Dae Kun Hwang named Fellow at Massey College

Chemical engineering professor Dae Kun (Rilla) Hwang has been named the 2018/2019 Ryerson Fellow at Massey College, and the prestigious research leave comes at a key point in his career, he says.

“I tend to only read and think about my field, but when you're trying to create new things and find a direction for your research in the future, you need exposure to novel ideas and different perspectives,” says Hwang, a Tier II Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Microarchitecture for Advanced Polymeric Materials.

Starting in September, Hwang will meet visiting scholars, distinguished professionals and full-time graduate students from a broad range of disciplines, thanks to an ongoing partnership between Ryerson and Massey College in the University of Toronto. The Massey College fellowship, which is open to tenured Ryerson faculty members who have been approved for a full-year sabbatical, provides space and resources at the graduate college to pursue leading-edge research.

In addition to supervising his Ryerson graduate students, Hwang will spend his eight-month fellowship focusing on his research, creating a new course for undergraduate students and attending a variety of scholar-led workshops and seminars at Massey College. In particular, he's interested in learning more about science policy, the social sciences and the humanities, and exploring how those areas can contribute to his work down the road.

With funding from the CRC program and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Hwang and his team are developing polymeric materials, which consist of a large number of molecules bonded together, for application in health care. One day, for example, the research could be used to detect tumour cells circulating in the body, to slowly deliver precise doses of chemotherapy via implants or to vaccinate a patient using microneedles (a less invasive delivery method).

Two other Ryerson faculty members will also have roles at Massey College this fall. Raktim Mitra of the School of Urban and Regional Planning and Frauke Zeller of the School of Professional Communication have been selected as Massey Visiting Scholars for the upcoming academic year.

Mitra is co-director of Ryerson's TransForm Laboratory of Transportation and Land Use Planning, which studies how urban transportation systems and the built environment affect travel behaviour and health. Zeller, meanwhile, co-created hitchBOT, Canada's first hitchhiking robot and a project that attracted considerable public interest worldwide. She is now working on a number of initiatives related to human-robot interaction and artificial intelligence. Both Mitra and Zeller will have their own set of privileges for the duration of their Massey College appointments.