Who Are We?

Chad W. Sinclair is Professor and Associate Head for Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Materials Engineering (MTRL). He is the Director of the Net0MM NSERC Create Training Centre and a member of the Advanced Materials Manufacturing Research Cluster  at the University of British Columbia.  He is also the founding chair of the Materials Engineering EDI (IDEAS) Committee in the Department of Materials Engineering at UBC, a member of the UBC Faculty of Applied Science EDI Leadership Committee and Indigenous Engagement Committee. He is passionate about working to dismantle the systems within our field that have restricted access to so many.

How did I get here?

Entering McMaster University as an Undergraduate student I knew little about engineering and even less about materials engineering.  Fortuitously I stumbled into the Materials Science and Engineering Department at McMaster, finding myself surrounded by pre-eminent materials teachers and researchers including J. D. Embury, G. R. Purdy, and G. C. Weatherly.  Following graduation with a B.Eng. in 1997 (and a fantastically fruitful senior thesis conducted under the supervision of G. R. Purdy), I commenced a M.Eng. under the supervision of J. D. Embury and G. C. Weatherly.  One year after swearing to “never, ever do a Ph.D.” I successfully transferred to the Ph.D. program, graduating in 2001 with a thesis entitled “Co-deformation of a two-phase FCC/BCC Material” .  A year in France followed, a NSERC post doctoral fellowship in hand and a position working with Yves Bréchet, J.-H. Schmitt and the company UGINE&ALZ (now APERAM).

In 2002 I was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Engineering (then the Department of Materials and Metals Engineering) at The University of British Columbia.  Since then I have been a visiting Professor at the Université de Rouen (France), Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) and the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium).