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.
U of T is the place where research forms an essential element of the student academic experience. We support student involvement in world-class research endeavours through a myriad of curricular and co-curricular mechanisms, including innovative course design, excellence in teaching, state-of-the-art laboratories, research funding opportunities, field schools, internships, and an increasing number of opportunities for undergraduate lab research, both at home and abroad.
Through the Amgen Scholars Canada program, U of T is making its research expertise and resources available to Canadian undergraduate students. Beginning in 2019, 15 students will come to Toronto for a fully funded, hands-on research placement at U of T’s Faculty of Medicine and Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy.
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As part of its continuous efforts to facilitate world-class research opportunities for its students, U of T penned a three-year deal with Mitacs to provide funding for up to 200 U of T students at the undergraduate, graduate, or post-doctoral level to take part in a research exchange abroad.
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Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education graduate Sara Santos and fourth-year student Natasha Bruno, who were finalists in the Innovative Designs for Accessibility (IDeA) competition. Their submission aims to emphasize individuals’ various levels of ability in sport and physical activity.
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In support of students’ community-based research, in 2018, U of T graduate students visited each of the city’s 25 wards as part of a newly launched initiative called Munk in the City, operated by the Urban Policy Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.
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Advancing the cause of social justice animates U of T’s research and innovation enterprise, and Shalice Coutu, a graduate of architectural studies at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, is hoping to improve the lives of all Canadians through the design of built environments.
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MA student Alex Jung is U of T’s first Wikipedian in Residence. Jung will support research and learning by improving access to high-quality and unique, online, open-access, primary source resources and collections such as digitized rare books, web archives, and art.
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Three-quarters of U of T students commute, often requiring more than an hour to get to school. U of T President Meric Gertler has observed that “[every minute students spend] in transit going to or from one of our campuses is time they cannot spend on their studies or engaging in life on one of our campuses. So it has a direct impact on the student experience.” U of T researchers, such as Geography and Planning professor Matti Siemiatycki, are studying how commute time and travel modes, as well as travel-related attitudes, influence students' campus participation, factors that may impact their university experience.
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U of T is the place for students to bring their research-based ideas to life. 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; assistance with funding competitions; and opportunities to share ideas and get feedback from faculty, industry partners, and other student entrepreneurs. U of T also offers more than 180 entrepreneurship-related courses – boasting 11,000 registrants in 2018 – from many different faculties and departments, which help empower aspiring entrepreneurs to learn more about developing ideas and launching their own businesses. Our student entrepreneurs are going on to develop innovative new products, services, and companies that are boosting the Ontario and Canadian economies and improving lives at home and abroad.
Entrepreneurship Week—the annual celebration of all things entrepreneurship at U of T—took place March 18-22, 2019. U of T incubator and accelerator programs and partner-hosted events were showcased throughout the week, which culminated in the True Blue Expo that hosted over 60 startups, the 2019 RBC Prize for Innovation and Entrepreneurship pitch competition, and the RBC Innovation and Entrepreneurship Speaker Series, featuring Michael Katchen from Wealthsimple.
The True Blue Expo also saw the announcement of the True Blue Fund, a new program that provides philanthropists with a way to support U of T’s entrepreneurship and innovation activities. The university is committing $2.5 million to match donations to the fund, which, in the coming months, will provide funding for prizes, awards, fellowships and support for U of T’s entrepreneurship programs.
Enabling students to gain international experience is a priority at U of T. A newly established international entrepreneurship highway work-study program between U of T and the National University of Singapore (NUS) is one of many such initiatives. The first two cohorts of students from NUS arrived in Toronto in 2018 and January 2019, and by the winter of 2020, the first group of U of T students will be travelling to work and study in Singapore
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The student-friendly entrepreneurship ecosystem at U of T helped a multidisciplinary team of students from U of T and a student from the University of Waterloo secure $10,000 from RBC’s Amplify program for designing the “most disruptive” technology to monitor email money transfers. A patent for their technology is pending and the four students have accepted roles at RBC when they graduate this spring.
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Utilizing support available from The Hub, UTSC’s entrepreneurship incubator, student Peter Meng connected with other students and worked to bring to life his invention Weav, an app that takes the pain out of carpooling.
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The resources available through U of T’s UTEST accelerator helped Zack Fisch and U of T master’s student Cory Blumenfeld build Dash MD, a health-care startup focused on developing better ways of delivering patient information.
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U of T’s student entrepreneurs, such as Samin Khan, are winning international competitions while improving the lives of others. Khan and his teammate from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology developed a robotic, prosthetic hand that can recognize and grasp objects, such as a set of keys. In so doing, they captured Canada’s first-ever win in the Microsoft’s Imagine Cup global innovation competition.
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Like their faculty counterparts, student entrepreneurs at U of T are often motivated by a strong desire to help others. Identified as one of 10 exciting U of T startups to watch, iMerciv was co-founded by Bin Liu, a civil engineering grad from U of T, and Arjun Mali, with the goal of creating “a long-lasting impact for communities living with blindness or partial sight, empowering them to lead a confident and independent life.”
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