Brian Thompson

Job Description

My job was to teach the engineering design of aircraft and to research the flows around vehicles including automobiles, aircraft, rocket-engines, nuclear power plans, and their components.

Career Story

After high school, I graduated from university in engineering from the University of Waterloo. Next, I did a PhD in engineering at the Imperial College in London, UK. I started my career at the University of Waterloo then took a job at a think tank involved in analyzing the Space Shuttle Challenger accident in 1986. In 1991, I returned to teach in academia at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where I studied aircraft design in particular, aerodynamics. In 2001, I transferred to the University of Western Ontario as the NSERC chair of Engineering Design and Innovation where I contributed to the advancement of engineering-design education in Canada. This lead me to be Dean of Engineering at the University of Ottawa. During this time, my research into conductive graphite foams lead to a major breakthrough, and I left university life to found a new company. Unfortunately, competitive commercial products could not be made from this advanced material, so I returned to academia and founded a new College of Engineering at A'Sharqiyah University in the Middle East.