The Complete Engineer Spring Summer 2016

COMPLETE

THE

Spring/Summer 2016

ENGINEER THE MAGAZINE OF THE FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCE AT QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY

INSIDE

Read about the inspiring things that our students and researchers are achieving!

She’s on fire!

Michele Romanow, Sc’07, MBA’08,

returns triumphantly to Queen’s PLUS

Thanks to our amazing supporters, we have surpassed the goal for our Inspiring Greatness Campaign.

Dean Woodhouse expresses the Faculty’s gratitude in her message.

SEC TION HEADER

CONTENTS SPRING/SUMMER 2016

1 A message from the Dean The Inspiring Greatness Campaign has concluded and the Faculty has surpassed its goal, raising over $90,000,000

DEAN

3

Kimberly A. Woodhouse DIRECTOR OF MARKETING

Aboriginal Access to Engineering continue to grow PromoScience grant supports a new Aboriginal Community Engagement Coordinator

4 Bits and bytes

News from around the Faculty

AND COMMUNICATIONS

Adam Walker MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS COORDINATOR

Matt Mills

6 Art and Engineering

Innovative collaboration to produce new artwork for Beamish-Munro Hall

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

8 Profile: Siobhan Powell

One student’s path to graduate studies

Lesley Fraser Matt Mills Jordan Whitehouse

10 Our cover story: Michele Romanow

Queen’s alumna is a successful entrepreneur and now Dragon!

GRAPHIC DESIGN

12 Mining graduate students aim to make mines safer

Research in preventing strainbursts could save lives

Walker Design + Communications

14 The Kingston Nano-Fabrication Laboratory

This partnership between Queen’s and CMC Microsystems is a catalyst for collaboration

PHOTOGRAPHY

Stephen Wild Matt Mills CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

16 Research excellence

Geological Engineering professor Mark Diederichs wins a 2015 Prize for Excellence in Research

Kirsteen MacLeod Matt Mills Mark Witten

18 New fund to honour David Turcke

New fund named for past Head of Civil Engineering will help forge and foster ties with industry

CONTACT INFORMATION

Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science Queen’s University Beamish-Munro Hall 45 Union Street Kingston, ON K7L 3N6 Tel 613.533.2055 Fax 613.533.6500 Email complete.engineer@queensu.ca

COMPLETE

THE

Spring/Summer 2016

ENGINEER THE MAGAZINE OF THE FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCE AT QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY

INSIDE

Read about the inspiring things that our students and researchers are achieving!

She’s on fire!

Michele Romanow, Sc’07, MBA’08,

returns triumphantly to Queen’s PLUS

Thanks to our amazing supporters, we have surpassed the goal for our Inspiring Greatness Campaign.

Dean Woodhouse expresses the Faculty’s gratitude in her message.

Our cover story, alumna Michele Romanow returns to campus to give back, see story page 10

20 Project team innovation

Electrical and Computer Engineering students seek to improve hospital waiting times 22 Meet Martin Guay

His process-control engineering research has application across multiple industries 24 A new kind of teaching

MME Professor Michael Rainbow is stirring things up 26 Alumni engagement Receptions in Toronto, the C100 in San Francisco, the CIVIL Industry Open House, The Gael’s Den and more

FACULT Y

Dean’s Message Gratitude. Inspiration. Energy.

T

hese words express just some of the feelings we have as we wrap up our Inspiring Greatness campaign, an integral part of the Initiative Campaign for Queen’s University. On behalf of the Faculty, I’d like to thank our incredible donors and volunteers who helped us surpass our goal and reach over $90.3 million in investment in Engineering at Queen’s. I would like to give you a snapshot of how your contributions are positioning the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science to adapt and thrive in our changing world.

We’re grateful for the outpouring of generosity and support from alumni, parents, friends and corporations who have embraced our vision of innovation and leadership and who understand the value of our Queen’s-unique approach to creating the next generation of extraordinary engineers. You truly are both our history and our future.

Your investment is helping to ensure that initiatives such as the Queen’s Innovation Connector, founded through a collaboration between Queen’s Engineering and the Smith School of Business, can continue to grow as an innovation hub for students, researchers and entrepreneurs. Gifts to the Aboriginal Access to Engineering program are helping our Aboriginal youth see and achieve post-secondary education and are supporting them throughout their university experience.

Our donors’ confidence and investment in our faculty members has tripled the number of endowed and expendable chairs and professorships in Engineering! The new Hazell Research Professorship in Chemical Design and Innovation, the Donald and Joan McGeachy Chair in Biomedical Engineering, the Donald and Sarah Munro Chair, and the Kinross Professorship in Mining Health and Safety have inspired a new generation of graduate students and their enhanced scholarship. Investments have also led to the formation of the Water Research Centre, the Robert M. Buchan Department of Mining and the ability to hire 14 new faculty members over the last five years. These new additions bring an energy and enthusiasm that has set the Faculty on fire.

“

”

Our planned Innovation Commons is considered

a transformational leap toward the future of engineering.

We’re inspired by our donors’ dedication to discovery. Your contributions to Queen’s competitive design teams, such as the Baja SAE Team and the Formula SAE Team, along with student outreach efforts, such as Science Quest summer camp, FIRST Robotics and Queen’s Engineers Without continued on next page THE COMPLETE ENGINEER 1

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Borders, make it clear that you want our students (and future students) to experience the world as they learn, and to translate their knowledge through opportunities and experiences that prepare them for the real world.

Thanks to our donors, we have seen a 50 per cent increase in student bursaries, scholarships and awards during the campaign period. Support for the Dean’s Excellence Fund has enabled the distribution of critical funding to projects, awards, student activities, teams and clubs. The generosity of all those who have given both time and money contributes directly to the education of outstanding engineers through experiential learning opportunities that challenge their assumptions and nurture team skills.

We have a renewed level of energy. The success of the campaign gives us the momentum required to move forward with our new dedicated interdisciplinary teaching and research space within the former physical education centre across the street from Beamish-Munro Hall. It will house innovative new undergraduate facilities, research laboratories and design studios to bring together professors, undergraduates and graduate students from a number of Faculties to collaborate in a dynamic and academic social environment.

This is a game changer for our faculty and our students. Interdisciplinary spaces offer so much more than physical labs and equipment—they are where the seeds of discovery are nurtured, where new perspectives are created and honed.

Donors have also recognized the importance of place to students by giving directly to major renovations in the historic buildings of the Faculty.

Renovations to the first floor of McLaughlin Hall have revitalized the space for experiential learning ,and the Jeffery Hall “Apple Lounge” is a hub of student activity.

