Greg Evans

Professor Greg Evans receives 3M National Teaching Fellowship

ullahnor — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 21:35:39 +0000

Professor Greg Evans receives 3M National Teaching Fellowship

ullahnor Wed, 02/15/2017 - 16:35

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U of T Engineering Professor Greg Evans is one of ten recipients of the 3M National Teaching Fellowship, a national award for excellence in post-secondary educational leadership (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Tyler Irving

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Tyler Irving

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Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Awards

Greg Evans

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Award is Canada’s most prestigious recognition of excellence in educational leadership and teaching at the post-secondary level

U of T Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering Professor Greg Evans has received a 3M National Teaching Fellowship from the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. The award is Canada’s most prestigious recognition of excellence in educational leadership and teaching at the university or college level.

“One of the things that makes it special for me is that this year three of the winners are in engineering education, which is one of my passions,” says Evans. “I’m very honoured to be in such good company, and it's wonderful to see engineering education gaining profile in Canada.”

Evans’ teaching philosophy involves changing the traditional role of professor from the stereotype he calls “sage on the stage,” toward becoming a “guide on the side.” In class, he encourages his students to generate solutions as a group rather than look to him for the correct answer and to relate classroom concepts to practical situations.

U of T engineer says diesel trains may expose passengers to exhaust

ullahnor — Tue, 07 Feb 2017 18:29:33 +0000

U of T engineer says diesel trains may expose passengers to exhaust

ullahnor Tue, 02/07/2017 - 13:29

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Greg Evans: “I don’t want to discourage people from taking transit or alarm them unduly, but there is an issue here” (photo by Kevin Hiscott via Flickr)

Tyler Irving

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Tyler Irving

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Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Greg Evans

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“I would advise pregnant women and passengers with heart or respiratory health problems not to travel in the front car,” says U of T's Greg Evans

A new U of T study finds that diesel trains may expose passengers to elevated levels of certain pollutants, especially if they are sitting directly behind the locomotive.

“Imagine yourself driving down a busy highway in a convertible, and spending your entire commute sitting behind a very large diesel truck,” said Greg Evans, professor at U of T's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and director of the Southern Ontario Centre for Atmospheric Aerosol Research (SOCAAR) at U of T. “That’s comparable to the levels we see here.”

Evans and Cheol-Heon Jeong, a senior research associate at SOCAAR, measured the concentration of airborne particles using two types of portable instruments: one that detects black carbon (BC) and one that detects ultrafine particles (UFP).

“Black carbon is essentially soot and is formed right in the cylinder of the diesel engine,” said Evans. UFP are formed when gases in the exhaust condense into microscopic particles less than 100 nanometres in diameter or about 1000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

Read the Toronto Star story

Studies have linked both BC and UFP to detrimental health effects, although evidence is still emerging and not conclusive. However, both measurements also act as proxies for the complex mixture of gases in diesel exhaust, which is an established carcinogen and associated with respiratory, cardiovascular and reproductive health effects.

In prior research, Evans and his team have found elevated levels of BC and UFP next to busy streets and highways. It was during a morning commute that Jeong left the sensors turned on the train. When he saw the data, he and Evans realized how high the numbers were inside cars pulled by diesel locomotives.

“We were quite surprised, and after making confirmation measurements we got in touch with Metrolinx to let them know of the potential issue,” said Evans. Metrolinx is the transit authority for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.

Over the course of 43 trips, the team gathered more data from inside commuter train cars. They also took measurements while walking along busy streets in downtown Toronto for comparison. In a paper appearing this week in the journal Atmospheric Environment, they report that:

Cars being pulled by diesel trains and located directly behind the locomotive had an average of nine times the levels of BC and UFP compared to air next to a busy city street.
Cars being pushed by diesel trains during a return trip had air that was generally cleaner than that next to busy city streets.
When being pulled, cars in the middle of the trains had levels three times lower than the front-most cars. The average BC and UFP concentrations across all pulled cars were about five times higher than on city streets.

“The health and safety of our customers and staff is our number one priority, which is precisely why we’ve supported the work of Dr. Evans and his research team,” said Greg Percy, chief operating officer for Metrolinx. “We welcome any findings that can help us run a healthier, safer transit service and we’re hopeful this work will result in improvements that will be applied throughout the industry and within other public transit agencies in Canada and abroad.”

Percy said that Metrolinx is taking a number of steps to address the issue such as installing high-efficiency filters in the ventilation systems of its train cars. The organization is also moving to locomotives with improved emissions standards and to electrified service on key routes, which will eliminate the diesel emissions altogether.

Evans and his team are currently working with Metrolinx and SNC Lavalin to test the new improved filters for the air intake vents. Preliminary results are positive.

