Computer & Electrical Engineering

U of T engineering students encouraged to consider sustainability when designing future AI systems

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 15:10:13 +0000

U of T engineering students encouraged to consider sustainability when designing future AI systems

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 09/16/2024 - 11:10

Cutline

Professors Hans-Arno Jacobsen, left, and Natalie Enright Jerger of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering are part of a team that is training computer system designers to integrate sustainability practices into the development of AI and machine learning systems (photo by Jenny Lee)

Matthew Tierney

Topic

Our Community

Computer & Electrical Engineering

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

NSERC

Sustainability

Subheadline

The Sustainable Data Systems for Data Science initiative aims to align Canada’s tech investments with its vision for a carbon-neutral future

The growing global adoption of artificial intelligence technologies, including machine learning, has created a new sustainability challenge: AI systems are energy-intensive – and the more sophisticated they become, the more resources they require.

To help address the issue, a team of experts including the ��Ƶ’s Hans-Arno Jacobsen and Natalie Enright Jerger – both professors in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. department of electrical and computer engineering at the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering – are launching an initiative that aims to align Canada’s tech investments with its vision for a sustainable, carbon-neutral future.

The Sustainable Data Systems for Data Science (SDSDS) project aims to train a new generation of computer and data scientists who can combine comprehensive technical skills with sustainability awareness. The project recently received a $1.6-million Collaborative Research and Training Experience (CREATE) grant from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

“A majority of students are unaware of how sustainability informs responsible development of platforms and systems because, frankly, there just aren’t many courses or learning paths available to them in this area,” says Enright Jerger, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Computer Architecture and is director of the division of engineering science.

“Another crucial component of this project is to equip our students with knowledge transfer strategies so they can seed these ideas in the workforce. Today’s trainees becoming tomorrow’s trainers.”

The SDSDS team propose training future computer systems designers to adopt a green approach when developing data analytics platforms and systems. The approach would apply to all aspects of the life cycle of development and deployment – such as hardware infrastructure, software systems and application domains.

To advance knowledge and dialogue on the issue, SDSDS will look to hold cross-university seminars on sustainability challenges and will offer courses on sustainable data science, along with summer school programs focused on energy-efficient software and hardware platforms.

The researchers also aim to connect students with industry via internships and applied research projects, enabling them to gain exposure to current challenges and facilitate cross-pollination of knowledge between industry and academia.

“The awareness about AI’s environmental impact is growing, but there is an expertise gap on how to address this very real problem – not just after the fact, but at inception. SDSDS aims to bridge this gap and prepare for the future resource demands of AI-driven industries,” says Bettina Kemme, professor of computer science at McGill University and team lead at SDSDS, which also includes Semih Salihoğlu of the University of Waterloo, Oana Balmau of McGill University and Essam Mansour of Concordia University.

“The potential of AI and machine learning systems are seemingly limitless,” says Jacobsen, who is the Jeffrey Skoll Chair in Computer Networks and Innovation. “Yet the true genius lies in building machine learning systems founded on sustainability principles. That’s real innovation.”

How U of T startup Shield Crypto Systems helps keep valuable data safe

geoff.vendeville — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 21:30:26 +0000

How U of T startup Shield Crypto Systems helps keep valuable data safe geoff.vendeville Mon, 03/09/2020 - 17:30

Topic

Breaking Research

Computer & Electrical Engineering

Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab

Entrepreneurship

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Startups

ThisIsThePlace

Data breaches not only endanger people’s privacy and financial information, they can cost companies millions and inflict untold reputational damage.

As a PhD student at the ��Ƶ, Alhassan Khedr worked on a technology known as “fully homorphic encryption” that can be used to better protect valuable encrypted information.

“With homorphic encryption, you keep your data encrypted and safe,” Khedr says. “However, you can still do some meaningful and very useful manipulations on it without exposing it at any time.”

With Professor Glenn Gulak in U of T’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering – and the support U of T’s Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab (DCSIL) accelerator – Khedr launched Shield Crypto Systems, which helps banks and other financial institutions guard their data throughout its life cycle.

DCSIL helped Khedr and Gulak translate their research into a proof of concept with the Royal Bank of Canada.

“Without U of T’s support, we wouldn’t be where we are today,” Khedr says.

