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Hear directly from the experts about the disruptive technologies that are reshaping business, government, and society at unprecedented speeds.

Industry leaders

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Francis Bilodeau

Associate Deputy Minister, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

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Victor Dodig

President and CEO, CIBC 

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Bruce Flatt

CEO, Brookfield Asset Management

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Francis Bilodeau was appointed Associate Deputy Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada in January 2022.  Bilodeau is the 2023 Government of Canada Workplace Charitable Campaign (GCWCC) National Chair.

Prior to his appointment, he held various executive positions across the public service, including chief information officer of the Government of Canada, assistant secretary of Digital Policy and Services at the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, and founding assistant deputy minister for the Privy Council Office's Results and Delivery Unit.

Bilodeau holds a master's degree in business administration and a degree in mechanical engineering.

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Victor Dodig leads a team of over 47,000 team members globally who live CIBC’s purpose every day – to help make our clients’ ambitions a reality.

Under Victor’s tenure, CIBC has transformed into a relationship-oriented bank for a modern world, with a North American platform for growth and a commitment to enable a more sustainable future for all stakeholders. He has helped to shape CIBC’s client-focused, highly connected culture – a differentiator for the bank in a competitive market. 

Before becoming CEO, Victor held a number of senior leadership roles within CIBC, including leading the bank’s Wealth Management business and its Retail Banking network across Canada. Through these roles, Victor furthered his commitment to putting clients first – a principle that dates back to his first role at CIBC as a part-time CSR, where he met with clients every day.

Over the course of his career, Victor has also led several businesses with UBS and Merrill Lynch in Canada and internationally, and was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company.

Victor is a strong advocate for Canada on the world stage, and a proponent of economic growth to enable a more prosperous and inclusive future. He serves as the current Chair of the Business Council of Canada, and was President of the 2022 International Monetary Conference. He is Co-Chair of the International Advisory Committee of the Brookings Institute and also serves on the board of Telus Corporation Inc.

Victor is committed to inclusion, both to strengthen our social fabric and as an economic imperative. He serves as Chair of CIBC’s Inclusion Leadership Council, and is Past Co-Chair of the Black North Initiative. He is a recipient of the 2017 Catalyst Canada Honours (Company Leader) Champion award, is Past Chair of the Catalyst Canada Advisory Board and Past Chair of the 30% Club Canada.

He is a graduate of the Harvard Business School, where he earned an MBA and was recognized as a Baker Scholar. Victor holds a diploma from the Institut d'études politiques in Paris and completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto (St. Michael's College) in Commerce. He has received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Toronto Metropolitan University.

Victor resides in Toronto with his wife, Maureen. They are the proud parents of four children.

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Bruce Flatt is the Chief Executive Officer of Brookfield, a global investment firm focused on alternative asset management, wealth solutions, and its operating businesses, with nearly $1 trillion in assets under management. 

Mr. Flatt joined Brookfield in 1990 and became CEO in 2002. Under his leadership, Brookfield has developed a global operating presence in more than 30 countries. 

Prior to his current role, Mr. Flatt ran Brookfield’s real estate and investment operations and has served on numerous public company boards over the past three decades. 

Mr. Flatt is Canadian and has a business degree from the University of Manitoba. 

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Nick Frosst

Co-founder, Cohere

Manav Gupta

Manav Gupta

Vice-President, Technical Sales and CTO, IBM Canada

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Mellody Hobson

Co-CEO and President, Ariel Investments

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Nick Frosst is a Co-founder at Cohere, the leading AI platform for enterprise. Cohere’s world-class AI platform is uniquely suited to the needs of business, offering data-secure deployment options in companies’ existing cloud environments, customization, and customer support. Nick plays a key role in refining user experience while defining a responsibility-focused culture. Before Cohere, Nick collaborated with Geoffrey Hinton, becoming Hinton’s first employee at Google Brain’s Toronto lab. Nick’s research focused on capsule networks, adversarial examples, and explainability. Based in Toronto, Nick holds a B.S. in Computer Science and Cognitive Science from the University of Toronto. He is also the lead vocalist of the indie pop rock band Good Kid.

