned plant genomicist Stephen Wright of the University of Toronto has capped a remarkable year by winning the prestigious Steacie Prize.

The prize is awarded annually to a scientist or engineer 40 years of age or younger for notable contributions to research in Canada.

“It’s certainly a big honour for our group,” says Wright, a professor and Canada Research Chair in Population Genomics with U of T’s department of ecology & evolutionary biology.

“It’s an especially exciting thing for our department since this is the second year in a row that we have received this,” adds Wright, noting that his colleague Aneil Agrawal, a distinguished professor of evolutionary genetics, was the 2015 Steacie Prize winner. “It’s also a great coup for our field.”

Wright says the back-to-back awards speak to the growing stature of evolutionary biology and genomics in the sciences.

Just as he was finishing his undergraduate degree, the first plant genome was being mapped out. Since then, the study of evolutionary plant genomics has skyrocketed with a rapidly growing number of species now catalogued in huge data sets.

“I sort of grew up as the field was growing up,” Wright says.

“Our ability to address these questions is still exploding.”

Wright has already established himself as one of the world’s most influential scientists in this emerging field of plant population and evolutionary genomics.

Earlier this year, he won a Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship. It is helping to fund his lab’s new research on herbicide-resistant “super weeds,” a growing threat to global food security and the livelihood of millions of farmers.

Twelve new U of T fellows join Royal Society of Canada

lavende4 — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 14:48:37 +0000

Twelve new U of T fellows join Royal Society of Canada

lavende4 Wed, 09/07/2016 - 10:48

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Patricia Brubaker: one of 11 U of T faculty members newly named as Royal Society of Canada fellows (Photo by Eva Eng, Dept. of Physiology)

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Great discoveries in the lab really do happen through “serendipitous observation,” says Patricia (Pat) Brubaker.

Twenty years ago, she and colleague Dr. Daniel Drucker were injecting intestinal peptide hormones into mice. They were on the hunt for something else when they noticed their booster shot of the naturally occurring hormone GLP-2 was triggering growth and improved bowel function in their furry subjects.

It was our bingo! moment, she recalls. Their discovery of GLP-2 as an intestinal growth factor opened up an entirely new frontier in the treatment of disorders such as short bowel syndrome and possibly the inflammatory bowel diseases Crohn’s and colitis.

Today, the outstanding scholarly, scientific and artistic accomplishments of Brubaker and 10 other U of T researchers have been recognized by the prestigious Royal Society of Canada, which has named them as fellows.

“I was deeply honoured that I was nominated in the first place. The fact that I’m receiving it [the fellowship] is really wonderful news,” says Brubaker, a professor in U of T’s department of physiology and faculty of medicine, as well as the Canada Research Chair in Vascular and Metabolic Biology since 2001.

This year’s U of T inductees come from four faculties and their research interests range widely, from thermal spray coatings and conservation biology to pioneering social history and probing the fundamentals of quantum mechanics. See the full list below.

They’re joining more than 2,000 active fellows in the Royal Society of Canada, which was established in 1883 to promote learning and research in the arts, the humanities and the natural and social sciences.

“As one of the top research universities in the world, the University of Toronto’s primary mission is to create new knowledge. We are incredibly proud of these 12 scholars — U of T’s newest Royal Society of Canada fellows — who embody that spirit in their exemplary work as they continue to blaze new trails in their fields,” said Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president of research and innovation.

In Brubaker’s case, the fellowship recognizes a “lifetime’s work” spent investigating intestinal peptide hormones and how they help the body repair itself. In addition to her pioneering work with GLP-2, she and her colleagues have found boosting the levels of its sister hormone GLP-1 in people with diabetes can help improve blood glucose control.

This research has already laid the foundation for others to create new drug therapies and diet regimens to treat — and someday hopefully prevent — these diseases.

“It’s very humbling to know that people think well of your work,” Brubaker said, thanking her colleague and principal nominator Dr. Drucker, as well as the researchers from Canada, the United States and Britain who supported her nomination by writing letters of support.

The 2016 U of T fellows of the Royal Society of Canada are:

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Javad Mostaghimi, department of mechanical & industrial engineering

Faculty of Arts & Science

Marie-Josée Fortin, department of ecology & evolutionary biology
Smaro Kamboureli, department of English
Anne Lancashire, department of English
Natalie Zemon Davis, department of history
Stevo Todorcevic, department of mathematics
Jeremy Quastel, department of mathematics
Aephraim Steinberg, department of physics

Faculty of Medicine

Patricia Brubaker, department of physiology
Julie Forman-Kay, department of biochemistry
Gordon Keller, department of Medical Biophysics and UHN

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Normand Labrie, department of curriculum, teaching & learning

This year’s new fellows will be officially inducted into the academies of the Royal Society of Canada at a ceremony on Friday, November 18 in Kingston, ON.

Rosemary Sullivan wins RBC Taylor Prize

sgupta — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 14:00:29 +0000

Rosemary Sullivan wins RBC Taylor Prize sgupta Tue, 03/08/2016 - 09:00

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Latest of many awards for “Stalin's Daughter” author

University of Toronto Professor Emerita Rosemary Sullivan has won the prestigious RBC Taylor Prize for Literary Nonfiction for Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva.

A professor of English and a noted critic, poet and biographer, Sullivan beat out several others for the $25,000 prize, which was awarded by a jury consisting of Susanne Boyce, Joseph Kertes and Munk School of Global Affairs Director Stephen J. Toope.

Sullivan will be invited to read at the International Festival of Authors, held in October at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto and will receive promotional support for her book, as part of the award package. Sullivan has also won the Hilary Weston Prize and the BC National Book Award for her biography of the daughter of former USSR dictator Josef Stalin.

Last October, Diana Kuprel, a writer with the Faculty of Arts & Science, interviewed Sullivan for U of T News. That interview, and an audio excerpt from Stalin’s Daughter, can be found here.

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Order of Ontario recognizes University of Toronto community members

sgupta — Thu, 14 Jan 2016 17:40:46 +0000

Order of Ontario recognizes University of Toronto community members sgupta Thu, 01/14/2016 - 12:40

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Four members of the Faculty of Medicine among those honoured

Members of the University of Toronto community comprise almost one-third of the newest appointments to the Order of Ontario, the highest honour bestowed by the province.

The Honourable Elizabeth Dowdeswell, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario and Chancellor of the Order of Ontario, announced the appointments on Jan. 13.

“The Order of Ontario recognizes exemplary service of the highest caliber,” said Dowdeswell. This is the 30th anniversary of the Order, which was established to recognize individuals who have demonstrated excellence and achievement in any field benefiting the people of Ontario or anywhere in the world.

Among those honoured are such distinguished alumni as: former Ontario cabinet minister Mary Anne Chambers; community leader Beverley Gordon; former apellate court judge Stephen T. Goudge and philanthropist Gordon Cressy.

Four members of the Faculty of Medicine are also being appointed to the Order.

“It is heartening to see these distinguished members of our community recognized with the Order of Ontario,” said U of T Medicine Dean Trevor Young. “Through their dedicated efforts here at home and around the world, they have improved health and ensured Ontario’s strength and compassion are known globally.”

Professor Robert Fowler of the department of medicine and a critical care physician at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre was honoured for his work as a clinical lead for the World Health Organization during the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa. He was also cited for the vital role he played in managing the SARS crisis in Toronto in 2003.

Professor Herbert Gaisano of the department of physiology was recognized as one of the world's leading gastroenterologists and for his dedicated work in the fight against diabetes by exploring the complexities of this pervasive illness and advancement of new treatment strategies.

Professor Julian Nedzelski of the department of otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery was cited as a highly respected ear, nose and throat specialist and head and neck surgeon at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. He was a pioneer of cochlear implants in Ontario and played a key role in the formation of the Ontario Cochlear Implantation Program, giving the gift of sound to thousands of people who believed they would never hear again.

