Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab

Entrepreneurship

Innovation & Entrepreneurship

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.

Seven transformational things that happened at U of T over the past decade

rahul.kalvapalle — Fri, 20 Dec 2019 21:19:44 +0000

Seven transformational things that happened at U of T over the past decade

rahul.kalvapalle Fri, 12/20/2019 - 16:19

Cutline

(photo by Wei Fang via Getty Images)

Rahul Kalvapalle

Topic

Schwartz Reisman Innovation Centre

Indigenous Initiatives

Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society

Myhal Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Black Grad

School of Cities

Boundless

Entrepreneurship Hatchery

Entrepreneurship

Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

Lester B. Pearson International Scholarship

Health Innovation Hub

Impact Centre

Indigenous

Landmark

Meric Gertler

ONRamp

Rotman School of Management

Research and Innovation

Sustainability

Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre

Truth and Reconciliation

As we prepare to usher in a new decade, U of T News is looking back at some of the defining and impactful things that happened at the ��Ƶ over the past 10 years.

The U of T community has left an indelible mark on the 2010s by making groundbreaking achievements in artificial intelligence, taking strides toward Indigenous reconciliation and promoting sustainability throughout its operations – to name just a few. Many of these initiatives have set in motion ideas and actions that will pave the way for the university’s success for decades to come.

Here’s a list – admittedly a non-exhaustive one – of transformational things that happened at U of T over the past 10 years:

Campus Transformation

The Myhal Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship on the St. George campus (photo by Lisa Sakulensky)

The past decade has seen U of T complete numerous construction and renovation projects as it continues to grow its campuses, expand the facilities available to students, faculty and staff, and lay the groundwork for more ambitious campus-building projects to come.

To take one, high profile example: The Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering last year opened the Myhal Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, a building designed to foster multi-disciplinary partnerships, experiential learning and entrepreneurship opportunities. Named after alumnus George Myhal and his wife Rayla, the building features technology-enhanced active learning rooms, dedicated space for student clubs and state-of-the-art fabrication facilities for design projects.

U of T also laid the groundwork for the Landmark Project, a major initiative to revitalize the historic core of the St. George campus and enhance sustainability and accessibility. The project will feature the expansion of pedestrian-friendly areas around King’s College Circle, Hart House Circle and Tower Road, and will replace parking spots for cars with green spaces, granite paths and an underground parking garage.

The Landmark Project will make the historic centre of St. George campus more pedestrian-friendly and add new green space (rendering courtesy of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Inc.)

The St. George campus is also the proposed site of a 14-storey building constructed from engineered wood, which is prized as an innovative building material due its low carbon footprint, structural integrity, fire-resistant properties and aesthetic appeal. Another landmark building is proposed for 90 Queen's Park Crescent, providing a home to U of T's School of Cities as well as numerous departments from the Faculty of Arts & Science.

At U of T Mississauga, it’s been a similarly eventful decade for campus-building. In 2011, the campus unveiled the Terrence Donnelly Health Sciences Complex. In August, U of T Mississauga acknowledged the Indigenous history of the land, the future of the campus and the university’s commitment to reconciliation by revealing the name of its newest building: Maanjiwe nendamowinan. Sitting on the site the former North Building, Maanjiwe nendamowinan is home to humanities and social sciences and features a six-storey atrium and event space, as well as 40,000 square feet of new classroom space that’s outfitted with cutting-edge technology and hundreds of new study spaces.

Maanjiwe nendamowinan at U of T Mississauga boasts 40,000 square feet of new classroom space that’s outfitted with cutting-edge technology (photo by Drew Lesiuczok)

At U of T Scarborough, national-level athletes, Varsity competitors and intramural sports participants alike can all take advantage of the state-of-the-art facilities on offer at the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre. After opening to the public in 2014, the facility hosted several competitions during the 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am Games. It is now home to numerous national sport organizations and high-performance centres, while also offering U of T Scarborough students top-notch fitness and wellness facilities.

Wheelchair basketball players practise inside the Toronto PanAm Sports Centre (photo by Bernard Weil/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

U of T Scarborough also opened the new Highland Hall building, creating a striking new gateway to the campus in addition to doubling the amount of space dedicated to students and adding faculty and administration space. And it unveiled the 500-metre Valley Land Trail, which was designed to offer accessibility and year-long enjoyment of the ravine abutting the campus.

Finally, the university recently completed comprehensive renovations of research labs across its three campuses. Driven by nearly $190 million in funding from the university, province and federal government, the upgrades increased the amount of space available for research activities, improved electrical and internet connectivity and will create utility savings and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Sustainability and climate action

The rooftop garden at U of T Scarborough (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Sustainability has been a central theme of U of T’s efforts to revitalize and expand its three campuses.

One of the most ambitious initiatives is the planned installation of a massive geo-exchange field beneath Front Campus. The project, part of U of T’s Low Carbon Action Plan, will see boreholes drilled deep into the ground to allow for storage of surplus heat. It is projected to yield annual greenhouse gas reductions of 15,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2024.

Sustainable design is also a hallmark of U of T Mississauga’s Maanjiwe nendamowinan, which has a 20,000-gallon rainwater re-use system, energy-efficient mechanical systems, green roof spaces and a green-cleaning initiative, and U of T Scarborough’s Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre, which boasts eco-friendly features including 1,854 rooftop solar panels and underground cisterns to collect rainwater.

