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Durham College celebrates ranking as one of Canada’s Top 50 Research Colleges

Durham College (DC) is proud to once again have been named one of Canada’s Top 50 Research Colleges by Research Infosource Inc.

DC placed 24th in the annual ranking and was highlighted as second among medium-sized colleges for our number of paid student researchers and third for industry research income as a percentage of total college research income. DC also moved up in the ranking to fifth overall in both research partnerships and completed research projects.

Powering DC’s research success is DC’s Office of Research Services, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (ORSIE), which moved four of its five applied research centres into the new Centre for Innovation and Research (CIR), last year. In addition to centralizing DC’s research presence on campus, ORSIE continues to engage industry, business and community partners from the wider Region of Durham as it seeks out meaningful ways to collaborate in solving our community’s applied research challenges.

This year, ORSIE is proud to highlight several initiatives:

  • Hosting the ORSIE Impact Expo in October, where close to 150 visitors explored DC’s applied research centres. Researchers were on hand from the AI Hub, Centre for Cybersecurity Innovation, Mixed Reality Capture Studio and the Social Impact Hub, each eager to answer questions and share projects.
  • Recognition for the AI Hub, a new Technology Access Centre (TAC), with the Tech-Access Canada’s Tri-Pillar Excellence Award. This award highlights the AI Hub’s strengths in all three areas of research, training and technology. Last year, the AI Hub was awarded an annual grant of $350,000 per year over the next five years from the College and Community Innovation (CCI) program.
  • The Social Impact Hub launching a project to study and improve mental health care for Black communities thanks to a $360,000 federal grant.

DC continues to create meaningful applied research and co-operative education work terms for students, supported in part through the Diane Blake Student Success Initiative.

“We’re thrilled to be recognized for our research expertise and proud to have developed the Centre for Innovation and Research as a hub to connect our research centres across the campus,” said Debbie McKee Demczyk, Associate Vice President, Innovation and Research. “Within the business community, organizations are recognizing Durham College as an essential partner for their innovative ideas and that collaboration means more opportunities for our students as well.”

To learn more about DC’s applied research centres, visit www.durhamcollege.ca/orsie.

To learn more about ORSIE, read the 2023-2024 Annual Report.

DC alumna Victoria Rinsma is Canadian finalist in S. Pellegrino Young Chef Academy competition

Young chef and Durham College (DC) Culinary Skills alumna Victoria Rinsma recalls first learning about the S. Pellegrino Young Chef Academy competition as a student from Raul Sojo, executive chef of DC’s teaching-inspired restaurant Bistro ’67. Today she’s the Canadian finalist, and headed for the world competition in Milan, Italy, next fall.

Rinsma’s winning dish was called “Across the Sea and Home Again,” a two-part meal that includes a chawanmushi (Japanese savory egg custard) made with smoked ham hock, and a main course of striped bass with nixtamalized butternut squash and preserved tomatoes.

Rinsma says her dish represents her culinary journey, with the first part an ode to her grandmother’s split pea soup and the second to her culinary development and especially the influence of her mentor Rafael Covarrubias, executive chef at the Michelin-star Hexagon Restaurant in Oakville, Ontario, where Rinsma has worked for the past six years and is now sous chef.

“I wanted the dish to convey my story, all the people I’ve met and the cultures I’ve practiced cooking,” said Rinsma.

S. Pellegrino Young Chef Academy Competition is now in its sixth edition and receives submissions from more than 1,000 young chefs from 15 countries worldwide. The Canadian final was held at George Brown College in October, where each chef had five hours to produce their signature dish before presenting it to a panel of top chef judges. Rinsma’s win was a culmination of months of training with her mentor (a previous Pellegrino competitor) who worked with her on timing, flavours and process.

Rinsma has known she wanted to be a chef from an early age, and recalls watching cooking shows with her grandmother, pretending to stir pots of water alongside the chefs. Calling her grandmother an excellent home cook and the inspiration for her own professional aspirations, Rinsma started cooking seriously herself in high school. Growing up in Pickering, Durham College was a natural choice for her training, and Rinsma threw herself into both the program and into the mentorship she found at Bistro ’67. 

“I can’t say enough good things about the program and my experience. I dove in and did as much as I could. I started working in the Bistro in my first year—I was really keen. When Chef Raul started, we worked really well together, and he even allowed me to be part of menu development,” said Rinsma, adding that she even first heard of her current restaurant Hexagon while at DC.

Now that she is focused on competing in Milan, Rinsma knows that she will have many more hours of training ahead as she refines her dish even further and steadies herself for the challenges of competition.

“I’ll have to prepare myself mentally for that, the first round was a lot, and the finals will be even more,” says Rinsma, noting that her mentor also went to Milan, so she plans to call on his expertise along with the rest of the advisors she is gathering around her, calling it a team effort.

“It was not just me that was in the competition, it was a huge group effort, and I’m lucky enough to be the face of it.”

DC’s AI Hub recognized with Tech-Access Canada’s Tri-Pillar Excellence Award

Durham College’s (DC) AI Hub has been awarded the Tri-Pillar Excellence Award for its ongoing work to help businesses conduct research and development, adopt new technology and education and training.

The award comes from the national non-profit Tech-Access Canada, which supports a network of Technology Access Centres (TAC) across the country, including the AI Hub, which became a TAC in 2023.

Natalie Arthurs, Senior Manager of the AI Hub, says that the award was especially meaningful because it recognizes that her team is meeting multiple needs in an evolving field.

“As a fairly new TAC, this award reflects that we’ve made considerable progress in the three key areas of research, training and technology,” she said. “We have done a really good job of looking systematically across this moment in time in AI at how to put the right tools in the right place to overcome barriers to AI in a holistic way.”

Key initiatives from the AI Hub include the development and launch of the AI Guide ethics training program to help non-technical professionals gain an in-depth knowledge of AI governance and regulations. The Hub also offers a webinar and workshop series to help small- and medium-sized businesses learn about ways they can use AI in their organizations. The Hub’s AI Strategic Roadmap service helps companies to test the feasibility of an AI tool before fully committing to a larger investment.

The AI Hub has also positioned itself as a thought leader in the community, hosting a flagship annual AI in Action event in February, which attracted more than 180 participants in 2024. In addition to partnering with local organizations including the Whitby Chamber of Commerce, Invest Durham and the Spark Centre, and Angel Investors of Durham, the AI Hub also engaged with more than 60 companies in various industries over the last year, including health care, finance and marketing among others.

For Arthurs and her team, the AI Hub’s focus is always on practical solutions and meeting the needs of industry and the community. “When we set out to research something, it’s specifically solving a problem that industry has brought to us,” she said. “We looked across the board and asked: What are key barriers companies are facing? Why are companies struggling to integrate AI into their businesses? And then we developed programming specifically around that.”

She points to the AI Guide as an example to emerge from the realization that a possible barrier to AI adoption was concern over emerging regulations.

Given the ecosystem that the AI Hub has created, Arthurs says she was thrilled to share the news of the win with her team. “The best part was we had an event here at DC the day that we got home from the conference where the award was presented. Being able to share it with the team was the most rewarding part, because this award is really about diversity and diversity of services, and that diversity is reflected in our team and their strengths and their dedication.”

The AI Hub serves as a strategic advisor to help companies assess the value of AI. They currently have more than 30 research and development projects underway, serving partners in every province and in sectors from energy to consulting to health to marketing. Companies are encouraged to reach out to the AI Hub with an AI problem and request a consultation.