News and Events

It’s always been Taku Chitekeshe’s dream to design aircrafts. 

The mechanical engineering student never thought one day he’d be flying them. 

Thanks to a partnership between UWindsor’s Faculty of Engineering and the Aeronautics Leadership Program housed in the university’s Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Chitekeshe is the first student specializing in aerospace engineering who has completed his Private Pilot’s License (PPL). 

“The first time I flew alone, I felt accomplished,” Chitekeshe says. “It has been intriguing to learn how aircrafts are designed, but after getting the experience to fly an airplane, my dream job would be to combine those two aspects — to design aircrafts and to test them.”

Finding ways to make fossil fuels burn cleaner is the focus of a new research project by a doctoral candidate in UWindsor’s Faculty of Engineering.

Arash Khabazipur is looking at ways to interfere with soot formation by diluting fuel with gases such as nitrogen and hydrogen. Using an algorithm that replaces lab experiments with numerical code, he runs computer simulations to find permutations that result in reduced soot emissions.

“This research project directly addresses the environmental issues arising from hydrocarbon fossil fuel combustion,” Khabazipur said. “Canada and the U.S. are among the top fossil fuel consuming countries in the world, so this area of research is in intense demand.”

Khabazipur is among 107 UWindsor students who have received $6,000 research training grants in a recent funding call. His project is being funded by the University of Windsor and Mitacs, a national not-for-profit organization that creates partnerships among Canadian academia, private industry, and government to provide research and training opportunities.

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An injection of nearly $4.3 million in federal and industry funding will spur University of Windsor next–gen electric vehicle research conducted in collaboration with the Canadian auto industry.

A multidisciplinary team of University of Windsor researchers led by the Faculty of Engineering’s Dr. Narayan Kar has received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) in the amount of $1.9 million with additional industry cash and in-kind investment of $2.4 million to develop lightweight, compact, aluminum–intensive induction motors for electric vehicles as well as motor testing technologies.

These high–efficiency, high–performance motors have the potential to significantly reduce costs and extend the driving range of electric cars to meet aggressive 2025 traction motor targets set by the U.S. government, automakers and energy companies.

Ford Motor Company of Canada, D&V Electronics and Nemak are partnering on and providing funds toward the research project that includes UWindsor experts in materials, electrical, mechanical, thermal and software engineering.

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What is it about some communities that allows them to manage a pandemic and return to normalcy faster than others?

A UWindsor team led by engineering professor Edwin Tam will delve into that question with sweeping research into municipalities’ experiences under COVID-19. The research team will examine demographics, governance, infrastructure, and services to create a template to help Windsor and Essex County and other cities prepare for future pandemics.

“We hypothesize that specific municipal characteristics enhance a community’s resiliency,” said Dr. Tam. “Our overall goal is to assess if there are physical characteristics, demographic profiles, infrastructure, policies, and practices specific to a community that enhance its ability to withstand and overcome a pandemic.”

Put simply, he said: “We want to know what it is about a city that helps it combat the spread.”