Faculty Accolades, November 2013

Liangzhu (Leon) Wang and his PhD student Cheng-Chun Lin from the Department of Building, Civil and Environment Engineering have been awarded the 2013 Best Paper Award from the journal Building and Environment for the paper "Forecasting simulations of indoor environment using data assimilation via an Ensemble Kalman Filter." Their paper discussed the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF), a data assimilation method originally designed for weather forecasting. Theirs was one of the first ever applications of this method to the indoor environment. The award is given to papers based on "originality, contributions to the field, quality of presentation, and soundness of the science."

At the Fall Convocation, recent alumnus, Amir Sanati-Nezhad, who completed his PhD in Concordia's Optical-Bio Microsystem Laboratory, focusing on the design and implementation of devices for the study of cell biomechanics, won the Governor General's Gold Medal. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow in McGill University's Micro and Nano-Bioengineering lab. Sanati-Nezhad is working on developing micro-devices that examine the invasive properties of migratory cancer cells.

At Fall Convocation, Concordia awarded an honorary doctorate to Vahid Tarokh, PhD, who was the principal inventor of space-time codes in 1996. Space-time codes significantly improved the speed, capacity and clarity of wireless voice and data communications. Tarokh is one of the world's most cited researchers in electrical engineering.

Navid Sharifi, a PhD student under the supervision of Martin Pugh, Christian Moreau, and Ali Dolatabadi in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) received the first prize for the Engineering and Computer Science Graduate Association (ECSGA) Poster Competition for 2013, chosen from among 14 participants in MIE.

Md. Shahidul Islam, a PhD student in the Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering, under the supervision of Saifur Rahaman, has also been awarded the best poster presenter in the ECSGA poster competition. His presentation was called, "Preparation and characterization of polymer/Carbon nanotube composite nanoparticles and nanofibers through electrospinning."

A. K. Waizuddin Ahmed, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering has become a Fellow of ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers). This is an honour bestowed on select individuals who are "responsible for significant engineering achievements." As the ASME website states, Ahmed has "contributed immensely as an engineering educator and a researcher. His works in road & railway vehicles have been most widely recognized. He developed a comprehensive curriculum in Vehicle Systems at Concordia, and served as director of internationally reputed CONCAVE Research Centre." Read more.