Under the unwavering eye of Dean Cristina Amon, the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering is quietly becoming an increasingly female-friendly environment. She believes firmly in the importance of building an open and encouraging attitude toward women into Engineering so that it becomes commonplace - typical of other non-gender dominated professions and not uncommon in other countries such as Amon’s native Uruguay, or Eastern Europe and China.

“It’s important to highlight and reflect on female accomplishments through actions of the commitment our faculty has made to improve our diversity. In the last two years, over 50% of new faculty hires have been women," Dean Amon said.

Mentorship is also an important factor; providing positive female role models is expected to have a direct impact on the enrolment of young women. Amon can personally attest to that: her daughter decided to follow in her footsteps and has become an engineer.

The Faculty has had only 13 Deans in its 135-year history and Amon is the first woman to hold the position. Three other Canadian Engineering faculties have female Deans: Engineering at Queen's University is currently headed by former U of T ChemE professor Kim Woodhouse, University of Calgary's Engineering Faculty is headed by Elizabeth Cannon and the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Applied Science is headed by Tyseer Aboulnasr.

Female Faculty Members Have Strong Roots in Engineering

Cristina Amon - Dean, Alumni Chair of Bioengineering in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Cristina Amon joined the University of Toronto's world-renowned Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering in 2006 as Dean, making her 13th Dean in the Faculty's 135-year history. A pioneer in the development of Computational Fluid Dynamics for formulating and solving thermal design problems subject to multidisciplinary competing constraints, Dean Amon continues her research at U of T in nanoscale thermal transport in semiconductors and bioengineered devices.

Susan McCahan - Chair, First Year
Susan McCahan is Chair, First Year, and has been a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering since 1992. Her current role of Chair, First Year, includes oversight of the first-year curriculum, development of co-curricular activities to support transition to university, and outreach and recruitment. She recently managed the implementation of a new general Engineering first-year curriculum, TrackOne, which was successfully introduced in Fall 2007.


Brenda McCabe - Chair of Civil Engineering
Brenda McCabe was appointed Chair of the Department of Civil Engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering and began her five-year term in January 2008. As part of McCabe's mandate, she will work to continue increasing the Department’s profile in the North American and international scholarly communites and in so doing attract resources for new initiatives. Prior to her appointment as Chair, Professor McCabe was the Faculty’s first woman Vice-Dean, responsible for building the strategy for the graduate studies in Engineering.

Yu-Ling Cheng - Professor, Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry
Since 1989, Professor Yu-Ling Cheng has contributed to the education mission of the University in many ways. She taught courses in physical chemistry, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, heat and mass transfer, biotransport, vector calculus, polymer chemistry, and mass transfer in polymers. Her Engineering Thermodynamics course was described by one former student as “the stuff of legend.” She played a key role in the design of the Biomedical Option in Engineering Science in 1995, and later served as Option Chair. In her role as Chair of the Division of Engineering Science (2000-2005), her dedication to her students was described as inspiring "loyalty and respect" as well as "affection and admiration." She also successfully oversaw significant enrollment expansion, led the development of an ambitious academic plan and spearheaded a renewal of the curriculum.

The following women faculty members have joined U of T Engineering in the past two years:

Female Academic Appointments 2008-2009

Aimy Bazylak (Victoria) - Assistant Professor, MIE
Aimy Bazylak’s passion for alternative energy led her to join a fuel cell research group at the University of Victoria for her graduate studies. From there, she broadened her expertise from micro fuel cells to a fuel cell with promise for transportation application—the polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC), which typically employs hydrogen and oxygen gasses as fuel and oxidant, leaving only heat and water as byproducts. At U of T, Professor Bazylak is excited to combine her three passions: alternative energy research, teaching, and public service.

Natalie Enright Jerger (Wisconsin-Madison) - Assistant Professor, ECE
Natalie Enright Jerger’s research focuses on computer architectures, specifically ways in which to optimize communication between processing cores and memory. Professor Jerger joined The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department at ECE in January 2009.

Dawn Kilkenny (Western) - CLTA Assistant Professor, IBBME
Dawn Kilkenny’s research interest is in intracellular signaling and celluar interaction with the extracellular environment, particularly during migration. Her specific interests relate to fibroblast growth factors (FGFs) and signaling through FGF receptors. Prior to joining IBBME, Professor Kilkenny was a Senior Research Specialist at the Cell Imaging Shared Resource, which is a microscopy imaging facility, at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Alison McGuigan (Toronto) - Assistant Professor, ChemE
Alison McGuigan’s research areas of interest are in how to design, organize, and assemble living biological materials such as tissues. Her research combines both Engineering and developmental biology principles and will include the creation of tools and strategies to organize living materials and developing quantitative models to describe the design and assembly process of living materials. Before joining the U of T, Professor McGuigan was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard University from 2005-2006 and Stanford University from
2006-2008.

Mary Nagai (Toronto) - CLTA Assistant Professor, IBBME
Mary Nagai is particularly interested in understanding the basic cellular and molecular level changes that take place during spinal cord injury and how these changes can be manipulated to improve the prognosis for patients with spinal cord injury. Her post-graduate clinical research studies were undertaken at the University of Manitoba, Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, and at U of T. Professor Nagai will be developing a research program in the area of spinal cord injury, specifically, the implementation of a new and unique flexion-distraction spinal cord injury model, which was developed at Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children.

Goldie Nejat (Toronto) - Assistant Professor, MIE
Goldie Nejat’s research work is in the areas of robotics and mechatronics/biomechatronics. In particular, her work focuses on the design and development of intelligent assistive robots, assistive devices and wireless sensor agents. Professor Nejat’s highly interdisciplinary research has important applications in the areas of rehabilitation, patient care, search and rescue, emergency response, surveillance, and security and manufacturing. Before joining U of T, Professor Nejat was an Assistant Professor for three years at The State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Jane Farwell (Toronto) - Lecturer, MIE
A Licensed Professional Engineer, Jane Farwell’s main teaching interests, in addition to solid fundamentals, are to improve the effectiveness of Engineering learning and to challenge students to develop practical thinking skills. Drawing from a variety of fields, including business, marketing, politics, healthcare, and Engineering, she achieves this goal by providing students with practical applications of the concepts taught. In addition to her teaching in Engineering and technology, Lecturer Farwell brings industrial work experience in design Engineering, manufacturing management, and Six Sigma quality.

Female Academic Appointments 2007-2008

Dionne Aleman (Florida) - Assistant Professor, MIE
Dionne Aleman’s research interests are focused on optimization of the delivery of healthcare services; most recently, she has focused on developing methods for optimizing intensity modulated radiation therapy to destroy tumors while minimizing damage to healthy tissue. Optimization in radiation therapy treatment planning, medical applications of operations research; Global and nonlinear optimization methods.

Susan A. Andrews (Alberta) - Associate Professor, CivE
Nano-scale sensors are being used to detect substances such as chlorine-based disinfectants in drinking water. Susan A. Andrews is involved in collaborative research efforts to identify appropriate chemistries for use in these sensors.

Alis Ekmekci (Lehigh) - Assistant Professor, UTIAS
For her PhD thesis, Alis Ekmekci investigated unsteady wakes from circular cylinders with surface perturbations using high-density particle image velocimetry. Ekmekci is currently a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at Purdue University. At the Institute for Aerospace Studies, Ekmekci will initiate a research program in experimental fluid dynamics emphasizing novel concepts for aerodynamic drag reduction.

Olivera Kesler (MIT) - Assistant Professor, MIE
Olivera Kesler’s areas of research include solid oxide fuel cells, fuel cell materials and manufacturing graded and multi-layered materials plasma spray and sol gel processing. Her current projects are aimed at lowering the cost and improving the durability of fuel cells, both SOFCs and Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs), through the use of new materials and processing techniques to produce fuel cells more rapidly using a process that is easily scaleable for mass production. Her work is also focused on understanding the electrochemical performance and degradation behaviour of SOFCs, in order to develop strategies to increase their durability.

Daman Panesar (McMaster) - Assistant Professor, CivE
Daman Panesar was a design engineer with Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) from 1997-2002 and was involved in major projects such as the construction and commissioning phase of a Nuclear Power Plant in China; plant and service life prediction of nuclear related concrete structures in Quebec and New Brunswick and tunnel sealing experiments for radioactive waste management in Manitoba. Dr. Panesar's research interests address cement based materials, durability, destructive and non-destructive test methods. She is a registered P.Eng. in Ontario and the recipient of several scholarships and awards.

Joyce Poon (Caltech) - Assistant Professor, ECE
Joyce Poon’s research interests include coupled micro-resonators, periodic optical structures, guided-waves, polymer integrated optics, III-V semiconductor lasers. Theory, design, fabrication, and characterization.

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