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F A L L 2 0 0 8 WWW. ENG I N E E R I N G . U A L B E RTA . C A

Celebrating a CenturyEngineering

Excellenceof

Robert RitterPhD Pioneer

Paul TichelaarGoing the Distance

From HumbleBeginnings

ENGMAGfall08_31:2 ENG ALUMNI W05 1/7/09 11:18 AM

fromtheDean

2 U of A Eng i n e e r Fall 2008

One hundred years ago Alberta was in its infancy and required the skills and talents

of engineers to shape the province, tackling everything from ensuring the safety and

security of fresh water and crops to the building of roads, sewers and rail lines.

The University of Alberta’s first engineering professor, William Muir Edwards, set the

standard for our Faculty. Muir Edwards played a crucial role in helping the City of

Strathcona to treat its drinking water. Historic records demonstrate that his work was vital

in ending typhoid outbreaks being spread by poor water treatment. Muir Edwards died in

1918 caring for the sick during the Spanish flu epidemic. It’s a tragic story but also one

that describes the calibre of individuals involved in the early days of our engi-

neering programs, and their sense of service to society. This ethic has become

a hallmark of the Faculty of Engineering.

This year we celebrate the university’s Centenary, 100 years of engineering

education, and our 20,000th graduate from the Faculty. Our alumni are

unique individuals who have done special things with their lives, having an

impact not only on themselves, but also on their families and society. Many

have seen the strong foundation their education has provided for them and

have seen the way to support the next generation, empowering us to progress

even further.

Our alumni have been instrumental in the development of our city, our province, and

beyond – helping others around the world to thrive and prosper.

Today, you only need to chat a few minutes with our students to discover they too possess

a real sense of service, a desire to help others. That’s why we’ve seen such demand for new

program areas such as biomedical engineering, where you can see the direct impact of

engineering on the human body. In all of our disciplines, students are saying, “This is the

way I would like to make my mark on society and help others.”

It is proof that there remains in our Faculty a ‘high nobility’ that was perhaps best

expressed during our earliest days, when our university and Faculty were being estab-

lished. We still find the same sentiments among our faculty, staff and students today – that

desire to build and strengthen our communities. Together, we have made a difference.

Together, we continue on the path of service and change.

Yours truly,

David T. Lynch, PhD, P.Eng.

Dean of Engineering

VISIONTo be one of the largest and

most accomplished

engineering teaching and

research centres, a leader in

North America.

MISSION

To prepare top quality

engineering professionals,

to conduct world-leading

research, and to celebrate

the first-class reputation

and outstanding

accomplishments of alumni.

VALUESDedication, integrity,

professionalism, and

excellence in teaching,

research, and service to

the global economy and

community.

Message


C O V E R S T O R Y

5 Celebrating a centuryAlberta, 1908: the threads that weavethe Faculty of Engineering into thefabric of our history begin here. Thefounder of Alberta’s university, HenryMarshall Tory, knows the frontier set-tlements need well-educated men andwomen capable of breathing life intoour province and the University ofAlberta opens its doors offering,among other things, an education inengineering.

F E A T U R E S

22 Going the DistanceOlympic triathlete Paul Tichelaar(Electrical ’05) battled his way toBeijing, training then racing in hostileheat and humidity. He comes homenot with a medal, but with honourand pride, and the experience of alifetime. And that’s priceless.

24 From humble beginningsWithout professional accreditationfor engineers, Alberta in 1908 wasripe territory for scoundrels whoclaimed the title but lacked theeducation. Professional credentials,regulation, and governance were asessential as the infrastructure ourearly engineers built.

of ContentsTable F a l l 2 0 0 8

U of A Eng i n e e r Fall 2008 3

D E P A R T M E N T S

31 In Memoriam

35 Kudos

26 Awarding PrideThere was a time when a new engi-neering building on campus didn’thave women’s warshrooms. Today, agrowing number of female engineer-ing students are earning nationalrecognition for academic excellence.

28 PhD PioneerRobert Ritter (MSc Chemical ’54), theFaculty of Engineering’s first PhDstudent, didn’t want to work at acookie-cutter job. Instead, he choseto design the cookie cutters, embark-ing on a remarkable, inventive careerthat has improved lives and changedthe world.

32 Perfect Student Continuesto GrowLindsay Leblanc (Engineering Physics’03) worked hard and earned perfectgrades en route to her degree. Sincethen, she’s earned an A-minus, butthere’s no doubt she’ll handily earnthe physics PhD she’s pursuing at theUniversity of Toronto.

34 Continuing a Traditionof GivingEngineers by nature work inservice of society. The Faculty ofEngineering’s new planned givingcounsel helps our alumni to supportthe causes and institutions they’repassionate about.

5

32

28



UofAEngineerU of A Engineer is the Faculty

of Engineering alumni magazine. It is

published three times a year by the Dean's

Office and is distributed to Faculty of

Engineering alumni, friends, and staff.

Dean of Engineering

David T. Lynch

(PhD Chemical '82), P.Eng.

Acting Assistant Dean,

External Relations

Laurie Shinkaruk

External Relations Team

Peggy Hansen, Katherine Irwin,

Linda Kelly, Nena Jocic-Andrejevic,

Leanne Nickel, Jamie Reid,

and Erica Viegas

Publisher/Managing Editor

Richard Cairney

Copy Editor

Scott Rollans

Art Direction

Halkier + Dutton Strategic Design

Contributing writers

and photographers

Blue Fish Studios, Andrea Collins, Caitlin

Crawshaw, Aimee Maxfield, April Serink,

Ryan Smith, and Bruce White

Send your comments to:

Richard Cairney

Faculty of Engineering

E6-050 Engineering Teaching

and Learning Complex

University of Alberta

Edmonton, AB T6G 2V4

Tel: 780.492.4514 or 1.800.407.8354

Fax: 780.492.0500

E-mail: [email protected]

Website: http://www.engineering.ualberta.ca

Fall 2008 Issue 26

Publications Mail AgreementNo. 40051128

Return undeliverable Canadianaddresses to:Faculty of Engineering,University of AlbertaE6-050 Engineering Teachingand Learning ComplexEdmonton, AB T6G 2V4

e-mail: [email protected]

thefrom

EditorThere can be no better time to join the Faculty of Engineering and to take on editor-

ship of U of A Engineer than during the university’s centenary — and the 100thanniversary of Engineering at the University of Alberta.

The timing provides a perfect excuse to immerse one’s self in the history andproud traditions of the Faculty, to learn the stories of those who have led theway in teaching, research, and community service, the impressive achievementsof our alumni, and the exciting potential of today’s students and researchers.

As surely as the university and the province sat at the frontier in 1908, weare at a new kind of frontier today. Our students learn at the side of some ofthe world’s best and brightest — professors who are also renowned researchers— using tools and technologies our founders could never have imagined.

The achievements of our alumni — the tremendous impact they’ve had onsociety — is testament to the student experience in the Faculty of Engineering.To my newcomer’s eye, it appears more and more to me that the commondenominators in all the engineering disciplines are an insatiable curiosity and

desire to learn, a genuine belief that there are no setbacks – only challenges, and the tenac-ity to overcome those challenges. Fine qualities indeed.

I have been working with the University of Alberta for the past seven years — and it isindeed an honour to join the Faculty of Engineering. This issue of U of A Engineer cannotclaim to be a definitive history of our Faculty, but it does provide us with a sense of ourpast, our present and our future. In my capacity as editor of U of A Engineer, I look for-ward to meeting more alumni, learning of your achievements and sharing the your stories.Yours truly,

Richard CairneyEditor

Message

Welcome in my mailbox anytimeI just received my U of A Engineering Magazine today and had to write youand tell you how much I enjoyed the articles. They were all thoughtfullywritten and topical. Nice going, and thanks for all your hard work. I dolook forward to the next one!

Too bad we missed an issue due to staff shortages, I suppose this is happen-ing everywhere in Alberta these days, since I now have to wait a very longtime for my coffee at “Tim’s”.

I found the mix of technical and personal information in each article madefor interesting and informative reading.

Keep up the good work, and thanks again.

Doug Murdoch

Letter to the Editor


While scouring the U of A archives for historic photographs of the

Faculty of Engineering we uncovered a letter from William Muir

Edwards, one of the first four professors teaching at the University

of Alberta. An engineer, Muir Edwards taught applied science and civil

engineering—and served his pioneer community.

In a letter to the mayor and council of the City of Strathcona (in those days,

the south side, where the university was located, was still a separate city),

Muir Edwards reports that a new water treatment facility has brought an end

to water-borne disease afflicting Strathcona’s residents.

“Since the sterilizing plant has been in operation there have been no new

cases of typhoid except those coming from houses in which typhoid cases

were being nursed,” he writes.

The letter, dated January 21, 1911, reflects our province in its infancy, and

the commitment to community service that lies at the heart of the Faculty

of Engineering and Alberta’s university. Muir Edwards died November 14,

1918—his thirty-ninth birthday. Pembina Hall had been converted to a hospital

during the worldwide Spanish flu epidemic. While tending the sick there,

Muir Edwards succumbed to the disease.

It was no accident that, when it opened in 1908, the University of Alberta

began educating engineers. Since then, our professors and alumni have had

a profound and lasting impact on every aspect of life in our province.

You can read the history of engineering in Alberta—the stories of our engineer-

ing alumni and professors—in the roads that criss-cross the Prairie and scale

Rocky Mountain passes, in the bridges that span rivers, in the structures that

define our communities, even in the comfort and safety of our own homes.

In 1908, five University of Alberta students began their engineering education.

Today the Faculty of Engineering ranks in size among the top five percent

of more than 400 engineering schools in North America, with about 3,800

undergraduate and 1,200 graduate students. Our province prospers and our

university achieves beyond the wildest dreams of its founders.

Learning alongside professors who are internationally renowned for their

research, today’s students, like those before them, will address society’s

most pressing needs. They will apply their education and creativity to new

challenges in biomedical engineering, nanotechnology, energy and the

environment, and information and communications technologies. In doing so

they will serve our communities, near and far, following in the footsteps of

their predecessors, and blazing new trails for those who will follow them.

The following stories recount some of the history of our Faculty, the

achievements of our alumni, and the aspirations of our students. Enjoy.

Celebrating a century ofengineering excellence

by Richard Cairney




by BruceWhite

99yearsof civil engineering

at the U of A

s the University of Alberta cele-brates its 100th birthday in2008, one of the successes it canjustly take pride in is beinghome to the largest civil engi-

neering school in Canada, and one of the topfive in North America, with 800 undergradu-ate and 400 graduate students.

Today’s Department of Civil andEnvironmental Engineering is the largest of

four departments in the Faculty ofEngineering. It offers degrees in PetroleumEngineering, Mining Engineering and threeflavours of Civil Engineering: General,Environmental and Biomedical. It also enrolsmore graduate students than any otherdepartment on the U of A campus.

It is difficult today to imagine an institu-tion with humbler beginnings than theUniversity of Alberta in 1908. In its first year

it was housed in borrowed classrooms in aStrathcona public school with four professorsand 45 full- and part-time students. Staffwere picked by the U of A’s first president, Dr.Henry Marshall Tory, a McGill-trainedphysicist, mathematician and theologianfrom Nova Scotia. Dr. Tory had a career likeno one else in Canadian learning. Beforearriving at the U of A, he helped to found aforerunner of the University of British

A

Celebrating a century of engineering excellence

Civil Engineering

April 27, 1929 – workers pause during construction of a relief sewer beneath the streets ofEdmonton. Fast forward to 2001: Civil Engineering professor Simaan AbouRizk, shown here in astorm relief sewer he acted as consultant on, is awarded the prestigious NSERC Steacie Fellowshipfor outstanding engineers. AbouRizk holds the NSERC Senior Industrial Research Chair inConstruction Engineering and Management.

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Columbia. During the 1914-18 war, he set up“Khaki University” in England, whichtrained 50,000 Canadian soldiers. After retir-ing from the U of A he moved to Ottawa,where he was founding president of theNational Research Council in 1928 andCarleton University in 1942.

In the U of A’s second year, 1909, five stu-dents enrolled in the its new Department ofCivil and Municipal Engineering. This firstclass of U of A engineers, who graduated in1913, was taught by William Muir Edwards,a professor of mathematics and civil engineer-ing who had come west from McGillUniversity in 1908. During the influenza epi-demic of 1918, Pembina Hall was pressed intoservice as an emergency hospital to care forflu-stricken Edmontonians and Prof. MuirEdwards volunteered to help care for patients.He contracted the disease and died at age 39.

Another early-round pick for the universi-ty was an electrical engineer from McGill, Dr.Robert William Boyle, a Newfoundlanderwho was recruited by Dr. Tory in 1912 tohead the physics department. During the FirstWorld War instruction in engineering wassuspended and Dr. Boyle went to Manchester,England, to work on early versions of sonar,which could detect a submarine submergedup to a mile away. Dr. Boyle later became thefirst head of the Department of ElectricalEngineering, the first Dean of Engineeringand would move on to a distinguished careerat the National Research Council.

Another arrival in 1912 was a NewEnglander with the magnificent name ofIbrahim Folinsbee Morrison, who was recruit-ed from the civil engineering staff at MIT.Morrison taught the first soil mechanics courseat a Canadian university and was rememberedby early U of A engineering grads as an inspir-ing teacher. He consulted on construction ofEdmonton’s Rossdale power plant and theGhost Dam on the Bow River west of Calgary.

In 1919 the U of A enjoyed a recordenrolment of more than 1,000 students,many of them returning soldiers who hadserved their country in the First World War.The Department of Civil and MunicipalEngineering remained a modest enterprise,giving out fewer than 10 B.Sc degrees peryear until the outbreak of the Second WorldWar. New disciplines in engineering wereadded to the U of A calendar: mining & met-

allurgical (1914), electrical (1925), andchemical (1928).

The period between the two world warssaw Canadian engineers organize themselvesinto a self-regulating profession. As a youngcivil engineering professor, Robert Starr LeighWilson was a key figure in the passing of theAlberta Engineering Profession Act of 1920and served as the first registrar of theAssociation of Professional Engineers and laterits president. A specialist in railway construc-tion, Wilson was dean of the faculty from 1929to 1946, a watch consisting of the GreatDepression followed by the SecondWorld War.

During the depression, the university bud-get was slashed by a third, staff salaries wererepeatedly cut and the work of the AlbertaResearch Council was suspended. Withoutadding staff, the number of students in theengineering faculty rose from 260 in 1930 to300 in 1940.

Robert M. Hardy joined the departmentin 1930 from the universities of Manitoba,McGill and Michigan and is credited withmaking the U of A a substantial graduateschool for civil engineering. He was a head ofthe department, dean of engineering andfound time to run R.M. Hardy andAssociates Ltd., which consulted on highwayand airport projects across Canada.

If one wanted to write a sweeping novelof life in the middle of the 20th century, onecould find worse models than Leonard Gads.He was born in 1907 to wealthy Russian par-ents who fled to China after the revolution.His father died and he ended up driving a cabin the Manchurian city of Harbin to supporthis family. He came to Canada at the age of19 and was an overworked farm labourer inthe Wetaskiwin area for 10 years until hesaved up enough money to enroll in civilengineering at the U of A, graduating in1939. During the Second World War, Gadstaught navigation to Royal Canadian AirForce and Commonwealth recruits and afterthe war served as an interpreter with theallied occupying force in Berlin. Hardybrought him back to the U of A to take on ateaching load that included surveying, astron-omy, graphics and an orientation course onabout the engineering profession. He retiredin 1971 as an associate dean.

In 1948, petroleum engineering was addedas a new discipline in the Faculty, and the dis-

History ofCivilEngineering

timeline1887 Canadian Society for Civil

Engineering founded.

