Sahar Kokaly probably isn’t going anywhere. Her steady dedication is what’s helping transform the ways we move. A three-time McMaster Faculty of Engineering graduate – BEng ’06, MASc ’08, PhD ’19 – Kokaly is a software safety engineering leader at General Motors as part of the Canadian Technical Centre where she and her team ensure the safety of the software that powers automotive systems like driver assistance and autonomous driving. While she has arrived in a specific field that only rose to prominence about a decade ago, the desire to pursue a career in engineering has been with Kokaly for a long time.
“I actually come from an engineering family,” Kokaly said. “Both my parents are engineers, so our dinner-table topics would revolve around how you would design this or what project my mom was working on. I think growing up, engineering was just something that I always thought about. I had an interest in all the foundational topics that I would need to be a strong engineer in terms of math and logic and science.”
Now, Kokaly has spent a decade with the team at GM, where she is helping to make the company’s vehicles even safer while enhancing driver comfort and the driving experience. Advancing a technology that existed only in science fiction when she was a Mac undergrad requires the kind of massive, multidisciplinary effort that benefits from a company of GM’s scale.
“GM’s mission is to pioneer the innovations that move and connect people to what matters and that’s exactly what drives our work in autonomous vehicles, electrification, and connectivity,” Kokaly asserted.
“What sets a company like GM apart is the understanding that building technology isn’t enough. You have to embed it within society, within the regulatory frameworks, the infrastructure, and the communities it’s meant to serve.”
“Every piece of the puzzle, from software to policy to hardware, feeds into our vision of a world with zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestion. There are many interdependencies in developing automobile technology, but at a company of this scale, you have the resources, the cross-functional expertise, and the breadth of knowledge to bring all of those ideas together and bring that vision to life.”
Kokaly started working with General Motors when she was a doctoral student at McMaster. While she is openly passionate about her involvement with projects like Super Cruise, GM’s award-winning, hands-free driving assistance system, there is another facet of her career that reaches beyond that focus. Kokaly may have graduated from McMaster, but she has never really left the university. In fact, she has made connecting universities and industry one of the hallmarks of her career. As a student, she saw the benefits of partnerships between McMaster and the private sector – in fact, that’s how she connected initially with GM – so, when she was hired into the corporate world full-time, she brought the value of that kind of cross-sector partnership with her.
“I continued my collaborations, not just with McMaster, but with other universities across Canada,” recalled Kokaly, who is an adjunct professor with McMaster’s Faculty of Engineering and has been playing an active role in GM’s scientific and academic partnerships since 2025. “My role in GM’s academic partnerships is rooted in a genuine belief that innovation thrives when industry and academia work together,” Kokaly explained. “I’m committed to bringing the best emerging research and ideas back to my team — but the relationship goes both ways. By sharing the real challenges we face on the industry side, we help university research teams move beyond theory and tackle problems that have genuine, real-world impact. That’s how meaningful progress gets made — and ultimately, it’s how we continue to advance GM’s purpose of pioneering the innovations that move and connect people to what matters.”
The same connection-driven approach that inspires Kokaly to build stronger bridges between academia and the private sector also motivates her efforts to expand the STEM community. A nominee for the 2026 YWCA Women of Distinction award in the STEM and Trades category, Kokaly has volunteered as part of initiatives including McMaster’s Women in Science Day Conference, McMaster EcoCar Women in STEM Conference and the Gr8 Designs for Gr8 Girls program.
“I think there’s an opportunity to encourage young girls because they might not know that they like programming or that they like math or that they like science and technology,” Kokaly said. “So having these opportunities for them to try it out is important, just to see whether it is something that catches their interests.” It’s an approach that resonates with her time as an undergraduate studying in a male-dominated field.
“I was one of very few female students in my program in software engineering, and it felt sometimes that it was going to be difficult to be in a career where you don’t see many people who look like you,” she recalled.
“So, I think it’s important for me to make sure that other girls and women understand that it’s possible. … I’d like to make sure that we’re opening doors for others and allowing them to think about the opportunities that may come their way.”
If there’s a common theme across Kokaly’s areas of interest – diversity in STEM, university-industry partnerships and software-powered automotive safety systems – it’s the power of connectivity. It’s clear that theme will continue to shape her career in the coming months and years as she pushes to advance the technologies that are at the heart of her work. The next frontier isn’t just the autonomous vehicle itself — it’s connectivity,” Kokaly predicted. “It’s about vehicles communicating across manufacturers, with infrastructure, with traffic systems, and with the smart devices in our everyday lives. That seamless integration is what will truly transform how we move.”
While Kokaly is dealing directly with many of the technological challenges of making that kind of progress, she acknowledges that a big part of the success of intelligent and autonomous cars is beyond the influence of the software that she and her team produce. Much will depend on consumer trust. She believes that widespread consumer belief in these kinds of AI-driven systems is likely to follow a path similar to what we have seen with electric vehicle adoption and the psychological barrier of range anxiety.
Beyond infrastructure and technology, Kokaly points to something less tangible but equally critical: consumer trust. “The shift only happens when people experience these vehicles firsthand,” she explained. “Just like our phones, EVs and autonomous vehicles need to become part of our daily lives — seamlessly integrated, intuitive, and indispensable. Once consumers live with the technology, the trust follows. And earning that trust? That’s on us.” It’s a responsibility that sits at the heart of GM’s vision of a world with zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestion — a future that can only be realized when people are ready and willing to embrace it.
When it happens, that shift has the potential to unlock benefits that include greater safety, lower fuel consumption and shorter travel times. Sahar Kokaly is looking forward to being part of that revolution at General Motors while remaining connected to McMaster and to her advocacy for girls and women in STEM. “There’s a lot of challenges that are coming our way,” she said, “but with challenge comes opportunity, and that’s the right place for me to thrive right now. So, I’ll be working in this area and continuing to bridge with research and academia because I also really enjoy just being around students and working with them.”
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