11 minute read
Our Special Feature
Sizi Bebe
PhD, Chemical Engineering
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Sizi Bebe has overcome much adversity in her life, but her positive and hopeful attitude shines through. Born in Zimbabwe, Sizi’s knack for science and mathematics led her to study engineering at the University of Zimbabwe. Her undergraduate degree further piqued her scientific curiosity, so she decided to head to Australia to do graduate work in polymers, a substance with a molecular structure made chiefly from a large number of similar units bonded together.
“Almost everything we use on a daily basis contains polymers,” says Sizi. “I find this fascinating.”
A family crisis brought her back to Zimbabwe, making it impossible to complete her PhD in Australia, but not before she had earned an MSc from the University of Sydney. A health crisis brought her to Kingston to stay with her sister. Sizi warmed to the city and decided to raise her two children there. During her recovery she contacted Dr. Robin Hutchinson, a Chemical Engineering professor at Queen’s, who encouraged Sizi to continue her doctoral studies.
Today, Sizi is the co-founder and Executive Technical Director of DAS Innovations Corporation, an Ottawa-based firm that collaborates with St. Lawrence College and the University of Waterloo on the complex and evolving world of polymers and nanotechnology. DAS researches and develops innovative technologies that improve day-to-day living conditions and alleviate challenges, such as energy storage systems.
Sizi is also contributing in her homeland: she has helped to establish the Polymer Sciences Institute in Harare to bring awareness of how important polymers are in everyday life. This will also advance research and development of polymer products derived from Zimbabwe’s abundant natural resources, including coal, platinum, and chromium.
“Quite a lot can be done with natural products found locally in Zimbabwe,” she says.
When Sizi comes to Canada, she has a chance to see her children, who are now of university age. When in Zimbabwe, Sizi likes to explore the natural beauty of her homeland.
“Victoria Falls, game reserves, the mountains … it’s all beautiful,” she says. “I’ve really come to appreciate it since I’ve been away and come back.”
John Ford
MASc, Civil Engineering
As a boy, John Ford, Sc’00, MASc’04, loved to watch things being built. Earth-movers, cranes, power tools, and hammers so fascinated him that his mother suggested he become an engineer or a carpenter. Now he does both: he’s an engineer by day and a carpenter in his spare time. When not at work, John focuses on remodeling his Toronto home, with his wife’s help.
“I get the same satisfaction from designing structures and seeing them get built as I do out of building things myself,” says John.
So enjoyable was his undergraduate experience at Queen’s that John decided to pursue a Master’s in Civil Engineering, where he collaborated with excellent professors and teaching assistants. His studies further fuelled his passion for building and construction and sparked a particular interest in sports venues. Today, John is a Structural Engineering Consultant with Halsall Associates, a Toronto-based firm that designs efficient, sustainable buildings that have a minimal environmental footprint.
He’s had a varied career with the company. He started out designing individual structural elements such as beams, columns, and foundations, then became a Project Manager leading design teams. In 2008, he moved to Calgary to start Halsall’s structural engineering group. After successfully getting it up and running he returned to Toronto, where he works out of Halsall’s office there. He currently lives in the city with his wife Kaitlin Ford (nee Palmer), Sc’00, MASc’02, and their children.
Basel Nabulsi
PhD, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Basel Nabulsi, PhD’13, grew up in Kuwait, studied in Jordan, France, Brussels, and Kingston, and, at age 31, landed his dream job in Kanata, Ontario. He’s among the growing number of PhD graduates who have chosen a career in industry rather than in academia after they’ve graduated.
An employee of Cortina, a leading provider of high-performance semi-conductor solutions, Basel explores his passion for highspeed communication design on a daily basis in a stimulating environment that more than adequately satisfies the “geek” in him.
“I love solving problems,” he says. “I love how engineering helps me do that.”
Although Basel’s background is cosmopolitan—his parents hail from two different countries, and he had offers to study in London, England, and in Barcelona, Spain—he opted to do his PhD at Queen’s, in comparatively low-key Kingston. “Queen’s and Kingston offer a nice balance for school and life,” he says.
