Department Calendar of Events

Jay G. Slowik

Research Scientist, Laboratory of Atmospheric Chemistry
Paul Scherrer Institute Switzerland

Mass spectrometry is a powerful tool for the analysis of aerosol composition. However, tradeoffs typically exist between the loss of chemical information due to thermal decomposition and/or ionization-induced fragmentation on the one hand, and lower time resolution and/or separated collection/analysis stages on the other. We address these issues through the development of an extractive electrospray ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometer (EESI-TOF), which provides online, highly time-resolved measurements of aerosol composition without significant decomposition or fragmentation. Further, the EESI-TOF provides a versatile sampling/ionization framework, as by simply changing the composition of the primary spray and mass spectrometer polarity, the instrument can be configured to optimize detection of different organic fractions or water-soluble metals, while the sampling inlet can be configured to allow separate detection of the gas and particle phase. Two applications of the EESI-TOF are presented. First, we demonstrate rapid intra-particle decomposition reactions in secondary organic aerosol generated from the dark ozonolysis of α-pinene, as well as further reaction on the exposure of the aerosol to visible light. Second, we explore the sources and processes governing SOA composition in complex urban environments.

Low-Carbon Renewable Materials Center (LCRMC) Impact Series

Seeram Ramakrishna, FREng
National University of Singapore

Over the past several decades, humans have perfected technology to make
synthetic polymers. Thousands of varieties have been created with a range
of properties needed for diverse applications and mass production. The
resultant creation of cheap and ubiquitous plastic, however, has fostered a
throw away culture that is contributing to an unsustainable global build-up
of solid waste. Less than twenty percent of plastic waste worldwide is recycled
– with a significant portion being incinerated. One-third of plastic
waste ends up in nature, accounting for 100 million tons of plastic waste in
2016. According to WWF, at present rates, the ocean will contain one ton of
plastic for every three tons of fish by 2025 – and through the food chain,
humans are at risk of ingesting up to 5 grams of micro-plastics and
nano-plastics a week. Policy makers and the public are emphasizing the
need to reduce consumption of single-use plastics and set hard targets for
recycling of plastics by companies and municipalities – a processes requiring
improved digital tracking and methods of sorting. Companies are considering
redesigning products with single plastic material systems so as to facilitate
higher recycling rates, including the increased use of bio-plastics and
natural polymers. Meanwhile, researchers continue synthesizing new
plastics to improve reprocessing and biodegradablility whilst still oering
desirable functional properties. Such developments are essential for establishing
national zero-waste/circular economies.

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Professor Seeram Ramakrishna, FREng is the Chair of Circular Economy
Taskforce at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is a member of
Enterprise Singapore NMC on ISO/TC323 on Circular Economy. He is an
advisor to the Singapore National Environmental Agency’s and a member
of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Committee on Future of Production-
Sustainability. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Springer NATURE Journal
Materials Circular. He is an editorial board member of NATURE Scientic
Reports. He received a PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK; and the
TGMP from the Harvard University, USA. He is named among the World’s
Most Inuential Minds and the Top 1% Highly Cited Researchers in Materials
Science by Thomson Reuters and Clarivate Analytics. His research interests
include innovations in sustainable materials and evaluation of circularity
of materials via life cycle assessment. In his lecture Materials for Engineers,
he teaches eco-design and life cycle engineering.

Dr. Helen Tran
Stanford University

Electronics that can be stretched like human skin and feature skin-inspired functionalities are opening doors for remarkable opportunities in health and environmental monitoring, next-generation consumer products, and sustainability. Notably, degradability is an attractive attribute for applications on dynamic surfaces where manual recovery would be prohibitively difficult and expensive. For example, fully biodegradable electronics promise to accelerate the integration of electronics with health by obviating the need for costly device recovery surgeries that also significantly increase infection risk. Moreover, the environmentally critical problem of discarded electronic waste would be relieved. A key component of such electronics is the development of a stretchable and degradable transistor with electrical performance independent of large mechanical stress. While numerous biodegradable insulators have been demonstrated as suitable device substrates and dielectrics for stretchable electronics, imparting biodegradability to electronically conducting and semiconducting materials for stretchable electronics presents a particular challenge due to the inherent resistance of most conductive chemistries to hydrolytic cleavage.  Herein, we decouple the design of stretchability and transience by harmonizing polymer physics principles and molecular design in order to demonstrate for the first time a material that simultaneously possesses three disparate attributes: semiconductivity, intrinsic stretchability, and full degradability. We show that we can design acid-labile semiconducting polymers to appropriately phase segregate within a biodegradable elastomer, yielding semiconducting nanofibers which concurrently enable controlled transience and strain-independent transistor mobilities. This fully degradable semiconductor represents a promising advance towards developing multifunctional materials for skin-inspired electronic devices that can address previously inaccessible challenges and in turn create new technologies.