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Manav Gupta is an IBM Distinguished Engineer, IBM Master Inventor, industry thought leader and published author. 

As VP and CTO, IBM Canada, Manav leads Canada Technical Sales Team comprising Brand Technical Specialists, Account Technical Leaders, and Client Engineering teams. His focus is on helping key IBM clients on their journey to hybrid cloud and scaling of AI solutions. 

With over 25 years of practical expertise with distributed systems, Manav is uniquely positioned to apply IBM capabilities to provide critical business solutions to IBM clients. He has written several books on cloud computing, big data & analytics, and blockchain. 

Manav has been awarded 45 patents in the fields of distributed computing, wireless communications, and machine learning. 

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As Co-CEO and President of Ariel Investments, Mellody Hobson is responsible for management, strategic planning and growth for all areas of Ariel outside of research and portfolio management. Additionally, she serves as chairman of the board of trustees of Ariel Investment Trust, the company’s publicly traded mutual funds. Prior to being named Co-CEO, Hobson spent nearly two decades as the firm’s President. In 2021, she co-founded Ariel Alternatives, LLC—a new enterprise offering a patient, focused and non-consensus approach to private equity investing. Its first fund, Project Black, has a mission to scale sustainable minority-owned business enterprises to serve as Tier 1 suppliers to Fortune 500 companies—driving economic growth and equality from the entry-level to the boardroom. Outside of Ariel, Hobson has been a leader in corporate boardrooms. She is the former chairman of Starbucks Corporation and its current lead independent director. Hobson also serves as a director of JPMorgan Chase. She was a long-standing board member of the Estée Lauder Companies and chairman of the board of DreamWorks Animation until the company’s sale in 2016.

Hobson is a well-recognized financial literacy advocate. She recently published a children’s book, Priceless Facts about Money, to demystify money for young readers. Her community outreach includes her role as chairman of After School Matters, a Chicago non-profit that provides area teens with high-quality after-school and summer programs. Hobson is also co-chair of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and a board member of Bloomberg Philanthropies, the George Lucas Educational Foundation, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Center for Strategic & International Studies. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Investment Company Institute, the investment committee of the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and past president of the Economic Club of Chicago.

Hobson earned her AB from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. In 2019, she was awarded the Woodrow Wilson Award, the university’s highest honor presented annually to a Princeton graduate whose career embodies a commitment to national service. Hobson has also received honorary doctorate degrees from Howard University, Johns Hopkins University, St. Mary’s College and the University of Southern California. In 2015, Time Magazine named her one of the “100 Most Influential People” in the world.

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Nicole Janssen

Co-founder and Co-CEO, AltaML

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Richard Jardim

EVP and CTO, Technology, Infrastructure, and Innovation, CIBC

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Rex Lee

CITO, Canadian Tire Corporation

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Nicole Janssen is an established entrepreneur and recognized leader in artificial intelligence. As the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of AltaML, she plays a crucial role in the company's success. Her extensive experience spans agriculture, financial services, health, and energy, driving AltaML’s growth. Dedicated to promoting global education on responsible AI, Janssen has earned recognition from the RAI Institute. Her expertise is sought by governments for input on AI innovation in Canada. In 2023, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Woman in AI of the Year and was named one of North America’s Top 25 Women of Influence. This acclaim led to her participation in high-profile AI discussions. She also co-founded Janalta Interactive Inc. and Stratus Holdings Inc., and serves as a member of the Future of AI Council.

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Richard leads the global Technology team in his role as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for CIBC. In this role Richard is responsible for delivering strategic, high-quality, innovative, and operationally resilient technology solutions that contribute to building a relationship-oriented bank for a modern world. His team is focused on driving technology innovation, agility, speed and simplicity across our technology platforms, as well as implementing many of the investments we are making to transform our bank and create the best experience for our strategic business units, employees, and clients. In prior roles at CIBC, Richard has also led and managed the Enterprise Digital, Process, and Innovation teams, as well as leading many of the CIO portfolios including Wealth Management, Commercial Banking, Payments, and Capital Markets and Risk Technology.

