Nadine Ibrahim, P.Eng., PhD, PMP (She/Her)
Lecturer, Turkstra Chair in Urban Engineering
Email: nadine.ibrahim@uwaterloo.ca
Location: E2 3327
Phone: 519-888-4567 x30299
Biography
Nadine is a Lecturer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and holds the Turkstra Chair in Urban Engineering. She comes from a cross-section of industry and academia in the areas of urban infrastructure, sustainable cities, and sustainable development, in addition to engineering education scholarship and pedagogy. Nadine has taken an interdisciplinary approach to her education and career. Transcending the boundaries of Civil Engineering, she combines environmental engineering, and incorporates non-engineering fields including architecture, economics and governance. Most recently, she was a post-doctoral fellow working on Engineering Education for Sustainable Cities in Africa, launching a “Sustainable Cities” course online, and piloting a Global Classroom.
She has leverages her industry experience to expand her inquiry into cities through urban and environmental projects in Canada and abroad. In Canada, she worked with municipalities in Southern Ontario on asset management, risk assessment, infrastructure planning, and capital budgeting. Her exposure to municipal engineering leadership and global industry best practices imparts transferable skills that she has excelled at, and applies them in academia to generate and seek collaborative opportunities to bring real world engineering leadership examples into the classroom and with other disciplines interfacing with engineering. Abroad, in the Middle East and North Africa, she worked in international development on high profile and large-scale projects for clients including the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility. In 2010, she received the Early Career Award, in recognition of her work in tackling global challenges in diverse communities in need, and in introducing corporate social responsibility.
Her research contributes to a wide spectrum of urban engineering fields and a broad range of global cities, megacities, and most recently megaregions, appearing in leading journals including Nature Climate Change, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. She has been active in futures research on engineering education for the future and co-authored a book chapter “Educating Engineers for the Anthropocene” which appeared in the State of the World 2017: EarthED: Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet, published by the Worldwatch Institute in 2017. She currently chairs a special interest group on the Engineer of 2050 at the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA).
For her role as the Turkstra Chair in Urban Engineering, her vision is to build a community of practice of leaders in municipal engineering and academics in urban research to offer leadership towards prospects for our future cities; and to develop urban sustainability literacy among students to motivate their technical specializations and empower them to traverse beyond their disciplines to create liveable futures. Stemming from the University of Waterloo’s “Educating the Engineer of the Future” Nadine’s goals include building partnerships within the department, and with other departments and faculties, and the broader engineering community for the benefit of this urban engineering initiative and advancing engineering education.
She has leverages her industry experience to expand her inquiry into cities through urban and environmental projects in Canada and abroad. In Canada, she worked with municipalities in Southern Ontario on asset management, risk assessment, infrastructure planning, and capital budgeting. Her exposure to municipal engineering leadership and global industry best practices imparts transferable skills that she has excelled at, and applies them in academia to generate and seek collaborative opportunities to bring real world engineering leadership examples into the classroom and with other disciplines interfacing with engineering. Abroad, in the Middle East and North Africa, she worked in international development on high profile and large-scale projects for clients including the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility. In 2010, she received the Early Career Award, in recognition of her work in tackling global challenges in diverse communities in need, and in introducing corporate social responsibility.
Her research contributes to a wide spectrum of urban engineering fields and a broad range of global cities, megacities, and most recently megaregions, appearing in leading journals including Nature Climate Change, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. She has been active in futures research on engineering education for the future and co-authored a book chapter “Educating Engineers for the Anthropocene” which appeared in the State of the World 2017: EarthED: Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet, published by the Worldwatch Institute in 2017. She currently chairs a special interest group on the Engineer of 2050 at the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA).
For her role as the Turkstra Chair in Urban Engineering, her vision is to build a community of practice of leaders in municipal engineering and academics in urban research to offer leadership towards prospects for our future cities; and to develop urban sustainability literacy among students to motivate their technical specializations and empower them to traverse beyond their disciplines to create liveable futures. Stemming from the University of Waterloo’s “Educating the Engineer of the Future” Nadine’s goals include building partnerships within the department, and with other departments and faculties, and the broader engineering community for the benefit of this urban engineering initiative and advancing engineering education.
Research Interests
- Urban infrastructure
- Sustainable cities
- Megacities
- Megaregions
- Urban engineering
- Greenhouse gas emissions
- Sustainable development
- Complex systems
- Urban prosperity
- Climate change mitigation
- Mitigation abatement economics
Education
- 2015, Doctorate Civil Engineering, University of Toronto, Canada
- 2003, Master of Applied Science Civil Engineering, University of Toronto, Canada
- 2000, Bachelor of Applied Science Certificate of Preventive Engineering and Social Development, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, University of Toronto, Canada
- 2000, Bachelor of Applied Science Civil Engineering (Collaborative Environmental Option), University of Toronto, Canada
Awards
- 2010 Awarded by the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto to one engineering graduate, who has attained significant achievement early in their career and shows promise of further contributions. This award recognizes a graduate 10 years from undergraduate graduation who is distinguished early in their profession, community, university and other related fields.
- 2015 Awarded to women demonstrating leadership and cultural and educational excellence, in celebration of International Women's Day.
- 2021 For outstanding contribution in teaching and scholarship.
- 2021 The Engineering Distinguished Performance Awards honour outstanding, well-rounded faculty members. Winners are those with exceptional overall merit ratings, who have also made some significant contribution through their research, teaching, or service. Each department offers awards for distinguished performance, with input from the Dean and from the Academic Policy Committee.
Teaching*
- CIVE 230 - Engineering and Sustainable Development
- Taught in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023
- CIVE 332 - Civil Systems and Project Management
- Taught in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024
- CIVE 400 - Civil Engineering Design Project 1
- Taught in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023
- ENVE 335 - Decision Making for Environmental Engineers
- Taught in 2020, 2021
* Only courses taught in the past 5 years are displayed.
Selected/Recent Publications
- Ibrahim, Nadine, Mitigation: Decarbonization unique to cities, Nature Climate Change, 690, 2017
- Ibrahim, Nadine and Kennedy, Christopher, A methodology for constructing marginal abatement cost curves for climate action in cities, Energies, 227, 2016
- Kennedy, Christopher A and Stewart, Iain and Facchini, Angelo and Cersosimo, Igor and Mele, Renata and Chen, Bin and Uda, Mariko and Kansal, Arun and Chiu, Anthony and Kim, Kwi-gon and others, Energy and material flows of megacities, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 5985, 2015
- Kennedy, Chris and Stewart, Iain D and Ibrahim, Nadine and Facchini, Angelo and Mele, Renata, Developing a multi-layered indicator set for urban metabolism studies in megacities, Ecological Indicators, 7, 2014
- Kennedy, Chris and Ibrahim, Nadine and Stewart, Iain and Facchini, Angelo and Mele, Renata, An urban metabolism survey design for megacities, Toronto: University of Toronto and Enel Foundation, , 2014
- Kennedy, CA and Ibrahim, N and Hoornweg, D, Low-carbon infrastructure strategies for cities, Nature Climate Change, 343, 2014
- Ibrahim, Nadine and Sugar, Lorraine and Hoornweg, Dan and Kennedy, Christopher, Greenhouse gas emissions from cities: comparison of international inventory frameworks, Local Environment, 223, 2012
- Hoornweg, Daniel and Ibrahim, Nadine and Luo, Chibulu, Educating Engineers for the Anthropocene, EarthEd, 267, 2017
In The News
- A prof’s commitment to future engineers
- Research projects backed by online educator D2L
- Dean, lecturer offer advice to engineering graduates
- Researchers offer insights on COVID planning impacts
- Waterloo lecturer featured in UN video lecture series
- Can we fix COVID-19 and climate change in one breath?
Graduate studies
- Not currently accepting applications for graduate students