The Club for Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering (CUBE) (cube.skule.ca) at the University of Toronto continues to garner recognition for its exceptional achievements and contributions to the university community. Recently, CUBE was honoured to receive the 2024 “Program of the Year” Award from U of T Student Life (https://studentlife.utoronto.ca/program/campus-club-organization-awards/) for its commitment to excellence and innovation in promoting biomedical engineering at the campus. In 2023 – 2024 academic year, CUBE hosted a total of 10 events and 11 workshops.
One of the highlights of the year was the “Hack the Heart” (hacktheheart.ca) design hackathon, where innovation meets cardiology. This two-day hackathon engaged over 130 students, 15 researchers, and 5 workshops, providing students across Ontario universities a platform to engage in cardiac health innovation. “Hack the Heart” comprises of two components. The first is a pre-heat kick-off panel discussion with esteemed researchers in cardiovascular health, held on Nov 2023, centered around “Advancements in heart research, diagnosis, and treatment”. The aim of the panel was to acquaint students with the forefront of cardiovascular research, inspiring them to seek avenues of innovation for the hackathon. The second component of the event was the hackathon which unfolded on Feb 24th-25th, 2024. Student teams were invited to come up with design solutions that focused on one of the three streams: diagnostics, patient care, or cardiovascular treatment. The event also provided four workshops covering topics from MRI for cardiac imaging, biorobotics, to wearable technologies, to guide students throughout the design.
Another successful event was CUBE’s professor-student mixer event, which welcomed the McGill Bioengineering Undergraduate Student Society (BUSS) to Toronto. With 100+ students from McGill and U of T, along with 6 professors from the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, the event aimed to enhance collaboration between the two universities’ biomedical engineering student clubs.
Kenny Man, the CUBE executive who organized this event, highlights “fostering connections between three dynamic groups – U of T BME students and BME professors and McGill students – is a truly captivating endeavour.”
This year, CUBE continued to offer hands-on Lab Skills Workshops in collaboration with the Undergraduate Teaching Laboratory, introducing more workshops than ever before. These workshops, attended at full capacity, empowered many first- or second-year undergraduate students at the University with an opportunity to improve their professional skills through gaining lab experience.
One such workshop was aimed at improving biomedical engineering wetlab skills, such as performing and analyzing data gathered from polymerase chain reaction (PCR) experiments, and how to perform basic cell culture maintenance. Another workshop, titled “Measuring physiological marker of stress”, was hosted in collaboration with U of T IEEE to highlight the interdisplinary application of biomedical and electrical engineering, which allowed students to build a stress detector using Arduino. Furthermore, CUBE proudly hosted its inaugural workshop with U of T Girls in STEM to offer middle school girls an insight into the experience of studying biomedical engineering, with a goal to inspire middle school girls to consider a diverse array of career options available in STEM.
“It is extremely fun to meet likeminded students who come from all sorts of different programs – health science, epidemiology and even political science – at these CUBE workshops! It also makes me more aware of the work that one has to put in to teach someone a new skill, in a correct way. This makes me appreciate all my mentors and teaching assistants even more.” Said Robinson Meng, a junior executive that helped to run the workshops.
In discussing her experience with CUBE, Angela Leung, a junior executive, emphasized that “it is the wonderful team dynamic we shared that made CUBE such a special experience for me.”
With its commitment to promoting innovation, collaboration, and skill development in biomedical engineering, CUBE remains a driving force in the U of T community. Learn more about what CUBE has to offer on their official website: cube.skule.ca.