Out of thin air: U of T researchers shorten path to capturing and recycling CO2 with new process

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 29 May 2019 23:01:45 +0000

Out of thin air: U of T researchers shorten path to capturing and recycling CO2 with new process

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 05/29/2019 - 19:01

Cutline

Geonhui Lee operates an electrolyzer capable of transforming dissolved carbonate into CO2 and then into syngas. The device offers a shorter path for converting atmospheric carbon into commercially valuable products (Photo by Marit Mitchell)

Tyler Irving

Topic

Breaking Research

Computer & Electrical Engineering

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Graduate Students

Research & Innovation

Sustainability

A research team from the ��Ƶ has developed a new electrochemical path to transform CO₂ into valuable products such as jet fuel or plastics. The technology could significantly improve the economics of capturing and recycling carbon directly from the air.

“Today, it is technically possible to capture CO₂ from air and, through a number of steps, convert it to commercial products,” says University Professor Ted Sargent, in the Edward S. Rogers department of electrical and computer engineering, who led the research team.

“The challenge is that it takes a lot of energy to do so, which raises the cost and lowers the incentive. Our strategy increases the overall energy efficiency by avoiding some of the more energy-intensive losses.”

Direct-air carbon capture is an emerging technology in which companies aim to produce fuels or plastics from carbon that is already in the atmosphere, rather than from fossil fuels. Canada’s Carbon Engineering, which has built a pilot plant in Squamish, B.C., captures CO₂ by forcing air through an alkaline liquid solution. The CO₂ dissolves in the liquid, forming a substance called carbonate.

In order to be fully recycled, the dissolved carbonate is normally turned back into CO₂ gas, and then into chemical building blocks that form the basis of fuels and plastics. One way to do this is to add chemicals that convert the carbonate into a solid salt. This salt powder is then heated at temperatures above 900 C to produce CO₂ gas that can undergo further transformations. The energy required for this heating drives up the cost of the resulting products.

The U of T team’s alternative method applies an electrolyzer, a device that uses electricity to drive a chemical reaction. Having previously used electrolyzers to produce hydrogen from water, they realized they could also be used to convert dissolved carbonate directly back into CO₂, skipping the intermediate heating step entirely.

“We used a bipolar membrane, a new electrolyzer design that is great at generating protons,” says Geonhui Lee, who along with postdoctoral fellow Y. Chris Li, is among the lead authors of a new paper in ACS Energy Letters that describes the technique.

“These protons were exactly what we needed to convert the carbonate back into CO₂ gas.”

Their electrolyzer also contains a silver-based catalyst that immediately converts the CO₂ produced into a gas mixture known as syngas. Syngas is a common chemical feedstock for the well-established Fischer-Tropsch process, and can be readily turned into a wide variety of products, including jet fuel and plastic precursors.

“This is the first known process that can go all the way from carbonate to syngas in a single step,” says Sargent.

While many types of electrolyzers have been used to convert CO₂ into chemical building blocks, none of them can deal effectively with carbonate. Furthermore, the fact that CO₂ dissolved in liquid turns into carbonate so readily is a major problem for existing technologies.

“Once the CO₂ turns into carbonate, it becomes inaccessible to traditional electrolyzers,” says Li. “That’s part of the reason why they have low yields and low efficiencies. Our system is unique in that it achieves 100 per cent carbon utilization: no carbon is wasted. It also generates syngas as a single product at the outlet, minimizing the cost of product purification.”

In the lab, the team demonstrated the ability to convert carbonate to syngas at an overall energy efficiency of 35 per cent, and the electrolyzer remained stable for more than six days of operation.

Sargent says that more work will be needed to scale up the process to the levels needed for industrial application, but that the proof-of-concept study demonstrates a viable alternative path for direct-air carbon capture and utilization.

“It goes a long way toward answering the question of whether it will ever be possible to use air-captured CO₂ in a commercially compelling way,” says Sargent.

"This is a key step toward closing the carbon loop.”

The research was supported by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), the Ontario Research Fund and the Natural Sciences and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).

Computer & Electrical Engineering

U of T engineering students encouraged to consider sustainability when designing future AI systems

How U of T startup Shield Crypto Systems helps keep valuable data safe

Read more about entrepreneurship at U of T

Out of thin air: U of T researchers shorten path to capturing and recycling CO2 with new process