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 year’s 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 bachelor’s 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