Toronto played host this year to the Canadian Undergraduate Technology Conference (CUTC), held from January 20 to 22. The annual conference brings professionals from companies like Microsoft and Amazon.com to speak with hundreds of students from across Canada who are looking to enter the technology industry. Sponsored by biggies like Microsoft, IBM, and Bell Canada, the CUTC gives engineering and computer science students the opportunity to learn first-hand information about jobs, research, and the expectations from growing economies all over the world.
The event started with a keynote speech by David Yach, senior vice president of Research in Motion (RIM), a company that specializes in wireless products. The latest offering from the wireless lab is the Blackberry, a personal digital assistant (PDA) that can perform all the functions of a normal PC, such as web browsing and e-mail. It is small, wireless, and runs on the cellular network.
“Questions about security is one of the main problems in the use of PCs,” says Yach. The Blackberry’s similarity to a cellphone is one of its major advantages. A cellphone typically has a battery life of three to six hours, but its sleep mode system allows it to run for much longer. The phone “awakens” continually, about every second or so, and “asks” whether there is a call. If not, the system goes off to “sleep” again. The Blackberry uses the same feature, which minimizes energy consumption.
Also at the CUTC was Dr. Uri Sagman, a specialist in cancer treatment who turned to nanotechnology and co-founded the Canadian NanoBusiness Alliance in 2002. Nanotechnology, which uses materials that have been engineered on a molecular scale, is one of the fastest-growing areas of technology. Sagman says that matter behaves differently at the nano scale, with more strength and better electrical conductivity. As a result, scientists are using extremely small materials, like fullerenes, soccer-ball shaped molecules made of 60 carbon atoms. Fullerenes, named after the scientist and inventor Buckminister Fuller (and jokingly referred to as Bucky Balls) will most likely be used in the next generation of fuel cells because they are so energy efficient.
The molecules could also find uses in medical science, because their cage-like structure can be effective in “packaging” certain drugs that are useful for diseases but have harmful side-effects. Their strength and durability could also be used in the manufacture of car bodies to reduce the effect of collisions.
One of the major concerns with tsunami-affected areas is the availability of safe drinking water. Sagman estimates that the world’s drinkable water comprises only one per cent of the total water supply. Of that one per cent, many areas of fresh water are unsafe to drink. Nanomaterials may serve as filters to remove impurities from water, and may also serve as detectors for preventing major contaminations of water, or provide ways to find new sources of fresh water.
