The Iron Ring at 100 - Trust, Transformation, and the Future of Canadian Engineering
Join the Faculty of Engineering and TVO to celebrate 100 years of the Iron Ring with a conversation on the future of engineering in Canada. The panel of speakers will explore how ethics, public trust, and responsible innovation can shape the next century of engineering for the benefit of society.
This free public lecture is part of the TRuST network lecture series. Learn more about the TRuST Scholarly Network.
Event Details
📅 Date: Wednesday, May 28, 2025
⏰ Time: 7:00 p.m. (doors open at 6:30 pm)
☕️ Post Lecture Reception 8:30 p.m.
📍 Location: 2nd Floor Event Space, Engineering 7, University of Waterloo
💲 Cost: Free
SPEAKERS
Hamid Arabzadeh
Chairman & CEO
RANOVUS
Mr. Hamid Arabzadeh has been the Chairman and CEO of RANOVUS, www.ranovus.com, a leading technology provider of photonic interconnect solutions for AI/ML workloads, since its inception in 2012. Ranovus is headquartered in Kanata, Ontario, Canada with European R&D center in Nuremberg, Germany, and business development presence in Sunnyvale CA USA.
Prior to RANOVUS, Mr. Arabzadeh was the Chairman and CEO of CoreOptics, an innovative provider of photonic subsystems for high-capacity networking applications based in Nuremberg Germany, before being acquired by Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) in 2010. Formerly, Mr. Arabzadeh held various senior management positions at Nortel Networks in Brazil, Mexico, England, and USA. Mr. Arabzadeh’s last role at Nortel Networks was VP & GM of Metro Optical business unit. Prior to joining Nortel, Mr. Arabzadeh was the President of UNICAD information systems, a custom CAD/CAM software development company in Montreal, Canada.
Since his return to Canada in 2010, Mr. Arabzadeh has co-Founded several Canadian scaleups in fields of AI Sovereign Cloud, Security and Healthcare with an eye to benefit Canada in a competitive Data and IP driven global economy.
Mr. Arabzadeh holds a B.A.Sc. from University of Waterloo in Electrical and Computer Engineering and an MBA from McGill University. He resides with his family in Toronto and enjoys soccer, tennis, and downhill skiing.
Professor Ashley Mehlenbacher
Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts
University of Waterloo
Professor Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Science, Health, and Technology Communication in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. She is also the inaugural Co-Director, with Donna Strickland, for the Trust in Research Undertaken in Science and Technology (TRuST) network.
Professor Mehlenbacher’s research investigates how genres of scientific and science communications emerge and evolve, how aspects of expertise and ethos interact and relate to trust in scientific and technical domains, and the ethical aspects of specialist/non-specialist relationality in the communication of complex information.
Professor Mehlenbacher is the author of On Expertise: Cultivating Character, Goodwill, and Practical Wisdom (Penn State University Press, 2022), Science Communication Online: Engaging Experts and Publics on the Internet (The Ohio State University Press, 2019), and co-editor, with Carolyn R. Miller, of Emerging Genres in New Media Environments (Palgrave, 2017).
Molly Thomas
Host, Big [If True]
TVO
Molly Thomas is the Host of TVO’s newest show, Big [If True] which exposes misinformation and disinformation in everyday life. An award-winning Anchor, Correspondent and Producer, she has worked for all three major networks in Canada.
In 2023, she received the Michener-Deacon Fellowship for her pitch on the loss of school for Afghan women and girls, which resulted in her 3-part podcast series 'Dear Taliban'. Prior, she worked as an Investigative Correspondent at CTV's flagship documentary program W5. She joined CTV National News in 2019 as a parliamentary reporter after working as a national news anchor for CTV News Channel, YOUR MORNING and the national faith-based current affairs show Context.
Molly has completed an MA in Global Affairs from the Munk School at the University of Toronto and a BA in Journalism from the University of Regina. Her commitment to social justice stories has taken her to Iraq, Somalia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Lebanon, Jordan, Haiti, Rwanda, Uganda, France, the United States, and England. Molly has been recognized for multiple awards, including a National Labour Reporting Award (CAJ 2021), a National Award in Sports Excellence (RTDNA 2021), and a Bronze Telly Award after the 2015 Paris attacks.
Her 2022 reporting on 'Flight 752', a follow to the Iranian plane crash impacting more than a hundred Canadians, was nominated for 3 Canadian Screen awards, including 'Best News or Information Program'.
Professor Mary A. Wells
Dean, Faculty of Engineering
University of Waterloo
Mary Wells is Dean of Engineering at the University of Waterloo (since July 1, 2020), the ninth dean since the Faculty was founded in 1957. From 2017-2020, she was Dean of the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Guelph.
Prior to her time in Guelph, Wells was a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo for 10 years. She received awards for graduate supervision from both the Faculty and the University in 2017.
An accomplished materials engineer, Wells also served as the Associate Dean of Outreach for Waterloo Engineering between 2008 and 2017, and chaired its Women in Engineering committee for many years. She chaired the Ontario Network of Women in Engineering from 2013 to 2018.
Wells began her academic career as a professor in materials engineering at the University of British Columbia from 1996 to 2007, and has worked in the steel industry in Canada and internationally.
The co-author of two books including one on Canadian women innovators and the second on Canadian women in materials, her research focuses on the relationship between processing, structure and properties for advanced metallic alloys used in the transportation sector.
Connect with Mary Wells on LinkedIn.