NCIT Educational and Training Initiatives

The NCIT Educational and Training Initiatives included the establishment of the NCIT Fellowship and Scholarship program as an innovative pilot program to address long-term research challenges in Ottawa. The program enabled industrial researchers (who left their industry positions due to the severe downsizing of the telecom industry) to join the academic arena where they worked on an industrial research project either as post doctoral fellows in their field of expertise or as graduate students studying for a higher degree. The benefits of the NCIT program directly impacted economic development in Ottawa, and enabled innovation longevity in the region. The program retained highly qualified industry talent in Ottawa who shared their knowledge with the next generation of innovators. Individuals with extensive industrial research experience had the opportunity to apply their knowledge for academic standing thereby actively addressing the urgent shortage of qualified Engineering and Advanced technology professors.

Steve McGarry who used to work for Nortel’s semiconductor division held the first NCIT Scholarship which enabled him to pursue academic studies towards M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in the Department of Electronics at Carleton University working with Prof. Garry Tarr. Steve’s research focused on opto-electronic component packaging technologies required to manufacture large scale optoelectronic and semiconductor components and subsystems.
Dr. Ostap Monkewich held the first NCIT Post-Doctoral Fellowship which enabled him to continue his research interests in promoting the use of formal methods for software development, testing and security. Ostap earned his Ph.D. degree from the University of Ottawa back in 1982. He had a long experience record behind him at Nortel and Industry Canada Department of Communications. While working for Nortel, Dr. Monkewich has been the driving force inside the company behind understanding, applying and adopting Formal Software Development Methods to developing software for telecommunications products and related standards. Through his efforts, Nortel sponsored the establishment of the “Advanced Software Engineering Research and Training (ASERT) Laboratories” at both the University of Ottawa and Carleton University. ASERT Laboratories support graduate research and extensive undergraduate education and training programs in formal software development. As Member of the ASERT Labs Boards of Directors, Dr. Monkewich has been the momentum behind these laboratories and maintained their interactions and relationships with the industrial sponsors (Telelogic is the Founding Industrial Member) and activities in international standard bodies such as ITU, IETF and ETSI.
Dr. Damian Flannery held an NCIT Post-Doctoral Fellowship. Dr. Flannery earned his Ph.D. degree from Cranfield University in the UK in 1998. Between the years 1999 and 2002, Dr. Flannery was employed at Nortel in Paignton, UK and in Ottawa, Canada, as an Optical System Designer where he conducted research in the design of optical amplifiers for next generation optical communication systems. Notably, Dr. Flannery gained experience with system model development and system control algorithms for optimum conditions. Dr. Flannery worked with Professor Hall at the University of Ottawa and industry partner Intelligent Photonics Control on the NCIT research project “Intelligent Control of Optical Add/Drop Multiplexors.” Dr. Flannery landed an excellent job with Bookham Technologies in January 2004 after 7 months as NCIT Fellow. This highlights the talent retention effect of the NCIT Fellowship program. Dr. Lijian Hou took over this job and is now the new NCIT Fellow.
Lijian Hou held an NCIT Postdoctoral Fellowship. Dr. Hou took over from Dr. Flannery. Dr. Hou earned her Ph.D. in laser and optics applications in engineering from the University of Kassel in Germany in 1999 and had been with Nortel Optical Division until 2002 where she worked on optical system design, packaging and testing of optical subsystems. Dr. Trevor Hall was very pleased with Lijian’s contribution and was disappointed to know that Lijian decided to leave to take an industry position in Germany. This remains as a positive proof of the effectiveness and retention value of the NCIT program. Her last day of work was June 30, 2004. It was agreed to use the remaining 6 months to support Sofia Parades a research associate at the Centre for Research in Photonics at the University of Ottawa.
Dr. Stewart Andrew Clark held an NCIT Post-Doctoral Fellowship. Dr. Clark earned his Ph.D. degrees from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK. Between the years 2000 and 2002, Dr. Clark was employed at Nortel Networks in Ottawa, Canada as an Optical System Designer where he conducted studies in optical network performance and gained experience in the design of robust automatic safety mechanisms to prevent accidental exposure to high power radiation. Previously, Dr. Clark worked with Motorolla Semiconductors. He worked with Dr. Hall at the Centre for Research in Photonics at the University of Ottawa in the field of photonics networks and optical network control with Industry partner Intelligent Photonics Control.
Dr. Guido Torrese held an NCIT Post-Doctoral Fellowship. Dr. Torrese earned his Ph.D. degree in Optoelectronics from the Université Catholique de Louvain, in Belgium in February 2002. During the year 2002, Dr. Torrese held a seven month Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at the Microwave Laboratory at U.C.L. in Belgium where he worked on new methods for determining the harmonic distortion in SOI MOSFETs and related characterization based on vector nonlinear network analyzer measurements. Since October 2002, Dr. Torrese has been with the Integrated Active Photonics Laboratory at SITE, the University of Ottawa working on pulse dynamics in non-linear photonic crystals, tunable lasers, and integrated photonics devices. He worked with Dr. Cada at the University on the NCIT research project, “Integrated Optoelectronic Oscillators for Wireless Communications.”
Dr. Henry Schriemer held an NCIT Post-Doctoral Fellowship. Dr. Schriemer earned his Ph.D degree in Physics from the University of Manitoba in 1997. During the years 1998 to 2000 Dr. Schriemer held a Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship in the Van der WaalsZeeman Institute at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands where he gained experience with using different types of lasers to measure emission spectra in photonic crystals for the analysis. In the year 2000 he was employed at Zenastra Photonics Inc. in Ottawa, as a research scientist to establish development of the next generation optical products for silica on silicon planar lightwave circuits. Dr. Schriemer worked with Professor Cada in the Centre for Photonics Research at the University of Ottawa on research in the area of photonic bandgap engineering in 3D crystals. Dr. Schriemer is now Associate Professor at SITE, the University of Ottawa.
Dr. Shahraam Afshar: NCIT Post-Doctoral Fellow. Dr. Afshar earned his Ph.D. degree in Physics from the University of Adelaide in Australia in 2000. He is an accomplished researcher in the areas of “Distributed Stimulated Brillouin Scattering in Fibre Optics Sensors” and “Modeling of laser beam propagation in Turbulent Atmospheric Media” studied at the University of Adelaide. In September 2002, Dr. Afshar was invited to spend few months with the Fibre Optics Group at the Department of Physics, at the University of Ottawa. Along with Professor Bao in the Centre for Photonics Research at the University of Ottawa, Dr. Afsar’s work ultimately targeted new holey fibre designs which optimize performance of the distributed Brillouin sensor for the spatial, temperature and strain resolutions. Dr. Afshar is now in Australia working in the Centre of Expertise in Photonics, School of Chemistry and Physics, University of Adelaide.
Terrance Sullivan held an NCIT Industrial Research Fellowship. Mr. Sullivan has extensive Internet and networking product development experience obtained while working for several industry leaders that has most recently included Boston based start-up ideaLogix, spun out from Intel’s StrongARM group that developed innovative wireless video sensor networks and components. Wireless meshing has the potential to provide broadband wireless access virtually anywhere including trains, buses, and remote or harsh environments such as underground industries like mining. A recognized industry expert in the field of WiFi and WiMAX wireless LANs, Terrance is working with Dr Thomas Kunz and his team at Carleton University on the NCIT project "Quality of Service Support in 802.11 Wireless Mesh Networks”.

In addition to the above program, the NCIT also supported the establishment of new junior professorship positions at Carleton University and the University of Ottawa to augment research and education capabilities.

Needless to say that research projects mentioned above resulted in the creation and funding of over 50 Ph.D. positions and 50 M.Sc. positions and 10 PDF positions in topics across optoelectronics, networking, wireless and multimedia.