His research at Queen’s involved a mix of signal processing and information theory for wireless communications. He also taught undergraduates (see story, page 13)—particularly those in the APSC 100 Introduction to Robotics course—and karate to young children.
“I find myself learning from students as much as I teach them,” says Basel. “The enthusiasm of first-year students who are all eager to learn gives me so much joy and pleasure. They take pride in being engineers, and they should!”
While he ultimately chose a career in industry, it’s clear that the classroom is still important to him.
“I love teaching,” he says. “But at this time in my life, I want to be part of an exciting industry where I can be innovative and maybe make a name for myself.”
Scott Brandon
Scott Brandon, MASc’09, regards engineering as a “helping profession”—a phrase that’s especially applicable to his field of study, biomedical engineering.
“In our research projects, our goal is to reduce peoples’ pain and improve their quality of life,” says Scott, who’s in the final year of his PhD in Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Queen’s.
Scott’s current research in the Collaborative Biomedical Engineering (CBME) program involves investigating the causes, prevention, and treatment of knee osteoarthritis.
Knee osteoarthritis affects 40 per cent of people over age 70. The disease can be caused, relieved, or exacerbated by mechanical forces applied to the knee joint—and mechanical engineers like Scott specialize in joint forces. Specifically, with research support from various funding agencies such as the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), he studies how knee braces can reduce the forces acting on the knee when a person walks, and how knee braces might be designed to be more effective, comfortable, and easy to wear.
He also specializes in forces of another kind: Scott has been an enthusiastic member of Queen’s Rowing since he arrived on campus in 2007 to complete his Master’s. The Queen’s Nordic Team also holds a special place in his heart—no doubt because he ended up marrying his wife, Julie, a member of the women’s squad.
Upon graduation, Scott plans to travel abroad for a post-doctoral position where he can enhance his biomechanical skill set, but he hopes to eventually return to Canada to teach at a university. His dream job is to combine his two passions—sports and biomechanics—to help athletes achieve their goals.
Paul Webster
PhD, Engineering Physics
Paul (right) and Laser Depth Dynamics CEO (and fellow Queen’s Engineering alum) Roger Bowes, Sc’92
Solving problems and spatial reasoning fascinate Paul Webster, Sc’06, PhD’13, so it’s not surprising that he chose to study Engineering Physics—a decision that led to a fulfilling career.
Paul is founder and owner of Laser Depth Dynamics, a Kingstonbased startup whose specialty is the LD-600, a device that allows for precise depth measurement of industrial laser processes. In other words, when a laser beam is used to cut or drill a material, the LD-600 allows the operator to know exactly how deep the cut is, as the cut is being made.
Being at the leading edge of technological design is both challenging and inspiring for someone who sees endless potential in his career and in life. “The future has practically unlimited possibilities that we can’t conceive of today,” says Paul. “The key to managing this and optimizing outcomes is preparation, both to take advantage of opportunities and mitigate problems as they arrive.”
Paul credits his Queen’s education—a “transformative experience”, he says—with equipping him with the right tools and management skills to advance in his career.
“My time at Queen’s helped me answer many questions about how the world works, technically and otherwise. I made a lot of lifelong friends, and was given opportunities that I couldn’t have imagined when I was in high school,” says Paul.
Paul has developed a good relationship with Queen’s in developing his product, citing a liberal intellectual property policy and substantial commercialization support as two attractive elements offered to aspiring entrepreneurs.
A Kingston resident, Paul plans to expand Laser Depth Dynamics by adding new products across diverse manufacturing sectors. He expects to fill other business roles with Laser Depth Dynamics in the future, but hopes he’ll always be “at least partially in touch” with technical problem-solving and design.
Carolyn Ingram
Carolyn Ingram completed her undergraduate studies in Applied Physics at the University of Regina and was delighted when she landed a job with Cameco Corporation as a Radiation Specialist and dispatched to Cigar Lake, a northern Saskatchewan mine sitting on the world’s second largest high-grade uranium deposit.
At Cigar Lake Carolyn discovered the Jet Boring System, a mining method that uses water under high pressure to excavate cavities in the ore body. The resulting ore slurry is pumped through pipes for further processing.
