Exhibitions 2017

In the department of Molecular Genetics we perform a wide variety of biological research in diverse areas ranging from human genetics to infectious diseases. At our exhibit, you can meet our scientists and become a scientist yourself! You’ll meet cool microbes and model organisms, extract DNA from a banana, learn about your unique genetic traits, make a DNA model out of candy, and much more!

Come step into the physiology warp machine were we will take you to Canada’s early scientific discoveries by playing interactive games, learning fun facts and becoming a time master.

As the original department of Drs. Banting and Best, the Donnelly Centre is still the home for many current advances in research. Visit us to learn more about the cutting-edge biomedical science in our department that can’t be done anywhere else in the world. Try your hand at decoding DNA and other fun activities and even take a picture of yourself as a scientist in one of the Donnelly Centre labs!

The Canadian Biomarker Integration Network in Depression (CAN-BIND) is a national research and education network dedicated to improving health outcomes for people living with depression. To learn more about depression and our research, come visit our booth and participate in our interactive activities!

Come play our fun myth buster game! You will also learn about our mobile application, brain structures and its effects on mood, the role of music in depression therapy, and the relationship between wellness and cognition. In recognition of Canada 150, help us create a Canadian wellness tree by sharing your wellness tips on a maple leaf!

Grow Your Own Leather will be an interdisciplinary exhibit in looking into the world of kombucha biofilms. Come visit our table to learn about iGEM, see some kombucha leather artworks, and learn about how people are using synthetic biology to play with this cool biofilm!

Zebrafish are a genetic model for studying vertebrate development and a model for human biology and disease. However, to make them useful for those purposes researchers have to put in genes similar to those found in our body. At our booth participants will have a chance to learn about zebrafish transgenics through a series of informative presentations, videos, and a hands on exercise that will allow them to use a microscope to identify zebrafish embryos at various stages of development.

Do-it-yourself biological innovation! We believe in the power of open source, open access, and learning in community. We believe this philosophy should be applied to biology! We are currently established at Hacklab.to and through equipment donations have a fully functional biology lab.

Scihigh will be running a bunch of family friendly, hands-on science demonstrations. Come and try making edible neuron models out of candy, extracting DNA from your own saliva, learn how to pipette like a scientist or complete our DNA puzzle to win a prize.

CSB research investigates the behaviour of cells – the fundamental units of life – in terms of molecular processes within and between cells. Both hypothesis-driven and discovery-based strategies are integrated to gain a mechanistic understanding of complex and highly dynamic cellular systems and how they govern the development, physiology, interaction and evolution of organisms.”

Join us for a dive into the history of stem cell research! Learn about this amazing type of cells, and tell us what you would like to accomplish as a potential stem cell scientist in the future! Learn about well-known and inspirational Canadian stem cell scientists – supplemented by trivia on stem cells, clay modeling of cell development – we will also have a photography booth where children would be able to pose with a lab coat and a white board with a message on why they think stem cell research is important and what they would like to accomplish with stem cell research.

Mathematics is all around us and is present in everything we see and experience. Come join us for some hands-on activities that explore mathematics in a whole new way.

In the department of Math, Comp. Sci and Statistics we are committed to promoting our research activities. At our exhibit you can explore the beauty of mathematics through various puzzles, games and tricks. You will walk out convinced that mathematics is not a boring subject, but an elegant and creative art!

Exhibit featuring robots designed and built by elementary and high school students. Visitors will have opportunity to see Lego Robots and 120-pound robots built by high school students. They will be able to work with Lego, ask questions and see the larger robots in action

At the SciNet & SOSCIP booth, explorers of all ages will find out how researchers use computers for discovery. They will see how simple computer simulations that you can run in your web browser or laptop can reveal important facts about how complex systems behave.

The University of Toronto Aerospace Team (UTAT) is a design team composed of ambitious students and young professionals at the forefront of aerospace education and innovation. We’re building the next generation of innovators and innovations mobilizing aerospace as a vehicle for pushing the limits of people, technology, and society to create a better world. At our exhibit, we will be displaying the rockets, satellites and drones that our team builds.

We will display various gadgets and objects from the team’s history. Next to it, we will have the solar car on display.

A handful of fun, engaging and hands-on STEM Activities that showcases the benefits of outreach STEM education.

We plan on having displays and also a robot activity for the public, where they can run the robots to solve a challenge.

We will have representatives to relay information about the work Bridges to Prosperity has done in the past and will do in the future. There will be a craft activity that requires building a small-scale bridge with simple household material.

Ever wanted to experience what it’s like in space or scaling the side of a cliff? Well, now you can with the technology of virtual reality – take a stroll in Paris, walk with dinosaurs and take a height-defying flight to wherever your imagination desires!
A cell phone, a cardboard viewer, and two lenses are all it takes to create virtual reality! With the help of the cardboard viewer, the lenses are placed at an appropriate distance to be able to magnify and focus the light and the double image created on your phone into one 3D view!
Dive in and experience VR today!

