Bottom (left to right): Afshin Poraria and Jaro Pristupa
April 22, 2020
With files from Carolyn Farrell
Five ECE faculty and staff have been honoured for their outstanding contributions to the Faculty with teaching, research and administrative staff awards.
These awards recognize exceptional faculty and staff members for their leadership, citizenship, innovation and contributions to the Faculty’s teaching, service and research missions. The recipients would normally be recognized at the Faculty’s annual Celebrating Engineering Excellence reception, which had to be cancelled this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m grateful to have this opportunity to acknowledge the amazing contributions made by our faculty and staff,” said U of T Engineering Dean Christopher Yip. “On behalf of the Faculty, warmest congratulations to the awardees, and my heartfelt thanks to all our faculty and staff members for their hard work, dedication and commitment to excellence.”
The ECE award recipients are:
Professor Farid Najm
Safwat Zaky Research Leader Award
Recognizing leadership in innovative interdisciplinary and multiple-investigator initiatives that have enhanced the Faculty’s research profile
Farid Najm is an international leader in the field of computer-aided design software tools for the design of large-scale integrated circuits. His work has addressed many important problems faced by industry, and has been widely incorporated into industrial practice. As Chair of ECE from 2009-2019, Najm made exceptional contributions in expanding and advancing the department’s research mission. He created the new role of Associate Chair, Research and reached out to other departments to break down silos and create multidisciplinary research centres such as the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics. Najm also led a major outreach program to industry, forming an Industrial Advisory Board and creating networking opportunities to facilitate industrial partnerships. These initiatives led to a significant increase in research funding, as well as disclosures, patents and start-ups, over the course of Najm’s term.
Nini Chen
Harpreet Dhariwal Emerging Leader Award
Recognizing a staff member who leads by example in their dedication to the Faculty’s mission and demonstrates potential to assume a more senior leadership role.
As Research Award Officer and Program Coordinator for ECE, Nini Chen has enhanced the department’s research operations through her innovation and expertise. Her efforts have resulted in significant improvements in research-related business processes within and beyond ECE and she has offered creative insight on how to improve ECE’s research capabilities. Chen has also gone beyond her role to advance other aspects of the department’s mission. For example, as an ECE alumna, she often brings exceptional alumni to the attention of the department, resulting in new connections. She has also identified stories related to research and industrial partnerships for our strategic communications team, and she recently helped create a presentation on ECE’s research achievements. Chen is an invited member of the organizing committee of the 2020 U of T Strengthening Administration of Research (STAR) conference.
Karen Irving
Agnes Kaneko Citizenship Award
Recognizing a staff member who has served with distinction and made contributions to the Faculty’s mission above and beyond their job description over a long period of time.
Karen Irving has served as the Undergraduate Assistant in ECE since 2006. Highly respected by students, co-workers and faculty for her dedication, work ethic and expertise, she is a go-to person in ECE for help, clarity and insight. She consistently goes above and beyond her role to think in a big-picture way about how services can be improved. It was her suggestion that the department create a seminar to help students going into second year navigate the flexible ECE curriculum, and she played a key role in the development of the Magellen system. Irving trains and mentors new staff, setting the tone and culture for the office and making everyone feel included. She has also ably filled in for senior staff during extended leaves. In addition to her many professional contributions, Irving is ‘lead decorator’ for the ECE undergraduate office, working on her own time to create seasonal displays that make the office a welcoming space.
Afshin Poraria
Innovation Award
Recognizing a staff member who has shown innovation in developing a new method, technology or system, or improving an existing system, to the benefit of the Faculty.
Afshin Poraria is being recognized for his leadership in the planning, design and installation of the DC Microgrid in ECE’s Energy Systems Lab. The project provides researchers with access to a state-of-the-art DC microgrid system that will be operating as a ‘living lab’. Access to commercial scale solar arrays and energy storage facilities and real-time data collected from DC microgrid operation individually and collectively offer opportunities for new cutting-edge research. This initiative demanded the renovation of the entire lab infrastructure, and the development of new safety procedures and training methodologies. This innovation will allow the Energy Systems Lab to be largely self-sufficient in terms of DC energy, and enables the use of an actual DC microgrid for both research and teaching. It has transformed the lab into a one-of-a-kind research and teaching environment for practical experimentation at the forefront of the field.
Jaro Pristupa
Catherine Gagne Sustained Excellence in Leadership Award
Recognizing a staff member who has demonstrated leadership in supporting the Faculty’s mission over a sustained period.
Jaro Pristupa has been a staff member with ECE since 1979, and has served as Director of Information Technology since 2012. During that time, he has been instrumental in leading transformative change across the department. Pristupa has been recognized across the Faculty and the University for his innovative solutions to technological challenges faced by ECE. He received U of T’s Excellence Through Innovation Award in 2012 for his leadership of a project to consolidate servers across the department, and again in 2013 for leading the successful implementation of the Magellan software system. He also led a team that received the Faculty’s Innovation Award in 2015 for developing ECE’s Graduate Research Information Database. Beyond the Faculty, Pristupa serves on the U of T Information Security Council’s Working Group on Procedures, Standards and Guidelines, developing best practices for IT security across U of T.
This story originally appeared on U of T Engineering News.
More information:
Jessica MacInnis
External Relations Manager
The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
416-978-7997; jessica.macinnis@utoronto.ca