��ݮ��Ƶ News - Technological Futures

New documentary showcases ��ݮ��Ƶ as an epicentre of global innovation

Sam Charles — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 12:15:00 +0000

It Started in ��ݮ��Ƶ: An Astronaut's Journey into the Universe of Innovation, narrated by Chris Hadfield, highlights the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ’s role in igniting innovation within the region and beyond.

A new documentary is shining the light on ��ݮ��Ƶ Region as a global innovation hub. A constant linkage between the region’s many entrepreneurial and technology success stories is the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ.

Since its founding, the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ has emerged as a leading global research-intensive university renowned for entrepreneurship and innovation. Initially inspired to champion co-operative education, the University continues to pair rigorous research with real-world work experience and entrepreneurial thinking to deliver bold, future-focused solutions.

"The University of ��ݮ��Ƶ was founded to address local and global challenges through unconventional means," says Nenone Donaldson, vice-president, Advancement and External Relations at the University. "Our unique approach to developing future-focused solutions — built on boundary-breaking research, experiential education and entrepreneurship - inspires innovation for Canada and the world. We're proud to have Chris Hadfield help share this story."

The new feature documentary, It Started in ��ݮ��Ƶ: An Astronaut's Journey into the Universe of Innovation, explores how and why ��ݮ��Ƶ Region has been so successful.

Narrated by Hadfield, the film highlights the region’s role in leading a digital revolution from smartphones and educational technologies to health care technology and quantum computing.

"As an astronaut, I've seen firsthand how innovation shapes our world," says Hadfield, who is also a former adjunct professor and current honorary advisor for the ��ݮ��Ƶ Institute for Sustainable Aeronautics. "��ݮ��Ƶ's approach to discovery and invention is completely unique, how they nurture ideas, refine and launch them onto the global stage. In this documentary, we shine a light on that process and the people behind it."

Recently named Canada’s top comprehensive research university for the 18th consecutive year by Research Infosource Inc. The University’s research excellence combined with its creator-owned IP policy and entrepreneurial ecosystem is moving ideas from the lab to the marketplace, turning research into societal and economic value.

What the filmmakers discovered during production was that behind all the innovations uncovered in the region was a desire to make a difference.

"Innovation is more than technology, it's a cultural expression of human creativity," says Craig Thompson, the documentary’s executive producer. "��ݮ��Ƶ's breakthroughs came from local engineers, designers, artists, entrepreneurs and students working at the intersection of imagination and problem-solving."

Commissioned by YES TV in association with Stageview TV and produced with the participation of the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ, the Canada Media Fund, Canadian Film and Television Tax Credits, and Ballinran Entertainment, the documentary will premiere in 2027.

Technological Futures

Global Impact

Quantum computers learn how to simulate quarks

Angelica Sanchez — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 13:00:00 +0000

��ݮ��Ƶ researchers have developed a new quantum computing approach that brings science closer to simulating the early universe

Researchers at University of ��ݮ��Ƶ’s Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) have reached a milestone in quantum information science: using a quantum computer to simulate how matter can behave in extreme environments, like the early universe after the big bang.

The researchers simulated a theory called quantum chromodynamics, that helps describe how quarks interact at defined matter density and temperature, key parameters for modelling large, dense physical systems. 

“The stability of all matter is based on this theory and describes how quarks ‘talk’ to each other,” said Dr. Christine Muschik, faculty researcher at the Perimeter Institute and IQC faculty and professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. “At IQC, we developed a new theoretical and experimental approach as a tool for quantum computation.” 

Muschik collaborated with IQC postdoctoral fellows Drs. Abhijit Chakraborty and Yasar Atas, along with Dr. Randy Lewis at York University and Dr. Norbert Linke at the University of Maryland, where the simulation ran on a trapped ion quantum computer.

To make this simulation possible, the team introduced two key innovations. The first adds a process after the simulation is complete, without adding computing power, to make sure the results  follow nature’s fundamental symmetry rules. The other method encodes information into the natural motion of ions, which typically isn’t used for quantum information processing. This new approach makes more efficient use of existing quantum resources: by doubling the register size available for computing, it can process more complex algorithms. 

Dr. Abhijit Chakraborty
Postdoctoral fellow, Institute for Quantum Computing

“There is so much about nature that we just don’t know,” Chakraborty said. “We can write a set of equations to describe a system but understanding how the system behaves under different parameters is another story. For large, dense physical systems like in the early universe, we need to control parameters such as temperature and density, and our new method delivers both.” 