Professor Stanley Zlotkin of the departments of nutritional sciences and paediatrics as well as the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, was noted as a respected leader in the medical and research community who has improved the lives of millions of children who live in economically disadvantaged parts of the world and suffer from serious nutritional deficiencies. A nutrition specialist and researcher at The Hospital for Sick Children where Zlotkin is chief of the Centre for Global Child Health, he is also an advisor to UNICEF, other United Nations agencies, civil society organizations and the Canadian government.

The Lieutenant Governor will bestow the honour to the new appointees during an investiture ceremony at Queen's Park on January 20.

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Provost Cheryl Regehr named one of Canada’s 100 Most Powerful Women

sgupta — Fri, 27 Nov 2015 07:57:34 +0000

Provost Cheryl Regehr named one of Canada’s 100 Most Powerful Women sgupta Fri, 11/27/2015 - 02:57

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Undergraduate student Krisha Ravikantharaja interviews Professor Cheryl Regehr (all photos by Johnny Guatto)

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Regehr discusses leadership at the university and her priorities as provost

The Women’s Executive Network (WXN) has named Provost Cheryl Regehr one of Canada’s Most Powerful Women for her work in the public sector.

Regehr was presented with the award at the Top 100 Toronto Gala on Nov. 26.

“It’s not about being a leader alone,” Regehr says. “I think the characteristic that is important to me in terms of leadership is a willingness to share leadership. It’s about seeing the incredible strength of people around you and looking for shared solutions to difficult problems, challenges and opportunities.”

Regehr says it is an honour to have a leadership role at the University of Toronto where so many others have also made WXN’s list in past years. Previous honourees have included students such as Jasmeet Sidhu and faculty such as Mary Jo Haddad, former president and CEO of SickKids, as well as Rose Patten, former chair of Governing Council and Judy Goldring, current chair of Governing Council. Goldring was also named to WXN's Hall of Fame this year.

Read the complete list of 100 Most Powerful Women

“Winning this award really speaks to the incredible breadth and scope and respect U of T has,” Regehr says. “U of T is this huge leader in Canada and it’s a leader in terms of its education, its research, its contributions to policy and practice.”

Leadership Renewal is one of seven priorities Regehr has announced for the current academic year. For Regehr, that involves reviewing the existing leadership training, implementing that training as early as possible, as well as ensuring diversity.

“If we bring in leaders who have had different life experiences, different cultural experiences and different world experiences, all of that really contributes to better decision making and being able to use different lenses on challenges and opportunities we face.”

The provost’s six other priorities are: service delivery to divisions, undergraduate education, graduate education, student experience, faculty engagement, and the budget.

The undergraduate education priority includes re-examining the role of technology in the classroom, increasing research, and experiential learning opportunities for students, Regehr says.

“You could say, ‘well, it’s obvious that students in psychology might do service learning courses in a community agency, and it makes sense.’ But we have other great examples where we have undergraduate math students who are doing service learning courses in high-needs high schools and they are tutoring students in math.”

Regehr is also interested in how people who never imagined themselves at university are now able to enroll thanks to changes to accessibility.

“If you create accessibility you will create a more equitable environment because you make it possible for people who for various reasons didn’t have the same kind of choices as others.”

She points to bridging programs at Woodsworth College which targets students who are ineligible for regular admission to university, as well as the Transitional Year Program, and programs with Seneca College that help students transition into university.

“To have a very diverse student body, we need to address things that might have been systemic barriers in the past and continue to be systemic barriers,” Regehr says. “And we need to help students in the community overcome those systemic barriers.”

Regehr says the mental health aspect of student experience is a priority for her in part because of her own scholarly background, but also because of the rise in mental health issues among youth. She says it’s important to emphasize prevention and to connect students with services provided by both the university and the larger community, such as the Counseline program offered through the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work which provides face-to-face and online counseling to undergraduates.

“We really need to think about preventative mental health strategies so that we can help people manage stress, deal with the kind of reactions that they have, and build resilience,” Regehr says, adding that building resilience is particularly important for students.

“When they go out into society − where they might not have the same kinds of accommodations − they’ll be able to succeed, become leaders, change the world.”

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Three U of T undergrads win Rhodes Scholarships

sgupta — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 15:56:21 +0000

Three U of T undergrads win Rhodes Scholarships sgupta Tue, 11/24/2015 - 10:56

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Jessica Phillips, Kaleem Hawa and James Flynn will be attending the University of Oxford as Rhodes Scholars next year (all photos by Diana Tyszko)

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These U of T faculty are now fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

sgupta — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 09:44:31 +0000

These U of T faculty are now fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science sgupta Mon, 11/23/2015 - 04:44

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Research from Cheryl Arrowsmith is speeding up the discovery of new medical therapies, while research from Greg Evans is leading efforts to understand the causes and effects of air pollution

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AAAS welcomes leading researchers Cheryl Arrowsmith and Greg Evans

Two U of T faculty members are among the latest fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Professor Greg Evans of chemical engineering was recognized for his important contributions to air pollution research and his leadership in engineering education.

Professor Cheryl Arrowsmith of medical biophysics was honoured for enabling the research community to benefit from open-access science, speeding up the discovery of new therapies.

The prestigious honour was announced on Nov. 23.

“This is a great honour,” says Arrowsmith, who serves as chief scientist at the Structural Genomics Consortium.

Arrowsmith studies the proteins that regulate how genes are turned on and off within cells, a field called ‘epigenetics’. While these proteins are essential to normal human health and development, they can go awry in certain diseases, such as cancer. Through the Structural Genomics Consortium, Arrowsmith collaborates with pharmaceutical companies to develop drug-like inhibitors to these “rogue” proteins, to test which proteins might prove to be good targets for future drugs. These inhibitors, called “chemical probes”, are then made available to any researcher who wants to use them, with no strings attached, to enable more discoveries.

“This way these really useful drug discovery tools can get into the community,” she says. “They can be used to accelerate the discovery and development of new medicines more quickly than if we or the pharmaceutical industry were to try to do it alone without sharing.”

Arrowsmith joined the Faculty of Medicine’s department of Medical Biophysics in 1991. She also serves as professor at the Banting and Best Department of Medical Research and is a senior scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Structural Genomics and has received numerous awards for her work.

“This is a prestigious and well-deserved honour,” says Faculty of Medicine Dean Trevor Young. “Cheryl has been doing incredible work over the past decade in open-access science with the Structural Genomics Consortium – work that is advancing scientific discovery and development of new treatments.”

Evans joined the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering in 1990, and began his world-leading research on the causes and effects of poor air quality, especially airborne particles in large cities. The work includes the development of new analytical instruments as well as advanced modelling. In 2003 he founded the Southern Ontario Centre for Atmospheric Aerosol Research (SOCAAR) and in 2008 expanded the project to create the Canadian Aerosol Research Network (CARN). These networks, as well as Evans' own lab group, have produced a number of key publications regarding the creation of aerosol pollution and its impact on human health.

He is also known as a leader within the Faculty. He served as the chair of First Year from 2003–2005 and the vice-dean, Undergraduate from 2005–2007. He also led the creation of the Engineering Communication Program, which helps undergraduate engineers build professional level communications skills.

Evans serves as associate director of the Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering (ILead). This program, unique in Canada, provides advanced leadership development programming for students across the faculty, integrating both theory and practice. Evans spearheaded the creation and implementation of the Graduate Collaborative Program in Engineering Education, the first engineering education graduate program in Canada. The program, which launched September 2014, allows masters and PhD students to pursue interdisciplinary research at the nexus of education and engineering.

Evans has been recognized with many previous awards and honours. Within U of T he has received the Joan E. Foley Quality of Student Experience Award, the Faculty Teaching Award, the Northrop Frye Award and the President’s Teaching Award, U of T’s highest teaching honour. He has also received the Alan Blizzard Award from the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) Teaching Award and the Engineers Canada Medal for Distinction in Engineering Education.

“On behalf of our entire Faculty, heartfelt congratulations to Professor Greg Evans on this richly-deserved recognition,” said Dean Cristina Amon. “His outstanding research and commitment to excellence in engineering education have been instrumental in advancing U of T Engineering's mission to nurture the next generation of global engineering leaders.”