1908 University of Alberta openswith 45 students and four profes-sors.

1909 Department of Civil andMunicipal Engineering is created.William Muir Edwards is the U ofA’s first engineering professor.

1913 First graduating class of fiveengineers.

1915 Construction of the CivilEngineering Building (South Lab).

1918 Prof. Muir Edwards dies, avictim of worldwide influenza.

1953 Civil Engineering Buildingcompleted.

1956 U of A establishes Canada’sfirst graduate program in civilengineering.

1980 Professorship established inconstruction engineering.

1981 Faculty of Engineeringintroduces co-op study.

1983 Centre for FrontierEngineering Research established.

1994 Establishment of C.W. CarryChair in Steel Structures.

1995 B.Sc in Civil Environmentaloption offered.

2002 A $5-million donation fromthe Hole family, whose constructioncompany Lockerbie and Holetraces its roots back to 1898,creates the Hole School ofConstruction Engineering.

2004 The $65 million Allan P.Markin/Canadian NaturalResources Limited NaturalResources Engineering Facility(NREF) opens.

2007 Civil biomedical option degreeintroduced.

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covery of oil near Leduc set the course for post-war Alberta. In the 1950s and 1960s, the U ofA sent numerous civil engineering graduates tomajor engineering schools in the U.S. andGreat Britain for doctoral studies, includingIllinois, Berkeley, Lehigh and Birmingham.Many returned to join the U of A faculty andbecame the backbone of the department in the1970s and 1980s.

Others came to the U of A to escape trou-bles in other parts of the world. At least threeprofessors arrived from Czechoslovakia afterthe 1968 uprising, including Stan Tepley(who specialized in urban transportation),Eva Knetting (environmental engineering)and Zdenek Eisenstein (tunnelling).

The opening of the I.F. MorrisonStructural Engineering Laboratory in the1960s gave the department the ability to testlarge concrete, steel timber and masonrystructures as well as advanced materials. Italso opened to door to research into ways toassess, repair and extend the lifespan of exist-ing structures instead of costly replacement.

By the late 1980s, the department couldclaim leadership in several fields of research.Dr. James MacGregor was a world-recog-nized expert in reinforced concrete structures,while Dr. Norbert Morgenstern was a geot-echnical engineer with a specialty in slopestability. Both have retired from the universi-ty with honorary doctorates. Other leading

department members included: Dr. DavidMurray in structural engineering, Drs. DonScott and Eisenstein in geotechnical engineer-ing, Dr. Nallamuthu Rajaratnam in waterresources and Dr. Daniel Smith in environ-mental engineering.

The 1980s and early 1990s were a time ofretrenchment. There were fewer students dueto quotas and waves of cost-cutting culminat-ing in Premier Ralph Klein’s across-the-boardcutbacks in 1993. The influx of teaching andresearch talent dried to a trickle. Of the hand-ful of staff hired in this period, most went onto successful careers that continue today.

Dr. David Sego, who received his PhDfrom the U of A in 1980, is a world leader inbuilding structures on permafrost. Dr.Simaan M. AbouRizk holds three researchchairs and is a professor in the ConstructionEngineering Management program, whichwas established in the department in by Prof.S. Peter Dozzi in the 1980s.

Dr. Roger Cheng began his engineeringeducation in Taiwan and arrived from theUniversity of Texas in 1984. In 1997 hebecame the second holder of the C.W. CarryChair in Steel Structures, which through thegenerosity of an Edmonton steel fabricatorbecame the first fully endowed chair in the Uof A Faculty of Engineering. Dr. Chengbecame chair of the Department of Civil andEnvironmental Engineering in 2002.

The 1980s and early 1990s saw many dra-matic changes. The introduction of a co-oplearning program in the Faculty of Engineeringin 1981 gave students two benefits they could-n’t find in a classroom or lab: real-world expe-rience and a regular paycheque. Currently, 45to 50 per cent of civil engineering students arein the co-op program.

Civil engineering students at the end of the1980s were able to observe the biggest civilconstruction projects of the period virtuallyunder their feet: the extension of Edmonton’sLRT system across the river to the Universitystation. Regular tours of the various worksiteswere arranged for the students. Of particularinterest was the new bridge named after anearly U of A civil engineering grad and formercity commissioner Dudley B. Menzies.Completed in 1990 at a modest cost of $13.3million, the LRT and footbridge were con-structed of 216 precast concrete girders each2.5 metres long and held together by 253 kmof high-strength, post-tensioned steel cable.

Without fanfare, and despite an unsuc-cessful attempt to impose quotas on foreignstudents, the department acquired an interna-tional flavour. By 1990-91, only 38.8 per centof graduate students in civil engineering werefrom Canada: nearly as many came fromAsia and one in seven were from Africa.

But the dismal science of economics tookits toll. By 1991, a hiring freeze was imposed,travel budgets were slashed and even thedepartment’s allocation to buy journals wascut by $10,549. The faculty’s enrollmentquota was ratcheted down. It was decided in1991 to terminate the mining engineeringprogram, which had been a pillar of the engi-neering faculty since 1914. However, themining industry and the Alberta Chamber ofResources rallied to deliver funding for pro-fessorships and save the program. Thatresulted in a series of hires in the mid-1990s,including Dr. Clayton Deutsch, fromStanford University, who teaches graduatecourses in geostatics and heads the U of ASchool of Mining and Petroleum Engineering.

A reorganization of the faculty in 1996brought another major change to CivilEngineering: the addition of the environ-mental, petroleum and mining units to thedepartment. A fifth discipline of biomedicalengineering has since been added, across theFaculty.

A leading expert in cold-climate engineering, civil

engineering professor DaveSego conducts research in a

cold lab at the CanadianCentre for Frontier

Engineering Research.

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In the decade leading up to the Universityof Alberta’s centennial, rising prosperity andsurging enrolment have enabled the depart-ment to recruit people to branch into newareas and build on the legacy of previous gen-erations. New buildings in the engineeringcomplex on campus attest to the resurgenceof the faculty. Growing enrolments, fundingand sponsored research have allowed theDepartment of Civil and EnvironmentalEngineering to build on its strengths in geot-echnical and structural engineering and tospread into other areas as well. The result isa more balanced, well-rounded department,says Chairman Dr. Roger Cheng.

Civil engineers use new technologies tosolve new problems, and old problems, too.That could mean applying materials createdin a nanotechnology lab to the treatment ofwastewater, or finding ways to extract andclean water from tailings ponds to reduce thewater consumed in resource extraction. As thegas industry begins to exploit coal bedmethane, more challenges arise for civil and

petroleum engineers: dealing with wastewater,CO2 sequestration and producing the gas.

Nanotechnology will have an impact inunexpected places, including Alberta’s poplarforests. Nanotechnology can be applied towood fibre to strengthen it for use in value-added wood products such as engineered joists.

Dr. Cheng wants us to break through ourstereotyped thinking and put civil engineersin leadership positions in all kinds of fields,some traditional but others quite surprising.In its five-year plan the department focuseson infrastructure engineering, and manage-ment, cold climate engineering and natural

resource engineering. But civil engineers willbecome involved with biomedical engineeringas well. A bone, after all, is a structural ele-ment. The flow of blood through our bodiescan be expressed in terms of fluid mechanics.The strains on our knees when we run aredue to friction and wear, so there are struc-tural engineers who specialize in knee joints.

Dr. Cheng believes opportunities forfuture civil engineers are greater than ever.Their training as problem solvers and abilityto work in multi-disciplinary teams will equipthem for the pressing environmental andsocial challenges of the 21st century: infra-structure deficit, water quality, air quality,greenhouse gas and the building of cities forthe future that are sustainable, healthy andlivable. Just as Dr. Tory and Prof. MuirEdwards had intended.

(An excellent history of the first 80 yearsof engineering studies at the U of A can befound in Dr. George Ford’s 1988 book, Sonsof Martha: University of Alberta Faculty ofEngineering 1913-1988.)

Robert William Boyle — Physicist hired byU of A in 1912, an early sonar researcher,the first head of the Department of ElectricalEngineering and the first Dean ofEngineering.

William Muir Edwards — One of theoriginal four faculty members at the U of Ain 1908, Edwards was a professor ofmathematics and civil engineering. He diedafter selflessly caring for the sick during theinfluenza epidemic of 1918.

in Civil EngineeringNotable people

Zdenek Eisenstein — An expert ontunneling who was voted best teacher inthe Faculty of Engineering for 1992,Dan Eisenstein consulted on the EnglishChannel Tunnel.

Leonard Gads — A refugee of the RussianRevolution who came to Alberta at the ageof 19. Worked as a farm labourer for 10years to save up enough money to studyengineering at the U of A. He retired in1971 as an associate dean.

Norbert R. Morgenstern — Headed thegeotechnical program in the 1980s andconsulted on dozens of major projectsaround the world. Chair, 1994-97;University Professor; honorary doctoraldegree 2007.

Ibrahim Folinsbee Morrison — Taught thefirst classes in soil mechanics in a Canadianuniversity and consulted on a number ofAlberta hydro dam projects in the 1920sand 1930s.

David Sego— Received PhD from U of Ain 1980 and joined the department’sgeotechnical program. A leading globalexpert on cold-climate engineering.

Robert William Boyle William Muir Edwards Leonard Gads Ibrahim FoilnsbeeMorrison

Dr. Cheng wants us to break

through our stereotyped

thinking and put civil

engineers in leadership

positions in all kinds of

fields; some traditional but

others quite surprising.



Electrical and Computer Engineering

he opening of the AlbertaMicroelectronics Centre in 1982proved a milestone in the devel-opment of today’s Departmentof Electrical and Computer

Engineering. It marked a big step in thedepartment’s evolution from a teaching unitto a leader in research.

The centre quickly became a magnet forresearchers and microchip designers fromacross Canada. It served as the launching padfor a renowned Edmonton microdevice fabri-cation company that now employs more than150 people. And it created a community ofexpertise that, two decades later, made it pos-sible for the University of Alberta to becomethe home of the National Institute forNanotechnology.

But the birth of the AlbertaMicroelectronics Centre required politicalbrinkmanship worthy of a Cold War missiletreaty negotiation. In fact, when the federalgovernment decided in the early 1980s toinvest $1 million each in three research cen-tres across Canada, it hadn’t even consideredthe U of A, recalls Dr. C.R. (Bob) James, chairof electrical engineering at the time. The U ofA found out about the plan only days beforean announcement was to be made.

James immediately telephoned a seniorresearch bureaucrat in Ottawa and gave himan earful: “Don’t you realize that we have thethird-largest electrical engineering departmentin the country?” Furthermore, the U of A metevery criterion the federal industry depart-ment had set for the centres (except perhapsan unwritten requirement of being located ina riding represented by a Liberal MP).

prizeeyes on the

T

Today’s electrical and computer engineeringstudents learn using state-of-the-art technology.

The bureaucrat informed James that hehad been planning to hand his recommenda-tions the next day to Herb Gray, the seniorminister in Pierre Trudeau’s cabinet whowould make the decision. However, he said,Gray was suffering from the flu and mightneed to delay the decision.

James rushed a 40-page brief to Ottawaand, before long, found himself at the airportgreeting a delegation sent, ostensibly, to eval-uate the U of A bid. James drove his guests toa downtown hotel, and they sat down in thelounge together for drinks. Over a round ofbeers, the guests admitted that, in reality, theyhad been sent to break the bad news. Whilethe higher-ups in Industry, Trade andCommerce were impressed with the proposal,this wasn’t going to be the U of A’s turn.

James refused to take no for an answer.Presentations went ahead the next day, andJames told faculty members to punch hard andheavy. They hammered away all day and didn’tstop until 6:30. Even then, with the feds plead-ing for mercy, James didn’t let up. At a banquetin the Faculty Club, James proposed a toast:“To the Alberta Microelectronics Centre.” TheU of A profs stood and raised their glasses,while the visitors sat frozen at their places.

James kept the pressure on, lining up ameeting with Gray and persuading him toexpand the list to six universities. The U of Agot $200,000 a year for five years to get intothe high-tech business of microelectronics.

Dr. Clarence Capjack, who a decade laterwould chair Computer and ElectricalEngineering, believes James succeeded notonly because of his political toughness, butbecause of his ability to involve other people

in his projects. James had the ear of his MLA,Neil Crawford, and other ministers in thegovernment of Peter Lougheed, which waseager to diversify the Alberta economy. Thatrelationship was highlighted in 1983 whenLougheed cut the ribbon on a new lab dedi-cated to CAD/CAM (computer-aideddesign/computer-aided manufacturing).

The Alberta Microelectronics Centre wasquickly followed by other successes. TheAlberta Laser Institute opened in 1985, build-ing on laser and plasma research begun twodecades earlier by Dr. George Walker. TheAlberta Telecommunications Research

by BruceWhite



History ofElectricalEngineering

timeline1912 Dr. Robert William Boyle

becomes head of the physicsdepartment.

1925 Department of ElectricalEngineering is created; Boylenamed chair.

1930 CKUA joins first cross-Canada educational radio network.

1931 Ward Porteous joins thedepartment; earns its first M.Sc. inelectrical engineering in 1933.

1941 Department begins to givespecial courses in electronics fornaval and air force personnel.

1958 Calgary Power donates aBrown-Boveri Network Analyzer tostimulate utility research.

1964 Dr. G.B. Walker becomesdepartment head.

1972 Nine faculty members receivea $638,000 grant for the develop-ment of laser and plasma physics.

1974 C.R. (“Bob”) James becomesdepartment chair.

1982 Dr. Alberta MicroelectronicsCentre is established (nowMicralyne Inc.).

1985 Alberta Laser Institute isestablished.

1986 Alberta TelecommunicationsResearch Centre is established(now TRLabs).

1987 Dr. P.R. Smy becomes chair.

1992 Dr. Clarence Capjackbecomes chair.

2002 Electrical and ComputerEngineering Research Facility(ECERF) opens; boasts the mostadvanced clean room in anyCanadian university.

2004 Dr. Horacio Jose Marquezbecomes department chair.

2008 U of A electrical engineersand biologists demonstrate amedical laser capable of operatingon a single human cell.

Centre opened the following year, the culmi-nation of years of discussions that had begunwith the concept of a western outpost of theBell Northern Research Lab. Any way youmeasure it, James was on a winning streak.

Early daysResearch in electrical engineering at the

University of Alberta traces its roots to thedawn of the 20th century and the remarkablecareer of R.W. (“Billy”) Boyle. ANewfoundland native, Boyle excelled at McGillUniversity, where he was the first student toreceive a PhD in physics. In 1912, anotherMcGill man—HenryMarshall Tory, the found-ing president of the U of A—lured Boyle toAlberta to head the physics department, whichoffered an electrical engineering course.

During the First World War, Boyleworked for the British Admiralty researchingasdic, an early sonar technology that coulddetect a submarine under water up to a mileaway. He became the Dean of the Faculty ofApplied Science in 1921. By 1925 he createda separate Electrical Engineering department,which started out with a dozen third- andfourth-year students each term. Soon after-wards Boyle departed for Ottawa to rejoinTory, by then the founding head of theNational Research Council.

One early U of A specialist in electronicsand communications was Ward Porteous, aformer lab boy in the physics department whowent on to receive the U of A’s first Master’sin Electrical Engineering. Porteous joined thedepartment staff in 1931, a year when it had

seven graduates. He helped build the originalCKUA radio transmitter on campus, andwired CKUA into Canada’s first educationalradio network. During the Second World War,he conducted classified research into antennasand taught electronics courses for theCanadian military. His teaching career at theU of A continued into the 1970s.

Between 1939 and 1945, the departmentramped up production, graduating about 60electrical engineers per year by war’s end.Perhaps more importantly, it taught shortcourses in radio and electronics to hundredsof Royal Canadian Air Force personnel at atime. After the war, enrolment in the depart-ment gradually declined until 1958, whenCalgary Power’s gift of a Brown-BoveriNetwork Analyzer gave the U of A a nation-al advantage in the field of power research.That, in turn, attracted students with aninterest in power engineering.

