As part of its Strategic Research Plan, the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science is establishing nine Concordia Research Chairs. These appointed positions will be made available to internal candidates, and will be supported at the same level of financing and commitment as the Canada Research Chairs.

The first two chairs have been awarded to Ching Y. Suen, in artificial intelligence and pattern recognition, and Suong V. Hoa, in materials and composites.

Dr. Suen received his MSc in engineering from the University of Hong Kong, followed by a PhD from the University of British Columbia. In 1972, he joined Concordia’s Department of Computer Science, became Professor in 1979 and served as chair of the department from 1980 to 1984. He was also Associate Dean, Research, from 1993 to 1997.

Recently, he was renamed Director of the Faculty’s Centre for Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence (CENPARMI). He is the author/editor of 11 books and more than 250 papers and journals on subjects ranging from computer vision, handwriting and pattern recognition, to expert systems and computational linguistics.

A Fellow of the IEEE, IAPR, and the Academy of Sciences of the Royal Society of Canada, he has served as officer of several professional societies. He is the general chair of the International Conference on Pattern Recognition, to be held in Quebec City in 2002. He is founder/editor-in-chief of one journal and associate editor of seven others.

He has supervised 77 post-graduate students and post-doctoral fellows to completion. He received the ITAC/NSERC Award in 1992, and was a Concordia University Research Fellow in 1998.

Suong V. Hoa has extensive expertise in the many aspects of testing, design, evaluation and manufacturing processes of composite materials and structures research.

One of the main thrusts of Dr. Hoa’s work will be nanotechnology, leading to the development of nanocomposite materials. Another area of focus will be the mechanics of textile composites, and determining applications for these materials.

Dr. Suong V. Hoa came to Concordia in 1977 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He attained full professor status in 1986, and led the Department of Mechanical Engineering from 1994 to 1999. He has been Director of the Concordia Centre for Composites for the past seven years.

During his years with the Faculty, he has published three books, more than 250 articles, and was editor of eight conference proceedings. In 1988, he founded the Canadian Association for Composite Structures and Materials (CACSMA), and he is editor of the Journal of Science and Engineering of Composite Materials.

A Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering (CSME), Dr. Hoa also won CSME G.H. Medal in Materials in 1996 and the SAE Ralph R. Teetor Award in 1980. He has supervised 35 Master’s and PhD students to completion.

Over the years, Hoa has worked with more than 50 companies in the field of materials and composites for research grants, contracts, and consulting activities.