Physical projects aside, the university has also taken steps to incorporate sustainability into all levels of academia including working on developing curriculum pathways for sustainability-minded undergraduate students across the university.

At an institutional level, U of T has played a leadership role by engaging with the challenges posed by climate change on the world stage. In 2018, U of T joined 12 other leading research universities in North America to form the University Climate Change Coalition, which aims to mobilize resources, expand research partnerships and leverage expertise to help businesses, cities and regions implement research-driven climate solutions.

This year, President Meric Gertler attended the inaugural U7+ Alliance in Paris, where he briefed French President Emmanuel Macron on the alliance's commitment to sustainability. U of T has also hosted numerous speeches, conferences and symposia to further dialogue on climate change.

Artificial intelligence

U of T University Professor Emeritus ��Ƶ has been described as the “godfather of deep learning” (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Many predict that artificial intelligence is poised to revolutionize everything from transportation to medicine – and some of the most exciting work is taking place at U of T thanks to pioneers like University Professor Emeritus ��Ƶ, a Turing Award-winner who is known as the “godfather of deep learning.”

In bid to build upon its early lead in the field, U of T partnered with government and industry to launch the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence in 2017 and is now attracting several of the most promising AI researchers from around world. Toronto, in turn, is benefiting from the arrival of global tech companies keen to establish an AI footprint in the city. For example, Google, Uber, Samsung and NVIDIA have all established or expanded AI labs in Toronto that are headed by U of T researchers.

U of T is also addressing AI through a multi-disciplinary lens following the launch of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. Set to be housed in the new Schwartz Reisman Innovation Centre, the institute leverages U of T's unique strengths across a wide range of fields to explore the role of humanities, social sciences, public policy and law in a rapidly changing technology landscape.

A global, inclusive student experience

Students at U of T were the first in Canada to organize a Black Grad event in 2017 (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

By embracing diversity and expanding its international presence, U of T over the past decade has continued to further its reputation as an inclusive institution with a truly global outlook.

U of T’s student body has played a proactive role in this regard. For example, in 2017, U of T students organized Black Grad, Canada’s first ever graduation celebration for Black students. Black Grad has since gone on to become one of the most highly anticipated convocation-related events on the calendar. After two years of being held at Hart House on the St. George campus, Black Grad 2019 was hosted at U of T Mississauga in June and organizers say the first Black Grad of the new decade could be held at U of T Scarborough.

The year 2017 also saw the launch of the Lester B. Pearson International Student Scholarship, which brings some of the most talented and driven students from around the world to U of T. The 2019 cohort comprised 36 students drawn from 27 countries.

U of T has also continued to expand its international footprint by way of research agreements with academic and industry partners around the world. Meanwhile, the university’s commitment to equity and diversity has also been formalized in the Institutional Strategic Research Plan, which aims to ensure an inclusive environment and increase the presence of marginalized groups such as Indigenous Peoples, racialized persons, LGBTQ individuals and persons with disabilities.

Truth and Reconciliation

Skahendowaneh Swamp, a chair of Indigenous knowledge at the Chanie Wenjack School for Indigenous Studies at Trent University, is flanked by U of T President Meric Gertler (right) and Kelly Hannah-Moffat, vice-president of human resources and equity (photo by Lisa Lightbourn)

In early 2016, U of T President Gertler and Vice-President and Provost Cheryl Regehr established U of T’s Truth and Reconciliation Steering Committee in response to the federal Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s call to Canadians to engage in ongoing reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.

The report produced 34 calls to action focusing on the following areas: Indigenous spaces; curriculum; students and co-curricular education; faculty and staff; research ethics and community relationships; and institutional leadership and implementation.

Since then, U of T has moved forward with a range of initiatives including the creation of the Master in Social Work, Indigenous Trauma and Resiliency program at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work; organizing an Indigenous Mentoring Day to match Indigenous job-seekers with employers at the university; and the appointment of academic advisers for Indigenous research and Indigenous curriculum and education.

The university is also launching an Indigenous Landscape project, to be installed on 4,500 square metres of Hart House Green, in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Committee's call for a “prominent, visible space at the very centre of the St. George campus be dedicated as an Indigenous space.”

“Indigenous students will be able to walk through campus and see an outdoor space and know it was created for them, with them and with their needs in mind,” said Shannon Simpson, U of T’s new director of Indigenous initiatives and co-chair of the Indigenous Landscape project.

The project is being planned on the basis of in-depth consultations with Indigenous groups at U of T and First Nations communities with historic ties to the area.

Innovation and entrepreneurship

U of T’s ONRamp co-working and collaboration space opened to entrepreneurs in 2017 (photo by Kenneth Cheung)

Over the past decade, U of T entrepreneurs have created more than 500 startup companies that have secured over $1.5 billion in investment and helped establish the university as an engine of Toronto’s thriving innovation scene.

U of T alone is home to more than 10 campus-linked accelerators that cater to startups at various stages of development. They include the Creative Destruction Lab, which was founded at the Rotman School of Management and has since expanded to seven other locations in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K.; the Entrepreneurship Hatchery, which serves entrepreneurs in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering; ICUBE, based in the Institute for Management and Innovation at U of T Mississauga; and U of T Scarborough’s The Hub. Others include: UTEST, DCSIL (Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab), H2i (Health Innovation Hub), Impact Centre and InnovED.

