International partnerships

Blue Door

Artificial Intelligence

Collaboration

Entrepreneurship

Health

Industry

Medicine

partnerships

Research & Innovation

Startups

Technology

Partnering with ��Ƶ has emerged as a key strategy for many companies, non-profits and government to achieve their most important goals – from furthering research and developing new products and services, to figuring out solutions to specific problems.

Alex Mihailidis (left) and Illan Kramer (photos supplied)

And many of U of T’s 600-plus partners access world-class talent and expertise via the university's new Blue Door portal.

A point of entry for organizations who want to work with the university, Blue Door is an online portal that helps potential – and existing – partners identify opportunities across the three campuses and connects them with the right people and departments.

“We often hear from prospective partners: ‘How do I partner with U of T? How do I find the right person to work with there?’ So, we wanted to ensure there weren’t barriers to us growing great new partnerships,” says Alex Mihailidis, associate vice-president of international partnerships and a professor in the department of occupational science and occupational therapy in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine.

Mihailidis, along with Illan Kramer, director of international research partnerships, developed the Blue Door initiative over the past two years – with significant input from U of T divisions – and officially launched it last February.

They recently spoke to U of T News about how the initiative helps streamline the partnership process and ensure both existing and emerging partnerships can evolve and grow.

What is the Blue Door?

Mihailidis: Simply put, it is a portal into the university. Within four clicks, a new partner or existing partner can be connected to the right person at U of T who will help them make further connections within the university to achieve their business goals. At a higher level, it’s a new philosophy in the way that we do corporate partnerships here at the university – a more collaborative approach across all the different divisions, campuses disciplines and departments.

U of T President Meric Gertler (front left) and Shigeru Sasaki, CEO of Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., sign a memorandum of understanding in 2017 (photo by Lisa Lightbourn)

Why was it important for Blue Door to include an online portal for partners?

Mihailidis: One of the things you always hear from partners is that “the university is so big – it’s so complex.” We’re kind of like a federated model – multiple divisions with multiple goals – but we are one university at the end of the day, even across three campuses.

We started talking early on about, “Well, what if we can provide a concierge-style model?’ Through these four clicks online, you’re connected with someone, and that one person becomes your contact at the university. In that way, we’re ensuring that U of T is not seen as this big place that’s complicated to navigate, but straightforward and easy to work with.

Why do so many organizations want to partner with U of T?

Kramer: When you look at U of T’s size and our quality, we’re pretty much peerless globally. And one of the consequences of being such a big, world-class institution is that you have disparate communities of expertise that can talk to one another in interesting and creative ways. It’s why sometimes you'll see an automotive company come to us and you think, “Oh, they're going to want to talk to a mechanical engineer or an electrical engineer.” But it turns out that the people whose work resonates with their needs might be child psychologists or kinesiology experts. The big research and development challenges that these companies are looking to us to help solve are interdisciplinary. And at U of T, we have that kind of interdisciplinarity baked into our size and quality.

Mihailidis: These companies realize that partnering with ��Ƶ just adds strength from a variety of levels – whether it’s research, accessing our talent or other areas to help their objectives. All that provides them with a competitive advantage at the end of the day.

In partnership with Moderna, Assistant Professor Omar F. Khan (back row, second from left) and his lab team focus on diseases that are currently incurable and untreatable (photo by Safa Jinje)

What are some examples of successful U of T partnerships?

Kramer: One longstanding partnership is with [Japanese electronics company] Fujitsu. They established a Toronto R&D hub in the Myhal Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship where grad students and Fujitsu researchers work elbow-to-elbow on new inventions and innovations. Since then, we’ve been expanding that collaboration to multidisciplinary applications by applying their microelectronics expertise to other fields like traffic engineering, financial modelling, surgical scheduling and beyond – touching on expertise that exists across the entire university.

Another impactful partnership is with [South Korean conglomerate] LG Electronics. One of the coolest things about this partnership is that it doesn't start and stop at collaborative research – it also includes elements of professional development. We’ve developed what we call an “inverted internship,” where LG scientists embed themselves with U of T research teams for four months to upskill their own AI abilities.

