Biomedical Engineering

Biomedical Engineer Robin Black thinks he more-or-less stumbled into his career in Engineering. In high school, he didn't know anyone who was an engineer. He was interested in medicine because his father and grandfather had been medical doctors. He started a biology program at McMaster, but when he found out that no one from that program at McMaster ever got into medicine, he switched to engineering at Queen's. He worked summers at an orthopedic laboratory, building and installing an artificial knee, and then joined a group doing rehabilitation engineering at the Ontario Crippled Children's Centre– helping people.

Biomedical engineer Dr. Monique Frize describes her "best project", a system for intensive care of infants – a software program that provides physicians and parents with decision assistance. It provides the physician with relevant data, predicts mortality, potential complications, duration of ventilation, and duration of stay. It provides parents with definitions of common medical terms and decision support should a change of treatment be needed. It was successfully piloted at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario. "It took 25 years to get there – and about 35 theses"

Biomedical Engineer Robin Black did not know engineers in high school and, although interested in STEM, started a biology program at McMaster. When he learned that no-one from this program was accepted to medical school, he switched to engineering at Queen's, working summers at an orthopedic laboratory in Toronto. He earned a PhD, researching preventing pressure sores for children with spina bifida. He worked with the rehabilitation engineering group at Ontario Crippled Children's Centre for a number of years, until severe funding cutbacks caused him to join the medical engineering program at the National Research Council. One of his projects involved working with Spar Aerospace, then designing the Canadarm, to develop a robotic arm that would allow a bright woman to control her wheelchair with her thumb. He contributed to the Space Life Science Program, studying means to mitigate bone loss problems in space, and worked on the Space Station Advisory Committee. When government funding to NRC was cut, he moved to the NRC Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) in Calgary. Now retired, he volunteers with the Vancouver Island branch of the Canadian Society of Senior Engineers, co-ordinating webinars for the Vancouver Island Engineering Society that attract several hundred attendees. Finally, he offers advice to high-school students interested in careers in engineering and newly graduated Engineers-in-Training.

Dr. Monique Frize took two years of pure science and mathematics at the University of Ottawa before being given a tour of an electrical engineering lab with monitors and oscilloscopes that inspired her to switch to electrical engineering. She received an Athlone Fellowship to support a Master's Degree in Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College in London. She worked for seven years at the Notre Dame Hospital in Montreal and then, based in Moncton, was appointed Chief of Biomedical Engineering for seven New Brunswick hospitals. While working, she completed a PhD as a distance student from a university in the Netherlands and in 1990 was appointed Chair for Women in Engineering, and Professor of Electrical Engineering, at the University of New Brunswick. She considers her mentors to include Professor Philip Thompson at the University of Ottawa, Nandor Richter, and Ursula Franklin of the University of Toronto. She collaborated on a system to interpret Electrocardiograms (ECGs), a camera to identify pain, and a Physician Parent Decision Assist System to support the intensive care of infants in hospitals. She has written books about the history of women in science and engineering, three textbooks related to engineering ethics, the story of Laura Bassi, and, finally, her own memoirs. She created the Canadian Institute of Women in Engineering and Science to persuade women to donate their papers to the University of Ottawa archives