Good times in the ’60sCapjack, a 1962 grad who would be the

department chair a generation later, remem-bers a department where research, by necessi-ty, took a back seat to teaching: “It wasdifferent department then, and with a verysmall faculty they taught a great number ofstudents. The teaching loads they had thenwere very, very large.”

The Beatles were live in black and whiteon televisions packed with vacuum tubeswhen George Walker became head of thedepartment in 1964. Electrical engineeringhad 113 students and 10 staff that year, but

Electrical engineering class of 1942. With the Second World War raging, the department taught shortcourses in radio electronics to hundreds of RCAF personnel.

Uof

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the numbers grew quickly. Every university inNorth America was expanding rapidly, andnew institutions such as the University ofCalgary (est. 1966) were being created for thefirst baby boomers.

By 1969, Walker had grown his depart-ment to 23 professors and three post-doctoralfellows. This influx of newcomers reawak-ened the department as a research unit. In1972, Walker negotiated a $638,000 devel-opment grant for laser and plasma physics.That helped establish a group in the depart-ment (including J. Tulip, H.J.J. Seguin, P.R.Smy, A.A. Offenberger and Capjack) thatearned an international reputation for push-ing lasers from the lab into industrial andmedical applications.

As research investment increased throughthe 1980s, students benefited greatly from theexpertise of their instructors. “It’s not some-body who has picked up a textbook that’s sixor seven years old,” Capjack explains.“Students get the material from someone whois at the leading edge of that world.” A greatexample, he says, is Dr. Fred Vermeulen, a verygood researcher in electromagnetics, a passion-ate and well-liked teacher and, in recent years,a mentor to a new generation of professors.

Tearing down then rebuildingThe era of Walker, James and Smy, from

1964 to 1992 marked nearly three decades ofalmost uninterrupted growth and progress.However, a short, sharp shock followed in the1990s. Almost as soon as Capjack took overas head of the department, he had to find away to absorb a 20-per-cent-plus budget cut

without decreasing the number of students.Many faculty recruits from the 1960s accept-ed early retirement in 1994–95, and ranks ofpart-timers grew to 25 sessional instructors,including more than a few who never com-pleted their term. Capjack remembers havingto plead with a professor emeritus, KeithStromsmoe, to hurry back and take over amicrocircuit design course after its instructorbolted. The department also implementedother forms of cutbacks, including reducingthe number of research groups from 13 to 6.

Eventually, however, funding began toflow back into the engineering faculty, and thedepartment returned to recruitment mode. Bythe mid-1990s, competition for talent wasfierce, not only from other academic institu-tions, but from a booming high-tech sector.Canada’s 60-cent dollar put the U of A at aneven greater disadvantage. Faculty candidateswere wooed aggressively—met at the airportand driven around town to check out the realestate market and schools for the kids.

Among the new hires in this period wasDr. Horacio Marquez, an Argentine-bornelectrical engineer specializing in control sys-tems. Marquez arrived in 1996 from a post-doctoral position at the University ofVictoria. Like his predecessors a generationearlier, he came to a department that carrieda heavy teaching load at the expense ofresearch. That changed virtually overnight, ascomputers sprouted from every desk and theInternet evolved from an academic networkto a mass-market phenomenon.

The Alberta government-sponsoredInformatics Circle of Research Excellence(iCORE), established in 1999, endowed anumber of research chairs and funded ITresearch along with Alberta Ingenuity. Thefederal government sponsored five CanadaResearch Chairs in the department. Newbuildings were planned for the Faculty ofEngineering—including the Electrical andComputer Engineering Research Facility thatopened in 2002.

Marquez became department chair in2004, eight years after arriving. During thattime, the department had grown from 26 fac-ulty members to 52—with a goal to expandto more than 70 members in coming years.The University of Alberta, in its centennialyear, has Western Canada’s largest computerand electrical engineering department, inde-

Electrical and Computer Engineering

pendently ranked as one of the top threedepartments nationally with Waterloo andToronto. Marquez plans to expand electricalengineering to make the department thelargest in Canada. But Marquez says size isn’this number-one concern. He’s more interestedin adding breadth and depth to the depart-ment to make it one of the best in NorthAmerica.

The department has strength in tradition-al areas of communications, power systems,electronics, signal processing, control systemsand electromagnetics. Marquez sees fourprincipal areas of growth:1. I n f o r m a t i o n - C omm u n i c a t i o n s

Technology (ICT)—Consisting of com-munications and all its enabling technolo-gies such as electronics, signal processingand software engineering.

2. Biomedical engineering—An undergradu-ate biomedical option in electrical engi-neering created two years ago providesstudents with an alternative to general sci-ences as a route into medical school.

3. Nanotechnology—A growing ability tomanipulate materials at nanoscale isopening great new opportunities for elec-trical engineers. Microelectromechanicalsystems (MEMS) are already establishedin the marketplace. Even smaller andmore complex nanoelectromechanicalsystems (NEMS) are on the way.

4. Energy systems—The focus is shiftingfrom traditional power systems to newenergy systems such as solar and wind. Asolar panel, for example, is engineeredfrom nanomaterials and electronics.The relatively modest investment Bob

James secured back in the 1980s has generat-ed fantastic payoff. The lineage is direct andunmistakable.

The microelectronics lab evolved into awell-equipped, ultra-clean nanofabricationfacility unique in Canada, which continues toattract researchers from across the country. Acompany successfully spun off from the centrein 1998, Micralyne Inc., is one of the world’slargest independent microelectromechanicalsystems (MEMS) foundries. Research inMEMS, microfluidics, and thin-film technolo-gies, among other areas, contributed to thedecision in 2001 to bring the NationalInstitute of Nanotechnology to the U of A.

The Alberta Laser Institute was the fore-

The University of Alberta, in

its centennial year, has

Western Canada’s largest

computer and electrical

engineering department,

independently ranked as

one of the top three

departments nationally with

Waterloo and Toronto.



runner of MPB Lasertech Inc., which provideslaser cutting for Alberta industries. The insti-tute also pioneered medical and other applica-tions for lasers.

The telecommunications centre worked withmajor telecom industry partners on self-healingnetworks, which route data around communica-tion failures. The centre continues as TRLabs, a

Masoud Ardakani—Currently an assistantprofessor, an Ingenuity New FacultyMember and holder of an iCORE JuniorResearch Chair in the WirelessCommunications Laboratory (iWCL).

Norman Beaulieu—A leading researcher inwireless communications, Beaulieu is iCOREResearch Chair and a NSERC E.W.R.Steacie Memorial Fellow. He is the firstelectrical engineer to have received theK. Y. Lo Medal from the EngineeringInstitute of Canada.

R.W. Boyle—Hired by Henry Marshall Toryin 1912 as head of the physics department,“Billy” Boyle helped develop sonar in theFirst World War, became Dean of the Facultyof Applied Science in 1921 and created theElectrical Engineering department in 1925.

Michael Brett—A leader in nanotechnologyat the U of A, Brett was instrumental inthe creation of the NanoFab lab, whichdevelops nanotechnology applications andmicrodevices. He is an iCORE professor innanotechnology, holds the Micralyne/NSERC Senior Industrial Research Chairand was the 2002 Canada Research Chairin Nanoengineered Thin Films. He receivedAPEGGA’s Excellence in Education Award,the university’s Rutherford award forexcellence in teaching, and the 2007University Cup—the highest honour theU of A can bestow on a member of itsacademic staff.

in Electrical and Computer EngineeringNotable people

Clarence Capjack—Chair of the depart-ment in the turbulent 1990s, Capjackfocused on laser and plasma research.

Abdulhakem Elezzabi—A present-dayexample of a leading researcher who also isan excellent teacher, Elezzabi holds theCanada Research Chair in UltrafastPhotonics and Nano-Optics.

C.R. (Bob) James—A department chair inthe ’70s and ’80s, James built relationshipswith government and industry that laid thefoundation for the department’s growth intoa centre for advanced research.

Ward Porteus—The U of A’s first student toearn a Master’s degree in ElectricalEngineering, Ward Porteous joined thedepartment staff in 1931. Porteous helpedbuild the original CKUA radio transmitteron campus and conducted classified wartimeresearch. His teaching career at the U of Acontinued into the 1970s.

Peter Smy—A winner of the university’sRutherford Award for Excellence inUndergraduate Teaching, Smy was anaccomplished researcher in the plasma areaand, as department chair, presided over aperiod of relative stability.

Mani Vaidyanathan—This year,Vaidyanathan, who teaches courses incircuits, electronics and nanoelectronics,became the first recipient of the Provost’sAward for Early Achievement of Excellencein Undergraduate Teaching. Vaidyanathan’sresearch interests include carbon nanotubesand nanodevices.

Fred Vermeulen—Now a professoremeritus, Vermeulen was a renowned andimpeccably well-prepared communicator inthe classroom. His numerous awards include3M Canada Teaching Fellow, the university’sRutherford Award for Excellence inUndergraduate Teaching and the CanadianCouncil for Professional Engineers’ Medalfor Distinction in Engineering Education.Many of the current generation of facultylook to him fondly as a mentor.

George Walker — A department chair—and builder—who in the 1960s recruitedmany excellent teachers includingVermeulen, James and Smy. Walker steeredthe department into new areas such as lasersand plasma research.

J.W. Porteus Norman Beaulieu R.W. Boyle Michael Brett

consortium of five prairie universities.These ongoing investments also are deliv-

ering real-world technologies. Thin-film coat-ings make drill-bits harder and solar cellsmore efficient at generating electricity. Lab-on-a-chip devices, already in use, pass apatient’s simple blood sample throughmicrofluidic channels where the DNA is

manipulated and analyzed to determine if itcontains genes related to cancer. Then, thetiny throwaway device exports the test resultsto a desktop computer in the doctor’s office.

And we can expect more in the nearfuture. It’s amazing what happens when ahard-nosed group of engineers refuses to takeno for an answer.



rom the pioneering oil sandsresearch in the 1920s to the ongo-ing work in thermodynamics andsurface sciences, U of A engineershave played a huge role in

Alberta’s economy.From year one the mission of the University

of Alberta was building a prosperous Alberta,and members of the Department of Chemicaland Materials Engineering have pursued thisgoal into the present. The university’s foundingpresident, Dr. Henry Marshall Tory, was aphysicist with a zeal for applied research. Torywas authorized to conduct scientific research tosupport development of Alberta’s naturalresources, and engineering was an early part ofhis strategy.

The Department of Civil and MunicipalEngineering was launched in 1909, followedin 1920 by the creation of the Department ofMining Engineering. The Department ofChemical and Materials Engineering is theresult of a 1996 merger of the Department ofChemical Engineering, founded in 1946,with elements of the former Department ofMining Engineering.

Chemical and Materials Engineering andits earlier incarnations excelled through thedecades in diverse disciplines, including thefollowing:• Oil sands research, as pioneered in the

1920s by Karl A. Clark.• Thermodynamics, as explored by Donald

B. Robinson, Ding-Yu Peng, Fred Ottoand Alan Mather from the 1940s throughto the 1960s.

• Computer process control, as pioneeredin the 1960s by R.A. Ritter andGrant Fisher.Today, the department has an internation-

al reputation for cutting-edge researchand excellence in education. Its specialtieslie broadly within energy and naturalresources, surface and interfacial sciences,nano and regenerative medicine, processcontrol and systems engineering, andadvanced materials. The department commitssubstantial resources to education andstudent support and receives an enormousamount of funding from industrial partnersand various levels of government for itsresearch efforts.

The Genesis of Chemical and MaterialsEngineering

Although Alberta in the 1920s remainedfirmly in the age of coal, it was a decadeof technological transition. The massproduction of automobiles created a boom inroad and bridge building, and northernAlberta’s bitumen deposits were initiallydeveloped for surfacing roads, rather than forfuelling automobiles.

Karl A. Clark headed the Mining andMetallurgy department for nine years,investigated methods of separating bitumenfrom sand in 1920, and found success on asmall scale in 1923 and in larger pilot plantsbuilt in 1930 and 1949. In retirement, Clarkconsulted on the building of Alberta’s first com-mercial synthetic oil plant, the Great CanadianOil Sands (now Suncor) in Fort McMurray,which began commercial production in 1967.

The U of A hired its first chemicalengineer, E. H. Boomer, in 1925. Boomer laidthe groundwork for the Department ofChemical Engineering (created in 1946),although he died before the departmentbecame a reality.

by BruceWhite and AimeeMaxfield

Laying the FoundationEngineering the Future

F


Chemical and Materials Engineering


History ofChemical andMaterialsEngineering

timeline

1946 Department ofChemical Engineering established.

1948 Dr. G. W. Govier named headof Chemical Engineering.

1959 Dr. G. W. Govier becomesdean of Engineering; Dr. D. B.Robinson becomes head ofChemical Engineering.

1967 Department of Chemical &Petroleum Engineering installsone of the first three IBM 1800computers in Canada.

1972 Dr. D.G. Fisher is nameddepartment chair.

1975 Dr. F. D. Otto becomes chairof department.

1976 Dr. D. B. Robinson andDr. D-Y. Peng publish the Peng-Robinson Equation of State.

1985 Dr. F. D. Otto becomes deanof Engineering, Dr. S. E. Wankebecomes department chair.

1986 The Chemical Engineeringprogram offers an option incomputer process control.

1990 Dr. M. R. Gray becomesdepartment chair.

1993 Dr. S. E. Wanke becomesdepartment chair.

1995 Dr. D. T. Lynch, a ChemicalEngineering professor, is nameddean of Engineering.

1996 Creation of Department ofChemical & Materials Engineeringwith the merger of the chemical andmaterials programs.

2002 Dr. J. F. Forbes nameddepartment chair.

2005 Alberta Centre for SurfaceEngineering and Science opens.

2007 Imperial Oil-Alberta IngenuityCentre for Oil Sands Innovation

(COSI) established.

2008 Dr. U.T. Sundararaj receivesnational award for excellence inteaching – the Medal for Distinctionin Engineering Education fromEngineers Canada.

Depression and wartimeIn 1930, the Department of Mining

Engineering was renamed “Mining andMetallurgy.” By the end of the decade,M & M had the highest enrolment of all theengineering disciplines—even in the depths ofthe Great Depression, there were jobs formining engineers.

In 1939, with Canada at war, engineeringtalent was in urgent demand. Boomer becamean advisor to Canada’s munitions program anddirected research projects for the Directorate ofChemical Warfare and Smoke. In 1943,Boomer became chairman of the Alberta Oiland Gas Conservation Board. After the end ofthe Second World War he travelled to Europeto study occupied Germany’s synthetic fuelindustry. He returned to the U of A as the soleprofessor in the Chemical Engineering program.

In 1945, enrolment surged, and Miningand Metallurgy went through a transforma-tion in both name and numbers. By 1946, theChemical Engineering program was in fullforce, and grads found eager employers in theoil patch following the discovery of oil nearLeduc in 1947.

The fledgling Department of ChemicalEngineering responded rapidly to the growth ofthe region’s oil and gas industry. By 1948 it washosting a “mud school” for oil drillers, andwas offering a degree in petroleum engineering.

The postwar eraChemical Engineering in the early 1950s

was a small department; 12 students graduatedin 1953. That elite group found itself in demand,as the Edmonton area was immersed in its firstoil boom. Demand also grew for metallurgistswith the building of the Sherritt Gordon nickelrefinery near Fort Saskatchewan in 1954 andPremier Steel Mills in Edmonton in 1955. Oil,gas and petrochemicals presented opportunitiesfor research into practical problems.

During this period, George W. Govier wasboth dean of Engineering and a member of theAlberta’s Oil and Gas Conservation Board. Helater wrote the seminal 1972 textbook, TheFlow of Complex Mixtures in Pipes.