It is common to see quantum computers as a threat, such as how new computing power could be able to break codes and threaten encrypted banking information and sensitive online data. While this is important, quantum computers also hold promises for the future of scientific discovery. Innovative theoretical work and simulating theories like quantum chromodynamics is only now showing just how useful quantum computers can be to help shape the future of technology and fundamental scientific discovery. 

“It’s clear that simulating certain problems in particle physics works very well on classical supercomputers, and it’s a highly successful field,” Muschik said.  

“But for physics that is trying to understand how multiple particles interact with each other, like in quantum chromodynamics, classical computers are fundamentally roadblocked, so a quantum computer is needed. Otherwise, a huge class of problems keeps modern physics stuck.” 

The paper, The phase diagram of quantum chromodynamics in one dimension on a quantum computer, was recently published in Nature Communications.

Technological Futures

WatSPEED and WRHN collaborate to enable health-care leaders to harness the power of AI

Angelica Sanchez — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 13:00:00 +0000

New executive program with ��ݮ��Ƶ Region Health Network helps health care executives navigate ongoing AI transformation

WatSPEED, the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ’s professional, executive and corporate education arm, recently joined forces with the ��ݮ��Ƶ Regional Health Network (WRHN) to deliver a new executive education program focused on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on health care.

The two-day program, held earlier this week, was designed to equip WRHN senior leaders with the strategic insights and skills required to lead transformation initiatives in a rapidly evolving AI landscape. It responds to growing demand among health organisations for leaders who can navigate the operational, clinical and ethical implications of generative and agentic AI.

“This collaboration with WRHN reflects the urgent need for senior decision-makers in health care to not only understand AI, but to lead with it responsibly,” says Aaron Pereira, executive director of WatSPEED. “AI is shaping patient care and hospital operations, and this investment in our region’s health care leaders will strengthen their capacity to drive innovation, improve system performance and confidently lead transformation.”

As part of the learning experience, more than 30 participants gained a practical understanding of how AI can be strategically applied within hospitals and health systems.

“Building literacy and leadership capacity around AI is essential for any health system preparing for the future,” says Danina Kapetanovic, vice president of innovation and chief health innovation officer at WRHN and ��ݮ��Ƶ. “Working with WatSPEED to shape this program ensured it supported the leadership capabilities we need as we build WRHN’s AI strategy. It helped spark meaningful conversations among our team about the future of health in ��ݮ��Ƶ Region, the vision we are defining for WRHN, and the conditions we need to put in place to adopt AI responsibly.”

The course featured sessions led by several ��ݮ��Ƶ faculty experts, including Dr. Joël Blit, professor of economics; Dr. John Hirdes, professor in the School of Public Health Sciences; Dr. Jimmy Lin, Cheriton Chair in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science; Mark Weber, special advisor to the provost on leadership strategy and development; Dr. Ian McKillop, associate professor of management and systems in the School of Public Health Sciences; Dr. Ana Crisan, assistant professor at the Cheriton School; and Michael Page, WatSPEED program advisor and director of AI commercialization at Unity Health Toronto.

Their cross-sector expertise enabled in-depth exploration of strategic AI adoption, the evolution from predictive to generative AI, agentic systems, digital maturity and leadership approaches for driving transformation in health care.

Part of ��ݮ��Ƶ’s broader efforts to support Canadian health-care leaders as they respond to — and help shape — the technological and societal shifts driven by AI, this collaboration with WRHN connects research with real-world outcomes to prepare leaders to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing world.

As AI continues to reshape industries, continuous learning and development are essential to building capacity for innovation, resilience and ethical decision-making. Through initiatives like this, ��ݮ��Ƶ invests in inclusive, future-focused education that empowers professionals, executives and organisations to lead with impact.

Technological Futures

Making powerful AI more accessible to everyone

David George-Cosh — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 13:00:00 +0000

��ݮ��Ƶ researchers develop highly efficient AI training system that paves the way for cheaper, greener “intelligent partners”

A much faster, more efficient training method developed at the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ could help put powerful artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the hands of many more people by reducing the cost and environmental impact of building them.

Large language models (LLMs) are advanced AI systems designed to understand and generate human language by learning patterns in how words and ideas are connected from massive amounts of text in books, articles and websites.

Teaching them to do that now requires months of work and huge quantities of computational power, specialized hardware and electricity, making the costs of development prohibitive to all but large corporations and organizations.

Researchers at ��ݮ��Ƶ set out over a year to make the technology cheaper, greener and therefore more accessible — a goal they refer to as ‘democratization’ — by combining and building on previous efforts to improve training.

