HPPM’s director, Dr. Dimitry Sediako is a Professor and the Head of the Mechanical Engineering program of the University of British Columbia in Kelowna, Canada, – the position he holds since 2017 after working for 12 years as a Senior Scientist with the National Research Council, Atomic Energy of Canada, and Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. Before joining UBC, his career extended over 30 years of industrial R&D in steel, aluminum, and magnesium metallurgy in the Canadian and international industries.

Over his long career in industry and research, he made a number of major contributions to steel continuous casting technologies, the direct-chill casting of magnesium and aluminum alloys, precision sand and high pressure die casting of aluminum. Along with extensive pilot-plant research, modelling, and state-of-the-art fitness-for-service testing, Dr. Sediako is extensively utilizing the unique properties of neutrons, allowing direct stress measurements and in-situ studies of phase evolution in metal parts and components. These studies enable new alloys development for the most challenging applications and technology optimization in metallurgical manufacturing. He collaborates extensively with many automotive manufacturers, both OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers, enabling new alloys development, stress analysis, and technology optimization for the most challenging applications.

The exciting projects that Dr. Sediako leads have motivated many undergraduate and graduate engineering students to join the HPPM family and work together to solve complex, real-world engineering problems while gaining a monumental amount of useable work experience. Over the years, Dr. Sediako supervised more than 30 graduate students, completed their graduate projects and are now recognized experts in the engineering profession. Most recently, Ermia Aghaie, Austin Piche, and Joshua Stroh completed their studies at HPPM. Dr. Stroh is the current HPPM lab manager and postdoctoral fellow. Read more