The Self-Powered Sensor Networks (ORF-SPSN) consortium consists of a multidisciplinary research team at the University of Toronto, in conjunction with our current industrial partners AD Telecom and SIRADEL. The proposed system developments address a highly challenging and intricate problem, which can especially benefit from the combined know-how and skills from a variety of technological areas, including Electronic Communications, Computer Science, Biochemistry, Energy Systems, Material Sciences and Engineering, as well as Nanoscale Biosensors and Nanobiomaterials. The versatile consortium offers diverse yet complementary expertise and resources. With the specialized technological and scientific skills, our group is in a unique position to provide the breadth and depth of interdisciplinary caliber needed for a project of such magnitude and complexity.
Our consortium is funded by the Ministry of Research and Innovation, under an Ontario Research Fund (ORF) grant. Over a period of five years, the project has a total operating budget of over CND$9 million, which is contributed in part by our industrial partners. Besides the researchers listed in the following, the fund is used to also support many senior undergraduate students and graduate students who are involved in associated research activities.
Principal Investigator
Bell Canada Chair in Multimedia, Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Toronto. He is co-founder and Director of the Identity, Privacy and Security Institute (IPSI) at the University of Toronto. He is author/co-author of more than 200 papers in technical journals and conference proceedings and he has contributed to 12 books in his areas of interest. He is the co-author of Multimedia Encoding for Access Control with Traitor Tracing: Balancing Secrecy, Privacy and Traceability, VDM Verlag Dr. Muller, 2008, (ISBN: 978-3-8364-3638-0). His experience includes consulting through Electrical Engineering Consociates Ltd. and contracts with United Signals and Systems Inc., Burns and Fry Ltd., Pipetronix Ltd., Defense R&D Canada (DRDC), Nortel Networks, Vivosonic Inc. and CANAMET Inc. He is currently an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing. He has served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing from 1998 till 2002 and Guest Editor for the special issue of Signal Processing, Elsevier, on Signal Processing Technologies for Short Burst Wireless Communications which appeared in October 2000. He was a member of the IEEE Statistical Signal and Array Processing Technical Committee (SSAP) from 1992 till 1995 and Technical Program co-Chairof the 5th Workshop on Higher-Order Statistics in July 1997. He is a senior member of the IEEE and member of EURASIP, the Professional Engineers of Ontario (PEO), and the Technical Chamber of Greece.
Academic Co-Investigators
Konstantinos N. (Kostas) Plataniotis is a Professor with The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and an Adjunct Professor with the School of Computer Science at Ryerson University, Canada. He is the Chair of the Communications Group at the ECE Department, Deputy Director of The University of Toronto's Knowledge Media Design Institute and the Director of Research for the Identity, Privacy and Security Institute at the University of Toronto.
Prof. Plataniotis is the Editor in Chief (2009-2011) for the IEEE Signal Processing Letters and chairs the Examination Committee for the IEEE Certified Biometrics Professional (CBP) Program. He is a member of the Nominations Committee for the IEEE Council on Biometrics, a member of Publications and Awards Boards, IEEE Signal Processing Society, and a Member of the Steering Committee, IEEE Trans. on Mobile Computing.
He served on the IEEE Educational Activities Board (EAB) and he was the Chair (2008-09) of the IEEE EAB Continuing Professional Education Committee. Dr. Plataniotis has served as Chair (2000-2002) IEEE Toronto Signal Processing Chapter, Chair (2004-2005) IEEE Toronto Section, and he was a member of the 2006 and 2007 IEEE Admissions & Advancement Committees. He is the 2005 recipient of IEEE Canada's Outstanding Engineering Educator Award "for contributions to engineering education and inspirational guidance of graduate students" and the co-recipient of the 2006 IEEE Trans. on Neural Networks Outstaning Paper Award for the published in 2003 paper entitled " Face Recognition Using Kernel Direct Discriminant Analysis Algorithms". He is a registered professional engineer in the province of Ontario, and a member of the Technical Chamber of Greece. His research interests include biometrics, communications systems, multimedia systems, and signal & image processing.
Associate Professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Toronto. Prior to her current position, Keryn conducted research at Motorola Labs, the corporate research laboratories of Motorola Inc., and held a final position of Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff and Manager. While at Motorola Labs, Keryn performed research and development work on electrochemical energy storage technologies and led a team of 32 engineers and academic researchers in developing applications of micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) technology for radio frequency (RF) and microfluidic systems. Keryn served as the principal investigator of the Meso-MEMS Consortium funded by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) of the United States. She has over 20 publications and presentations and holds 33 US patents. Among the issued patents, 20 are in the area of electrochemical energy storage materials and devices. She was an invited speaker in Argonne National labs on electrochemical ultracapacitors. In April 2007, Keryn served as the sub-panel lead on electrolytes for ultracapacitors at the US Department of Energy (DOE) workshop on Basic Research needs for energy storage proposing the research direction for next 10 years.
Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology, Professor, Dept. of Computer Science, Faculty of Arts and Science, University of Toronto. He has published over 100 papers in refereed journals, including in Nature, Nature Materials, Reviews of Modern Physics, Applied Physics Letters, Advanced Materials, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and NanoLetters. His most recent work has been in the applications of colloidal quantum dots in optoelectronic devices and systems. In July 2006, the Editor of the journal Nature introduced the Sargent group publication appearing in that journal as follows: devices are built via semiconductor crystal growth on a single-crystal substrate. Over 100 papers have been published in recent years in Nature on alternative devices, produced instead from the solution phase. They have some advantages over conventional crystalline semiconductor devices: ease of fabrication, physical flexibility and - most important - low cost. The problem was the poor electronic performance of solution-processed devices, compared with single-crystal counterparts. But that could change now: a team from the University of Toronto reports that one such system – colloidal quantum dots of lead sulphide - can actually outperform the state-of-the-art crystalline alternative." The research findings were covered in the popular press including the Financial Times and MIT Technology Review. annual list "...recognizing outstanding leaders in science and technology cells. In 2004-5 he was Visiting Professor in Nanotechnology and Photonics at MIT. In 2003 he was named "one of the world's top young innovators" by MIT's Technology Review. In 2002 he was honoured by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research as one of Canada's top twenty researchers under age forty. He received the B.Sc.Eng. (Engineering Physics) from Queen's University in 1995 and the Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering (Photonics) from the University of Toronto in 1998. His book "The Dance of Molecules: How Nanotechnology is Changing Our Lives" was released in the United States in February 2006.
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto. David Lie’s research focuses on improving the security and reliability of our computing infrastructure. He received his Ph.D from Stanford University in 2003 and joined the University of Toronto later that same year. His seminal doctoral work in secure processor architecture has led to publications totalling over 250 citations, and has inspired other researchers at MIT, Princeton and Georgia Tech to continue his work. He has published widely in fields of operating systems, computer security and computer architecture, and was recipient of the Best Paper Award at the prestigious Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP) conference in 2003. He currently supervises 2 Ph.D students and 4 Masters students. He is frequently invited to participate on Technical Program Committees in his field and has served on NSERC, CITO and NSF funding panels.
Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Toronto. Nazir Kherani has over 20 years of industrial and academic experience in research and technology development, innovation, engineering, technical management, and teaching in the area of semiconductor and nanostructured materials and devices. In 2005 he was jointly appointed in ECE and MSE to formally lead the area of Solar Energy and allied research in nanomaterials. He is currently leading the development of high efficiency Si heterojunction photovoltaics in the Advanced Photovoltaics and Devices group at the University of Toronto. He was recently (2006) awarded the prestigious Early Researcher Award for his research in photovoltaics and allied fields. He has over 80 publications, 5 granted patents, and 1 book to his credit. Nazir Kherani graduated with a PhD in Physics (1994), MASc in Nuclear Reactor Physics (1983), and BASc (Hon) in Engineering Science (1982) from the University of Toronto. He has completed two industrial research sabbaticals at Los Alamos National Laboratory (1986) and Institute for Plasma Physics, Research Center, Julich, Germany (1987).
Professor in the Department of Biochemistry (Medicine) and Division of Pharmaceutical Sciences (Pharmacy) at the University of Toronto. She holds a Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology, and was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at the Scripps Research Institute. Dr. Kelley has co-authored 48 scientific publications in top-tier and internationally-recognized journals, and has advised 15 graduate students, 3 postdoctoral fellows, and 10 undergraduate students. Her interdisciplinary research efforts are directed towards understanding and engineering the chemical properties of DNA and RNA using techniques and approaches that involve aspects of biological, analytical, organic, and materials chemistry. Over the last seven years the Kelley laboratories have produced new biosensing methods, generated novel DNA-binding probes useful for cellular studies, and have addressed the molecular basis of RNA-related disease. For the proposed project, Kelley’s research group has ideal expertise to spearhead the functionalization of sensors for biological and chemical detection. Since 2000, Kelley has received a Research Corporation Innovation Award, a Dreyfus New Faculty Award, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the Pittsburgh Conference Achievement Award and was named to Technology Review’s list of Top 100 innovators. She has also received grants from NIH, DARPA/AFOSR, NSF, the Keck Foundation, and several other private organizations and companies. Shana Kelley was a cofounder of GeneOhm Sciences, a company devoted to developing new clinical diagnostics. She chaired the 2002 Frontiers in Chemistry Symposium in Durham, NH, was consultant for NOVA television series in 2003, is an NIH Study Section Participant (Biodefense, SBC-A, EBT, IMAT) from 2003 – present and served on the planning committee for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, NAS/Keck Futures Initiative in 2004.
