Department Calendar of Events

The Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry is excited to host the 4th annual ChemE Graduate Research Exhibition.

This virtual poster exhibition features cutting edge graduate research in Energy, Environment, and Health presented in the unique and interactive Gather.town platform where you will have the opportunity to interact directly with students, alumni, faculty, and staff and to learn more about the incredible research taking place throughout the Department.

Register: https://forms.office.com/r/He4Mr0hZ0g

Link and instructions will be email prior to the event.

Presented by Trinity Centre for Biomedical Engineering & University of Toronto

Featuring:

Caroline Curtin, Assistant Professor, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Biomaterial Scaffolds as Gene Activated Platforms for Tissue Engineering & 3D Tumour Models for Cancer Research

Warren Chan, Professor, University of Toronto
A Framework to Engineer Nanoparticle Delivery Systems for In Vivo Targeting

David Hoey, Associate Professor, Trinity College Dublin
Mechano-biologically Inspired Therapeutics and Materials for Bone Regeneration

Penney Gilbert, Associate Professor, University of Toronto
3D Human Skeletal Muscle Microtissues to Assess Function in a Dish

Michael Monaghan, Assistant Professor, Trinity College Dublin Electroconductive Biomaterial Patches and Scaffolds to Match the Mechanical Anisotropy of Organ specific Tissues

Milica Radisic, Professor University of Toronto
Advances in Organ on a Chip Engineering

Hosted by Molly Shoichet and Michael Monaghan

Alán Aspuru-Guzik, Professor, Depts. of Chemistry and Computer Science, University of Toronto

In this colloquium level talk, I will overview my research group’s activities in the area of self-driving laboratories. These labs combine artificial intelligence, automation, and chemical experiments with the aim of reducing time-to-discovery. The applications that I will overview briefly will be in the area of generative AI models for drug discovery, self-driving laboratories for organic light-emitting and lasing materials, as well as the process optimization and scaleup processes for pharmaceuticals as concrete examples of what self-driving labs are all about. I will also discuss more futuristic areas of research which involve the development of computer vision systems for automated laboratories and robotic arms for carrying out complex chemical experiments in a more autonomous fashion.
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Alán Aspuru-Guzik is a professor of Chemistry and Computer Science at the University of Toronto and is also the Canada 150 Research Chair in Theoretical Chemistry and a Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute. He is a CIFAR Lebovic Fellow in the Biologically Inspired Solar Energy program. Alán also holds an Google Industrial Research Chair in Quantum Computing. Alán is the director of the Acceleration Consortium, a University of Toronto-based strategic initiative that aims to gather researchers from industry, government and academia around pre-competitive research topics related to the lab of the future.

CONGRATULATIONS GRADUATES!

The University of Toronto will host a virtual ceremony to celebrate our graduates on:

Wednesday, June 23, 2021 at 12:00 p.m. ET

The University of Toronto is pleased to announce the date of our Spring 2021 virtual convocation ceremony. We understand the importance of celebrating your remarkable achievements and hard work in reaching this significant milestone, even at a time when our traditional convocation ceremonies are not possible because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In place of in-person ceremonies, the University is planning to host a virtual Convocation ceremony in which the Chancellor will officially confer degrees on members of the June 2021 graduating class. After the virtual ceremony, diplomas will be couriered (for free) to our graduates over the course of the following weeks. Please allow some flexibility with this schedule, particularly under these difficult circumstances.

Once the public health situation stabilizes and it is possible to gather safely again, individual academic divisions will be able to plan in-person graduation celebrations to honour our graduates, and their families and friends.

9:35 AM

Louise Moyle
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto
A mechanobiology-based approach to muscle stem cell repair

Olwyn Mahon
Postdoctoral Fellow, Trinity College Dublin | University Limerick
Interplay between immune cells and tissue specific microenvironmental components: Immunomodulatory scaffolds for tissue repair and regeneration

10:50 AM

Muhammad Rizwan
Research Associate, University of Toronto
Synthetic Notch activating hydrogel induces liver biliary cells differentiation and morphogenesis

Tom Hodgkinson
Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Osteochondral cell regeneration strategies through mechanobiology and biomaterial-controlled siRNA delivery

11:50 AM

Eimear Dolan
Royal Society-Science Foundation, Ireland (SFI) University Research Fellow National University of Ireland Galway
Dynamic devices to improve therapy delivery

Qinghua Wu
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto
High-throughput heart-on-achip platform for studies of SARS-CoV-2 induced myocardial injury

Increasing concern over fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has led to growing interest in the use of biomass (i.e., plant material and organic waste) for both energy and materials. Around the world, government programs primarily incentivize use of biofuels in the transportation sector. In contrast, few policy drivers exist to encourage the use of biomass for the production of chemicals, an industry which is currently among the largest users of fossil fuel and which is responsible for approximately 7% of global GHG emissions.

