Some stories I’ve done over the years, either for my day job at U of T Engineering News or for freelance clients.

    If you want more, check out the the blog section of my website.

    Canada’s largest urban geoexchange system

    Illustration: Nicolas Demers, courtesy of U of T Facilities & Services

    U of T Engineering Professor Frank Hooper’s research on ground source heat pumps helped inspire the sustainable Geoexchange Project at the heart of U of T’s historic St. George Campus

    [U of T Engineering News, January 26, 2022]

    Artificial intelligence helps researchers up-cycle waste carbon

    Photo: Daria Perevezentsev

    Researchers at U of T Engineering and Carnegie Mellon University leveraged AI to speed up the search for a new catalyst that converts carbon dioxide (CO2) into ethylene — a chemical precursor to a wide range of products, from plastics to dish detergent.

    [U of T Engineering News, May 13, 2020]

    FLATTEN: Engineering students create free online map to help track the spread of COVID-19

    Image courtesy FLATTEN.ca

    An online tool built by a team of volunteers uses self-reporting to create a heatmap of potential COVID-19 cases across the GTA.

    [U of T Engineering News, March 25, 2020]

     

    Big cats of southern Alberta

    Illustration of Smilodon fatalis by palaeoartist Henry Sharpe.

    A reexamination of old fossils shows that Smilodon (sabre-toothed cats) roamed further north than previously thought — and that Eurasian cave lions came further south.

    [Canadian Science Publishing, October 7, 2019]

    Leading the ‘vinyl renaissance’

    Photo: Doug Chappell

    Rob Brown is chief operating officer of Viryl Technologies, one of only two companies in the world that make vinyl record pressing machines.

    [U of T Engineering News, September 27, 2019]

    Spray-on solar power

    Photo: Steve Rainwater, via Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons

    Protective polymers from researchers at the University of Saskatchewan could lower the cost of photovoltaics.

    [Canadian Science Publishing, September 23, 2019]

    Why don’t more Torontonians cycle to work?

    Photo: Kevin Zolkiewicz, via Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons

    A new study maps cycling stress levels and accessibility across the city.

    [U of T Engineering News, September 10, 2019]

    Out of thin air

    Photo: Marit Mitchell

    A promising technique for converting atmospheric CO2 into commercially valuable products.

    [U of T Engineering News, May 29, 2019]

    Cleaning up the lithium-ion battery supply chain

    Photo courtesy Li-Cycle

    Li-Cycle is a Toronto-area company that recovers critical materials from lithium-ion batteries

    [U of T Engineering News, April 30, 2019]

    How self-driving cars could shrink parking lots

    Photo: Roberta Baker

    Optimizing for autonomous vehicles could increase the capacity of a parking lot by up to 62 per cent

    [U of T Engineering News, March 28, 2018]

    Let them eat dirt

    Photo: freepik.com

    University of British Columbia microbiologist Brett Finlay suggests that bacteria have a role to play in keeping us healthy

    [Innovation.ca, February 13, 2017]

    A 150-year-old fossil mystery from the Canadian Arctic

    Image: Nobu Tamura, via Wikimedia Commons

    A fossil recovered during the search for the lost Franklin Expedition is finally identified after a century and a half

    [Canadian Science Publishing, January 10, 2017]

    What if all the ice on earth melted?

    I researched and wrote the script for this video starring Bill Nye, which has more than 6.5 million views on YouTube.

    [AsapSCIENCE, September 7, 2016]

    Designing against disaster

    Photo: Ashley Cooper/Corbis

    As offshore wind turbines proliferate, engineers are considering the possibility of collisions with ships.

    [Hakai Magazine, June 11, 2015]

    What if humans disappeared?

    I researched and wrote the script for this video, which has more than 8.5 million views on YouTube.

    [AsapSCIENCE, January 28, 2015]

    How Toronto engineers built a human-powered helicopter

    Todd Reichert and Cameron Robertson won the Sikorsky prize for designing and building the quadcopter Atlas

    [Torontoist.com, July 16, 2013]

    The Human Edge

    I edited and wrote some of the display copy for this exhibit at the Ontario Science Centre

    [Opened 2013]

    Nature’s industrialists

    This story won the inaugural Award of Journalism Excellence in Engineering from Engineers Canada

    [Canadian Chemical News, December 2012 issue]

    Final verdict

    This story won the Herb Lampert Emerging Journalist Award from Science Writers & Communicators of Canada (formerly the Canadian Science Writers’ Association)

    [Canadian Chemical News, July/August 2011 issue)535]