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Meet Julie Payette, ing., Emad Rizkalla, P.Eng., Dr. Wallace Read, P.Eng., and Dr. Janet Anne Wade Elliot, P.Eng, or meet other amazing engineers by clicking on the link at the end of Janet's bio. 
Julie Payette puts the letters ing. after her name because it is her professional designation, showing that she is a Professional Engineer, registered in Quebec with l’Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec. Professional engineers who are registered in other provinces and territories in Canada use the Personal data: Education: Organizations: Special honours: Experience: Ms. Payette was selected as an astronaut by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) in June 1992 and underwent training in Canada. After basic training, she worked as a technical advisor for the MSS (Mobile Servicing System), a robotic system that constitutes the Canadian contribution to the International Space Station. In 1993, Ms. Payette established the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Group at the Canadian Astronaut Office and served as a technical specialist on the NATO International Research Study Group (RSG-10) on speech processing (1993-1996). In preparation for a space assignment, Ms. Payette studied Russian and logged over 120 hours of reduced gravity flight time aboard various parabolic aircraft (KC-135, T-33, Falcon-20, DC-9). In April 1996, Ms. Payette completed a deep-sea diving hard suit training program in Vancouver BC and was certified as a one-atmosphere diving suit operator. Ms. Payette obtained her captaincy on military jet at the Canadian Air Force Base in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan in February 1996. She has since obtained her military instrument rating and continues to fly regularly with the training squadron. Ms. Payette has logged more than 700 hours of flight time, including 150 hours on the Tutor CT-114 jet aircraft. NASA experience: 
Behind every great business success is a talented individual who has steered a dream into reality. Emad Rizkalla, P.Eng., the young visionary behind a hot Newfoundland information technology (IT) company, ZeddComm Inc., is just such a leader.Mr. Rizkalla, the co-founder, president and CEO of ZeddComm, graduated from Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) in 1992 with a degree in mechanical engineering. A man of many interests, he had chosen engineering as a career because he wanted to design innovative technologies and thought engineering would give him the grounding he needed. A class project in the final year of his mechanical design class led to the founding of ZeddComm. The project, an antenna stablilizer device that was developed for the market with funding from the National Research Council, was not as successful as had been hoped. Factors beyond ZeddComm's control delayed the need for the stabilizer for three years, but in the meantime they had to pay the bills. The firm survived some difficult years by dabbling in IT consulting. By the time the stabilizer market eventually opened up, the company had become a thriving IT firm. ZeddComm is now one of the Newfoundland's largest IT firms. The highly respected e-learning and Web applications consulting company is headquartered in St. John's, Nfld.. Customers include Fortune 100 and prominent governmental clients, among them Microsoft Great Plains, Cisco Systems, Canon Corporation, Health Canada, EDS and the NBA's Golden State Warriors. It has been featured in Time, Financial Post, CBC's The National Magazine, Maclean's and the Globe and Mail's Report on Business magazine. ZeddComm employs over 50 people and plans to expand some ten-fold in the next five years. Today, Mr. Rizkalla says corporate leadership is the most important aspect of his job. He credits his father - a man full of creative ideas for interesting ventures, who approaches everything as an opportunity - with teaching him leadership and entrepreneurship skills. In addition to running ZeddComm, Mr. Rizkalla contributes in many ways to the Newfoundland community he loves. He speaks to engineering classes every year at Memorial University, where he encourages other enterprising young engineers to consider entrepreneurial options. He has spoken to student forums and conferences for the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Newfoundland and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He is past chair of the Newfoundland Association of Technology Industries, the voice of the technology sector in Newfoundland, where he focused on repatriating Newfoundland talent and developing export opportunities. He sits on the Board of Directors for the Genesis Group, a technology incubator, chairs the Royal Bank's Small Business Advisory Council, and sits on a federal task force of the Department of International Trade and Foreign Affairs. Mr. Rizkalla finds great satisfaction having built a company that's making a big difference to the community that he loves - St. John's and Newfoundland. But his greatest satisfaction, he says, comes from his employees who share a vision of moving the company forward. Mr. Rizkalla is a member of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Newfoundland (APEGN). 
Dr. Wallace (Wally) Read, P.Eng.'s provincial, national and international contributions in the field of electricity span a lifetime. Today, thanks to his leadership skills and engineering ability, Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro proudly stands as the fourth largest electric utility in Canada in terms of generating capacity. Yet 50 years ago, electricity was a luxury nearly half of Newfoundland's residents lived without.Transforming Newfoundland's power network from a disconnected jumble of woefully inadequate electrical facilities into a system that today not only serves all of Newfoundland and Labrador but also boasts a substantial reserve capacity took extraordinary vision and leadership. Both came from Wally Read. In 1964, Dr. Read was appointed chief engineer of the Newfoundland and Labrador Power Commission (NLPC). With an island power grid and associated generating projects under development, he became the guiding force behind the expansion of the electric power system across Newfoundland. He put his "heart and soul" into the plan to update and unify the province's existing isolated systems, and to build much needed generating plants. His work created an abundant, standardized source of power so crucial to industrialization throughout the province, brought electricity to many Newfoundland outports for the first time, and transformed home, life and job opportunities for thousands of Newfoundlanders. Ten years later, in 1974, Dr. Read was appointed chairman and chief executive officer of NLPC, which later became Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro. He managed the engineering and operations division of Hydro as it expanded to become the major shareholder of the Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corporation and the Twin Falls Power Corporation. Dr. Read also managed the operation of Churchill Falls, playing a lead role in the project design of the Gull Island and Muskrat Falls power sites and the high voltage transmission system to connect these plants to the Newfoundland and Quebec grids. Under his leadership, Newfoundland Hydro moved forward dramatically. Today, the company employs approximately 1,100 people, operating an intricate and sophisticated electrical system. Dr. Read attributes his success in life to two things, his love of electrical engineering and his leadership abilities. He finds joy in working with people, especially his fellow engineers who he finds inspiring. Over the years Dr. Read has been closely involved with numerous professional organizations including the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Newfoundland. In 1985 he became the first full-time president and CEO of the Canadian Electrical Association (CEA), and in 1996 he served as the International President of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Dr. Read was the first non-U.S. president elected by the full membership in the organization's history, a great testament to his stature and reputation. Although he has retired, Dr. Read still travels extensively and continues to volunteer with organization like IEEE, the Canada Standards Council and the Canadian Center for Marine Communication. One of Dr. Read's goals today is to be a positive influence on young engineers. His advice to them is, "Make sure you love what you're doing and then everything else will fall into place." It certainly seems to have been a dictum that worked for him, the benefits of which spilled over in abundance to the people of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Dr. Wallace Read is a member of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Newfoundland. 
Dr. Janet Anne Wade Elliott, P.Eng. Widely recognized as one of the engineering profession's up-and-coming super stars, Dr. Janet Anne Wade Elliott, P.Eng. is also an outstanding teacher and mentor.When she's not conducting innovative research on molecular transport, bitumen extraction from oil sands and the effect of gravity on interfacial properties, she inspires her students at the University of Alberta, and instils in them a lasting quest for knowledge. One student went so far as to write, "I feel very lucky to be in her class, and would be willing to rearrange my entire schedule if I ever had the opportunity to be taught by her again." Few others could have stood the pace Janet set for herself from the outset of her career, or can boast such a long list of accomplishments after just 11 years. She is one of the first 100 Canadians to fly on NASA's KC-135 microgravity flights, and worked as the principal investigator on a Canadian Space Agency project to study the effects of microgravity on interfacial properties. Despite her heavy research workload, she also found the time to develop a new undergraduate engineering course on colloids and surfaces. "Being an engineer means that the types of problems I get to work on are problems whose solutions really matter to people and will change the way that people live," Janet says. "I work hard, not because I am trying to be successful but because I love the thrill of discovery as I learn something new." Janet sees herself first and foremost as a problem solver. Although her workdays tend to be jam-packed, she says her motives are selfish because she has loved every minute of her career. After earning an undergraduate degree in engineering science in 1990, Janet went on to complete a masters and PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Toronto. She excelled as a student, receiving the Governor General's Gold Medal for the best PhD thesis in Science and Engineering, and subsequently the very prestigious Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada Doctoral Prize, one of only four such prizes awarded in 1997. Except for a last-minute change of plans, however, Janet may have followed a very different career path. "I had decided I was going to go to art college when my father suggested engineering science at the University of Toronto," says Janet. "He said, 'That's where all the smart people went who we used to make fun of when I was in university. You'll fit right in.' So, off I went." For the past six years, Janet has belonged to the engineering faculty at the University of Alberta, and is currently a tenured associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials engineering. In her short time at U of A, she has established a research program that has garnered her international attention, as well as invitations to speak at Gordon Conferences in Italy and California, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University. "I enjoy the opportunity to think and learn about such a broad variety of subjects, from such a diversity of people including undergraduate and graduate students, researchers and fellow faculty members," said Janet. "I get day-to-day positive feedback when I see students understanding. I can't believe I am so lucky as to get paid to do research in and teach thermodynamics and surfaces." Janet has combined her theoretical research in statistical rate theory with many applied engineering problems. She is involved in projects that span biology, transport processes and oil sands technology. "Surfaces play a role in many important processes," she says. "For example, most chemical processes in the human body occur at surfaces; the production of materials by catalysis at surfaces drives much of the world's economy; the extraction of wealth-creating resources, such as bitumen from oil sands or minerals from rock, is based on surface phenomena. The more understanding we can gain about surfaces from fundamental, curiosity-driven research, the better chance we have for future advances in these areas." You wouldn't think that Janet could find time to serve her profession, given her research and teaching commitments, but she is an active - and recognized - volunteer. In 1996, she won the Gordon Cressy Student Leadership Award for her participation on more than 15 groups and governing bodies at the University of Toronto. Today she is the fourth-year advisor for chemical engineering students at U of A and a director of the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering (CSChE), with the education and student affairs portfolio. Although she has a thirst for knowledge, Janet attributes much of her early drive and present success to the people who have surrounded and influenced her throughout her career. Inspiration has come from her father, Ted Wade, a geological engineer who always kept things in perspective, her classmates at the University of Toronto who inspired her by their own achievements, and her husband Duncan, an accomplished professor who has never lost his thirst for knowledge. "I think everyone should pursue a particular career because they love doing the things that their career entails and not because of monetary returns or fulfilling the wishes of parents and others," says Janet. "There is so much opportunity in this job that one has to think carefully about what projects to take on next." A member of the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta, Janet holds a Canada Research Chair in Interfacial Thermodynamics. She is an outstanding mentor for graduate students, an inspiration to her peers and her students, and a great Canadian engineer. In recognition of her accomphishments, Janet received the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers' Young Engineer Achievement Award in 2001. For more information on the Canadian Engineers' Awards recipients, click here. You can meet other amazing engineers at the Canada Science and Technology Museum's Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame. |
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