Professor Amy Bilton (MIE) is launching a new initiative to empower the next generation of engineers in tackling complex international development challenges.
The new project, entitled Sensing, Data, and Analytics for Advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDA-for-SDGs), has secured $1.65 million in funding through an NSERC CREATE grant over six years.
The Sustainable Development Goals, created by the United Nations (UN), are a set of 17 interconnected objectives aimed at addressing global challenges such as poverty, inequality, climate change and access to clean water and education. Adopted by all 191 UN member states, the SDGs are intended to be achieved by 2030.
The SDA-for-SDGs project offers engineering graduate students and post-doctoral fellows an opportunity to navigate the entire innovation lifecycle of transformative technologies — from design and development to deployment. The program is specifically designed to enable participants to reach beyond the traditional research silos, which can otherwise hinder innovation.
Participants will benefit from joint training modules, research mobility programs and internships supported by a global network of 19 collaborators from organizations such as Engineering for Change, the UN Institute for Water and Environment and Health. The list of collaborators includes government laboratories and universities across Canada, India, Mexico and South Africa.
Earlier this year, Bilton was named a 2025 Fellow of the SDGs@UofT Scholars Academy. SDGs@Uof T is an Institutional Strategic Initiative (ISI) that aims to catalyze research on sustainable development at the university.
A novel feature of the program is its focus on technology commercialization. Drawing on Bilton’s experience in launching research-based ventures, trainees will receive guidance, from partners such as U of T’s Creative Destruction Lab and Engineering for Change, on identifying customers, crafting value propositions and building relationships with funders.
“Right now, most new technologies are created for developed world markets,” says Bilton.
“But you can’t achieve the SDGs by simply making those technologies available to everyone, because they don’t work in every context. Sustainable development requires us to think about how people in different regions actually use products — as opposed to how the designer intended them to be used — and to consider things like how they will be repaired or maintained.
“Increasingly, that also means embedding sensors and using data and analytics to understand real-world usage patterns, environmental conditions and maintenance needs over time. Also, to make technologies accessible, that often requires thinking about the implications of policy. Those are the skills that participants in this new program will learn.”
The SDA-for-SDGs project arrives at a critical moment.
Meeting the SDGs by 2030 is increasingly uncertain — the most recent United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Report found that progress has been significantly hindered by the COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical instability and worsening climate change.
SDA-for-SDGs directly addresses the need for accelerated cross-disciplinary efforts to bring SDGs back on track.
“Engineering is a more global discipline than it has ever been before,” says Bilton.
“By using the SDGs to focus our efforts, we can give the next generation of engineering leaders a truly global perspective that will pervade and inform all their work. That will have positive knock-on effects for decades to come.”