Another prominent figure of the period,Donald B. Robinson, founder of the engineer-ing powerhouse D.B. Robinson and Associates,was not only a researcher and departmenthead, but also a teacher beloved by his studentsfor his ability to make complex material under-standable. He became world-renowned as co-developer (along with Ding-Yu Peng) of theequation of state used to calculate vapour-liq-uid equilibrium of mixtures of hydrocarbonsand gases. The Peng-Robinson equation, as itcame to be known, is used widely in the petro-leum and petrochemical industries, and formsan integral part of most modern chemicalengineering thermodynamics texts.

U of A’s chemical engineers, includingGrant Fisher, also pioneered computer processcontrol. The purchase of Canada’s real-time,sensor-based IBM 1800 computer—installedin the new Chemical Engineering Building in1967—gave engineering students experienceon systems that even their potential employersdidn’t yet have.

The 1980s and 90sIn 1983, the introduction of a co-op

learning program in Chemical and MaterialsEngineering transformed the traditionallinear student path from high school touniversity to job market. It gave students theopportunity to blend real-world experiencewith academic learning—while earning apaycheque. For the department, co-opeducationmeant adopting a full three-termyear in place of the more traditional fall-winter terms.

In 1986 the world price of oil dropped by46 percent, with significant economic andindustrial repercussions across Canada. InAlberta, career opportunities for graduates ofChemical Engineering dropped considerably.

In 1992, massive cost-cutting was initiat-ed throughout provincially funded depart-ments and agencies. The U of A was forced toendure a 21-percent grant cut, promptingfour Chemical Engineering professors toaccept offers of early retirement. Sieg Wanke,who chaired the department from 1985 to1990 and 1993 to 2002, had to balance fewerfaculty members with demands for moreresearch. The department somehow managedto reduce teaching loads, even against thepressure of cutbacks.

In 1996, the department began a processof fiscal resurgence. It aggressively sought

Karl Clark, known as the father of the oilsands, first pioneered ways to coax oil fromsand during the 1920. Today, professor MurrayGray, seen here with graduate students NeginRazavilar and Greg Dechaine, is pioneeringbreakthrough technologies for clean oil sandsenergy at the Imperial Oil-Alberta IngenuityCentre for Oil Sands Innovation.



Chemical and Materials Engineering

E.H. Boomer — Joined the U of A as a lec-turer in 1925, advancing to a full professor-ship in Physical Chemistry and ChemicalEngineering by 1943. Boomer was instru-mental in the developing what would become(in 1946) the Department of ChemicalEngineering.

Robert Burrell — In June 2008, the WorldUnion of Wound Healing Societies Congressawarded Burrell a lifetime achievementaward for his development of the Acticoatbandage, one of the world’s first commercialmedical applications of nanotechnology.Burrell holds the Canada Research Chair inNanostructured Biomaterials.

Ken Cadien — Is a recent recipient of aCanada Research Chair in Nanofabrication.Prior to joining the University of Alberta,Cadien was honoured as an Intel Fellow—oneof only 12 in the world—for his stellar techni-cal contributions and deft leadership. Hisresearch interests include nanotechnology,atomic layer deposition, semiconductor pro-cessing at nanoscale dimensions, electronicmaterials nanotechnology, atomic layer depo-

in Chemical andMaterialsNotable people

sition, semiconductor processing at nanoscaledimensions, and electronic materials.

Karl A. Clark—Known as the “Father of the OilSands” Clark joined the U of A Department ofIndustrial Research as a professor in 1920. Hetaught inMiningandMetallurgy,becomingheadofthat department in 1945.

Janet Elliott — In 2002, Elliot received theCanadian Institute for Advanced ResearchYoung Explorer’s Prize, an award given toCanada’s top 20 researchers under the age of40 in engineering or science. Elliott holds theCanada Research Chair in InterfacialThermodynamics.

Grant Fisher — Pioneered the area ofprocess control in automation (along withR.A. Ritter), generating international atten-tion and acclaim. He joined the Departmentof Chemical Engineering in 1964 and waschair of the department from 1972 to 1975.

George W. Govier — Was head of thedepartment from 1948 to 1959, then dean ofEngineering for four years. Govier’s legacyincludes an Order of Canada and a research

centre named in his honour at the AlbertaResearch Council.

Murray Gray — Scientific director of theImperial Oil-Alberta Ingenuity Centre for OilSands Innovation, Gray is an internationallyrecognized expert on bitumen upgrading. Heholds the NSERC Chair in Oil SandsUpgrading and the Canada Research Chair inOil Sands Upgrading.

Steve Kuznicki — Is the Canada ResearchChair in Molecular Sieve Nanomaterials,holds an NSERC Industrial Research Chair inNew Microporous Molecular Sieves, and hasbeen named Alberta Ingenuity Fund Scholar.

E.O. Lilge— In 1936, while at work on his mas-ter’s thesis on the use of cyanide leaching in recover-ing gold from ores found around Lake Athabasca,Ewald Oscar Lilge joined the Department ofMining and Metallurgy. He would go on to headthe department from 1954 to 1969.

Jacob Masliyah, OC — Was made a Fellowof both the Royal Society of Canada (1996)and the Canadian Academy of Engineering(2000) in recognition of his research, and

new funding, particularly from corporateand federal government sources. There was apressing industrial need for research to sup-port heavy oil and bitumen production, witha second wave of oil sands development onthe horizon and with corporations scalingback in-house research and development.Syncrude, the Natural Sciences andEngineering Research Council of Canada(NSERC), and Imperial Oil were among themany companies and organizations to fundnew research chairs. These chairs provedvery successful—each chair in the depart-ment was renewed at the end of its initialfive-year term.

In 1996, the Faculty of Engineering wasreorganized into four departments: Chemicaland Materials, Civil and Environmental,

Electrical and Computer, and Mechanical. TheSchool of Mining and Petroleum Engineeringmoved to the Department of Civil andEnvironmental Engineering, but oil sands andmetallurgy fell under the umbrella of the newlynamed Department of Chemical and MaterialsEngineering. The combination of materialsengineering and chemical engineering was logi-

cal, as both disciplines use similar methods toexplore changes on molecular surfaces.

The Present, and BeyondA dozen years after its creation, the

Department of Chemical and MaterialsEngineering now boasts 614 undergraduatestudents, 227 graduate students, and 54faculty members. The department is amongthe U of A’s leaders in research. Its graduatesare sought after by industry leaders in chem-ical and materials engineering.

The Department of Chemical andMaterials Engineering holds eight NSERCIndustrial Research Chairs (Canada’s mostprestigious research program), more than anyUniversity of Alberta department and morethan most other major universities in

Department of Chemical and MaterialsEngineering Chair Dr. Fraser Forbes.



s Engineering

Karl A. Clark E.O. Lilge Jacob Masliyah, OC George W. Govier

Dr. Robert Burrell holds the Canada ResearchChair in Nanostructured Biomaterials.

received a Rutherford Award for Excellencein Undergraduate Teaching from theUniversity of Alberta in 1997. He holds theNSERC Chair in Oil Sands Engineering.

Dave Mitlin — Is an associate professor ofmaterials engineering. His research interestsinclude nanostructured materials, micro-structure and mechanical properties of thinfilms, epitaxy, microelectronic processing,physical metallurgy, solid-state phase trans-formations, diffraction and crystallography,and transmission electron microscopy.

Fred Otto — As a researcher, Otto focusedon thermodynamics, mass transfer, and com-putation of separation processes. He was aneffective teacher of mass transfer, air pollu-tion, material and energy balances, and reac-tor design.

Donald B. Robinson — Joined the depart-ment in 1948 as an associate professorspecializing in thermodynamics, becamechair of Chemical Engineering in 1959, andwas founding president of the CanadianSociety for Chemical Engineering.

R. Sean Sanders — Holds the NSERCIndustry Research Chair in PipelineTransport Processes. His research interestsinclude multiphase flows, interparticle andfluid-particle interactions in concentratedslurries, core-annular flow, pipeline condi-tioning of oil sands, water-assisted heavy oilpipelines, tailings transport and placement,rheology of industrial, non-Newtonian mix-tures, centrifugal pump performance, andpipeline wear.

Sirish Shah — Is the recipient of theNSERC-Matrikon-ASRA Industrial ResearchChair in Computer Process Control and win-ner of the NSERC University-IndustrySynergy Award (2003).

John Shaw — Holds the NSERC IndustrialResearch Chair in Petroleum Thermodynamicsand has held visiting professorships at the

Technical University of Delft (Netherlands), theInstitut Francais du Petrole, and the SyncrudeResearch Centre.

Hasan Uludag — Is a recognized worldleader in developing engineered materials forregenerative medicine. The Uludag lab isexploring bone regeneration and remodeling.His research interests include biomaterials,tissue engineering, and drug delivery.

Zhenghe Xu — Holds the Canada ResearchChair in Mineral Processing and the NSERC-EPCOR-AERI Industrial Research Chair inAdvanced Coal Cleaning and CombustionTechnology.

Anthony Yeung — Project leader with theImperial Oil-Alberta Ingenuity Centre for OilSands Innovation, Yeung is the most recentrecipient of an NSERC Industrial ResearchChair in Non-aqueous Bitumen Extraction.

Canada. Faculty members currently holdingNSERC chairs include Drs. Murray Gray,Steve Kuznicki, Jacob Masliyah, R. SeanSanders, Sirish Shah, John Shaw, ZhengheXu, and Anthony Yeung.

Today the department focuses on fourpriority research areas:• Energy and Natural Resources: After nine

decades of research the departmentcontinues to dominate oil sands research.Jacob Masliyah, Murray Gray, John Shaw,R. Sean Sanders, and Anthony Yeung allhold NSERC IRCs in the oil sands area.

• Nanotechnology and Nano-engineering:Robert Burrell, Canada Research Chair inNanostructured Biomaterials, is bestknown for his invention of medical dress-ings that use the anti-microbial propertiesof silver to speed healing of burn victims.

Dr. Ken Cadien, whose research will affectsilicon technology, micro-electromechanicalsystems (MEMS), fuel cell technology,nanotechnology and much more,holds the Canada Research Chair inNanofabrication.

• ICT (Information CommunicationsTechnology): Sirish Shah, an internation-ally respected expert in computer processcontrol, is currently researching the appli-cation of advanced algorithms in moni-toring performance and problemdiagnosis in industrial plant automation.

• Biomedical Engineering: Hasan Uludag isat the forefront of this vital research areawith his work in bone regeneration andremodelling. His focus is on the stimula-tion of bone repair within specified sitesin the body.

The past 100 years have seen a continu-ous succession of new engineering technolo-gies. As soon as engineers solve one problem,another challenges their ingenuity. Newindustrial processes to reduce environmentaldamage are an increasingly urgent priority, asare the applications of biomedical engineer-ing for an aging domestic population.

As future challenges continue to arise, ourchemical, metallurgical, and materials gradu-ates will continue to lead the world.



Mechanical Engineering


ifty years ago most males by theage of 16 could name virtuallyevery part of a car engine—air fil-ter, carburetor, radiator, distribu-tor and the spark plugs.

But pop the hood of a 2008 model andfew of us can identify more than the reservoirfor windshield-cleaning fluid. Changes in thedesign of the automobile are a good indicatorof how the mechanical world has evolved inthe 50 years since the creation of theUniversity of Alberta’s Department ofMechanical Engineering in 1958.

Today’s cars are smaller, lighter, more effi-cient, less polluting, safer and more reliable.The 16-year-olds looking under the hood alsochanged, points out Dr. Larry Kostiuk, chairof Mechanical Engineering. Fifty years ago,Alberta teenagers, especially those raised onfarms, seemed to be born with an oily rag intheir hands. They could remove a carburetor,take it apart, find the problem, and thenfix and reinstall it. Turning these youngmen (and a few women) into mechanicalengineers was a matter of formalizing in theirminds what their hands and eyes alreadyknew—by adding large doses of applied mathand physics.

Alberta in the ’50s was still very much anagricultural province. The department’s firstgraduate student in 1959, a Vancouver cityboy named Don Bellow, remembers beingsurprised that the fall term in Alberta didn’tbegin until September 15, to allow studentsto help with the harvest.

Fast-forward to 2008, the 50th anniver-

sary of the department and the 100thanniversary of the University of Alberta.Mechanical Engineering is now the largestsingle program within the Faculty ofEngineering (although not the largestdepartment). The young men and womengoing into mechanical engineering areanalytical and academically brilliant—on average they left high school with gradesof 87 per cent—and much more likely tobe urban.

But more often than not, their hands-onexperience has been limited to keyboard andmouse. They are finding their place in aworld heavily invested in analysis and design,and often too small to touch. Teachingmechanical engineering has evolved in thisage. Less time is spent on math and physicsand a lot more on the practical side, throughhands-on instruction, co-op placements andextra-curricular competitions.

David Checkel, a mechanical engineering

FbyBruceWhite

changeThe mechanics of

Mechanical engineering professor DavidCheckel has seen as many changes to theuniversity as he has seen changes to cars.Checkel and Robert Koch are researchingdigitally controlled engine valves thatadapt to demands placed on them.



professor and a car enthusiast, has witnessedmany of these changes. As a student fromCoronation, Alberta in the 1970s, he studiedthe combustion reaction that powers pistonengines. As a mechanical engineering profes-sor, he has analyzed exhaust gases, examinedbattery technology for use in electric andhybrid cars, and researched many otheraspects of automotive technology.

Checkel, along with colleague Dr. RobertKoch, is currently working on digitally con-trolled engine valves that open and closewithout a cam. This technology will allow anengine to power up without a starter motor,and to operate on six, four or three cylindersas conditions demand, tune itself for efficienthighway cruising and instantly kick intohigh-performance mode when you pull out topass a truck.

Of course, there is much more to mechan-ical engineering than cars. Some machines arebigger than ever (as in Fort McMurray), butthe focus these days is on making machinessmaller and more elegant, as in micro- andnanotechnology. Yet even these small miracleshave come to seem routine. People sometimestake them—and their inventors—for granted.

“As engineers, we refer to ourselves as‘the silent profession’ because people don’treally know what we do,” says Dr. DouglasDale, who served twice as the departmentchairman. “You get in your car or into an air-plane and nobody knows how this wonderfulmachine works. Of course, thousands of peo-ple were involved in it, and everyone has theirown little contribution.”

U of A mechanical engineering studentsand professors are making discoveries about

everything from gas plumes to artificial limbsto better golf club shafts. The commonthread is that mechanical engineers design,manufacture and operate machines. Theyalso study the engineering economics ofmachines, their impact on the environmentand ways to make them safer to operate.

For its first 50 years the University ofAlberta operated without a mechanical engi-neering department, due a cost-saving agree-ment with the University of Saskatchewan inthe 1920s; chemical engineering was taughtin Edmonton and mechanical engineering inSaskatoon.

Dr. George Ford (Civil ’42), foundingchairman of the department, taught everyengineer who passed through the U of A for40 years. As department chair and later deanof engineering in the 1970s, he was a builder.

Ford also wrote eloquently about the his-tory of U of A Engineering. In his 1988 bookSons of Martha, he describes how the depart-ment of Mechanical Engineering got going inthe fall of 1958 using borrowed labs andscrounged equipment for its 21 students.Their decision to enroll was a bit of a gamble,because Dr. Ford had his new department upand running before the provincial bureaucra-cy had gotten around to sanctioning it.

Among Ford’s expert scroungers wasBellow, the department’s first graduate stu-dent, first doctoral student and a part-timelecturer in applied mechanics. He remembersFord frequently handing him governmentsurplus lists, which he would comb throughlooking for useful equipment that might behad on the cheap.

