Media Releases

New Engineering minor in robotics and mechatronics, and clinical engineering PhD concentration will launch in fall 2011

April 14, 2011

TORONTO, ON – The Aca­d­e­m­ic Pol­i­cy and Pro­grams Com­mit­tee of Gov­ern­ing Coun­cil has approved a new Engi­neer­ing minor pro­gram in Robot­ics and Mecha­tron­ics, along with a PhD con­cen­tra­tion in Clin­i­cal Engi­neer­ing at the Insti­tute of Bio­ma­te­ri­als & Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing (IBBME), for fall 2011.

The new Engi­neer­ing Robot­ics and Mecha­tron­ics minor will allow stu­dents to explore fun­da­men­tal enabling tech­nolo­gies that ren­der robot­ic and mecha­tron­ic sys­tems into viable con­sumer prod­ucts. Course­work will cov­er mecha­tron­ics design and sys­tems inter­fac­ing, advanced tech­niques for sig­nal pro­cess­ing and sys­tems con­trol, and new sys­tem-lev­el prin­ci­ples under­ly­ing embed­ded sys­tems.

The minor is a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort between The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Depart­ment of Elec­tri­cal & Com­put­er Engi­neer­ing, The Depart­ment of Civ­il Engi­neer­ing, the Depart­ment of Mechan­i­cal & Indus­tri­al Engi­neer­ing, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to Insti­tute for Aero­space Stud­ies, and the Insti­tute of Bio­ma­te­ri­als & Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing.

“We have a lot of strength in the Fac­ul­ty in mecha­tron­ics and robot­ics,” said Pro­fes­sor Rid­ha Ben Mrad (MIE), Direc­tor of the university’s Insti­tute for Robot­ics and Mecha­tron­ics, found­ed in 2010, and a chief pro­po­nents of the new minor. “This minor pro­gram will pro­vide our stu­dents with the abil­i­ty to pur­sue a struc­tured pro­gram that pro­vides in-depth stud­ies in this area and takes advan­tage of exten­sive teach­ing facil­i­ties and resources from across the Fac­ul­ty.”

A new Clin­i­cal Engi­neer­ing con­cen­tra­tion with­in IBB­ME’s PhD pro­gram will allow doc­tor­al can­di­dates hold­ing an under­grad­u­ate engi­neer­ing degree to pur­sue a unique con­cen­tra­tion in bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing with an empha­sis on enhanc­ing patient safe­ty, qual­i­ty of care and qual­i­ty of life, in order to be pre­pared to meet the increas­ing demand for clin­i­cal engi­neers as lead­ers in research and inno­va­tion.

In addi­tion to com­plet­ing the nor­mal require­ments of the exist­ing PhD pro­gram, stu­dents in the con­cen­tra­tion will require co-super­vi­sion by engi­neer­ing and health sci­ence fac­ul­ty, and must con­duct research with­in a clin­i­cal health­care envi­ron­ment.

Grad­u­ate stu­dents with­out a for­mal degree in clin­i­cal engi­neer­ing are nor­mal­ly required to com­plete a spec­i­fied half-course in Clin­i­cal Engi­neer­ing. The new con­cen­tra­tion includes an option to allow Clin­i­cal Engi­neer­ing grad­u­ate stu­dents cur­rent­ly in the MHSc pro­gram to trans­fer into the PhD program’s con­cen­tra­tion.

“This is a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for the field of clin­i­cal engi­neer­ing in Cana­da and abroad,” said Pro­fes­sor Paul San­terre, Direc­tor, IBBME. “The Fac­ul­ty has tak­en the lead in expand­ing what was tra­di­tion­al­ly a pro­fes­sion­al master’s pro­gram by enhanc­ing the depth of its cur­ricu­lum, and focus­ing on the trans­la­tion of inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies and tools into the health­care sec­tor, which gen­er­ates approx­i­mate­ly 11% of Canada’s gross domes­tic prod­uct in the form of ser­vices and prod­ucts.

“The PhD con­cen­tra­tion in Clin­i­cal Engi­neer­ing aligns quite well with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s deep roots as a lead­ing research-inten­sive insti­tu­tion, and was devel­oped in response to the strong inter­est of our grad­u­ate stu­dents.”

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For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact:

Liz Do
Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Offi­cer
416–946-0922
liz.do@utoronto.ca

Made­lyn Her­schorn
Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Pub­lic Affairs
416–946-5783
madelyn.herschorn@utoronto.ca