“I was intrigued about this method of mining and wanted to find a way to contribute and become more involved,” she says.
That desire led her to Queen’s and the Robert M. Buchan Department of Mining, where she’s now working on her Master’s degree. Her graduate research involves acquiring meaningful data from the cavities that will be mined at Cigar Lake.
“As part of my project, we designed and built a test cavity to compare three different technologies that were prospective candidates for the survey system,” she explains.
The devices being evaluated include a Senix ultrasonic sensor, an MDL Cavity Auto-Scanning Laser System (C-ALS), and a MESA Time of Flight (ToF) camera. The ultrasonic sensor is known to provide range data in foggy conditions, but it has low accuracy. The C-ALS has been developed for surveying remote cavities, but it’s expensive and provides unreliable data in fog. The ToF camera provides a high volume of data relatively quickly and may provide accurate information in extreme conditions, but it hasn’t been tested in a mine-cavity application.
Carolyn says Queen’s provided her with a successful and fulfilling graduate study experience, and credits Dr. Joshua Marshall as being an excellent and encouraging supervisor.
“I was made to feel welcome from the instant I stepped into the Mining Department,” says Carolyn. “I love being able to expand my knowledge on the social, economic, and technical aspects of the mining industry while focusing on my Master’s project at the same time.”
In her spare time, Carolyn participates in outdoor activities such as skiing and scuba diving. She also enjoys spending time with her sisters, nieces, and nephews in Saskatoon.
Naci Saldi
PhD candidate, Mathematics and Engineering
As a boy growing up in Turkey, Naci Saldi had a strong affinity for mathematics. Inspired by a high school teacher who fuelled his love for “a fascinating and exciting discipline,” as he calls it, he decided to study engineering at Bilkent University in Ankara.
After completing a Master’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Naci found himself hankering for his first passion— mathematics. Fortunately, he heard about Serdar Yuksel, a fellow Bilkent graduate who’s a professor in the Mathematics and Statistics Department at Queen’s. With Yuksel’s help, Naci found his way to Kingston, where he enrolled in Queen’s doctoral mathematics and engineering program.
Naci’s research involves both stochastic control, a subfield of control theory that deals with sequential optimization of stochastic systems, and information theory, a branch of engineering and mathematics involving the quantification of information that is used primarily for communications technology.
Overall, Naci’s experience at Queen’s has been positive. Faculty and students alike helped him settle into a smaller university and a much smaller city. Moving from the metropolis of Turkey’s capital city has involved a cultural shift for him—but a good one.
“Kingston is small compared to Ankara, but it’s a great place to do a doctoral degree,” says Naci. “People are friendly and helpful, and it’s a beautiful city.”
Naci plans to remain in North America after he completes his PhD, and possibly pursue further studies in a postdoctoral program. He lives with his wife in Kingston, but plans to move to Ottawa where his wife is working on her Master’s in Translation and Interpretation at the University of Ottawa.
Matt Lato
PhD, Geological Engineering
Matt Lato, Sc’06, PhD’10, is a hands-on kind of guy, and geological engineering is that kind of discipline— which is what attracted Matt to a career in this practical, interdisciplinary field. Since graduating, he has found meaningful employment in the industry, first in Norway with the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute and now in Ottawa, where he manages his own company.
“I started in geological engineering because I was fascinated by the possible areas of work,” says Matt. “I continued into graduate studies because I enjoyed the faculty I was studying under, and the available projects brought forward incredible opportunities.”
After returning to Canada from Norway in 2012, Matt established RockSense GeoSolutions Inc. The company focuses on threedimensional imaging applications for tunnelling, mining, transportation, and natural hazard engineering. Conducting fieldwork in remote locations in the world, hiking mountains, and investigating natural phenomena inspires Matt. He credits his Queen’s education with having nurtured his success and his innovative spirit.
“The Department of Geological Engineering does an incredible job at encouraging young minds and enabling their learning and development,” he says. “The faculty members who directly supervised me, as well as other faculty in the department, want nothing but the best for and from their students.”
Matt looks forward to pursuing further business opportunities with RockSense GeoSolutions. He currently lives with his wife, Isabel Coderre, BA’10, in Ottawa
