Upstairs at the North American International Auto Show is this year’s array of new cars being unveiled by automakers, but the lower level was where the wizardry behind them begins.

Researchers from UWindsor’s Centre for Hybrid Automotive Research and Green Energy — CHARGE, for short — was among the exhibitors on the lower level of Cobo Center, displaying a prototype of an electric motor created in collaboration with Ford Motor Company of Canada.

CHARGE Labs researchers also brought along a controller that runs an electric motor, and information on the independent, third-party testing they can provide manufacturers developing their own electric vehicles.

“We are here to showcase the contributions we are making as a university with this lab,” said Narayan Kar, director of CHARGE Labs and a professor with expertise in electrified transportation systems. “We are creating knowledge and experts for the future…. That’s what we’d like to demonstrate to the outside world.”

The CHARGE Labs’ exhibit space was sponsored by auto parts giant Magna International, one of the industry funders of Dr. Kar’s research. With other industry and government funders — electric motor supplier Borg Warner, D & V Electronics which makes testers for electric motors, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the province’s Ontario Centres of Excellence, and internal UWindsor grants — Kar’s CHARGE Labs employs more than two dozen post-doctoral fellows, PhD candidates, master’s students, and undergrads.

“This is a tremendous opportunity for me,” said CHARGE Labs R&D manager Eshaan Ghosh, an electrical engineer who completed his PhD at the University of Windsor.

“This is not an area where a lot of universities are doing research,” Dr. Ghosh said, calling it a privilege to work on extending the frontiers of electric vehicle technologies.

“This is the future.”

The University of Windsor has had another presence at the autoshow, collaborating with the WindsorEssex Economic Development Corporation, St. Clair College, and the WEtech Alliance on a shared booth.

“We want to promote Windsor-Essex as a region that’s advancing mobility and technology, and promote the innovative research going on in the community,” said Tina Suntres, who works in UWindsor’s Office of Research and Innovation Services.

The University of Windsor is part of the Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Network and has been selected as one of six Regional Technology Development Sites in Ontario. Windsor will be home to a site where manufacturers can test their autonomous vehicles in a virtual-reality environment.

“It will be one of the largest high-fidelity virtual-reality testing in Ontario,” Suntres said.

Windsor mayor Drew Dilkens, other members of city council and Essex County warden Gary McNamara spent time at the booth touting the region as “where Canada begins.”

“The Windsor/Essex Detroit relationship provides a unique environment to innovate, attract talent and think globally,” said McNamara.

Said Dilkens: “The strength of our shared history in automotive positions us well for the future and we are excited to share our story with global leaders at the NAIAS.”

The auto show, which features vehicles and technologies that will shape the future automotive landscape, opens to the public Jan. 19 to 27.

The University of Windsor will also have a presence at the Canadian International Autoshow, Feb. 15 to 24, and the Ontario Centres of Excellence Discovery trade show, May 13 and 14, both at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

—Sarah Sacheli

Artist Teresa Altiman, whose work is featured on the banners on Turtle Island Walk, has lent her talents to support the Alternative Spring Break project.

Greeting cards bearing images she painted, each featuring a feather of a bird native to the area, are available for purchase in the Campus Bookstore. Inside, the cards feature the seven Indigenous traditional teachings: honesty, humility, wisdom, courage, truth, love, and respect.

A portion of each purchase will help to offset costs for student volunteers to visit one of two locations — Costa Rica or Altiman’s home of Walpole Island First Nation — during Reading Week.

The cards are available individually for $3 apiece or as a boxed set of all seven for $20.

Works by composers Bernard Heiden and Paul Hindemith are on the program for a recital by saxophonist Jeffry Price in the SoCA Armouries on Sunday, Jan. 20.

Price, an instructor in the instrument in the School of Creative Arts, will be accompanied by pianist Ina Yoon for the free public performance, set for 2 p.m. in the Performance Hall.

The SoCA Armouries is located at 37 University Ave. E. Find the full program on the concert website.

A 10 per cent cut in tuition for domestic students announced Thursday by the Ontario government will reduce universities’ revenue by $360 million — and negatively affect their ability to provide the best possible learning experience for students, according to the president of the Council of Ontario Universities.

“Ontario universities understand the province’s fiscal realities and are committed to continuing to operate as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible,” David Lindsay said in response to the government’s announcement. “The current financial situation faced by universities should be viewed in the context of over 16 years of decreased funding.”

He said a healthy, financially sustainable university system is vital to Ontario’s economic and social well-being:

• preparing students for life-long meaningful careers,
• supplying employers with the skilled graduates they need,
• helping build thriving communities, and
• strengthening public services such as health care with high-quality professionals and innovative research.

Lindsay noted that per-student government operating grants to universities, when adjusted for inflation, have declined by 10.6 per cent since 2002-03 and that Ontario universities operate at the lowest cost in Canada.

Read the entire statement on the COU website.

The Office of Open Learning is launching a new Book Club to discuss critical issues in online, open, and technology-enabled teaching and learning.

These are flexible, informal gatherings intended to bring together members of the UWindsor community to have conversations that advance the pedagogy of online and blended teaching and learning, while discussing books by leading thinkers in the field. Wherever possible, these books will be free and openly licenced.

The first book selected to discuss is An Urgency of Teachers: the work of Critical Digital Pedagogy by Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel. This collection of essays explores the authors’ work in and the trends, techniques, hopes, fears, and possibilities of digital pedagogy. In the age of artificial intelligence and machines, the authors posit that pedagogy, specifically critical digital pedagogy, is the lever for change. They urge us to put humans at the centre of our educational practices; indeed, to put care and justice for humans at the fore of our institutions and our ideologies.

“You can join the conversation on campus or online,” says organizer Nobuko Fujita. “We will be using the Hypothes.is tool to annotate the web version of the book. While we have a private group for the Book Club, you can also choose to annotate privately or publicly.”

Dr. Fujita encourages the campus community to join the group in the Leddy Library, participate in the conversation asynchronously online using Hypothesis, or choose a combination of the face-to-face and online modes that is meaningful to them.

The first session is scheduled for noon to 1 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 18, in the library’s first-floor room 1101. Register at https://ctl2.uwindsor.ca/openlearning/workshops/9/#wkshp-105.

For more information, contact Fujita by email nfujita@uwindsor.ca, or phone at 519-253-3000, ext. 2105.

The University of Windsor and Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare (HDGH) have partnered to invest in collaborative patient-centred research.

The new Partners in Research seed grants program will offer $10,000 in funding to two successful teams that include a principal investigator from each of the university and the hospital.

The program is intended to help generate novel data, foster research collaborations between HDGH and UWindsor, and attract new funding from other sources. Proposals should provide a definitive plan for conducting knowledge transfer and continuing the research effort at the end of the grant period, including applying for ongoing funding.

The deadline to apply is Feb. 28. For more information, contact Natasha Wiebe in the Office of Research and Innovation Services at nwiebe@uwindsor.ca or Marla Jackson from HDGH at marla.jackson@hdgh.org.

The University now has authorization codes to update the statistics software SPSS.

The current version is SPSS 25, available for download from the Software Depot. Users of the network version of SPSS will have received an expiry message indicating they are due for an update.