DR. CASEY KEULEN

Canada is a leader in advanced manufacturing and one of only 11 world economies that compete on value rather than cost. Our manufacturing sector is dominated by small and medium-sized businesses that leverage the power of engineering expertise and infrastructure to make highly specialized parts and machinery for a range of industries and end uses.

UBC’s Master of Engineering Leadership (MEL) in Advanced Materials Manufacturing is the ideal training ground for engineers who want to be leaders in this field – whether by managing projects and teams in existing enterprises or starting their own.

This unique program brings together advanced graduate courses in engineering and leadership, taught by academic and industry experts from UBC Faculty of Applied Science and UBC Sauder’s Robert H. Lee Graduate School. Over the 12-month program, students work on several industry-led projects as they enhance their technical knowledge and develop new leadership skills.

In September 2020, I will be entering my eighth year here at UBC. This is an excellent university for research, with world-class facilities and a wide range of expertise across different departments creating opportunities for exciting collaborations. The high quality of industrial research at UBC is evident in the long list of companies that have ongoing collaborations with the university. We’re also known for our commitment to excellence in teaching. UBC attracts the brightest students at both the undergraduate and graduate level, and has state-of-the-art teaching facilities to support them. There is a great collegial feeling among faculty and we all have our students’ best interests in mind.

UBC also has a great depth of expertise in manufacturing engineering, and a new undergraduate program in this field has seen the addition of new faculty with manufacturing expertise, new lab facilities and more manufacturing engineering elective courses for our MEL students.

My work focuses on processing and manufacturing advanced composite materials like carbon fibre. Our lab has an ongoing relationship with Boeing that keeps our research both cutting edge and grounded in areas that are of interest to industry. We also do a lot of work with small and medium-sized enterprises – over the past eight years my lab has worked with over 150 companies, giving us strong insight into the issues facing manufacturing in Canada. These connections have helped us bring industry leaders into the classroom while giving students firsthand access to industrial facilities through site visits and co-op placements.

UBC and the provincial and federal governments are all strong supporters of manufacturing education, and of manufacturing in general, as a critical path to ensuring Canada’s global competitiveness. Graduates of the MEL in Advanced Materials Manufacturing are positioned to guide success in manufacturing – which will ultimately translate into success for Canadian society as a whole.