Many entrepreneurs from U of T and partner universities work out of U of T’s ONRamp, a 15,000-square-foot space that opened in 2017 and offers co-working and collaboration spaces – not to mention ready access to downtown Toronto’s vibrant business community.

Unprecedented community support

The soon-to-be-built Schwartz Reisman Innovation Centre will accelerate innovation in Toronto and Canada by creating the country’s largest university-based innovation node (rendering by WEISS/MANFREDI)

In March, U of T received $100 million from Gerald Schwartz and Heather Reisman – the largest single donation in its history. The funds are being used to support construction of the new Schwartz Reisman Innovation Centre that will anchor U of T's growing cluster of AI scientists, biomedical experts and entrepreneurs.

But that was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to supporting the university over the past decade.

Spanning a period of seven years, U of T’s Boundless campaign raised $2.6-billion from more than 104,000 donors in nearly 100 countries. The generous contributions from individuals, families, corporations and charitable organizations will go towards an array of initiatives aimed at accelerating research and educational opportunities, enriching the student experience and transforming the university’s three campuses to leave a lasting legacy for generations to come.

What's more, the campaign saw endowments for student aid and student support cross the $1-billion mark for the first time in the university's history.

In an interview with U of T News this past summer, David Palmer, U of T's vice-president, advancement, said the Boundless campaign’s success suggests the best is yet to come.

"People ask me all the time: 'Have we exhausted the capacity of our donors and the time and efforts of our volunteers?' And I have to say we all feel we’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of what we are capable of together, and what our donors and volunteers are so generously willing to do for us," Palmer said.

"We think there’s a very, very exciting future ahead of us right now."

U of T artificial intelligence startups make big splash at Elevate tech fest

rahul.kalvapalle — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 17:16:45 +0000

U of T artificial intelligence startups make big splash at Elevate tech fest

rahul.kalvapalle Thu, 09/26/2019 - 13:16

Cutline

Professor Brendan Frey, the CEO of Deep Genomics, revealed during the Elevate technology festival that the startup was nominating the "first-ever" AI-discovered drug candidate (photo courtesy of the Elevate Tech Festival)

Topic

Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research

Entrepreneneurship

Faculty of Information

Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research

The Elevate 2019 technology festival underway in Toronto held a day-long program dedicated to AI on Wednesday, with ��Ƶ startups stirring up excitement with announcements about key project milestones.

The third day of Canada’s largest technology festival saw Brendan Frey, CEO of Deep Genomics, reveal that the company’s cutting-edge AI drug discovery platform has identified a genetic mutation linked to Wilson disease, a rare and potentially life-threatening genetic disorder, and honed in on a molecule that holds treatment potential, Betakit reported.

“We are delighted to nominate the first ever AI-discovered therapeutic candidate and are eager to move it rapidly into the clinic for the potential benefit of patients,” said Frey, a professor in U of T’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering with cross appointments in the department of computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science and the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, in a press release.

Betakit also reported that AI-powered customer analytics platform ODAIA, whose co-founders include Assistant Professor Periklis Andritsos of the Faculty of Information and Adjunct Professor Helen Kontozopoulos (also a co-founder of the Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab, or DCSIL) used the event to announce it has raised $1.6 million in seed funding.

Enthusiasm surrounding U of T's startup ecosystem also extends to students, Keri Damen, managing director of U of T Entrepreneurship, told Global News.

“There’s a huge appetite coming from the students themselves that they want to work for new companies, startups and scale-ups, especially in the social innovation and social entrepreneurship space,” Damen said.

The U of T Entrepreneuship booth at the Elevate tech festival (photo courtesy of the Elevate Tech Festival)

U of T researchers, entrepreneurs to showcase work at Elevate 2019 tech festival

rahul.kalvapalle — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 20:08:21 +0000

U of T researchers, entrepreneurs to showcase work at Elevate 2019 tech festival

rahul.kalvapalle Fri, 09/20/2019 - 16:08

Cutline

More than 300 scheduled speakers, including Michelle Obama, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and several researchers and entrepreneurs connected to U of T, are scheduled to appear at Elevate 2019 (photo courtesy of Elevate)

Rahul Kalvapalle

Topic

Our Community

Alumni

Entrepreneneurship

��Ƶ

Quantum Computing

University College

Researchers and entrepreneurs from the ��Ƶ are set to showcase their innovative work to a global audience during Elevate 2019, Canada’s largest technology and innovation festival.

The week-long event, which kicks off Friday, features hundreds of speakers and is expected to draw tens of thousands of attendees. U of T will play a central role thanks to its contributions to Toronto’s thriving technology ecosystem and research that underpins key advances in fields like artificial intelligence (AI) and precision medicine.

At this year’s festival, U of T experts will be featured prominently at Elevate AI, a day-long program on Sept. 25 devoted to conversations around AI research, applications and commercialization held at the MaRS Discovery District.

The scheduled speakers include Brendan Frey, the founder and CEO of Deep Genomics, which is using AI to build life-saving genetic therapies.

“Lots of companies talk about using AI to disrupt drug discovery, but nobody has made it work yet,” says Frey, a professor in U of T’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering with cross appointments in the department of computer science and the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research.

