Chairholders
Profile
Hanan Anis
Faculty of Engineering, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of Ottawa
Chair title
NSERC Chair in Entrepreneurial Engineering Design
Chair program
Chairs in Design Engineering Program
Role
Chairholder since 2015
Summary
The objective of the Chair in Entrepreneurial Engineering Design is to strengthen design engineering at the University of Ottawa by empowering students to design, build and test solutions to engineering problems in the context of validated market opportunities and business constraints, with entrepreneurship as a unifying theme. The creation of this Chair is underpinned by the philosophy that engineering graduates must be trained in understanding customer needs and recognizing and evaluating market opportunities, alongside their core training in sound engineering design principles and processes. The next generation of graduates needs to understand business models, with an awareness of how and where their own product, design contribution, employer, enterprise or venture fits within a complex value chain of customers, suppliers, and partners. Moreover, they need to be able to communicate their engineering solutions in terms of economic and societal values that resonate beyond peer subject-matter experts.
Statistics show that more and more new graduates will be employed by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or start their own companies. Interest in entrepreneurship has noticeably increased among students, and the barrier to entrepreneurship has been lowered through easier accessibility to technologies, crowd funding and open innovation. The Chair’s philosophy is rooted in Dr. Anis’ experience as a design engineer and entrepreneur, which underscored the imperative for integrating the two elements. Dr. Anis’ career path to date has taken her full circle from academia as a graduate student, through industry and business enterprise (1994–2004), and back to academia (2004–present). During her tenure in industry, she was an integral part of several multi-disciplinary design teams that successfully delivered numerous complex, state-of-the-art fibreoptic system products to market. Since joining the University of Ottawa in 2004, Dr. Anis has taught management-related courses in creativity and innovation, product development and technology entrepreneurship, as well as technical courses in optical networks, optoelectronics and photonics components, and biophotonics.
The Chair is structured around five core activities:
- Effecting curriculum enhancements to strengthen the current design engineering curriculum and linkages between design engineering and entrepreneurship
- Facilitating access to, and providing training within, rapid prototyping facilities
- Creating a multidisciplinary capstone projectstreamat the undergraduate level
- Facilitating a student internship program
- Creating a Master’s program in entrepreneurial engineering design
The intended outcome of the core activities proposed above is to enhance the design engineering curriculum, student experience and training, by fostering and strengthening:
- Technical design engineering depth, by providing students with many opportunities throughout their program to design, fabricate and test products that meet a customer need.
- Customer awareness, by integrating customer discovery and validation in the design engineering process.
- Business acumen, through introduction to essential business concepts, exposure to industry, and advanced training in entrepreneurial engineering design for students interested in starting their own business.
Contact information
Faculty of Engineering, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of Ottawa
Email: hanis@uottawa.ca
Website:
http://engineering.uottawa.ca/eecs/people/anis-hanan
