On behalf of the Division of Engineering Science, I am delighted to welcome you to the 7th Annual Engineering Science Education Conference.
This year’s conference, being held at the University of Toronto on January 20th, 2012, showcases the work of eight distinguished speakers, all leaders in academia, research and industry. You’ll hear inspiring talks that explore research, education and career paths in the eight Major fields of Engineering Science.
Please join us for this year’s Engineering Science Education Conference, as we engage with the broader engineering and science community and discover the exciting places a career in Engineering Science can take you.
Please arrive to sign-in/register at the Front Desk located in the Bahen atrium starting at 09:00.
If you are a 1T5 student, you will require your TCard to register.
If you are NOT a 1T5 student, you are asked to register for a ticket and bring it with you to sign-in. Please complete the registration questionnaire at the bottom of this page.
SE, SECB, FACI, LEED® AP BD+C
Director of Engineered Buildings for the Portland Cement Association
Lawrence Novak is the Director of Engineered Buildings for the Portland Cement Association. He consults with engineers, architects, contractors, and owners on the design and construction of reinforced concrete buildings, including sustainable design. Novak manages research and development projects, publishes books and guides to aid engineers in the design of concrete structures, and conducts technical seminars for engineers and students.
Novak has more than 25 years of experience as a structural engineer on high profile projects throughout the world, including seismic regions. Most recently as an Associate Partner with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, he served as the senior project engineer responsible for the structural design of the Burj Khalifa, Dubai, the world’s tallest building.
Novak serves on several technical committees, including the ACI 318 Code committee and the ACI 130 committee on Sustainability of Concrete. He has served as Director on the governing board for organizations including SEAOI, TCA and the Illinois Engineering Hall of Fame.
He has co-authored numerous papers on engineering and is a three time recipient of SEAOI’s “Meritorious Publication Award”, the NCSEA’s “Outstanding Structural Engineering Publication Award” and the United Kingdom’s “Oscar Faber Award”. He is the only individual to be named twice as the “H.T. Person Lecturer” of the year. In 2010, Novak was the co-recipient of the SEAOI “Most Innovative Structure Award” for the Burj Khalifa project and he was selected as the “Centennial Lecturer” in engineering and he was named the “Citizen Engineer of the Year” by the Illinois Chapter of ASCE. In 2011 he was selected as the ACI “Speaker of the Year”
To give back to the community, Novak utilizes exciting interactive demonstrations with the goal to inspire the next generation of young minds to study math, science, engineering and sustainability.
The recently opened Burj Khalifa Tower formally known as the Burj Dubai, is the world’s , tallest manmade structure. The multi-use skyscraper soars to over a half mile high (828 meters, 2717 feet). The 280,000 m 2 (3 million square feet) reinforced concrete multi-use Tower is utilized for Retail, a Giorgio Armani Hotel, Residential and Office. The goal of the Burj Khalifa Tower is not simply to be the world’s highest building; it’s to embody the world’s highest aspirations.
Designers purposely shaped the structural concrete Burj Dubai – “Y” shape in plan – to reduce the wind forces on the tower, as well as to keep the structure simple and foster constructability. The structural system can be described a “buttressed” core; each wing, with its own high performance concrete core and perimeter columns, buttresses the others via a six-sided central core, or hexagonal hub. The result is a tower that is extremely stiff. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the architects and engineers for the project, applied a rigorous geometry to the tower to align all the common central core and column elements.
The presentation will discuss the philosophy behind the structural design and sustainable design of the world’s tallest structure.
CEO,
R2 Financial Technologies
Dan Rosen is the Chief Executive Officer of R2 Financial Technologies and an adjunct Professor of Mathematical Finance at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Rosen has worked as an advisor to numerous financial institutions around the world over the last two decades, and lectures extensively on valuation of derivatives, structured finance, counterparty credit risk, risk and portfolio management, regulatory and economic capital management. He has authored several patents and over 75 publications on risk and financial engineering, and serves on the editorial board of several journals. Dr. Rosen was also a founder of the Professional Risk Manager’s International Association (PRMIA) and RiskLab, an international network of Financial Engineering research centers. In 2010, Dr. Rosen was inducted a Fellow of the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, for his “outstanding contributions to the Fields Institute, its programs, and the Canadian mathematical community”. Prior to R2, Dr. Rosen was at Algorithmics, where he was responsible for setting strategy, new initiatives and alliances, the design of credit risk and capital solutions, market risk tools, operational risk, and advanced simulation and optimization. He holds an M.ASc. and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Toronto.
Professor of Systems Biology and Founding Member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering,
Harvard University
Pamela Silver received her BS in Chemistry and PhD in Biochemistry from the University of California where she was an NIH Pre-‐doctoral Fellow. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University where she was a Fellow of the American Cancer Society and The Medical Foundation. Subsequently, she was an Assistant Professor in Molecular Biology at Princeton University where she was an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association, a Scholar of the March of Dimes and an NSF Presidential Young Investigator. She moved to Harvard Medical School where she was a Professor in the Dept of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology. She was named a Claudia Adams Barr Investigator and awarded the Mentoring Award for the PhD Program in Biological and Biomedical Sciences at Harvard Medical School. In 2004, she became one of the first members of the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School and the first Director of the Harvard University PhD Program in Systems Biology. In 2009, she became one of the founding members of the Harvard University Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Her work was recognized by an Innovation Award at BIO2007 and has been funded by grants from the NIH, DOD, DOE, NSF, Novartis, Merck and The Keck Foundation. She currently holds an NIH MERIT award. She has served on numerous government and private advisory panels including the NIH Pioneer and Innovator Award Committees, the NAS/NRC Study on Network Science, the OSD/NA Biodefense Workshop, the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund, the Novartis Oncology Program and the Institute of Synthetic Biology at Imperial College. She was recently appointed as a Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute. Her laboratory works in diverse areas of Systems and Synthetic Biology. The main focus areas include predictable design and re-‐programming of biological systems and designing sustainability.
Nuclear Systems Designer and Collaborator,
Candu Energy Inc.
Michael Ivanco attended the University of Toronto where he obtained a PhD in Physical Chemistry in 1985 in the field of Laser Photophysics. He joined Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., at its Chalk River Laboratories, in the same year and worked in the Laser Isotope Separation Group. In 1997 he moved to, what was then, AECL's engineering company located in Mississauga, Ontario (now Candu Energy Inc. - a division of SNC-Lavalin), where he has worked on various areas of product development, most recently in advanced fuel cycles. Michael has been published in the fields of molecular spectroscopy, laser isotope separation, analytical applications of lasers, co-generation applications of electric power plants, advanced nuclear fuel cycles, and has managed development projects for new heavy water upgraders, tritium abatement technology and nuclear steam generator cleaning systems amongst others. Michael is outspoken on the subject of nuclear power and the energy industry in general. In addition to his scientific publications he has had scores of letters published in major newspapers, appeared in radio and TV interviews and debates, and has had a number of editorials published in the Toronto Star and other publications on the subject of nuclear power and the industry in Canada.
Project Manager,
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA
Jan Chodas is the Project Manager for the Juno mission to Jupiter at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. She has managed the Juno Project since August 2008. Juno launched successfully on August 5 and is now completing the checkouts of its engineering subsystems and instruments. Prior to this position, Ms. Chodas served JPL in numerous capacities including Manager of the Systems and Software Division, Assistant Flight System Manager for the Mars Exploration Rover Project, Flight System Manager for the Space Interferometry Mission, Project Element Manager for the Cassini Attitude and Articulation Control Subsystem and Technical Manager for the Galileo Attitude and Articulation Control Subsystem. Ms. Chodas received both her M.A.Sc. degree in Aerospace Engineering and her B.A.Sc. degree in Engineering Science - Aerospace Option from the University of Toronto. She was awarded the NASA Exceptional Service Medal for her work on the Galileo mission to Jupiter, the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal for her work on the Cassini mission to Saturn and the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal for her work on the Mars Exploration Rover Project. She has also received numerous NASA Group Achievement Awards.