Professor Jim Field
College of Engineering,
University of Arizona, USA 

Anthropogenic nitro-organic compounds enter the environment through their use as explosives, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, solid fuels and fragrances. The aim of this project is to study the environmental fate of two new insensitive munitions constituents being deployed as new chemistries to reduce the incidences of accidental explosions. One of these is a heterocyclic, 3-nitro-1,2,4-triazol-5-one (NTO), and the other is an aromatic compound,2,4-dintroanisole (DNAN). In microbial cultures derived from soil, NTO is first reduced to 3-amino-1,2,4-triazol-5-one (ATO) and subsequently oxidized to benign mineral products (NH₄⁺, N₂ and CO₂) by a consortium of 7 bacteria. DNAN is rapidly reduced to its amino counterpart, 2,4-diaminioanisole (DAAN). DAAN then becomes irreversibly covalently incorporated into natural organic matter (NOM) via rapid Michael addition reactions with quinone moieties in the NOM.

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Dr. Jim A. Field is a Full Professor of Environmental Engineering and Assistant Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Arizona. He received his PhD in environmental technology at Wageningen University (The Netherlands). Dr. Field conducts research on the biodegradation and biotransformation of environmental contaminants of concern. Dr. Field has published 275 peer-reviewed journal and has a Google Scholar H-index of 75 with 18,000 citations.

Christopher Y. Lim
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Chemistry
University of Toronto

The chemistry of organic aerosol (OA) and indoor films is immensely complex due to the vast number of organic compounds present in the air and on surfaces and their complex reaction pathways. Laboratory experiments have generally focused on the initial formation of OA from volatile organic compounds (VOCs), but have neglected processes that can change the composition and loading of organics over longer timescales (“aging”). This seminar will describe several laboratory studies that better constrain the effects of heterogeneous oxidation, the reaction of gas-phase radicals with organic molecules in the condensed phase, both outdoors and indoors. First, the effect of particle morphology on the rate of heterogeneous oxidation is examined by comparing the hydroxyl radical (OH) oxidation of particles with thin organic coatings to pure organic particles. Results show that morphology can have a strong impact on oxidation kinetics and that particles with high organic surface area to volume ratios can be rapidly oxidized. Second, the molecular products from the heterogeneous OH oxidation of model organic particles are measured. Significant concentrations of oxygenated VOCs are observed in the gas phase indicating the importance of fragmentation reactions that break carbon-carbon bonds and decrease OA mass. Finally, the effect of aging on organic films indoors is examined by measuring the heterogeneous ozonolysis products of lingering cigarette smoke on surfaces (thirdhand smoke). Small, gas-phase acids are found to be significantly enhanced when the surfaces are exposed to ozone. The results from this work emphasize that aging of organic particles and films can significantly alter their composition and lead to the volatilization of gas-phase products.

The CREATE for BioZone program invites you to a Workshop on Open Science focusing on Open Publishing and Data Sharing.

One of the goals of the BioZone CREATE is to accelerate the rate of innovation through the promotion of Open Science principles. Broadening access to scientific publications and data is at the heart of open science. This ensures that research outputs are in the hands of as many as possible, and potential benefits are widely distributed. The benefits of Open Science include accelerated scientific enquiry and discovery, more accurate verification of scientific results, and reduced duplication of scientific research.

At this workshop, you will learn about open publishing, pre-print servers & data sharing, FAIR principles, Creative Commons, open science policies in government and open laboratory notebooks.

Invited Speakers

– Prof. Elizabeth Edwards, University of Toronto

– Dr. Masha Cemma, Policy Advisor at the Office of Canada’s Chief Science Advisor

– Prof. Alan Aspuru-Guzik, University of Toronto

– Demitra Ellina, Editorial Community Manager, F1000

– Prof. Hannes Rost, University of Toronto

– Gryph Theriault-Loubier, Creative Commons – Canada Chapter Lead

– Mandeep Mann, Expert on Open Laboratory Notebooks

All students, PDFs, RAs and PIs interested in open science are encouraged to register and attend.

