Chair: Way to Heavens

Stephen Yue (left) is the inaugural Lorne Trottier Chair in Aerospace Engineering. Postdoctoral fellow Ahmad Rezaeian (centre) and graduate student Wilson Wong are working with Professor Yue on new ways to manufacture aerospace components, like this jet engine combustion chamber.
Stephen Yue (left) is the inaugural Lorne Trottier Chair in Aerospace Engineering. Postdoctoral fellow Ahmad Rezaeian (centre) and graduate student Wilson Wong are working with Professor Yue on new ways to manufacture aerospace components, like this jet engine combustion chamber.

A new endowed chair aims to strengthen the already deep relationship between McGill researchers and the aerospace industry. Stephen Yue, a professor in the Department of Mining and Materials Engineering, is the inaugural Lorne Trottier Chair in Aerospace Engineering, which is funded by Lorne Trottier, the founder and CEO of Matrox Electronic Systems. The chair will support Yue’s research on cold-spray manufacturing, a new process that creates aerospace parts by building up layers of metal powder—a much less wasteful process than traditional machining methods. The NSERC-funded research is a collaboration between researchers in the McGill Aerospace Materials and Alloy Development Centre—including Richard Chromik, Mathieu Brochu and Jerzy Szpunar—Pratt & Whitney Canada and Jean-Gabriel Legoux’s thermal spray team at the Industrial Materials Institute in Boucherville. “I believe we will have the best facility on the planet,” says Yue. “Because we are creating new materials and processes, we will be helping to establish a technical work force that will attract more aerospace activity and new enterprises.”