Dionne M. Aleman

PhD, P.Eng.

Professor, Industrial Engineering
Associate Dean, Cross-Disciplinary Programs, Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Email: dionne.aleman@utoronto.ca
Tel: 416-978-6780
Office: BA1015A
Research group: Medical Operations Research Lab (morLAB)

Research Areas

Operations Research

Applied Machine Learning

Research Interests

Medical applications of operations research; radiotherapy treatment optimization, pandemic planning; data mining to improve bone marrow transplant outcomes; global optimization; heuristic design; parallel computing.

Bio

Dionne Aleman is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto, and holds appointments in the UofT Institute for Health Policy, Management & Evaluation, the UofT Institute for Pandemics, and the UHN Techna Institute. She received her PhD in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Florida (2007), MSc from the University of Florida (2006), and BSc from the University of Florida (2003).

Dr. Aleman’s research focuses on the application of operations research to medical and healthcare systems to improve the quality, timeliness, and efficiency of care. This research includes using optimization, simulation, machine learning, and graph theory to design and validate radiation therapy treatment plans, to predict and mitigate the spread of pandemic diseases in urban populations, to improve hospital surgical scheduling, and to optimize organ transplant matches and multi-person chains. Dr. Aleman has held grants from NSERC, CFI, ORF, and NSF for her research. She is a two-term past President of the Canadian Operational Research Society (CORS). Within the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS), she currently serves on the Committee for Teaching and Learning, and has previously served as Chair of the Health Applications Society (HAS), President of the Public Sector OR Section (PSOR), President of the Junior Faculty Interest Group (JFIG), Chair of INFORM-ED, and TutORials co-chair. Dr. Aleman is also a Topical Editor for the Wiley Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science, Associate Editor for IIE Transactions on Healthcare Systems Engineering, Associate Editor for OMEGA, Associate Editor for the International Journal of Biomedical Data Mining, and Editorial Board Member of Operations Research in Health Care.

Myrtede Alfred

PhD

Assistant Professor, Industrial Engineering

Email: myrtede.alfred@utoronto.ca
Tel: 416-978-3662
Office: RS319

Research Areas

Human Factors

Research Interests

Patient safety; systems equity; maternal health disparities; virtual environments

Bio

Myrtede Alfred is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. Prior to joining University of Toronto, she served as a research assistant professor at the Medical University of South Carolina where she spent the past three years applying her expertise as a human factors engineer to improve the delivery of care through both research and practice. She obtained her PhD in industrial engineering from Clemson University (2017). During her tenure at Clemson, she held the SREB Dissertation Fellowship and Janine Bowen Graduate Fellowship and earned multiple awards for teaching and outreach including the College of Engineering, Computing, and Applied Science’s Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant and MLK Jr. Excellence in Service Award.

Professor Alfred’s research examines the role of sociotechnical systems factors in supporting or hindering safety in clinical systems, with specific interests in surgical instrument reprocessing, robotic-assisted surgery, anesthesia medication delivery, and retained foreign objects. Complementing the social determinants of health framework, her research also leverage human factors and systems engineering to examine clinical systems contributions to healthcare disparities.

Cristina H. Amon

OC, ScD, P.Eng., FAAAS, FASEE, FASME, FCAE, FCSME, FEIC, FIEEE, FRSC, NAE, NAE

Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Alumni Distinguished Professor in Bioengineering
Dean Emerita, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering (2006-2019)

Email: cristina.amon@utoronto.ca
Tel: 416-978-2272
Office: BA 8102
Research group: Advanced Thermal/fluid Optimization, Modelling and Simulation (ATOMS) Lab

Research Area

Thermofluids

Research Interests

Nanoscale thermal transport; thermofluids; clean energy systems; electric vehicle and battery thermal management; regenerative medicine, hemodynamics and transport in biomedical systems.

Bio

Cristina Amon is an Order of Canada recipient, University Professor, Alumni Distinguished Professor and Dean Emerita at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering. Under her leadership, Canada’s #1 ranked engineering school has become a global hub for inter-disciplinary research and education known for its strategic Faculty-wide initiatives, cross-Faculty centres and institutes, and innovative undergraduate and graduate programming.