“The elephant in the room – whether you’re talking to pharmaceutical companies that are trying to advance drugs or patients who are looking for drugs – is: Will AI actually make a difference in drug discovery and medicine?”

Frey, for his part, says Deep Genomics is making progress and plans to use Elevate to announce a “breakthrough” discovery made using Deep Genomics’ AI technology for the treatment of a specific disease, but declined to provide further details.

“Toronto right now is where Silicon Valley was in the early 2000s,” says Brendan Frey, a U of T researcher who founded the AI-powered startup Deep Genomics (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Elevate 2019 runs Sept. 20 to Sept. 26 and is expected to draw 20,000 attendees to venues around the city. Among the more than 300 scheduled speakers are such luminaries as Michelle Obama, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield – a founding fellow of the space stream at the Creative Destruction Lab seed-stage accelerator based at U of T’s Rotman School of Management – and Toronto Raptors president Masai Ujiri.

Previous editions of Elevate have featured speeches from the likes of U of T University Professor Emeritus ��Ƶ, a pioneer of deep learning whose research is credited with helping spark the AI revolution in Toronto and beyond.

Frey, who was one of Hinton’s students in the 1990s, hailed Toronto as the “birthplace of the new era of AI” and identified U of T’s academic and innovation ecosystem as crucial to the city’s rise as an AI capital.

“Toronto right now is where Silicon Valley was in the early 2000s, in that there was an established framework that enabled startups to translate research discoveries into entrepreneurial opportunities,” says Frey.

“Toronto has been born as a location that will generate a large number of startups that can recruit hard-working people who have a big vision and can execute that vision by taking advantage of the supports that surround them. That support comes in the form of U of T and the tremendous intellectual powerhouse that we have in terms of AI, but also in the form of entities like the Creative Destruction Lab that provide the surrounding support that makes it easy to start companies and build off of new ideas and opportunities.”

U of T alone is home to more than 10 campus-linked accelerators that cater to entrepreneurs and their companies at various stages of growth. At the same time, local entrepreneurs benefit from the strong relationships forged between the university, neighbouring hospitals, the financial community and a growing number of multinational companies that have launched or expanded research operations in the city.

As the co-founder of AI-powered customer analytics and prediction platform ODAIA.AI and a co-founder of U of T’s Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab (DCSIL), Helen Kontozopoulos knows what it takes to grow novel ideas into innovative businesses.

She is scheduled to give a talk at the AI event about the importance of building tighter working relationships between so-called “Mad Men” (advertisers, marketers and salespersons – a nod to the television series of the same name) and “Math Men,” the engineers, scientists and developers who build technology products.

Kontozopoulos says her interest in the topic was sparked, in part, by her experience teaching courses on product development and entrepreneurship at U of T.

“I realized that my computer science students and engineers weren’t built to think about the customer,” she says. “They were conditioned to bring in the marketing and salespeople after the fact. There needs to be more of an overlap, otherwise they’re going to end up building, in silos, products without sufficient focus on the customer experience.

“For example, a customer might say, ‘OK, this chat bot is very creepy.’ Well, why is it creepy? Because it was built by engineers who didn’t think that there would be a creepiness factor.”

Kontozopoulos, who teaches an entrepreneurship course in the department of computer and mathematical sciences at U of T Scarborough and gives guest lectures to engineering students in an undergraduate machine learning program, says she hopes to use her remarks at Elevate AI to convey that if AI-based companies are to realize their potential, there needs to be more proactive cross-pollination between the technology and customer experience arenas.

“My talk will be about conversations and breaking down silos,” she says.

Helen Kontozopoulos teaches an entrepreneurship course in the department of computer and mathematical sciences at U of T Scarborough and co-founded the Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab, or DCSIL (photo by Chris Sorensen)

Also scheduled to speak at Elevate AI is Raquel Urtasun, an associate professor in U of T’s department of computer science who heads up Uber’s self-driving vehicle lab in Toronto. Widely recognized as a star in the fields of machine learning and computer vision, Urtasun previously spoke to a packed house on the main stage at the inaugural Elevate festival in 2017.

U of T’s presence at Elevate extends beyond professors. Several alumni will also be in attendance to showcase the fruits of their research and entrepreneurial labour.

Among them is Christian Weedbrook, CEO of Xanadu, a startup that’s developing light-powered quantum computing technologies that received support from the CDL program. Weedbrook, who founded Xanadu soon after he completed his post-doctoral research at U of T, will take part in a panel discussion on the challenges of commercializing AI-based innovations.

For recent U of T graduates Samin Khan, Quinn Underwood and Avery Wang, the stakes at Elevate are especially high. The trio, who met during their first year at University College, are co-founders of Animo, a startup that uses AI to asses and quantify psychological well-being. Animo is one of 32 startups that will compete at the festival’s ElevateR Pitch competition.

Billed as a “March Madness-style pitch competition,” ElevateR Pitch gives startups the chance to compete for a funding prize and the opportunity to pitch their startup on the Elevate Main Stage.

Khan, who graduated with a double major in computer science and cognitive science and is Animo’s chief technology officer, says he’s grateful to U of T for encouraging his research and entrepreneurial interests.

“A lot of the support we received from U of T wasn’t just within the courses themselves, but the environment and culture surrounding the university,” he says.

Khan says he and fellow Animo co-founders feel confident going into ElevateR Pitch, but that the build-up to the competition is also nerve-wracking.

