Professor Hani E. Naguib
Manufacturing New Materials; smart materials and structures; multi-functional polymers such as: active polymers, biopolymers and polymer nanocomposites. Research focus on physical, mechanical, biological, and environmental active polymers. Dynamics of polymer systems; mechanical and physical properties of polymers; Modelling and simulation of polymers properties; Energy harvesting and storage materials; Smart skins and sensors.
Post-Doctoral Research Associates
Shahrzad Ghaffari
Dr. Ghaffari graduated with a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Toronto and is currently working as a post-doctoral researcher at SAPL focusing on the mechanical performance of rubber materials in collaboration with companies. Prior to her work with rubber materials, she was working on the design, modelling, and prototyping of composite foams for acoustic applications.
PhD Students/Candidates
Zhongjie Li is Ph.D candidate under the supervision of Professor Hani E. Naguib. He obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Harbin Institute of Technology, China. His previous projects were mainly about deployable structures, especially overconstrained mechanisms and solid-surface deployable mechanisms. He discovered the Twin-Bennett linkage and applied it to a deployable solar concentrator. His current research focuses on building low-frequency vibration-based energy harvester.
Zia Saadatnia
Zia is currently a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering at University of Toronto. He is also a research assistant in SAPL under the supervision of Prof. Hani Naguib and co-supervision of Prof. Ebrahim Esmailzadeh (University of Ontario Institute of Technology). His current research is mainly focused on design and development of mechanical energy harvesting devices and passive sensors.
Anastasia Wickeler
Anastasia is a PhD student working on finite element modeling of building management structures utilizing ANSYS.
Shahriar Ghaffari
Shahriar is focused on the development of aerogel composites for various thermal and mechanical applications.
Arturo Reza Ugalde
Arturo is a PhD student from Mexico, his current topic is concerned with novel materials for energy storage applications.
HaoTian Harvey Shi
Harvey is working on his PhD project on the design, fabrication, and modelling of thin film, flexible energy storage materials, mainly focusing on the prototyping of high performance solid-state hybrid batteries for scalable for both consumer electronics and high power, high energy applications. His work mainly concerns the conductive polymer electrodes, gel-based composite electrolytes, and conductive current collectors.
Muhammad Anwer
Anwer is conducting research in the field of hierarchical polymer composites for high strength mechanical applications. His MASc topic was on the behaviors of bio-degradable polymer blends. He is working on the design and fabrication of mechanically sound materials for various engineering purposes.
Gary Sun
Gary’s PhD work is concerned with the design of carbon nano-particle based composite for actuation purposes. Gary’s MASc work mainly focuses on novel energy harvesting composite materials with a emphasis on piezoelectric and thermoelectric polymer composites. His work has the potential to be implemented for energy harvesters to be used in smart textiles or waste heat management applications.
Nazanin Khalili
Nazanin’s PhD project is focused on the modelling, optimization, and fabrication of smart textiles such as electronic skin for biomedical applications. Nazanin completed her MASc. degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Toronto focusing on the multiobjective optimization of conducting polymer based composite materials for sensing and actuating applications.
Mohamad Kshad
Mohamad started his PhD project on the fabrication, modelling, and optimization of meta-materials, specifically origami materials for various mechanical and lightweight structural applications.
Master of Applied Science Students
XueChen Jerry Shen
Jerry is making innovative 3D printer designs and structures allowed for the rapid prototyping and fabrication of functional 3D sensor materials.
Taylor Morrison
Taylor is seeking new techniques in fabricating highly efficient energy storage devices for a wide-range of applications.
Karolina Stepniak
Karolina is working on understanding the mechanical and CT-attenuation properties of the heart and its pulmonary arteries and designing novel materials for biomedical phantoms.
Akshay Seshadri
Akshay is re-inventing smart sensor systems for oil and gas industry. His work focuses on the design of novel sensor materials for selective gases.
