Sophie Larivière-Mantha

Biography:

Holder of a Bachelor's degree in Automated Production Engineering (ÉTS) and a Master's degree in Business Administration (ESG UQAM), Sophie Larivière-Mantha started her career in the biomedical engineering field for over a decade and developed a solid expertise in governance and strategic planning. 

Over the past eight years, Ms. Larivière-Mantha has held various management positions at the CIUSSS de l'Est-de-l'Île-de-Montréal, including Chief of Technology and Medical equipment services in the major real estate projects. Previously, she worked as a biomedical engineer for SNC-Lavalin, Groupe Biomédical Montérégie, and Planifika (part of Régis Côté Group).

Before her election as president in 2022, Ms. Larivière-Mantha had five years of experience as a member of OIQ’s board of directors, where she served multiple roles including president of the Audit Committee and a member of the Request Committee. She was also appointed Vice-President of the OIQ in 2021. Additionally, she has served on the board of directors of the Fondation de l'Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec in recent years.

She is also involved as president of the board of directors of the « Bureau coordonnateur de la garde en milieu familial d'Ahuntsic ».

Chunyan Lai

Biography:

Chunyan Lai received the B.S. degree in Engineering from Sun Yat-sen University, China, in 2010, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Windsor, Canada, in 2017. She worked at Midea Group, an Electrical Appliance Industry in China between 2010 and 2013, and then worked as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at University of Windsor in Canada between 2017 and 2018. She joined Concordia University in 2018 where she is currently an Associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her research areas include electric motor drives and control, power electronics, vehicle to grid and energy management systems. Dr. Lai has been the New Scholar Concordia University Research Chair on Transportation Electrification since 2020. She is a Senior Member of IEEE and an Associate Editor of the IEEE Systems Journal.

Marie-José Nollet

Biography:

Marie-José holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Université Laval, in Québec, and a Ph.D. in structural engineering from McGill University.  After 4 years of professional practice at Hydro-Québec as a structural engineer, she joined the Department of Construction Engineering at ETS in 1995 and is Dean of studies since 2019.  During her career as a professor, she has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in the field of structural engineering, was program director for the graduate programs in construction engineering and was actively involved in several committees. Still active in research, she has supervised nearly one hundred students since 1995 and published nearly 150 reports, journal and conference papers. Her work is focused on developing tools for the seismic vulnerability and risk assessment of structures in urban environment, i.e. building inventories for vulnerability analysis, loss assessment functions and damage prediction models for buildings and bridges. Prof. Nollet has been working on experimental and seismic risk assessment of unreinforced masonry residential buildings and heritage structures, such as churches, for more than twenty years. Over the years she has developed multiple collaborations in academia in Canada, Italy and Switzerland and with different partners at the municipal, provincial and federal government levels, and thereby, contributing to the knowledge transfer in seismic risk.  

Hakimeh Purmehdi of Ericsson

Biography:

Hakimeh Purmehdi is a project lead and senior data scientist at Ericsson Global Artificial Intelligence Accelerator, where leads innovative AI/ML solutions for future wireless communication networks. She received her Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada. After completing a postdoc in AI and image processing at the Radiology Department, University of Alberta, she co-founded Corowave, a start-up to develop resilient to movement, non-contact and continuous vital signs monitoring platform and sensors solution, leveraging radiofrequency technology and machine learning. Before joining Ericsson, she was with Microsoft Research (MSR) as a research engineer, and collaborated on developments of TextWorld project, which is a testbed for reinforcement learning research projects. Her research focus is basically on the intersection of wireless communication (5G and beyond including resource management and edge computing), AI solutions (such as online learning, federated learning, reinforcement learning, deep learning), optimization, and biotech.

Danielle Sami Nasrallah

Biography:

Danielle Sami Nasrallah received the Engineer’s diploma in electromechanical engineering and the

Diplôme d’´Etudes Approfondies in electrical engineering from École supérieure d’ingénieurs de

Beyrouth (´ESIB), Beirut, Lebanon in 2000 and 2002, respectively, and the Ph. D. degree in mechanical

engineering from McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada, in 2006.

During her Ph. D. studies she worked on a part-time basis at Robotics Design as control and robotics

engineer. She moved to Meta Vision Systems in 2006-2007 as a control and applications engineer.

In 2008 she joined the electrical department of the Royal Military College of Kingston as an assistant

professor and, in 2009, she was a visiting assistant professor at the American University of

Beirut. From 2010 to 2014, she worked as a consultant in control and systems engineering. In 2014

she joined OPAL-RT Technologies where she is presently the Courseware offering manager and Robotics expert.

She kept also links with academia as she is a lecturer at Concordia University in Canada, JUNIA in France, and ESIB in Lebanon.