“Installing the higher grade filters did produce a marked improvement with an 80 per cent reduction in the levels of black carbon,” said Evans.

“Metrolinx has been very supportive of our research.” said Jeong. “Our collaboration with them is most welcome as it will help translate our research findings into action. Further research is also required to evaluate in-transit exposure for all types of diesel-powered passenger trains.”

In the meantime, there are practical steps that passengers can take.

“I would advise pregnant women and passengers with heart or respiratory health problems not to travel in the front car,” said Evans. But he would not necessarily suggest avoiding the train entirely.

“I commute by train on a regular basis myself and have done so for years,” said Evans. “As an air quality researcher, I want to see a reduction in overall emissions, and trains are a more efficient system than people commuting in their cars. I don’t want to discourage people from taking transit or alarm them unduly, but there is an issue here. It underscores the importance of train electrification, which will address this indoor air issue in addition to helping to combat climate change.”

Think a more fuel-efficient engine is the green choice? Not so fast, U of T engineers say

lanthierj — Wed, 13 Jul 2016 14:36:25 +0000

Think a more fuel-efficient engine is the green choice? Not so fast, U of T engineers say

lanthierj Wed, 07/13/2016 - 10:36

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Cheol-Heon Jeong and Professor Greg Evans measured emissions from gasoline direct-injection engines and evaluated climate tradeoffs of the more efficient engine type (photo by Tyler Irving)

Marit Mitchell

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Marit Mitchell

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Breaking Research

Engineering

Greg Evans

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Research shows gasoline direct-injection engines may emit less CO2 but more climate-warming black carbon

Trying to think green when buying a car? Whether your new fuel-efficient engine helps or hurts the warming planet depends on where you live and what you’re putting in the tank.

New cars aim to deliver high performance with maximum fuel efficiency, making them easier on both the environment and the wallet. To do this, auto manufacturers are adopting a smaller, more fuel-efficient engine type, called gasoline direct-injection (GDI) – between model years 2009 to 2015, the percentage of new vehicles sold with GDI engines jumped from five to 46 per cent.

But new research from the ��Ƶ’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering shows that GDI isn’t necessarily the greener choice. Although GDI engines emit lower levels of CO2, they emit more black carbon – the climate-warming particle commonly known as soot – and toxic volatile organic compounds, such as benzene and toluene.

“The whole motivation for creating these engines in the first place was fuel efficiency. But what we haven’t considered are the other climate-related emissions,” says Greg Evans, a professor in the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry and director of the Southern Ontario Centre for Atmospheric Aerosol Research.

“If a vehicle emits a small amount of soot, it can completely negate the lower amount of CO2 that it’s emitting.”

Evans, Naomi Zimmerman and Professor Jim Wallace, director of the Engine Research & Development Lab at the ��Ƶ, first studied the chemical composition of emissions from GDI engines. They found that GDI emissions ranked in the 73rd percentile of all vehicles studied for black carbon, and in the 80 to 90th percentile for volatile organic compounds.

They then examined the climate trade-offs between reductions in CO2 emissions and increases in black carbon to determine whether this new engine type confers a net climate benefit. They found that whether GDI engines are the ‘greener’ choice depends on several factors, including fuel composition, temperature and lifetime of the vehicle.

Their work appeared in two papers in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

“We found that in some cases, you need up to a 20 per cent improvement in fuel economy in order to offset black carbon emissions,” says Zimmerman, lead author on the studies. “Offsetting the black carbon might be realistic in a place like California, where fuel composition is more strictly regulated and seasonal temperatures fluctuate less, but is harder to achieve in Canada.”

Evans and Zimmerman also compared conventional gasoline engine types, called port fuel injection or PFI, with GDI engines. They found that replacing an older PFI engine from 2005 with a new GDI engine from 2015 meant an 11 per cent improvement in fuel economy, but swapping a 2010 PFI engine with a 2015 GDI engine only saw a one per cent improvement in fuel economy.

“All the complex interactions show that because of the well intentioned desire to mitigate climate warming, the technology is changing quickly and we are not properly considering all the trade-offs and side effects,” says Evans. “As engine designs improve, the balance between all these factors could change again.”

Innovations in teaching: Greg Evans

sgupta — Tue, 31 May 2016 10:52:47 +0000

Innovations in teaching: Greg Evans sgupta Tue, 05/31/2016 - 06:52

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“Over the last 15 years the idea that engineers work in teams has become much more prevalent,” Professor Evans says (all photos by Johnny Guatto)

Arthur Kaptainis

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Arthur Kaptainis

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Adding teamwork to curriculum in chemical engineering course

Convocation is a time to celebrate U of T's students. Although they may make it look easy, graduating from one of the top-ranked universities in the world is a remarkable achievement.

When the 18,000 members of the Class of 2016 cross the stage at Convocation Hall – including an estimated 13,500 grads this spring – they'll be looking back at years of exams, essays, lab and field work, experiential learning, volunteer stints, creativity and hard work. And almost zero snow days.

On the stage with them – or following via live streams and Instagram feeds – will be some of the professors and instructors who also invested countless hours in their students’ success.

Who are the teachers who helped make this day possible? You can learn about some of them in our Inside Con Hall series from student writer Krisha Ravikantharaja.

And you’ll meet a few more in this series on Innovations in Teaching.

In this second instalment, U of T News writer Arthur Kaptainis profiles Professor Greg Evans of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

Wallberg International is a formidable enterprise.

“It’s a huge company,” Greg Evans, one of three winners of the 2015 President’s Teaching Awards at the ��Ƶ, said with a wry smile. “They have vested interests everywhere.”

Wallberg’s only weakness is that it does not, in fact, exist – except in the minds of the students enrolled in CHE 230, Environmental Chemistry, a course given by the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry at the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, where Evans, a professor and U of T alumnus, has taught since 1990.

Twenty-five per cent of the final mark is based on how students respond to a simulated request for proposals from this fictional company headquartered, not coincidentally, in the Wallberg Memorial Building on the downtown Toronto campus.

One such call for tenders concerned a hypothetical housing development south of Ontario Highway 407. What will the air quality be like?

Another request was to assess the surroundings of an ecotourism resort Wallberg International wanted to build outside Yellowknife. Does an abandoned gold mine in the area pose a risk to the water supply?

“Students create their own environmental consultant companies,” Evans explained. “And these teams will bid on the proposal.”

There are five students per team. Simulation is not merely a matter of assembling statistics and preparing spreadsheets. There is a formal meeting in a boardroom. Proper attire is required, with handshakes and business cards all around.

Receiving the pitch are the president of Wallberg, typically played by someone from the faculty’s Engineering Communications Program, and the technical vice-president, a role sometimes taken by Evans himself. The president knows what is good for the company but does not necessarily have a grip on the technical particulars.

Since enrolment in this mandatory course is around 160, the bidding by more than 30 teams is competitive. Preliminary work includes preparing a budget.

Not that hard science is neglected.

“We want students to go through a simulation of how they would go about doing the sampling,” Evans said. “How do you make measurements, and interpret them in terms of the relevant regulations?

“And how do you explain them to a client or the public? There is a big communications part to this.”

Of course the “president” and “vice-president” eventually step out of their roles and provide feedback. Students also evaluate each other “semi-anonymously” (a student is not told which member of the team is making which observation).

Bidding simulation is just one of the innovations Evans has brought to the classroom. Even in first-year classes he uses the Team-effectiveness Learning System (TELS), a knowledge-sharing program developed by the Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering (ILead). Evans is associate director of this institute.

Much class time in CHW 230 is occupied by problem solving. Students are divided into groups and get busy, while Evans and his teaching assistants walk the floor assessing progress and answering questions. Collaboration is the key concept.

“Certainly over the last 15 years the idea that engineers work in teams has become much more prevalent,” Evans said. “We are still working at learning how to teach ‘success skills’ like teamwork, communication and professionalism.”

But do young engineers thirst after this knowledge?

“The energy level is high. They seem to enjoy it.”

Nikola Andric, a fourth-year student, is one who did.

“Professor Evans is a model of an excellent professor and educator,” said Andric, who is the undergraduate chemical engineering council chair for 2015-2016. “He has the ability to take theoretical concepts and apply them to real-world problems.”

Stephanie Tzanis, a third-year student, said she appreciates the professor's personal touch.

“Professor Evans truly cares about the wellbeing, success and future of every one of his students,” she said. “He takes the time to get to know you, and continues to push you to do your best.”

Evans has earned many honours for his teaching – including the 2010 Engineers Canada Medal, the 2014 Allan Blizzard Award and, from U of T, the Northrop Frye Award for linking teaching and research and the Joan E. Foley Quality of Student Experience Award. He has also been named the inaugural director of the new Collaborative Program in Engineering Education.

This graduate program, operated jointly by Engineering and U of T's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), has acquired 13 masters and doctorial students after only 18 months of existence.

Is there still room for old-fashioned classroom teaching in the era of Wallberg International?

“I still do lectures,” Evans said. “Maybe in a few years I won’t.”

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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Traffic emissions may pollute 1 in 3 Canadian homes

sgupta — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 08:44:28 +0000

Traffic emissions may pollute 1 in 3 Canadian homes sgupta Tue, 04/21/2015 - 04:44

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Peter McMahon

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Engineering studies find harmful vehicle emissions spread farther than thought, with variable pollution levels across cities

A trio of recently published studies from a team of ��Ƶ engineers has found that air pollution could be spreading up to three times farther than thought – contributing to varying levels of air quality across cities.