Prior to joining CIBC in 2011, Richard was Managing Director & Head of Technology Solutions for the Wholesale Bank at TD Bank Financial Group as well as working in TD Securities on the Derivatives Trading desks before joining Technology.

Richard has an Honours BA in Economics from Western University and also holds his CFA Designation and his PMP (Project Management Professional).

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Rex Lee is the Chief Information & Technology Officer (CITO) at Canadian Tire Corporation (CTC) a $15B retail company, and is accountable for technology strategy, architecture, development, operations, and cyber security across the CTC group of companies (Canadian Tire, Sportchek, Mark’s, PartyCity, CT Financial Services, Atmosphere, Sports Experts, Pro Hockey Life, Hockey Experts, Partsource, CT REIT, Helly Hansen, and Gas+). His mandate includes all technology for 1700+ retail locations, digital properties, corporate operations, and global facilities. He is a key member of the senior executive team, often interfacing with the board of directors, and in addition to core technology, Lee is actively involved with corporate strategy, enterprise risk, corporate governance, and CTC’s venture capital arm.

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George Takach

Author on geopolitics and AI, including the recent Cold War 2.0

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Jodie Wallis

Global Chief Analytics Officer, Manulife

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John Weigelt

National Technology Officer, Microsoft Canada

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George S. Takach obtained undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Toronto, and a graduate degree from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. He is a former partner and national technology industry leader at the McCarthy Tétrault law firm, where for more than 35 years he represented Canadian and international technology companies (with financings, M and A and commercial matters) and traditional companies and governments with their sophisticated technology transactions and projects.

George was an Adjunct Professor of computer law at Osgoode Hall Law School for 22 years. He is the author of Computer Law and two other books on the business of technology. George is a Senior Fellow of the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary History (at the University of Toronto), and he writes books on technology and geopolitics for a general audience, including Cold War 2.0: Artificial Intelligence in the New Battle Between China, Russia and America (available from Simon & Schuster.com). 

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Jodie Wallis is a decisive, results-driven leader with more than 30 years of experience developing and leading transformation programs and agendas. As the Global Chief Analytics Officer at Manulife, she leads the company’s efforts worldwide to leverage data and AI to deliver personalized customer experiences, achieve operational excellence and support strategic decision making. 

Prior to joining Manulife, Wallis was a Managing Director at Accenture Canada where she led the Applied Intelligence Practice. In that role she was responsible for working with clients across industries to develop and implement data and analytics strategies, pushing the boundaries of applied machine intelligence models to deliver incremental value for organizations and their customers. 

As a recognized expert in Artificial Intelligence, Wallis was recently named as one of the “10 Women advancing AI in Canada” by ITWorld Canada, and “Digital Leader of the Year” by Women in IT. She is also a co-host of the award-winning podcast series “The AI Effect,” and was recently named a Catalyst Honours Champion for her work in accelerating progress for women in the workplace in Canada. 

Wallis holds an Honours Co-op Bachelor of Mathematics from the University of Waterloo. She lives in Toronto where she is a co-Chair of the organizing committee for Guts+Glory in support of Covenant House.

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John Weigelt leads Microsoft Canada’s strategic policy and technology efforts. He helps individuals and organizations across Canada innovate with technology while avoiding the unintended consequences that might arise. John has contributed to many technological efforts that established the foundation for the electronic services we take for granted today and he continues to lead efforts to evolve technology standards and policy. His extensive experience in technology, business and policy provides him with a unique perspective of our technology enabled economy. 

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Ozge Yeloglu

Vice President, Advanced Analytics and Artificial Intelligence, CIBC

Rachel Ziemba

Rachel Ziemba

Founder, Ziemba Insights
Senior Advisor, Horizon Engage
Adjunct Senior Fellow, Center for a New American Security

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Özge Yeloğlu is the Vice President, Advanced Analytics and AI at CIBC, where she leads the enablement and delivery of analytics solutions and advances the use of AI across the bank. Previously, Ozge led data and artificial intelligence technical team for Microsoft Canada. She has a diverse background, ranging from academia to start ups and she enjoys bringing these different perspectives to her everyday work life. Outside of the office, Ozge puts her skills and knowledge to use as a mentor for start-up founders through Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) in Toronto and Halifax. She’s also a founding member of the Atlantic Women’s Investment Fund focusing on female led start ups across Canada while also increasing the number of female investors in the investment ecosystem.

