School of Engineering Alumni Honours and Awards

Last night the School of Engineering honoured their alumni, celebrating the success of three influential graduates. Leadership from CEPS and the SoE, along with fellow alumni, family and friends gathered in the Adams Atrium. 
 

2023 Winner: Young Alumnus of Honour
Stephen Bacchus, B.(Eng.)’15

Stephen Bacchus completed his Environmental Engineering degree at the University of Guelph in 2015. Studying here has provided Stephen with the knowledge and experience to assume significant responsibilities across various organizational levels early on in his career. From the age of 19, he has been a people leader, and was accountable for many innovative projects at a number of large-scale private and public sector organizations.

Upon graduating from the University of Guelph, Stephen worked at large-scale engineering and strategy consulting firms, which included WSP and AECOM. During his time in consulting, he assisted more than a dozen municipalities to pave the pathway on their infrastructure asset management journey, focusing on a variety of asset classes including water, wastewater, transit, roads, bridges, facilities, fleet, and parks.

Stephen then pursued his MBA at Wilfrid Laurier University, specializing in Finance. Upon graduation, he joined the Public Sector in the City of Brampton working as an Advisor, Corporate Asset Management within the Finance division. During his time there, Stephen was the Project Manager on the City of Brampton’s first ever State of Local Infrastructure Report that was approved by Council in 2018. While leading the development of the City of Brampton’s Transit Asset Management Plan, this re-ignited his passion for public transit. As a result, he moved to the City of Mississauga where he is currently the Manager of Transit Fleet.

In this role, Stephen is directly responsible for the asset management of 500 MiWay transit buses and 70 transit support vehicles, with an estimated replacement value of $600 Million worth of assets. In addition, his mandate is to reduce the City’s corporate GHG emissions by moving away from conventional diesel buses and gasoline-powered vehicles, and towards decarbonization.  Stephen leads the design, planning, and implementation of innovative zero-emission fleet projects, which includes the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Electric Bus and Battery-Electric Bus projects at the City of Mississauga.

In 2023, Stephen managed the procurement of 165 hybrid-electric buses, which is the most number of buses purchased in a single year in Mississauga history. These hybrid-electric buses are 30% more fuel efficient than the average diesel bus. MiWay was the first Transit Agency in North America to implement the EV Geo-Fencing project that was first piloted in 2022. Since then, it has been a success by further reducing CO2 emissions, and was adopted by other peer Transit agencies.

Stephen is passionate about tackling challenging, multi-faceted problems head on, working with equally passionate people to solve the environmental, humanitarian, and societal issues of our day, while also recognizing that we need government, business, not-for-profits and for-profits, and every individual engaged in building a better future.

Today, Stephen stands as a visionary leader whose commitment to prioritizing climate action and spearheading fleet decarbonization initiatives has paved the way for a cleaner and more sustainable future in public transportation.

2023 Winner Mid-Career Award
Kirsten Hogan, B.Sc.(Eng.) '00, MASc. '02

Kirsten Hogan earned both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in environmental engineering at the University of Guelph. Early in her career, Kirsten founded Aperture Consulting Inc., an environmental consulting firm that operates across northern and western Canada.

After more than 15 years running an independent consulting engineering practice, she has a wide variety of technical experience. Most recently, Kirsten is excited to be leading multi-disciplinary teams contributing to a better future in the Yukon. These teams are working on projects that include renewable energy heating sources for northern buildings, renewable electricity production for the Yukon’s grid, and design of a water treatment and distribution system for a growing Yukon community.

Kirsten is an active volunteer and a thoughtful and compassionate leader. In the engineering community she has served on the Engineers Yukon council since 2017 and was President from 2020 – 2022. Under Kirsten’s leadership, Engineers Yukon was the first regulator in Canada to recognize caregiving as part of continuing professional development.

Kirsten recently served as the co-chair of the Yukon Climate Leadership Council, an advisory body to the Government of Yukon tasked with developing a plan to reduce the Yukon’s GHG emissions by 45% by 2030.

Outside of her professional career, Kirsten enjoys the beautiful Yukon wilderness as often as possible with her family and friends.

2023 Winner: Award of Excellence
Graham Gagnon, B.Sc.(Eng.) '93

Graham Gagnon grew up in Guelph. His parents, Carole and Earl, were devoted employees of the University of Guelph and his dad is a Guelph alumnus, receiving his Diploma in Agriculture in 1958.  Not surprisingly, Graham was destined to go to Guelph.

Graham has many fond memories of the University of Guelph engineering program. He is very proud to be in the first graduating class for Guelph’s environmental engineering program. Following his undergraduate degree in environmental engineering at Guelph, Graham obtained his PhD from the University of Waterloo - where he studied advanced processes in drinking water treatment

Dr. Gagnon joined the Faculty of Engineering at Dalhousie University in 1998. Over the past 25 years, Graham has developed and maintained vital research–industry partnerships that have facilitated knowledge mobilization and sector advancement on a global scale. Graham’s long-term vision and broad understanding of the water sector, coupled with his ability to recruit and train top-tier engineers, has served not only water utilities like Halifax Water, but the international community. Dr. Gagnon is presently working with Black & Veatch, South West Nevada Water, Halifax Water and AquiSense to assess the world’s largest installation of UV LED disinfection in drinking water and wastewater.

Throughout his career, Graham built research infrastructure, such as Dalhousie’s Clean Water Laboratory, that has attracted more than $50M in research contracts and grants to Dalhousie. This funding has supported many engineering trainees, which includes supervising over 100 undergraduate students, 93 Master’s level students, 37 Doctoral students, and 14 Postdoctoral Fellows. Trainees from Dr. Gagnon’s lab work now work for a vast range of engineering opportunities in the private and public sector.

While studying first year engineering at Guelph, Graham was profoundly impacted by the events of the École Polytechnique massacre in Montreal. As a result, Graham has maintained a commitment to gender equity in his research lab throughout his career -with 51% of his 250+ research trainees identifying as women. Graham is particularly proud of 10 alumnae from his lab who are now working as professors – including Dr. Heather Murphy who is a Canada Research Chair at the University of Guelph.

For much of his career, Dr. Gagnon has supported safe water in First Nation communities. Graham worked with Chiefs in the Atlantic Region to identify challenges and gaps in water safety in First Nation communities for the past 15 years. His research was critical in the communities establishing the Atlantic First Nation Water Authority – the only First Nation-owned and operated water utility in Canada. This transformational outcome is leading to a significant change in water safety and engineering training opportunities for indigenous youth.

Finally, Graham is very proud to have a wonderful family that includes his wife Ruth and their children Kathryn, Jane, David, and Anna.