Brian Tran

Canadian Academy of Health Sciences names eight U of T researchers as fellows

noreen.rasbach — Fri, 14 Sep 2018 14:41:24 +0000

Canadian Academy of Health Sciences names eight U of T researchers as fellows

noreen.rasbach Fri, 09/14/2018 - 10:41

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Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering Professor Michael Carter's election to the academy is an acknowledgment of his leadership in improving health-care delivery in Toronto for more than 30 years (photo by Brian Tran)

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Eight researchers at the ��Ƶ have been named fellows of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences – one of the highest honours for the country’s health sciences community.

The academy brings together Canada’s leading health scientists and scholars to address critical health challenges facing Canadians. The fellows are recognized for their leadership, creativity and commitment to advancing academic health science and are drawn from a wide range of fields, from fundamental science to social science and population health.

“The ��Ƶ is proud of these eight scholars, all of whom have achieved national and international peer recognition for their meaningful contributions to the health sciences," says Vivek Goel, vice-president of research and innovation.

“Their internationally recognized leadership and their election to the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences reflect the university's strength in these fields that helps place it as one of the top research universities in the world.”

“This is a real privilege,” says Michael Glogauer (pictured left), a professor in the Faculty of Dentistry and one of the eight elected to the academy. “Being a clinician-scientist is the best job in the world. There is creativity and problem-solving involved and we get to work toward answering important questions.”

Glogauer is a leader in oral innate immunity in health and disease. As a dental clinician scientist, he focuses on understanding the impact of oral diseases on general health. He says his election into the academy will afford him the opportunity to demonstrate how important funding is to the work of dental clinician scientists – and to the lives of Canadians.

“The oral cavity is connected to the rest of the body where health problems can be initially detected by dentists," he says. "For example, diabetes often presents with an infection in the mouth. With improved communication between the dentist and the rest of the health-care team, we can potentially carry out earlier detection of new cases of diabetes, improve patient health, and reduce costs to the health-care system.”

Smarter cancer treatment: AI tool cuts time of developing radiation therapy plans from days to hours

noreen.rasbach — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 14:41:22 +0000

Smarter cancer treatment: AI tool cuts time of developing radiation therapy plans from days to hours

noreen.rasbach Wed, 08/01/2018 - 10:41

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“There have been other AI optimization engines that have been developed," says Aaron Babier. "The idea behind ours is that it more closely mimics the current clinical best practice” (photo by Brian Tran)

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Beating cancer is a race against time. Developing radiation therapy plans – individualized maps that help doctors determine where to blast tumours – can take days. Aaron Babier wants to change that by developing automation software that cuts the time down to mere hours.

Babier, a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, along with PhD candidate Justin Boutilier, supervisor Timothy Chan, an associate professor in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering, and Andrea McNiven, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Medicine, are looking at radiation therapy design as an intricate – but solvable – optimization problem.

Their software uses artificial intelligence, or AI, to mine historical radiation therapy data. This information is then applied to an optimization engine to develop treatment plans. The researchers applied this software tool in their study of 217 patients with throat cancer, who also received treatments developed using conventional methods.

The therapies generated by Babier’s AI achieved comparable results to patients’ conventionally planned treatments – and did so within 20 minutes. The researchers recently published their findings in Medical Physics.

“There have been other AI optimization engines that have been developed," says Babier. "The idea behind ours is that it more closely mimics the current clinical best practice.”

If AI can relieve clinicians of the optimization challenge of developing treatments, more resources are available to improve patient care and outcomes in other ways. Health-care professionals can divert their energy to increasing patient comfort and easing distress.

“Right now treatment planners have this big time sink," says Babier. "If we can intelligently burn this time sink, they’ll be able to focus on other aspects of treatment. The idea of having automation and streamlining jobs will help make health-care costs more efficient. I think it’ll really help to ensure high-quality care."

Babier and his team believe that with further development and validation, health-care professionals can someday use the tool in the clinic. They maintain, however, that while the AI may give treatment planners a brilliant head start in helping patients, it doesn’t make the trained human mind obsolete. Once the software has created a treatment plan, it would still need to be reviewed and further customized by a radiation physicist, which could take up to a few hours.

“It is very much like automating the design process of a custom-made suit,” explains Chan. “The tailor must first construct the suit based on the customer’s measurements, then alter the suit here and there to achieve the best fit. Our tool goes through a similar process to construct the most effective radiation plan for each patient.”

Read the research in Medical Physics

Trained doctors, and often specialists, are still necessary to fine-tune treatments at a more granular level and to perform quality checks. These roles, he says, remain outside the domain of machines.

For Babier, his research on cancer treatment isn’t just an optimization challenge.

“When I was 12 years old, my stepmom passed away from a brain tumour,” he says. “I think it’s something that’s always been at the back of my head. I know what I want to do, and that’s to improve cancer treatment.

"I have a family connection to it."

This research was supported in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

David Miller: What students need to be leaders

sgupta — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 10:44:25 +0000

David Miller: What students need to be leaders sgupta Mon, 03/17/2014 - 06:44

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Former Toronto mayor David Miller chats with students at the ILead event (photo by Fang Su)

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Know your values and defend them, former mayor says

When asked to talk about the qualities of leadership, perhaps it’s not surprising that a man who's been mayor of Toronto, a litigation lawyer and CEO of World Wildlife Fund-Canada would focus on the importance of strength.

But during his recent visit to the ��Ƶ David Miller shared a personal example of the strength that inspired him: the mother who raised him on her own before dying of cancer.

“She was incredibly brave and never complained,” Miller told students at the Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering (ILead) event. “I drew from her amazing strength when she was sick.”

Miller told students his mother’s influence helped him endure fierce opposition during his political career and stay rooted to his values. And he encouraged them to call on their own “inner reserves of strength” in times of need.

Urging students to have a greater voice in the non-profit and political worlds, Miller also called on them to be creative in their approach to problem solving, especially when tackling problems concerning environmental and urban sustainability. And he had specific advice for U of T’s many engineering students.

“So many of our environmental challenges are actually about waste,” Miller said. “Engineers are great at finding innovative solutions to reduce waste. The profession has a huge amount to offer the world.”

Acknowledging that students of engineering study the strength and endurance of systems, rather than of individual people, Miller reminded them that awareness and sensitivity to human systems were essential to many great feats of science and technology. And the very human skills of listening and the ability to articulate a clear and compelling vision are essential to success, the former mayor said.

"Those are the very skills that ILead teaches students through its leadership courses, certificate programs and workshops," said Annie Simpson, assistant director of ILead.

One student at the engagement took up Miller’s challenge to reflect on her values and determine which ones she would stand behind in the face of adversity:

“We engineers have the skills to make things happen, but we really need to develop our perseverance and focus during our educational journey,” said first-year student Bella Zhang, adding she was deeply inspired by Miller’s talk.

“Have we questioned what our core values are in our lives and where we should contribute our intelligence?”

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Brian Tran

Canadian Academy of Health Sciences names eight U of T researchers as fellows

Read more about Michael Glogauer

Read more about Michael Carter

Smarter cancer treatment: AI tool cuts time of developing radiation therapy plans from days to hours

Read the research in Medical Physics

David Miller: What students need to be leaders