The result is SubTrack++, a technique that speeds up pre-training of LLM models – the first and most costly, resource-intensive step in a multi-step process – by up to 50 per cent, while still exceeding state-of-the-art performance in terms of accuracy.

“These are extremely large models which consume a lot of energy, so an improvement of even five per cent translates into big gains,” said Dr. Sirisha Rambhatla, a professor of management science and engineering at ��ݮ��Ƶ. “Advances like these will help us all build our own LLMs in the long run.”

The project also contributes fresh thinking on responsible and accessible AI to ��ݮ��Ƶ’s Global Futures initiative, which looks to advance innovations to address the world’s most pressing challenges.

LLMs are neural networks comprised of vast numerical matrices that learn through trial and error from billions of examples how to predict the next word in a sequence. Each time an LLM makes a mistake, it slightly adjusts its mathematical parameters to improve accuracy.

“In simple terms, training is like letting the model read an entire library and learn how people use language by recognizing patterns in words and ideas,” said Sahar Rajabi, a PhD student who led the study.

SubTrack++ accelerates both pre-training to establish a basic foundation and fine-tuning for a specific task by essentially focusing on the most important parameters of a model to simplify the correction process.

Rambhatla, director of the Critical Machine Learning (ML) Lab at ��ݮ��Ƶ, compares the highly technical approach to using a map of a mountain, rather than its actual physical features, to plot the quickest route to climb it.

Researchers expect faster, cheaper training for LLMs – which are now capable of such functions as drafting emails and reports – to make it possible and affordable for ordinary people, not just large companies, to build and customize powerful tools of their own.

“By safely learning from personal preferences, LLMs could act as truly personal digital assistants that adapt to each person’s style, goals and needs,” Rajabi said. “Future models may become intelligent partners in human work and creativity.”

Rambhatla’s work on researching more efficient AI systems aligns with and contributes to the broader research efforts underway at ��ݮ��Ƶ. Dr. Juan Moreno-Cruz, a professor in the Faculty of Environment at ��ݮ��Ƶ, recently published a research paper that found U.S. AI power usage has a minimal effect on global greenhouse gas emissions.

Researchers are scheduled to present a paper on the new training method, SubTrack++ : Gradient Subspace Tracking for Scalable LLM Training, at the upcoming Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2025) in Mexico City.

Featured image: Engineering master's student Nayeema Nonta (left), one of the three paper authors, and her supervisor, Dr. Sirisha Rambhatla, in a large server room with the computer power needed to develop their new LLM training technique. (University of ��ݮ��Ƶ)

Engineering

Research

Global Futures

Technological Futures

University of ��ݮ��Ƶ launches AI-CTO program

Angelica Sanchez — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 18:33:25 +0000

New executive program prepares senior technology leaders to bridge AI execution, business strategy and boardroom influence

WatSPEED at the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ recently announced the launch of a new Chief Technology and AI Officer (AI-CTO) program — a six-month, live-online executive program designed to help senior technology leaders translate complex architectures and AI innovation into measurable business outcomes.

Designed and delivered by ��ݮ��Ƶ faculty and supported by global industry practitioners, the program balances deep technical learning about AI, along with financial insights, organizational transformation and responsible governance. Enrolment and learner support services will be provided by upGrad — a global education platform that provides a range of learning programs for professionals, from short courses to doctoral degrees — under the University’s academic oversight and quality assurance.

“AI has moved well beyond experimentation; it’s now being embedded across every layer of business operations. Organizations across the world are seeking technology leaders who can pair algorithmic depth with strategic foresight,” says Myleeta AgaWilliams, CEO, International Consumer Business, upGrad. “Our partnership with ��ݮ��Ƶ addresses precisely this global gap to support senior technologists evolve from solution builders to boardroom influencers. Initiatives like these are essential to shaping a generation of leaders capable of turning AI innovation into long-term business value.”

“As technology leaders face unprecedented complexity, the next generation of CTOs must unite engineering depth with boardroom fluency. This program captures ��ݮ��Ƶ’s strengths in AI, systems engineering and entrepreneurship and extends them to a global audience,” says Aaron Pereira, executive director, WatSPEED.

Preparing the next generation of AI-enabled leaders

The AI-CTO program is designed for senior technology professionals (CTOs, CIOs, CDOs, CAIOs and their leadership teams) who want to evolve from strong technical executors into strategic enterprise leaders. Over 25 weeks, participants move through an integrated learning journey that blends strategy, technology and applied leadership.

The program begins by strengthening business fluency and strategic alignment, enabling learners to link technology decisions directly to profit-and-loss accountability, ROI and organizational priorities. From there, participants dive deep into the modern technology stack, mastering cloud architecture, MLOps, FinOps and responsible AI frameworks. They then turn their focus to influencing at the highest levels of leadership, building transformation roadmaps, leading due diligence for mergers and acquisitions and developing board-ready narratives that translate technology into value- and risk-based language for executives.

The journey culminates in high-stakes simulations, where participants must apply their learning under pressure, responding to crises, navigating change and making consequential decisions in real-time. Each participant graduates with a University of ��ݮ��Ƶ certificate and a portfolio of practical deliverables, including a 90-day CTO plan, an AI investment report, a transformation playbook and the confidence to lead AI-driven organizations through complexity and change.

“Learners earn a ��ݮ��Ƶ certificate taught by our faculty and supported through a partnership structured for global reach,” says Jean-Paul Mouton, associate director, strategic partnerships and global growth, WatSPEED. “Our goal is to equip leaders everywhere with the same rigour and innovation mindset that define ��ݮ��Ƶ.”

“Our partnership with ��ݮ��Ƶ exemplifies how academia and industry can come together to solve the leadership challenges of our time,” says Jaitali Dedhia, AVP, university partnerships, upGrad. “Through the AI-CTO program, we’re creating a global pathway for senior technology executives to turn AI innovation into sustainable business growth.”

The AI-CTO program stands apart for its applied learning design — integrating boardroom simulations, cross-functional decision labs and real-world strategies that mirror the pressures of modern enterprise leadership. Developed jointly by academic experts and industry practitioners, the program ensures participants understand emerging technologies like AI and machine learning operations and learn to deploy them as levers for growth, governance and organizational resilience.

Learn more about the program on the WatSPEED website.

About WatSPEED

WatSPEED is the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ’s professional and executive education hub, helping organizations and leaders around the world stay ahead of disruption. Through programs that merge technology with business strategy, WatSPEED translates ��ݮ��Ƶ’s world-class research and innovation ecosystem into practical, future-ready learning.

About upGrad

upGrad is a leading global skilling and lifelong learning company that partners with universities to deliver a range of online and hybrid skilling programs and certifications to consumers and enterprise partners. upGrad has delivered learning solutions and career outcomes through technology and teaching innovations to more than seven million learners across the globe since it was founded in 2015. More details on the upGrad website.

Campus

Entrepreneurship

Talent

Technological Futures

The woman behind the laser

Sarah Fullerton — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 19:01:06 +0000

Celebrating Dr. Donna Strickland's chirped pulse amplification breakthrough that has reshaped science, technology, and everyday life over the last 40 years

What would you do if you woke up one day and your whole life changed?

Forty years ago, when Donna Strickland, physics professor at the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ, and Gérard Mourou published their paper on the discovery of chirped pulse amplification (CPA), they knew they had found something that would change laser science. Fast forward 33 years to an early morning call from the Nobel organization with news of her 2018 Nobel Prize win, and Strickland’s life was changed forever.

What followed was a whirlwind of press interviews, travel, and lectures around the globe. As the third woman ever to win a Nobel Prize, Strickland became a household name overnight. And she deserved it.

The invention of the CPA technique changed the game in laser science. Its creation enabled a giant leap in the intensity of optical pulses that continue to steadily climb. Thanks to Strickland and her PhD supervisor, Mourou, countless everyday technologies became possible, built on research propelled by this groundbreaking technique.

While lasers were invented in 1960, no one had figured out how to amplify short laser pulses without damaging their laser amplifiers in the two decades after. Strickland and Mourou discovered that if they stretched the pulse, amplified it, and then compressed it back down, they could heighten the laser’s intensity without damaging the amplifier. The breakthrough approach packed more light into a shorter time, which increased the intensity of the pulse and allowed the laser beams to cut into matter with precision.

“When you make the intensity extremely high, you have a laser hammer, and not only is it a hammer, but it can hammer through transparent objects like your cornea or like glass in your telephone,” Strickland says. “Before this laser, you could not machine glass because the light went right through it, but after CPA created this laser hammer, you could.”

The ripple effect of that laser hammer is significant. Strickland and Mourou’s breakthrough sparked research that has led to many of the technologies we now use daily. CPA is used to slice open the cornea of the eye without damaging the surrounding tissue, making the process of laser eye surgery far less painful for patients. It also has applications in many laser materials processing techniques, including the machining of fragile materials like the glass used in smartphones. Additionally, CPA can be used to accelerate protons that could one day be used in proton therapies used to treat deep-tissue tumors, like those in the brain.