More recently, we launched a really exciting partnership with [American pharmaceutical and biotechnology company] Moderna, a company that a lot of people became familiar with in the last couple of years. Moderna recognized a huge level of expertise, especially in mRNA and regenerative medicine research, at U of T and wanted to do something comprehensive that would help them expand beyond the COVID-19 vaccine to a host of other potential applications. They’ve since launched a project with Omar Khan, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering, and have had several early successes already. So that’s a partnership where we really see the opportunity to be on the leading edge of something that has the potential to impact millions – maybe even billions – of people around the world.

U of T President Meric Gertler (left) and I.P. Park, the president and CTO of LG Electronics, sign a five-year collaborative AI research agreement in 2018 (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

What is the value of these partnerships to U of T?

Mihailidis: They obviously bring funding to the university to support the work that is happening here. But it also brings our faculty, researchers and students together with cutting-edge, world-leading companies to help them accelerate the development of their research and move their findings into the real world, where they can have maximum impact.

Of course, there are always questions around protection of intellectual property and appropriate handling of confidentiality. These considerations are handled in an up-front and transparent way through contractual agreements, each of which takes into account our partner’s motivations as well as the motivations and expectations of the professors who may get involved in the partnership. That way, professors and their research teams can still benefit from groundbreaking innovations, while our partners can improve upon their own products and services. Ultimately, these partnerships give us access to other experts around the world and help grow the reputation of the ��Ƶ and our community.

Kramer: There's no shortage of ambition among U of T's research community. Our researchers are world-class – they do work that is excellent and excellence doesn’t come for free. If we want to do big things, we need to have world-class facilities; we have to attract the best professors, postdocs and graduate students – in general, we need to be able to outfit our labs with the right equipment and expertise in order to do that research.

Bringing industry on board helps ensure U of T remains a cutting-edge institution. I’ve seen professors’ labs transform with a key industry partner where they went from, “Hey, this is kind of neat work that our academic peers are paying attention to,” to “Oh my God, I'm literally impacting millions of people now.” That’s incredibly exciting.

From cars to cannabis: U of T kicks off international research collaboration on 'traffic' in urban spaces

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 19:41:19 +0000

From cars to cannabis: U of T kicks off international research collaboration on 'traffic' in urban spaces

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 04/23/2019 - 15:41

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A drone shot of highway traffic in Bogotá, where the Universidad de los Andes – one of the four partners in the international research collaboration – is located (photo by Stephan Zirwes via Getty Images)

Jovana Jankovic

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Cities

Humanities

Religion

Whether it’s the movement of cars and trucks or illicit goods, the theme of “traffic” holds a central place in contemporary urban life. Now, a new international research collaboration aims to explore the multiple meanings of traffic and the related issues it raises: urban planning, public transportation, displacement, infrastructure, the divide between centre and periphery, poverty, racial segregation, the drug trade and more.

Traffic in the Americas is a partnership between the ��Ƶ’s Centre for Diaspora & Transnational Studies (CDTS), University of California, Los Angeles’s Institute on Equality and Democracy, the Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios sobre Desarrollo at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá and the Latin American and Caribbean Centre at the London School of Economics (LSE).

The four-year research collaboration begins April 26 with a workshop on traffic at U of T, with subsequent meetings planned in following years for Los Angeles, Bogotá and London.

U of T’s Jovana Jankovic spoke with Kevin Lewis O’Neill, director of the CDTS and a professor in the department for the study of religion, about how this international collaboration came together, what he hopes it will achieve and why “traffic” is a particularly pressing theme today.

How did you set this research collaboration in motion? What were some of the early discussions?

Some of the early ideas emerged while I was working on one of my current book projects. It’s on traffic in Guatemala City. I was also inspired by the idea that urban studies is really grounded by three public institutions: U of T, LSE and UCLA.

We had Jane Jacobs in Toronto, for example. Edward Soja spent time between LSE and UCLA. And they are two of the dominant intellectual architects of urban studies, of understanding public transportation and the organization of cities. So, we thought: what if we marshalled the considerable intellectual resources of these three classic institutions?

