Engineering professor wins national award
George Vatistas, a Professor in the Concordia Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, has been awarded a prestigious "Idea to Innovation" grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).
The objective of NSERC’s Idea to Innovation (I2I) program is to accelerate the pre-competitive development of promising technology and promote its transfer to Canadian companies. In short, the program was established to assist professors in the development of marketable products based on scientific research.
Because few research programs mature into marketability, these awards are a rare occurrence. Indeed, even though the I2I program has been in existence for five years, this is only the third time a researcher at Concordia has ever been chosen.
Vatistas says he is honoured to now be part of such a select crowd: “The award shows that the work going on right here in the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science has great value, both academically and in industry."
The project that the I2I grant, worth $115,452, will fund is a new type of compact heat exchanger that Vatistas and his post doctoral fellow, Mohamed Fayed, designed based on pioneering research into swirling flows.
Developed over two decades, the heat exchanger will be simpler in design and easier to manufacture than models currently on the market. The device will also be more effective and more environmentally friendly. The heat exchanger has potential applications for power plants, petrochemical plants, natural gas processing, oil refineries, air conditioning, refrigeration and even food processors.
Vatistas and Fayed filed a provisional patent for the product with the U.S. Patent Office in June 2009 and plans to submit his final project report to NSERC in late 2011.
Related links:
- Concordia Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
- Concordia Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council
- NSERC Idea to Innovation program