To guide efficient resource use, this talk explores certain tradeoffs in the use of biomass for GHG mitigation in a U.S./North American context. In particular, this research addresses key questions, such as 1) are greater GHG reductions achieved when using bio-ethanol as a transportation fuel, or as a chemical feedstock? 2) within the plastics sector, are greater GHG emission reductions achieved by switching to bio-based plastics, or more simply by producing conventional plastics with renewable energy? This talk will also discuss recent work showing 3) how economic/market response can substantially undermine or reverse the GHG benefits from biofuel policies. The results of these studies shed light on the uncertainty present in the life-cycle GHG emissions from bio-based products, and make concrete recommendations to set priorities in the use of biomass for GHG mitigation.
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Professor Daniel Posen is an Assistant Professor in Civil & Mineral Engineering at the University of Toronto. He holds a dual PhD in Engineering & Public Policy and Civil & Environmental Engineering (Carnegie Mellon University, 2016), a Master of Science in Economics (London School of Economics, 2012), a Master of Research in Green Chemistry (Imperial College London, 2010) and a BA in Chemistry (Princeton University, 2009). Dr. Posen’s research uses a mix of technical and economic modeling to supply quantitative, system-level analysis to support of environmental decision making. His expertise spans a range of areas including life cycle assessment and life cycle thinking; setting priorities for greenhouse gas mitigation; evaluating biofuels, bio-based materials & other uses for biomass; electric vehicles and transportation fuels; modeling of fossil fuel and energy markets; public policy & decision support models; and quantifying uncertainty and risk in environmental systems & environmental policy.

Zoom Meeting Details
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Meeting ID: 839 7592 7179
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Dr. Chang Liu
Research Scientist,
SCIEX

We describe an innovative Acoustic Ejection Mass Spectrometry (AEMS) platform resulting from the novel integration of acoustic droplet ejection (ADE) technology, an open-port interface (OPI), and electrospray ionization (ESI) MS that creates a transformative system enabling high-speed sampling and label-free analysis. The ADE technology delivers nanoliter droplets in a touchless manner with high speed, precision and accuracy; subsequent sample dilution within the OPI, in concert with the capabilities of modern ESI-MS, eliminates the laborious sample preparation and method development required in current approaches. This AEMS platform is applied to a variety of workflows, including high-throughput (HT) pharmacology screening, label-free in situ enzyme kinetics, in vitro and in vivo adsorption, distribution, metabolism, elimination, pharmacokinetic (PK) and biomarker analysis, compound QC, HT parallel medicinal chemistry, and synthetic biology. The system principles and representative applications of AEMS technology will be discussed in this talk.

 Dr. Chang Liu earned his B.Sc. in Chemistry from Peking University, China, and his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of British Columbia, Canada. Chang joined SCIEX in 2013 as a scientist where he has been working on the front-end sample preparation and sample introduction technologies, and their applications in high-throughput drug discovery. Dr. Liu has published more than 30 papers and was the organizer of the High-throughput MS session for Pittcon. He was the recipient of Danaher Excellence in Innovation Award, CSC Ryan-Harris Award, and ACS Analytical Chemistry Graduate Fellowship.

Hosted by Professor Krishna Mahadevan

Dr. Syeda Tasneem Towhid, Post-Doctoral Fellow
Department of Civil Engineering, University of Ottawa

The emergence and circulation of SARS-CoV-2 in a population could be detected through surveying the municipal wastewater. This project presents the outcomes of the wastewater surveillance from Ottawa City, selected neighborhoods of Ottawa City and the University of Ottawa. Quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) was done targeting the N1 and N2 genes in the SARS-CoV-2 genome and the SARS-CoV-2 titre was normalized with reference to Pepper Mild Mottle Virus (PMMoV), the endogenous indicator of fecal discharge in sewage.

During the span of this project (April 2020-till date), we have been able to track the increase of the SARS-CoV-2 titre in the wastewater 48 hours before the reporting of the clinical cases and 96 hours before hospitalization from the community.   We have also been able to track the 2nd and 3rd wave from May 2020 to May 2021. We could detect the ɑ-variants from Ottawa municipal sewage since February, 2021 and determine the allelic frequencies of N1, D3 and D3L in wastewater. The sudden increases in wastewater titers around national holidays and festivals indicated periods of susceptibility for SARS-CoV-2 transmission in the communities. To sum it up, wastewater-based surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 is an early detection system that indicates the burden of COVID-19 in the population from both symptomatic and asymptomatic people.

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Syeda Tasneem Towhid finished her Master of Science in Microbiology from University of Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2007 and obtained PhD from Eberhard Karls Universitaet Tuebingen, Germany in 2013 in clinical biology. She was employed as a surveillance officer during the avian influenza epidemic in Bangladesh in 2013 under projects conducted by the International Center of Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh. She joined as an assistant professor of Microbiology in Jagannath University, Dhaka, were her team reported the burden of critical drug-resistant bacteria from people with long-term hospitalization. She joined Prof. Robert Delatolla’s group in the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Ottawa in January, 2021, to assay the wastewater titer from First Nations and Vulnerable Communities from Ottawa City. She is also involved in community engagements and discussions to explain the importance of wastewater-based surveillances in controlling epidemics.

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Join Zoom Meeting
https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/83975927179

Meeting ID: 839 7592 7179
Passcode: 054682
One tap mobile
+17789072071,,83975927179#,,,,*054682# Canada
+14388097799,,83975927179#,,,,*054682# Canada

Dial by your location
+1 778 907 2071 Canada
+1 438 809 7799 Canada
+1 587 328 1099 Canada
+1 613 209 3054 Canada
+1 647 374 4685 Canada
+1 647 558 0588 Canada