Of the current participants, Austin Zeiderman of LSE is one of my longtime collaborators. And Ananya Roy of UCLA is a supremely established and exciting scholar who was quick to get on board. She’s the director of UCLA’s Institute on Inequality and Democracy, which studies racial segregation and the policing of Los Angeles.

Every workshop in this collaboration will have its own interpretation based on its location. For example, at next year’s meeting in Los Angeles, the intersecting themes will be around the policing of racialized communities and the ways in which low-level drug offences segregate populations. The workshop in Bogotá will address road congestion, but also Colombia as ground zero for drug trafficking.

The response to this collaboration from students and colleagues has been overwhelming. It seems traffic has been an intuitive point of interest for a lot of people. And our SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) Partnership Development Grant has been integral to this project. That SSHRC is willing and ready to fund an extended thought experiment is, I think, fantastic. They’ve provided the platform for other units and other people to contribute in significant ways.

In addition to the established scholars participating, what do you hope other – perhaps younger – scholars, students or attendees will contribute or get out of this workshop?

For one thing, I’m secretly hoping there’s a moment of catharsis.

Perhaps students and community members will talk about the snow day we experienced this past winter, when students who often commute two hours a day couldn’t attend their classes. That’s an issue of traffic, an issue of infrastructure and an issue of access to education.

Students in one of my seminars a few years ago were eager to talk about infrastructure and public transportation, and why Rob Ford – Toronto’s mayor at the time – championed the suburbs. So, U of T students have an intuitive grasp of these issues. I think they can contribute both as locals and as young scholars.

Second, I hope we’ll do some intellectual work here in Toronto so that next year in Los Angeles we’ll have an even clearer sense of our intentions when we talk about traffic.

Why do you think looking at traffic is a pressing issue now?

The organizing principle here is about the regulation, control and movement of people, bodies, ideas, etc. But traffic also has the connotation of being illicit; it has the connotation of having an uneven rhythm, of implying stalling.

What does it mean when the rhythm of everyday life is continually stalled? That’s a powerful point for philosophical and theoretical reflection about what we call “the contemporary,” and this leads us to conversations about infrastructure like roads, as well as technology like cars. But it also leads us to different kinds of traffic. The legalization of cannabis, for example, does not push all drug sales into the licit market, and Canada is struggling now with higher rates of incarceration because of illicit cannabis sales. Obviously, our colleagues in Bogotá have had generations of scholarship on the effects of drug trafficking.

My own research as an anthropologist has been on Guatemala City for the last 20 years, where the number of cars has quadrupled and the infrastructure has stayed the same. And Guatemala is a transit country for drugs – 85 per cent of the cocaine produced in the Andes travels through Guatemala, which has obviously had a tremendous impact on the region.

The four cities in this collaboration –Toronto, London, Los Angeles, Bogotá – have notoriously terrible traffic. Transport studies have found that Bogotá has hands-down the worst traffic in the world. And obviously, L.A. and Toronto have their own issues. When my students talk about their principal struggles with living in Toronto, it often has to do with traffic, infrastructure and commuting. We all have this shared experience across the hemisphere.

So, how can traffic bring together otherwise divergent scholars who have this common point of reference, both in their scholarship and their everyday life? That’s what we hope to explore.

UCL President Michael Arthur on how working with U of T can help address global issues

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 05 Apr 2019 13:33:54 +0000

UCL President Michael Arthur on how working with U of T can help address global issues

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 04/05/2019 - 09:33

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U of T President Meric Gertler (left) met with UCL President and Provost Michael Arthur to discuss the universities' global partnership (photo by Romi Levine)

Topic

Meric Gertler

Research & Innovation

With over 2,500 joint publications, the ��Ƶ and the United Kingdom's UCL (University College London) are pooling resources to tackle the world’s most pressing problems.

This week, the president and provost of UCL, Michael Arthur, as well as staff and faculty from the university, travelled to Toronto to meet with U of T President Meric Gertler and members of the university community.

“University College London has become an indispensable part of our global academic network,” said President Gertler. “We are pleased to work together with our colleagues in London to build upon our world-class research and provide students with invaluable international experience.”

