Dear Colleagues,
Seasons Greetings to all! As the year draws to a close and we transition into the winter months, it’s a great time to reflect on the year's accomplishments and share some of the highlights for the upcoming year ahead.
As part of a two-year pilot project, I’m pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Qiang Zhang as the new Editor-in-Chief of our Canadian Biosystems Engineering Journal, effective October 11, 2024, for a two-year term. As discussed during the journal’s ad-hoc meeting at the AGM in Winnipeg earlier this year, Dr. Zhang will be focusing on increasing the number of issues and manuscripts published each year while ensuring a prompt review process and speedy publication.
We recently partnered with other Engineering Societies in Canada through the Engineering Institute of Canada for the continuation of a project titled “Oral History Interviews to Preserve Canadian Engineering Achievements”. Video recordings of several interviews are now available through the Ontario Tech University website: https://digitalcollections.library.ontariotechu.ca/node/7
Visit https://asabemeetings.org/ for more information.
The Canadian Math Challengers Society will run BC regional events starting February 19th at: UBC, Okanagan College, University of the Fraser Valley Abbotsford, Camosun University Victoria, and an an in class competition for students that are more distant or out of province. The Provincial finals competition will be May 3 at Simon Fraser University. An estimated 1000 students from grades 8, 9 and 10 will take part.
Professor Shahab Sokhansanj (Adjunct University of British Columbia and Emeritus University of Saskatchewan), is the recipient of the 2024 British Columbia Bioenergy Network Researcher Award. The honour recognizes Dr. Shahab for his “outstanding leadership and contribution to the bioenergy sector in British Columbia Canada”.
Jiating Li is a new Assistant Professor in the Department of Biosystems Engineering at the University of Manitoba (UM). She earned her Ph.D. in Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) in August 2023, following her M.S. degree in the same field from UNL in 2019. Her undergraduate studies were in the Department of Biosystems Engineering at Zhejiang University in China. Before joining UM, she had one year of postdoctoral experience at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Jiating’s prior research focused on using Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and advanced data analytics to tackle critical challenges in crop improvement (e.g., yield prediction, stress detection, plant phenotyping) and management (e.g., water and nitrogen management). She has developed interdisciplinary expertise spanning agricultural engineering, data science, and plant science.
At UM, Jiating will delve into a broad range of digital technologies to advance Canadian agricultural and food production systems. These technologies include, but are not limited to, ground- and aerial-based automation systems, optical sensing, Internet-of-Things (IoTs), physics-based models, and artificial intelligence (AI). Through intensive collaborations with crop breeders, plant physiologists, soil scientists, animal scientists, and computer engineers, Jiating aims to develop robust systems that promote agricultural productivity as well as sustainability.
The Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC) is proud to announce that video recordings of oral history interviews highlighting the lives and achievements of 27 prominent Canadian engineers are now available online. The attached news release briefly describes the objectives of these interviews, their content, the contributors and of course their url link: https://eic-ici.ca/history/
The main objectives of this initiative are to document great achievements in the recent history of Canadian engineering, and to illustrate the personalities of some of those involved. The interviews hopefully also demonstrate to younger audiences that anyone interested in sciences can become an engineer.
Guy Gosselin, FCSCE, FEIC, P.Eng.
Executive Director
Past-President
Engineering Institute of Canada
Web: https://eic-ici.ca/
The WFEO Working Group on Climate Change is pleased to invite you to the webinar “The WFEO Code of Practice: Principles of Climate Change Adaptation and (in future) Resilience for Engineers” that will be held on 19 December, at 10:00 AM EST / 4:00 PM CET.
The registration link is available in this page: https://shorturl.at/L2t8x
WFEO President-Elect, Seng Chuan Tan, will moderate the webinar and David Lapp, Member of the WG on Climate Change & Associate of the Climate Risk Institute, will introduce and explain the nine principles contained in the "WFEO Code of Practice: Principles of Climate Change Adaptation" as well as new principles under consideration related to climate resilience and the integration of nature-based solutions.
You will find more information in this page https://www.wfeo.org/events/
Ivan Juiz
IT and Communications Manager / Responsable IT et communication
World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO) / Fédération mondiale des organisations d'ingénieurs (FMOI)