Our Fall/Winter issue will feature stories about the generosity of our donors and how philanthropy is making a difference in the Faculty. In the meantime, as we move forward on the new interdisciplinary facility, I want to offer a personal note of thanks to all those who gave so generously.

Thank you for your leadership and your confidence in our vision. Thank you for inspiring all of us to reach further for our students. Thank you for inspiring our students by your example. And thank you for infusing our campaign with spirit and drive.

I would like to extend a special thank-you to Michael Norris, our campaign chair, and to our campaign cabinet for their passion and commitment to the Faculty. They could have chosen to put their time, energy and, frankly, money elsewhere. That they did not, and that they took the time to support and guide “the McGill grad” through a campaign that had many twists and turns, speaks of a commitment to their alma mater that is rare. It has been a privilege to work with them.

Kimberly A. Woodhouse PhD, PEng, FCAE, FBSE Dean, Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science

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FEAS

Aboriginal Access to Engineering set to expand programs

MAKING A DIFFERENCE: “Now it’s time for us to really focus on certain communities and see what we can do to increase STEM within those communities,” says AAE Director Melanie Howard.

A

boriginal Access to Engineering (AAE) has earned a PromoScience grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). The funding has been used to hire an Aboriginal Community Engagement (ACE) Coordinator to deepen relationships with proximate Indigenous communities and further expand AAE programs. It also supports the travel inherent to Aboriginal community outreach initiatives “We’re building on the success we’ve had over the last three years,” says AAE Director Melanie Howard. “Our previous grant found us travelling all over the province. Going forward, we’ll concentrate primarily on return engagement with communities within 300 km of Kingston.”

Justin Gordanier joined AAE on May 9 as the new ACE coordinator. Gordanier worked previously with the Faculty of Education at Queen’s as a lab technician and as a supply teacher in his home community of Tyendinaga. He’s a qualified teacher of high school biology and physics and holds qualifications in primary, junior and intermediate education.

AAE already has close partnerships with three area schools and community organizations. Howard says the grant will help grow school partnerships and foster innovation in AAE programs. The grant consists of annual installments of $76,300 over each of the next three years.

The PromoScience program supports organizations that help promote science and engineering among primary and

NEW ADDITION: “One of the main reasons I applied for this job is to connect with and give back to Aboriginal communities,” says new ACE Coordinator, Justin Gordanier.

“Being Aboriginal myself, I understand what it’s like to go through education and try and get past all the barriers.”

secondary students.

AAE was founded in 2010 with a stated aim of increasing the number of Indigenous students in engineering.

There are two main methods by which Howard and her team work to that end: outreach and student success.

Outreach includes working directly with Indigenous students from kindergarten through Grade 12 to engage them early with engineering-related topics. It also includes presenting workshops to primary and secondary school teachers to help them to develop ways to present science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects with reference to the technology of Aboriginal cultures. Once students start their engineering education at Queen’s, AAE provides various forms of student success support to help ensure they have everything they need to graduate from their engineering program of choice at Queen’s.

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Bi t s a nd b y t e s Out of the lab and into the pub “There’s a lot of discussion and media attention about augmented reality (AR) and the multibillion dollar market it will become in the near future,” says Queen’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Michael Greenspan. “A lot of companies are trying to create development platforms in the hopes of essentially becoming the MS Windows of AR.” Greenspan is banking on a different strategy, though, one that delivers to consumers a complete AR system with a single killer application. To that end,

he and his research team have developed Procam Pool.

A blend of the terms “projector” and ”camera,” Procam Pool is a gaming system that uses AR technology to make billiards much more fun and easier to learn for novice and intermediate players. It’s sort of a combination pool table and video game.

Here’s how it works: Players rack real balls on a real wood-andslate pool table. After the break, Procam Pool uses computer vision, sophisticated algorithms and graphics projection to identify the positions of the various balls in play and, with graphical elements projected onto the table from over head, helps players to plan where various shots will end up and how the balls might be positioned after the shot.

It’s a project that started a

few years ago as a fourth-year design project that advanced to a master’s thesis and now a marketable product. Five ProCam Pool units were installed last year in O’Leary’s Sports Restaurant in Stockholm, Sweden.

“They’re in there, they’re running and we get feedback that it’s a great experience,” says Greenspan.

Greenspan says he and his team continue to refine the system by incorporating feedback from players and adding new features. They’re also actively seeking clients who want to share Procam Pool with their friends and customers. “I can see a time when every pool table has a Procam system”, says Greenspan, “and this is just one example of many where this technology will be successfully applied.”

Engineering prof receives a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grant For people with disabilities, assistive technologies can save hours each day and be foundational to independent living. But making the most helpful tools for them is a notoriously complicated, expensive and time-consuming process.

Imagine, though, if virtually any device could be conjured up as needed by anyone with access to a 3D printer. Someone who needs a prosthetic arm and hand, for example, could simply choose one from a digital catalogue of proven designs and have it inexpensively printed to size and fit within just a few hours. If it’s not quite right, not quite comfortable or not quite as useful as predicted, the new device could just as quickly be modified in whole or in part to suit the user’s needs and preferences.

“Adherence is a huge issue in any assistive technology,” says Queen’s Engineering Professor Claire Davies. “If the end user can decide what they want and it gets done for them—if it’s developed by them for them—they’re going to wear it. We want to make it do-it-yourself technology.”

It’s a future at least partly at hand but 3D-print

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technology is still evolving. As it does, Davies is experimenting with new ways to best apply it to the development of new assistive devices.

“We’ve had hands printed by a couple of different machines and they really don’t meet quality standards,” says Davies. “So, I’m working on a proposal for a 3D printer capable of working with stronger plastics so we can develop devices that are really useable by people.”

As part of that wider mission, Davies has also secured a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grant so she and PhD student Liz Delarosa can synthesize information about the state of the art of 3D-printed assistive devices. They hope to learn more about what assistive devices are being printed today in industry and among hobbyists.

“Liz’s background is actually occupational therapy and social work,” says Davies. “Together we’re working on understanding all aspects of the design process so we can build a complete task analysis and understand the functional requirements for designing according to those needs.”

Civil Professor appointed Associate Dean, Research and Graduate Studies Effective July 1st, Dr. Amir Fam, the Donald and Sarah Munro Chair in Engineering and Applied Science, will begin a thee-year term as the Associate Dean (Research and Graduate Studies) in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science.

