NEWS FROM YOUR FIELD /
THE EDWARD S. ROGERS SR. DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL & COMPUTER ENGINEERING
www.ece.utoronto.ca
As president of the You’re Next Career Network, Mingyi Bian found her calling in helping her fellow students find theirs.
She’s next Mingyi Bian’s (Year 4 ElecE + PEY) job is to help you find your dream engineering job — an unexpected talent for a woman who never planned to be an engineer in the first place. “I applied on a bet with a high school friend,” Bian said. “I had no plans to do engineering, but came to a Track 1 reception as someone’s guest. We heard from Track 1 alumni, and I was just hooked. I think I’m still friends with 100 per cent of the people I met there.” Those she met at the reception included past Engineering Society president Teresa Nguyen (CivE 1T5) and You’re Next Career Network (YNCN) founder Yi-Wei Ang (IndE 1T2 + PEY) and past president Gordon Tang (IndE 1T4 + PEY). As president of the hugely successful YNCN, Bian leads a group of 46 engineering students who are devoted to generating diverse employment and internship opportunities for themselves and their classmates. They’re organized into three teams: corporate, startup and student development. Most devote more than 20 hours a week to keeping their well-oiled machine
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running, on top of the already ambitious engineering workload. “We ourselves benefit from doing it — it’s a service-based group,” Bian said. “There are both intrinsic and extrinsic benefits.” Bian initially joined YNCN as a member of the student development team before heading to Switzerland in her third year for an exchange at ETH Zurich, then participating in the Professional Experience Year (PEY) program. When she returned, Tang encouraged her to take over as president at the end of his term. For the 2015–2016 school year, she is focused on strengthening and extending ties with alumni, increasing coordination with the Engineering Career Centre and capitalizing on overlap with the robust student club network. “My roommate said that fourth year is all about legacy,” Bian said. “And that got me thinking about the legacy I want to leave behind, and how I can build on something I’ve already started.”
AARABI, COBBOLD NAMED INVENTORS OF THE YEAR Professors Parham Aarabi (ECE) and Richard Cobbold (IBBME, ECE) have each been named U of T Inventors of the Year, an honour that recognizes them for commercializing technology that stands to effect real change in society. Their two products were among just five U of T spinoffs honoured in 2015. Aarabi is the inventor of X-Touch, the only commercially available technology that can instantly transform any surface to become tap-sensitive without any hardware add-ons. The system uses unique acoustic signatures generated by taps at specific locations to turn any table, wall or lab bench into an interface for the mobile device placed on it. Cobbold and Amir Manbachi (EngSci oT8, BioMedE MASc 1T0, PhD 1T4) are the inventors and founders of PedicProbe™, a medical device that uses ultrasound technology to give surgeons a clearer picture during operations where screws are inserted into the spine. The technology could prevent navigational errors and significantly reduce the rate of revision surgeries, in addition to being more portable and affordable than what’s available today. PHOTO/ MARIT MITCHELL