Engineers!
Cristina Amon is Dean and Alumni Professor in Bioengineering at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. As Dean, she is responsible for the strategic and visionary leadership of one of the world’s most distinguished Engineering Faculties, the administration of over 750 faculty, researchers and staff with an annual operating and research budget of $290M, and the education of more than 5,400 undergraduate and 2,400 graduate students. Under her leadership, Canada’s #1 ranked engineering school has become a global hub for interdisciplinary research and education, known for its strategic Faculty-wide initiatives, cross-Faculty centres and institutes, and innovative undergraduate and graduate programming. Her commitment to outreach and diversity has set a new standard for engineering schools worldwide: the number of women faculty members at U of T Engineering has doubled in the last decade and the Faculty celebrated an historic 40% women first-year undergraduate enrolment for its second consecutive year in 2017.
Prior to joining U of T Engineering in 2006, Dean Amon was the Raymond J. Lane Distinguished Professor and Director of the Institute for Complex Engineered Systems (ICES) at Carnegie Mellon University. As Director of ICES, she conceived and led interdisciplinary research initiatives, seeded high-impact projects, fostered a culture of innovation and promoted strong interactions with industry. A pioneer in the development of Computational Fluid Dynamics for formulating and solving thermal design problems subject to multidisciplinary competing constraints, Dean Amon continues her research at the University of Toronto in thermal transport in nanoscale semiconductors, energy systems and biomedical devices. She is a professional engineer and elected fellow of all major professional societies in her field, and has contributed 350 refereed articles to the education and research literature.
Cristina Amon has received numerous awards, including the ASME Gustus Larson Memorial Award, the ASEE Westinghouse Medal and the ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award. She was recognized as one of Canada's Most Influential Women in 2012, received the YWCA Toronto Woman of Distinction Award, and was honoured with the 2011 Society of Women Engineers' highest honour for outstanding contributions to engineering over more than 20 years. She received the 2017 Sir John Kennedy Medal (the highest recognition of the Engineering Institute of Canada) and was awarded the 2015 PEO Gold Medal, Ontario’s most prestigious honour for engineering public service, technical excellence and professional leadership. She has been inducted into the Canadian Academy of Engineering, Spanish Royal Academy, U.S. National Academy of Engineering and Royal Society of Canada.
Dr. Amon has served as Independent Director of MKS Instruments Inc., a leading global provider of instruments and process control solutions for advanced manufacturing of semiconductor devices, energy generation and electro-optical products. She is chair of the research committee of NCDEAS (National Council of Deans of Engineering and Applied Science in Canada), founding chair of the Global Engineering Deans Council, and serves on advisory boards in Canada, Chile, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, UAE, Portugal and the US, including Innova CORFO, Stanford, UCLA, UIUC and Waterloo.
Born in Uruguay, Dr. Amon earned her Mechanical Engineering degree from Simon Bolivar University in Venezuela, and her M.S. and Sc.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988.