Professor and Researcher,
Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo
David Cory (jointly appointed with the Institute for Quantum Computing and the Department of Chemistry at the University of Waterloo) received his PhD in physical chemistry from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and at the National Research Council at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. He was also a senior scientist at Bruker Instruments, and led their research and development activities in nuclear magnetic resonance. In 1992, he joined the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT. Since 1996, Professor Cory has been exploring the experimental challenges of building small quantum processors based on nuclear spins, electron spins, neutrons, persistent current superconducting devices and optics. From 2009-2010, Professor Cory was a Visiting Researcher at PI and, in 2010, he was named the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Quantum Information Processing. Professor Cory chairs the advisory committee for CIFAR’s Quantum Information Processing program.
Chief Technology Officer
Cisco Systems Canada
As Chief Technology Officer for Cisco Canada, Jeff Seifert provides technical guidance and direction in key advanced and emerging technologies and go-to-market strategies. He is managing several global-reaching initiatives, including the development of Cisco's Intelligent Airport Solution, and assisting large service providers in delivering consumer and business voice solutions. As a unified communications expert, Seifert has guided many large customer migrations from traditional telephony to unified communications.
Seifert was appointed a Distinguished Systems Engineer, Cisco's highest technical distinction, in August 2003. As an individual who represents the pinnacle of Cisco's technical and sales expertise, he is responsible for transforming customer demand into innovative solutions that companies can utilize in an effective and efficient manner.
Seifert joined Cisco in 1995 as a systems engineer supporting enterprise and service provider accounts. He progressed to a National Consulting Systems Engineer position supporting Cisco's introduction of IP telephony and evolution to unified communications. Prior to joining Cisco, he held financial, management, and technical positions at Bell Canada, Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), and IBM Canada.
Seifert has achieved double CCIE certification, including Routing & Switching CCIE in 1996 and Voice CCIE in 2003. He holds a Bachelors in Applied Science degree in electrical engineering from the University of Toronto
When Jeff graduated from UoT Engineering 20 years ago, Cisco was still almost a start-up company operating out of Silicon Valley with a single product, “The Networking Router”. Over the past 20 years, Cisco has grown to be one of the largest technology companies in the world with over 100,000 employees and contractors. Since that single product Cisco has evolved to bring wide-ranging solutions including Immersive Telepresence video technologies, Smart and Connected Communities, Connected Sports Stadiums, SmartGrid technologies, Virtualized Data Centres, and many Service Provider offerings. During this session, Jeff will share Cisco’s approach to innovation and the many ways it turns ideas into commercial products deployed in customers globally. He will also share some of the areas of focus for Cisco and the industry over the next few years. Through this session, Jeff will share his personal experiences with students.
Researcher and Department Chair of Physics,
Indiana University
Rick Van Kooten was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and completed his B.Ap.Sc. in Engineering Science (Physics Option) in 1984. He headed off to graduate school at Stanford University with fortuitous timing to be involved in the first detailed studies of the decay of Z bosons detected by the Mark II detector operating on the brand new Stanford Linear Collider and receiving his Ph.D. in 1990. Moving from just hundreds of Z decays to millions collected by the OPAL detector at the Large Electron-Positron Project (LEP) hosted by the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), he served first as a CERN Associate Scientist and then as a DESY Scientist. There he studied particles containing b quarks and then later searched for new particles predicted by Supersymmetry when the beam energies were raised at LEP2. Returning to North America, he joined Indiana University as an Assistant Professor in 1993 and switched to proton-antiproton physics using the DØ detector operating on the Tevatron collider at Fermi National Laboratory, helping to design and build a scintillating fiber tracking system. He was involved in the discovery of new baryonic states containing b quarks, new possible meson molecule particles, the first observation of the long sought particle-antiparticle oscillations of the Bs meson, and the first evidence of anomalously large CP violation in heavy flavor decay. He has had the privilege of serving as Physics Coordinator of both the OPAL and DØ Experiments, guiding the physics directions of hundreds of physicists in large international collaborations. He continues as Chair of the Department of Physics at Indiana University over the past five years, and transitioning to physics using the ATLAS detector at CERN, exploring the exciting results pouring out of the Large Hadron Collider.
The reception will host the conference guest speakers and Option Chairs, welcoming all attending students to an evening of intimate conversations, networking opportunities, live music, and light refreshments and drinks. Music will be performed by members of the Appassionata Music Group.
