Professor Michael Carter (MIE) is among this year’s recipients of the University of Toronto President’s Impact Award. The award recognizes faculty members whose research has made a significant impact outside of academia.

Recipients receive $10,000 per year for five years to be used toward their research, and become members of the President’s Impact Academy.

Carter is being recognized for his pioneering contributions to the field of health-care engineering. His research and use of industrial engineering principles has led to substantial improvements in the health-care system in Canada and beyond.

Over the past 30 years, Carter has demonstrated the important role industrial engineers play in optimizing health-care systems. His work has been applied to improve government policy and practice in a number of areas, including surgical scheduling, managing scarce resources, and predicting future demand for health-care procedures and practitioners.

As one of the first academics in Canada to dedicate his research and teaching to improving the health-care system, Carter has supervised hundreds of students. More than 130 of his graduates are now working in the health-care sector, many of whom are in leadership roles.

Carter is also the Founding Director of the Centre for Healthcare Engineering (CHE), which launched in 2014 with funding from the Dean’s Strategic Fund. He has developed research partnerships with most hospitals in the Greater Toronto Area as well as provincial and federal governments across Canada.

“The current pandemic has, among other important lessons, underscored how crucial it is to have an optimized health-care system before a crisis strikes,” says Chris Yip, Dean of U of T Engineering. “On behalf of U of T Engineering, I want to extend my heartfelt congratulations to Professor Michael Carter, whose career-long commitment to health-care engineering has helped to improve the lives of people across the country and around the world. This honour is well deserved.”