Ahmed Anwer
Ahmed is working on novel impact resistant, shock absorbing materials for various purposes.
International Exchange Researchers
Wei Wang
Wei Wang is an international visiting Ph.D student from Xi’an Jiaotong University of China. His research interests are primarily associated with the fabrication and application of flexible energy harvesters.
Shasha Jiao
Shasha is a Ph.D. candidate from the Northwestern Polytechnical University of China. Her research interests are primarily associated with higher performance flexible fibrous electrodes for supercapacitor and batteries applications.
SAPL Alumni
Post-Doctoral Researchers
Reza Rizvi
Dr. Rizvi graduated from the University of Toronto Mechanical Engineering PhD program in 2014 and has been working as a post-doctoral researcher at SAPL in collaboration with Toronto Rehabilitation Institute (Toronto Rehab) in an effort to design and fabricate novel composite sole materials for non-slippery winter shoes. Prior to his post-doctoral work, he has been working on piezo-resistive materials for smart sensing applications. Reza is now working on nanomaterials research at UCLA.
Doctor of Philosophy of Applied Science Graduates
Kyle Eastwood
Kyle is working towards a joint PhD-MD program co-supervised by Dr. James Drake from the Sick Kids Hospital. His work mainly focuses on the design and optimization of active surgical tools for minimally invasive neurosurgery.
Janice Song
Janice is working towards her PhD degree on the design and experimental validation of shape memory polymer materials for drug-delivery applications. With a controlled release of medication, her work can potentially change the way patients will receive pharmaceutical care in the future.
Farooq Al Jahwari
Farooq had a project focus on the design and modelling of functionally-graded novel composite porous structures for ultra-high impact energy applications in automotive, aerospace, and military applications.
Eunji In
Eunji was a PhD candidate focusing on the design and fabrication of aerogel-based medical MRI phantoms for medical calibration and training purposes. Currently in collaboration with hospitals, her work is aiming at implementing this type of novel composite phantom prototyping for clinical applications.
Master of Applied Science Graduates
Ali Anwer
Ali started his MASc studies working on surface texturing of polymer composites.
Adam Pearson
Adam is working with rubber based materials for studying the friction reduction and aging properties.
Sherif Ramadan
Sherif is a M.H.Sc. student working in conjunction with hospitals on novel flexible bio-mimicking materials.
Carlton Hoy
Carlton currently works on the fabrication and engineering design of medical imaging phantoms made from novel polymer composite materials for CT scanners. His work can be potentially implemented in hospitals to be used for medical device calibration and training.
Sharon Li
Sharon is a master of engineering student working on the characterization of anti-microbial composites by effectively integrating anti-microbial agents within polymeric matrices.
Master of Engineering Graduates
Sean Lin
Sean is interested in the design and fabrication of high strength structures with novel fillers.
Nicola McFadden
Nicola has a keen research interest in the environmental impact of cosmetics packaging materials and she is searching for the next generation environmentally friendly products for this purpose.
Terri Zhang
Terri has been focusing on the memory polymers blends designed for drug delivery applications. Her work with Janice is targeted to overcome obstacles faced by conventional drug release systems, where the delivery rates are often not controlled.
Elisabeth Walker
Martin Huang
Chaofan Ho
Martin works on the fabrication of polymeric foams for ultra-high impact energy applications in automotive industries.
International Exchange Researchers
Jerry Cai
Jerry is a Ph.D. candidate from the Tongji University of China. His research interests are primarily associated with shape memory polymers and by tailoring the polymerization parameters for optimizing the shape memory effects.
Merle Bischoff
Merle is conducting a research project on electro spinning of sPEEK fibers in cooperation with ITA, RWTH Aachen, Germany. Besides the fiber spinning process development her focus is on investigating several forms of sPEEK fibers with different modifications ( e.g. degree of sulfonation and nanoparticle incorporation).
Clement Dhondt
Clement is an internship student from ENSICAEN France, he is working on organmi based structures.
