This prestigious plenary session showcases the personal perspectives of three leading early-career researchers in 10-minute TED Talk-style presentations. The panelists will highlight their vision of opportunities and big challenges in their respective fields, discuss strategies for success, and offer their views on where research is moving in the next 5 to 10 years.
Gisele Azimi, MCIC
University of Toronto
Beyond lithium-ion batteries: Development of next-generation aluminum ion batteries with superior performance
Gisele Azimi is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair joint-appointed between the Departments of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry and Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Toronto. She established the Laboratory for Strategic Materials in 2014, conducting research on addressing sustainability challenges in terms of energy, environment, and critical materials. She has received several prestigious awards and has delivered 25 invited talks in renowned national and international conferences and universities including MIT. She is on the editorial board of the Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering and Scientific Reports and she is the lead organizer of Rare Metal Symposia in renowned national and international conferences including COM and TMS. Not only is she pushing the limits of science and technology in her field, she does so in collaboration with 11 top-ranked industrial sponsors, who understand and benefit from her unique approach to solving real world problems. She has published over 40 journal articles with more than 1500 citations. She also has 15 patent applications with two patents granted. She has grown her research group to 18 sole-supervised members in different capacities – undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and research associates. She has graduated 11 Postdoc/PhD/MASc students, 7 placed in the Canadian industry and academia.
Noémie-Manuelle Dorval Courchesne
McGill University
Deriving Functional Devices from Nature
Noémie-Manuelle Dorval Courchesne is an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at McGill University since 2017. She was trained as a multidisciplinary scientist and engineer and earned a double degree in Biotechnology (Chemical Engineering & Biochemistry) from the University of Ottawa in 2010. She then obtained her PhD in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2015, and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard until 2017. In her research, she integrates synthetic biology with scalable assembly processes, to fabricate sustainable functional materials. She has worked in the field of bio-derived and bio-inspired materials for a decade, focusing on the fabrication and characterization of novel functional materials and devices using self-assembling recombinant proteins. Prof. Dorval Courchesne is actively involved in industrially-relevant research, with the goal of introducing biologically-derived technologies in real-world products. She is a member of several research networks including the Quebec Center for Advanced Materials (QCAM), the Research Center for High Performance Polymer and Composite Systems (CREPEC), the Trottier Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design (TISED) and the McGill Sustainability Systems Initiative (MSSI). In 2020, she was recognized for her research potential as the recipient of the Christopher Pierre Award for Research Excellence (Early Career) at McGill.
Kevin Golovin
The University of British Columbia
When liquids act like solids and solids like liquids
Prof. Kevin Golovin is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia Okanagan in the School of Engineering. Golovin holds degrees in material science and engineering from Cornell University (B.S.) and the University of Michigan (Ph.D.). Golovin is the Principal Investigator of the Okanagan Polymer Engineering Research & Applications (OPERA) Lab, which investigates interfacial mechanics, coatings, surface modification, and sustainable methods for achieving solid and liquid repellency. The OPERA lab explores both fundamental and applied projects, with industry partners including Arc’teryx, Boeing, FPInnovations, and PRE Labs. Golovin also leads the Comfort Optimized Materials For Operational Resilience, Thermal-transport, and Survivability (COMFORTS) Micro-net, a large-scale, interdisciplinary network sponsored by DND, investigating improved soldier protection and comfort. He additionally leads the UBC Cluster of Excellence in Comfort, a textile-centric collaborative group investigating novel, comfort-enabling technologies.
Before being recruited to the University of British Columbia, Golovin served as Vice President of Technology for HygraTek, a coatings/paints start-up based out of Ann Arbor, MI. At HygraTek, Golovin oversaw the development of novel coatings solutions including anti-icing materials for heat exchangers, dust-repellent coatings for vacuum cleaners, and omniphobic fabrics for the US Navy. Golovin is an inventor on 7 patents, one of which is actively licensed. Golovin has received various accolades, including the ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award and the Patagonia Eco Innovation Case Competition Grand Prize.