FEATURES
FEATURES
Exceptional Canadian Women Engineers
Elizabeth Cannon, Christina Amon, Tyseer Aboulnasr and Indira Samarasekera
By Essam Farag
Distinguished Canadian women are climbing the scientific and administrative ladders of academia. In this article, The Ambassadors Magazine presents the great success stories of exceptional Canadian female engineers in high-calibre North American universities, profiling their careers and personalities, in order to acknowledge their contributions and achievements in changing the face of engineering in the 21st century.
University of Calgary's engineering dean, Prof. Elizabeth Cannon and University of Toronto engineering dean, Prof. Cristina Amon, are at the top of their field in university positions traditionally held by men. Both are worried that the number of women in engineering schools is on the decline, while women make-up about 60% of the undergraduate population, nearly 50% of the student body in law and medicine, they have fallen to just 20% of the first year engineering class - down from nearly 30% five years ago. University officials have said that misconceptions about engineering - that engineers are essentially nerds in cubicles working with mathematical formulas all day - have resulted in this decline. Both Prof. Amon and Prof. Cannon hope to reverse the trend, starting with the young women in their own homes. This fall, they both dropped off their daughters to study in the same field where they have found success. They had an easier time convincing their daughters that engineering was the right fit. Prof. Amon had made a few visits to her daughter's all-girls high school in Pittsburgh to speak about engineering careers, and her daughter enrolled at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Several other students from her daughter's school submitted applications to enrol in engineering in other universities.
Prof. Cannon and her husband, who is also an engineering professor at the University of Calgary, remember dragging their daughter to the office, to conferences, and to engineering camps. In general, the two exceptional female deans of engineering are optimistic that the traditional male-dominated culture is slowly changing.
The field of top female engineers in top posts in Canada is not only a new phenomenon, Prof. Tayseer Aboulnasr, had held the position of dean of engineering for six years from 1998 at the University of Ottawa. Most recently also, Prof. Indira Samarasekera, a mechanical engineer by profession, was named president and vice chancellor of the University of Alberta in 2005 - making her the first female to ever hold this top university post in Alberta.
Prof. Elizabeth Cannon (University of Calgary)
The University of Calgary geomatics engineering professor is a leading expert in the research and development of satellite navigation tools - including ones that enable pinpoint airplane positioning. It's world-class work for which Dr. Cannon is being awarded a 2002 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Steacie Fellowship - one of Canada's premier science and engineering prizes.
Dr. Cannon received the 1994 APEGGA Early Accomplishment Award from amongst University of Calgary's 90-member engineering faculty. The professor in geomatics (surveying) engineering already has achieved more in the area of technical papers and major research projects than many scientists do in a lifetime. In 1993, faced with competing nominees twice her age, she was awarded the Calgary YWCA Women of Distinction Award for her contribution to the sciences. This year she was elected by members of the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGGA) to serve three years on the governing Council.
When Dr. Cannon began her work with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) in 1984, the network of 27 satellites that now exists - built and operated by the US military - consisted of only a half-dozen satellites. This meant that it was only useable several hours a day, when there were four satellites within view of a particular location. Her world-class Global Positioning System (GPS) software is licensed in more than 12 countries and she is ranked as one of North America's top five trainers in GPS technology.
University of Calgary engineering professor Ed Krakiwsky, P. Eng., Ph.D. said about his colleague "She's [Prof. Cannon] a highly intelligent, organized, hard working, focused professional who delivers." One of the reasons the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) installed her in her U of C position with a women's facility award in 1991 was to establish more female faculty role models. Just recently she was awarded the Petro-Canada/NSERC Chair for Women in Science and Engineering of the Prairie Region. The award means that beginning July 1st, half of Dr. Cannon's time will be spent on the Chair's position and half on teaching and research. NSERC will match $50,000 per year of industrial donations for the next five years.
When, after graduation, she went to work on the research and development group of Calgary's Nortech Surveys, she continued to take a balanced approach to life. She met her husband-to-be - and now co-worker - Gerard Lachapelle, P. Eng., Ph.D., and began part-time studies aimed at a master's degree. Unlike her mother, who had to leave her employment when she married - because that's the way things were done - the young engineer carried on with her studies. She earned a master's and a doctorate, completing her Ph.D. candidacy exam just before her daughter was born, and defending her thesis when she was almost eight months pregnant with her son.
Friends and colleagues alike agree Dr. Cannon has led the kind of life that could easily serve as a model for young women interested in pursuing a math or science-related career. Not surprisingly, she also has been called upon by women's groups, becoming the group leader for the University of Calgary's Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) program, which provides support for female undergraduate science and engineering students. She also acts as a liaison between the university and working engineers and has participated in the job-shadowing program of Operation Minerva, which also encourages young women to pursue careers in science. Even though she is only 34, Dr. Cannon can see the need to get more female successors in place to provide a more balanced view in the engineering profession and in organizations such as APEGGA. Her career mission became all too clear the day a male student got up to leave when she walked in to teach Engineering 213. "He thought he was in the wrong class because it was being taught by a woman," she says. "That's when I realized how important it is to have a positive influence on male students as well as female."
Prof. Christina Amon (University of Toronto)
“Professor Amon is a gifted institutional leader, a brilliant academic and a
committed teacher,” says Professor David Naylor, president of the University of
Toronto. “Her presence will accelerate the scholarship and innovation that are
the hallmarks of the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering. Her expertise
and guidance promise to bring engineering at U of T to the forefront of
international research and pedagogy and create a student experience that is
second to none.”
"I feel privileged to have the opportunity to come to the University of Toronto, with its internationally respected faculty, outstanding students and an administration genuinely committed to education, innovation and interdisciplinary research," Amon says. "I'm looking forward to working with the students, faculty and staff in an environment that fosters excellence in teaching and research."
Professor Amon will be the 13th dean of the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering and its first female dean. The appointment is effective July 1, 2006, through June 30, 2011.
Carnegie Mellon University's Cristina Amon has been named one of America's 50 most important Hispanics in technology and business by the editors of Hispanic Engineer and Information Technology Magazine.
Prof. Amon’s research pioneered the development of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for formulating and solving thermal design problems subject to multidisciplinary competing constraints. This led to the creation of a multi-stage Bayesian methodology based on successive model refinement, CFD, non-deterministic experiments and Bayesian statistics. More recently, her research group has focused on developing numerical tools for multi-scale hierarchical modeling from nano-scales to system level. This includes molecular dynamics, lattice-Boltzmann method and Boltzmann transport equation for predicting sub-micron and nano-scale heat transport in semiconductors.
Applications include transient thermal management technologies for portable electronics and wearable computers, novel approaches for high heat-flux removal from high-density electronic packaging, fabrication and characterization of nano-porous media for thermal insulation materials for CMOS-compatible microsystems, micro-fluidics and system integration of silicon-based micro-scale direct methanol fuel cells for micro-power generation.
Other projects address fundamental issues in biological systems and biomedical devices including hemodynamics and mass transport in intravenous blood oxygenators, abdominal aortic aneurysms, and endovascular grafts. Professor Amon has contributed twelve book chapters, one McGraw Hill Custom Textbook, and over 200 refereed articles in education and research literature.
Prof. Tyseer Aboulnasr (University of Ottawa)
Tyseer
Aboulnasr is a Professor of Electrical Engineering in the School of Information
Technology and Engineering. Dr Aboulnasr received the Bachelor's of Engineering
degree from Cairo University, Egypt, M. Sc. and Ph. D. degrees from Queen's
University, Kingston, Canada; all in Electrical Engineering. Dr. Aboulnasr
received the Ottawa-Carleton YWCA Women of Distinction Award (Education) in 1999
and became Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada in 2001 and a Fellow of
the Canadian Academy of Engineering in 2003. She was chair of the Council of
Ontario Deans of Engineering in 2001-2002.
Dr. Aboulnasr taught a variety of undergraduate, graduate as well as short courses for industry. Her research interests are in the general area of Digital Signal Processing and its applications. More specifically, her interests include Adaptive Signal Processing (algorithms/implementations and applications), Blind Signal Processing and Multirate Signal Processing. Applications include echo cancellation, system modeling and speech/image processing on data networks. Depending on the project, some research work is conducted in close co-operation with industry. Dr. Aboulnasr was an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (1994-1996). She has participated in several revues of other faculty of engineering nationally and internationally. As an expert in the field of signal processing, she is the leading researcher for the Signal Processing Oriented Technologies (SPOT) group, which is a collaboration of several professors in the School of Information Technology and Engineering (SITE, University of Ottawa), the School of Rehabilitation Sciences (program of Audiology, University of Ottawa), the Acoustics and Signal Processing group at the National Research Council, and the department of Systems and Computer Engineering at Carleton University.
Her contributions have also been acknowledged in the international engineering literature, whereby Dr. Aboulnasr has published over 32 journal papers, 79 conference papers and co-authored a chapter in the book, Multidimensional Systems: Techniques and Applications (1986).
