U of T ENGINEERING

BioZone

CREATE Team and Program Committee

CREATE Team Members

Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry, University of Toronto

  • Emma Master

    • Research and Expertise: The implementation of enzymology, protein engineering, proteomics, applied functional genomics, and lignocellulose chemistry for the production of high-value products from renewable plant resources.

    • Research Projects: Developing cell-free biocatalytic cascades to high-value products from plant polymers; Functional genomics and assay development

  • Elizabeth Edwards

    • Research and Expertise: Utilizing the latest genomics and metagenomics tools to understand and exploit microbial communities that detoxify common pollutants, convert wastes into useful products, and to minimize solid waste streams.

    • Research Projects: Research Projects: Anaerobic Bioremediation; Wastewater Treatment; Anaerobic Digestion

  • Krishna Mahadevan

    • Research and Expertise: Engineering microbial systems for industrial and medical applications by employing bioinformatics, modeling of metabolic and regulatory networks, systems biology, metabolic engineering, and synthetic biology.

    • Research Projects: Bioprocesses for high-value chemical products from renewable feedstocks; Genome and community scale modeling

  • Grant Allen

    • Research and Expertise: Environmental bioprocess engineering for the treatment of industrial waste and wastewater streams, air quality, and the use of micro algae for the conversion of waste into value-added products.

    • Research Projects: De-watering industrial waste; Production of chemicals from waste CO2 and wastewater

  • Brad Saville

    • Research and Expertise: Conversion of biomass for production of biofuels and bioproducts, and the economic and life cycle analysis of biofuels and bioproducts.

    • Research Projects: Technoeconomic assessment of bioprocesses; Life cycle analysis; Bioprocess design

  • Alexander Yakunin

    • Research and Expertise: Engineering microbial systems for industrial and medical applications by employing bioinformatics, modeling of metabolic and regulatory networks, systems biology, and metabolic engineering.

    • Research Projects: Identifying novel biocatalysis for industrial applications; Development of assays for enzyme characterization

  • Doug Reeve

    • Research and Expertise: Process and enviornmental improvement in the pulp and paper industry, surface science of wood pulp fibres and paper, and the leadership education for engineering students.

    • Research Projects: Leadership, management, and communication training

Civil and Mineral Engineering, University of Toronto

  • Heather MacLean

    • Research and Expertise: Systems analysis for sustainable engineering including the development and application of life cycle assessment and techno-economic methods for the evaluation of technical and externality impacts of conventional and alternative energy and transportation systems.

    • Research Projects: Techno-economic analysis; Life cycle analysis

  • Elodie Passeport

    • Research and Expertise: Characterizing the fate and removal of organic and inorganic contaminants in natural and engineered aquatic environments and development of isotope techniques to quantify trace levels of environmental contaminates

    • Research Projects: Tracking the behavior of specific emerging contaminants in surface waters; Developing new applications for stable isotope techniques

Donnelly Centre for Cellular & Biomolecular Research, University of Toronto

  • Hannes Röst

    • Research and Expertise: Understanding biology on a personalized level and using next-generation mass spectrometry to analyze proteomic and metabolomic data in high-throughput.

    • Research Projects: Mass-spectrometry based quantitative proteomics and metabolomics; Human Personalized Omics Profiling (unerstanding human genetic variation)

Faculty of Law, University of Toronto

  • Max Morgan

    • Research and Expertise: Development of open science legal structures, policy, and translational initiatives.

The Hatchery, University of Toronto

  • Joseph Orozco

    • Research and Expertise: Student lead entrepreneurship and commercialization

Microbiology and Immunology, University of British Columbia

  • Steven Hallam

    • Research and Expertise: Microbial ecology, biological engineering, and bioinformatics with specific emphasis on the creation of functional screens and computational tools that reveal hidden metabolic powers of uncultivated microbial communities.

    • Research Projects: Construction and interpretation of environmental genomics libraries through functional screen; Generation of computational tools and workflows for genomics analysis

Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, University of Calgary

  • Alexei Savchenko

    • Research and Expertise: Enzyme production and characterization facilitating enzyme discovery and synthetic biology, including: bacterial pathogenic factors; antimicrobial resistance enzymes; carbohydrate-active enzymes; biocatalysts. Characterization of protein function based on combination of structural, biochemical and in vivo methodologies.

    • Research Projects: Bacterial structural genomics; Clinical and emerging antibiotic resistance elements; Molecular basis of pathogen-host interactions

Start-up Co-founders

  • Pratish Gawand

    • Research and Expertise: Synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, industrial bioprocess development, biotechnology commercialization.

    • Research Projects: Development of cosmetics and fragrances from renewable feedstocks

  • Sofia Bonilla Tobar

    • Research and Expertise: Enzyme technology, microalgae, biotechnology commercialization.

    • Research Projects: Development of next generation pet food from sustainable ingredients

The Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC)

  • Aled Edwards

    • Research and Expertise: Developing open access research tools (chemical inhibitors, protein structures and recombinant antibodies). Showing up for airline flights at the very last minute.

    • Research Projects: Implementing open science initiatives

Troost Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering, University of Toronto

  • Emily Moore

    • Research and Expertise: Engineering leadership education, technology transfer

    • Research Projects: Interdisciplinary training, systems mapping frameworks to establish effective partnerships and business ecosystems 

CREATE Program Committee

  • Anthony Aniya (Chair, Canadian Food Inspection Agency)

  • Radhakrishnan Mahadevan (Co-applicant, U of T)

  • Grant Allen (Co-applicant, U of T)

  • Matyas Kosa (West Fraser)

  • Pratish Gawand (Ardra Inc.)

  • Sofia Bonilla Tobar (ALT PRO Advantage)

  • Elizabeth Edwards (Open Science Lead, U of T)

  • Aled Edwards (Open Science Lead, U of T)

  • Emily Moore (Leadership Lead, U of T)

  • Emma Master (Program Lead, non-voting member)

  • Robert Lam (Project Manager, non voting member)

CREATE Trainees

  • Erica Di Pede (Saville group)

  • Joel Howard (Lawson group)

  • Liam Foyle (Edwards group)

  • Ian Gois Alves dos Santos (Lawson group)

  • Rachel Asbury (Saville group)

  • Mark Spahl (Mahadevan group)

  • Kevin Marrs (Master group)

  • Austin Zheng (Mahadevan group)

  • Jasmeen Parmar (Lawson group)

  • Rena Chen (Master group)

  • Aiman Fatima (Diosady group)

  • Kamilla Aliyeva (Diosady group)

  • Rana Barghout (Mahadevan group)

  • Michelle Feigis (Mahadevan group)

  • Christiana Anih (Diosady group)

  • Victoria Ivey (Mahadevan group)

  • Marjan Mohammadi (Mahadevan group)

  • Ryan Weiner (Edwards group)

  • Aiden Liu (Edwards group)

  • Ariel Tastasa (Edwards group)

  • Julia Silva Gordijo (Master group)

  • Dinesh Kumar Nallasamy (Lawson group)

  • Neha Joshi (Lawson group)

© 2025 Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering