Pearl Sullivan

Pearl Sullivan is a Professor in the Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering department at the University of Waterloo. She was the eighth Dean of Engineering at Waterloo (July 1, 2012-December 31, 2019) and the first woman to hold that post. In addition, Professor Sullivan was the fourth woman across Canada to head an engineering faculty.

Professor Sullivan holds a Professional Engineer designation from Professional Engineers Ontario, and is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining in the United Kingdom. Prior to joining the University of Waterloo, she was a mechanical engineering Professor at the University of New Brunswick, and a Lecturer and Visiting Professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

In 2004, Professor Sullivan came to the University of Waterloo as a Professor of mechanical engineering and served as Chair of the Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering department from 2006 until January 2012. She is also the founding Director of Waterloo's collaborative graduate program in nanotechnology within the Engineering and Science faculties. In addition to her many achievements, Dean Sullivan received the Outstanding Performance Award from the University of Waterloo in 2009.

Her research interests are in the long-term stability of polymers and their composites due to thermo-mechanical loading; moisture absorption and physical aging, the adhesive bonding of dissimilar structural materials, and in the micro-engineering measurement of mechanical property data deviation from bulk values as dimensions are reduced.

• Mechanics of Composite Materials
• Nano-Composites
• Physical Aging of Polymers
• Adhesives
• Composite-to-Metal Joints
• Thermal Analysis
• Thermo-mechanical Characterization
• Automotive
• Advanced Materials Joining
• Nanotechnology
• Additive manufacturing
• Lightweight materials
• Nano-electronics
• Nano-materials
• Long-term Stability of Polymers
• Adhesive Bonding of Dissimilar Structural Materials
• Micro-engineering Measurement of Mechanical Property Data Deviation

• 1990, Doctorate, Materials Engineering, University of British Columbia Vancouver, BC
• 1986, Master's, Metallurgical Engineering, Technical University of Nova Scotia, Halifax, NS
• 1985, Bachelor's, Metallurgical Engineering, Technical University of Nova Scotia, Halifax, NS
• 1982, Other, Engineering, Dalhousie University

• Rivers, Geoff and Marzbanrad, Ehsan and Hook, Michael David and Lee-Sullivan, Pearl and Zhou, Y Norman and Zhao, Boxin, Highly-stable silver nanobelts joined via diffusion-free attachment, Nanotechnology, 27(29), 2016
• Marzbanrad, A Ehsan and Rivers, Geoffrey and Rogalsky, Allan and Lee-Sullivan, Pearl and Zhao, Boxin and Zhou, Norman Y, Highly repeatable kinetically-independent synthesis of one-and two-dimensional silver nanostructures by oriented attachment, RSC Advances, 6(66), 2016, 61641 - 61649
• Rogalsky, Allan and Kwon, Hyock Ju and Lee-Sullivan, Pearl, The Rheological Injectability of N-succinyl-chitosan Solutions, Carbohydrate Polymers, 2016
• Rivers, Geoff and Rogalsky, Allan and Lee-Sullivan, Pearl and Zhao, Boxin, Thermal analysis of epoxy-based nanocomposites: Have solvent effects been overlooked?, Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry, 119(2), 2015, 797 - 805
• Haghighi-Yazdi, Mojtaba and Lee-Sullivan, Pearl, FTIR analysis of a polycarbonate blend after hygrothermal aging, Journal of Applied Polymer Science, 132(3), 2015

• Pearl Sullivan to step down as dean
• Faculty members and graduate inducted into the CAE