Michael Benoit

Dr. Michael Benoit, PEng., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering and Associate Director of the Waterloo Centre for Automotive Research (WatCAR). In 2026, he was named one of Canada's Top 40 Under 40®, a national award recognizing leadership and exceptional achievement among young Canadians.

Benoit is a Waterloo alumnus, earning his BASc and PhD here before serving as a Banting Postdoctoral Research Fellow at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. He previously held a faculty position at the University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus. His research on high-performance, sustainable metallic materials for welding, joining and additive manufacturing — including methods to use lower-purity aluminum without the defects that typically result — is conducted in partnership with organizations including Ford, Nemak and Teck Resources.

He is a core member of Waterloo's Centre for Advanced Materials Joining and Multi-Scale Additive Manufacturing Lab, and Co-Director of the Manufacturing & Materials Joining Innovation Center. Benoit serves as Assistant Editor of the Journal of Materials Processing Technology and Associate Editor of Canadian Metallurgical Quarterly and chaired the 36th Canadian Materials Science Conference in 2025.

Benoit has published more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and holds several other honours for his research and teaching, including the SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award, the Metallurgical and Materials Society of Canada's Light Metals Emerging Professionals Award and the ASM Bradley Stoughton Award.

• ME 115 - Structure and Properties of Materials
  • Taught in 2024, 2025
• ME 538 - Welding Design, Fabrication and Quality Control
  • Taught in 2024, 2025

* Only courses taught in the past 5 years are displayed.

• Professor named one of Canada's Top 40 under 40