We will drive new knowledge, local and national economic growth, and equitable societal advancements through a national centre of excellence in robotics.
Through this campaign, we will realize the promise of robotics to address a range of complex challenges in an ethical, equitable, and just manner. We will create a new national centre of excellence in robotics to develop robots as tools to enable new medical procedures and drug discovery, autonomous monitoring of climate, and improvements in transportation and logistics, among myriad other uses. The centre will catalyze an interlocking system of discovery and development, sparking the growth of a robotics education-research-industrial core in our region. Our efforts will be integrated with U of T’s Robotics Institute and Acceleration Consortium, Canada’s largest and most diversified robotics program. Collectively, U of T is the only Canadian institution with the critical mass of talent to create a national robotics strategy. This collaborative work—with broad partnerships across the University and our communities—will improve human health and the sustainability of our planet and create greater and more equitably shared prosperity. This work will build on the University’s pioneering discoveries in artificial intelligence and our community’s prominent role in health care, logistics, and advanced manufacturing. It will pave the way for UTM to develop the region’s only research-intensive program in engineering, which will catalyze the region’s economy and workforce with new, highly trained talent.