“As we grew in size,” Ford wrote in hisbook, “we took on an aura of affluence. Wecould now boil water in many diverse andfancy ways, we acquired wind and water tun-nels with hot and cold running fluids, we

History ofMechanicalEngineering

timeline1958 Dr. George Ford heads

new Mechanical EngineeringDepartment.

1959 Department receives approvalfrom the provincial government.

1960 First graduating class of 19B.Sc. degrees and one M.Sc. inMechanical Engineering.

1963 First PhD in MechanicalEngineering.

1971 Ford becomes dean ofEngineering.

1972 Dr. James S. Kennedy takesover as chair of the MechanicalEngineering Department.

1972 Mechanical EngineeringBuilding opens.

1975 Dr. D.G. Bellow becomeschair.

1981 Mechanical Engineering isfirst department to launch a co-opprogram.

1984 Dr. M. Gary Faulknerbecomes chair.

1988 Ford publishes The Sons ofMartha, a history of the U of AFaculty of Engineering from 1909to 1988.

1990 Dr. J. Douglas Dale becomeschair of the department.

1994 Dr. Thomas W. Forestbecomes chair of the department.

1999 Dr. Gary Faulkner becomestemporary chair.

2000 Dr. J. Douglas Dale becomesacting chair of the department.

2002 Dr. Larry Kostiuk becomesthe chair of the department.

2005 George Ford dies.

2005 Indira Samarasekera, amechanical engineer, becomespresident of the U of A.

2008 The Department ofMechanical Engineering celebratesits 50th anniversary, coinciding withthe U of A’s centennial.

In a variation on the traditional ribbon cuttingceremony, the Mechanical Engineering Buildingwas opened with a ceremonial cable-cutting.

Research into the biomechanics of the humanbody—in this case measuring the effect ofpressure on the jaw—is a hallmark of innova-tion at the Department of MechanicalEngineering.




obtained instruments and gadgets thatscreeched all levels of noise which we thenmeasured.”

Ford and his colleagues built a curriculumfocused on the fundamentals of strength ofmaterials, dynamics, fluid mechanics, ther-modynamics and heat transfer, setting a newtrend for Canadian universities. Researchprobed areas of interest to Alberta’s econo-my: resource development, energy conversionand utilization, cold-weather engineering,design, and engineering management. Thedepartment was also open to collaborationswith other disciplines.

By the ’60s, with a growing number ofstudents and faculty—now including Bellow,the department’s first PhD—and a growinginventory of equipment, the departmentlacked only a home on campus. For years, itmade do with temporary quarters in the oldpower plant, in temporary huts next to thePhysics Building and later in the new powerplant south of the Jubilee Auditorium.

The second power plant had some issuesduring its commissioning, including flooding.Bellow remembers one trying term, warningstudents not to switch on the electricity fortheir experiments while standing in a puddle.The department next moved to temporaryspace in the new Chemical EngineeringBuilding, opened in 1967, while it worked onthe design and construction of a home of itsown—a task that Ford again handed to Bellow.

With much of its pipe and ductingexposed, to suggest industry, the new blackbuilding featured large windows to “open thebuilding to the world,” recalls Bellows.Opened in 1972 at a cost of $3.2 million, itremains one of the notable modern buildingson campus. It housed an array of specializedlabs: wind tunnels, water channels, coldrooms, vibration lab and computer lab.

In 1975, Bellow became the head of thedepartment he’d joined as a graduate student17 years earlier. He and Peter Adams, dean ofEngineering, would spark a major transforma-tion of the faculty by creating western Canada’sfirst engineering co-op program. Launched inMechanical Engineering in 1981, the optionalco-op program combines academic study withwell-paid, hands-on engineering work withemployers. Surprisingly, it proved at first to bea hard sell to both faculty and students.

Eras of great growth are often followedby periods of retrenchment. The governmentof Premier Ralph Klein imposed a 21-per-centbudget cut in the early ’90s.

Dr. Tom Forest became department headat the height of the budget cuts. At the sametime, quotas required the department to con-tinue to accept the same number of second-year students. The budgeting process beganto border on the bizarre. There was nomoney for telephones, for example, so to stayconnected to the outside world the depart-ment relied on “soft money,” such as rentalfees charged to other departments for the useof the machine shop.

When reinvestment came in the late ’90s,reality often lagged behind the lavish officialannouncements. Typically, Forest notes, thefunding for five new positions would end upsupporting only three, because the plan tookno account of inflation, salary increases andother costs. It became necessary to cannibal-ize new positions to keep old ones operating.

Researchers, then as now, worked inde-pendently, forming into spontaneous groupswhen they discovered they had interests incommon. Forest’s specialty was phase transi-

tion—the mechanics of a material’s changefrom solid to liquid to vapour. He wasinvolved with cold weather engineeringresearch and with the Alberta Home HeatingResearch Facility in Ellerslie, where he stud-ied moisture problems in wood frame houses.

Often, says Dale, the collaborativeprocess begins with a phone call from a col-league in another department, such as a med-ical doctor who has a question related tofluid mechanics such as why an asthma druginhaler doesn’t work properly. In Dale’s case,a textile scientist’s call about fireproof fabricsled to standard-setting research into heat-resistant clothing.

Another collaboration resulted in theworld’s first orthodontics simulator—mechanical engineering of the mouth. Projectleaders Drs. Jason Carey and Roger Toogoodexpect to develop a system that will take datafrom MRI scans of the jaw and develop amodel for each patient. This would reducetreatment time and the number of follow-upvisits, while reducing the risk of damage.

Mechanical Engineering

[Don Bellow] and Peter Adams,

dean of Engineering, would

spark a major transformation

of the faculty by creating

western Canada’s first

engineering co-op program.

Some ideas just set the world on fire. When a textile scientist contacted Dr. Douglas Dale about fire-proof fabrics, a creative collaboration was born, ultimately leading to standard-setting research intoheat-resistant clothing. Here, a mannequin named ‘Harry Burns’ puts garments to the test.

A glider in flight near Chipman, Alberta.Mechanical Engineering professor DaveMarsden, whose research included the devel-opment of ‘winglets’ seen on aircraft today,set a world record in 1984 for gliding1,121 kilometres surfing thecurrents of a massive Prairiestorm from Edmontonto Winnipeg.



The department now offers a biomedicaloption in mechanical engineering, which willgraduate its first class in 2010. “The discov-ery of engineering by medicine will have aprofound effect; we can contribute a lot,”says Kostiuk.

In the next 50 years, Kostiuk also expects tosee growth in mechatronics, the convergence ofelectrical and mechanical engineering. The fieldemploys electrical motors, controllers and sen-sors in the design of robots and to controljoints and movement—an area with a hugerange of industrial and biomedical applica-tions. Kostiuk hopes to soon offer a BSc inmechatronics. Nanotechnology and surface sci-

Don Bellow — The first graduate student inthe department of mechanical engineering in1958–59, Bellow later would become thedepartment’s first PhD and first homegrownprofessor. His imprint also endures on theMechanical Engineering Building, which hehelped to design, and in the co-op educationprogram, which as department chair hehelped to set up in the 1980s. His researchinterests included cold-climate engineering.He left the department in 1989 and retiredfrom the university in 1996.

David Checkel — A motorsport enthusiast,Checkel has studied many aspects of theautomobile, including the reaction of fuels,exhaust gases, sparkless ignition, andbattery technology for electric and hybridcars. He also advises students enteringautomotive design competitions.

Douglas Dale — Twice head of thedepartment, Dale has high-profile researchprojects ranging from Alberta HomeHeating Research Facility in Ellerslie(begun by R. Gilpin), to testing the fire-resistant properties of fabrics for industrialand military uses.

in Mechanical EngineeringNotable people

Gary Faulkner — A highly respectedteacher, Faulkner conducted pioneeringresearch into the mechanics surroundingdental implants. This was an early exampleof the emerging field of biomechanicalengineering, which continues to be a fertilearea of research for many in the department,including David Budney, Jason Carey,Donald Raboud, Roger Toogood andWalied Moussa.

George Ford— Fifty years ago Ford hada Mechanical Engineering Department upand running at the U of A before he wasgiven permission to do so. As chair of thatdepartment, and later Dean of Engineering,he helped develop the department’s strengthsin thermodynamics, cold-climate engineer-ing, project management and engineeringeconomics. He also was the engineeringfaculty’s in-house historian.

Larry Kostiuk — An expert inthermodynamics and combustion, andauthor of Alberta’s standards on gas flaring,Kostiuk is the department’s current chair.He is steering it toward a future in fieldsthat would have seemed incredibly exoticin 1958—biomechanical engineering,nanomaterials and mechatronics.

G.S.H. Lock — Working in the late 1960swith graduate student David Morris,Lock developed artificial hearts that wereimplanted with some success in lab animals.

David Wilson — Wrote the bookon the dispersion of stack gases fromrefineries and petrochemical plants. Hiswork continues to underpin Alberta’s airquality standards.

George Ford Don Bellow David Checkel Larry Kostiuk

ences will also be important emerging themes.Some feats of mechanical engineering are

thrilling on a more personal level. Take forinstance Dave Marsden, whose professionalwork included ultralight aircraft design usingthe department’s wind tunnel. In 1984,Marsden set an enduring world distance recordof 1,121 kilometres by gliding on the air cur-rents ahead of a prairie storm all the way fromEdmonton to Winnipeg in a single June day.Who says thermodynamics has to be dull?

As for the first graduate student, Bellow leftthe department in 1989 to take a senior posi-tion in facility management for the university.He retired in 1996. Since 1958 he had seen it

come from a startup enterprise with 21 stu-dents taught by eight staff; today it has 40 fac-ulty members teaching 650 undergraduate,and 200 graduate and doctoral students. Hewitnessed the replacement of slide rules byhandheld calculators, and later by laptop com-puters.

But some things haven’t changed in 50years—such as the laws of thermodynamicsand the human desire to design and buildnew and better machines.

Hannah Nash provided additional researchfor this article and the accompanyingchronology.



n August 19, Paul Tichelaar(Electrical ’05) sweated it out in thesuffocating heat, taking 28th place in

the men’s triathlon at the Beijing Olympics.It was the culmination of a dream that

began to take shape when Tichelaar was ayoung competitive swimmer, just ten yearsold. As he grew older, his interests turned tocompetitive cycling and then to triathlons.

With respectable showings in internation-al and world cup competitions, Tichelaar sethis sights on the Beijing Olympics—but knewhe needed to redouble his efforts in order tocompete at that level. Until recently, he hadbeen working full time in Edmonton forMagna IV Engineering, while also trainingand competing. Many of his strongest com-petitors, in contrast, make a full-time com-mitment to the sport. Tichelaar needed tomatch them in training if he were to matchthem on the Beijing course.

When Tichelaar approached his employ-ers, Magna IV gave him a 10-month leave ofabsence to pursue his dream. “They werevery supportive, and for that, I have such loy-alty to them,” he says.

Tichelaar put the time to good use. By June,he needed to place higher than eighth at aVancouver triathlon to automatically win oneof three Canadian triathlon spots—one wasalready secured by 2000 gold medalist SimonWhitfield, and the other two were vacant.

Failing to place above eighth would leaveTichelaar’s fate in the hands of a TriathlonCanada committee, which would appointthe two other national competitors. Thecommittee had been planning to select twoathletes who would commit themselves tohelping Whitfield to the podium rather thanmedal for themselves. Tichelaar sparked acontroversy prior to the race when he pub-licly objected to participating in the commit-tee’s team-based approach. He argued that heshould be given the opportunity to perform

at his peak individual level, rather than sacri-ficing his own performance to aid Whitfield.

Ultimately, the committee asked Tichelaarto support Whitfield. Tichhelaar reluctantlyagreed, but eventually the committee and teamdecided that Tichelaar would be allowed torun his own race. The third Canadian on theteam, Colin Jenkins, would support Whitfield.

Training for the sweltering heat andhumidity of Beijing included sessions in aheat chamber, in order to conditionTichelaar’s body for an all-out effort in a hos-tile environment.

“The temperature in Beijing can be up inthe 30s for sure, and with the humidity, thatreally does change the way an endurance raceis run,” said Tichelaar during a July interview.“In normal weather, the limiting factor is howmuch oxygen you can get into your muscles.And in the heat, the limiting factor is howmuch heat you can dissipate. The idea is to getyour body used to having a core temperaturethat is elevated so that when it comes time torace, the automatic reaction is not to panic.

“A lot of training is about teachingyour body not to panic, that it isn’t in criticaldanger.”

Despite the training, the heat mayultimately have been his undoing.

“I suffered in the heat,” he says. “I was ingreat shape for the race. I swam well, I wasstrong on the bike and I pushed hard on therun. I would have liked to have had the raceof my life at the biggest race of my life, butthat didn't happen. Even so, I am not at alldisappointed.”

DistancGoing theO

“A lot of training is about

teaching your body not

to panic, that it isn’t in

critical danger.”

Paul Tichelaar represented Canada in themen’s triathlon at the Olympics in Beijing.

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Matt Baldwin(Petroleum '51)Baldwin didn't play for a var-sity team at the U of A, but heis known, quite simply, as onethe greatest curlers to everplay the game. Baldwin wonthe Alberta CurlingChampionships five times andthe Brier Tankard as Canada'schampion curler three times(1954, '57 and '58). He is aninductee of the Edmonton andCanadian Sports Halls ofFame, as well as the CanadianCurling Hall of Fame.

Murray Cunningham(Civil ‘97)Known for his ferociousdefending and rebounding,Cunningham anchored theGolden Bears basketballnational championship teamsin 1994 and '95. The six-foot-five power forward andformer league all-star andteam MVP is the only U of Aathlete in the past 25 years toplay both basketball andfootball during the same sea-son, a feat he accomplishedin the 1995-96 season.

Cara Denkhaus(Civil '02,M.Sc. Structural ‘04)Denkhaus only played oneyear for the Pandas rugbyteam—but what a year. In the1999-00 season, the Pandaswon the first of five consecu-tive national titles, withDenkhaus scoring two tries ina 20-3 upset in the final gameover the defending championGuelph Gryphons. Denkhausalso earned CIAU Rookie ofthe Year honours and theKathlene Yetman Award, pre-sented annually to the U ofA's female Academic All-Canadian of the Year.

Grayson Michael"Mickey" Hajash(Mining '47)Hajash excelled in hockey,softball, basketball and trackand field, but it was on thegridiron that he distinguishedhimself at the U of A. Afeared competitor for the

football Golden Bears,Hajash played fullback onoffense and linebacker ondefense, rarely substitutingout of the game. He was theU of A's outstanding athleteof the year in 1947 and wenton to play for the CFL'sCalgary Stampeders, includ-ing in the 1949 Grey Cup.The Stamps lost 28 – 15 tothe Montreal Alouettes.

Edward Lucht(Chemical '54)Lucht dominated as a postplayer for the Golden Bearsbasketball team, leading themto conference titles in each ofthe four years he played,including 1952, the U of A'sfirst appearance in a basket-ball national final. At six-foot-eight, Lucht once scored 88points during a game, a recordthat still stands, more than 50years after he accomplishedthe feat. After Lucht graduat-ed, he starred for a number ofclub teams and also represent-ed Canada at the 1956Melbourne Olympics.

Dr. Don Stanley(Civil '40)Aside from competing inintramural basketball andswimming, Stanley playedvarsity hockey, football andsoccer during his U of A days.In particular, he starred onthe ice, leading the WesternIntercollegiate ChampionshipGolden Bears in scoring forthree consecutive years. Healso played for Canada at the1949 World HockeyChampionships in Sweden,where he was considered themost outstanding player inthe tournament. Stanley wenton to found the company thatlater became Stantec, andpassed away in 2001.

Frank King(Chemical '40)King served as chair of theCalgary Winter GamesOrganizing Committee, lead-ing a group that organizedthe 1988 Winter Olympics.Insiders say the ’88 Olympics

were the best winter gamesever. To this day, Calgary andthe province benefit from thelegacy of the games in facili-ties and world-class athletictraining opportunities.

