MEET ANIA ULRICH NEW TOOL THAT TESTS BACTERIOPHAGE BUSTS BUGS new associate dean of outreach if a pill can kill your ill a virus fights food poisoning Keeping in Touch with Alumni Fall 2017 New Paradigm Sylvie Boulanger is bridging a new approach to infrastructure rehabilitation To the holodeck! Save the world or die trying Engineers build Concussion-rated centre ice hockey helmets and change are almost here Edmonton 4 Kaleidoscans PAGE 30 U OF A ENGINEER FALL 2017 1 FIRST WORD ENGU OF A INEER Fall 2017 Issue 42 Dean of Engineering THE THREAD THAT J. Fraser Forbes PhD, PEng Assistant Dean, Advancement CONNECTS US Valérie Bélisle Advancement and Alumni Relations Team Brad Woronuk, Brian MacMillan, Leanne Nickel, Jackie Lewyk hat an incredible year it has been here Change of Address W in the Faculty of Engineering. New [email protected] and returning students reported for classes 780-248-1673 on time at the beginning of September, we Editors welcomed our alumni back to campus during Richard Cairney and Mifi Purvis our annual Alumni Weekend (please see page Associate Editor 36 for images) and, with this issue of U of Leanne Nickel A Engineer, we’re enjoying the autumn and Copy Editing/Proofreading bracing for winter. Sasha Roeder-Mah As passionate as we engineers are about Art Direction math, our time is marked more by events than Halkier + Dutton Strategic Design numbers. This year we’ve made incredible Contributing Writers progress on a number of initiatives. In terms Joseph Bereznicki, Richard Cairney, of how we connect with the general public Amie Filkow, Olga Ivanova, Tim Querengesser, Sandra Segal, and specifically with prospective students, Isabella Varela, Jennifer Westlake we’ve appointed civil engineering professor Ania Ulrich as our first associate dean (outreach). Contributing Illustrators She is taking concrete steps to help our faculty and the engineering profession to reach out to and Photographers under-represented groups—to find and encourage those creative, bright young minds who Charles Burke, Curtis Comeau, Richard Cairney, Mark Dutton, might not otherwise consider engineering to study and practise in our profession. Nathan Elson, Jason Franson, In terms of programming we took a major step forward in the development of the David Darren Jacknisky/Bluefish Studio, Jimmy Jeong, Allen McEachern, and Joan Lynch School of Engineering Safety and Risk Management. Two years ago we Terri Meyer Boake announced the creation of a fundraising campaign to support safety and risk management Advertising education for our students. Generous alumni such as you and supporters in industry Tel. 780-492-4514 responded by contributing $1 million. That milestone triggered a matching donation of an or 1-800-407-8345 additional $1 million from former dean of engineering David Lynch and his wife Joan, who Letters to the Editor continue to be incredible supporters of the Faculty of Engineering. [email protected] We are also moving forward with construction of new student spaces. This fall we are U of A Engineer magazine 9-385 Donadeo Innovation opening a new student maker-space that gives students mentored access to the mechanical Centre for Engineering engineering shops. And by the spring of 2018 we will open two large student design-and-build University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta spaces. One is a flexible student design space in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Canada T6G 1H9 Research Facility where student groups can work on design projects. The other is an engineering.ualberta.ca engineering garage in the Engineering Teaching and Learning Complex. The garage space will Publications Mail Agreement No. 40051128 be providing students with tools ranging from 3D printers to saws and lathes, to bring their Return undelivered Canadian addresses to: designs to life. U of A Engineer 9-201 Donadeo Innovation And amidst all that, we’re able to compile a magazine with stories about your achievements. Centre for Engineering You are still our concern—alumni and students are connected by our school. You still belong University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 1H9 here. As you share these stories, remember that we welcome your ideas and advice. J. Fraser Forbes PhD, PEng Dean of Engineering 2 U OF A ENGINEER FALL 2017 FALL 2017 CONTENTS 12 TO THE HOLODECK Alumnus Nathaniel Rossol and his brother Alex want you to try to save the Earth from a killer asteroid. At least, that’s what it will feel like. FEATURES DEPARTMENTS 12 TO THE HOLODECK 4 ENGG NEWS 40 IN MEMORIAM A new virtual reality experience News from around the Remember our own allows users to save the world, Faculty of Engineering or die trying 41 KUDOS 8 IMPACT You do great things 16 COVER STORY Alumna JoAnne Volk tells how Repsol THE NEW PARADIGM helps the faculty build safer engineers 43 LAST WORD Sylvie Boulanger found ways From the gulag to the iron ring to let architects, engineers and 10 COOL TECH steel fabricators understand Pros and pee-wees are on the lookout each other. Now she’s for hockey helmets to protect against pursuing novel approaches to concussion. Brooklynn Knowles is infrastructure rehabilitation working on a certification system 22 THE PUCK DROPS 32 SHORT PROFILE How they built centre ice and Ania Ulrich, new associate dean, the new centrepieces of a heralds changes in the faculty and refreshed downtown in Canada’s eventually the profession No.1 hockey city 35 FOLLOWUP 28 LEGACY Three alumni reflect on what they’ve George Poling helped establish learned in their first few years as Canada as a diamond producer entrepreneurs 30 PHOTO FEATURE 36 PHOTO ESSAY Sandra Segal is looking at It was great to see you everyday things in new ways, on Alumni Weekend revealing the extraordinary with This September, we welcomed back grads from her Kaleidoscans 38 FACULTY NEWS the 1940s through to the class of 2017 for Alumni Roger Cheng retires as chair of civil. Weekend. Check out the images on page 36. Brian Fleck steps into his professor’s role from chair of mechanical U OF A ENGINEER FALL 2017 3 ENGGNEWS Ryan Li lets in the light Faculty of Engineering fast. It’s inundated with researcher Ryan Yunwei heavy new demands from Li, pictured right, scored a an increasingly digital and major win in October that environmentally conscious will boost his team’s work. economy. Some estimates say The Canada Foundation that in this country we will for Innovation (CFI) gave need $300 billion over the Li an Infrastructure Fund next two decades to upgrade award worth more than the grid and create next- $2.5 million. Li, an electrical generation smart grids. and computer engineering professor, is expert in Smart grids enable use integration of renewable of renewable energy, energy and distributed more efficient loads, high generation, microgrid and efficiency grid structure, and active distribution systems, more reliable operations. and more. He spends a lot of But there are technical time thinking about how we challenges, including energy keep the lights on, literally management, hybrid AC-DC and metaphorically. grid structure, cyber security and power electronics. Canada’s electrical grid is critical to the smooth Li’s answer to the challenges companies and manufacturers New technologies and trends running of our society. starts with the Future Smart of renewable energy and coupled with the need to The grid delivers electric Grid Technologies Lab, power electronics and could upgrade aging grids means power and integrates many which will undertake the bring long-term economic the time to innovate is now. energy sources for efficient development and integration benefits. And it will lower the This CFI program proposes to energy production and of smart-grid technologies. cost of providing electricity to capitalize on this opportunity transportation. But grid The research enabled by remote communities, easing by focusing on research and infrastructure built over the lab will develop key the addition of renewable development of key smart- the past century is aging technologies for utility energy sources into the grids. grid technologies. 4 U OF A ENGINEER FALL 2017 NEW INFRASTRUCTURE SOLUTIONS “Engineers are seen as focusing on infrastructure and building,” says Christina Tool to Radyo. “But how we go about building has a lot to do with the sustainability of a project.” Radyo, who test if a pill just started fourth-year civil engineering (co-op), belongs to the campus chapter of Engineers Without Borders Canada (EWB), an organization that focuses on using will kill your ill engineering to support international development. Don Thurston (Chemical ’58) understands that EWB Faculty of Engineering-led researchers are developing a handheld device helps develop engineers and communities. That’s why he that will help reduce unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions, a welcome was concerned when he heard that the campus chapter of development in an era of antibiotic resistance stemming from the the organization had been operating without its flagship junior medicine’s overuse. A team led by Robert Burrell (pictured below), chair fellowship program, which sends students on international of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, wants to equip frontline development placements. “Engineers Without Borders is an agency clinicians with the device to differentiate in minutes between viral and well suited for such initiatives,” Thurston says. The fact that EWB bacterial infections. had not had the cash to send a student abroad for a couple of years motivated him to make a substantial donation. Doctors often prescribe antibiotics before traditional throat swabs reveal whether a particular bacterium is at As a result, Radyo was able to travel to Lilongwe, Malawi as a the root of an infection—a process that takes hours or junior fellow. But, because EWB Canada focuses on underlying days at the lab.