U of T's Mina Tadrous, a professor in the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, launched The Toronto Centre for Real-World Evidence - a place where pharmaceutical companies, government regulators, clinicians, and public health researchers come together to determine how drugs perform outside of clinical trials.
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BioLabs, a global innovation infrastructure company that operates a growing network of shared labs and co-working spaces, is partnering with U of T to establish a Toronto's largest shared lab incubator.
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Headquartered at U of T, The Electric Vehicle Innovation Ontario (EVIO) program launched with $2.5 million in federal funding from FedDev Ontario to embed 37 graduate researchers from Ontario universities into 20 of the province’s EV and mobility companies over nearly three years.
Chadwick King, Associate VP Research, Immunoengineering and BC Site Head of Amgen provides his perspectives on precision medicine at the 7th Annual PRiME Symposium.
U of T Entrepreneurship hosted Entrepreneurship Week March 2-6 including the flagship event, The 2026 Desjardins Startup Prize Pitch Competition, where over $100,000 were awarded to promising innovators within the U of T ecosystem.
The Institute for Studies in Transdisciplinary Engineering Education and Practice (ISTEP) brought together more than 70 graduate engineering students for Semiconductor Industry Night, a panel event exploring innovation and new opportunities in this rapidly evolving sector.
U of T hosted Canada's Horizon Europe Secretariat and The European Health and Digital Executive Agency leadership on March 4th to promote joint opportunities, spur collaboration, and demystify the Horizon Europe program - the largest scientific research funding program in the world, encouraging academic, industrial and public sector researchers to work together to solve grand challenges.
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On February 27th, U of T's Troost Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering (ILead) hosted a talk by Dr. Lobna Cherif on building resilient and emotionally intelligent leadership in organizations that operate in uncertain, and high-stakes environments, like with the Canadian Armed Forces.
U of T's Centre for Research and Applications in Fluidic Technologies (CRAFT) will be hosting an industry open house on April 28th and is inviting industrial partners to propose a talk.
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- UPCOMING -
The National University of Singapore's Institute for Functional Intelligent Materials is partnering with U of T's Acceleration Consortium on a first-ever joint AI4X - Accelerate Conference 2026 in Singapore from June 15-19. Register now if you want to be involved in this leading AI conference for science and deep tech applications.
Professor Nandita Vijaykumar
If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to build efficient artificial intelligence systems that don't just process data, but actively perceive and interact with the world around them, you’ll find the answer in the work of Prof. Nandita Vijaykumar—a researcher who seems determined to teach computers not just to think faster, but to see smarter and move better. Taking all of the above together, it's no surprise along with her primary appointment in U of T's Department of Computer Science, Nandita also has appointments in U of T's Robotics Institute and the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
Nandita's lab, known as embARC, focuses on the systems foundations of emerging AI applications - what many describe as the next frontier of intelligent systems: physical intelligence. From large-scale machine learning models to robotics, autonomous systems, augmented and virtual reality, and generative AI, today’s most exciting applications are pushing computing systems to their limits. These applications need to process massive amounts of data, operate at very high speeds, and scale efficiently from hardware as small as a digital thermometer to as big as a data centre —all while keeping costs and energy expenditure in check!
Nandita and the embARC team tackle these challenges head-on. They design system and hardware foundations for these emerging workloads. The goal: make these powerful AI systems faster, more efficient, and scalable across both cloud platforms and edge devices. As these workloads grow in scale and ambition, so do their demands—on performance, latency, and energy. By building better systems across the stack, Nandita and her team are helping turn cutting-edge ideas in physical intelligence and machine learning into practical, real-world technologies. “Breakthroughs in AI don’t come from algorithms alone—they depend on the systems and hardware that make them fast, efficient, and usable in the real world. That’s where we come in.”
This convergence of computing hardware, sensing, and AI methods has invited quite a few well known companies into Nandita's orbit. She has collaborated with Intel, LG, AMD, and Sony, among others, in recent years. As a Sony Research Award Program awardee, for example, Nandita and the embARC team were working to implement neural nets on resource-constrained devices for 3D reconstruction.
What stood out most in this collaboration was the shared commitment to turn strong academic research into knowledge that can be used beyond an academic setting. Through open dialogue and mutual trust, the partnership helped promising ideas mature more quickly and created pathways for those insights to spread across teams and ultimately into real-world applications.
Kazuyuki Sakoda, Sony Group Corporation
Nandita is open to adding to her roster of collaborators, be they new corporations, not-for-profits, government agencies, or academic institutions. Reach out viaThe Blue Door or directly with Nandita if you think you may want to collaborate with her and her team.
Here are some ways to get involved over the next few weeks, months, and years.
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U of T has just launched its portal for defence and dual use research. If your organization is interested in collaborating in aerospace, arctic, AI, biosecurity, democratic resilience, health systems resilience, quantum technologies, robotics, or related topics, reach out to Derrik Leach to learn how.
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U of T's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering is launching its Master of Engineering Co-op Program (MEng Co-op) for the incoming September 2026 cohort of Master of Engineering students. The program includes an 8-month placement and leverages tax incentives and matching programs (where eligible). MEng Co-op students in Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry, Civil & Mineral Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering, Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Aerospace Studies can participate in the program. Reach out to the Engineering Career Centre to learn about how your company can participate.
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U of T's Data Sciences Institute is hosting a suite of three micro-credential sessions this spring on Data Science Fundamentals, Machine Learning Fundamentals, and Deploying AI. Learn more about activities and partnership opportunities with DSI.
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U of T's Engineering Partnerships Office (EPO) at 800 Bay Street is a home base in Toronto's downtown Discovery District for companies looking to lease private office space or host an event. Boasting up to 4000 square feet of highly configurable office and dry lab space, the EPO is a great place from which companies can connect with U of T's talent, research, and entrepreneurial communities. For more information or to schedule a visit, contact the EPO.
Still have back pain from all the stuff you lugged around as an undergrad? You're not alone! Compare that to what today's students have in their backpacks (image generation 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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