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The Faculty of Applied Science comprises a unique constellation of professional disciplines including; Architecture & Landscape Architecture, Engineering, Nursing and Community & Regional Planning. The core purpose shared across all of our four disciplines is to discover, create and apply knowledge, provide unwavering top-tier education and champion a community of responsible professionals devoted to serving a thriving, sustainable and healthy society. Our work and the professions which our graduates represent span the entire human-centred built environment.
The disciplines within the Faculty of Applied Science are celebrated for the scope, strength and impact of their research activities. Our Faculty claims the spotlight in the global arena for our research in clean energy, communication and digital technologies, health and health technology among many others. We offer disciplinary-specific research based graduate programs as well as a range of professional graduate programs and pride ourselves on our ability to open doors of opportunity to students beyond their time within our Faculty.
Applied Science participates in a number of research centres and laboratories at UBC, some of which are inter-faculty collaborations and others of which are within Applied Science and involve inter-departmental collaborations.
Through leadership and the relentless charge to improve professional practice, Applied Science researchers – often in interdisciplinary and pan-professional collaborations – advance knowledge, policies and technologies, and solve the global challenges facing society. In any specific year, over 100 leading companies partner with UBC APSC to advance their research agendas.
The UBC Applied Science research enterprise helps drive the reputation of one of the top research-intensive universities in the world. Our researchers claim the spotlight in the global arena in the following research themes:
| Name | Academic Unit(s) | Research Interests |
|---|---|---|
| Aamodt, Tor | Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering | computer architecture, optimizing compilers, Computer architecture, Microarchitecture and programming models for energy efficient computer accelerators |
| Abolmaesumi, Purang | Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering | Biomedical Technologies; Artificial Intelligence; Machine Learning; Medical Imaging; Biomedical Engineering; Ultrasound Imaging; Image Guided Surgery; Cancer Imaging; Computer Assisted Interventions; Surgical Robotics |
| Adebar, Perry Erwin | Department of Civil Engineering | Concrete structures, seismic design, high-rise buildings, shear design, evaluation and repair of structures |
| Altintas, Yusuf | Department of Mechanical Engineering | Virtual Machining, Computer Control of Manufacturing Systems, CAD/CAM, CNC Design, High Speed Feed Drive Control, Real Time Interpolation and Trajectory Generation for Machine Tools, Adaptive Control, Sensor Fused Intelligent Machining, Metal Cutting Mechanics, Chatter Vibrations in Machining, Piezo -Actuator Based Precision Machining, High Speed Milling, Optimal Machining of Aerospace Parts, Dies and Molds, Automation, Precision Engineering, Electro Mechanical Systems, Modeling and Analysis of Machining Processes, Mechanics, dynamics and control of micro-machining operations |
| Angeles, Leonora | School of Community and Regional Planning | Gender analysis, gender mainstreaming and other gender planning related tools, including feminist critiques and perspectives on the intergration of gender and other social axes of difference and diversity in community planning and international development work |
| Asselin, Edouard | Department of Materials Engineering | Hydrometallurgy (including leaching, electrometallurgy and residue characterization), Electrochemistry (including high temperature electrochemistry and sensors) |
| Bacca, Mattia | Department of Mechanical Engineering | Solid Mechanics; Adhesion and fracture; Soft materials; Biophysics |
| Baldwin, Susan | Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering | Bioprocess engineering, bioremediation, biomedical reaction modelling |
| Banthia, Nemkumar | Department of Civil Engineering | Materials engineering, concrete, advanced composite materials, shotcrete, fibre reinforcement, rebound mechanics, kinamatic studies, optimization, supplementary cementing materials in concrete |
| Bass, John | School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture | Constested landscapes Globalization and Contested Territory, Infrastructure, Social Equity, Visualization and Community Engagement |
| Baumbusch, Jennifer | School of Nursing | long-term residential care, family caregiving, Intellectual Disability, nursing care of older adults |
| Berube, Pierre | Department of Civil Engineering | Water treatment, trace organic contaminants, membrane and advanced oxidation technologies., Drinking water treatment, filtration/membrane processes for water and wastewater treatment, distribution system water quality, advanced oxidation, wastewater reuse |
| Beznosov, Konstantin | Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering | usable security and privacy; mobile security and privacy; computer security and privacy; online social networks security and privacy |
| Bhargava, Vijay | Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering | Green communications, cognitive and cooperative wireless systems, MIMO-OFDM systems, cross-layer analysis |
| Bi, Xiaotao | Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering | Biomass and Bioenergy; Multiphase Chemical Reactors; Fluidization; Particle technology; Electrostatics of Powders; Life Cycle Analysis; Green Engineering; Industrial Symbiosis; Fuel Cells Water Management |
| Bigazzi, Alexander York | Department of Civil Engineering, School of Community and Regional Planning | Transportation Systems; active transportation; bicycles; Air quality; motor vehicle emissions; travel behaviour |
| Boschma, Geertje | School of Nursing | History of nursing and health care, with special emphasis on mental health and mental health nursing |
| Brown, Helen Jean | School of Nursing | Maternal-infant and women |
| Browne, Annette | School of Nursing | Health inequalities, indigenous peoples, women's health, cultural safety, primary health care interventions to improve health outcomes, marginalized populations, health policy |
| Bungay, Victoria | School of Nursing | sexuality, sex work, harm reduction, drug use, intersectionality, ethnography, communication technologies, community based research, Health inequities affecting men and women working in the commercial sex industry and people who are street-involved, leadership, public health nursing, mental health, sexual health, HIV, and harm reduction programming |
| Bushe, William Kendal | Department of Mechanical Engineering | Numerical modelling and mechanical characterisation; Automotive combustion and fuel engineering (including alternative and renewable fuels); Hypersonic propulsion and hypersonic aerodynamics; Aerospace engineering, n.e.c.; Numerical Simulation of Turbulent Combustion; Reacting Flows; Energy Conversion Systems; clean energy |
| Byrne, Fionn | School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture | Landscape architecture; Design innovation; Landscape studies (except architecture); Landscape design; Landscape ethics |
| Campbell, Suzanne | School of Nursing | Community Health / Public Health; Health Promotion; Interpersonal Communication; Educational Technologies; Health Care Technologies; Modelization and Simulation; Social Determinants of Health; Global Health and Emerging Diseases; Adult Education and Continuing Education; simulation nursing education; interprofessional health professional education; health communication; lactation support; leadership in nursing; global maternal-infant-child health |
| Campbell, Heather | School of Community and Regional Planning | how ethical values can be incorporated into public policy relating to city and regional planning; how academics can work more effectively with non-academics to enhance the relevance of research; how academics can work more effectively with non-academics to enhance impact of research |
| Cao, Yankai | Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering | Optimization, Control and Operations Research; Solar and Wind Energy; Artificial Intelligence; Large Scale Optimization |
This is an incomplete sample of recent publications in chronological order by UBC faculty members with a primary appointment in the Faculty of Applied Science.
| Year | Citation | Program |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Dr. Rasouli prepared a synthetic inorganic ion exchanger for removal of toxic selenate from wastewaters. The goal of this study is to create a novel technology to prevent selenate release into the environment and to protect aquatic life. | Doctor of Philosophy in Materials Engineering (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Mohseni studied matrix defects in aerospace composites manufacturing. He developed analytical models and approaches for process optimization to minimize waste and reduce the manufacturing cost, especially for small enterprises. This research will inform improvements to cure cycle design, which will enable defect-free part manufacturing. | Doctor of Philosophy in Materials Engineering (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Reza developed a highly-scalable, distributed solution to support practical pattern matching based analytics in large graph datasets. He demonstrated the effectiveness of this technique through scaling experiments on massive real-world graph datasets and at platform scales, orders of magnitude larger than used in the past for similar problems. | Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical and Computer Engineering (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Fang developed comprehensive approaches to help applications detect and recover from failures caused by hardware faults in high-performance computing systems. These approaches improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of error detection and resilience techniques that are commonly practiced in the high-performance computing domain. | Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical and Computer Engineering (PhD) |
| 2020 | What's the best way to utilize the limited biomass resources to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions? Dr. Wang investigated the environmental impacts, economic viability, and policy implications of producing bio-energy from the available resources in British Columbia. His work provides insight into a cost-effective transition to a sustainable future. | Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical and Biological Engineering (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Putra developed a process for bio-fuel production using renewable carbon from woody biomass and hydrogen from glycerol and water. He showed that gasoline-like compounds can be obtained in a single process. His findings will contribute to the development of sustainable and scalable bio-refineries. | Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical and Biological Engineering (PhD) |
| 2020 | Direct Air Capture is a radical technology which removes carbon dioxide from the air for sequestration or utilization. Dr. Campbell's research provides a new understanding of the reactions involved in this technology and explores alternative reaction pathways with lower temperatures, which enables a more cost-effective removal of CO2 from the air. | Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical and Biological Engineering (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Hussain investigated the feasibility of using volumetric medical images for kidney cancer prediction and prognosis. He developed novel deep neural network-based approaches for kidney cancer detection, cancer grading, and staging for CT scans. This approach will improve our ability to detect and therefore treat kidney cancer. | Doctor of Philosophy in Biomedical Engineering (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Karimibiuki studied security solutions for dynamic systems within the Internet-of-Things (IoT), such as drones and rovers. He developed mathematical-based methods to detect software vulnerabilities in mobile computer systems such as drones. His work enables the detection of malicious behaviors in autonomous IoT systems. | Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical and Computer Engineering (PhD) |
| 2020 | Dr. Robazza's research focused on the seismic performance of slender ductile reinforced masonry shear walls. His research included both extensive experimental testing and numerical analyses, which demonstrated that properly detailed reinforced masonry shear walls can possess very good energy dissipation and offer reliable seismic force resistance. | Doctor of Philosophy in Civil Engineering (PhD) |
