Join Engineers Nova Scotia for our Spotlight on Local Innovation on Thursday, March 5th, 2020, to celebrate National Engineering Month by highlighting interesting projects and research led by engineers in Nova Scotia. This event will be held at The Westin Nova Scotian (Commonwealth Ballroom).

This signature event will include a three course meal with wine, three dynamic presentations and an opportunity to connect with other members and students. The reception begins at 5 PM, dinner will be served at 6 PM.

The cost to attend is $50, please use the online registration system to reserve your seat. Limited tickets are available. If you or your company are interested in sponsoring a table of 10, these can be purchased for $600 by contacting Beth@engineersnovascotia.ca. To provide greater networking opportunities for both students and professionals, sponsored tables will seat 9 employees and 1 engineering student. Students will be paired with companies by discipline. Sponsors will be recognized in our publications and during the event. 

SOLD OUT

Our presentations this year will be: 

Stephanie Gora, PhD, P.Eng., Postdoctoral Research, Dalhousie University, will discuss her experience as the project manager and lead researcher for a community-driven research project in Pond Inlet, a predominantly Inuit community located on Baffin Island. The goals of the project are to better characterize drinking water challenges in the system; develop water quality analysis and experimental design capacity in Pond Inlet; and to initiate hazard and stakeholder identification activities to support water safety planning within the community. Two-way knowledge transfer and collaborative dissemination of research findings are important components of this project. Research activities to date have included site visits; sample collection and analysis; training and mentoring of the community research team; collaborative hazard identification; and the execution and analysis of qualitative interviews with local and external stakeholders.

Sara Stout-Grandy, P.Eng., Hardware Engineer at Innovasea, will discuss the challenges involved in designing a tag that would be small enough to monitor juvenile salmon on their trek from their spawning grounds to the ocean without sacrificing the operating life and power levels offered by larger tags, all while trying to beat a competitor to market.  Sara will discuss the many twists and turns of this year-long project, including a complete platform change midway through the process due to a worldwide shortage of the microcontroller they chose, and some interesting testing in the Sacramento river during crazy high-flow water conditions. The presentation will conclude with the unveiling of the new tiny tag product, which is about to be officially launched to the market.

Christine O'Donnell, MBA, PMP, EIT, Manager Infrastructure with Nova Scotia Health Authority, will discuss the QEII New Generation Project -- the largest health care project in Nova Scotia history, and a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rethink and rebuild the way health care is delivered in Nova Scotia.  In her presentation, Christine will discuss the sub-projects included in the overall redevelopment as well as the need for the multiple complex work streams to flow in alignment to ensure that deadlines for delivery of the new patient care spaces are met. As part of her role, Christine is very committed to ensuring that standards are not only met, but that solutions put in place are innovative and future proof.