Bob Brawn(Chemical ’58)Brawn has founded a numberof vibrant resource compa-nies and worked alongsidehis old high school-and uni-versity pal Frank King on theCalgary Winter GamesOrganizing Committee.Brawn’s business savvy hadimpact: the Games generatedan unprecedented total cashendowment of $150 million.

Bill McCaffrey(Civil '82)McCaffery was part of theinfamous Dirtshooters, agroup of athletically talentedstudents from Calgary whodominated the U of A’s intra-mural sports scene during themid-1970s. McCaffrey ispresident and CEO of MEGEnergy Corp., an oil sandscompany with a major stakein developing the Athabascaoil sands.

Tracy Layton(Mechanical '72)Fresh out of high school,where he had played on everyschool sports team, Laytonplanned to become a highschool physical educationteacher. In a requisite first-year volleyball class heshowed enough potential tobecome a member of theBears intercollegiate volley-ball team in 1965. He playedfor two years while studyingin the Faculty of PhysicalEducation and Recreation,enrolled in a commercialflight training course in 1967and a year later entered theFaculty of Engineering. Heplayed on the Bears intercol-legiate volleyball team forthree more years. In 1975, heand his brother incorporatedLayton Bros. ConstructionCo. Ltd.

by Ryan Smith and Richard Cairney

sportsGOODEngineering alumni have left their mark not only in their profession, but also in extracurricularpursuits. Here is a brief – and we mean brief – list of some alumi who have made notableachievements in athletic pursuits.

A strong cyclist, Tichelaar’s best strategicmove might have been to get in with a break-away group so he could begin the 10-km runportion of the event earlier. Unfortunately, hecouldn’t pull it off.

“I felt strong on the bike and climbed verywell, but I was too far back in the pelotonwhen the small breakaway did get off thefront to go with it—I would have liked tohave been in there. The heat made me moreconservative than I would normally havebeen. Pacing is important on a hot day.”

In the end Whitfield, who had beendropped by a lead group of runners, pouredon the speed and worked his way back intothe pack and onto the podium for a silvermedal—providing incredible drama to thefinish. Tichelaar, who calls Whitfield “aninspiration,” missed the action.

“My only regret from the race was that Iwasn't a little faster. I would have loved to seethe sprint finish live,” he says. “What anexciting finale for the top four. Simon hasbeen supremely dedicated to the sport for solong. He’s a deserving two-time medalist andan inspiration. He pushed himself so hard toget that medal and is incredibly deserving. Iam very happy to see him succeed.”

And, while Tichelaar didn’t succeed in hisgoal of a podium finish, he did succeed in get-ting to the Olympics and giving it his all.That, he says, is reward in itself.

“I’m deeply satisfied with my perfor-mance. I dedicated as much of my life into thetraining as I was willing to and I had a resultthat was in line with my level of dedication.… As cliche as “doing my best” is, that iswhat the Olympics are about to me, and I’mproud of my approach.

“What an honour it has been to representmy country, province, city, family andfriends. I would have achieved nothing with-out the support I have enjoyed. I hope I havedone them proud.”

ceENGMAGfall08_31:2 ENG ALUMNI W05 1/7/09 11:25 AM

“A lot of projects went really wrong,” headds. “Project management was terrible, anda lot of money was wasted.”

Alberta’s medical professional associationformed in 1905, and the legal profession cre-ated the Law Society of Alberta in 1907. Butthe engineering profession lagged behind, notforming its own association until 1920.

“I think it was easier to form associationsin medicine and law because a lawyer is alawyer, and a doctor is a doctor whateverfield of health you study,” says Gilprin.

“It was different for engineers. There was-n’t the same sort of debate going on in theother professions to try to clarify roles—atleast not to the same degree—as there was inthe engineering profession. There was a timeat the turn of the 19th century when anyonewho operated a machine was considered tobe an engineer.”

BeginningsFromHumble

Gilprin, who is researching a book aboutthe history of engineering in Alberta, says theconstruction of the Canadian Pacific Railway(CPR) through Alberta in the late nineteenthcentury brought the first significant influx ofengineers to the province.

“The CPR marked an incredible transi-tion to locomotion transportation from horsedrawn carts. A lot of engineers were neededto make this happen, and most of them camefrom Europe—mainly Britain—and the U.S.”

As the 20th century dawned, the engi-neers kept coming. “With the development ofCalgary and Edmonton there were a numberof major engineering projects underway,including the creation of street systems, rail-way systems, and telephone and electricalsystems, among others,” Gilprin says.

“In the period up to 1914 you had rapiddevelopment in the urban regions, so you had

t that time there were a lot ofdebates about who was and whowasn’t an engineer. Sometimespeople would show up and say

‘I’m an engineer,’ and the city of Calgarywould hire them even though they often hadno qualifications whatsoever for what theywere doing,” says Dr. John Gilprin, anAlberta-based historian.

by Ryan Smith

Early in the 20thcentury, Albertawas the Wild Westfor people whocalled themselvesengineers.

“A

Downtown Edmonton, early 1900s.As the province grew, the groundwas fertile for scoundrels whoclaimed to be engineers, but lackedthe education.

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a real diversity of specialists coming to theprovince within the engineering profession—hydro, mining, civil and mechanical.”

The First World War stifled developmentin Alberta from 1914 to 1918, but rapidgrowth and technical advances began to hap-pen again almost as soon as the war ended.

A leading Alberta engineer at the time wasFrederick Peters, who served as the commis-sioner of irrigation in the federal Departmentof the Interior. Peters had the daunting taskof planning all the irrigation projects inAlberta and then ensuring they were doneproperly.

“Peters was one of first examples where asenior bureaucrat held a position not based inOttawa. I have the correspondence betweenPeters and the superintendent of irrigation inOttawa, and you can safely conclude fromthe letters that these two guys did not like oneanother,” smiles Gilprin.

Spurred by a desire for independence andto regulate the engineering profession inAlberta, Peters spearheaded the foundationof the Association of Professional Engineers.The association—which formed as a result ofthe passage of the Engineering ProfessionalAct in the provincial legislature on April 19,1920s—had an initial membership of 69 civil,20 mining, 10 electrical and 7 mechanicalengineers.

The University of Alberta played a centralrole in the association from the beginning.Intially—and for many years after—theU of A Senate decided who could join theassociation. Also, the association providedbursaries and awards for U of A engineeringstudents, a practice it continues today.

“Had the U of A not been around to pro-vide the provincial government with anagency to regulate the profession in begin-ning, it would have delayed the maturity ofthe association,” Gilprin says. “The U of Awas an institution the government trusted toregulate the profession and act as sort of asurrogate parent to the association.

“The U of A trains the engineers and thenthe association takes responsibility thatthe engineers maintain certain standards ofpractice, so the two need one another, andit has been an ongoing mutually beneficialrelationship.”

In 1930, a new Engineering Act made itmandatory for all professional engineers tobecome members of the association—and topay annual dues, which at the time were $2.

Growth in the engineering profession inAlberta ebbed through the 1930s until theend of the Second World War. During thisperiod, the association continued it struggleto define who was and who wasn’t an engi-neer. With the discovery of oil in Alberta, adebate raged over whether or not to considergeologists as engineers.

After the discovery of the Leduc oil fieldin 1947 sparked a jump in engineering activ-ity in the province, the association helpedestablish the petroleum engineering program

at the U of A. The association also began tolobby the provincial government on the U ofA’s behalf in order to increase the number ofpositions available for students in the U of AFaculty of Engineering. It also pushed for anew building on campus exclusively for theEngineering Faculty.

In 1955, the association expanded toinclude geologists and geophysicists as pro-fessional engineers. This raised complaints byboth geologists and geophysicists, as theywanted to be designated separately. A com-mittee was formed in 1956 to address theissue, and the association eventually settledon its modern name: the Association ofProfessional Engineers, Geologists andGeophysicists of Alberta (APEGGA).

Over the decades, as development in theoil sands expanded and immigration toAlberta increased, the association also grew—to 17,000 by 1980, up from 630 in 1950.

In 1982, the association decided toimpose a written test for all applicants. In themid-’90s, the association established manda-tory reporting of the professional develop-ment efforts of its members, and raised theprofessional service requirement to fouryears—up from two—before an engineercould claim full membership.

“Our mandate at APEGGA is to effectivelyregulate the practice of engineering in

Alberta, and we’ve considerably reducedthose instances of illegal practice or risk tothe general public by insisting that thereare competent and qualified professionalswho take responsibility for their work,”says Albert Schuld, APEGGA’s deputyregistrar.

“We were one of the earlier self-governingprofessional associations in Canada, andwe’ve been successful in ensuring that therehas been a high quality of engineering workdone in Alberta—everything from the build-

ing of bridges to our telephone and Internetsystems, for example.”

Despite its Wild West beginnings, theengineering profession in Alberta (with morethan 50,000 members) is now regulated likea well-oiled machine, says Neil Windsor,APEGGA’s executive director and registrar.

“The engineering profession in Alberta iscurrently enjoying a most unusual rate ofgrowth due to the high rate of resource devel-opment in the region, and we do not expectthat this will decrease in any dramatic fash-ion in the near future.

“As the largest profession in the provinceby far, the APEGGA council feels that wehave an obligation not only to be an active,state-of-the-art regulator, but also to repre-sent the views of our profession and supportthe activities of the province and the commu-nity at large.”

“We are proud of our history and ourrecord, and we see ourselves as leaders notonly in the profession but also in theoverall community,” adds Windsor. “Weexpect that to continue as we mature and growin our role.”

The association—which formed as the result ofthe passage of the Engineering Professional Actin the provincial legislature on April 19, 1920—had an initial membership of 69 civil, 20 mining,10 electrical and 7 mechanical engineers.

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here was a time, not so long ago,when virtually nobody saw a placefor female engineers. In fact, whenthe Civil Engineering building

opened at the U of A in 1960, it lackedwomen’s washrooms. Even though a quartercentury had passed since the graduationof Esther Rabkin (Electrical ’35), plannersdid not envision a future that includedfemale engineers.

Agnes Yuen (Chemical ’01) experiencedUniversity of Alberta before the completionof the new NREF and ETLC buildings. “Itwas kind of funny,” she recalls, “the bigboxes in the ladies’ washrooms obviouslycovering urinals.”

Fortunately, times have changed. Womenstill represent a minority in engineering, butthey have certainly left their mark at the U of

A—racking up prestigious awards and schol-arships year after year. “When I applied todifferent universities across the country, thepotential to apply for so many scholarshipsreally played a huge factor in deciding toattend U of A instead of Waterloo,”recalls Yuen.

When Yuen won the C.D. HoweMemorial Award in 1997, for superior acad-emics leadership in her first year, she starteda trend. U of A engineering students haveproudly won nine C.D. Howe Awards sincethen, including every female award since2005. In addition to Yuen, U of A femalewinners include Katherine Svrcek (Civil ’03),Rebecca Pinto, Alma Ornés Gutiérrez, andMorgan Gwin.

Each year, the C.D. Howe MemorialFoundation Engineering Awards Program

presents two awards to engineering students,one female and one male. The award recog-nizes top marks and community participationamong students completing their first year,and candidates are nominated exclusively bydeans of engineering. The foundation wasestablished in 1961 to memorialize the RightHonourable Clarence Decatur Howe, anengineer who served in the governments ofMackenzie King and Louis St. Laurent.

“The award sets a standard of excellencefor the institution,” says Rebecca Pinto. “Itprovides a sense of confidence for studentsthat U of A is competitive on a national andinternational level.” Morgan Gwin points tothe award’s role in encouraging more womento enter the profession.

Of course, the award also inspires person-al pride, says Alma Ornés Gutiérrez.

PRIDEAwarding

byApril Serink

Second-year engineering student Morgan Gwin is the most recent of a growing number of femaleFaculty of Engineering students to earn the prestigious C.D. Howe Memorial Award.

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“Personally, the award is such a huge honour,especially after arriving to Canada fromVenezuela a year earlier and learning to playby new rules in a new country.”

The U of A’s success with the C.D. HoweAward reflects the cornerstone values stressedby President Indira Samarasekera: people andtheir talents, structure and organization, inte-grated learning, discovery, and citizenship,and engagement with communities. A distin-guished engineer and the university’s firstfemale president, Dr. Samarasekera providesan excellent role model for females in thispredominantly male discipline.

Dr. Samarasekera knows first-hand thespecial challenges of being a female engineer."There weren't very many women in engi-neering, certainly in Sri Lanka or Californiaor at UBC. But you get used to it. It was dif-ficult at first to make the adjustment.”

The scholarship provides $7,500 CADper year for the students’ remaining threeyears of study. By easing financial stress, theaward helps recipients to maintain their supe-rior marks without sacrificing their extracur-ricular activities and volunteer efforts. “Beingrecognized with winning the [C.D. HoweAward] encourages students, as it did me, tohave something to aim for in keeping markshigh and not to quit volunteering,” saysYuen. Gwin agrees, noting that her ownmotivation and momentum increased afterwinning the award.

As classes become more challenging overthe course of the program, maintaining ahigh grade-point average becomes an increas-ingly tall order. “Third year was reallytough,” says Yuen, “Although the awardmade the biggest impact coming out ofschool I had no loans, so I was able to travelafter graduation and then discuss the award’ssignificance with employers.

“The significance of the award being a bigdeal occurred to me afterward. No one reallycares about marks after school, because it’sthe skills you learned that follow you. TheFaculty provides and encourages the skillsbeyond methods to solve problems. Theaward confirmed people see me as a well-rounded person, not just a slate of extracur-ricular activities and high marks.”

“The award recognizes people who riseup to be leaders, and teaches you to getinvolved,” agrees Pinto. Her volunteer activi-

ties include canvassing for the Alberta Kidneyand the Alberta Heart and StrokeFoundations, organizing and participating ina co-recreational volleyball team for campusintramurals, and volunteering for WISEST(Women in Scholarship, Engineering, Scienceand Technology).

Gwin, who also volunteers for WISESTand participates enthusiastically in sports andcampus intramurals, says that winning theC.D. Howe felt different than winning atsports. “You feel proud but totally embar-rassed, because it’s entirely an individualachievement, whereas I am used to succeed-ing as a member of a team.”

Ornés Gutiérrez points out that her vol-unteering efforts also contributed to her ownpersonal and professional growth. “The vol-unteer experience from International Househelped shape me best by getting people fromdifferent cultures to communicate and to liveharmoniously with each other,” she says. “InAlberta, I will work with people from all overthe world and need to communicate mymethods.”

The award has inspired Pinto to giveback even more. “It allows me to get themost out of my university experience and toget involved.” Pinto dedicates several hoursa week to Engineers Without Borders aswell as BADSA (Blood Awareness andDonation Students’ Association), and hopesto pursue medicine.

Gwin, whose focus is on biomedicalengineering, sees medicine in her future as well,although from a dentistry angle. “I want towork to develop the technologies and machinesrequired to speed up orthodontic treatmenttimes.” She adds brightly that her experiencewith braces “going awry” compelled her to

improve the experience for others.At Syncrude, Yuen works toward ensur-

ing sustainability of resources in future devel-opment. The C.D. Howe Award helpedconvince her that she and other women haveessential contributions to make as engineers.“In a predominantly male dominated field,there are many days I am the only femalein a room, but I enjoy the challenge.Women’s emotions tend to get involved,which makes us unique and creates a differ-ent thought process toward solving theproblems beyond formulas.”

Yuen trusts her experience and achieve-ments will provide a model for her youngersister—who is now pursuing her own engi-neering degree at the U of A.

Ornés Gutiérrez looked to her parents—both chemical engineers—as examples forher engineering aspirations. “I’ve alwaysadmired my mom who is very hands on as anengineer, and then my dad is more of a labperson as an engineer.” With both extremesin her background, she has chosen a pathin the middle, in the civil-environmental field.