Kent Novakowski, Head of the Department of Civil Engineering, second from left, with students at the Kennedy Field Station

Queen’s joins SOWC The Southern Ontario Water Consortium (SOWC) is a partnership of 10 universities and private sector organizations that seeks to commercialize innovative water technologies by providing researchers with funding and access to real-world facilities. Queen’s joined SOWC in March.

“Our membership presents Queen’s researchers with new opportunities for funding and partnerships with industry and access to highly specialized infrastructure,” says Steven Liss, Vice-Principal (Research).

Queen’s footprint in water technology research includes more than 50 faculty researchers, most of whom are part of the Water Research Centre. The interdisciplinary centre is dedicated to furthering research on water governance, sustainability and protection of water resources, among other topics.

“The Water Research Centre represents researchers from many disciplines across campus,” says centre director and Queen’s Civil Engineering professor, Kent Novakowski.

“Our diversity of membership represents an ideal environment for collaboration and we are excited to explore the partnerships afforded by the SOWC. Several of Queen’s unique facilities will expand SOWC’s current offerings. The Queen’s Coastal Engineering Laboratory, the largest university hydraulics laboratory in the country, provides researchers with the technology required to study coastal engineering, natural channel design and sediment transport. Multiple wave flumes, a coastal models basin, a rotating water flume and closed pipelines enable researchers to tackle a broad range of water issues including river engineering, lake dynamics, water supply systems and Tsunami/Landslide interaction.

The Kennedy Field Station is another unique Queen’s facility. Located on 200 acres near Tamworth, Ontario, the station is situated in a sensitive geological setting and is part of the Salmon River Watershed, a tributary of the Great Lakes. The Station is a result of a Queen’s Alumni donation, and has become a valued teaching and research site for students and faculty. The Kennedy Field Station features enhancements that allows students to participate in hand-on, field-intensive courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The Kennedy station is ideal for water research and education due to a naturalized riverfront, existing environmental instruments, a water control structure and a variety of soil and physical features.

The Water Research Centre is supported in part through the RBC Queen’s University Water Initiative, a ten-year program bringing together researchers and industry partners to expand research, training, and outreach activities focused on sustainable watershed science, education and protection. It provides hands-on learning for graduate and undergraduate students within a world-class research and teaching environment.

Dr. Fam holds a BSc in Civil Engineering from Alexandria University and an MSc and PhD in Civil Engineering (structures) from the University of Manitoba. From 2000 to 2002, he was a Post-doctoral Fellow and Instructor at North Carolina State University (NCSU), Raleigh, NC. He joined the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science in the Department of Civil Engineering at Queen`s University as an Assistant Professor in 2002, and was promoted to Full Professor in 2009.

Dr. Fam held the position of a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Innovative and Retrofitted Structures (2003-2013).

In his new role, Dr. Fam hopes to use his experience to serve the Faculty, building on the excellent momentum established by the Faculty in the past few years. He plans to continue promoting research and scholarship and assist in developing large collaborative research projects and attracting top domestic and international graduate students.

Queen’s Civil Engineering Professor Amir Fam has been named FEAS Associate Dean, Research and Graduate Studies.

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Making our mark Art and engineering intersect in collaboration with Queen’s students

Toronto artist Kwest

T

he foyer of Beamish-Munro Hall (BMH) is the front door and welcome mat, the reception area and anteroom for the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at Queen’s.

It represents our best foot forward and sets the tone for time spent here by visitors.

This is where prospective students and families are greeted during open-house events. It’s where visiting academics, industry leaders and funders are received; where alumni reconnect at Homecoming and a space through which Queen’s engineering students pass and linger countless times over the course of their training.

This year the foyer is getting an art piece for installation on the atrium wall immediately opposite the entry doors. It will be the first thing people see on their way into BMH, and it’s being designed and built by prominent Toronto artist Kwest, in collaboration with Faculty students.

Kwest built his name in his teens and 20s as a graffiti artist whose complicated and compelling tag style popped up across the continent. As urban art grew into a mainstream aesthetic movement, Kwest turned more to sculpture and began earning important commissions.

In recent years, he has produced pieces

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for multi-platinum recording artist Drake and for many restaurants, offices and creative spaces. Now he’s accepted the commission for the installation in the BMH foyer.

“ ” The commonality between art and engineering is the creative spark required in every project.

For two days in April, Kwest worked with Queen’s engineering students who had entered and won the Make Your Mark: Art and Engineering Contest.

Together they sought inspiration at the Queen’s University Archives and Agnes Etherington Art Centre as they collaborated to design a piece that reflects Queen’s engineering through Kwest’s signature visual style.

“For a lot of public art calls, you

submit ideas and all the work falls to you,” says Kwest. “Being able to create a piece with the students who actually go here and know what this place is about is one of the things that really appealed to me about this project. We’ll be creating a piece that’s timeless in its appearance. Twenty or thirty years down the road, it will still carry significance to Engineering and to the school.”

And it’s that legacy, that stamp on the building to last long after graduation, that appealed to many on the collaboration team.

“I’m just so proud of our work on this,” says engineering student Gabrielle Hinch. “Being part of something that’s going to be part of the building for however long is just amazing. We’re putting our stamp here at Queen’s, and everyone is just so open-minded and has different attributes to bring to the table.”

FEAS

One of Kwest’s previous pieces, Genisis Raylcon.

Design, fabrication of wall mounted interior Thunderbird Sculpture — Toronto, 2013.

Seven undergraduate engineering students took part in two days of collaborative workshops with Kwest: David Alberico Chris Caromicoli Matthew Gaiser Gabrielle Hinch Allison Kondal Max Lindley-Peart Rachel McConnell

Queen’s engineering students brainstorm ideas with Kwest, April 5, for the new art piece for BMH.

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Choosing

to take it

MATH

... to the next level

Queen’s Apple Math student Siobhan Powell, Sc’16, will be starting grad school at Stanford in the fall. She’ll be working on research into mechanical applications in renewable energy.

Siobhan Powell

F

ourth-year Mathematics and Engineering (Apple Math) student Siobhan Powell is whip-smart, academically talented and interested in a research field with great currency. She’s capped a very successful undergraduate career at Queen’s this spring, but grad school wasn’t a foregone conclusion for her.

“I didn’t plan on going when I first came here,” she says. “I remember, in first year when we had to choose our streams, specifically asking people about Apple Math: ‘Do you have to go to grad school or can you go directly into industry?’

Because that’s what I thought I wanted to do.”

After second year, she took a summer job in corporate finance. Powell recalls the experience as an interesting challenge but one that ultimately helped her decide that business was not where her passions lay. Rather, she felt drawn to the research and development of renewable energy technologies. For the summer after third year, Queen’s Professor Dr. AbdolReza Mansouri recommended her for a research internship at Inria (L’Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique) in southern France.