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Rachel Ziemba is a geo-economic and country risk expert. She runs Ziemba Insights, an advisory firm that engages in macroeconomic scenario analysis and policy due diligence for public and private sector clients. She is Senior Advisor at Horizon Engage and Adjunct Senior Fellow at Energy, Economics and Security program at the DC-based think tank the Center for a New American Security (CNAS).

Her work is particularly focused on the role of coercive economic statecraft policies including sanctions and the array of other positive and restrictive tools governments use to reshape markets including sovereign investment and industrial policy strategies in developed and emerging economies. She is developing a course on economic statecraft and weaponized trade for NYU’s Center for Global Affairs. She also runs Ziemba Insights, an advisory firm that engages in macroeconomic scenario analysis and policy due diligence for public and private sector clients.

Previously, Rachel served as the head of emerging markets macro strategy research at Roubini Global Economics, a global macro strategy and country risk firm. In that capacity she co-led the research team, overseeing the firm’s quarterly global economic outlook and scenario production and implementing many of its customized research projects and due diligence exercises for private equity firms. 

Rachel regularly serves as an expert commentator in key media outlets including CNBC, Bloomberg, New York Times, Financial Times, and her research has been cited by a range of international institutions including the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and European Central Bank. She is the co-author of “Scenarios for Risk Management and Global Investment Strategies”  and “Investing in the Modern Age” both with William Ziemba.

Rachel started her career in international development, working for the Canadian International Development Agency in Egypt, and the International Development Research Centre (Canada) on development economic issues. She also spent time as a US State Department intern at the Embassy in Paris (where she was an inaugural recipient of the Pamela Harriman Foreign Service Fellowship) and the Consulate in Toronto.

She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago with honours, and a Master of Philosophy degree in international relations with a specialization in international political economy from St. Antony’s College, Oxford University (with distinction).

Academic experts

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Dr. Jagdeep Singh Bachher

Chancellor, University of Waterloo
Chief Investment Officer, University of California

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Dr. Joël Blit

Chair, Council on Innovation Policy
Senior Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)

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Dr. Vivek Goel

President and Vice-Chancellor, University of Waterloo

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Dr. Jagdeep Singh Bachher is the University of California’s chief investment officer. He is responsible for managing some $180 billion, which includes the UC endowment, pension and retirement savings, working capital and insurance assets. 

Bachher has been a champion for change in the investment industry and gained an international reputation as an innovator. In his role as chief investment officer, he created a collaborative culture known as The UC Investments Way that is embodied by 10 pillars that guide investment decision making for the benefit of university stakeholders and the broader UC community.

Bachher received his Ph.D. and Master’s degrees in management sciences and B.A.Sc. degree in 
mechanical engineering from the University of Waterloo. Bachher was recently selected as the 
university’s incoming chancellor, a ceremonial role.

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Dr. Joël Blit's main research interests are in the economics of innovation and innovation policy. He studies, among other things, the diffusion of disruptive technologies and their impact on productivity and jobs.

Blit regularly advises policymakers on innovation policy. As part of an expert roundtable, he advised the Minister of Foreign Affairs on Canada’s optimal position on intellectual property for USMCA trade negotiations. On the topic of automation and the future of work, he has briefed the G7 Representatives and has been an invited speaker at a number of venues including the OECD Global Forum on Productivity.

Prior to joining Waterloo, Blit was an Assistant Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the George Washington University, and a business consultant to financial services firms in Asia, Australia, and North America. His consulting engagements included reorganizing the activities of a major bank and formulating the strategy for a $US 100M startup.

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Dr. Vivek Goel is the University of Waterloo's President and Vice-Chancellor. He has held a number of senior leadership roles at the University of Toronto including as Vice-President and Provost and most recently as Vice-President Research and Innovation.

He served as founding President and CEO of Public Health Ontario from 2008 until 2014 and also as a founding scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES). Goel has served as Chief Academic Strategist with Coursera, a global platform that connects universities and learners with online courses.

