by Barbara Black

For the past five years, the Department of Mechanical Engineering has ended the winter term with an awards day ceremony to celebrate the outstanding accomplishments of students, faculty and staff over the past year.

For four years, this has included presentation of the Silas Katz Memorial Award, and of design awards, initiated by the families of Professors Emeriti R.M.D. Cheng and M.O.M. Osman. The design awards are meant to encourage creativity and a spirit of organization among students in their final year, as expressed in extracurricular activities or their capstone design project.

This year’s winning teams designed a recumbent bicycle, flight simulator and pedal scooter. In the future, it is expected that sponsoring Quebec industries will initiate design awards for specific projects.

The Awards Day, held April 10 in the Department, was, as always, well attended.

Certificates of recognition for service to the department were presented to Professor Vojislav Latinovic (faculty), Robert Oliver (technical), Leslie Hosein (assistants/secretarial staff) and Peter Sakaris (professional).

Long-service awards were presented to Professors A.K. Waizuddin Ahmed and Gerard J. Gouw (15 years), Assistant to the Chair Jayne Claassen (15 years), Technical Officer John Elliott (30 years) and Technician Gilles Huard (10 years).

The Silas Katz Memorial Award, presented by Professor Emeritus R.M.D. Cheng, was given to Christopher Gruden, Halim Pagacz and Paul Slack.

The R.M.D. Cheng Award, presented by Mrs. Cheng, went to the designers of an attitude indicator of a flight simulator: Louis-Philippe Senecal, Donato D’Onofrio, Joao Carlos Santos and Rehan Wasti.

The M.O.M. Osman Design Award, presented by Mrs. Osman, was given for the design of a recumbent bicycle to Melvyn Kouri, Jovan Stojanovic, Michael English, Hervé Tichkiewitch and Dominica Wolszczan.

The Mechanical Engineering Design Award, presented by Professor Emeritus Hugh McQueen, was given for the design of a pedal scooter to students Richard Nelson, Neil Tanna, Fab Guerrera, Pasquale Ciaramella, Ahmed Al-Zayani and Li Ju Huang.

Certificates for involvement in student associations went to Harry Politis CSME), Monalisa Larouche (CSIE), Harry Politis (ASME), Michael Kouzelis (MESA), Karim Ibrahim (CASI), Stefano Rotili and Roberto Rotili (SAE). Bruce Keddy got the SAE Award, and Dr. Henry Hong was given the SAE Faculty Advisory Award.

Dr. Rama Bhat, chair of the department, announced the winners of graduate fellowships, fee remission awards and scholarships: Ma Hui, Mengistu Temesgen, Stefanov Tzanko, Omar Adb Elgawad Mohammad, Sekhar Ganti Chandra, Xiangyu Xie and Tingseng Tang.

Our thanks to Dr. Ion Stiharu, who was master of ceremonies, for this information.