This special event will be featured as part of the Skule Lunch & Learn Series and will showcase the innovative and progressive research currently underway at the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. With professors from different departments sharing their expertise and research, this event will be an exciting display of the diversity of research in U of T Engineering today.

Special Guest Moderator: Dean Chris Yip

Upcycling CO2: Achieving energy storage and addressing persistent emissions with renewable electricity

Professor David Sinton (MIE)

Net zero carbon by 2050 is a goal shared by Canada and much of the world.  Achieving this goal will require massive expansion of renewable electricity generation, and addressing the combined challenge of energy storage and persistent CO2 emissions. Persistent emissions include those from aviation and heavy industries that are challenging to decarbonize, such as steel and cement. I'll outline our recent work motivated by these challenges - electrocatalytic upgrading of CO2 into renewable fuels, such as ethanol, and chemical feedstocks, such as ethylene. I will also outline our vision for the energy transition lab, and a new campus wide research initiative, Climate Positive Energy.

Supporting Student Success: Increasing Access to Inclusive Global Research Experiences

Professor Elham Marzi (ISTEP)

Engineering students require global competencies to help prepare them to work in an increasingly culturally diverse, complex, and interconnected global economy. With some colleagues I have established the International Virtual Engineering Student Teams Initiative (InVEST), through our research and programing we are working to increase access to global experience that allow students to enhance international awareness and cultural sensitivities of undergraduate and graduate engineering students at the University of Toronto and various partner Universities across the world. At InVEST we study Engineering Education in practice, and facilitate virtual-teams comprised students from multiple countries, faculty and engineering firms as they work on projects related to the Sustainable Development Goals.  We blend intercultural content with international projects to help students develop these critical 21^st Century competencies.

Pi in the Sky: Drone-delivered defibrillators for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest

Professor Timothy Chan (ISTEP)

This talk presents several research projects related to optimizing drone delivery of defibrillators to out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) victims. The projects include optimizing the design of a drone network to reduce response time to OHCAs in Ontario, using machine learning to ensure drones are dispatched and prioritized for cases where they are most likely to beat an ambulance, and feasibility studies of actual drone flights to deliver defibrillators.