There she worked with a group on the interpretation of data signals from MRI machines.

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“I spent the first month catching up on all the literature and talking to the PhD students about their projects,” says Powell. “A three-month summer is very short, but I got a taste of the lifestyle and what it’s like to do research.”

That experience, coupled with her own investigation into the fields that hold special interest to her, finally led to the conclusion that research and graduate studies are right for her.

“I developed a strong interest in wave energy and tidal energy,” she says. “I also learned that, for all the leading-edge jobs in that field, you need more than a bachelor’s degree.”

So, armed with a strong transcript and a list of researchers with similar interests, she started the application process. She applied to five of the most prestigious universities in the world, earning and settling on a spot at Stanford University in California.

“The professor is doing really

interesting work and was really nice, so I thought we would get along well,” says Powell. “The graduate students really like him, and I got better funding for Stanford than any of the other schools.

That turns out to be a big factor, too.”

So after a summer of family, rest and travel, Powell is off to her next grand adventure. To anyone considering grad school, she has two pieces of advice.

“First would be to start everything really early,” she says. “It all happens so quickly, but you can find out what essays you need to write really far in advance, so if you pick a program early and start writing, you won’t have to during midterms in November.

“Another is that the professors at Queen’s are very happy to help. I needed six references for one application, so I talked to a lot of faculty and they’re all so supportive. I felt bad asking them to send so many letters, but they were very helpful. I turned to them a lot for advice.”

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Find the MBA program that’s right for you at ssb.ca/mba Queen’s Full-Time MBA and Executive MBA ranked #1 in Canada by Bloomberg BusinessWeek

Entrepreneur, CBC Dragon and Civil grad: M

Michele Rom

ichele Romanow founded the Integrated Learning Centre’s (ILC) Tea Room as an undergraduate at Queen’s in the early aughts. A decade later, she has become a national figure in business and media.

What was her path from barista to mogul?

“I think the most important thing that happened for me at Queen’s is that I was able to start a business,” says Michele Romanow (Sc’07, MBA’08). “I was able to use what I learned in engineering, go through the approvals process, figure out how to raise a little bit of capital and actually start The Tea Room from scratch.

I have so many warm memories of starting my first business here.”

It’s that foundational Queen’s Engineering education from which Romanow propelled herself to a hugely successful career. From a student enterprise in light refreshment and social space—one that continues a decade later as an integral part of the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science student experience—she has become a national figure in commerce and media.

She co-founded consumer deal site Buytopia.ca, then SnapSaves, an online couponing venture which sold to Groupon in 2014. She was consequently named one of the 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada in 2015 by the Women’s Executive Network, then one

Michele Romanow behind the counter in The Tea Room of the Forbes Top 20 Most Disruptive Millennials on a Mission. And last year she earned a spot as a Dragon on Season 10 of the popular, long-running CBC television show Dragons’ Den. But it wasn’t necessarily a straight shot from espresso machine to boardroom.

“There’s this narrative that if you want to change the world, you go to school, do two things, then magically build a huge, huge thing,” Romanow told a crowd at an April 2 return visit to Queen’s. “In my experience, it was never like that. It was much messier than that, much more surprising, and it was certainly much more difficult.”

In one of several early ventures, she and her partners noticed, for example, that high-end chefs across North America were hungry from an undersupply of caviar. It was a great business opportunity, one they seized with both hands. There was a strong start, but then the bottom fell out of the luxury goods market with the financial crisis of 2008, and regulatory hurdles made export to U.S. clients untenable. The business lost momentum, and Romanow took an executive job with a large retailer.

But she and her partners didn’t give up. They used the last of their caviar funds to bankroll SnapSaves, worked on their own time to bring it to market, and the rest is history.

Michele Romanow takes questions from a student audience on Queen’s campus.

She has been giving her time to help with projects related to the Queen’s Innovation Connector.

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CIVIL

omanow

Michele on the set of Dragons’ Den

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PREVENTING Three Queen’s engineering graduate students are studying the how to reduce rockbursts, and save lives

Kris Gingras Little (right), working with a technologist on datalogger setup for the rock instrumentation

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he Ontario Ministry of Labour identified rockbursts as one of the top workplace hazards for miners in a 2015 report on mining health, safety and prevention. Lindsay Moreau-Verlaan, a part-time PhD student and full-time ground-control engineer at Vale’s Garson Mine in Sudbury, is working with two other Queen’s graduate students on an innovative practical research project to help prevent or reduce the hazards of strainbursts (a type of rockburst) in Ontario underground mines.

Strainbursting is the unpredictable and often explosive ejection of rock from the faces, sidewalls or roofs of advancing tunnels in deep mines in hard rock.

Strainbursts are particularly dangerous because miners work directly at the rock face or tunnel wall where activities, such as drilling, may trigger an event.

“Strainbursts are very serious seismic events that can be devastating when they happen, and workers have died as a result of them in Ontario mines,” says Moreau-Verlaan, who is conducting this research to improve mining safety under the supervision of Dr. Steve McKinnon,

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professor and Chair in Mine Design in the Robert M. Buchan Department of Mining.

The project’s main goal is to develop scientifically based, practical guidelines for Vale and other mining companies to reliably design destress blasting techniques to prevent or mitigate the risks of strainbursts in underground mining tunnels. Destress blasting is thought to alter the properties of the rock mass so that high stresses are reduced, thereby reducing strainburst risk. But the technique has been used for decades based solely on experience rather than evidence; industry standards

vary widely, and some companies don’t use destress blasting because they don’t believe it works.

“The current design of destress blasting is entirely based on experience, and there’s no hard evidence to say whether it’s truly effective. This research will give us a better scientific understanding of how destressing actually works and allow us to gauge its effectiveness. With an improved understanding, I believe the design of destress blasting can be engineered to improve performance, reduce risk and increase worker safety,” says MoreauVerlaan.

MINE

DISASTER

Lindsay Moreau-Verlaan using a laptop to download data from the rock instrumentation Andrew Macdonald, holding a Geokon borehole pressure cell (used for measuring rock stress changes)

Her preliminary research findings suggest that microseismic data— measurements of vibrations through the rock mass—and open borehole observations may be practical, effective ways to gauge rock-mass response associated with strainburst risk. “Seismic and borehole data could provide a guidance tool to help decide whether and when to apply destressing in specific situations. In upcoming field trials, we’ll determine whether these metrics can also be used to measure destressing effectiveness and design improved techniques,” she says.