Watch video on YouTube

Since winning the Nobel Prize, Strickland continues to push the boundaries in laser science to make new discoveries that have the potential to further impact many industries.

“Now what I'm trying to do is make pulses even shorter,” she says. “To do that, I'm making a rainbow of colours in my lab so that I can generate an even shorter pulse. And we're also trying to make the laser lase out of mid infrared, which will hopefully be used to benefit the environment, but more to come on that.”

If you ask Strickland, she’ll say she gets too much credit for some modern inventions using CPA. Here at ��ݮ��Ƶ, we think it’s just the right amount for her Nobel Prize-winning work.

Kind words from ��ݮ��Ƶ colleagues

"All of the experimental work I have done for the past thirty years has relied on the technology developed by Donna and almost everyone in the field of ultrafast laser matter interactions could say the same." - Joe Sanderson

"The development of laser technologies possible because of CPA has unlocked our ability to probe, control, and characterize matter via spectroscopy and dynamics. Applications range from surgery and micromachining through to taking split-second pictures of atoms in molecules." - Scott Hopkins

"CPA was a giant leap for laser science. Suddenly, femtosecond pulses could be amplified without blowing up the gain medium—what a game-changer. Anytime I talk about this in a lecture, I tell my students: “This paper here? Co-authored by my colleague Donna Strickland. Yes, our Donna in Physics. And yes, it’s one of the most cited and influential papers in laser physics.” And yes, I was doing this years before Donna and Gerard Mourou received the Nobel Prize." - German Sciaini

Banner photo courtesy of University of Rochester.

Science

Talent

Technological Futures

$10.5 million gift empowers the future of systems design engineering

Charlotte Danby — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 17:22:52 +0000

Alumni’s generous investment in the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ’s Systems Design Engineering Department will equip students for a complex world

University of ��ݮ��Ƶ alumni and longtime supporters David J. Cornfield (BASc ’85, LLD ’24) and Linda Archer Cornfield (LLD ’24) recently announced their transformational investment of $10.5 million to the Faculty of Engineering’s Department of Systems Design Engineering.

The gift accelerates the department’s ability to educate agile, ethical and impact-driven engineers by investing in people, learning spaces, research capacity and global experiences that connect design, sustainability and health.

“We are deeply grateful to David and Linda Cornfield for their generous gift, which strengthens ��ݮ��Ƶ’s Systems Design Engineering program and advances our university’s vision to educate innovative problem solvers for a complex world,” said Dr. Vivek Goel, president and vice-chancellor, highlighting the importance and impact of this philanthropic contribution. “Their support is enabling new classrooms designed for active, collaborative learning, a named chair to renew core design courses and expanded opportunities for students to engage globally. Together, these investments empower our community to lead in creating equitable and sustainable solutions for humanity and our planet.”

A visionary contribution with an immediate impact

The gift is already making an impact with the establishment of the George Soulis Chair in Systems Design Engineering to advance the department’s founding vision — to educate engineers who can bridge systems thinking with design practice to create integrated, participatory and human-focused solutions to pressing global challenges.

Dr. Katherine (Kate) Sellen, a leading design researcher working at the intersection of health innovation and human-centred systems, was appointed the inaugural George Soulis Chair in May 2025. Sellen leads the renewal of core design courses and student spaces to enrich students’ interdisciplinary learning experiences and better equip them for an increasingly complex world.

Sellen has led the design of a new design classroom which opens in 2026. This expansion and modernization of existing spaces into larger, purpose-built classrooms will enable more active, collaborative and design-focused learning for students across the program.

“It’s been a busy first few months working with colleagues on a new classroom design and supporting some new research and teaching initiatives,” Sellen says. “It’s a warm and creative team and a privilege to be working together.”

The name of the new chair pays tribute to the legacy of the late professor George Soulis, one of the founders of systems design engineering at ��ݮ��Ƶ. As a former student, David J. Cornfield credits Soulis’s drive for interdisciplinary innovation with shaping his own career, from working at Microsoft to becoming an award-winning documentary producer alongside his wife Linda.

