Welcome to the first issue of The Blue Door Quarterly, your snapshot of U of T's industry partnerships. We hope you will find stories that inspire you to reach out and develop your own collaboration with our research, training, and innovation communities.
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Faisal Kazi, President & CEO of Siemens Canada, and Leah Cowen, Vice-President, Research and Innovation, and Strategic Initiatives, celebrate the launch of a new strategic partnership between Siemens and U of T
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The University of Toronto has entered into a multi-year partnership with Siemens that seeks to transform the energy grid and boost Canada’s ability to provide clean energy to communities.
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University Professor Emeritus Geoffrey Hinton won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his foundational work that enables modern artificial intelligence.
Industry, academia, and government discuss new avenues for collaboration at U of T's Industry Partners' Reception.
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Nearly 200 people from U of T, Industry and the Toronto innovation ecosystem gathered on November 21st at the Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus for U of T's first ever institutionalIndustry Partners' Reception.
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U of T's Medicine by Design initiative hosted its 9th Annual Symposium on December 9th. Over 500 people including industry researchers, academics, venture capitalists, clinicians, entrepreneurs and not-for-profit executives attended to share the latest in regenerative medicine research and innovation.
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U of T's Department of Computer Science and it's Master of Science in Applied Computing (MScAC) program held its ARIA (Applied Research in Action) symposium and reception on November 14th. This annual celebration showcases applied computer science research and the collaborations that support it.
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U of T's Robotics Institute co-organized the Canadian Robotics Council 2024 Symposium, producing a report on the state of the Canadian robotics sector with over 160 partners from industry, academia, government and the not-for-profit sector.
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On January 15th, 2025, Prof. Steven Waslander will be delivering a Lunch & Learn virtual lecture on preparing self-driving technology for Canadian winters.
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On January 16th, 2025, U of T will be hosting the Alumni Innovator Showcase in the Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus at 108 College Street. Come learn about how AI is shaping our innovation ecosystem.
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Join us at 10 am on February 11th, 2025 for an exclusive virtual meeting designed to introduce Canadian companies to Horizon Europe, the world’s largest research and innovation program, with a budget of $140B.
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The Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control is organizing Quantum Days 2025, Canada's flagship quantum science and technology conference February 19th-21st at the University of Toronto.
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Look for details on Entrepreneurship Week activities March 3rd to 7th, 2025. When finalized, you can find them, along with other startup-related activities on the U of T Entrepreneurship Events Page.
Professor Anastasia Kuzminykh
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Located within the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information, Prof. Anastasia Kuzminykh leads the Communication, Organization of Knowledge, Information Ecosystems Group - colloquially known as the COoKIE Group. Her research lies at the intersection of communication theory, artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction; in her own words, “Our recent work touches on diverse technologies, including conversational agents, large language models, generative AI systems, and AI-based decision support systems. Seeking to advance Human-AI interaction design, we explore mechanisms driving the perceptions of different types of AI systems, such as trust, anthropomorphization, or perceived reliability to inform the system and algorithm design requirements for effective, efficient, and ethical AI.”
But Anastasia's work goes beyond the fundamental. Working with major global corporations like Naver, her work seeks not to remove humans from the loop, but rather elevate the human-in-the-loop so that the system becomes as effective as possible. Critically, her group understands and focuses on how the human perceives its AI collaborator in order to better facilitate trust, understanding and buy-in necessary in order to achieve a shared goal.
In short, Anastasia's research is motivated by finding cutting-edge strategies to design smarter, nimbler, and more effective human-AI collaboration tools that align with evolving user needs.
Anastasia and NAVER have been collaborating to investigate topics related to AI safety and ethics around large language models. We have learned a lot from our studies with Anastasia, and these lessons strengthen NAVER's research perspectives on AI.
- Young-Ho Kim, NAVER AI Lab
Far be it, though, for the COoKIE Group to work in a vacuum. Anastasia not only moves her research field forward through her own scholarship, but she's also actively involved in growing the number of skilled AI practitioners who can contribute to this and many other AI-related fields. In 2022, she and her colleagues launched the Toronto Human AI Summer Research School (THAI-RS) to provide intensive applied Human-AI research & training for the broader U of T community.
Anastasia is open to expanding her roster of collaborators to include new corporations, not-for-profits, or academic institutions. Reach out viaThe Blue Door or directly to Anastasia if you think you may want to collaborate with her or her colleagues.
Here are some ways to get involved over the next few weeks, months, and years.
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U of T's Acceleration Consortium, recipient of the largest government research grant in Canadian history, accelerates the discovery of new materials combining AI, advanced computing and robotics across application areas such as clean energy, pharmaceuticals, and novel chemistries. Learn about how their strategic partnership with founding consortium member Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany is leveraging both collaborative research and student-led hackathons to benchmark and drive adoption of their BayBE bayesian optimization tool. Find out more about The Acceleration Consortium.
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SpinUp is U of T's first wet lab accelerator for the life science sector, located at in the New Science Building on the U of T Mississauga campus. Annually, SpinUp runs The Blue Ticket program to support early-stage Canadian biotechnology startups with a year of free access to wet lab space. In 2024, Abbvie established the Abbvie Biotech Innovators Award through the Blue Ticket program. Find out more about SpinUp and the Blue Ticket Program.
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The Master of Science in Applied Computing is a 16-month advanced degree in the fields of Applied Mathematics, Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, Computer Science, Data Science, Data Science for Biology and Quantum Computing. The program includes an 8-month applied research internship hosted by corporations, not-for-profits, and hospitals, among others. See how students from the MScAC program are engaging with industry to solvelocal and global challenges. Find out more about the MScAC program.
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The Data Sciences Institute at U of T is a hub and incubator for data science research, training, and partnerships. One way students get hands-on experience in data science problem solving is through the Summer Undergraduate Data Science (SUDS) internships. This year, SUDS interns worked with Ernst & Young to develop and deliver solutions for their client firms across a variety of strategic sectors. Find out more about the SUDS Internship Program.
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The Centre for Quantum Information and Quantum Control (CQIQC) supports and promotes research collaborations in the interdisciplinary fields of quantum information and quantum control. Students from chemistry, physics, mathematics, computer science, electrical engineering, and materials science all collaborate cross a variety of topics within the quantum sector, like quantum computing, quantum security, photonics, and beyond. Supported by Mitacs, CQIQC graduate students and postdoctoral fellows can intern with Canadian industry partners. Find out more about CQIQC.
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The Centre for Research and Applications in Fluidic Technologies (CRAFT) is a hub for precision fluid control on the micron scale with applications in engineering, medicine, biology, and chemistry. As a joint effort between U of T and the National Research Council Canada, CRAFT aims to accelerate the creation, commercialization and adoption of leading-edge microfluidic technologies. Registration is currently open for the July 9-11, 2025 Microfluidics Professional Course, a crash course in microfluidics for industrial researchers. Find out more about CRAFT.
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U of T has catalogued the specialized equipment and infrastructure it hosts across its three campuses. These Institutional Core Facilities are available to be used by academic and industrial collaborators alike on a fee-per-use basis. Learn more about U of T's Institutional Core Facilities.
Happy Holidays from the Blue Door Team (with a little help from Microsoft Copilot 😉).
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We hope you enjoyed the Blue Door Quarterly. If you want to follow up on any of the above or learn about how you can form a partnership with U of T, reach out to us at bluedoor@utoronto.ca or visit us at bluedoor.utoronto.ca.
-The Blue Door Team
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