Undergraduate research on display at annual URO showcase

Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) students representing six faculties presented their research projects at the Undergraduate Research Opportunities (URO) showcase on Sept. 21, 2023.

Nearly 50 student projects, ranging from robots for STEM education to innovation in cancer cell research, were on display at the Sears Atrium during the culminating two-hour event. 

Running annually since 2019, the URO program is funded by the Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation (OVPRI) and offers students a paid opportunity to contribute to scholarly, research and creative (SRC) activities. Students benefit from working with a faculty mentor for 14 weeks during the summer on a research project and attend workshops hosted by TMU Libraries and the OVPRI to learn key knowledge translation skills.

“I’d like to acknowledge the contribution you make by participating and collaborating with the faculty who serve as your mentors, but also the ways you contribute to scholarship and the overall SRC enterprise at the university,” said Steven N. Liss, TMU’s vice-president, research and innovation. He highlighted the value of the research skills gained by the students as technology impacts the future of work. “It is a very dynamic world that we live in, and one where the tools and very learnings which take place in the SRC environment are critical.” 

Below is a small sample of the projects presented at the URO showcase.

“Patch”: Social-emotional robotics to teach STEAM in classrooms 

Social-emotional robotics can be used in classrooms to help students learn STEAM subjects (science, technology, engineering, arts and math). The Creative School student Alexander Verni spent his summer helping design and prototype “Patch,” a small robot that can physically interact with and provide students with coding opportunities using CircuitPython – a programming language that uses plain English, increasing its accessibility. 

“We can introduce these to even Grade 3, Grade 2 students,” Verni said at the showcase. He and his supervisor, professor Mark Argo, designed “Patch” to be an upgrade over previous learning robots designed by professor Argo. Improvements include an expanded array of sensors and specialized eye screens that students can program. 

Management of non-communicable diseases and/or chronic conditions during COVID-19 pandemic in Francophone African countries

How did health professionals in African Francophone countries manage diseases and chronic conditions such as diabetes or hypertension while COVID-19 pandemic measures were in place? Faculty of Community Services nursing student Samara Esack presented the results of this study, supervised by professor Margareth Zanchetta, at the showcase. 

“There’s an underlying issue – a lot of health information is very jargony,” said Esack. The study dug into how the new challenges of medical jargon, COVID-19 misinformation and disruptions to medical supplies impacted health professionals from countries such as Algeria and Cameroon. It also examined the solutions they found, including more intensive, one-to-one conversations with patients, ensuring health information was user-friendly and accessible, and integrating cultural health practices. Esack will present these research findings at the upcoming Canadian Conference on Global Health in mid-October.

Towards an efficient context-aware recommendation system for e-commerce

When shopping online, customers are frequently given recommendations for new or additional products. However, those recommendations can be influenced by fake ratings. Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science student Ahmed Aly spent the summer working with supervising professor Rasha Kashef to create a recommender system that can provide e-commerce users with more reliable recommendations.

“Our research specifically focused on implementing a variational auto-encoder neural network to increase performance, and an anomaly detection mechanism that aims to decrease the effect of fake rating attacks,” said Aly. The model Aly helped develop outperformed other state-of-the-art models by giving more accurate recommendations.

The role of AMPK in metabolic adaptation in triple negative breast cancer cells

Faculty of Science student Ayshin Mehrabi shared her success developing a new tool for tracking cell movement, decreasing the time needed to analyze cell migration from weeks to minutes. Mehrabi worked with professor Costin Antonescu in his lab that studies fundamental cellular processes. One part of the lab’s research involves targeting and understanding a protein that regulates cell movement to unveil potential mechanisms cancer cells use to metastasize to other locations in the body. However, there was one obstacle in the research. “There’s no good method of tracking cell migration,” said Mehrabi, who explained that the cumbersome nature of tracking cells manually prevents some research from being pursued.

To solve this, the newly developed tool scans and captures an image of the cells every 20 minutes over 24 hours. When the images are stitched together, like a movie, researchers can see the speed, direction and distance the cells moved. 

When Machines Innovate: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Product Design Reception 

Will consumers like a product’s design more – or less – if it is designed by artificial intelligence (AI)? To help answer this question, Ted Rogers School of Management student Queenie Zhu and professor Matthew Philp measured nearly 600 participants’ reactions to three different electrical fan designs of varying levels of congruency, ranging from a standard-appearance fan to significantly unusual. Participants were shown one of the three designs; half were told it was designed by AI and the other half that it was human-created. Overall, the somewhat unusual, or moderately incongruent, design was most positively received – but all three were considered less favourable if told that AI had designed it. 

“One key takeaway is generative AI is present in our everyday lives, but it’s important for marketers and designers to look at the perceptions of consumers,” said Zhu. She said further research should address why people react less favourably to AI-designed products. 

Learn more about the URO program.

List of the undergraduate students who participated in the 2023 URO program