As a personal ambition, Pinto strives tobe a positive role model to children, espe-cially young girls. She particularly enjoystutoring students in math and science.“Giving someone the confidence to accom-plish their goals gives me an amazing feel-ing,” she says.

The C.D. Howe Award recognizes peopleat a crucial time of their academic careers—at the completion of their exciting first years,with three more years to take their visionseven farther. The U of A’s impressive rosterof female recipients proves that the placeof women in the profession now extendsfar beyond the right to have their ownwashrooms.

The U of A’s success with the C.D. Howe Awardreflects the cornerstone values stressed byPresident Indira Samarasekera: people and theirtalents, structure and organization, integratedlearning, discovery, and citizenship, andengagement with communities.

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t was 1954, and twenty-two year-old grad-uate Robert Ritter (MSc Chemical ’54)wondered what to do next. He knew hisdecision would have a huge impact on the

rest of his life.“There was far less info available in the

1950s about career possibilities,” Ritterrecalls. “There was no Internet—thereweren’t even any computers. The only way toget the lowdown on something was to go outand do it.

“I could have gone into industry, but theprospects back then didn’t appeal to me. Ididn’t want to work in a quality control lab;that seemed too cookie-cutter and routine.That just wasn’t me.”

Robert Ritterearned the first

PhD in the Facultyof Engineering

PioneerPhD

As often happens in the life stories ofsuccessful people, Ritter decided to followhis passion. He loved conducting research,so he chose to pursue a PhD. He wrote lettersto the deans of a number of engineeringprograms across the country—includingthe Faculty of Engineering at the Universityof Alberta, which, unbeknownst to Ritter,had never granted a PhD before.

A few schools accepted him, but Ritterstruck a connection with the U of A’s dean atthe time, Dr. George Govier.

In 1962, Ritter earned the first engineer-ing PhD in U of A history, launching ajourney that kept him involved for nearly ahalf century in some of the most interesting

engineering projects in Western Canadaand beyond.

The colleagues Ritter met along the waysometimes found him intimidating, at leastinitially. “My first contact with him was ashis student in my second year, and at first Iwas terrified of him,” smiles Dr. AlanMather, a U of A Faculty of Engineering pro-fessor emeritus.

“He always had a kind of mean and angrylook, but when I got to know him better Ifound out he was actually a very gentle andhelpful person.”

Perhaps Ritter’s gruff exterior was theresult of being born into harsh conditions—Saskatchewan during the Great Depression.

I

Robert Ritter didn’t take thepath less travelled – he tookthe path never travelled whenhe became the Faculty ofEngineering’s first PhD student.It wasn’t the last time Rittermade a bold move.

by Ryan Smith

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maintain the correct pressure and energy foran optimal flow.

For his next notable feat, Ritter created amedical device that improved and lengthenedthe lives of many patients—and changed thecourse of his own life forever. In concert withthe head of cardiology at the FoothillsHospital in Calgary, Ritter developed amethod of extracting oxygen from the atmos-phere, and he left his post as dean of the U ofC Faculty of Engineering in 1974 to manu-facture his invention.

“It helped people with emphysema andcystic fibrosis and those kinds of nasty thingsthat make it hard to breathe,” Ritter says.

The stationary appliance, which Rittercalled the Reox machine, sucked in air andrejected nitrogen, leaving patients with 95 per-cent pure oxygen.“It was a piece of furniture—it looked like a TV set. It had a long tube anda cannula attached to it so you could movearound your house. The main benefit was thatit removed the constant worry you would runout of oxygen, as you would with oxygen bot-tles, which were the only other options avail-able at the time and were fire hazards.”

“There were people whose lives werecompletely altered,” he adds. “I rememberone farmer just gave up. He came to the hos-pital and didn’t want to see his kids anymore,didn’t want to do anything. But we got himback to the farm, got him on the machine,and when we went out to visit him he was outon a grass mower mowing his lawn with thelong tube in his nose and a big smile on hisface. He loved it.”

Ritter built about 100 of the machines,and his business “really blossomed”.

Sadly, it didn’t last. “They worked well,but the main problem was that they werebuilt with household parts—vacuum parts—that weren’t intended for continuous use,and they needed maintenance, which I hadto do myself. It became overwhelming,especially because people began to depend onthem totally.”

“I was new to the industrial worldand didn’t appreciate how much capital

it takes to bring that sort of system intogeneral use,” he adds.

After two years, in 1976, the business col-lapsed, and Ritter decided to move into con-tract work. One of his first jobs was to tackleAlberta’s primary environmental challenge:devising a method to clean up an oil sandstailings pond.

“Technically, I was able to get crap out ofthe pond, but the cost of doing it was toomuch. Even if the process was free, the cost ofhandling the material would be uneconomi-cal. When we realized that, there was nosense continuing with it,” he says.

Ritter then took a series of jobs for a com-pany called Western Research, a subsidiary ofBow Valley Industries. For example, he devel-oped a technique to dispose of the PCBs thatwere used in obsolete transformers.

“Transformers are those cylinders that areabout a metre and a half high and a metre indiameter behind your house,” Ritterexplains. “They drop the voltage from 4,000volts to 110, so you can get the electricity inyour house. They used to be filled with an oilthat contained PCBs, which are a wonderfulinsulator. The problem is, PCBs contain chlo-rine, which makes them an environmentalhazard, and they had to get rid of them.

“There were hundreds and hundreds of [theobsolete transformers], and I developed a fur-nace for getting rid of the PCBs in the way thatallowed you to salvage and sell the metal.”

Ritter’s next big contract provided ahistory lesson as well as an environmentalchallenge.

The Canadian military hired Ritterto develop a safe way to destroy “a few tons”of lewisite that it had been storing fordecades at a base near Suffield in southernAlberta. “Lewisite is a war chemical, likemustard gas but about 100 times moretoxic,” says Ritter. “It’s a vesicant thatattacks the eyes and skin and destroys every-thing it touches.”

Think that sounds bad? It gets worse. “It’sa liquid made up of about 35 percent arsenic,and one little drop the size of a pinhead

But he worked hard, and when he arrived inEdmonton in the mid-1950s he began asuccessful career doing what engineers dobest: solving problems.

Under Govier’s supervision, Ritterpublished his PhD thesis, a seminal work onthe pipeline characteristics of crude oil.He stayed on as a faculty member at theU of A until 1966, when he left to becomethe first chair of the Chemical Engineeringprogram at the brand-new University ofCalgary. He eventually became U of C’s Deanof Engineering.

But before he left the U of A, Ritter had ahand in developing (among other things) theworld’s first pipeline viscometer, which agraduate student created under his supervi-sion. The device measures the viscosity of aliquid as it flows in a pipeline.

“Before [the viscometer], you needed totake a sample from the line and then take itback to the lab to measure it—and, if you real-ized then that you needed to change the flow,it was already too late,” Mather explains.

Today, the instrument has been computer-ized, sending instant measurements to labs to

Robert Ritter (at right) displays the oxygenseparator he invented. The portable deviceprovided 95 percent pure oxygen foremphysema and cystic fibrosis patients,allowing them to regain their mobility.

Ritter created a medical device that improvedand lengthened the lives of many patients—andchanged the course of his own life forever.

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would be enough to kill everyone in theroom—very nasty stuff.”

The Canadian army had procured thechemical from the U.S. Army. The Americanshad developed and refined it throughout the20th century as a response to mustard gas,which the Germans had used in World War I.Fortunately, the chemical was never usedexcept in tests on animals. Unfortunately, itwas hard to destroy.

“Mustard gas was not easy to destroy, butit was easier to destroy than lewisite becauseyou could burn the mustard and then get ridof the sulphur dioxide, and they had a tech-nology for that,” says Ritter. “But I had todevelop a process of several steps to get rid ofthe lewisite. It was a chemical process, and inthe end it worked pretty well.”

It worked so well that about ten yearslater, when the Americans wanted to get ridof their own remaining lewisite, they licensedthe process from Ritter and called on him forhelp. “I went down there and they had it in asystem that required a lot of upgrading, andwhen they realized how much the processwould cost they weren’t prepared to putup money to do it, so they abandoned it,”he says.

“What they’ve done with the lewisite onlythe gods know. My guess is they dumped it inthe ocean—that’s the conventional thinking.”

In the early 1990s, Ritter moved to BritishColumbia and starting doing contract workfor Australian National Industries to clean up

contaminated soil. He built a prototype andcalled it the Lymelox Process.

“We could take soil contaminated withPCB, dioxins or any nasty carcinogenic andreduce them down to parts per billion andhave no exhaust, not even carbon dioxide, sonothing, nothing came off in this process,”Ritter says.

“The secret of the process was the pre-conditioning of the lime. You would run thesoil through an auger and then combine itwith another augered feed of lime. “The realadvantage of it is that it ran at a much lowertemperature than other incineration process-es and consequently didn’t have nasty mater-ial forming on you, like dioxins.

“If you ran contaminated soil through theprocess, what would come out on the backwas just original soil and lime carbonate—thelime absorbed the carbon dioxide.”

However, the “misadventures ofAustralian National Industries in Europe”forced them to sell the subsidiary,Consolidated Environment Technology, to alarge Australian steel company, which wasn’tinterested in developing the Lymelox processany further.

“The process still hasn’t been matched byany other technology, and if the company hadsurvived it might have taken off,” Ritterbelieves. “I tried to keep it going, but I fig-ured it would have taken about $40–50 mil-lion to pull the first piece of it together, andyou need to be a young man to keep some-thing like that going.

“It’s just very difficult to raise cash forsomething like what I was trying to do.

People pretend to be interested in venturecapital, but that’s a myth. They want some-thing that’s already proven, and that theyknow they can get an immediate return oninvestment from it.

“Big companies will support researchersthrough grants funding and write it off if itdoesn’t work, but, as an individual, if youwant to be an inventor you need to inventVelcro or a safety pin or something like that.Something that everyone understands andyou can build a prototype for and get marketevaluated. Then you might be able to do it.”

Ritter worked on the Lymelox projectuntil 1999, and he considers it his last bigventure. It never succeeded financially, but heneither regrets it nor is he bitter about theway it ended. “I don’t apologize for notbeing able to raise 50 million. It would benice to sit back now and point to a giantcompany and say I started it, but I can’t saythat, and that’s okay.

“When I look back on all the things Iworked on—the PCB furnaces, the Reoxmachine, the lewisite, the Lymelox—theyworked. The things that we set out to do, wewere able to do, and that’s where the satis-faction comes from.”

In particular, Ritter feels good about theReox machines, because they made a directimprovement in the lives of “a couple ofdozen people.”

“Of all the things I’ve done in my profes-sional life, that was the most satisfying.”

Now in his mid-70s, the U of A’s firstengineering PhD graduate lives just outside ofVancouver, in “a big house with some prop-erty around it,” which he spends most of histime repairing and renovating.

In spite of the struggles and setbacks inhis chosen career, Ritter feels blessed. Heraised four kids, consulted for more than 30companies around the world, served as chairof the Calgary Region Arts Foundation(among other associations), and producedmore than a dozen patents.

“I’ve always had an interest in science—even as a little kid—and when I was 22 andnot sure what to do with my life, I thoughtabout my love for doing research, and then itbecame clear to me what I should do, and Iwas right,” he said.

“If I had to do it all over again I’d do theexact same thing.”

Ritter designed a full-scale unit built at thehazardous waste disposal site in Swan Hills,Alberta. The unit (above) was used in thedecontamination of PCB-laden transformers.Below, Ritter is seen with a pilot model of aprocess that was used to destroy tons of warchemicals at Canadian Forces Base Suffield, insouthern Alberta.



Gustav Stroem “Gus” Christensen wasborn April 1, 1929 on a farm on the tiny

Danish island of Laesoe. The eighth of ninechildren, Gustav completed nine yearsof schooling in an ancient one-room elemen-tary school and the island’s brand-new juniorhigh school.

In 1945, he ventured to Copenhagen totake a radio operator apprenticeship. Heserved as a radio operator with the DanishMerchant Navy for four years, and on anAmerican oil tanker for another two. Histravels took him to ports on five continentsand to Canada, where he visited his brotherand sister who had immigrated to the prairies.

When Christensen joined his siblings inCanada, his life abruptly changed. Hecompleted his entire high school diploma in

six months, mainly through correspondenceschool in Edmonton, and enrolled inEngineering Physics at the University ofAlberta.

He blossomed as an engi-neering student, taking theHenry Birks Gold Medal in1958, along with severalother scholarships. After asummer with the NationalResearch Council in Ottawa,he took his M.A. Sc. inElectrical Engineering underDr. Frank Noakes at theUniversity of BritishColumbia in 1960.

Christensen worked withthe BC Energy Board andChemcell in Edmonton, but disliked theodours associated with chemical engineering.So he beat a hasty retreat to the rarifiedatmosphere of academia at UBC. His PhDthesis (1966), under supervisor Dr. AvromSoudack, examined the stability of non-linearmathematical models of systems.

In July 1966, even before he haddefended his thesis, Christensen was luredback to the U of A as assistant professor. Hespent the next 27 years teaching, researchingand taking a large load of administrativeresponsibilities for the Departmentof Electrical Engineering. He taught 16different courses, but his forte was theone-on-one training with his 24 graduatestudents.

Christensen’s research focused on theoptimum economic operation of varioustypes of power systems, minimizing the ener-gy lost in transmission lines while generatingthe maximum possible amount of power. Heauthored over 140 scientific papers, fourbooks and four chapters in books on hisresearch specialties.

In 1969 Christensen married an Englishimmigrant, Penelope Janet Gardner, inEdmonton. They have two children, Lynneand Neil.

Christensen retired as full professor toMission, BC in 1993. He and Penny joinedthe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day

Saints and both served atthe church’s Family HistoryCentre in Abbotsford. WithPenny, a professionalgenealogist, Gus wrote hisautobiography, the historyof his parents’ 172 descen-dants, and a volume oftranslations of historicalarticles on Laesoe, theisland of his birth.

Christensen was anintervener in the NationalEnergy Board hearings thatresulted in the rejection of

the huge SE2 coal-fired plant, a project thatwould have emitted unacceptable pollutioninto the Fraser Valley funnel. Onlookers willalways remember the NEB Chairman saying,“So, Dr. Christensen, is that your entire argu-ment?” Gus replied, “No sir, I am just gettingstarted.” It brought the house down.

At 75, Christensen took up an adjunct pro-fessorship in the School of Engineering Scienceat Simon Fraser University, where he had anoffice, a computer and a grad student – but nosalary. He spent one or two days there eachweek until he died, and he published what heconsidered to be his best work during this time.These papers and patents were in the field ofasymptotic stability of linear and nonlinear sys-tems, a continuation of his PhD work. He sim-plified the solutions to Lyapunov’s widelyapplicable stability theorems, making themuseful to electric power engineers, other practi-cal engineers, and many other professionals.With the help of linear programming, he alsosolved the least absolute value estimation prob-lem originally posed by Laplace in 1750.

Gus Christensen died August 9, 2007 atthe age of 78. He enjoyed many trips with hisfamily, and was justly proud of their success.He was a wonderful man, touched many livesand is sadly missed.

GUSTAV STROEM CHRISTENSEN1929–2007

in memoriam

Anderson, Wendy (Mineral Process '81)Bradley, Horace (Electrical '50)Dawson, Earl (Electrical '50)Fedoruk, Raymond (Electrical '69)Good, Max (Mining '40)Hawkins, William (Electrical '49)Lien, Clifford (Electrical '52)Matheson, J Donald (Civil '51)Poland, Charles (Petroleum '56)Ragan, John (Civil '74)Reynolds, John (Mining '42)Smerek, Alexander (Civil '50)Tod, James (Petroleum '55)Van Der Lee, Arie (Civil '47)Warne, George (Electrical '51)Williams, Reagan (Mechanical '92)Willumsen, Arnold (Civil '58)

The Faculty of Engineering sincerelyregrets the passing of the followingalumni and friends.