“As 1A systems design students, we were self-selected ad-hoc problem solvers, but Professor Soulis gave us a powerful vision that design and problem solving could be studied as a discipline, reinforced by his practical workshop courses,” David says. “He described a general methodology that applied to every kind of problem — from technical to artistic to socio-economic — and showed how, by attending to this methodology, you could avoid many of the pitfalls that befall complex innovative projects. That foundation has been essential to every aspect of my career, and I’m very happy to honour Professor Soulis and support Systems Design Engineering in maintaining and expanding his vision of a transdisciplinary, practical engineering education.”

Giving students advanced learning spaces and experiences

The Cornfields’ gift invests in the student experience in tangible ways that prioritize learning environments, from upgraded facilities on campus to real-world problem-solving opportunities in the field.

Upgrades to biomedical engineering facilities are underway to enhance interdisciplinary research and graduate training. The new infrastructure will support teams advancing innovations in areas such as hearing loss diagnosis and treatment, and microrobotics for medical applications. The department is proud to name one of the spaces the David J. Cornfield Biomedical Engineering Lab.

David J. Cornfield and Linda Archer Cornfield outside the newly-named lab.

The gift funds the department’s Clinician-in-Residence program which connects students directly with health-care professionals. Now in its second year, the current clinicians, a cardiologist and an occupational therapist, work on campus one half-day per week to consult with students, offer practical insights from the frontlines and facilitate shadowing experience in health-care settings. Through mentorship and in-clinic experiences, students gain a deeper understanding of how technology, people, and policy intersect within the health-care system.

Undergraduate students can now also broaden their co-op work term experiences through co-op research placements for students investigating AI, ethics and trust. A new Co-op for Good: Systems Design Engineering program has also been launched, which funds mission-driven placements with non-profits, charities or NGOs addressing social or environmental challenges. The program’s first two students are applying their engineering skills to real environmental and civic challenges while building strong technical and teamwork experience. One is advancing marine biodiversity and water quality through automated oyster-reef restoration research in the Netherlands, and the other is improving charitable effectiveness as a full-stack developer for a transparent donation platform.

The gift also supports the department’s efforts to educate engineers equipped to design responsible, impactful technologies through the Cornfield PhD Fellowship in Sustainable Energy Systems and two new courses: AI and Society and Technology and Film. Keeping with the department’s historical connection to Ashesi University in Ghana, the funds will also support ongoing partnerships with Ashesi with a four-week, place-based field course starting in summer 2026 where students will tackle local environment, water and health challenges in Ghana.

“This gift is directly elevating our students’ learning by embedding ethics and societal context into engineering education and expanding hands-on opportunities,” says Dr. Lisa Aultman-Hall, chair of the Department of Systems Design Engineering. “At the same time, our faculty members and staff are inspired by David and Linda’s passionate work and advocacy on climate change and social justice. It is such a pleasure to consider them part of our community.”

Feature image (left to right): Dean Mary Wells, President Vivek Goel, David J. Cornfield, Linda Archer Cornfield, Dr. Lisa Aultman-Hall, Dr. Kate Sellen and Dr. Ed Jernigan. Photo credit: Samuel Chen.

Technological Futures

Extending the boundaries of education

Olivia Vanderwal — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 15:22:44 +0000

Professor launches Canada’s first large-scale VR use in the classroom, embracing emerging technology and driving the future of education

The use of virtual reality (VR) is expanding across industries, but its large-scale application in educational settings has remained largely unexplored. As the technical capabilities and affordability of VR tools continue to improve, ��ݮ��Ƶ researcher Dr. Ville Mäkelä is turning his classroom into a living lab to better understand how VR can enrich the student experience.

Mäkelä and colleagues Dr. Daniel Harley and Dr. Cayley MacArthur piloted the first class in Canada to offer large-scale, VR-centred 3D design at the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business. Throughout the term, students used VR headsets and the design software Gravity Sketch, already used by companies including New Balance for product design, to create characters and objects in an immersive environment.

From its initial offering in 2024, Mäkelä has taught 200 students over four sections and co-authored a groundbreaking research paper about integrating VR into the classroom.

“Our prediction is that VR will be increasingly relevant to many careers,” he says, “so future graduates need to know how to navigate VR technology and understand its opportunities and limitations.”

Designing VR education that scales

The work positions ��ݮ��Ƶ as a leader in expanding our understanding of how technology adoption impacts classroom learning. “There aren't many examples out there of mass adoption of VR in university classes,” Mäkelä says. “A lot had to happen before something like this was possible.”

Between budgeting for equipment, deciding on headset models, developing protocols for equipment use and finding a space large enough to accommodate multi-user VR interaction, there was a lot to prepare on top of regular course planning.