U of T and UCL have been pursuing a strategic global partnership since 2015 – a venture built on interdisciplinary research around a range of subjects, from city-building to child health and nanotechnology.

The initiatives include co-sponsored research and joint workshops on issues including affordable housing and support for the Canada-U.K. Colloquium – an event that brings academic, government and industry leaders from the two countries together to discuss critical public policy issues.

During their Toronto visit, UCL representatives worked with U of T colleagues to strengthen existing relationships and develop new ways of working together.

“It's been great to come over,” said Arthur. “The reception is incredibly warm and we're very grateful to all of you that we met, and are particularly grateful to the president, Meric, who has provided great leadership in bringing us to this point with U of T.”

While the political turmoil of Brexit has the U.K. looking inward for answers, UCL is doing just the opposite: partnering with leading global universities like U of T on research, student exchange programs and joint initiatives.

U of T News spoke with Arthur about UCL’s partnership with U of T and the value of global collaboration:

What drew UCL to Canada, and to U of T in particular?

The ��Ƶ is one of the world's leading institutions. It's seen that way around the world and I think it was a combination of that, plus the fact that we already had significant activity that had grown organically between members of academic staff in each institution. We also had a very successful student exchange program. So when we were looking for partners around the world, we started with those two things in mind.

As a university president, you can't dictate what your academic staff get up to, you can just simply help create the conditions and gently point them in the direction of collaborative activity and most of them will respond to that, particularly if you put a bit of funding in and particularly if they feel the partnership has got momentum.

The same thing happened the other way around. As we were doing the analysis, so was U of T. And then Meric and I met and it's gone on from there. The teams have put a lot of work into bringing it to this level, but it's now regarded by us as one of our top strategic global partnerships.

Why do you think it's important to have partnerships with other universities around the world?

At the very highest level, the world's greatest problems are not going to be solved by individual institutions or even individual countries. I think we're going to need to work jointly, we're going to need to work across boundaries and we're going to need to work across disciplines to really try and tackle some of those big issues – climate change, global health, distribution of wealth and poverty.

The idea is that if you bring two world-leading institutions together, then you've got critical mass and the wherewithal to make a difference.

One of the strongest ties between U of T and UCL is around research collaborations. What can these two universities achieve working together that they might not be able to accomplish on their own?

I think the combined intellectual might works when you're trying to have big impact. You're looking for partnerships where there's win-win on both sides, where both sides are enjoying that partnership and where the whole thing becomes highly creative.

What would success look like? In five years time, being able to point to one, two, maybe three big outcomes that wouldn't have happened if we'd been working alone. Sometimes it's about bringing disciplinary expertise together, sometimes it's about bringing cross-disciplinary expertise together, sometimes it's facilities, sometimes it's access to data, sometimes it's patient populations if you're thinking about health and rare disease of children.

What are some of the disciplinary areas where there is a strong research collaboration between the two universities?

There are a few I'm aware of in the children's health area – chronic pain in children, bringing enough of a population together to do the research necessary that's much more difficult in children.

Both places are significantly in the forefront of artificial intelligence. A big donation, I hear, to the ��Ƶ will create the [Schwartz Reisman] Innovation Centre. We haven't got anything quite so grand, but we have a lot of academic excellence in the field and we've also got the backing of one of the big AI companies, DeepMind, because that was founded by postdocs at UCL.

When a field is moving as rapidly as that, working together is one way of having an impact that you can't have on your own.

The student exchange program is an important part of the partnership between UCL and U of T. What do you think UCL students get out of studying in Toronto and what do you think U of T students get out of studying in London?

One is just the experience of two world-class universities that are similar but at the same time different. That adds to your portfolio of being able to deal with different environments, being able to deal with uncertainties moving from one to the other. I think that's very important.

Increasingly, employers are looking for people with global experience and I think it's a world now where the best jobs are looking for your degree and the grade that you get, but they're also looking for what you've done in your lifetime and career to bring to their company.

Both cities are spectacular, but they're different. Both are exciting places to be. I can't imagine two better cities to be a student than in London and Toronto.

What other ways do U of T and UCL work together and where would you like see this partnership go?

