Emcee:
Professor Mary A. Wells
Dean, Faculty of Engineering
University of Waterloo
Mary Wells is Dean of Engineering at the University of Waterloo (since July 1, 2020), the ninth dean since the Faculty was founded in 1957. From 2017-2020, she was Dean of the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Guelph.
Prior to her time in Guelph, Wells was a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo for 10 years. She received awards for graduate supervision from both the Faculty and the University in 2017.
An accomplished materials engineer, Wells also served as the Associate Dean of Outreach for Waterloo Engineering between 2008 and 2017, and chaired its Women in Engineering committee for many years. She chaired the Ontario Network of Women in Engineering from 2013 to 2018.
Wells began her academic career as a professor in materials engineering at the University of British Columbia from 1996 to 2007, and has worked in the steel industry in Canada and internationally.
The co-author of two books including one on Canadian women innovators and the second on Canadian women in materials, her research focuses on the relationship between processing, structure and properties for advanced metallic alloys used in the transportation sector.
Connect with Mary Wells on LinkedIn.
Moderator:
Armen Bakirtzian
BASc 2008, Mechatronics Engineering
Co-Founder and CEO
Intellijoint Surgical
Biography:
Armen Bakirtzian is the co-founder and CEO of Intellijoint Surgical, a Kitchener based medical device company focusing on improving patient outcomes in joint replacement surgery. Intellijoint Surgical is a spinoff of an engineering design project Armen and his co-founders completed as part of their Bachelor degrees in mechatronics engineering at the University of Waterloo. Upon graduation, Armen completed his Masters in biomedical engineering from the University of Toronto.
Intellijoint Surgical was then founded in 2010 to commercialize their technology, called intellijoint HIP™. Intellijoint Surgical now offers a suite of products to assist orthopedic surgeons and was awarded the #1 fastest growing tech company in Canada by Deloitte’s 2020 Technology Fast 50™ Companies List. Armen has been selected to represent Canada at G20 Young Entrepreneur Alliance Summits and further, he was awarded with a Future Entrepreneurial Leader of Canada (FuEL) award. Armen also spearheaded the creation of MIX, Medical Innovation Xchange, Canada’s first industry-led innovative hub dedicated to helping medtech companies scale within Canada.
Connect with Armen Bakirtzian on LinkedIn.
Panel Speakers:
Elliot Fung
Executive Director
Medical Innovation Xchange (MIX)
Biography:
Elliot is a passionate supporter of the local technology ecosystem, and an experienced community leader. Over the past 20 years, Elliot has held various executive roles helping to advance the local ecosystem. He was Vice President, Innovation and Strategic Partnerships at Ontario Health and also held various strategic positions at BlackBerry, helping to adopt and commercialize enterprise-level technology to some of BlackBerry’s largest global partners. Elliot has also served two terms on municipal council in the Township of Wilmot and one term as the Vice Chairperson of the Waterloo Regional School Board. Currently, Elliot is also a sessional instructor at the University of Waterloo in the Bio Medical Engineering program and serves on the Board of Directors for Intellectual Property Ontario (IPON). Elliot studied Political Science at Wilfrid Laurier University.
Connect with Elliot Fung on LinkedIn.
Hamed Shahsavan, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Chemical Engineering
University of Waterloo
Biography:
Hamed Shahsavan is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He obtained his PhD in chemical engineering and nanotechnology from the University of Waterloo in 2017. In his graduate studies, Dr. Shahsavan’s research was focused on the fabrication and characterization of bioinspired micro/nanostructured surfaces and their implications in fundamental studies of contact mechanics, and interfacial phenomena, such as adhesion, friction, and wetting. Fascinated by the rapidly growing fields of soft robotics and smart materials, he moved to Stuttgart in Germany, to embark on his postdoctoral research as an NSERC postdoctoral fellow at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. In this period, he mainly focused on the synthesis of different types of liquid crystalline elastomers, networks and gels to deploy them as shape-change programmable materials in soft robots and devices at millimeter to micrometer scale. During his PhD studies, Dr. Shahsavan was a visiting scholar in the Advanced Materials and Liquid Crystal Institute at Kent State University, OH, USA. He was also a visiting scientist in the Smart Photonic Materials (SPM) research group at the University of Tampere in Finland. His current research interests revolve around the development of a variety of soft, stimuli-responsive, and programmable materials, and different fabrication methods for the manufacturing of small-scale mobile robots and devices.
Connect with Hamed Shahsavan on LinkedIn.
Additional speakers to be announced.
Registration: There are no physical tickets for this event. Once your online registration is completed, you will be sent a registration confirmation by email and your name will be added to the event guest list. Please check in at the door when you arrive at the event.
Please note: This session will not be recorded. Past sessions of this series were virtual and have been posted to view on the Alumni Speaker Playlist on the Waterloo Engineering YouTube Channel. Event participants do not have permission to record the session.