Kris Gingras Little, who is completing his Master of Science (engineering) and works as an engineer for Imperial Oil in Calgary, analyzed data from 129 reported strainbursts at three Ontario mines over the past decade. “About 40 per cent of these events occurred when workers were at the face drilling. As an engineer,

“ ”

It’s important to think about the very real risks to the people working underground. We’re working on trying to reduce the risk and the danger to people.

I’d like to provide better science-based options to make decisions about using destress blasting and worker safety. If the destress blasting isn’t done correctly, it could increase the risk of strainbursting,” he says.

Andrew McDonald, a PhD student, analyzed case histories of strainbursts from Vale’s ground-control incident records to define categories of geological

environments in which strainbursts occurred. He then identified a specific mechanism associated with several strainbursts at Garson Mine and a different mechanism associated with strainbursts at other mines. “The idea would be to tailor your mitigation strategy to the rock mechanics and strainburst mechanism that present the highest risk for your area,” he says.

As a native of Sudbury, McDonald knows how much this research matters to people living and working in the community. His dad has been a mining engineer with Inco and Vale for almost 30 years, and his sister is a geologist at Vale’s Coleman Mine. “The preventive goal of this project is really motivating for me. It’s important to think about the very real risks to the people working underground. We’re working on trying to reduce the risk and the danger to people,” he says.

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Dr. Rob Knobel

WORKING AT A FANTASTICALLY SMALL SCALE

YIELDS BIG RESULTS!

Dr. Rob Knobel (Sc’91) is probing the ultimate limits of nanomechanical systems to develop and build tiny vapour sensors, which could be used as airport security tools to prevent terrorism or drug smuggling.

He and his students are using highly specialized equipment in the $5-million Kingston Nano-Fabrication Laboratory (KNFL), which opened a year ago in Innovation Park, to fabricate nanosensors made from graphene, a form of carbon a single atom thick. “Graphene is the strongest, lightest material yet discovered, and it has remarkable

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electrical and mechanical properties.

We’re developing graphene chemical sensors that can detect vapours in parts per billion or trillion concentration. These could potentially be used for detecting explosives or biological agents,” says Knobel, an associate professor and the Chair of Engineering Physics.

In his cutting-edge research, Knobel runs experiments in which small vibrating elements fabricated at the KNFL are cooled down to temperatures near absolute zero. These nanomechanical systems—moving devices with dimensions of a few nanometres, only a few atoms thick—vibrate under the influence of vanishingly small forces, and measuring their motion presents both scientific and engineering challenges. One purpose of these cryogenic experiments is to understand and measure how the properties and behaviour of these human-made nanostructures change in the transition

from the macro world of classical physics to the quantum mechanics world on an atomic scale. “Putting and measuring a nanomechanical system in the quantum world is important, fascinating and challenging science in its own right,” he says.

But Knobel’s fundamental research in the quantum realm also leads to the translation of this knowledge into promising real-world applications at room temperature. As he and his team push to develop superior nanoelectrical and nanomechanical devices with the extreme sensitivity needed to measure quantum effects, they are building better sensors with many possible practical applications of value to industry. These innovative nano-devices could be used for advanced mass spectrometry, more precise analysis of materials’ properties, biosensors to detect proteins in the blood, or extremely high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to probe single

PHYSICS

PHOTOS ABOVE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: The “smallest plaque she’ll ever receive” was presented to Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, who visited KNFL in March, to thank the province for supporting the lab. The plaque was made using a laser micromachining system.

KNFL Lab Manager Dr. Graham Gibson operating the laser micromachining system

molecules a few nanometres wide.

Knobel’s research on the quantum behaviour of nanoscale devices is opening up new possibilities for quantum computing, a proposed way to rapidly speed up computing, and for quantum communications. “Quantum communications is a way to create perfectly secure communications that no one could eavesdrop on,” he says. He’s also built vibrating crystal beams that will respond to incredibly small forces at frequencies up to the microwave range, which could be used as filters to enable cell networks to handle many more phone calls.

The KNFL facility, a partnership between Queen’s and CMC Microsystems, is an open facility for researchers and companies that want

MME graduate student Matt Sedore checking his work in a microscope An atomic force microscope (AFM) for imaging surfaces with resolution to single atoms A probe station for electrical measurement of integrated circuits The lithography room of the KNFL is a cleanroom (very low dust) and is orange because the ultraviolet and blue light is filtered to prevent damage to chips while they are being patterned CENTRE: Chemical Engineering graduate student Hannah Dies deposits thin films of metal with an electron beam evaporator

to make, characterize and test devices and materials with small dimensions from nanometre to millimetre. The new lab (funded through the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation, CMC Microsystems and Queen’s) has been a catalyst for Knobel to launch collaborations with materials and chemical companies and other small and large industrial firms to test and advance these innovative technologies for broader practical uses. “We’re excited about the industry collaborations, and these are of great benefit to graduate students. This facility allows us to envision projects that were out of reach before and bring our research on quantum effects in nanomechanical systems closer to the real world and commercialization,” he says.

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Geological Engineering professo

EXCELLENCE IN RESEARCH

He works to ensure safe storage of nuclear waste for the next million years

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ark Diederichs, a professor in the Department of Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering, was one of five faculty members recognized with the university’s 2015 Prize for Excellence in Research.

“It was a great honour and very humbling to be in that company,” says Dr. Diederichs, a member of the GeoEngineering Centre at Queen’s-RMC who conducts research into the failure of rock and safe engineering design for tunnels, caverns and mine excavations in challenging geological conditions at great depths.

Known for advancing the standards of theory and practice in underground engineering, Diederichs has published

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Mark Diederichs inspecting a trial nuclear waste containment tunnel in Sweden

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250 peer-reviewed research articles and has been recognized with numerous professional-society and academic awards for research excellence, including induction as a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada in 2015.

When asked to describe his work, Diederichs replies, “In the last few years, I have split my time between nuclear repository engineering and deep tunnelling.”

Part of a Canadian research group

that’s designing massive networks of underground chambers for safe, long-term storage of nuclear waste, Diederichs’s expertise is in figuring out how the geology and characteristics of the surrounding rock interact with shafts or tunnels excavated within it: whether rock will fracture or disintegrate, for example, or how tunnelling affects water flow, or whether future geological change would compromise the excavation’s stability.

Diederichs is a technical adviser

GEO

ssor awarded Queen’s Prize for for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), a governmentmandated, industry-supported organization. He has been part of the team designing a deep geologic repository, a minelike structure, to be built under Ontario’s Bruce Nuclear Generating Station to store low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste. He and his graduate students are also working on protocols and tools for engineering a deep-storage facility for Canada’s highlevel nuclear waste. “Stakes are high,” he says, “which is why it will take at least a decade to choose a location for the facility and another 20 to 30 years before it’s actually built.”

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It’s like putting someone on the moon—actually, the risks and

1

unknowns are probably greater.

Tunnels are the second focus of his research. “I have worked on developing geomechanical analysis tools for two pairs of 60-kilometre tunnels up to 2.5 kilometres under the Swiss and Italian Alps, and I currently advise on over 50 kilometres of active tunnel construction deep under the Chilean and Peruvian Andes,” he says. “In each case, it’s the first time for something like this, and the ability to quantify the geological hazards facing deep tunnelling is limited. It’s like putting someone on the moon—actually, the risks and unknowns are probably greater.”

For transport and water tunnels, the risks must be minimized during construction and for tunnel lifespans of more than 100 years. With the underground storage of nuclear waste, the objective is to minimize risks for up to a million years. “The oldest things humans have created that still exist are maybe 10,000 to 40,000 years old,” he notes. “It’s a challenge. I love the creativity and geological engineering adventure!”

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PHOTOS 1 Geological Engineering grad students visiting the Niagara Beck tunnelboring machine (TBM) during construction 2 Diederichs during technical visit to the Torino Metro TBM , Italy, during construction

3 Diederichs and grad students during final visit to completed Niagara Beck Tunnel before commissioning 4 Computational Geomechanics Lab in the Department of Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering 5 Diederichs and students in the Miller Hall Rock Mechanics Lab

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Civil Engineering fund to honour David Turcke The newly launched David J. Turcke Building Partnerships Fund in Civil Engineering recognizes one of the Faculty’s most distinguished leaders.

Turcke, head of Civil Engineering from 1995 to 2005, emphasized industry partnerships as he shaped the department into one of the most successful in the country.

“The fund is a good way of remembering the substantial impact that Dave had on developing strong links with our many industrial partners,” says Dr. Kent Novakowski, Department Head of Civil Engineering. “Dave was our leader when resources were low and brought in many key industrial players from a variety of sectors, including structural design, municipal engineering, environmental consulting, coastal engineering and geotechnical design.”

Novakowski and Professor Mark Green established the fund to honour Turcke’s contributions. “Dave lived by the axiom ‘Do what makes you happy, find your passion; the rest will fall into place,’” says Dr. Green. “We have all benefited greatly from his tremendous energy in pursuing his passion for this department.”

Among Turcke’s many legacies is the Building Partnerships Program, which provides employment opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, has led to contract research on specific issues encountered by industry, and opens avenues for feedback on industrial needs that informs the teaching curriculum.

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Do what makes

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you happy, find your passion; the rest will fall into place.

Various other innovations endure, says Green. “The Industry Open House, in particular, has become the highlight of our year. We attract over 30 different companies; there’s a job fair and collaborative discussions between faculty

members and industry partners.” Most of the industry representatives are also graduates of the program, he adds.

Turcke, who died in 2013, was known as a dedicated teacher, friend and mentor by students, colleagues and alumni.

“Dave had an infectious personality and was a great mentor to many students and younger faculty members he hired, myself included,” says Green.

The newly created fund, he says, “is a great opportunity to carry on Dave’s legacy of partnerships with industry, to reach out to alumni and to maintain links with industry so we can integrate their needs into our curriculum and keep it vibrant.”

Novakowski says the fund’s effect will be “to improve, strengthen and broaden the existing relations we have with various industrial sectors.”

Activities to bolster ties, he anticipates, will include “inviting guest lecturers from industry, allowing for more studentindustry exchange via internships and through the capstone design course, and providing more formal avenues to obtain feedback and guidance from senior industry members.”

To make a donation, visit: www.givetoqueens.ca/turcke 18

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Advanced Design & Manufacturing Institute (ADMI)

Accelerate your Career with a Master of Engineering in Design and Manufacturing The ADMI MEng, offered by Queen’s and Western Universities, is designed for working engineering graduates.

ADMI is a part-time, in-class master’s program delivered in the Greater Toronto Area.

When I came across the ADMI website, I knew right away that a Master of Engineering degree with a combination of engineering and management subjects would differentiate me from the pack” —JOE AZZOPARDI, ADMI MEng GRADUATE

This exciting program is designed to give practicing engineers the technical knowledge and business and management skills necessary for them to advance to the forefront of their profession.

Enrollment opens in Summer 2016 and classes begin January 2017.

GENERAL ENQUIRIES Tom Elmer Director, Business Development, Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, Queen’s University Tom.Elmer@queensu.ca / 613.533.6000 x78963

Engineering students

INNOVATE to REDUCE HOSPITAL WAIT TIMES

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Project team develops system to quickly match patients with doctors

Nationally, more than 27 per cent of ER patients report waiting more than four hours just to see a physician.

Though improving, numbers like this are embarrassing in contrast with those of some other Western countries, like

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the Netherlands and the U.K. There is a complex array of contributing problems in this scenario, so Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) students Jordy Jacob, Daniel Nadeau, Thomas Davies and Anthony Nguyen built Aegle

as their ELEC 490 fourth-year design project. It’s a proof-of-concept suite of software and accompanying hardware that organizes ER patients according to need and matches them with available medical professionals.

“A patient will walk into triage and be greeted by a nurse who will enter all the needed information: first name, last name, gender, major diagnostic category, minor symptoms,” says Nguyen. “The nurse assesses the patient’s priority and submits the information to our algorithm.

The algorithm then picks the doctor who it thinks will allow for the shortest wait time for the patient.”

The four started work on the project last summer and spent many late nights bringing it to fruition.

“We used Node, which is a JavaScript framework,” says Jacob. “It gave us some issues because it’s asynchronous; things would happen later in the code that weren’t supposed to happen until something else had run. It gave us a bunch of different errors all over the place that took us quite a bit of time to fix.”

“There was a lot of back-and-forth,” says Davies. “The REST API has specific end points you can query to get data back.

ECE

ECE students Jordy Jacob, Daniel Nadeau, Thomas Davies and Anthony Nguyen

When we initially identified the problem, we didn’t know the scope of what we were going to have as a front end. Jordy and I would build stuff and Anthony would be like, ‘Oh, we need this and this.

Can we add this, can we add that.’ Then he would be able to move forward.”

That REST API allows various consumer smartphones and smartwatches to be easily configurable for Aegle. Doctors and nurses can access the system from their mobile devices and make decisions about whether to see patients or pass them on to colleagues.

But the Aegle team also developed their own smartwatch prototype, one that could be mounted in a hospital-friendly case, produced inexpensively and distributed specially to medical staff. It runs the Arduino software platform on an 8-bit ATmega328P microprocessor, the same chip used in the Arduino Uno. Nadeau estimates Aegle watches could be produced for $15 to $20 each.

“Just like the web interface, you can use our watch to enter the cue, click on a patient and look at their page,” he says.

“It’s not really professional for doctors to carry their personal phones with them.

Not only that, it’s not really sanitary.

This allows it to be completely separate

from a doctor’s personal device. It’s also way cheaper for a hospital than buying a multitude of phones for staff to use.”

Jacob, Nadeau, Davies and Nguyen toyed with the idea of pressing on with the project with an eye to taking it to market, but they each have career plans in place that will take them in different directions. After graduation, Jacob and Nadeau are off to Seattle for jobs with Amazon and Microsoft, respectively.

Davies has a job lined up working on IOT (internet of things) with Autodesk, and Nguyen will stay at Queen’s a little longer to finish his dual degree in

economics before moving to industry in software development.

Still, their work on Aegle is an exercise in applying the engineering theory and skill they’ve amassed over the last four years to solve real-world problems.

“Technology changes all the time, and stuff you might learn in school will be old in a year, so it’s more about using your foundational knowledge to pick up things like Node and what Daniel’s doing really quickly on your own,” says Nguyen. “It’s about connecting the dots and being able to build something like this.”

Aegle can be easily configurable via its REST API for use on virtually any phone, tablet or smartwatch

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TAKING CONTROL Martin Guay’s innovative work in process-control engineering is being embraced by companies across industries

Google’s Project Loon aims to provide internet access to the entire globe using a network of high-altitude balloons. Less than half the world’s population and fewer than 30 per cent of people in Africa and Asia have internet access today. Dr. Martin Guay, PhD’96, and colleagues showed in a recent research paper how an innovative distributed control technique—distributed extremum seeking control (ESC)—can be used to solve the balloon problem without requiring complex wind models or large amounts of computing power. Guay’s simulation study, involving 1,200 balloons, illustrates how distributed ESC can determine the optimal configuration for balloons floating on changing, non-linear wind currents

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to provide adequate internet coverage for all users at the lowest cost. “We’re pushing the boundaries of this control technique. It’s a very practical tool, which can be used to solve large-scale operating problems in any type of industry in a simple way. Every company I talk to will listen because it does exactly what they are looking for, real-time optimization in

a model-free way,” says Guay, professor and Undergraduate Program Chair in the Department of Chemical Engineering.

Guay works with large companies such as Mitsubishi Electric, United Technologies, Johnson Controls and Praxair to continually improve, refine and apply his control method to optimize in real time power consumption, manufacturing productivity and chemical processes—and ultimately, profitability— across a wide range of industries. With Mitsubishi Electric, for example, he has applied the technique and its algorithms to optimize energy performance in heating and cooling buildings. “These techniques allow you to minimize a building’s total power consumption by

CHEE

Award-winning researcher and educator Martin Guay

manipulating the energy-management control system to give you the best performance. A small change in power consumption can result in a lot of cost savings,” he says.

Consider a large grocery store with multiple heating and cooling systems, lots of open space with doors opening and closing, and varying numbers of people shopping. The store conditions are constantly changing and very complicated to model in a realistic way. The control problem is to maintain a constant store temperature with the least power consumption. “This technique allows you to find extra degrees of freedom to adjust the compressor speed or fan speed, for example, to changing conditions in real time to minimize power consumption while maintaining a constant temperature.

It’s an adaptable tool that could easily be used to retrofit the energy systems in office, retail, industrial or apartment buildings,” he says.

Guay’s innovative and influential contributions in the areas of process-

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We’re pushing the boundaries of this control technique. It’s a very practical tool, which can be used to solve large-scale operating problems in any type of industry in a simple way.

control engineering and real-time decision-making support have been recognized with the Premier’s Research Excellence Award, the Queen’s Chancellor’s Research Award and the Syncrude Canada Innovation Award.

He also received the Golden Apple Award for his teaching from Queen’s Engineering undergrads. His past work

with Suncor Energy, Syncrude Canada and Royal Dutch Shell in the Alberta oil sands to help optimize plant productivity and performance under changing daily operating and market conditions takes on greater urgency and relevance in today’s world of low oil prices.

Guay sees exciting opportunities as well to develop real-time optimization tools in multiple areas. Such tools could be used in drug delivery in medicine to develop tailored individual treatments.

“Every individual responds differently to medications. We’d like to work with pharmaceutical companies to develop drug delivery systems that could find the optimal dose from measurements of blood sugar, blood pressure or cholesterol from the patient in real time,” he says.

ESC is also ideal for the development of cyber-secure control systems. “The model-free aspect of the technique can minimize the complexity of control systems and reduce their vulnerability to cyber-attacks,” Guay says.

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FLIPPING FLIPPING the classroom Professor Michael Rainbow aims for best results for students

T

he traditional lecture method of teaching in which students listen and take notes as an instructor speaks in person is at least 800 years old. It developed organically in medieval monasteries largely as a function of the rarity of books. Printed texts, and by extension the knowledge within them, could then be reproduced only singly and by craftspeople of great and rare skill. The lecture was a way to add efficiency to the dissemination of information, to distribute knowledge from a single precious text to many people simultaneously.

As technology evolved, as people learned to duplicate textbooks quickly and cheaply, the lecture model persisted. Seeing and hearing an accomplished person describe wondrous things still adds colour and nuance that isn’t communicated through text. But with advances in internet access, miniaturized computing and digital media, there are new, even more efficient, ways to learn and teach. And harnessing those new technologies to make education as easy, available and effective as it can be implies a need for change to traditional teaching methods.

One example of that change is a technique education researchers call “the flipped classroom.” In it, class time formerly devoted to lectures is used instead for group exercises. Students cover course material on their own using a variety of resources and spend classroom time working together to apply what they’ve learned. It’s a teaching approach that’s gaining traction at all education levels and it’s one that a brandnew Queen’s Engineering professor has taken with his class.

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Dr. Michael Rainbow is a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering. He was convinced to try the flipped classroom approach after learning about it from his wife,

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Instead of giving them stuff to write down and spit back up, we’re helping them to synthesize it.

