As he has an 80-page Curriculum Vitae, it is a task to keep track of George Brown College professor Md. Safiuddin’s many achievements.
The construction materials and technology professor is an internationally recognized researcher and concrete specialist who has developed several construction materials, written more than 150 research articles and reports, and is the academic editor of three technical journals.
He is also the recipient of three awards for his research, two of which were from international organizations.
In 2018 he received the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award from Marquis Who’s Who for career longevity and unwavering excellence in his field of expertise.
This past November he was also given a scientist medal from the International Association of Advanced Materials, a Swedish-based non-profit international scientific research organization. The medal was in recognition for his contribution to “structural and engineering materials.”
And earlier this year he was honoured with the George Brown College Distinguished Researcher Award.
Along with his many research and teaching positions at a number of Ontario post-secondary institutions, he was also a lecturer at two Malaysian universities at different periods.
Just some examples of his research initiatives include the development of a high-performance mortar incorporating short carbon fibres during his graduate study at the University of Windsor and a self-consolidating concrete using rice husk ash as a supplementary cementing material during his PhD research at the University of Waterloo.
It was his civil engineering father who inspired Safiuddin to follow in the same career path. But it was his own passion and interest in concrete that led to the stature he now enjoys.
In tracing his long journey to Canada, Toronto and George Brown, the professor says he liked and achieved high marks in physics, mathematics and chemistry in high school and also had a strong interest in statics, dynamics and solid geometry.
Following high school, he enrolled in the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology where he cultivated a strong interest in concrete technology.
“I did well in concrete materials testing and reinforced concrete design courses.”
After obtaining a bachelor of science in civil engineering at that university, he decided to aim even higher. From 1996 to 1998 he worked as a full-time research assistant and completed his master of science at the National University of Malaysia.
As part of his research work at that university, he created two different high-strength high-performance concretes including industrial and quarry wastes.
“A ready mixed concrete company of Malaysia was involved with my projects and they used the findings in their concrete production.”
In 1999 he was offered and accepted a position as a lecturer at the University Malaysia Sabah. One of the professors was a Canadian citizen who had praise for this country’s education system. That influenced his decision to immigrate to Canada.
Once coming to Canada in 2000, Safiuddin was able to obtain positions at the University of Windsor as a graduate research assistant and graduate teaching assistant while pursuing a masters of applied science in civil engineering.
Then, between 2003 and 2008, he worked as a graduate research assistant and a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Waterloo during his PhD degree studies.
Other milestones in Safiuddin’s long and varied teaching and research career include working as a research associate at the University of Waterloo’s Centre for Pavement and Transportation Technology.
“I wanted to improve my knowledge of pavement.”
In 2013 he became a faculty member in the Angelo DelZotto School of Construction Management at George Brown College.
While “primarily a teaching professor,” he spends a considerable amount of his own voluntary time at nights and weekends in a college laboratory on research.
Currently, he is conducting research on fibre-reinforced self-consolidating concrete with the assistance of his students who are helping in the concrete mixing, conditioning and testing. A major supporter of that project is Sika Canada Inc., which donated several admixtures.
Although he has lived in Canada for more than 20 years, Safiuddin maintains strong ties with his home country of Bangladesh and has been collaborating with a number of that nation’s academics on research projects and the publication of technical papers.
In November he received a “Certification of Recognition” from BUET Alumni Association Canada, a non-profit organization of graduates of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology living and working in Canada.
Presented by the Bangladesh high commissioner to Ottawa, the certificate acknowledged “his remarkable achievements and exceptional contributions in the field of engineering.”
Recent Comments
comments for this post are closed