Dr. Javad Mostaghimi is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto and the director of the Centre for Advanced Coating Technologies (CACT). Before joining the University of Toronto in 1990, he held positions at Pratt & Whitney Canada, Longueil, Quebec, and the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec.
His main research interests are the study of thermal spray coatings, including superhydrophobic coatings, thermal barriers, corrosion and wear-resistant coatings. He has performed comprehensive studies on the flow, temperature, and electromagnetic fields within arcs and RF inductively coupled plasmas. Professor Mostaghimi has done extensive simulations of the dynamics of droplet impact and solidification in thermal spray processes, and design of novel DC and RF plasma torches.
Professor Mostaghimi is elected into the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the Academy of Science of the Royal Society of Canada. He has the rank of Fellow of the following professional societies: RSC, ASME, ASM, CSME, EIC, AAAS, IUPAC.

Jules Thibault obtained his bachelor of chemical engineering at the Royal Military College in 1973. He later obtained a PhD in Chemical Engineering from McMaster University in 1978 where he worked on the topic of heat transfer in nuclear reactors.
Following his PhD Professor Thibault spent four years in the Canadian Armed Forces, including two six-month postings to Egypt and Cyprus with the United Nations. From 1981 to 1984, he taught in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the Royal military College, after which time he joined the Department of Chemical Engineering of Laval University. In 2000, he moved to the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Ottawa. His research interests are in biochemical engineering, and process simulation, control and optimization.