Prior to joining U of T in 2006, she was the Raymond J. Lane Distinguished Professor and Director of the Institute for Complex Engineered at Carnegie Mellon University. She has pioneered the field of Computational Fluid Dynamics and the development of multidisciplinary multi-scale hierarchical modelling, concurrent design and optimization methodologies for thermo-fluid transport phenomena, with applications to thermal management of electronics and electric vehicles, renewable energy and biomedical devices.

Professor Amon was appointed to the Order of Canada and inducted into the Canadian Academy of Engineering, Hispanic Engineer Hall of Fame, Royal Society of Canada, Spanish Royal Academy and US National Academy of Engineering. She is a fellow of all major professional societies in her field and has contributed over 400 refereed articles to the education and research literature.

Among her many accolades, she received the ASEE Westinghouse Medal, ASEE Ralph Coats Roe Award, ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award, ASME InterPACK Achievement Award, EIC Sir John Kennedy Medal, and CSME Robert W. Angus Medal. She was recognized as one of Canada’s Most Influential Women in 2012, received the Engineers Canada Award for the Support of Women, was named one of the YWCA’s Women of Distinction, and received the highest honor for Engineers in Canada (2020 Engineers Canada Gold Medal) and Ontario (2015 PEO Gold Medal) for outstanding engineering public service, technical excellence and professional leadership.

Cristina Amon is the founding chair of the Global Engineering Deans Council and has served on numerous editorial and technical conference roles, advisory and review boards in North America and abroad. She received her Mechanical Engineering degree from Simon Bolivar University in Venezuela, and her M.S. and Sc.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Photo of Professor Amon by Daniel Ehrenworth

Samin Aref

PhD

Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, Industrial Engineering

Email: aref@mie.utoronto.ca
Tel: 416-946-7233
Office: BA8112

Research Areas

Operations Research

Applied Machine Learning

Information Engineering

Research Interests

Data science, network science, mathematical programming, graph algorithms and optimization, statistical learning, social network analysis, computational complexity, scalable computing, big data analytics, complex systems, science of science, and computational social science

Bio

Samin Aref is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream in data science at the University of Toronto Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. Prof. Aref holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Auckland (New Zealand, 2019) and an MSc in Industrial Engineering from Sharif University of Technology (Iran, 2014). Prior to joining the U of T, he has been a research scientist and a research area chair at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Laboratory of Digital and Computational Demography (Germany, 2018-2021). Prof. Aref’s research is at the intersections of Data Science, Operations Research, Applied Machine Learning, Network Science, Industrial Engineering, and Computational Social Science for which he has secured funding from several organizations in Germany, New Zealand, and Canada. Prof. Aref has given over 60 invited talks and presentations at international conferences and workshops and has published over 20 articles in reputable journals including European Journal of Operational Research, Networks, Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, Scientometrics, EPJ Data Science, Scientific Reports, and Journal of Complex Networks. More info on saref.github.io

Nasser Ashgriz

PhD, JD, P.Eng., FAAAS

Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Email: ashgriz@mie.utoronto.ca
Tel: 416-946-3408
Office: MC415
Research group: Multiphase Flow and Spray Systems Lab

Research Area

Thermofluids

Research Interests

Fluid and thermal systems, spray and multiphase flows; energy, combustion, and nuclear engineering; microfluidics, micro-droplet jetting; bio-fluid engineering and vestibular systems.

Bio

Dr. Nasser Ashgriz is a professor of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. Prior to U of T, he was a Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York. He obtained his BS (1979), MS (1981), and PhD (1984) degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, where he was the recipient of two Bennet Prize awards (1981, 1983) in recognition of outstanding scholarly work in Mechanical Engineering.

He has been a visiting scientist at several national laboratories including NASA Lewis Research Center and Phillips Laboratory at Edwards Air Force Base. He has received several awards including the Ralph Teetor Award from Society of Automotive Engineers (1988), The Best Picture Award, from the American Physical Society (1988), the Best Paper Award, from the Combustion Institute (1992), and TOKTEN Award from the United Nations Development Program (1995). He is also the holder of a patent on MultiOrifice Impulsed Spray Generator, Patent No. 4,667,877. Dr. Ashgriz has been a member and has held offices in various professional societies (e.g., ASME K-11 Committee, “Heat Transfer in Fire and Combustion Systems,” ASME Winter Annual Meeting, American Physical Society, the Combustion Institute, and the Institute for Liquid Atomization and Spray Systems).

Fae Azhari

PhD, P.Eng.

Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Email: azhari@mie.utoronto.ca
Tel: 416-978-2534
Office: MC228
Research group: Decisionics Lab

Research Areas

Mechanics & Design
Operations Research

Research Interests

Structural health monitoring, sensor development, intelligent structures and systems, computer simulations coupled with field and laboratory testing, and decision analytics.

Bio

Fae Azhari is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering and Civil & Mineral Engineering at the University of Toronto. She also held a Dean’s Spark Professorship in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering (2018-2021). She completed her PhD in Structural Engineering and Mechanics at UC Davis and holds two master’s degrees, one in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from UC Berkeley and the other in Civil Engineering from UBC. She is a registered Professional Engineer with five years of industry experience. Fae’s research focuses on structural health monitoring (SHM) and prognosis of engineering systems. Her main areas of research are (I) sensor development and assessing the performance of novel sensing devices, and (II) developing decision-making frameworks that use probabilistic models to translate collected data into meaningful information and efficient remedial strategies for various engineering systems.

Aimy Bazylak

PhD, PEng, FEIC, FCSME, FASME

Professor, Mechanical Engineering & Associate Chair, Research
Professor (Cross-Appointment), Dept. of Materials Science & Engineering
Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Clean Energy

Email: aimy.bazylak@utoronto.ca
Office: MC227
Research group: Thermofluids for Energy and Advanced Materials (TEAM) Laboratory

Research Area

Thermofluids

Research Interests

Multiphase flow through porous media; thermofluids; clean energy applications; polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells; PEM water electrolyzers; carbon dioxide electrolyzers; solid-state batteries; regenerative medicine.

Bio

Professor Aimy Bazylak is the Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Clean Energy and a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the U of T. In 2011, she was awarded the I.W. Smith Award from the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering, and she received the Ontario Early Researcher Award in 2012. From 2015-2018, she served as the Director of the U of T Institute for Sustainable Energy. In 2015 she was named an Alexander Von Humboldt Fellow (Germany), and in 2019 she was named a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. In 2020, she was named a Helmholtz International Fellow (Germany), was awarded the U of T McLean Award, and was elected to the Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. In 2021, she served as the Vice-Dean Undergraduate (Interim), and in 2022, she served as the Director (Interim) of the Division of Engineering Science for the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering. In 2022 she was elected as a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC) for excellence in engineering and services to the profession and to society.

Jason Bazylak

P.Eng., M.Ed.

Professor, Teaching Stream, Mechanical Engineering
Hart Teaching Innovation Professor

Email: jason.bazylak@utoronto.ca
Tel: 416-946-5066
Office: MC221
Website: jbazylak.mie.utoronto.ca

Bio

Jason Bazylak brings his engineering, education, and design experience to his role at the University of Toronto. He currently coordinates an award winning first year design course (Engineering Strategies and Practice), conducts research into reducing the under-representation of women and Indigenous people in engineering, and is the Dean’s Advisor on Indigenous Initiatives. Professor Bazylak started his career as a manufacturing engineer in a new product introduction division of a large telecommunication manufacturer. He returned to academia joining the University of Victoria first as an engineering co-operative education coordinator and then as an engineer-in-residence. He joined the University of Toronto as a teaching stream professor where he is heavily involved in design education. He most recently won the Hart Teaching Innovative Professorship for his work to increase engineering engagement with Indigenous students and communities.

Christopher Beck

PhD, LEL

Professor, Industrial Engineering

Email: jcb@mie.utoronto.ca
Tel: 416-946-8854
Office: BA8126
Research Group: Toronto Intelligent Decision Engineering Laboratory (TIDEL)

Research Areas

Information Engineering
Operations Research
Applied Machine Learning

Research Interests

Optimization; heuristic search; constraint programming; scheduling; hybrid algorithms; dynamic and uncertain problems; problem modeling.

Bio

J. Christopher Beck is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. He received his PhD from the Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto in 1999 on the topic of knowledge-based heuristic search algorithms for constraint-directed scheduling. Chris then spent three years on the Scheduler Team at ILOG, SA (now part of IBM) in Paris, France, developing industrial constraint-directed scheduling software. He then was a Staff Scientist at the Cork Constraint Computation Centre in Cork, Ireland. Since 2004, he has been at the University of Toronto. Professor Beck’s research interests continue to include scheduling, heuristic search, and constraint programming but have widened to include hybrid optimization combining mixed-integer programming and constraint programming, constraint integer programming, optimization under uncertainty, queueing theory, online algorithms, and multi-agent negotiation for coupled combinatorial optimization problems.

Kamran Behdinan

PhD, PEng., FAAAS, FASME, FCAE, FCSME, FEIC, FPWC, AFAIAA

Professor, Mechanical Engineering
NSERC Chair in Multidisciplinary Engineering Design
Director, Institute for Multidisciplinary Design & Innovation (UT-IMDI)

Email: behdinan@mie.utoronto.ca
Tel: 416-946-3631
Office: MB113
Research Group: Multidisciplinary Engineering Design; Multiscale Analysis and Design of Multifunctional Lightweight Structures

Research Area

Mechanics & Design

Research Interests

Multidisciplinary Engineering Design; Multiscale Analysis and Design of Multifunctional Lightweight Structures

Bio

Dr. Kamran Behdinan, earned his Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Victoria in British Columbia in 1996, and has a considerable experience in both academic and industrial settings. Kamran was appointed to the academic staff of Ryerson University in 1998, tenured and promoted to the level of associate professor in 2002 and subsequently to the level of Professor in 2007 and served as the director of the aerospace engineering program (02-03), and the founding Chair of the newly established Department of Aerospace Engineering (07/2003 – 07/2011).  Kamran was a founding member and the Executive Director of the Ryerson Institute for Aerospace Design and Innovation (2003-2011). He was also a founding member and the coordinator of the Canadian-European Graduate Student Exchange Program in Aerospace Engineering at Ryerson University. Dr. Behdinan held the NSERC Design Chair in “Engineering Design and Innovation”, 2010-2012, sponsored by Bombardier Aerospace and Pratt and Whitney Canada. Dr. Behdinan joined the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, in the rank of Full Professor in September 2011. He is the NSERC Design Chair in “Multidisciplinary Design and Innovation – UT IMDI”, sponsored by NSERC, University of Toronto, and thirteen companies including Bombardier Aerospace, Pratt and Whitney Canada, United Technology Aerospace Systems, Magna International, Honeywell, SPP Canada Aircraft, Ford, and DRDC Toronto. He is the founding director of the “University of Toronto Institute for Multidisciplinary Design and Innovation”, an industry-centred project-based learning institute in partnership with major aerospace and automotive companies.

Dr. Behdinan is the past President of the Canadian Society of Mechanical Engineering (CSME), served as a member of the technical and scholarship committees of the High Performance Computing Virtual Laboratory (HPCVL) and a member of the Design Division of the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute (CASI). He is the founding director and principal investigator of the University of Toronto, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering “Advanced Research Laboratory for Multifunctional Lightweight Structures”, funded by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (Leader’s Opportunity Fund) and Ontario Research Fund. His research interests include Design and Development of Light-Weight Structures for aerospace, automotive, and nuclear applications, Multidisciplinary Design Optimization of Aerospace and Automotive systems, Multi-scale Simulation of Nano-structured Materials and Composites. He has supervised 28 PhDs, 110 Masters’, and 34 Post-Doctoral Fellows and Scholars. He has also published more than 330 peer-reviewed Journal and Conference papers, and 9 book chapters. He has been the recipient of many prestigious awards and recognitions such as the Research Fellow of Pratt and Whitney Canada and Fellows of the CSME, ASME, the Canadian Academy of Engineering, EIC, AAAS, as well as Associate Fellow of AIAA.

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