McIntosh, Alexander M. (Petroleum '51)Spence, Robert (Civil '48)Wong, James (Civil '75, MEng Civil '77)

The Faculty of Engineering was recentlymade aware of the following alumniwho passed away more than a year ago.

Gustav Stroem Christensen



by Ryan Smith

continuestogrow

Lindsay Leblancis no longer perfect,but she doesn’tmind too much.

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Leblanc (Engineering Physics ’03) earned aperfect grade in all 46 of her undergrad-

uate classes. On graduating, she added the2003 Governor General’s Award and C.D.Howe Fellowship.

Leblanc was part of the last U of A classto be marked on the nine-point grade scale(the U of A switched to the more traditionalfour-point scale in the fall of 2003), and shereceived a nine in every class she took. “Ithink it was easier to maintain a perfectrecord in the nine-point scale than it wouldhave been according to the letter scale,” shesays modestly.

Now a PhD student in physics at theUniversity of Toronto, Leblanc admits her aca-demic record is no longer completely unblem-ished. “I received an A-minus in one of mymaster’s classes a few years ago,” she laughs.“It was actually a really tough class, and I did-n’t have some of the background I neededgoing into it, but that’s OK. I learned a lot.”

Not surprisingly, Leblanc continues to dowell for herself nearly five years after herflawless run at the U of A. Now 26 years old,she received her master’s in physics at theU of T in 2005, and hopes to attain a PhD inphysics by 2010.

Despite her stellar success as an under-graduate, Leblanc admits she had some mis-givings about entering graduate school,

“I took a year off after the U of A andconsidered becoming a high school teacher,”she says. “I love kids and I love teaching, andit was the classic idea that I wanted to dosomething good for the world, and I wasn’tsure grad school was the way to do that. Butthen I came to the decision that I love tolearn, so I choose grad school. I still plan toteach, but now it’ll be at the university level.”

Shortly after writing her final exam forher engineering physics degree in the U of A’sDepartment of Computer and ElectricalEngineering, Leblanc threw some clothes anda Eurail pass into a backpack and hopped ona plane to wander Western Europe for threemonths.

Her favorite stop was Rome. “I grew upon the Prairies and there aren’t too manythings there that are more than 100 years old,so when you can go to a place like Rome,with so much history, it’s really interesting.”

When she returned to Canada, Leblancengaged in some much needed relaxation.

“I slept in and loafed a bit,” she smiles. “Ireally needed some time off at that point.”She also indulged her love of reading—par-ticularly Canadian literature—and becameaddicted to CBC Radio One.

Not one to remain idle for long, Leblanceventually did volunteer work and got a jobpart-time with the Women in Scholarship,Engineering, Science and Technology(WISEST) program, an organization close toher heart. “As a female in math and science,you’re always told that you can be as good asthe guys, and I’ve always worked to try toprove it,” she says.

Leblanc continues to achieve in graduateschool. “Lindsay is the senior graduate stu-dent on an ultra-cold atom experiment tostudy the physics of ferromagnetism,” saysher PhD supervisor, Dr. Joseph Thywissen.“She is rapidly becoming an independentresearcher. Recently she gave her first invitedtalk—at Simon Fraser University—and shehas also published a first-author paper thisyear in Physical Review A.”

Thywissen goes on to describe Leblanc’scurrent research. “One of the main goals ofour field is to understand how high-tempera-ture superconductivity works. There are var-ious models proposed for what this does, butthey can’t be solved by computers, so wehope the kind of experiments our lab is work-ing on will help us understand this type ofphysics better.”

Leblanc works in a room full of lasersthat also includes a vacuum system and mag-netic fields, which control the models ofatoms that she and her colleagues build inorder to better understand their properties.

The research is basic, says Leblanc, but theknowledge gained may be applied in manyways. “For one example, this material’s resis-tance to electricity is so low—zero—that if wewere able to understand it and use it to trans-mit electricity, it would be much more effi-cient than current methods, which lose abouthalf the power.” The materials could also beused to build powerful magnets, she adds.These might, for example, improve the effi-ciency of the levitating bullet trains in Japan.

“Lindsay is an extremely dedicatedworker,” marvels Thywissen. “She sometimesruns the experiment late into the night—a time when scientific breakthroughscanonically occur.”

Leblanc largely enjoys those long hours, butconfesses that sometimes it gets monotonous.“Working in a lab is almost like doing manuallabour,” she observes. “Sometimes I feel like Ineed to sit down and learn something, so I findmyself opening textbooks just to do that.

“I also read a lot of novels,” she adds. “Idecided that, when I became a grad student, Iwas going to continue to read, even if it takesaway from my studies, because I love read-ing, and that’s what makes me happy.”

Her life in Toronto includes more than labwork and reading. “I have a lot of friendsnow,” she says. “It took a while after movinghere, but I definitely have an active social lifethese days. And I really enjoy living in Toronto.I love the diversity. I can sit in a circle of friendsand realize that I’m the only one who’s a nativeEnglish speaker, and that’s pretty neat.

“I think I’m a big city kid in the end,” sheadds. “I grew up in the suburbs of prairiecities and, you know, they’re always thesame—there’s always a Wal-Mart and aSuperstore. Now I live in a neighborhoodwhere there’s not a single chain business;everything’s independently owned, and

there’s a coffee shop on the corner and a usedbook store and a used clothing store, and Ican ride my bike anywhere I want to go. Ilove that.”

After Leblanc earns her PhD, she plans todo a post-doctoral fellowship and then find ajob as a faculty member at a Canadian uni-versity, perhaps the U of A.

“I really enjoyed my time at the U of A. Ithink it’s a great school and I have a lot of goodfriends there,” she says. “And I know this isgoing to sound lame, but I really miss theadministration at the U of A—it’s a lot betterorganized and friendlier than at the U of T.”

The university isn’t the only thing thatmight draw Leblanc back to Alberta. “I missthe Prairies sometimes. I miss being able tosee the sky.”

That’s ironic, because the sky is heronly limit.

Not surprisngly, Leblanccontinues to well for herselfnearly five years after herflawless run at the U of A.

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You don’t have to look very far to see themany ways that Engineering alumni

have given back to the community. Whethervolunteering to help build a neighbourhoodplayground, coaching a sports team or mak-ing significant financial donations, engineer-ing alumni have a long tradition ofcommunity service.

“Every gift counts; everything is meaning-ful,” says Nena Jocic-Andrejevic, the Facultyof Engineering’s Planned Giving Counsel. Inher role as a fund development professional,Jocic-Andreovic helps families find alternateways of supporting the community throughgift planning.

Many people think they aren’t able tosupport causes they’re passionate about, andJocic-Andrejevic says they’re often surprisedto learn that they are capable of giving morethan they’d imagined.

“Often, we feel that our finances restrictour ability to give back to the community ona regular basis. Maybe it’s because we’reyoung and just starting out in our life and ourprofession, or because we’re starting a fami-ly, or caring for our own parents—we haveobligations.”

But that doesn’t mean that, at the end ofthe day, we can’t make a gift from our accu-mulated assets. Jocic-Andrejevic is straight-forward on this point: “It is a truism that theonly things certain in life are death andtaxes,” she says.

While there’s nothing we can do aboutdeath, there are plenty of options for dealingwith taxes—and that, says Jocic-Andrejevic, iswhere people become pleasantly surprised intheir ability to support institutions and causes.

“Most of us support our passions by vol-unteering or giving back to an institution thatprovided us with an education, the founda-

tion of the careers that enabled us to raise ourfamilies. Through planned giving, you givenot through your income, but through yourassets.”

“When you look at your estate, there aregoing to be taxes on it. Most people aremiffed when they discover how much taxthere will be on it. But the government allowsus the opportunity to make choices, if wewish, to invest some of those assets into ourpassions to a degree we weren’t able to solelydo through our income—and receive a signif-icant tax deduction.”

Jocic-Andrejevic says that with plannedgiving, we are all empowered to give, empha-sizing the importance of having a “plan” inplanned gifts. “My role is to listen to peopleand work with their financial planners to

assist them in developing a plan that takescare of themselves and their family, but alsoto look at the amount of taxes on their estateand making an informed choice about howthey want to manage their taxable assets—their social capital.”

U of A Engineer will have regular featureson planned giving. For more information onplanned giving contact Nena Jocic-Andrejevic,the Faculty of Engineering’s Planned GivingCounsel, at 789-492-8969 or via e-mail atnena.jocic [email protected].

Continuing a tradition of

GIVING

Nena Jocic-Andrejevic

Many people think they aren’t able to

support causes they’re passionate

about, and Jocic-Andrejevic says

they’re often surprised to learn that

they are capable of giving more than

they’d imagined.

By Richard CairneyBl

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T a k i n g p r i d e i n a c h i e v e m e n t

FILIPCHUK, DAVID(Civil ’84) PEngHas been appointed as regionalvice president, WesternCanadian buildings operationsfor PCL. Filipchuk began hisPCL career in 1984 as a fieldengineer in Edmonton, and hasserved the organization atnumerous locations acrossNorth America. In 2004, hebecame operations manager forPCL Edmonton, prior to hisappointment as district managerof Southern Alberta operationsin the same year. Filipchuk wasappointed vice president anddistrict manager of SouthernAlberta operations in 2005.

GROVER, DR. WAYNE D.(PhD Electrical ’89), PEng

Has been elected asa Fellow in theRoyal Society ofCanada: TheAcademies of Arts,Humanities and

Sciences of Canada. Founded in1882, RSC is Canada’s mostprestigious scholarly organiza-tion. Election to RSC is the high-est honour a scholar can achievein the Arts, Humanities andSciences. A professor for theDepartment of Electrical andComputer Engineering, Groverwas also awarded 2008 AlbertaIngenuity Fund ResearchExcellence Award.

HEINZ, HEINRICH K.(MSc Civil ’84, Ph.D. Civil ’88) PEng

Has been appointedManaging Directorof ThurberEngineering Ltd.Heinz joinedThurber’s Calgary

office in 1995 and was appoint-ed as a Principal in 2000. Heserved as Thurber’s Calgaryoffice manager from 1999 until2007, during which time, theoffice developed in both size andstaff expertise and capabilities,to become one of the leadinggeotechnical consulting firms inthe City. He has worked onmajor geotechnical engineeringprojects in Canada and abroad,and is well known for his contri-butions in the fields of tunnelingand trenchless technology. In hisnew capacity, he will continue tobe involved with senior review

of projects in the oil and gas,municipal and transportationinfrastructure sectors. Heinzwill be based in Calgary.

HILL, DAVID W.(MSc Civil ’77), PEng

Has been appointedPresident andChairman of theBoard of ThurberEngineering Ltd.Hill joined the

firm’s Edmonton office in 1983and subsequently relocated tothe Vancouver office in 1995.He has previously served asBranch Manager for Thurber’sEdmonton and Vancouveroffices and most recently as thefirm’s Managing Director.Hill’s expertise encompassesfoundation investigation anddesign for buildings, landdevelopment projects, andtransportation and municipalinfrastructure. He has practicedin Alberta and British Columbia,and is currently based inThurber’s Vancouver office.

McGINLEY, MARK(Civil ’83, MSc Civil ’85,PhD Civil ’88)A professor and endowed chairof infrastructure research andcivil engineering at the Universityof Louisville in Kentucky,McGinley recently received anASTM International Award ofMerit. He was recognized for hisoutstanding dedication to andinvolvement in the entire mason-ry industry, and particularly thestandards process, includingresearch contributions related totest methods.

MORGAN, GWYN(Mechanical ’67 ) , PEng

Has been appoint-ed to Canada'sOutstanding CEOof the YearAdvisory Board for2008 by the

Caldwell Partners, Deloitte, CTVand the National Post. Morganis retired founding presidentCEO of EnCana Corporationand was named the 2005 recipi-ent of Canada's OutstandingCEO of the Year Award.

SARMA, HEMANTA(PhD Petroleum ’88)

Professor HemantaSarma is a recipientof the 2008AustralianLearning &Teaching Council

Citation for OutstandingContributions to StudentLearning “for initiating studentsinto the profession of PetroleumEngineering while interactingwith them to secure their welfareas individuals and success asscholars”. Sarma holds the RegSprigg Chair in PetroleumEngineering at the AustralianSchool of PetroleumEngineering, University ofAdelaide.

SOROCHAN, ERNEST(Chemical ’72), PEngHas been appointed to the boardof directors for MainlandResources Inc. Sorochan hasbuilt a professional career focus-ing on understanding all techni-cal aspects of planning, drilling,

Kudos

Send news of your awards, appointments, and othersuccesses to [email protected]

Do you have news to share?

CORRECTIONS

On page 35 of the Winter/Spring 2008 issue of U of A Engineer, the class organizer for the Class of 1968Chemical Engineering was incorrectly identified as Bruce Burdenie. Our apologies to Bill Burdenie who wasin fact the class organizer.

On page 23 of the Winter/Spring 2008 edition of U of A Engineer, Dr. Jeff DiBattista (MSc Structural ’95,PhD Structural ’00) PEng was named as the sole recipient of the Consulting Engineers of Alberta award ofmerit in building engineering, for the PCL Centennial Learning Centre. In fact, the award was presented toan entire team from Cohos Evamy “for their excellent work on the mechanical, electrical, and structuralengineering systems,” says DiBattista. “The success of the PCL building was a team effort—many of whomare graduates of the University of Alberta—and it is their work that truly deserves the recognition.”

evaluating and completing high-pressure sour gas fields as wellas operations of gas plant facili-ties. Most recently, Sorochanjoined Compton PetroleumCorporation (2004-2008) ofCalgary to provide engineeringsupport for areas in southernAlberta, conduct economic eval-uations and capital expenditures,coordinate completions, and helprecommend new wells and selectnew exploration areas.

TAYLOR, DON ’58 BSc(Civil ’58, MSc Civil ’60), PEng

Has been named alaureate of theCalgary BusinessHall of Fame. Hewas honoured forhis entrepreneurial

spirit and for his work as presi-dent of Engineered Air, an air-conditioning equipmentmanufacturing business. Underhis direction, this companyachieved steady growth andnever experienced an unprof-itable quarter.

USENIK, ANDREW(Civil ’08) E.I.T.As the lead vocalist and song-writer for the Edmonton-basedpunk rock group Ten SecondEpic, Usenik has been touringthe country and working on anew album, after crossing theconvocation stage this summer.He has also taken on a positionas a songwriter with SonyMusic, as well as writing andperforming with his own band.


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U n i v e r s i t y o f A l b e r t a ENGINEERING

This year, as we celebrate 100 years of engineering education at the Universityof Alberta, the 20,000th U of A Engineer will graduate. More than ever, a newgeneration of engineering graduates will be inspired by the accomplishments ofthose alumni who have graduated before them. But while the campus, the tools,and the technology may have changed, today's engineers share a common goalwith their predecessors: to use human creativity and imagination, along with anunderstanding of natural phenomena, to solve the problems of society.

Today, the Faculty of Engineering at the U of A is recognized as one of the topengineering programs in North America, and the foundation of our success hasbeen the outstanding tradition of our alumni supporting each new generation ofengineers. We thank you for your continued commitment to our faculty.

If you have any comments regarding the Faculty of Engineering or would like moreinformation on how you can support future U of A Engineers, please contact:

Laurie Shinkaruk, Acting Assistant Dean, External RelationsFaculty of Engineering, University of Albertac/o E6-050 Engineering Teaching and Learning ComplexEdmonton, AB T6G 2V4Tel: 403.718.6394E-mail: [email protected]

Celebrating a Century

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