Goel obtained his medical degree from McGill University and completed post-graduate medical training in Community Medicine at the University of Toronto. Goel obtained a master’s degree (MSc) in Community Health from U of T and a master’s degree (MS) in Biostatistics from Harvard University School of Public Health.

Amir-Hossein Karimi

Dr. Amir-Hossein Karimi

Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

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Dr. Jimmy Lin

Cheriton Chair, David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
Co-director, Waterloo AI Institute
CTO, Primal

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Dr. Bessma Momani

Professor, Political Science
Senior Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)

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Dr. Amir-Hossein Karimi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering with cross-appointment at the Cheriton School of Computer Science of the University of Waterloo at the University of Waterloo, and a Vector Institute Faculty Affiliate. He leads the Collaborative Human-AI Reasoning Machines (CHARM) Lab, dedicated to pioneering advances in AI to facilitate trustworthy human-AI collaborations.

Dr. Karimi's scholarly contributions have been showcased almost exclusively at top-tier AI and ML venues including NeurIPS, ICML, AAAI, AISTATS, ACM FAccT, and ACM AIES. He has authored influential publications such as a comprehensive survey paper in the prestigious ACM Computing Surveys, holds a patent, and is a contributing author of a book chapter. Dr. Karimi’s work on algorithmic recourse has notably elevated its prominence in responsible AI research, with its presence growing from almost none to hundreds on Google Scholar in just five years; algorithmic recourse is now a mandatory criterion in key sectors, including Canada’s Treasury Board Directive on Automated Decision-Making. Besides highlighted presentations at the aforementioned venues and serving on their respective conference program committees, numerous academic and industry research labs have invited Dr. Karimi to present talks, lectures, and tutorials. His invited talks span institutions like University College London, ETH Zurich, Cyber Valley Health, Harvard University, MIT, Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA), Institute of Mathematical Statistics, NEC Europe Labs, DeepMind, and Google Brain. Notably, Dr. Karimi gave a tutorial on Causal Explainable AI at KDD 2023 and one on Algorithmic Recourse at the Toronto ML Summit 2024. Committed to knowledge mobilization and reproducibility, his open-source code has earned over 100 GitHub stars.

Prior to joining Waterloo, Dr. Karimi accumulated significant industry experience at leading tech companies such as BlackBerry, Meta (Facebook), Google Brain, and DeepMind, and provided consulting services for various startups and incubators including for NEXT AI. His contributions have earned him multiple accolades, such as the University of Toronto Spirit of Engineering Science Award (2015), the Waterloo Alumni Gold Medal Award (2018), the NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship - Doctorate (2018), the Google PhD Fellowship (2021), the ETH Zurich Medal (2024), the NSERC Discovery Grants (2024), and the Igor Ivkovic Teaching Excellence Award (2024).

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Dr. Jimmy Lin's area of research lies at the intersection between natural language processing and information retrieval. In addition to being one of the most cited artificial intelligence scholars in the world, he has been frequently and deeply engaged with both the private and public sectors throughout his career, including an extended sabbatical at Twitter and visiting positions at the US National Library of Medicine (NLM), part of the National Institutes for Health (NIH).

He presently serves as the Chief Technology Officer of Primal, a Waterloo-based AI company focused on creating meaning that computers can understand. Lin holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT and is a fellow of the ACM.

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Dr. Bessma Momani is Full Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo, a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, and Governor on the board of the International Development Research Centre. She previously served as both Assistant and Associate Vice-President in the university’s Office of Research.

Dr. Momani has worked as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund, both in the communications office and the Independent Evaluation Office. She has also been a Visiting Scholar in Global Affairs Canada (GAC) in its International Assistance Research and Knowledge Division and served as an inaugural member of the National Security Transparency Advisory Group at Public Safety Canada. Dr. Momani has authored more than twelve books and 80 peer-reviewed academic articles and is also a frequent media and political analyst with editorials in The Globe and Mail, The New York Times, Time, the Washington Post, the National Post and the Toronto Star.

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Dr. Mary Wells

Dean of Engineering

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Dr. Mary Wells is Dean of Engineering at the University of Waterloo (July 1, 2020 - Present), 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.