2019 News Archive

For the past three years, the Windsor Section of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Canada has seen a surge in membership and accolades for its efforts.

Most recently, the IEEE Windsor Section led by University of Windsor researchers, received IEEE Canada’s Exemplary Section Award for medium sectionsduring the IEEE Canada Board of Directors Meeting in Toronto March 1-3, 2019.

The section was recognized for its outstanding membership retention performance and hosting more than 50 events, says Esrafil Jedari, Chair, IEEE Windsor Section and UWindsor research associate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. 

“None of this would’ve been possible without our section’s more than 35 motivated volunteers comprised of faculty members, graduate and undergraduate students,” Jedari says.

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Fourth-year industrial engineering students at the University of Windsor are improving the accuracy of critical medical procedures, optimizing automotive production lines and using virtual reality to enhance manufacturing processes.

Students presented these projects and more at the Faculty of Engineering’s annual Industrial Engineering Capstone Design Demo Day on March 29, 2019. Capstone projects challenge fourth-year engineering students to apply the formal knowledge they’ve gained during their undergraduate studies to solve real-world problems. 

Jackie Ing and Stefan Spiric focused on improving mannequins used to train students on perfecting thoracentesis, an invasive procedure that involves inserting a needle into the chest to remove fluid or air.

“It’s a very critical procedure, because if there’s too much force, they can puncture the lung or cause internal bleeding,” Ing says.

Windsor’s Schulich School of Medicine uses a medical training mannequin that has one silicone tissue layer. Ing says their model, created by graduate student Andre Khayat, has two silicone layers, which is more similar to human skin and muscle layers.

Using cadavers, the two collected data while performing the procedure and recorded the needle’s peak force, impulse force and pulsewidth. They then created a series of silicone trials to try and match the data. 

A Great Lakes Basin level modeling study conducted by a University of Windsor PhD candidate may enhance provincial climate change adaptation strategies. 

Masihur Rahman, a PhD candidate in civil engineering, has spent the last few years collecting and processing data from various provincial and federal government agencies to develop a Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model for the Great Lakes Basin in Southern Ontario. Rahman used the model to assess projected climate change impacts on the basin’s water availability.

“The beauty of this work is that it covers most of the of the Great Lakes Basin on the Canadian side,” Dr. Tirupati Bolisetti, Rahman’s faculty advisor and associate professor in civil and environmental engineering says about the first-of-its-kind study in Ontario. “So, such a large-scale modeling tool would help in water sector policy formulation and developing environmental plans for the province.” 

“The Windsor Mold Group is proud to continue its support of the University of Windsor in many ways, the most recent of which demonstrates our continued commitment to the students in Engineering, EPICentre, and Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences,” said Keith Henry, president and CEO of the Windsor Mold Group.

Nearly 80 Windsor and Essex County girl guides spent the end of their March break building bridges, circuits and water filters at the University of Windsor.

The full day of activities March 16 at UWindsor’s fourth annual Girl Guide Badge Day landed the girls engineering, science and water badges.

“We learnt if you attach two wires on a circuit to a lightbulb in a certain way, it lights up,” says Genevieve Bulmer, a Grade 5 student.“We also got to build a whole bridge. It was fun.”

University of Windsor and St. Clair College students have joined forces to compete against schools worldwide in a competition that encourages the development of a high-speed technology that has the potential to revolutionize mass transit.

They are one of three Canadian teams to advance to the final round of SpaceX’s Hyperloop Pod Competition and one of 21 worldwide that will compete this summer in Hawthorne, California at SpaceX headquarters — a rocket and spacecraft company spearheaded by Elon Musk. The Windsor students will test their pods alongside prestigious institutions including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Purdue University and the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

The group’s initial design work has helped them advance to the final round. After spending more than a year designing the pod and running calculations, simulations and modelling, uWinLoop turned to students from St. Clair College to assist with manufacturing. 

“With their extensive manufacturing resources, we will be able to manufacture the pod faster, which will give us more time to test and iterate on designs to be competitive and win in California,” says Stefan Sing, uWinLoop’s president and founder who’s in his third year of mechanical engineering.

University of Windsor researchers have teamed with local produce growers to improve greenhouse energy efficiency and decrease operating costs.

The two-year project led by Dr. Rupp Carriveau, director of UWindsor’s Environmental Energy Institute and co-director of the Turbulence and Energy Lab, is examining the technical and economic feasibility of a solar energy system designed to reduce dependency on carbon-based fuels for heating and grid connected power for electricity. 

“We're focusing on energy from the sun,” says Dr. Carriveau, who is working on the project with UWindsor’s Dr. David Ting, co-director of the Turbulence and Energy Laboratory. “The advantage here is that we can offset some of the dependence on natural gas, which of course we know has a carbon footprint and has a notable water footprint as well.”

The awards ceremony, held March 7 at Alumni Auditorium in the CAW Student Centre, recognized scholars and researchers university-wide in all stages of their careers.

“Today’s celebration is the sign of a thriving academic community, where people are flourishing in their research, scholarship and creativity, and receiving recognition and support for the extraordinary work they do,” said interim president Douglas Kneale.

“What is so impressive is our collective bench strength in research and scholarship. We have outstanding students, emerging scholars, and established researchers, singular efforts and large collaborative projects, local, provincial, national, and international honours and success across all disciplines.”

Dr. Mohammed Khalid, an electrical engineering professor, has been elected to the executive committee of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Canada. 

IEEE is the world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. It has more than 400,000 members worldwide, including more than 16,000 in Canada. IEEE membership offers access to technical innovation, cutting-edge information and networking opportunities. 

Upstairs at the North American International Auto Show is this year’s array of new cars being unveiled by automakers, but the lower level was where the wizardry behind them begins.

Researchers from UWindsor Engineering’s Centre for Hybrid Automotive Research and Green Energy — CHARGE, for short — were among the exhibitors on the lower level of Cobo Center, displaying a prototype of an electric motor created in collaboration with Ford Motor Company of Canada.

CHARGE Labs researchers also brought along a controller that runs an electric motor, and information on the independent, third-party testing they can provide manufacturers developing their own electric vehicles.

“We are here to showcase the contributions we are making as a university with this lab,” said Narayan Kar, director of CHARGE Labs and a professor with expertise in electrified transportation systems. “We are creating knowledge and experts for the future…. That’s what we’d like to demonstrate to the outside world.”