“I’d say I’m both excited and nervous.”

Visitors CRAM U of T campus at one-night festival of ideas

geoff.vendeville — Mon, 08 Apr 2019 21:07:38 +0000

Visitors CRAM U of T campus at one-night festival of ideas

geoff.vendeville Mon, 04/08/2019 - 17:07

Cutline

Hundreds of people came to listen to the ideas of ��Ƶ researchers at the CRAM festival on Friday evening (all photos by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Geoffrey Vendeville

Topic

Institute for Gender and the Economy

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

English

Political Science

Rotman School of Management

Statistical Sciences

Undergraduate Students

Vector Institute

By the end of the week, the ��Ƶ usually goes quiet as students take a well-earned break. But the downtown Toronto campus was bustling on Friday evening as people came to listen to U of T researchers describe their work and its impact.

About a dozen U of T experts took part in CRAM, a new one-night festival created by journalist and alumna Mary Ito to be a hybrid of Nuit Blanche and TED Talks. The festival invited the public to take a closer look at exciting research being done at U of T, OCAD University, Ryerson University and York University.

U of T held 10 lectures in the Myhal Centre for Engineering Innovation & Entrepreneurship, starting at 6 p.m. and ending before 11. Among other topics, visitors received a crash course on what the humanities can contribute to the fight against climate change, how the forces of chance affect one's life and when we can expect robots to begin taking care of us.

U of T News dropped in on several lectures throughout the night. Here's what we found:

6 p.m.

Scientists and policy-makers aren't the only ones who can help combat climate change, said Andrea Most, a professor of English, American literature and Jewish studies. “Stories matter,” she told a sold-out audience – especially those we tell about the environment. In light of alarming climate reports, Most said it's beyond time for a cultural shift that redefines people's relationship to nature.

In the not-so-distant future, intelligent robots may lead to efficiencies in health care and help look after older adults. Goldie Nejat, an associate professor of mechanical engineering, has developed humanoid robots that understand speech and body language, and are capable of assisting with tasks like preparing a plate of spaghetti.

7 p.m.

In one of the festival's most popular sessions, Patricia O'Campo, a professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, primed an audience on the social determinants of adult mental health. Precarious housing or working conditions, income inequality and other environmental factors all play a role in mental health, she said.

Faculty weren't the only ones getting their ideas across to the public at CRAM. There were also exhibits by undergraduate students on the second floor.

Sarah Kaplan, a professor at the Rotman School of Management and the director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy, said new research suggests we can make faster progress by taking a moral and social justice approach to diversity.

8 p.m.

Researchers at U of T are known the world over for their prowess in artificial intelligence. But what will an AI-driven future look like and when will it become reality? Panelists Mark Fox (left), a professor of urban systems engineering, David Wolfe, a political science professor and co-director of the Innovation Policy Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, and Peter Wittek, an assistant professor at Rotman and affiliate of the Vector Institute, debated the issues with moderator Mario Grech, co-director and co-founder of the Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab, or DCSIL. If there was any consensus, it appeared to be that the future of AI will be what we make of it. “Will we let the technology run away with itself like social media has?” asked Wolfe.

A man sitting in the front row laughs during a lighter moment in the AI panel discussion. People waited in line before the event trying to get a space at the popular talk.

9 p.m.

Jeffrey Rosenthal, a professor in the department of statistical sciences and author of bestsellers Knock on Wood and Struck by Lightning, spoke to a rapt audience about probability and the concept of luck. Sometimes, an event that appears to be a huge stroke of luck – such as the true story of strangers who met on a beach in Hawaii and turned out to be half-brothers – isn't as improbable as you might think. “I hope that attendees left with a better understanding of how to interpret random events when they encounter them,” Rosenthal told U of T News.

U of T startups at True Blue Expo take home cash prizes, receive advice from Wealthsimple co-founder

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 15:58:02 +0000

U of T startups at True Blue Expo take home cash prizes, receive advice from Wealthsimple co-founder

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 03/22/2019 - 11:58

Cutline

Catherine Chan, the founder of Honeybee Hub, a communication platform for researchers, talks about her startup during the True Blue Expo, part of U of T's Entrepreneurship Week programming (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Topic

Division of University Advancement

Entrepreneurship Hatchery

Graduate Students

Health Innovation Hub

Impact Centre

Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Subheadline

From facial fracture-mending “bone tape” to counterfeit-stymieing authentication technology, the ingenuity of ��Ƶ startups was on full display Thursday during an Entrepreneurship Week event held at the MaRS Discovery District.

Dozens of U of T entrepreneurs staffed booths in MaRS’s airy indoor concourse on College Street as part of the True Blue Expo. They spent the day fielding questions about their startups and the often challenging problems they are seeking to solve.

In the case of Nanology Labs, that includes nothing less than brain cancer. The startup took home a $25,000 first prize in the “late-stage” category of an RBC-sponsored pitch competition for its injectable MRI contrast agent built using nanotechnology.

“Current MRI contrast agents aren’t very sensitive … and they’re toxic,” co-founder and CEO Mohammad Ali Amini explained to a panel of judges.

Ali Amini, who is finishing up a PhD at U of T in pharmaceutical sciences, showed a slide that compared MRI scans of a mouse’s skull. The scan using Nanology’s nano-contrast agent spotted the brain tumour that lurked within. The scan performed with a conventional Gadolinium-based contrast agent did not.

