Faculty, students, alumni honoured
Members of U of T’s engineering community have received six of nine national Engineers Canada (www.engineerscanada.ca) awards for their contributions and achievements in engineering. Dean Cristina Amon received the Award for the Support of Women in the Engineering Profession. Professor Constantin Christopoulos (CivE) garnered the Young Engineer Achievement Award. Professor Greg Evans (ChemE) received the Medal for Distinction in Engineering Education. Two engineering science students, Mike Klassen (1T0) and Jane Chui (1T0) were co-recipients of the Student Gold Medal Award, and alumna Julie Payette (ECE, MASc. 9T0) received the Gold Medal Award. Click the thumbnails below to view videos of the award recipients. All videos are courtesy of Engineers Canada.
Cristina Amon is Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. She has made pioneering contributions to concurrent thermal designs, innovation in electronics cooling and transient thermal management of wearable computers. Dean Amon is a leader in the profession and has demonstrated exceptional commitment to diversity in engineering. She was honoured for her dedicated and innovative efforts to attract more women to the profession and to our Faculty. She has previously been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the Royal Academy of Spain.
At an age when many researchers are just beginning their careers, Constantin Christopoulos is already recognized as a leader in his field. He has led development of a new damping system that significantly improves the response of high-rise buildings to wind and seismic loading. This system is expected to result in more cost-effective designs and increase the safety of our infrastructure. In 2008, Professor Christopoulos received the Young Engineer Medal from the Professional Engineers of Ontario.
Greg Evans is the Director of the Southern Ontario Centre for Atmospheric Aerosol Research and founding co-Director of the Leaders of Tomorrow program. Professor Evans has served as Chair of First Year and Vice-Dean, Undergraduate. In these roles, he led the redevelopment of the curriculum to integrate skills in design and communication into engineering courses. His contributions have been recognized with the Teacher of the Year Award from chemical engineering and the Joan E. Foley Quality of Student Experience Award from U of T.
Jane Chui is an outstanding future engineer who has demonstrated a commitment to her fellow engineering students here and abroad through her involvement in the NSight Mentor Program and the Asian University for Women’s Cybermentor Program. Jane is co-creator of the Faculty’s Peer Support Initiative to raise awareness of and promote mental health within the engineering community. She also founded the Citizen Engineer student club, dedicated to encouraging engineering students to become more involved in public policy.
Co-President of U of T’s Engineers Without Borders chapter, Mike Klassen is an exceptional student who has served as a leader and role model in a number of capacities. Mike was a key participant in the creation of the Faculty’s new Energy Systems Engineering program and the Centre for Global Engineering. He also participated in the development of the Faculty’s “Promise to Future Generations.” In 2009, Mike spent three months in Zambia, assisting in projects to improve sanitation and reduce disease in the region.
In 1992, alumna Julie Payette was selected by the Canadian Space Agency as one of four astronauts from a field of 5,330 applicants. She worked as a technical advisor for the Mobile Servicing System and flew on the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1999. She served as Chief Astronaut for the Canadian Space Agency from 2000 to 2007, and visited the space station again in 2009 as a Mission Specialist aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour. Julie Payette is a member of the Ordre National du Québec and holds 14 honorary degrees.“The awarding of six Engineers Canada awards to members of the U of T engineering community is a great testament to the strength of our Faculty and the breadth of our achievements,” said Cristina Amon, Dean, Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “On behalf of the Faculty and all the awardees, I extend our deep gratitude to Engineers Canada for bestowing these honours on our Faculty.” The award recipients were honoured at the Engineers Canada Awards Gala in Vancouver on May 29, 2010.
Congratulations to Professors Sanjeev Chandra (MIE), Tom Coyle (MSE), and Javad Mostaghimi (MIE) and Dr. Valerian (Larry) Pershin (MIE), of the Centre for Advanced Coating Technologies, who have been awarded the 2010 NSERC Brockhouse Canada Prize for Interdisciplinary Research in Science and Engineering. This award, which includes a research grant of $250,000, recognizes a team of Canadian researchers from different disciplines who have combined their expertise to produce achievements of outstanding international significance in the natural sciences and engineering.
The Centre for Advanced Coating Technologies (CACT) was established in 1998 by Professors Chandra, Coyle and Mostaghimi as an interdisciplinary laboratory to improve fundamental understanding of thermal spray technology, develop improved tools and materials, train students and transfer knowledge to industry. It has developed into one of the world’s leading thermal spray research centres. Thermal spraying is an efficient and environmentally friendly method of applying metal or ceramic coatings. Traditionally used in the automotive and aerospace industries, it is finding new medical applications in depositing coatings on bone and dental implants, and in renewable energy, where it offers a low-cost method of manufacturing fuel cells and solar panels.
