Concordia University Research Chairs

Spatial visualization is an essential skill that surgeons master to perform even for the most basic surgical procedures. Surgeons are routinely required to navigate complex, three-dimensional spaces without damaging vital tissue, nerves or organs to reach an area requiring medical attention, such as a tumour or aneurysm. Augmented reality allows for less invasive medical procedures and improved surgical workflows. This research program develops and tests visualization, display and interaction methods in the context of image-guided surgery to improve the spatial and depth understanding of volume rendered medical data in addition to studying the impact of augmented reality visualization for specific surgical tasks.

Sustainable mobility is the need of modern times. Digital technologies such as cyber physical systems, internet of things and cloud computing are seen as potential aids in this regard. In this research program, we are working on sustainable mobility planning of goods and people by leveraging the advantage of digital technologies to minimize negative environmental impacts and improve the quality of life in urban areas.

Today’s microelectronics systems are complex with hundreds of millions of transistors on a single chip. Complexity and time-to-market pressure pose new challenges in the design and verification process. Traditional testing no longer gives a reasonable level of assurance of a product’s quality. Tahar’s research aims to develop techniques and tools enabling the verification of system-on-chip designs through alternative means based on formal methods to improve the systems specification and verification process, thus shortening the design cycle of microelectronics products.

Minimization and avoidance of pollutant releases and understanding the movement and transformation of contaminants once they reach the environment, are required to avoid the degradation of the environment and hence the ecosystem. The increasing population is leading to fewer waste management options, environmental destruction, and increased disasters due to global warming. Environmental management and technological development will ultimately enhance the quality of life of the public and the quality of the environment for the entire ecosystem. Through this research program, Dr. Mulligan looks to develop technologies for the treatment of air, water, waste and soil contaminants, as well as investigate the processes for the transport and degradation of chemicals in the complete environment across all media.

The building envelope is a critical component in achieving energy efficient, carbon-neutral, healthy and resilient buildings. Our team focuses on investigating the impact of future climates on building performance and developing cost-effective and innovative building envelope solutions to enhance buildings’ resiliency and adaptive capability to future climates. It supports the Canadian government’s efforts to develop net-zero energy and climate adaptive building codes and standards and commitment to achieve net-zero emission by 2050.

Microfluidics is the design of ‘lab-on-a-chip’ devices that will fit right onto the palm of your hand.  Shih’s team designs and fabricates microfluidic devices that will be used to automate processes related to synthetic biology applications.  For example, they design microfluidic devices that will expedite the engineering of immune cells that can eradicate cancer cells.  Our approaches will accelerate the ‘design-build-test-learn’ cycle and can further be felt throughout many industries including medicine, biofuels, resource and food development as well as manufacturing.

The multidisciplinary research program's focus is on the development of fully integrated mmWave front end along with their integration in reconfigurable hybrid beamforming networks for emerging communications, imaging, and space systems. Such developments allow high data rate capacity and speed over extended wireless ranges for a variety of cutting-edge wireless networks and other related technologies such as autonomous vehicles, smart cities, health care, virtual reality, the Internet of Things, and imaging, sensing, safety, and airport and border security applications.

The rise of ultra-large-scale software systems (e.g., Amazon.com) has posed an impact on people's daily lives from mobile devices users to space station operators. The increasing importance and complexity of such systems makes their quality and efficiency a critical, yet extremely difficult issue to address. Weiyi and his research team have made major contributions in this area by understanding the challenges of such systems and developing techniques that help improve the quality and efficiency of ultra-large-scale systems. Weiyi's teams' work has been adopted and used by industrial practitioners daily.