Research with societal impact

Anchored at McMaster’s Automotive Resource Centre within McMaster Innovation Park, the Southern Ontario Innovation Hub will bring together industry, academia and government in a single, co-located environment.

Several Faculty of Engineering faculty members are among the newly appointed or renewed CRCs, while others are recipients of the New Frontiers in Research Fund.

Tohid Didar, professor and Canada Research Chair in Nano-biomaterials, enters rare territory with the appointment, already being a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences

Boyang Zhang, associate professor of chemical engineering, is leading the development of organ-on-a-chip technology, which aims to accelerate drug discovery by constructing in vitro human tissue models for use in preclinical testing.

Nabil Bassim is collaborating with TechInsights and Fibics Incorporated to advance research and development for next-generation semiconductors.

Paulin Coulibaly, a professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and the School of Earth, Environment & Society, talks about how engineers are working to safeguard Canadians during floods.

Chemical Engineering Postdoctoral fellow Reza Eslami is bridging academia and industry through electrochemical innovations. His work advances scalable CO₂ conversion technologies to reduce emissions and support sustainable production of everyday materials.

Chemical Engineering professor David Latuilippe discusses how his lab safely experiments with biotherapeutic production methods aimed at improving efficiency and lowering costs, with the goal of expanding access to cancer immunotherapies.

Materials Science and Engineering researchers Nabil Bassim, Maureen Lagos and Oleg Rubel received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s (NSERC) G7 Countries Alliance International Catalyst Quantum grants program.

Civil Engineering professor Paulin Coulibaly has secured a second round of federal and industry funding to continue a McMaster-based national research network focused on strengthening flood forecasting across Canada.

Faculty of Engineering researchers James Cotton, Stephen Veldhuis, Benzhong Zhao and Alan Wassyng were each awarded a $240,000 NSERC grant to lead studies on SMRs.

The partnership explores rapidly evolving areas of AI — explainable AI and agentic AI — with the goal of creating intelligent systems that are not only capable, but also transparent and reliable.