Past research on air pollution from vehicle tailpipes has shown poor air quality anywhere between 100 to 250 metres of major roadways.

But in a paper published in the recent edition of the journal Atmospheric Pollution Research, U of T chemical engineer Greg Evans (ChemE) and his partners at Environment Canada have found that concentrations of pollutants from traffic are still double at a distance of 280 metres downwind from highway 400 north of Toronto.

One in three Canadians, and half of all Torontonians, lives within 250 metres of at least one major roadway. These roads, says Evans, range from 10-lane highways to most four-lane streets with steady traffic.

“We used to think that living near a major road meant that you lived near a lot of air pollution,” says Evans. “But what we’re finding is that it’s not that simple, someone living right on a major road in the suburbs may not be exposed to as much pollution as someone living downtown on a side street near many major roads.”

In the same study, Evans demonstrated that for somebody living near multiple roads, they could be exposed to up to ten times more pollutants than if they didn’t live near any major roads.

“It used to be that we measured air quality on a regional or city scale,” says Evans. “But now we’re starting to understand that we need to measure air quality on a more micro scale, especially around major roadways.”

According to Health Canada, poor air quality from traffic pollution is associated with a number of health issues, such as asthma in children and other respiratory diseases, heart disease, cancer and increased rates of premature death in adults. The Canadian Medical Association attributes 21,000 premature deaths each year in Canada to air pollution. A separate study published last month also linked traffic pollution to delayed cognitive development in children.

Lab in a truck

Throughout 2014, the research team travelled the streets of Toronto measuring vehicle emissions from a mobile lab that resembles a Canada Post mail truck.

“One of the aspects of our work that’s unique is that we’re using real-time instruments to make measurements in seconds,” says Evans (pictured right). “You have to do the measurements right there, right away, or the exhaust will be gone.”

The team’s findings suggest that people living or spending time near major roadways could be exposed to elevated levels of a dangerous chemical brew of ultrafine particles, volatile organic compounds, black carbon and other pollutants.

“The ultrafine particles are particularly troubling,” says Evans. “Because they are over 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair, they have a greater ability to penetrate deeper within the lung and travel in the body.”

On a typical summer day in Toronto, Evans’ instruments measure approximately 20,000 ultrafine particles in each cubic centimetre of air. This means that for every average breath, Torontonians are inhaling 10 million of these nano-sized particles. These numbers increases to 30,000 and 15 million in the winter, when there is more stagnant air and less evaporation of the compounds.

25% of cars causing 90% of pollution

A second paper by Evans and colleagues, published in the March 2015 edition of the journal Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, suggests that a small number of older or “badly-tuned” cars and trucks produce the majority of vehicle pollution.

The study made on-the-spot measurements of 100,000 vehicles as they drove past air-sampling probes of the main laboratory on College Street, one of Toronto’s many major roadways.

Evans and team found that one-quarter of the vehicles on the road produced:

95% of black carbon (or “soot”),
93% of carbon monoxide, and
76% of volatile organic compounds such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes, some of which are known-carcinogens

“The most surprising thing we found was how broad the range of emissions was,” says Evans. “As we looked at the exhaust coming out of individual vehicles, we saw so many variations. How you drive, hard acceleration, age of the vehicle, how the car is maintained – these are things we can influence that can all have an effect on pollution.”

A vehicle emissions map of Toronto

A third paper, due out in the June 2015 edition of the journal Atmospheric Environment, looks at variations in traffic pollution throughout Toronto, evaluating how exposure to largely unexplored, unregulated ultrafine particles varies across the city. View map here.

Evans is currently working with Environment Canada, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change and Metro Vancouver to design, test and install new air quality measurement stations around the cities of Toronto and Vancouver. These stations will support enhanced monitoring of the air quality health index during this summer’s Pan Am games in Toronto. More broadly, this research will provide a basis for future near road air quality monitoring in cities across Canada so as to get a more accurate portrayal of the exposure of Canadians to traffic pollution.

Evans and team hope that their research may someday lead to policy changes that could help better target the small number of vehicles that pollute the most, as well as to better decide where to build schools, hospitals, daycares, seniors residences and other structures to protect people who are especially vulnerable to air pollution.

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Greg Evans

Professor Greg Evans receives 3M National Teaching Fellowship

Read more about Evans in the classroom

U of T engineer says diesel trains may expose passengers to exhaust

Read the Toronto Star story

Think a more fuel-efficient engine is the green choice? Not so fast, U of T engineers say

Innovations in teaching: Greg Evans

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

Traffic emissions may pollute 1 in 3 Canadian homes