All universities constantly face problems they're trying to tackle. We've started doing some joint work about sharing best practices around human resources issues. We've done a lot of work on gender diversity and inclusion. We're more than happy to share that experience with our major partners.

Advancement, philanthropy – there’s a lot of expertise in both places. We can always learn from each other. Also, staff mobility – people being able to come over, pick up and learn techniques, gain access to materials that perhaps aren't in London and vice versa.

I think there's lots of opportunities to work the partnership in favour of both institutions against the background of us knowing each other and wanting to support each other – which has grown over the last few years as we've been working on this partnership. I think it's just good to learn from each other and to share.

Read UCL's story about the meeting of presidents

From Toronto to Kyrgyzstan: How U of T computer science is going international

ullahnor — Mon, 04 Jun 2018 17:54:37 +0000

From Toronto to Kyrgyzstan: How U of T computer science is going international

ullahnor Mon, 06/04/2018 - 13:54

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U of T computer scientists by the Naryn River and Tien Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan (photos by Kyros Kutulakos)

Nina Haikara

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Computer Science

Faculty of Arts & Science

Along Kyrgyzstan’s ancient trade route between China and the Mediterranean, known as the Silk Road, is the small town of Naryn. It’s a place where cars stop for the rush-hour herds of sheep, horses and yaks, which continue to fuel the area’s economy. Away from the town’s centre, unexpectedly rising next to the Tien Shan Mountains, are yellow, red and pink buildings, forming a most Instagram-worthy setting for learning.

It’s here – where old world meets new – that the University of Central Asia will establish its first computer science curriculum with the support of the ��Ƶ’s department of computer science.

“We’ll be part of a huge mission that will have long-term effects on Central Asia, from helping improve the quality of education to invigorating the rural economy,” said Paul Gries, an associate professor, teaching stream, who was part of a U of T computer science visit to the region.

From atop the University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan

The University of Central Asia is a secular, private and not-for-profit university founded by the governments of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and the Aga Khan Development Network.

U of T President Meric Gertler and Munk School of Global Affairs distinguished researcher Shamsh Kassim-Lakha, who is also chairman of the Central Asian university's board of trustees, signed a memorandum of understanding to work together on curriculum and faculty development, faculty and student mobility and joint research collaborations.

“International collaboration is more necessary than ever, in our efforts to create knowledge and to educate global citizens for leadership in the 21st century,” said President Gertler. “For this reason, U of T is delighted to partner with the University of Central Asia in the advancement of our common goals. We look forward to the many mutual benefits that will arise from the relationship between our two institutions.”

Last year, administrators from the University of Central Asia visited U of T computer science. Steve Engels, an associate professor, teaching stream, helped facilitate the early stages of the partnership, and visited Naryn when the campus was still under construction.

“For our own benefit, it gives us a chance to take a second look at the work we're doing and reorganize some of our own curriculum,” said Engels, who worked closely with David Liu, an assistant professor, teaching stream, on the initial phases of the program design.

“It’s an honour to be part of the Aga Khan’s mission to create centres of education in developing countries.”

The U of T faculty met with students who will take the computer science courses they’ve designed, starting next year. And, they were able to enjoy some of the food specific to the region (photos left and right).

“The students gave us a lot of context. Other local universities teach programming from the start, and the students felt they were behind, as they’re in the preliminary year of a five-year program,” said Gries. “We reassured them that the groundwork they were doing was going to help them when they start learning computer science – it’s a tool, and in order to use the tool properly, they need to understand the context in which it is applied.”

Industry will also be a vital part of the Central Asian university’s success. Local software company, SpalMalo, shared the challenges they face when seeking talent, as educated students typically move on to wealthier regions or countries, so exposure to local opportunities through internships and placements will be key.

Like the town itself, population 35,000, the Naryn campus is small: Only 15 students per class, though eventually there will be two cohorts and 30 computer science students in total, whereas more than 350 undergraduates will graduate from the U of T computer science program this spring.

Faculty will also live on Naryn campus which also offers media and communication studies. University of Central Asian campuses in Tajikistan and Kazakhstan will focus on other subjects from earth and environmental sciences to business and engineering.

“It was an incredible experience,” said Gries of visiting Kyrgyzstan. He will plan the university's second-year software design course.

The UCA/U of T partnership was made possible with support from the federal government.

From left to right, Associate Professors, Teaching Stream, Michelle Craig and Paul Gries; Assistant Professor Alec Jacobson; Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, David Liu; and Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, François Pitt; by the Naryn River and Tien Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan (photo by Kyros Kutulakos)

Mexican-American chemist on why he left Harvard for U of T

ullahnor — Thu, 12 Apr 2018 17:46:47 +0000

Mexican-American chemist on why he left Harvard for U of T

ullahnor Thu, 04/12/2018 - 13:46

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Mexican-American chemist Alán Aspuru-Guzik (left) talks with Ted Sargent, U of T’s vice president international (right), at an event in Mexico City earlier this week (photo by Toni Hauri)

Topic

Mexico

Alán Aspuru-Guzik, a Mexican-American scholar in theoretical and computational chemistry, was recently named a Canada 150 Research Chair jointly appointed to the ��Ƶ’s departments of chemistry and computer science.

At an event this week co-hosted by the Canadian Embassy in Mexico City, Ted Sargent, U of T’s vice-president international, spoke with Aspuru-Guzik about his decision to move to U of T after 12 years at Harvard University.

Ted Sargent: You are a great example of the kind of scholar we are so proud to have at U of T. Tell me the story of how you decided to join us.

Alán Aspuru-Guzik: The moment when I decided to leave the U.S., I looked around the globe – Europe, Australia, Canada – for where I wanted to go to. I already had a relationship with Canada through the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR).

Within Canada, U of T is a very special place in a very diverse city. I thought, this is where I want my kids to grow up. Fifty per cent of people in Toronto are foreign-born. And there are professors like you, a finalist for the Carbon XPrize. You are the kind of faculty who attracted me to U of T.

Ted Sargent: What will life look like on the ground at U of T?

Alán Aspuru-Guzik: U of T has given me a very interesting opportunity. The university is so diverse and dynamic. I will be in chemistry, and I will make compounds with my robots and maybe work together with your lab. We will get our arms around the chemical data from computers and robots using machine learning strategies arising from computer science. In other words, we’ll use robots to synthesize and test chemicals, and we’ll put machine learning in the loop to automate and accelerate the discovery process.

Alán Aspuru-Guzik speaks at an event in Mexico City this week (photo by Toni Hauri)

Ted Sargent: What will you do with the Vector Institute in Toronto?

Alán Aspuru-Guzik: The Canadian government has made a statement about its commitment to AI by creating three institutes in Edmonton, Montreal and Toronto. Vector is a multi-disciplinary institute with academia and industry. It builds on the remarkable legacy of people like ��Ƶ, Richard Zemel, David Duvenaud and so many others. Apart from them, the rest are all the next generation of truly outstanding scholars attracted to Vector and U of T from around the globe. These people are working together with industry to use AI to transform the world. We want to use quantum computing for chemistry, machine learning and other applications in collaboration with Vector.

Ted Sargent: You’re also an entrepreneur. Tell us about your startups.

Alán Aspuru-Guzik: Yes, I’m an entrepreneur. And recently, the World Economic Forum named Boston the fourth most entrepreneurial city and Toronto the sixth most entrepreneurial city. So I feel good about my decision to come to Toronto. I started two companies this year, one is called Zapata Computing, named for Emiliano Zapata, the Mexican revolutionary, because the company will revolutionize computing. The other is called Kebotix and the CEO is Jill Becker, a U of T and Harvard graduate. We’re committed to opening an office in Toronto for both companies. There is a lot of support from the Canadian government for startups.

Ted Sargent: How has your experience with the culture of inclusivity been in science?

Alán Aspuru-Guzik: Canada has a remarkable diversity of gender roles. It’s very impressive. During the ceremony in Ottawa when they announced my Canada Research Chair, I thought I’d get a selfie with the prime minister, but he didn’t come. Instead, I got to meet Governor General Julie Payette. She is a U of T grad, an astronaut and an engineer. Also Canada’s Minister of Science [Kirsty Duncan] is a woman, and the chief science advisor to the prime minister [Mona Nemer] is a woman. Mexico needs to do a lot more work on that.

Ted Sargent: How does your family feel about the move?

Alán Aspuru-Guzik: My mother, wife and children are all very excited. And, it is easier to get from Toronto to Mexico than to get from Boston to Mexico. There are multiple direct daily flights. Toronto and Mexico should have more links and more integration between our countries. We need to reach out and make a strategic connection.

Ted Sargent: Tell us more about your research goals.

Alán Aspuru-Guzik: I am interested in generating and storing the energy of the world, storing electricity that we get during the day through inexpensive and renewable solar cells and batteries, and then making it available to be used at night. Through our collaborations with the Ministry of Energy in Mexico and the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACyT), Mexico will be a leader in this. Connected to this, I recently co-led an international workshop for the innovation challenge of Mission Innovation, a collaboration of 22 countries and the EU that focuses on doubling the participating countries’ clean energy research budget over five years.

Ted Sargent: So great to have you here. Thank you.

U of T's Deep Genomics inks partnership with U.S. biotech firm

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 21:18:49 +0000

U of T's Deep Genomics inks partnership with U.S. biotech firm

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 04/11/2018 - 17:18

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Professor Brendan Frey co-founded Deep Genomics in 2015. The startup uses AI to find treatments for genetic illnesses (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Chris Sorensen

Topic

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Artificial Intelligence

Brendan Frey

JLabs

A ��Ƶ startup that uses artificial intelligence to develop treatments for genetic diseases has forged a partnership with a U.S. biotechnology firm.

Deep Genomics, spun out of research done by Professor Brendan Frey in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, said this week it will be working with Cambridge, Mass.-based, Wave Life Sciences to identify novel therapies for neuromuscular disorders – a category of illness that includes diseases like Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Frey, Deep Genomics’ co-founder and CEO, said Wave’s neuromuscular research is tailor-made for the startup’s machine learning technology and targets a group of disorders for which treatments are badly needed.

“Neuromuscular diseases are a tragic category of diseases for children that impacts them at a very young age, and impacts their lives severely and can be fatal,” he said, adding Deep Genomics and Wave have yet to disclose the particular neuromuscular diseases they intend to focus on.

“But there’s a significant portion of these disorders that have a clear genetic basis, meaning there are mutations in their DNA that they’ve inherited at birth that cause something to go wrong.

“That makes it a perfect match for our platform, which is all about genetics – RNA, DNA and linking the genetics to what’s going to go wrong inside the cell.”

Founded in 2015, Deep Genomics has built an “artificial intelligence-powered discovery platform” that combines machine learning with genomics research to develop genetic medicines that can potentially treat a myriad of genetic illnesses, from autism to cancer.

The startup, which raised US$13 million in financing last year, received support from U of T's Innovations & Partnerships Office, as well as UTEST and the Creative Destruction Lab at the Rotman School of Management – all part of the expansive U of T entrepreneurship ecosystem. It is now working with Johnson & Johnson’s JLABS life sciences incubator in Toronto.

Wave, meanwhile, is a publicly listed company that uses a chemistry-based platform to find “transformational therapies for patients with serious, genetically-defined diseases.”

While Deep Genomics’ main research focus continues to be on metabolic and neurodegenerative disorders – it’s investing $10 million to develop its pre-clinical platform in these areas – Frey said working with Wave on neuromuscular diseases offers a number of additional benefits. They include “a way to rapidly deploy the output of our platform within a drug development context,” and the opportunity to further fine-tune Deep Genomics’ machine learning technologies.

Frey said Deep Genomics has held talks with most of the world’s major pharmaceutical companies, as well as several smaller ones, but decided to partner with Wave because it’s a young, research-focused firm that shares his startup’s vision.

And what is that outlook? If the traditional approach to medical research is mostly trial and error at the lab bench, Frey believes machine learning can be used to crunch through billions of data points, including those created by the sequencing of the human genome, to determine not only the cause of a particular genetic illness, but to find a cure – all “in silico,” or on the computer.

“The AI systems that we’ve built aren’t meant to speculatively offer up potential solutions,” Frey says.

“They’re highly precise and very intentional.”

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Professor Christopher Yip chosen to head international partnerships

geoff.vendeville — Fri, 31 Mar 2017 14:03:54 +0000

Professor Christopher Yip chosen to head international partnerships

geoff.vendeville Fri, 03/31/2017 - 10:03

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Professor Christopher Yip, the director of the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, was chosen to take up the international partnerships portfolio (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

Geoffrey Vendeville

Author legacy

Geoffrey Vendeville

Topic

International

IBBME

Professor Christopher Yip, a leading researcher in the field of single-molecule biophysics, has been appointed the ��Ƶ’s first associate vice-president, international partnerships.

He starts a five-year term on July 1 and aims to foster international academic and industry collaborations. He will be reporting to Vice-President, International Ted Sargent and Vice-President, Research and Innovation Vivek Goel.

Read the official announcement

Yip brings almost a decade of leadership experience within U of T’s Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering (IBBME), a team of more than 100 faculty members from engineering, medicine and dentistry who look for innovative solutions to pressing problems at the intersection of health-care and engineering.

“U of T is known for its strengths in a number of different areas,” he told U of T News. "Part of my job will be to help enable and grow new emerging areas of impact in the U of T ecosystem.”

The benefits of forging new partnerships around the world are multifaceted, he said. “It aids in increasing the profile of the university, the students and the research. It also improves the profile of Canada more broadly.”

On large research projects, borders tend to become blurred.

“Research is borderless," he said. “We will identify how teams can come together on large projects that take full advantage of each institution's strengths.”

He added: “It’s the opposite of what you see right now around the world, where people are saying ‘Let’s put more and more borders up and block things.’”

Whether in a lab or administrative position, Yip says his goal is always to support others.

“For me, it’s important to provide resources and opportunities to let people drive initiatives, and that’s my main focus.”

Yip joined the university in 1997. He is a faculty member in the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry, department of biochemistry, IBBME and U of T's Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research. His lab research group of post-doctoral, graduate and undergraduate students studies the phenomena that take place at the molecular scale.

“We’re developing and applying new ways of understanding how molecules assemble and form structures, and developing new ways of visualizing these processes,” he said.

The applications of their research extend to biology, biophysics, nanotechnology and engineering.

In recent years, Yip's lab has hosted students from Singapore and Cuba, and sent U of T students to Asia and Europe. He also facilitated a partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy which led two of his grad students to study at the Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque.

“It was very much a two-way street. They learned from us and we learned from them,” Yip said.

Yip is the author of more than 90 peer-reviewed publications and four book chapters, and has won a Premier's Research Excellence Award among other academic distinctions. From 2000 to 2010, he held a tier II Canada Research Chair in molecular imaging.

“Our ability to continue to recruit the best scholars and students from around the world hinges on our global reputation,” said Professor Goel. “Through the IBBME, Chris has clearly demonstrated the ability to foster collaboration at all levels, bringing together a multidisciplinary community of students, scholars and external partners to support the impact of their research globally.”

Professor Sargent said: “Chris Yip, in his leadership, has stimulated and seeded outstanding new team initiatives. He has shown how to bring collaborating researchers together within U of T to put our best foot forward to the world. And he has built global partnerships that leverage and showcase the best U of T has to offer. He is perfectly poised to unite U of T’s International and Research and Innovation portfolios into a coherent platform building global partnerships.’

Will he have the stamina for the new position?

His hobby suggests he does. Yip is an avid runner, who has 25 marathons and 25 half-marathons under his belt. His best time completing a marathon was three hours and seven minutes.

Croatian president visits U of T, tours lab and meets students

ullahnor — Tue, 22 Nov 2016 21:10:39 +0000

Croatian president visits U of T, tours lab and meets students

ullahnor Tue, 11/22/2016 - 16:10

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Photo of Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović with Rose Tominac from U of T's Croatian Student Association (photos by Johnny Guatto)

Geoffrey Vendeville

Author legacy

Geoffrey Vendeville

Topic

Croatia