Each member of the core CACT team contributes a unique area of expertise to its research. Professor Mostaghimi is internationally recognized for his research on thermal plasma technology and its industrial applications, and his numerical models of plasma sources and thermal spray coating are widely cited and applied. Professor Chandra’s expertise is in experimental heat transfer and spray deposition; he has created award-winning photographs showing the impact of droplets on solid surfaces at high velocity and the collision of particles in a thermal spray with the substrate. Professor Coyle’s expertise is in ceramics and coatings; he studies the relationships between deposition conditions, the microstructure and phase composition of deposits, and the coating properties. Dr. Pershin is known internationally for his outstanding and innovative research in thermal spray technology, and serves as the Centre’s manager.
In addition to the core team, CACT has approximately 40 researchers, including professors, research staff and graduate students. Two spin-off companies (Simulent Inc. and Ablazeon Inc.) have been created to commercialize the Centre’s research. CACT also has partnerships with industrial companies in Canada and around the world, including GE Global and Pratt & Whitney Canada.
“I am delighted that the Centre for Advanced Coating Technologies’ core research team has been recognized for their outstanding contributions to thermal spray coating,” said Cristina Amon, Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “The Centre’s record of achievement is extremely impressive, and indicative of the world-leading, interdisciplinary research taking place throughout the Faculty.”
The Academic Board has approved the re-appointment of Cristina Amon as Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering for a five-year term beginning on July 1, 2011.
The Search Committee advising the Vice-President and Provost received and reviewed much feedback from faculty, staff and students of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, as well as from the broader University of Toronto community. This feedback, as well as input from an external review team and from the Committee members, was strongly supportive of re-appointing Professor Amon for a second term as Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.
The overwhelming support for Professor Amon’s re-appointment reflects her exceptional leadership of the Faculty during her first term as Dean. She has been a champion of communication, co-operation, transparency and increased diversity within the Faculty. She has enhanced the high standards of its academic programs, strengthened its finances and increased both the Faculty and its individual members’ profiles, both within the University of Toronto community and internationally.
Professor Amon joined the University of Toronto in 2006 as the 13th Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. She also holds the position of Alumni Chair of Bioengineering in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. Prior to her leadership at U of T Engineering, she was Director of the Institute for Complex Engineered Systems (ICES) at Carnegie Mellon University, in addition to the Raymond J. Lane Distinguished Professor of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering. As Director of ICES, Cristina Amon conceived and led interdisciplinary research initiatives, seeded high-impact projects, fostered a culture of innovation and promoted strong interactions with industry.
Professor Cheryl Misak, vice-president and provost, praised her exceptional leadership, noting, “Professor Amon has been a champion of communication, co-operation, transparency, and increased diversity within the Faculty. She has enhanced the high standards of its academic programs, strengthened its finances and increased both the faculty and its individual members’ profiles, both within the University of Toronto community and internationally.”
Read the story posted on NEWS @ the University of Toronto.
Paul Giampuzzi (MIE), Rehman Merali (UTIAS), Brendan Wong (ECE), Merrick Zoubeiri (ECE), Arian Omidzohour (ECE) and Soren Massoumi (ECE) won gold at RoboGames in the 120-lb Combat Robot category. RoboGames brings bright minds from all over the world to compete in more than 50 different events. This year, RoboGames took place in San Mateo, California from April 23-25, 2010.
Follow the link to read the full story, as reported by the Toronto Star.
You can also watch a clip of the final battle between TSA Inspected (the U of T robot) and Mortician (a robot from a California team) by following the link to the University of Toronto Robotics Association (UTRA) website.
Eric Miller and Amer Shalaby from the Department of Civil Engineering are part of a worldwide group of transport engineers working with the Hajj Center of Research Excellence to find solutions to Mecca’s dense traffic, especially during the hajj, the world’s largest pilgrimage. The city is planning on developing a massive public transit system.
The engineers aim to design a complex system of transit routes that would alleviate crowd control and chaos on the busy streets and turn Islam’s holiest city into a global model of how to handle masses of people in limited space.
Professor Shalaby is looking at gondola cable cars for rapid transit while Professor Miller is considering the lessons from high-density world events like the World Cup and the Vancouver Olympics for solutions to the issues of moving large numbers of people conveniently.
Click here to read the full story, as reported in The Globe and Mail .
Professor Mark Chignell from the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and graduate student Jamy Li authored a study, “Birds of a Feather: How personality influences blog writing and reading,” evaluating whether aspects of a blogger’s personality can be gleamed from his/her posts.
The researchers found that blog readers do, in fact, gain insight into writers’ personality traits by following their posts; Personal or narrative-style blogs are found to reveal the most about the writer’s personality.
Click here to read commentary on the study in Psychology Today.