After the first class launched, cyber sickness, a kind of motion sickness triggered by exposure to a virtual environment, presented a challenge. “It became very clear during these courses that the symptoms and how it develops can vary quite significantly,” Mäkelä says, adding that moderating use of the headsets and offering non-VR alternatives for assignments became key strategies to support students. “It’s interesting that despite all these issues, students were very positive about the VR experience and using the technology.”

Another challenge was effectively communicating with students. Although everyone was physically together in a classroom, demonstrating a virtual application to someone outside of it presented a unique problem. Mäkelä turned to screencasting as an innovative way of lecturing that allows the VR user to stream their view from inside the headset onto an external screen. “It’s such a different technology, not just for students but for instructors,” he says. Although it required practice, screencasting became an effective tool to offer mass tutorials and support peer learning and group activities among students.

Fostering student agency

The class pushed the boundaries of traditional education not only through its content and delivery but also through its relationship with students, who were at once research participants and co-learners in navigating this new technology.

“For a lot of people, including myself, it was the first time using VR and for almost everyone the first time designing in VR,” says Brooke Eyram (BGBDA ’24), who took the first iteration of the course in her fourth year.

Being part of this cohort meant that her input, and every student’s since, has been invaluable to further developing the course. “Professor Mäkelä was very open to feedback at all stages,” she says, emphasizing how impactful it was to influence and shape her own and others’ experiences as a student.

On top of the opportunity to engage with VR in the class, she adds that the experience has helped empower and equip her for life after school by giving her tools to navigate an up-and-coming technology. “Just like how AI is growing, it’s really important to be aware of and develop skills that relate to VR, because that can be the future of the market.”

Eyram’s final project featuring a character and object in a 3D environment

Shaping the future of education

In their paper presented in Japan earlier this year, Mäkelä and colleagues shared key findings from their ongoing research on large-scale VR in the classroom, including the need for careful planning, flexibility, collaboration and student-driven learning.

The first of its kind, this study plays an important role in sharing best practices and opportunities with fellow educators, shaping the future of technology in the classroom.

“Thanks to the embodied way of seeing and doing things in VR, design becomes a more experiential practice,” Mäkelä says. “These immersive, embodied and interactive aspects of VR enable ways of learning that no other technology or approach can deliver.”

____________________________________________________________________________________

Read the full research paper and watch Mäkelä’s video on Integrating Virtual Reality Head-Mounted Displays into Higher Education Classrooms on a Large Scale.

Arts

Talent

Technological Futures

Velocity is building momentum for ��ݮ��Ƶ startups

Sam Charles — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 07:12:50 +0000

Velocity’s $10K Momentum Grants help student builders become full-time founders

Five startups have been awarded $10,000 Velocity Momentum Grants to help them take the next step in their entrepreneurial journey. The no-strings attached funding is intended to allow founders to focus on their business full-time after graduation.

Velocity is the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ’s centre of entrepreneurship and offers mentorship, funding and Canada’s largest tech-corridor network to help founders move ideas from the lab to market. Since 2008, Velocity has helped launch more than 500 startups that together exceed $40 billion in enterprise value.

"Switching from a student to a startup founder is very challenging at the best of times”, says John Dick, senior director at Velocity. “Momentum Grants take a bit of the financial burden off our new graduates so they can remain focused on achieving the milestones that will get their businesses off the ground.”

The companies receiving the funding offer solutions in health technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and safety monitoring.

The University of ��ݮ��Ƶ is ranked number one for producing the most successful entrepreneurs and founders. In fact, many of Canada’s top innovations have their roots at ��ݮ��Ƶ.

“Velocity is proud to be the cornerstone of ��ݮ��Ƶ’s entrepreneurial ecosystem,” Dick says. “The world is facing challenging times, and we are here to support the builders creating solutions that will make a real difference in people’s lives.”

This year’s Momentum Grant recipients include Movarion, Foratus, Woodpeckr, Mandel Diagnostics and CogniHealth Inc.

“The Momentum Grant allows us to prove the demand we're seeing from customers by bringing our MVP to market now, rather than spending months raising investor dollars first,” says Connor Kapahi, founder of Mandel Diagnostics. “Without Velocity's support, from coaching to connections with investors and clinicians, we couldn't have moved this quickly. Hardware startups are particularly challenging and this grant lets us get our device in clinicians' hands today so we can attract more customers and investment tomorrow.”

Meet the Momentum Grant recipients

CogniCheck supports brain health and health monitoring using mobile devices and an AI infrastructure. The startup is founded by Yuvraj Walia (BASc '25) and Omar Atwa (BASc '25).

