Over one year ago, Engineers Canada launched a national marketing campaign to highlight the value of engineers and challenge Canadians to expand their perceptions of engineers—not just as builders of bridges and buildings, but as builders of solutions that make our world a better place.
Engineers Canada has since spoken with engineers across the country, sharing their stories and highlighting the integral work they provide in every aspect of our lives, from our energy systems to our transportation safety to protecting the environment and increasing public safety. These 11 articles represent just a small sample of the variety of amazing P.Engs in Canada.
Mary Alexander brings her passion and love of conquering challenges to create beautiful and functional community spaces. Her work as a structural engineer is specialized in timber and complex geometry. Her focus is on creating beautiful, functional buildings for communities who urgently need them. She has worked on a number of projects, from research buildings to seniors’ homes, and the common point between each is that they are sustainable, efficient buildings that serve their community.
Social spaces in virtual reality
John Desnoyers-Stewart uses his engineering background to apply creative, artistic processes to his technological investigations, discovering new possibilities for transformative technology. He specializes in art installations made by combining creative art processes with engineering principles. One of the avenues Desnoyers-Stewart's work is constantly exploring is the ways in which technology can create a shared, lived experience, as opposed to one that is isolated or virtual only.
Jean-Paul Pinard has a plan to help the Yukon and the North wean itself off fossil fuels through renewable energy. He has lived in the Yukon for over 30 years and spent most of his career as a mechanical engineer focused on the pursuit of a singular goal: bringing renewable wind energy to the North.
Quazi Hassan uses information from the past and present to predict future disasters and develop resiliency plans for mitigating the increasing risk of wildfires in Canada. As a geomatics engineer, he uses data from past disasters, examines current conditions, and then models the possibility of disasters in the future. As the wildfires and extreme weather Canada has experienced over the past year have demonstrated, our world is changing rapidly in the face of climate change. Though Hassan’s work won’t stop the fires already burning, it is vital in preventing and fighting future disasters.
Environmentalism in the oil and gas industry
Ijeoma Omodu is a mechanical engineer and an environmentalist who works in the oil and gas industry, focusing on reducing emissions and environmental impact while advocating for sustainable energy and energy security. She previously worked in a variety of roles at Royal Dutch Shell including pipelines, maintenance, and commercial business and project portfolios, all of which strengthened her understanding of the system and increased her determination to work towards environmental solutions. Omodu is currently an engineering manager at Aurora Hydrogen, which is focused on microwave powered production of emission-free hydrogen.
Geotechnical and geological engineers use their knowledge of geology and water systems to understand and manage risks that come from natural hazards. Lauren Hutchinson is a senior engineer at BGC Engineering Inc. (BGC), a consulting firm headquartered in Vancouver, BC. She’s one of several engineers that tackle the geological problems that underpin communities—or that come from above, are driven by climate, or caused by natural formations, site location, or sheer chance. When the levels of risk rise above acceptable levels, geotechnical engineers will go straight to the source, examine the terrain, and come up with solutions to mitigate problems before they become catastrophic.
As an environmental engineer, Steve Auger is one of many experts who works at the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority to create innovative methods of stormwater management that promote conservation and resilience. Water is a predominant feature of our landscape in Canada and a strong driver of our natural environment. Water resources engineers like Auger are increasingly considering how to design systems that promote conservation and have low-impact effects while preserving the health and resiliency of both natural and urban environments. This includes incorporating more nature-based solutions within the designs, sourcing materials locally, and transferring knowledge of past successes and lessons learned to practitioners.
Alan Carter is a professor in the Department of Construction Engineering at the École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS). He applies his extensive knowledge to developing asphalt pavement that is less harmful to the environment. He currently oversees myriad research projects aimed at reducing our dependency on asphalt and using less energy to produce pavements. Carter hopes that his knowledge and discoveries will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation field.
In medical emergencies, infant patients are dependent on fast medical transport to take them to specialized units that can provide the advanced level of care they require. While speed is of the essence, the noise and vibration from transportation could have dire consequences; infants are susceptible to vibration and noise in a way that most patients are not. The problem is complex, with multiple moving pieces involved. Rob Langlois is a mechanical engineer as well as a Professor at Carleton University, and he is part of a team that is working on safety critical transportation dynamics for neonatal patients—babies under 4 weeks old and often with serious medical conditions.
When engineering fails, forensic engineers like Matthew Obach investigate to understand what went wrong and how future failures can be prevented. Forensic engineers enter the scene after a failure and painstakingly reconstruct the event to determine the cause. Sometimes it comes down to design, use, or random happenstance. They function like detectives, using their observational skills alongside their knowledge of mechanics and fire science, to solve mysteries and provide answers to those in need.
What do small fishing vessels battling noise problems, the probability of a ship encountering a whale, and an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) navigating through ice have in common? Amy Deeb, an autonomous systems engineer in Nova Scotia, has tackled each of these challenges using her engineering skills, innovation, and knowledge of autonomous systems, bringing practical solutions to real-world problems. Autonomous systems are uniquely suited not only for collecting data but also for sorting through large numbers of variables to find hidden patterns that can lead to breakthrough solutions.
