Elizabeth Weckman Full Interview

Oral history interview with Dr. Elisabeth Weckman, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Dr. Weckman enjoyed math, sciences, history, and art in high school and eventually elected to take engineering at university instead of archeology or architecture. She started in systems design engineering but switched to mechanical, where her first co-op job was at a copper mine in Turkey. She was introduced to combustion engineering by a professor who ignited an aerosol can in her presence, convincing her that "this is more exciting than plastic gears." Her PhD research used lasers to study the velocities and temperatures in a burning pan of liquid that moved to accommodate the stationary lasers. In the last four or five years, these data have been used as benchmark data for international teams developing computer models for fires. The training director of the Waterloo Fire Department became aware of her work after watching a dramatic short video showing her experiments. This led initially to collaborative work to improve training of fire fighters and subsequently to funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation program for the $5.6 million University of Waterloo Fire Research Lab that has the capability of creating a two-storey house fire at full scale. She describes the evolution of the field of Fire Protection engineering that now has roots in mechanical, civil, electrical, chemical, and systems design engineering and requires knowledge of physiology to investigate how fire gases impact humans as they're trying to escape from a fire. She advises high-school students who are curious about careers in engineering – or any field – to be adventurous and not fear making a wrong decision, she believes in learning experiences, not failures. She encourages graduate students to measure their successes in the context of the work they are doing and the individuals they are working with, instead of being fixated on journal publications. She looks forward to the development of holistic solutions in Fire Protection engineering that include "social things, policy, economics, environment."