Abstract: In this talk, a recent University of Waterloo PhD graduate will discuss the transition from graduate student to assistant professor. Topics will include the ingredients of a good PhD project, structuring your future research plans, setting reasonable expectations, the joys and burdens of teaching, the paradoxical nature of hiring the best lab rats (PhDs) to become rat trainers (Professors), and generally how to begin ‘thinking like a professor’. By way of illustration he will discuss his own experience in the context of his research on ‘engineered’ porous materials. This mission generally involves developing new characterization tools suited to the unique properties of these materials, and advancing the modeling and theoretical understanding of pore scale phenomena in general. He has recently taken the bold step of ‘putting his money where his mouth is’, and is using the aforementioned expertise to design and produce actual materials via electrospinning that have desired properties for specific applications. This talk will be accompanied by the ‘Professor Confessor’ quiz that is designed to gauge your preparedness for a faculty position.
Bio-Sketch: Professor Jeff Gostick is currently an Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering at McGill University in Montreal. He received his undergraduate degree from Ryerson University in Toronto in 2000 and his Master’s degree from University of Waterloo in 2002. Prior to beginning his PhD, he worked as a Research Engineer at Teck Resources Inc. on the production of zinc powder and fiber for zinc-air flow batteries and large-scale alkaline batteries. His PhD work at the University of Waterloo, under the supervision of Michael Fowler and Mark Pritzker in collaboration with Marios Ioannidis, focused on multiphase transport in the porous electrodes of the hydrogen fuel cell. Upon completion of his PhD in 2009 he did 1 year of post-doctoral work at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab under Adam Weber, performing X-ray tomography on porous materials using the Advanced Light Source synchrotron. He joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at McGill University in 2010 where he runs the Porous Materials Engineering & Analysis Lab. His current research continues to include fuel cell electrodes in collaboration with industrial partners, but has expanded to include all manner of engineered porous materials ranging from electrospun nanofiber webs for flow battery electrodes and tissue scaffolds, to nanoporous zeolite materials for carbon capture. He is also a lead developer of the open source pore network modeling project OpenPNM (openpnm.org).