University of Toronto

Neuroscientist Gillian Einstein wasn’t comfortable with the existing medical model that treats all women the same. Instead of stewing about the status quo, she took action and created the University of Toronto’s Collaborative Graduate Program in Women's Health, allowing researchers from a variety of disciplines to come together to look at women’s needs through multiple lenses. Einstein, who teaches at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, is curious about many other issues, too, including the effects of steroid hormones on the brain, how sleep and the menstrual cycle affect mental states and the neurobiological effects of genital cutting. One day, thanks to her, we’ll all undoubtedly look at women’s health differently.

Hart House calls itself U of T’s living laboratory of arts, culture and recreation, and with good reason. The historic building itself, built in the beaux arts Gothic revival style, dates back to 1919, but the activities taking place inside are distinctly au courant. Hart House is home to numerous student clubs and musical organizations, including a film board, a jazz choir and a debates club that has hosted myriad prominent figures as guests. Recreational facilities include a gym, a weight room and dance studio and there are classes offered in activities for every taste, offerings as diverse as hip hop dance, cycle fit and karate. Hart House is also home to the renowned Hart House Theatre, where actors such as Raymond Massey and Donald Sutherland once trod the boards. With such a range of intellectual and physical offerings, it’s a popular spot, day and night.

Professor Ping Lee of the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy explores methods for improving the way drugs can improve the quality of life for those suffering from disease. So, when Lee, the GlaxoSmithKline Chair in Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery, sees an opportunity to bring successful research to market, he jumps at the chance. Currently, he is working with Innovations and MaRS Discovery District to commercialize a technology for healing diabetic wounds using a novel technology that releases nitrous oxide into the body over a two week period. Not only does nitrous oxide improve wound closure rates, it also acts as an anti-infectant, so Lee’s discovery is sure to find a loyal following among the world’s 45 million diabetics.

The globe IS Professor Nick Eyles community! A professor in the Department of Physical and Environmental Science at the University of Toronto Scarborough, Eyles is a geologist who uncovers the mysteries lurking beneath the earth’s surface. Earlier this year, environmentalist David Suzuki engaged Eyles to host a five-part series on his CBC program The Nature of Things exploring the world’s geology. This adventure took Eyles from New Zealand to England to Chile to Ethiopia and points in between as he explained the origins of some of our planet’s most magnificent features to the layperson. More recently, Eyles dissected Japan's Sendai earthquake for the university community, explaining why the island nation is so vulnerable and whether Canada, too, is at risk.

Canada can learn a thing or two about multicultural societies from the Caribbean nations, says Professor Alyssa Trotz, director of U of T’s Caribbean studies program at New College. After all, the island countries have blended cultures for hundreds of years. Trotz, a native of Guyana, still edits a regular column for a newspaper in her homeland and she draws on the Caribbean for her research. "The Caribbean generates so many exciting questions and offers important, useful and relevant ways of thinking about the world," she says. She also teaches for the Women and Gender Studies Institute where she explores such issues as gender, race and nation and transnational feminism.

If you’re looking for quality and consistency in sports, the Varsity Blues swim team can be counted on to deliver. Simply check the university championship standings and it’s apparent. The Blues are at or near the top of the heap each year, both provincially and nationally. A team starts with a strong coaching staff, and Byron Macdonald, also known as CBC’s Olympic swimming commentator, and Linda Kiefer offer sound guidance and stability to their charges, and they are also talented recruiters. Among its stellar swimmers, the Varsity Blues can point to such standouts as Zach Chetrat, the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) butterfly champion and Andrea Jurenovskis, the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) swimmer of the year. The Blues are definitely cool in the pool.

The citizens of Japan, reeling from the March 2011 earthquake, will undoubtedly want to make the acquaintance of Professor Oh-Sung Kwon of civil engineering. One of Kwon’s passions is earthquake engineering, and he is exploring ways to design buildings that can better withstand these upheavals in the earth’s crust. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Kwon took part in a field mission to understand why roads and bridges failed, and he undertook similar trips to Peru after that country’s earthquakes in 2007 and 2010 in an attempt to analyze the damaged structures. Perhaps when Vancouver’s anticipated big earthquake finally occurs, structures will stay intact thanks to Kwon’s discoveries.

While many of their friends escape to warmer climes or hole themselves up in the library during Reading Week, more than 200 University of Toronto students dedicated their time to helping the community. For the fourth consecutive year, the Centre for Community Partnerships sponsored this foray into service-learning, offering students an opportunity to tie what they learn in the classroom to real-world experience, with time for reflection afterward. This year, the residents of Weston Mount Dennis neighbourhoods were the beneficiaries as the students built planters, created a garden, held story hours and conducted leadership training for local teens. “The impact students have even in one day can be amazing. Students are filling in a need that would be unmet otherwise, said Lisa Chambers, director of the centre. Bottom line, we hope students become civically engaged and make that commitment for the rest of their life.”

Curiosity is the hallmark of an engaged mind, and Professor Ray Jayawardhana of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics is endlessly curious. Jayawardhana, the Canada Research Chair in Observational Astrophysics, has made a name for himself with his research on the formation of stars and brown dwarfs and the origins of planetary systems, earning numerous prestigious honours, such as the Steacie Prize. Yet, when the opportunity arose to spend his holiday break searching for meteorites in the Anatarctic, Jayawardhana didn’t hesitate for a moment to turn his eyes earthward. The sky’s no limit for this knowledge seeker: Jayawardhana’s most recent book considers the possibility of life beyond our solar system.

Atom Egoyan took international relations at the University of Toronto but it didn’t take long for him to get caught up in his true love – filmmaking. It was 1979, his first year at U of T when he made a short film called “Howard in Particular.” It was black and white, shot on 16 mm, and he did it because a play he had written had been rejected by Trinity College's Dramatic Society. “I just thought out of spite I would make it as a movie,” he said. Egoyan is perhaps best known now for the his major movie hits “The Sweet Hereafter” and “Chloe,”and for being a four-time winner at the Cannes Film Festival. He credits his studies in international relations for helping him understand “what my fascinations are as an artist.”

When 12-year-old Craig Kielburger saw a headline in the Toronto Star reading, “Battled Child Labour, Boy, 12, Murdered,” no one could have known it would start an entire worldwide social movement. It inspired Kielburger to start Free the Children, which fights child labour through programs for one million young people in 45 countries. Kielburger took peace and conflict studies at U of T and learned from “some of the greatest minds of our time. Before I walked into U of T I was already passionate about the world. But what I lacked was the theory, the knowledge and the development approach,” he said.