Graduate Research Days 2025

2019 PhD graduate | Chemical Engineering

Esmeralda Bukuroshi completed her PhD in chemical engineering in 2020. Under the supervison of Professor Tim Bender, her thesis focused on carbon-based molecules that can transform light into electricity. Her work could one day lead to solar cells that bend and twist, enabling them to be sewn into wearable technology.  

A highlight of Bukuroshi’s program was the six months she spent at the University of Copenhagen studying with Professor Mogens Brøndsted Nielsen, an exchange facilitated by a Mitacs Globalink Award. She also co-founded the Graduate Engineering Council of Students (GECoS) and helped to coordinate the Engineering Graduate Career Fair, which is now an annual event.  

Bukuroshi currently supports health-care delivery across Ontario to fight COVID-19 as a Senior Analyst of Innovation on Ontario Health's Capacity Planning and Optimization team. 

U of T Engineering News: Grads to Watch 2020 

2018 PhD graduate | Materials Science Engineering 

Phil De Luna completed his PhD in materials science and engineering. Under the supervision of Professor Ted Sargent, he investigated the development of new materials to convert carbon dioxide into renewable fuels. He also held competitive research internships at IBM Research Center in New York, Toyota Research Institute in Silicon Valley, and was a visiting researcher at University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University. 

After graduating in 2018, De Luna served as the youngest-ever director at the National Research Council of Canada, focused on disruptive technologies to decarbonize Canada. As a result of this work, he was named one of 2019’s Forbes 30 under 30.  

De Luna recently ran as the Green Party Candidate for Toronto-St. Paul’s.  

U of T Engineering News: Grads to Watch 2019

2019 MASc graduate | Civil Engineering

Olugbenga Olubanjo completed his MASc in civil engineering in 2019 under the supervision of Professor Shoshanna Saxe. With support from U of T’s entrepreneurship ecosystem, including U of T Engineering’s Entrepreneurship Hatchery, Olubanjo developed his own clean energy startup called Reeddi. 

Reeddi provides portable energy via compact capsules that are charged at solar-powered stations located in communities in rural and urban Nigerian communities. Customers rent the capsules at an affordable price and are incentivized to return them on time by earning credits that can go toward future rentals.  

As the founder and CEO of Reedii, Olubanjo has won numerous awards including the Cisco Global Problem Challenge, the MIT Clean Energy Prize competition and the IEEE Empower a Billion Lives competition. Most recently, Reedii was named a finalist by Prince William for the Earthshot Prize. 

U of T Engineering News: Reeddi powers up: Startup brings portable, renewable electricity to rural areas 

2019 PhD graduate|Chemical Engineering & Biomedical Engineering

Ahil Ganesh earned his PhD in chemical and biomedical engineering in 2019 under the supervison of Professor Molly Shoichet. Near the end of his degree, he did an internship at Shoichet’s startup, which helped him realize his interest in working at the earliest stages of pharmaceutical product development.  

After serving as a postdoctoral researcher at Novartis on novel delivery technologies, he continued his career in industry. Ganesh now works as a senior research scientist at Spark Therapeutics where develops gene therapies for the pharmaceutical industry. 

Alumni Profile: Pursuing a career in the pharmaceutical industry

2020 PhD graduate | Engineering Education

With a background in civil engineering, Sasha Gollish completed her PhD in 2020 in engineering education, a unique program offered jointly through U of T’s Institute for Studies in Transdisciplinary Engineering Education & Practice (ISTEP) and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Under the supervision of Professor Bryan Karney, Gollish studied attitudes toward mathematics among engineering faculty. 

Gollish pursued her PhD as she returned to professional running, a lifelong passion that saw her represent Canada at the 2015 Pan Am Games (she won bronze in the 1,500-metre race!). In the first year of her PhD, she won the Governor General’s Academic Athletic Excellence award and was named Athlete of the Year by U of T, USports Track and Field and OUA Track and Field.  

In 2021, she joined the University of Toronto’s Division of Engineering Science and ISTEP as an assistant professor in the teaching stream.  

U of T Engineering News: Grads to Watch 2020

2019 MASc graduate | Mechanical Engineering 

Tij Gupta completed his MASc in mechanical engineering in 2019. As a member of the Advanced Thermal/Fluids Optimization, Modelling, and Simulation (ATOMS) Laboratory under the supervision of Dean Emerita Cristina Amon, his research focused on creating more efficient batteries for electric vehicles.  

Gupta now works for General Motors as an Algorithm Design and Development Engineer in Vehicle Thermal Management. 

One Minute Thesis – Tij Gupta

2020 PhD graduate | Aerospace Engineering

Valentin Peretroukhin completed his PhD in aerospace engineering in 2020. His thesis focused on finding new algorithms to assist the ability of self-driving vehicles and robots to 'see’ using cameras similar to those found in smartphones. 

Peretroukhin also helped develop an online course on programming self-driving vehicles with his supervisor Professor Jonathan Kelly. The course is available worldwide through Coursera. He also found time to co-found Pillsy, a startup that uses a sensor-enabled pill container to remind people to take their medication. Pillsy received support from two U of T Engineering startup accelerator initatives: The Entrepreneurship Hatchery and Start@UTIAS. 

Peretroukhin currently works at the Space Flight Laboratory at University of Toronto’s Institute for Aerospace Studies. 

U of T Engineering News: Grads to Watch 2020

2011 MASc graduate | Electrical and Computer Engineering

Professor Mark Jeffrey completed his MASc in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2011, and his PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2019. His research is focused in the areas of computer architecture and computer systems, with an emphasis on parallel computer architecture, parallel programming models and hardware/software co-design for parallelization, performance and efficiency.  

U of T Engineering News: ECE welcomes new faculty member Mark Jeffrey