Three professors to receive prestigious engineering medals

The engineering contributions of faculty members John Yeow, Susan Tighe and Lin Tan will be honoured at the Ontario Professional Engineers Awards (OPEA) Gala on November 19 in Mississauga.

The event celebrates the contributions of the province’s engineers to the well-being of the profession, and recognizes their commitment to innovation and excellence.

Lin Tan will receive the Engineering Medal – Young Engineer

The electrical and computer engineering professor is described as having

proven herself as “an ingenious researcher poised to rank among the elite in the field of software engineering.”  

Tan's research focuses on improving software dependability, addressing the software bug problem at every stage of a bug’s life-cycle by creating techniques to avoid, predict, prevent and fix bugs. Her work reduces the cost of software development and the impact and frequency of bug-induced software failures such as crashes, breaches of security and performance degradation.

Susan Tighe will receive the Engineering Medal – Research & Development

Tighe, a civil and environmental engineering professor, is recognized

globally as a leading authority on pavement composition and performance. Tighe, who is also Norman W. McLeod Professor of Sustainable Pavement Engineering and the director of the Centre for Pavement and Transportation Technology, has made profound contributions to both fundamental research and industry practice.

She has established a comprehensive research program that spans fundamental materials science to experimental performance evaluation through to implementation of innovative materials and designs on roads and airfields in Canada and abroad. Her research findings are used by the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario, municipalities and companies across the province to reduce costs, improve performance and cut waste.

John Yeow will receive the Engineering Medal – Engineering Excellence

As one of Canada’s foremost researchers in microsystems and nanodevices, Yeow, a systems design engineering professor, is pioneering

miniature devices and sensors that serve as building blocks for powerful medical instruments in the early diagnosis and treatment of disease.

Yeow, the Canada Research Chair in Micro/Nano Devices and the president of ArtSensing Inc., was the first to develop a three-dimensional (3D) micromachine-based optical coherent tomographic (OCT) imaging system, which acquired the first 3D-OCT images of the central nervous system of a fruit fly. This technology enables the use of a miniaturized catheter for the early diagnosis of cancer in human cavities too small to access by existing methods.