The Foundation for Student Science and Technology provides STEM research, publishing and leadership opportunities for high school and undergraduate students. The exhibit will consist of two parts. The first part will be the booth in the main part of the fair. This booth will provide visitors with an introduction to the Foundation, student opportunities in STEM and the Journal for Student Science and Technology. The second part will take place in the Gerstein Library. Visitors to the Library’s Instructional lab will be able to participate in a workshop on creating virtual labs that can be used for research.

The colour and surface of a car is a very important part of its appeal. Come learn about our research on how to keep paint on car surfaces smooth and glossy!

At Physics you will be amazed by how the world works! Come tinker with pattern formation and chaos theory. Hear how icicles are formed and about gravitational waves. You will be able to tour labs with atoms, lasers, icicles and condensed matter. Check out everything PHYSICS from kinematics to superconductivity to atmospheric science. See you there!

Join our team of chemistry graduate students at the Lash Miller Chemical Laboratories for over 20 different fun activities, including film canister rockets, fruit explosion, instant ice-cream and more!

Join us in a workshop to make your very own biodegradable paper and learn about the history and future opportunities of Canada’s biorefineries. Together, let’s explore how we can use plants and trees as a replacement for fossil fuels to produce the fine-chemicals and polymers, like plastic, that we use in our everyday lives. Participants of all ages are welcome.

Discover and learn about light like never before!

The CHISIL laboratory will showcase virtual reality applications related to medical education and clinical care. The display will feature hands on activities for participants to immerse themselves in virtual reality medical environments. To celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday, we have designed a special virtual reality experience.

Booth representing the 14 graduate departments (MSc & PhD) at the Faculty of Medicine, showcasing various research applications

The Nutrition Mythbusters exhibit, put on by the graduate students from the Department of Nutritional Sciences, will feature activities for students of all ages. The exhibit has a wide range of interactive activities that will enable students to learn how to read a nutrition facts table, the relationship between energy balance, portion sizes and health, as well as some nutrition myths.

To celebrate the 150 anniversary of Canada theme our booth will present a poster highlighting 150 years of medical discoveries in Canada! We will also have posters with disease awareness created by our pre-medical students, a project called Flowers for Cures where we present brochures created by our members and give away seeds and plants in support of medical research, we will have interactive games such as “Can I be a doctor?”and ” How well do you know your digestive system?”We will have quizzes and prizes, finger print activity and other fun bio-medical and interactive games. We will have displays with various animal models of diseases used in preclinical trials to test drugs, about our diseases awareness international project Flowers for Cures, and about our workshop series and programs for mentoring applicants to medical school and other health care postgraduate programs. Visitors will learn about diseases and flowers and can participate by planting seeds and flowers and sharing images online from their garden. We will have quizzes and prizes for grade 4-12 for drug discovery-model knowledge, practical interactive activities (fingerprinting, diseases discovery games, etc) and information about our educational activities, workshops, and about our International Conference Models of Human Diseases and Global health and global medical education for the 21st century. We will also have a hall of fame where fair participants can nominate a great doctor or med school student or professor they know.
In addition we will present our outreach activities in high schools to promote science to students and in particular women, minorities, and international students.

In this exhibit, participants will be able to experience the effect of exercise on their mental health and cognitive function, will be able to discuss the link between exercise and mental health with experts, and will be able to try out new ways of practicing mindfulness and positive self-talk for improved exercise behaviour.

Pharmacy and the science behind it. How are medicines designed and used to best cure what ails you? Stop by and test your knowledge of some of the best health care services a short walk away from home. See and try out the experiments used to design medicines that reach the right place at the right time inside you and do the needed job – how do we make that magic happen?

Did you know that Canada is a world-leader in brain and neuroscience research? Discover how this research has advanced our understanding of the brain, and how these insights are creating better tools, technologies, and treatments to improve brain health.

Simple programmable circuits. We will teach kids some of the basics behind controlling digital signals and reading in analog data from the environment in short lessons convenient for the street festival.

We will be showcasing several patient-specific 3D printed models that our lab has developed for either educational training purposes or for pre-surgical planning operations. These will be tactile models so the audience/public can touch and interact with them. We will also demonstrate the normal ‘workflow’ for producing a patient-specific organ: segmentation, 3D model editing and ultimately 3D printing.

Canadian Blood Services manages the national supply of blood, blood products and stem cells, and related services. We also lead an integrated, interprovincial system for organ donation and transplantation. Our Centre for Innovation conducts and supports research in key priority areas. The focus is on transfusion science and medicine but also emerging related fields such as cellular therapies and organ and tissue transplantation. At our booth, we will be blood typing (for 17+), providing educational info about why blood types matter and what’s in blood, going through the eligibility quiz, signing up people to learn more about blood, and a scientist may be on hand to answer questions and/or talk about research projects.

Ever wonder how sand moves in rivers forming an intricate set of river bedforms? These bedforms are incredible archives of the energy used in river systems and the sediment that they transport. The table-top flume will be used to demonstrate active sand transport and the creation of river dunes to simulate what happens in real river environments. These models are of interest to Physical Geographers and Earth Scientists.

We will show participants the effect of earthquakes on buildings using a makeshift “shaketable” with a Kinex structure on top.

The Department of Earth Sciences exhibit will have something for everyone. Our booth highlights will include the oldest water in the world, meteorites, an interactive geologic time line, fun mineral identification games, and a celebration of Canadian geologists’ contributions to science.

Our aim is to give the public some hands-on experience allowing them to discover several of the important organisms that have led to discoveries in the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology. We plan to have leeches (important for medicinal purposes), daphnia (a model organism for many systems, especially in disease ecology and ecotoxicology), anole lizards (a model organism for the study of diversification), Madagascar hissing cockroaches (an exemplar species for unique evolutionary adaptation), and amphibians (often labelled as indicator species, these organisms are highly sensitive to anthropogenic impacts, acting as red flags to indicate when a system is under stress). Lastly, we’d like to highlight some of the species that have recently been discovered in our department. This will include fossils and specimens from the Royal Ontario Museum.

Stop by the Bug Bites booth to learn about the consumption of insects as a sustainable, healthy food source, and their role in the future food production. Bug Bites seeks to overcome taboos, create demand for sustainable foods, and show people that insect consumption is tenable, healthy, fun, and delicious.

Follow the 2014 story of the blue whales that washed ashore in Trout River and Rocky Harbour, Newfoundland and Labrador; and the unprecedented opportunity for research and conservation that resulted. Find out how the ROM is studying their DNA to unlock some of the mysteries surrounding these large but elusive creatures, and gain insight into the global decline of the blue whale population and what is being done to protect the world’s largest animal…ever.

Explore your relationship with Turtle Island through hands on activities with Mishiikenh (turtle) and Odemin (strawberry). Through Odemin we can learn about how our cells to our ancestors pass on information. Learn about ecological relationships through the stories of Mishiikenhs scoots with interactive turtle models.

1. Transplant and harvest your own food in the green living wall
2. Pick your seeds and watch your plants come to life in our Interactive seedling station
3. Challenge your taste buds and try our living plants right off the wall!

The University of Toronto Child Study Centre is a group consisting of multiple developmental psychology labs at the University of Toronto researching about how children and adolescents learn about the world around them. Children will get the opportunity to play fun, interactive games that represent the various studies that are run amongst the labs

The Scott Research Lab will demonstrate the use of eye tracking technology to conduct research, and will invite patrons to interact with the technology.

Children and families at this event will do an activity where they put together a timeline of child development. They will have the opportunity to sequence various developmental milestones (i.e., word learning, lie-telling, understanding others’ mental states) in order along the timeline. Included in our booth will also be 3 research spotlights where we highlight some of the developmental science work conducted at University of Toronto.

The psychology booth will feature a number of exciting demonstrations, including how our taste buds work, how our eyes can adapt to changes in the world, and how anyone can become a better problem solver!

We have developed three STEM kits, each with 6-7 activities for three different age groups. We will be showcasing activities from each kit. “Around the pond kit” for 5-7 year-olds tha focus on exploration of nature and learning about senses. Space Exploration Kit for 8-10 year-olds that focuses on space technology and life on the International Space Station, and the Robotics Kit that focuses on programming a robot to find signs of life on a distant planet.

WISE will display pamphlets and some swag items, as well as have some simple science/engineering activities.

At the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design booth, explorers of all ages will find out how simple materials can be used for research about structural and material principles as well as insights into architectural geometry. They will see how household materials can reveal important facts about how design decisions affect the built environment.

Anthropology offers a science program – the Major in Anthropology (Evolutionary) program. Evolutionary anthropology provides the opportunity to think deeply about the nature of humanity. Human biology and behaviour are bio-cultural. Like other animals, genetics and environment influence their lives, but unlike other animals both of those factors are influenced by culture. As humans face problems of urban crowding, interpersonal conflict, and ill health, we can learn from the insights derived from evolutionary anthropology, viewing our species in the context of our origin and evolution.

What was it like doing science at the University of Toronto a hundred years ago? Come and see curious artifacts from the university’s science and technology history and learn about who used them and what they were used for.

Come learn about the Science of Language at the Linguistics Booth! See what your tongue looks like when you say different sounds and puzzle over how to make words in different Canadian languages. Don’t forget to take home a picture of your voice!

Origami is the art of paper folding. The word is Japanese, literally meaning to fold (oru) paper (kami). UTFOLD is an organization committed to introducing and promoting the entertainment and educational values of origami, on and off the UTSG campus. We love to turn paper into many intricate things, and we’d love to show you how.

Let’s Talk Science is a national charitable organization committed to building youth interest and engagement in science, engineering and technology. At the U of T – St. George site, we mobilize graduate student volunteers studying science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) to do hands-on/minds-on science activities with children and youth.

The booth is the launching point for girls from all over the GTA, we offer STEM demonstration connected to the program activity and create custom site map so that the participants can do all activities required for STEM badge. We provide Girl Guide program information and connect program areas to the STEM environment.

Come learn about space and astronomy! We have a variety of small exhibits including telescope, pin buttons, and people in spacesuits!