MIE’s Distinguished Seminar Series features top international researchers and leading experts across major areas of Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Engineering. The speakers present about their latest research and offer their perspectives on the current state of their field. The Distinguished Seminar Series is coordinated by Professor Enid Montague.
The seminars are part of the program requirements for MIE Master of Applied Science and PhD students.
View all upcoming MIE Distinguished Seminars below or go to main Events Calendar
Interested alumni and members of the U of T community who would like to attend the seminars can email Kendra Hunter at hunter@mie.utoronto.ca
November 2025
MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Kevin Chen: "Insect-Scale Aerial Robots Driven by Soft Artificial Muscles"
Friday, November 28, 1:00pm-2:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
MIE Distinguished Seminar Series Reception with Professor Kevin Chen
Friday, November 28, 2:00pm-3:00pm
MC331
January 2026
MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Marc Rosen: "Energy Sustainability: A Key Pathway to Sustainable Development"
Friday, January 30, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
MIE Distinguished Seminar Series Reception with Professor Marc Rosen
Friday, January 30, 3:00pm-4:00pm
MC331
April 2025
MIE Distinguished Seminar Series Reception with Professor Wendy Rogers
Friday, April 4, 3:00pm-4:00pm
MC331
MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Wendy Rogers: "Living in Interactive Future Environments: Supporting Successful Aging through Technology"
Friday, April 4, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
February 2025
MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Ophir Frieder: "Digitized Health"
Friday, February 7, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
January 2025
MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Dean Alissa Park: "Creating a New Circular Carbon Economy via Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage"
Friday, January 31, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
November 2024
MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Michael Thouless: "The Mechanics of Adhesion and Interfacial Fracture - A Cohesive-Zone Perspective"
Friday, November 22, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
October 2024
MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Jonathan Caulkins: "Systems Modeling to Inform Policy Toward Illegal Drugs, the Opioid Epidemic, and Prescribed Safer Supply"
Friday, October 18, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
September 2024
MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Yuehwern Yih: "Human, Technologies, and Innovations in Health and Humanitarian Relief"
Friday, September 27, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
March 2024
MIE Distinguished Seminar Series Reception with Professor Yonggang Huang
Friday, March 1, 3:00pm-4:00pm
MC331
MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Yonggang Huang: "A Dynamically Reprogrammable Surface with Self-Evolving Shape Morphing"
Friday, March 1, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
February 2024
MIE Distinguished Seminar Series Reception with Professor Eberhard Bodenschatz
Friday, February 2, 3:00pm-4:00pm
MC331
In-Person: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Eberhard Bodenschatz: "Fluid Transport in the Third Ventricle of the Mammalian Brain"
Friday, February 2, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
January 2024
MIE Distinguished Seminar Series Reception with Professor Rupa Valdez
Friday, January 26, 3:00pm-4:00pm
MC331
In-Person: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Rupa Valdez: "Designing Systems That Promote Equity: A Journey Across Disciplines"
Friday, January 26, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
November 2023
MIE Distinguished Seminar Series Reception with Professor Jay Humphrey
Friday, November 3, 3:00pm-4:00pm
MC331
In-Person: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Jay Humphrey: "Vascular Mechanics and Mechanobiology Illustrated"
Friday, November 3, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
October 2023
MIE Distinguished Seminar Series Reception with Professor Gang Chen
Friday, October 13, 3:00pm-4:00pm
MC331
In-Person: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Gang Chen: "Photomolecular And Thermal Evaporation at Water-Air Interface"
Friday, October 13, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
September 2023
In-Person: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Mark Van Oyen: "A Hospital Bed Placement Decision Support System Implementation and New Methods for Patient Decisions Via Capacitated Multi-Armed Bandits with Delayed Rewards and Reusable Resources"
Friday, September 22, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
MIE Distinguished Seminar Series Lunch with Professor Mark Van Oyen
Friday, September 22, 12:30pm-1:30pm
MC331
March 2023
Networking Reception with Prof. Peter Glynn
Friday, March 31, 3:00pm-4:00pm
MC331
In-Person: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Peter Glynn: "Statistics for Service Operations"
Friday, March 31, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building
CANCELLED: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Seeram Ramakrishna: "Advancing Materials Science and Engineering with Future in Mind: Sustainable Materials and Intelligent Materials"
Friday, March 17, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
Networking Reception with Prof. Michael McAlpine
Friday, March 3, 3:00pm-4:00pm
MC331
In-Person: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Michael McAlpine: "3D Printing Active Electronic Devices"
Friday, March 3, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
February 2023
Networking Reception with Prof. Kristen Miller
Friday, February 10, 3:00pm-4:00pm
MC331
In-Person: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Kristen Miller: "Re-engineering the Future of Diagnostic Safety: A Human Factors Engineering Approach"
Friday, February 10, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
December 2022
Networking Reception with Prof. David Pui
Friday, December 2, 3:00pm-4:00pm
MC331
NEW DATE In-Person: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor David Pui: "Green Technologies for Sustainable Environment"
Friday, December 2, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
November 2022
Networking Reception with Dr. Jesse Zhu
Friday, November 25, 3:00pm-4:00pm
MC331
In-Person: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Dr. Jesse Zhu: "Small Particles Hoisting Gigantic Industrial Processes - the I2I (Idea-to-Industrialization) road of Particle Technology"
Friday, November 25, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
October 2022
Networking Reception with Professor Emeritus Christopher Macosko
Friday, October 28, 3:00pm-4:00pm
MC331
In-Person: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Emeritus Christopher Macosko: "Applying Rheology to Solve Engineering Problems"
Friday, October 28, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
September 2022
MIE Distinguished Seminar Series Reception with Professor Ann Bisantz
Friday, September 16, 3:00pm-3:30pm
MC331
In-Person: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Ann Bisantz: "Cognitive Systems Engineering and Health Informatics: A Work-Centered Design Approach"
Friday, September 16, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
April 2022
Online: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Ashok Goel: "Biologically Inspired Design: Information-Processing Models and Computational Methods"
Friday, April 1, 2:00pm-3:00pm
March 2022
Online: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Aydin Nabovati: "Thermal Management of Self Driving Systems: From Silicon to Vehicle to Supercomputers"
Friday, March 25, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Online: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Philomena Bluyssen: "The Need for Understanding the Indoor Environment and its Occupants"
Friday, March 11, 2:00pm-3:00pm
November 2021
Online: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor John Hooker: "Balancing Fairness and Efficiency in a Optimization Model"
Friday, November 19, 2:00pm-3:00pm
October 2021
Online: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Fan Yuan: “Overcoming and Establishing Transport Barriers to Improve Delivery of Molecular Cargo”
Friday, October 22, 2:00pm-3:00pm
March 2021
Online: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Dr. Robert Bixby: "Optimization: Past, Present, Future"
Friday, March 19, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Online: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Garud Iyengar: “Shapley Meets Uniform: An Axiomatic Framework for Attribution in Online Advertising”
Friday, March 5, 2:00pm-3:00pm
February 2021
Online: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Albrecht Schmidt: “Interactive Human Centered Artificial Intelligence–A Definition and Research Challenges”
Friday, February 26, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Online: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Jock D. Mackinlay: “Analytical Conversation"
Friday, February 5, 2:00pm-3:00pm
November 2020
Online: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Peer Fischer: "Microsystems and Nanorobots Actuated by Light, Magnetic Fields, and 3D Ultrasound"
Friday, November 13, 2:00pm-3:00pm
October 2020
Online: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor John A. Rogers: "Soft Electronic and Microfluidic Systems for the Human Body"
Friday, October 16, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Online: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Cynthia Rudin: "Current Approaches in Interpretable Machine Learning"
Friday, October 2, 2:00pm-3:00pm
September 2020
Online: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series with Professor Douglas Thomson: "Single Cell Dielectric Analysis–High Throughput Using Optical Transit Dielectrophoresis Flow Cytometry"
Friday, September 25, 2:00pm-3:00pm
March 2020
CANCELLED: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series: Albrecht Schmidt, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Friday, March 27, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
CANCELLED: MIE Distinguished Seminar Series: Anna Nagurney, Virtual Center for Supernetworks, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Friday, March 13, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
MIE Distinguished Seminar Series: Peter Hancock, MIT2 Laboratory, University of Central Florida
Friday, March 6, 2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102