2014 Young Engineer of the Year

RENÉ MORISSETTE, ing. is the recipient of the CSBE/SCGAB Young Engineer of the Year Award in recognition of his contributions to engineering for agricultural, food and biological systems through service to CSBE/SCGAB, CIGR, and other professional activities related to engineering and website development. René Morissette has made outstanding contributions to CSBE/SCGAB since he took on the role of Society webmaster in 2008. He has supervised the transfer of all the society archives to a new web platform in 2010-2011, which has recently been upgraded to the most up-to-date principles of web design. He was responsible for setting up the web site of the 2010 joint and highly successful congress with the International Commission of Agricultural and Biological Engineering (CIGR) held in Quebec City in June 2010. He was co-editor of the proceedings of (746 papers in the Book of Abstracts) and coordinated registration of 750 participants and 40 guests at the congress. He continued to improve the web interface for CSBE meetings in Winnipeg in 2011, Orillia in 2012 with NABEC, and Saskatoon in 2013.

René is also an enthusiastic worker in his technical field. Since 2007, he works as a research engineer in forage and biomass with the Research Branch of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Québec City. He has developed a keen expertise in forage drying and biomass combustion. He helps out graduate students with their instrumentation needs in close collaboration with Université Laval. He conducted a technical exploration tour in France on bulk drying of chopped forage with solar energy. He has set up a novel hay drying system using solar and biomass energy as renewable sources. He has studied the potential of novel biomass sources for energy such as corn stover and short-rotation woody crops. He contributes regularly to the Quebec provincial scientific day on forages by extending his research results on forage drying and biomass utilization.

René is a deserving recipient of the CSBE/SCGAB Young Engineer of the Year Award as a result of his significant work for the Society as webmaster and for his novel engineering applications in the area of forage and biomass.