The CREATE for BioZone training program will provide students with the skills needed to lead Canada’s transition to a sustainable circular bioeconomy. Training focuses on Data Fluency, Open Science & Innovation, and Leadership & Communication.

https://www.biozone.utoronto.ca/biozonecreate/

The term “nanotechnology” often elicits images of advanced materials, nanoelectronics, medical devices, and powerful imaging tools – a spectrum of complex, high value technologies developed for demanding conditions. Professor Gu heads an interdisciplinary research group that combines chemical engineering principles and nanotechnology to tailor the material design for life sciences and environmental remediation applications. The seminar will also introduce several major activities in our lab for therapeutics and pathogen sensing applications through the use of metallic nanoparticles to generate a “fingerprint”-like interactions with biological structures. This seminar will also showcase our recent development of advanced nanocomposites for photocatalytic treatment of persistent organic water pollutants.

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Frank Gu is an NSERC Senior Industrial Research Chair Professor in Nanotechnology Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry at the University of Toronto. Prior to joining the University of Toronto in July 2018, Dr. Gu was an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Dr. Gu received his Ph.D. from Queen’s University, Canada, where he majored in chemical engineering. Following completion of his graduate program, he pursued postdoctoral research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Gu has established a frontier research program in Nanotechnology Engineering, with important advances in medical and life science applications. Leading-edge projects have produced new materials and tools for targeted drug delivery, rapid pathogen detection, and passive water treatment. His research has had tangible impacts on his field and industry, including mucoadhesive nanoparticles for the treatment of Dry Eye Disease that has led to the creation of MyX Therapeutics, and photocatalytic water treatment technologies that are the core technology of H2nanO Inc, both are Canadian companies. Dr. Gu has authored and co-authored more than 200 journal and conference publications, as well as 25 U.S. and World patents and applications.

Click here for more information on Lectures of the Leading Edge 2019-2020

The Institute for Sustainable Energy at the University of Toronto invites you to attend its Annual Sustainable Energy Research Symposium. The symposium will feature presentations by sustainable energy thought leaders from Hatch, Ontario Power Generation, and eCamion, as well as U of T faculty members. Poster presentations by the 2019 recipients of the Hatch Graduate Scholarship for Sustainable Energy Research will also be featured.

Eventbrite password: “JoshTaylor”

Host: Yuri Lawryshyn

With the effects of climate change upon us, our global community is focused on the transition to a lower carbon economy as a means of minimizing further climate impacts. The financial sector, as part of the global community, can be leveraged to promote sustainable economic growth. Although finance is not going to solve climate change alone, it has a critical role to play in supporting the real economy through the transition. The emerging field of ‘sustainable finance’ is focused on channelling financial sector expertise, ingenuity and influence towards the challenges and opportunities posed by climate change. This talk will focus on the role that banks, and their multiple business segments, are playing in identifying, assessing, and managing the risks of climate change, and supporting the transition to a low carbon economy.

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Nicole Vadori is AVP and Head of Environment, TD Bank Group. She leads TD’s environmental strategy to deliver on the bank’s vision of creating a sustainable tomorrow so that people and economies can thrive. Leading a team of environmental finance and risk professionals, her mission is to drive positive business results for the bank while increasing the quality of the environment. TD’s environmental efforts include managing environmental and climate risk for the bank and the bank’s business activities, pursuing sustainable finance opportunities to support low carbon economic growth, and building community resilience through philanthropy and strategic investments in green spaces and natural areas. She is a proponent of innovative business solutions to support the planet and profits, and has been a key player in TD’s environmental accomplishments, including the formalization of TD’s Green Bond Program, the development of TD’s $100 billion target towards the low carbon economy by 2030, and the consideration of climate-related risk within TD’s key business segments.

Prior to TD, she was an engineering consultant working across industries and geographies to reduce environmental impacts and advise on climate change. Nicole holds a Bachelors in Chemical Engineering from the University of Toronto, and a Masters in Business Administration from Wilfrid Laurier University.

Click here for more information on Lectures of the Leading Edge 2019-2020