Researchers
Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan. He received his Ph.D. from the same institution in 2009. His doctoral research was supported by an NSERC CGS-D scholarship, and was focused on signal processing methodologies for resource allocation and security in wireless communication networks. In the ORF-SPSN project, he was the Project Manager till June 2011. As such, besides his technical contributions in the communication architecture, his role also included providing overall coordination and management, ensuring that the technical milestones and financial objectives were timely achieved. As the project progresses, he was also involved in the manufacturing and commercialization of the products, in conjunction with the industrial partners. Furthermore, he was responsible for developing communications and dissemination activities for the group. He was also the webmaster of the current website.
Dr. Liang Song has been an associate research scientist at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto (Canada). His R&D experience includes the areas of wireless communications and networking, signal processing, and embedded systems. The application areas include telecommunications service providing, low-power mesh networking for emergent interconnections, wireless sensor networks for intelligent surveillance and biomedical signal acquisition. His development experience is extensive in embedded system design and software / firmware programming, where he has been planning and leading many international R&D projects in North America, Europe and China. His technical publications include the authoring of about 30 referred papers in technical journals and conference proceedings, contributing to 4 books, and he is also the leading inventor of 9 patented innovations in the areas of wireless communications and networking. He was awarded the Ph.D. degree from the Department of ECE, University of Toronto, in 2006. And since 2008, he has been the co-founder and CTO of OMESH Networks Inc. which is a spin-out from Ontario Centres of Excellence and University of Toronto to commercialize large-scale cognitive wireless networking technologies and radios.
Petros Spachos is a Ph.D candidate at the University of Toronto. His research interests span primarily the area of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), as well as allied areas such as network protocols, network programming and network security. Besides his technical contributions in the communication architecture, his role also includes providing overall coordination and management and ensuring that the technical milestones are timely achieved. As the project progresses, he is also involved in the manufacturing and commercialization of the products, in conjunction with the industrial partners. Furthermore, he is responsible for developing communications and dissemination activities for the group. He is the webmaster of the current website.
Dr. Lukasz Brzozowski is a recipient of the Governors General Gold Medal for the best applied Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 2002-2003 year for his work on semiconductor, optical, and nanostructure telecommunication optical devices. He conducted research at the Sunnybrook and Women’s College Health Sciences center in medical devices for imaging applications. Subsequently Dr. Brzozowski spent several years in the industry holding middle management positions in the development, marketing, legal, and regulatory departments at a Canadian medical device/pharmaceutical start-up company Novadaq Technologies Inc. Prior to joining the team of Professor Ted Sargent, Dr. Brzozowski has held a position of Manager, Project Management at MDS Pharma Services, Global Central Lab and Centralized Cardiac Services.
Currently a post-doctoral fellow in the Multimedia Lab, in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees (with the rank of first) in Electrical Engineering, both from Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran in 1993 and 1996, respectively, and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Waterloo in 2009. From 1996 to 2004, he worked as a faculty member in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Yazd University, Iran. During this time, he was the head of Electrical laboratories at Yazd University. From 1998 to 2004, he worked as a technical advisor and design engineer (part time) in R&D center and cable design department in SGCC Company. His research interests are in general areas of Wireless Ad hoc and Sensor Networks, in particular Energy Efficiency and Optimal Resource Allocation, Multi-User Information Theory, Applications of Game Theory in Non-Cooperative Wireless Networks, and Orthogonal Codes in CDMA Systems.
Industrial Partners
The ORF-SPSN consortium is fortunate to have the participation of two international industrial partners, who have invested significantly to the province of Ontario, as part of the agreement under the ORF program. Indeed, the fact that our project has attracted the contributions of AD Telecom (headquartered in Spain) and SIRADEL (headquartered in France) is a compelling testament to the generalized, versatile and ubiquitous nature of the ORF-SPSN framework, in accordance with the motto of “designed in Ontario, ready for the world”.
Based in Barcelona, Spain. AD Telecom is devoted to the design and production of radio-frequency equipment, mainly for reception and distribution of analog and digital television signals, and power meters for DVB MPEG terrestrial and satellite TV reception. As an OEM company, it has produced and designed for several European companies. In the ORF-SPSN project, AD Telecom has focused on the sensor module development, particularly with optical based sensors, as well as on the practical implementation of various communication topologies.
Headquartered in Rennes, France. SIRADEL is a French high-tech company (Small Medium Enterprise) with branches in France, Hong Kong and Canada. It is one of the main International suppliers of geographic databases dedicated to the planning of broadcast and 3G radio networks. SIRADEL develops and sells the Volcano software propagation engine, featuring the best propagation models available on the market. SIRADEL has actively participated or participates in several (more than 20) academic and industrial research programs (e.g., EU-funded) in telecommunications, aimed at the planning of new wireless networks (4G, 3G LTE, 3G, WiFi, WiMAX, TD-SCDMA, indoor/outdoor, Digital TV) and is an active member of the COST 2100 European research group entitled "Ambient and pervasive networks". As our newest industrial partner, SIRADEL will be involved mainly in the communication architecture of the project.