Mary Wells

Mary Wells, PhD, is currently the Dean of the College of Engineering and Physical Science at the University of Guelph, a role she accepted in November 2017. This diverse College includes a School of engineering, a School of computer science, as well as the departments of physics, chemistry and mathematics/statistics. Professor Wells is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo.

Professor Wells began her academic career at the University of British Columbia in 1996 in the Department of metals and materials engineering and in 2007, moved to the University of Waterloo's Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering as a Professor. She was chosen as the inaugural Associate Dean Outreach in 2008 and continued in this role until 2017. In 2013, Professor Wells was selected to be the Chair of the Ontario Network of Women in Engineering (ONWiE) for a five-year term. Professor Wells is widely respected for her work including attracting, engaging and retaining women in the engineering industry as well as her strategic leadership in building collaborative and fruitful relationships within a University setting that creates exciting and empowering opportunities for researchers, academics and staff.

Professor Wells’ research focuses on the development and manufacturing of advanced metallic products used in the transportation sector. This involves developing mathematical models of the manufacturing processes used to make metallic products, as well as understanding the microstructure and property changes that occur in the material. A materials final properties and structure depend on the process or manufacturing history such as thermal and deformation conditions. The mathematical models developed help manufacturers design casting and deformation processes that optimize a metal’s microstructure.

Professor Wells and her colleagues are working on the development of new processes to create laminate or clad metallic products via casting or deformation. The product resulting from these process are ones where the product’s surface will have different properties from its core, for example, a surface that is designed for corrosion and a core that is tailored for strength.

• Process modelling
• Hot deformation of metallic materials
• Casting of light metals
• Boiling water heat transfer
• Microstructure/Processing Models
• Automotive
• Digital Factories
• Lightweight Materials
• Structural Crashworthiness
• Additive Manufacturing

• 1996, Doctorate, Metals and Materials Engineering, University of British Columbia
• 1987, Bachelor's, Metallurgical Engineering, McGill University

• ME 340 - Manufacturing Processes
  • Taught in 2015, 2016, 2017
• ME 738 - Special Topics in Materials
  • Taught in 2017

• Wei, Guobing and Mahmoodkhani, Yahya and Peng, Xiaodong and Hadadzadeh, Amir and Xu, Tiancai and Liu, Junwei and Xie, Weidong and Wells, Mary A, Microstructure evolution and simulation study of a duplex Mg--Li alloy during Double Change Channel Angular Pressing, Materials & Design, 90, 2016, 266 - 275
• Mahmoodkhani, Yahya and Wells, Mary A, Co-extrusion process to produce Al--Mg eutectic clad magnesium products at elevated temperatures, Journal of Materials Processing Technology, 232, 2016, 175 - 183
• Hadadzadeh, Amir and Wells, Mary A and Javaid, Amjad, Warm and Hot Deformation Behavior of As-Cast ZEK100 Magnesium Alloy, Experimental Mechanics, 56(2), 2016, 259 - 271
• Di Ciano, Massimo and Weckman, DC and Wells, MA, Development of an Analog System to Simulate Interface Formation During Fusion™ Casting, Metallurgical and Materials Transactions B, 47(2), 2016, 905 - 919
• Wei, Guo-bing and Peng, Xiao-dong and Hu, Fa-ping and Hadadzadeh, Amir and Yan, YANG and Xie, Wei-dong and Wells, Mary A, Deformation behavior and constitutive model for dual-phase Mg--Li alloy at elevated temperatures, Transactions of Nonferrous Metals Society of China, 26(2), 2016, 508 - 518