Dr. Roshni Rainbow, who studied it as part of her post-doctoral work at Tufts University. Inspiration came also from Robert Beichner’s Scale-Up program at North Carolina State University and from Queen’s Physics Professor Dr. James Fraser,

who uses similar techniques with some of his courses. Rainbow applied what he learned to his very first undergraduate class, MECH 228: Kinematics and Dynamics. It’s a course about measuring and predicting change in the positions of moving particles over time.

“Dynamics was formalized more than 300 years ago,” says Rainbow. “There’s no shortage of content online and there are hundreds of books on it, so students were getting content by themselves. What they weren’t getting is how to actually sit down and use it to solve problems...

Instead of giving them stuff to write down and spit back up, we’re helping them to synthesize it.”

Research results on the flipped classroom are very positive. They show significantly lower failure rates, higher average marks and higher rates of student engagement across multiple studies of various iterations of the approach. Marginalized and disengaged students perform much better, and learning outcomes are more likely to be achieved. And these measured

MME improvements aren’t typically small; they’re big, sometimes huge.

For Rainbow’s students, class starts most weeks with a 20-minute quiz on material learned independently. Students then assemble into groups and take the same quiz again, this time working together on the solutions.

“They get a certain amount of marks for the group part and a certain amount for the individual,” says Rainbow. “Say I ask them a question and they do poorly in the individual part but better in the group. When I ask a similar but more complicated question next quiz, more of them get it right. It means the process is helping them learn, which is neat.”

The students generally seem to like the format, too. Even those who find that the lecture approach works best with their learning style seem to like the flipped classroom for its interactivity.

“Not only do we learn the material; we learn other things that are very applicable, like coding,” says MECH 228 student Felix Lafontant. “Because of the team setting, we have to work on our communications and problem-solving skills. This is the only class that offers that. It’s the only class that lets you be creative. I think it’s more up-to-date, more modern.”

“Another overlooked aspect is that because we’re in groups, it forces me to go to every single class because I feel bad if my group is without me,” says MECH 228 student John Craig. “It gives me the incentive to go and try my hardest for everyone else.”

Michael Rainbow

But change is jarring and the stakes are high for students. Some argue, for example, that they’ve grown accustomed to the traditional lecture approach and changing the delivery method partway through their program seems unfair.

Others say group work puts a higher burden on stronger students and gives an unfair advantage to those struggling to learn the material. Still others simply prefer lectures.

“I think half the job is selling it to students,” says Rainbow. “Next time around I’ll be more explicit about the connections between the paper problems

and the quizzes. Initially, I described them through email, and I would get replies, ‘Oh, I don’t know how to learn from the book by myself.’ Then I’d just show them the statistics.”

And it’s those research statistics, the ones that show such a profound positive impact on virtually every classperformance metric, that simply can’t be ignored.

“I’m going to keep doing it,” says Rainbow. “Maybe not in every course, but for something like dynamics, where the real challenge is learning how to solve problems, I think it’s perfect.”

LEARNING TOGETHER: MECH 228 students Maggie Scheunert, Felix Lafontant, Nicholas Simone and Katelyn Morrison learn material formerly taught in lectures during their independent study time instead. They spend class sessions working together to crystalize their understanding of the work.

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ALUMNI NE WS

Alumni engagement October 28 and 29, 2015: Greater Toronto Area Receptions Dean Woodhouse hosted two engineering alumni receptions, one in downtown Toronto and one in Oakville. Department heads and faculty members were in attendance.

Phil Sager, Sc’03, Alan Chan, Sc’87

Jim Shearn, Sc’59, James Archibald, Sc’71, MSc’73, PhD’77, Professor and Chair of Graduate Studies, The Robert M. Buchan Department of Mining

November 23, 2015: C100 in San Francisco Dean Woodhouse; Mark Chen, Professor and Chair, Engineering Physics; Shahram Yousefi, Acting Head and Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering; and Catherine Keates, Director of Career Services, travelled to California for a fireside chat with C100 members. They discussed internship and engagement opportunities for Queen’s Engineering students.

Mark Chen, (second from right), Sc’89, the Gordon and Patricia Chair in Particle Astrophysics, Professor in Physics and Astronomy, meets with alumni

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November 25, 2015: Toronto Branch Award Reception

March 5, 2016: QYEA Gael’s Den, Downtown Toronto Queen’s Young Engineering Alumni (QYEA) held their second Annual QYEA Gael’s Den. Students had the opportunity to present their projects.

David McKenna, Sc’03, George Liu, Sc’08, Phil Sager, Sc’03, Paul Yang, Sc’09, Chris Bury, Sc’02, judging the competition Mary Ann Turcke, Sc’88 MBA’97, 2015 Toronto Branch Award recipient

January 21, 2016: Civil Industry Open House, Ellis Hall, Queen’s University

Norman Loveland, Sc’65, Sarah McCurdy, Sc’13

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ALUMNI NE WS

Alumni engagement April 2, 2016: Michele Romanow Returns April 2, 2016 Michele Romanow, Sc’07 MBA’08, returned to campus where she was honoured with the QUAA “One to Watch” Award. She also visited The Tea Room, listened to APPSC100 student presentations and spoke to students and the public.

APPSC100 group presentation QUAA Awards Gala: Principal Woolf, Michele Romanow and Sue Bates, President of the QUAA

Eleanor McAuley, Sc’17, Michele Romanow, Sc’07 MBA’08, Kristy Tu, Sc’16

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April 26, 2016: Dr. James McLellan, Head of Chemical Engineering and Engineering Chemistry, hosted an alumni reception in downtown Toronto.

Donald Cooper ,Sc’11, Peter Rhamey, Sc’84, Kenneth Sutton, Sc’76

Andrea Robinson, Gordon Robinson, Sc’59

Michael Hrynyk, PhD’13, Melanee Short, Sc’00, Darcy Smith, Sc’15

Ken Laver, Sc’73 MBA ‘76, Marilyn Laver, Sc’73, Michelle Rea, Sc’15, James McLellan, Sc’81, PhD’91, Head of Chemical Engineering and Engineering Chemistry

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Inspired giving: Inspired outcomes $90,300,203 RAISED Thank you to all our alumni, friends, corporate supporters and volunteers who have inspired the future of Queen’s Engineering.

Our 10 year Inspiring Greatness: Campaign for Queen’s Engineering has surpassed its $85 million goal, raising $90.3 million in support of our inspiring students, spaces, programs, teaching and research.

inspiring.engineering.queensu.ca

Watch for more details on the impact of your support in our Fall/Winter edition of the Complete Engineer!

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCE – Development and Alumni Relations Beamish-Munro Hall, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6 www.inspiring.engineering.queensu.ca 613-533-6000 Extension 75248 inspiring@engineering.queensu.ca