Students

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Wide-eyed expressions that typically signal fear seem to enlarge our visual field making it easier to spot threats at the same time they enhance the ability of others to locate the source of danger, according to new research from the University of Toronto.

The research by Daniel Lee, a graduate student in the Department of Psychology, is published on the Psychological Science website and in an upcoming issue.

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It was not your typical dissertation panel: a swimmer, a lawyer, an economist, a policy analyst and a guitarist from the Tragically Hip.

They gathered at Queen’s University to judge 30 doctoral presentations from students representing 16 Ontario universities at the Ontario Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition.

Each graduate student had three minutes, one static slide, and no other props to convey their research topic to the non-specialist judging panel. The University of Toronto entered two scholars.

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Some of them have been playing classical music together since they were toddlers—now the students in this University of Toronto chamber quartet are taking the stage at the Canadian Opera Company.

Chamber music ensemble The Arkadas Quartet comprises fourth-year students Emily Kruspe (violin), Jesse Morrison (viola) and Brandon Wilkie (cello), from the Faculty of Music and master’s student Jamie Kruspe (violin).

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Squint a little, and you might imagine you’re on the floor of a Bay Street financial firm. A stock ticker on the wall displays real-time information on hundreds of publicly traded companies, while 60 dual-screen computers flash results from professional-grade financial programs.

The only giveaway that you’re at a university campus is that the computers are being used by students in jeans and t-shirts, their backpacks tossed down at their feet. That and the lectern in the corner.

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They call them solar bursaries: Trinity College is using money generated from solar panels on its roof to fund research opportunities and awards for students.

Each day the solar panels on the Larkin Building near the corner of Devonshire Place and Hoskin Avenue generate electrical energy which the College sells at a premium to Toronto Hydro. And this year, revenues from those solar panels helped fund 25 student bursaries.