Other startups that took home money in the RBC Prize for Innovation and Entrepreneurship included: Puremark ($10,000), which uses a software-based authentication technology to protect high-end western brands from being counterfeited in markets like China; Cohesys ($10,000), which makes a flexible “bone tape” that can be used instead of titanium plates and screws to repair facial fractures; and Sirona Onsite ($5,000), which is building a platform to deliver eye exams and other vision services to people’s homes.

The prizes were presented by U of T Chancellor Rose Patten, who called the university “a wonderful place for students to bring their research to life.”

Earlier in the day, U of T also announced the recipients of the commercialization-focused RBC Post-Doctoral & Graduate Fellowships, which spanned disciplines ranging from machine learning and advanced data analytics to security. There were a total of seven fellows this year – five graduate and two post-doctoral – the most ever awarded under the program.

Representatives from U of T startups fielded questions at the MaRS Discovery District during the True Blue Expo (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Not all of the startups on display were high-tech in nature. Diva Turial is the founder and co-ordinator of Lead with Dignity, a social impact startup that’s hoping to alleviate homelessness, mental health and other related issues in Ontario and further afield, including in Afghanistan.

How? By offering employment support and, in particular, micro-lending strategies to help people launch their own small businesses.

“I was so inspired by the Grameen Bank,” Turial said, referring the microfinance and community development organization founded in Bangladesh in the 1970s. “But we want to make [the loans] interest-free.”

Lead with Dignity is being supported by U of T’s Health Innovation Hub, or H2i, one of nine accelerators on campus. Other on-campus accelerators include the Creative Destruction Lab, Impact Centre, UTEST, The Hub (U of T Scarborough), ICUBE (U of T Mississauga), The Entrepreneurship Hatchery, Start @ UTIAS and the Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab, or DCSIL.

U of T’s expanding entrepreneurship infrastructure – a new, 14-storey U of T innovation centre will break ground this summer across the street from MaRS – has helped launch over 500 companies over the past decade, generating more than $1 billion in investment.

“The U of T entrepreneurship community is Canada's leading engine for research-based startups,” Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president of research and innovation, told attendees at one of the RBC events. “In all sectors and across our three campuses, our faculty and students are building on U of T's world-class excellence and research talent.

"They are getting their ideas into the marketplace in the form of products, services, jobs and companies that are contributing to the Ontario and Canadian economies around the world."

U of T startups will now also have even more help after the university announced Thursday the launch of a new True Blue Fund, which will provide up to $5 million in financial support.

'We're in a good place right now': Women entrepreneurs share their experiences at U of T event

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 17:41:03 +0000

'We're in a good place right now': Women entrepreneurs share their experiences at U of T event

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 03/08/2019 - 12:41

Cutline

From left to right: Pooja Viswanathan of Braze Mobility, Saara Punjani of Structura Biotechnology and Leila Keshavjee of Happy Pops (all photos by Chris Sorensen)

Chris Sorensen

Topic

Our Community

Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Impact Centre

Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy

Building a startup company is a daunting prospect – often more so if you’re a woman. But things may finally be starting to change.

That was one takeway from a panel discussion, held on the eve of International Women's Day, featuring three female founders from the ��Ƶ.

While all three panellists – Leila Keshavjee, Saara Punjani and Pooja Viswanathan – acknowledged the myriad challenges women founders still face in the business world, two of the entrepreneurs said gender had relatively little to do with the roadblocks they faced while trying to launch their companies.

“I’ve been lucky to not have the fact that I’m a woman get in my way,” said Punjani, who is the chief operations officer at Structura Biotechnology, which uses artificial intelligence to help pharmaceutical companies visualize proteins for drug discovery.

She attributed her positive experience, in part, to the support of her team, which includes Structura co-founder and CEO Ali Punjani – her brother.

Viswanathan, meantime, credited the fact she had a PhD when she started building “smart” wheelchair company Braze Mobility for helping to dull any gender discrimination she might have faced while dealing with male clients and investors.

“We're in a good place right now – we're seeing a lot of support,” said Viswanathan, citing various entrepreneurship programs at U of T and elsewhere in Ontario.

The discussion, part of the RBC Innovation & Entrepreneurship Speakers Series, drew a crowd to U of T’s ONRamp co-working and collaboration space on College Street. It was moderated by Professor Christine Allen of the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, who is involved in two startups herself.

Referring to the new ground each panellist was breaking in their respective sector, Allen called the three entrepreneurs “female pioneers.”

Pooja Viswanathan, the co-founder and CEO of Braze Mobility (far right), answers a question from the audience at ONRamp. Professor Christine Allen (far left), who is involved with two startups, moderated the discussion (photo by Chris Sorensen)

Unfortunately, it wasn’t all smooth sailing gender-wise for the panellists.

Keshavjee said she definitely felt like she was treated differently while trying to get her all-natural ice pops company Happy Pops off the ground. She even recalled dealing with a businessman who didn’t believe Happy Pops was actually her company.

With a bachelor's in kinesiology from U of T, Keshavjee said things began to change last fall after she appeared on the season premiere of the CBC program Dragon’s Den, walking away with a deal with Arlene Dickinson. But while the show helped elevate her personal brand, Keshavjee said she feels for women entrepreneurs who don’t get similar opportunities.

“Women shouldn’t have to go through that to be credible,” she said.

The bulk of the evening, however, was spent talking about the specific challenges each panellist faced while trying to turn their ideas into a money-making enterprise.

Viswanathan called the experience “terrifying” because she had no idea what to expect each morning when she woke up – a feeling she said continues to this day. Even so, Viswanathan said she is “laser-focused” on trying to solve a problem after witnessing, as an undergraduate student, residents of a long-term care facility slumped over their wheelchairs and unable to get around.

Her solution? Sensors and software that help motorized wheelchair operators navigate their environment, giving them back their freedom.

She heaped praise on the Impact Centre, one of nine on-campus entrepreneurship hubs, for helping her problem-solve a way to a viable product.

“For me, as someone with no business background, that was a home away from home,” she said.

Punjani, similarly, said Structura tapped into the vast expertise at U of T – both while trying to build a product and for getting advice on how to deal with Big Pharma customers. She said the startup received support from UTEST and the Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab, or DCSIL, and is benefitting from being based at the nexus of the Toronto’s burgeoning innovation ecosystem.

“We’ve been fortunate to work with some of the incubators and accelerators here – and through ONRamp,” she said. “That proximity really helps.”

As for Keshavjee, she also credited the Impact Centre for helping her launch Happy Pops, despite the fact that it’s not a typical, research-based university startup. “They really helped me grow the business,” she said.

That growth appears set to continue. After working with Dickinson's packaged-goods focused accelerator in Calgary, Keshavjee is now preparing to relaunch the brand this spring.

“We're projecting half a million in sales this year,” Keshavjee said. “I knew the day would come when we didn't just have a seasonal business – where it wouldn't just be a summer treat for kids."

'It's like a rolling boil': U of T's Sanja Fidler on Toronto's hot AI scene and where research is headed in 2019

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 25 Jan 2019 15:48:03 +0000

'It's like a rolling boil': U of T's Sanja Fidler on Toronto's hot AI scene and where research is headed in 2019

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 01/25/2019 - 10:48

Cutline

Sanja Fidler, an assistant professor of computer science at U of T Mississauga, discusses her computer vision research at Elevate Toronto's AI event in 2017 (photo by Chris Sorensen)

Chris Sorensen

Topic

Our Community

Deep Learning

U of T Mississauga

Vector Institute

There are few technologies in the world hotter than artificial intelligence, or AI – as evidenced by the recent NIPS (Neural Information Processing Systems) academic conference in Montreal that sold out in less than 12 minutes.

That’s faster than last year’s Burning Man festival.

At the same time, the list of big, multinational companies that are setting up AI research labs in Canada – and Toronto in particular – continues to grow. But where is all this research headed, and what do we non-AI experts need to know about it?

The ��Ƶ’s Sanja Fidler, a leading computer vision researcher and the head of NVIDIA’s research lab in Toronto, says progress in self-driving cars and certain health-care applications is moving “pretty fast.”

However, she also notes the problems AI researchers seek to solve are growing ever more complex, necessitating a more co-operative approach.

“People used to just work in computer vision or image processing, but now there’s a lot interdisciplinary work to connect these things together,” says Fidler, who is an assistant professor at U of T Mississauga’s department of mathematical and computational sciences and a faculty member at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

As for Toronto’s growth as a global hub for AI research and development, Fidler doesn’t see the trend slowing down any time soon.

“I don’t think we’ve hit a plateau – there’s just going to be more and more,” she says. “It’s like a rolling boil.”

U of T News recently caught up with Fidler to find out more about her work and her thoughts on where AI is headed in 2019.

Where do you see AI research headed over the next 12 months – what are the trends you’re keeping an eye on?

Things move very quickly, so it can be hard to predict. But one of the trends I witnessed over the past year, and that I think will grow even stronger, has to do with the crossover of different fields. People used to just work in computer vision or image processing, but now there’s a lot interdisciplinary work to connect these things together. There’s crossover between vision, IP, graphics and even program synthesis. So now you’re connecting all these very different fields. But they’re all linked with machine learning and deep learning in particular. As a result, I think you’re going to see some nice advances.

I think we’re also going to see more progress in certain application domains. Self-driving cars and health care are both important applications, and areas where progress is moving pretty fast. People are also going to start looking more into the idea of fairness – meaning the fairness of machine learning models and the issue of training on biased datasets.

In my domain, people have started looking into embodied agents – so not just an algorithm that only sees images, but one that exploits the fact that it’s an agent that performs actions in the world. Vision is just one of the inputs that helps it function in an environment and make predictions about various tasks. There’s actually been a lot of work in designing simulations where you can train these embodied agents – so I think this will be a new big thing, where people make more sophisticated simulators and train more sophisticated algorithms.

What’s an embodied agent?

It’s basically a robot that goes around and is actually tasked to do something. Typically, the way computer vision works is you have an image and you want to segment different objects because someone has decided this is an important task – for example, this is a car, this is something else and so on. But what we want to do in robotics is design a robot that can actually do something in the environment. So, for example, make coffee, watch TV or something along these lines. But that takes things much further because we might not know the task that will need to be completed.

So what are the things we need to learn from each sensory input? It could be vision. It could be sound. What is necessary to enable these robots to perform these tasks? It links all these fields and adds control – how to move in this environment. A lot of computer vision people have started working in simulated environments where you use vision as a sort of auxiliary task needed to solve a more complex problem. This is key. As humans, we all get different sensory inputs and different modalities can help each other. For example, a motorbike’s sound might be more distinct and easier to recognize than the shape of a motorbike. The interactions between different modalities and fields can stitch together nicely. I think a lot of people are exploring this.

When it comes to your own work, what are you most excited about?

I’m actually looking into these embodied agents – including in a simulated environment for household activities. That’s one of our bigger pushes. Most of our current simulators had navigation tasks: Can you have robot walk from a room to a TV or some other location in the environment? But what we want to do is really teach robots to do more high-level activities. So, for example, making coffee, cooking, throwing a party – something that requires more high-level planning. We’ve put quite a few resources into this. It’s been our project for the past two years. We designed this simulator for crowdsourcing information about tasks that people do in the home, and then converted that into robot language – language that a robot could understand. We then make that into a learning platform to teach robots how to do that.

How close are we getting to the point where some of these AI technologies are used outside the lab?

Some applications are certainly using the technology already. For example, there are already commercial systems for music recognition that can do it much better than humans. On your phone, Google recently released a tool that blurs the background of a photo – that’s all based around deep learning algorithms. So some applications are already there. But if you look at more complicated applications like self-driving cars, drones or general robotics – that’s still further down the road. In general, these are difficult problems that will take some time to solve.

It’s been about six months since you joined the NVIDIA research lab in Toronto. How has that impacted your research?

I really love it there. NVIDIA is a leader in GPU [graphics processing unit] technology that’s powering all the current deep-learning efforts. But it’s really invested in the importance of AI and research. I don’t know if you saw, but [NVIDIA co-founder and CEO] Jensen Huang actually came to Toronto to open the lab.

I listened to his talk.

He’s a really smart guy. With his understanding of research and the importance of AI, it’s very nice for us to work there. The research is very open. They allow me to work on a lot of different things – and everything can become important internally because there’s so many diverse interests inside of NVIDIA and so many different application domains. NVIDIA has great technology for graphics, self-driving, robotics – to name just a few examples. This kind of diverse interest really suits me because I like to work on different things. It’s also great to know that, whatever we work on, it’s potentially important down the line for products. It’s very fast-paced, which I love as well. At the same time, speaking as an academic, I like having more clarity on problems. Having that clarity has made me a better researcher, I think.

Are there any particular problems you’ve encountered at NVIDIA that you hadn’t considered before, or that have opened up new avenues for your research?

The things that I’m doing which are a little bit different, and where I think I can make a big impact inside the company, has more to do with content creation. For example: scaling up simulations that might be used for graphics or gaming. There’s a lot of internal teams working on stuff like that, but I want to contribute with some AI tools. This is really not something I would be able to do at a university because I wouldn’t have the resources. So this is something I wasn’t expecting, but that I found really interesting and wanted to work on. It's very open. I just adapt my research to what’s going on.

What’s your sense of how the AI research ecosystem is developing in Toronto? It seems like every few months there’s an announcement about a company opening a lab here.

I think it’s so exciting. Finally, the world is seeing the incredible potential we have here in Toronto. U of T is basically a pioneer in deep learning – we have Geoff Hinton and there’s so many renowned faculty working on various AI fields, particularly machine learning and deep learning. Now, with the Vector Institute, there’s so many students who are working on this field, too, so I think the local talent and expertise is incredible. There’s always seminars trying to connect industry with academia, incubators like CDL [Creative Destruction Lab] and the Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab [DCSIL] that can help you if want to take that technology and turn it into a startup. There’s a lot of support for that.
I think the big companies see that talent and want to be part of it. I really think Toronto is going to be the next Silicon Valley.

Do you see that trend continuing for the foreseeable future?

Yes. I’ve seen the hiring at NVIDIA as well – so I’ve seen both sides. I think the interest is increasing. I don’t think we’ve hit a plateau – there’s just going to be more and more. It’s like a rolling boil. Some companies open labs and then more companies want to come. And then when all that takes off, more talent is going want to come to Canada to work here because there’s so many different opportunities.

What do you wish people better understood about what you and your colleagues do?

I think everyone now realizes the potential of AI. You can see that with the media attention – it’s just increasing. Conference attendances are going crazy. So everyone understands the importance. But I still think maybe its still a bit over-hyped in the sense that many people think deep learning is a solution to all their problems. But to get that final performance to really solve a problem – the technology is not there yet. There’s so many different things that one needs to solve: the data collection, the robotic platforms, if you’re doing something like that. Most of it is just so complex. Thinking it’s all going to be solved overnight is just hype. People need to realize the technology isn’t ready yet and won’t be ready tomorrow. There’s definitely amazing potential, but it’s going to take time.

U of T startup helps hospitals capitalize on their data, prepare for an AI future

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 13 Mar 2018 15:20:31 +0000

U of T startup helps hospitals capitalize on their data, prepare for an AI future

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 03/13/2018 - 11:20

Cutline

Daniel Zhang and Carolina Gomes are building a startup at U of T that helps hospitals overcome "data silos" so they can realize the full potential of information collected from patients (photo by Chris Sorensen)

Chris Sorensen

Topic

Alumni

Entrepreneneurship

Graduate Students

Health