Mandel Diagnostics, founder Connor Kapahi (PhD in progress), develops automated screening devices that detect age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss, enabling eye doctors to apply new therapies instead of referring patients to surgeons.

Foratus is a research collective focused on building tools that make understanding and processing information, easier, more insightful and easily accessible to everyone. Foratus is founded by Hadi Alsibassi and Hassan Ismail (BMath ’25).

Movarion develops a range of power assisted carts, and dollies that leverage innovative electrification and computing technology to deliver products that make a positive impact in the workforce. The founders Jeff Graansma and Mike Duthie are both ��ݮ��Ƶ staff in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering.

Woodpeckr, founded by Brandon Ko (BASc '25) and Tyler West (BASc '25), is an all-purpose drone monitoring service that combines drone operations for security, safety monitoring and operational insights in a variety of applications including construction.

Past recipients include Swish Solar, PatientCompanion, NewGen Health, Mapkot Technologies, GrownStone, Doro, GreaseTech and CELLECT Laboratories.

Velocity entrepreneurship programs benefit from the longtime support of entrepreneur and angel investor Mike Stork, and continue to grow thanks to his vision and the contributions of donors.

Technological Futures

Financial inflection point: How do we move from analogue to digital-first?

Megan Vander Woude — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 14:18:08 +0000

Sir Ron Kalifa shared Brookfield’s financial infrastructure strategy at ‘Transformative Financial Futures,’ an exclusive event for the ��ݮ��Ƶ community

As Sir Ron Kalifa, head of financial infrastructure and vice chair of private equity at Brookfield, reflected on the beginning of his career, he described a rigid, hierarchical environment and recalled physically writing in ledgers. Those physical ledgers may have exited banks years ago, but Kalifa believes that most large-scale financial institutions are still analogue businesses.

At a time filled with cryptocurrencies and digital payment systems, how can traditional banks catch up?

Kalifa joined University of ��ݮ��Ƶ leadership, alumni, students and friends for an exclusive event last week at Level39, an incubator hub at Brookfield’s Canary Wharf location in London, UK. The event featured a fireside chat between Kalifa and Jagdeep Singh Bachher (BASc ’93, MASc ’94, PhD ’00), chancellor of ��ݮ��Ƶ. Together, they discussed Kalifa’s impressive career in finance, Brookfield’s financial infrastructure strategy, and the future of the global economy.

“Many organizations are now challenging the large institutions,” Kalifa explained. “And financial services, I think, is at a significant inflection point.”

While large-scale financial companies might want to become digital-first players, Kalifa says they lack the agility to do it. But this doesn’t mean that smaller, more agile Fintech companies are poised to take over. They don’t have the scale, distribution or regulatory processes held by traditional institutions.

“So the task is: How do you get that agility into those large-scale organizations? And that’s what the financial infrastructure strategy for Brookfield is about.”

Kalifa leads investment in companies building behind-the-scenes technology that will allow us to move money or work within the global financial ecosystem more efficiently.

“It’s the backbone of the global financial economy,” Kalifa said. “Think about asset-light businesses that are the critical enablement factor driving banks, wealth managers, insurance companies. They can be a loans administration software. It can be a payments company ... a wealth management platform that connects distributors to the banks.”

As cash becomes increasingly scarce, this type of technology is critical infrastructure for the future.

Investing in the world’s future

Their financial infrastructure strategy is just one example of Brookfield’s visionary approach to investment. The company has also partnered with ��ݮ��Ƶ for more than 40 years, supporting scholarships and hiring more than 380 co-op students. Today, more than 150 ��ݮ��Ƶ alumni work at Brookfield, including a number of senior leaders steering other future-focused strategies in AI, infrastructure and renewables.

Most recently, ��ݮ��Ƶ was thrilled to partner with Brookfield to create the Brookfield Renewable Energy Hub, which gives Engineering and Environment students the valuable opportunity to engage directly with real-time clean energy challenges.

About the Global Futures event series

“Transformative Financial Futures” was one event in ��ݮ��Ƶ’s Global Futures event series, taking place in Canada and beyond. Alumni, students and friends can join us to see how the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ community is turning challenges into opportunities for change. Attendees can hear from experts making real-world change in economics, society, technology, health and sustainability.

Each event is made possible by an industry partner. Thank you to Brookfield for hosting the “Transformative Financial Futures” event, and their generous support to other initiatives within our community.

Technological Futures