The AAAS seeks to "advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all people." Arrowsmith and Evans will be formerly inducted as fellows at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington this February.

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Polanyi Prize goes to U of T researcher for his work on more efficient solar materials

sgupta — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 12:57:54 +0000

Polanyi Prize goes to U of T researcher for his work on more efficient solar materials sgupta Tue, 11/17/2015 - 07:57

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(photo by Marit Mitchell)

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Engineering postdoc one of five recognized as outstanding Ontario researchers in early states of their careers

Riccardo Comin, a postdoctoral fellow in The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, has won the 2015 John Charles Polanyi Prize for Physics for his research into a rapidly emerging new class of materials, called perovskites, for more efficient solar cells and lighting.

The Polanyi Prizes are given annually to outstanding researchers in the early stages of their careers. The prizes, worth $20,000 each, are awarded in five areas: physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and economic science. Comin is the only recipient from the University of Toronto this year. (Read about some of U of T's previous Polanyi Prize winners.)

“By scientific upbringing, I’m a solid state physicist,” said Comin. “I take new compounds, films or crystals, crafted by chemists, and I analyze them to figure out what’s special about those materials.”

Comin’s work, under the direction of Professor Ted Sargent, is to investigate the mysterious properties of a very special family of hybrid organic-inorganic materials called perovskites. Perovskites show great promise for a range of applications, from more efficient LED technologies to high-efficiency flexible and lightweight solar cells.

Read more about Comin’s recent work, published in the journals Science and Nature:

“My work in the Sargent Group has been to explore various key characteristics of perovskites, including their chemical composition, crystalline structure, and electronic structure,” said Comin. “Thanks to the Polanyi Prize, I plan to expand my work into using x-ray methods to look at the collective phenomena involving the reorientation of the organic molecules embedded in the inorganic crystalline structure of these hybrid materials.”

Comin earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Universita degli Studi di Trieste in Italy, both in physics. He completed his PhD at the University of British Columbia under the supervision of Andrea Damascelli, where he worked on characterizing quantum materials. When he joined the Sargent Group for his postdoctoral fellowship, he was ready to take a more applied approach to his research.

“I’d done a lot of fundamental materials science, and I was thinking, ‘What are the strategies and processes involved in harnessing and functionalizing the material properties that are key for devices that realize solar, imaging or lighting applications?’” he said “Here, we’re trying not just to develop high-quality materials, but also to combine them into device architectures that use the best properties of these materials. Ultimately, the metric for the quality of the work is the efficiency and performance of our devices.”

The John Charles Polanyi prize was created in honour of the achievement of John Charles Polanyi, recipient of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and a professor in the University of Toronto’s department of chemistry.

“My congratulations to Riccardo, who is doing exceptional research,” said Professor Sargent, vice-dean, research for the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, and Comin’s supervisor.

“It’s particularly wonderful to see him honoured with this award, named after one of the greatest investigators in the University of Toronto’s long history.”

Learn more about the other 2015 John Charles Polanyi winners

Marit Mitchell is a writer with the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering at the University of Toronto

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U of T physicists among team members receiving Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics

sgupta — Sun, 08 Nov 2015 21:04:35 +0000

U of T physicists among team members receiving Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics sgupta Sun, 11/08/2015 - 16:04

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Associate Professor Hirohisa Tanaka and Professor Emeritus John Martin of U of T’s department of physics (photo by Diana Tyszko)

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U of T students who crushed it in 2016

U of T evolutionary biologist Stephen Wright takes Steacie Prize

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Twelve new U of T fellows join Royal Society of Canada

Rosemary Sullivan wins RBC Taylor Prize

Order of Ontario recognizes University of Toronto community members

Provost Cheryl Regehr named one of Canada’s 100 Most Powerful Women

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Three U of T undergrads win Rhodes Scholarships

Read more about Rhodes Scholars at U of T

These U of T faculty are now fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Polanyi Prize goes to U of T researcher for his work on more efficient solar materials

U of T physicists among team members receiving Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics