by Julie Parkins
The Concordia Institute for Aerospace Design and Innovation (CIADI), held
its second annual recognition ceremony on Nov. 6. Forty-two students,
compared to 26 in last years first class, were congratulated for
their achievement.
Created in January 2001, CIADI aims to provide leading-edge skills to
engineering students in the field, emphasizing multi-disciplinarity and
evolving technologies. Thanks to seven industry partners Pratt
& Whitney Canada, Bombardier Aerospace, Bell Helicopter Textron, EMS
Technologies, CAE Electronics, CMC Electronics and Héroux-Devtek
students are able to learn about the industry up close.
CIADI is the first initiative in Canada to group seven major aerospace
companies under one roof with the objective of enhancing the education
of undergraduate students by providing them with real design and research
projects, says Dr. Hany Moustapha, manager of technical education
and collaboration programs at Pratt & Whitney Canada Technology.
The students selected for the CIADI project are among the top undergraduates
in the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science. They are primarily
from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, but there has also been
growth in the number of students from Computer Science and from Electrical
and Computer Engineering joining the program.
With these early opportunities to work in industry, the students are well
placed to acquire full-time jobs. In fact, of the 12 graduating CIADI
students in May 2002, CIADI industrial partners hired five, and five are
currently pursuing graduate studies in aerospace.
Nahida Bchara is one of those students. Having worked at Bombardier
and Pratt & Whitney Canada, I now have a very well-balanced knowledge
of the entire aerospace industry. CIADI also opened the door to a permanent
position at Bell Helicopter, through networking opportunities with industry
supervisors.
François Caza, vice-president, engineering, Bombardier Aerospace,
and chairman of CIADI industrial advisory board, says that CIADI, without
a doubt makes a significant contribution to the development of engineers
through the provision of skills specific to the aerospace industry. The
access to aerospace specialists makes the learning curve of the students
steeper than otherwise possible in the regular university program structure.
In addition to handing out recognition certificates to the students, CIADI
presented its first Excellence Award to Danny Di Perna, VP
of Procurement at Pratt & Whitney Canada, for his outstanding contribution
to the field of gas turbines and to the success of CIADI. Danny graduated
from Concordia in 1989 with a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering.
Congratulations to all these CIADI graduates, and thanks to their supervisors.
Undergraduate student participants by company affiliation
Bell Helicopter
Taline Baddour
Catherine Gomez
Anthony Jonkov
Peter Silvano
Bombardier
Julie Beaulac
Diane Guay
Thomas Hewitt
Vincent Poirier
Jan Radtke
Paul Slack
Anthony Scalia
CAE Electronics
Michael Faltas
Vincent Lalonde
Stephen Takacs
CMC Electronics
Dana Shawish
Mourat Mourtazov
EMS Technologies
Giuseppe Pace
Héroux-Devtek
Gianni Mollica
Pratt & Whitney Canada
Paolo Babino
Nahida Bchara
Aldo Campanelli
Steven Faltas
Nadia Foty
Lukasz Gerstel
François Gignac
Carmen Gonzalez
Stéphanie Grenier
Maggie Katz
Monalisa Larouche
Stefan Lebel
Joelle Lewandowski
Nader Nasr
Halim Pagacz
Nancy Paliotti
Carl Petrone
Patricia Phutthavong
Michel Pitsikoulis
Karim Rafla
Hany Sarhan
Mark Vukadin Seidah
Martin Tremblay
Marie-Pierre Vaillancourt
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