Dr Aboulnasr is also active in several community-oriented dialogue groups aimed at building bridges and fostering understanding amongst Canadians. She is on the board of Leadership Ottawa (www.leadershipottawa.org), an organization dedicated to nurturing community-oriented leadership in Ottawa, the Ottawa Talent Initiative (www.ottawatalentinitiative.ca) , an organization to assist high technology professionals in the Ottawa area as well as the co-chair of the Renaud Foster Network for Executive Women (www.renaudfoster.com/power.html). Furthermore, she is a very active member within the Arab-Canadian and Muslim-Canadian communities of Ottawa, whereby she has supported activities that seek to enhance civic engagement of these communities within mainstream Canadian society.
On the personal side, Dr Aboulnasr has three “children”; two young ladies and one young man. She has recently (2005) earned her Black Belt in Taekwon Do and is currently working on her motorcycle riding skills.
Prof. Indira Samarasekera (University of Alberta)
In Fall 2005, Prof. Indira Samarasekera, 54 years-old,
was installed as University of Alberta's 12th president. By taking this
post, Dr.Samarasekera is making history: the first woman, the first person of
non-European ancestry, the first person born in a southern nation, and the first
engineer to serve the University of Alberta as its president.
Dr. Indira V. Samarasekera was previously VP Research at the University of British Columbia. Born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, of minority Sri Lankan Tamil descent, she received a BSc in mechanical engineering from the University of Ceylon, an MSc in mechanical engineering from the University of California as a Hayes Fulbright Scholar, and a PhD in mechanical Engineering at the University of British Columbia. As professor in the Department of Materials Engineering, Dr. Samarasekera served as the Director for the Centre for Metallurgical Process Engineering and was the first incumbent of the Dofasco Chair in Advanced Steel Processing at UBC.
In 2002, Dr. Samarasekera is made an Officer of the Order of Canada. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIMM). Her other honours include the E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship, the British Columbia Science Council New Frontiers in Research Award, the Dofasco Award, the Golden Jubilee Medal, the UBC Killam Research Prize and an Honorary Degree from UBC.
She is a member of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Committee on the Public Service and the Prime Minister's Advisory Council on Science and Technology, Dr. Samarasekera also sits on the boards of the Conference Board of Canada, the Public Policy Forum of Canada, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, the Canadian Health Industries Partnership and the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research and on a Visiting Committee for MIT.
In the past, Dr. Samarasekera was a member of Council of the National Research Council of Canada, a member of the National Advisory Board on Minerals and Metals, Director of Student Affairs of the Metals, Minerals and Materials of AIME and a member of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Reallocation Committee. She was Vice-President of Academy III of the Royal Society of Canada in 2003 and is a member of the Fellows Selection Committee for Applied Science and Engineering. She has also served on the Killam Selection Committee for the Canada Council for the Arts, the Board of TRIUMF, the International Review Committee for the Ontario Challenge Fund, and the Science and Engineering Advisory Committee of the Alberta Ingenuity Fund. Dr. Samarasekera served on the boards of Discovery Parks Inc., Genome BC, the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, the Provincial Health Services Authority, the Canadian Microelectronics Corporation, the Stem Cell Network, and the Canadian Genetics Diseases Network. She was a member of Industry Canada’s University Advisory Group, and the Sustainable Development Technology Fund. Dr. Samarasekera has also served on Presidential Advisory Committees at MIT and Carnegie Mellon University.
A highly sought public speaker, her international experience has greatly informed her view of the world, and her deep connection with Sri Lanka shaped her humanitarian consciousness. She is passionate about eradicating intolerance, and about the value of education as a means of achieving prosperity and wellbeing, both in Canada and around the world. She has emphasized that as president of the University of Alberta, she plans on improving the quality of the graduate and undergraduate experience by increasing the number of faculty and allow different methods of course delivery besides standard classroom teaching.
Dr. Samarasekera has two children. Her 23-year-old daughter, Anjilikah, is in law school, having previously earned a degree in biochemistry, while her son, Dinesh, followed his parents into engineering but is now in medical school. Immediatly after the birth of her son, Dr. Samarasekera, took three months off, wrote up her PhD thesis, and was offered a faculty position at UBC. She had found her calling - leading her to challenge she takes on now.
As women engineers in North America tread a non-traditional terrain, they have left a trail blazed for future generations of young women who may follow in their exemplary footsteps. As distinguished specialists in their respective fields, Drs. Cannon, Amon, Aboulnasr and Samarasekera continue their efforts to dispel myths about their professions and empower other women to take the path least traveled.
Sources:
"Indira Samarasekera: President, University of Alberta," The Globe and Mail University Report Card, 2006. URL: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/reportcard
"Thouroughly Dynamic," New Trail University of Alberta Alumni Magazine. Features, Autumn 2005. URL: http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/newtrail/nav03.cfm?nav03=41976&nav02=41975&nav01=41974
Essam
Farag, BA Honors (Dalhousie), MA (
