Student Experience
Top tier research and innovation actively engage undergraduate, professional, and graduate students, while U of T’s research breadth and intensity, as well as our strength in research-informed pedagogy, enhance our educational mission.
Student Research
Student research is at the heart of the student academic experience. With the help of innovative course design, excellence in teaching, state-of-the-art laboratories, research funding opportunities, field schools, internships, and increasing opportunities for undergraduate lab research, both at home and abroad, U of T supports student research in myriad ways and students are taking up the challenge.
VPRI Invests in Summer Research Internships
The Vice-President, Research and Innovation (VPRI) provides funding for the University of Toronto Excellence Awards (UTEA) program, providing opportunities for natural sciences and engineering or social sciences and humanities undergraduate students to conduct summer research projects under the supervision of U of T faculty members. During their internships, students experience different approaches to research and learn the investigative methodologies in their areas of interest.
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ModiFace Creates 50 Internships for U of T Engineering Undergrads
The augmented reality (AR) startup, ModiFace, is supporting the student research environment at U of T by investing $4 million to create undergraduate and graduate level student internships and support leading research at the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. The internships aim at getting students up to speed and ready to enter the fast-paced AR industry upon graduation. ModiFace’s investment also supports research grants aimed at industry-partnered research in the faculty.
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$450,000
U of T Launches Undergraduate Research Catalogue
In conjunction with the Office of the Vice-Provost, Innovations in Undergraduate Education and the Vice-Provost, Students, the Career Education and Exploration Team launched an online research catalogue for undergraduates. One of the first of its kind in North America, the catalogue broadens student awareness of co-curricular research opportunities and assists faculty in attracting student researchers. The research catalogue launched at both the St. George and UTSC campuses through the Career Learning Network system.
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Reimagine Ways to Reach the Hardest to Reach
The Reach Project at the Munk School of Global Affairs enables U of T students to conduct top-notch research and to translate that research into real-world impact. For one term, student researchers study development initiatives that have done well at reaching marginalized, underserved communities. They then spend up to 10 days in the field, conducting in-depth interviews with local stakeholders. The Reach Project is a partnership between the Munk School and the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth.
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U of T PhD Student Publishes Hip Surgery Research in Major U.S. Medical Journal
U of T PhD candidate and medical resident in orthopedic surgery, Dr. Daniel Pincus, has found that a delay of 24 hours or more before hip fracture surgery may be associated with an increased risk of death and complications. Although a link between hip surgery wait times and death rates had already been established, Pincus’ work clarified the amount of time that makes the critical difference. His work is published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association. Pincus is a Vanier Scholar studying for his PhD at the Institute of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.
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Six Researchers Are Finalists for Three Minutes or 300 Words Contest
Six student researchers from U of T secured places among the top 25 finalists in the Canada-wide Storytellers Contest, run by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Each finalist went on to compete in the Storytellers Showcase at the 2017 Congress and two of the U of T contestants placed in the final five: Tammara Soma, a doctoral candidate in urban planning in the Department of Geography and Planning created a three-minute video entitled “Closing the Loop: Food Waste and Consumption in Indonesia.” Mimi Masson, a doctoral candidate at OISE, created a piece about supporting French-as-a-Second-Language teachers.
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Student Entrepreneurship
The entrepreneurial ecosystem at U of T is diverse and thriving. The numerous research-based accelerators and incubators at U of T support students through the commercialization process, offering equipment to help with rapid prototyping, funding competitions, and opportunities to share ideas and get feedback from faculty, industry partners, and other student entrepreneurs. U of T is a great place for students to bring their research-based ideas to life.
Entrepreneurship Week at U of T
The second annual Entrepreneurship@UofT Week took place February 26 – March 3, 2018. The week drew over 850 attendees and culminated on March 1 with three big events: the all-day Startup Showcase, a networking opportunity with more than 55 of U of T’s leading startups; the RBC Innovation and Entrepreneurship Speaker Series lecture delivered by Arlene Dickinson, renowned independent marketing communications entrepreneur and CEO of Venture Communications, District Ventures, and Youinc.com; and the RBC Prize for Innovation and Entrepreneurship pitch competition, in which 10 leading U of T startups competed in the early- and late-stage categories for $10,000 and $25,000 first prizes, respectively. Participants came away with new insights, new connections, the confidence to pursue their ideas, and the knowledge that U of T is the place in Canada for building a startup. U of T’s inaugural Entrepreneurship@UofT Week in March 2017 featured more than a dozen events hosted by incubator and accelerator programs and other partners.
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Trexo Robotics
U of T grads and co-founders of Trexo Robotics, Manmeet Maggu and Rahul Udasi, have taken their business another step forward after winning first prize in Sunnybrook’s Hawk’s Nest Pitch Competition. The company builds child-sized robotic exoskeletons, and the judges responded to Trexo’s vision to help children living with physical challenges swap their wheelchairs for a walker-like device equipped with robotic "Iron Man" leg attachments. Maggu and Udasi took advantage of the multidisciplinary expertise within the U of T Entrepreneurship ecosystem, including at the H2i, Entrepreneurship Hatchery, Department of Computer Science Innovation Lab, and Creative Destruction Lab innovation hubs.
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H2i Pitch Competition
The Health Innovation Hub (H2i) enables people working on problem solving in the health sciences to realize their ideas. In 2017, H2i’s pitch event, Pitch Perfect, took place in the newly opened ONRamp co-working space for entrepreneurs. Of the six startups chosen to participate in the event, three took home a $5,000 prize. The three winners were Xpan, which is creating a new surgical gold standard with its expandable trocars; Nutarniq, which is using seal oil to provide nutritional therapy to those suffering from diabetes-induced nerve damage; and the team of Yair Feld, an interventional cardiology fellow at Sunnybrook, who pitched a novel microcatheter.
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61 companies
U of T Startup Structura Biotechnology on the Path to Growth
Founded by PhD student Ali Punjani and postdoctoral fellow Marcus Brubaker, now an Assistant Professor at York University, Structura Biotechnology was based on the development of machine learning algorithms to rapidly reconstruct high-resolution 3D structures of protein molecules from electron cryomicroscopy data. Their results were published in the journal Nature Methods in early 2017. Since then Structura released a software system encompassing the algorithms, called cryoSPARC™. It is now being used at over 150 academic institutions and a number of industry labs in more than 25 countries.
Currently working out of the ONRamp entrepreneurial space, Structura received funding and support from U of T’s Innovations and Partnership’s Office (IPO) through the Connaught Innovation Award, the University of Toronto Early Stage Technologies (UTEST) program, as well as provincial and federal funding.
Collaboration Brings Together MBA and PhD Students
In early 2017, a team of graduate students presented their findings as part of a Medicine by Design and Rotman School of Management collaborative for-credit project. The project brought together MBA candidates and PhD students in health sciences and engineering to assess the global market for stem cell therapies. All of the students had some health sciences background, but they brought complementary strengths to the collaboration.
Medicine by Design is building on U of T’s legacy of excellence in regenerative medicine research by bringing together more than 100 researchers from across U of T and its affiliated hospitals, along with hundreds of post-doctoral fellows and graduate students, in collaborative teams to accelerate breakthroughs. In partnership with CCRM, Medicine by Design is also driving Toronto’s regenerative medicine ecosystem and propelling new therapies to market.