Two Smith Engineering faculty members are recipients of this year’s Ontario Professional Engineers Awards (OPEA).
In the Research and Development category, Heidi Ploeg and Joshua Marshall will formally receive Engineering Medals at a ceremony in November.
The awards, administered by the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, are adjudicated by a committee based on nominations submitted by P.Eng license holders of Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO) and including personal statements from nominators and at least two referees.
According to the OPEA, The Engineering Medal – Research and Development “recognizes a professional engineer who has developed novel applications, advanced engineering knowledge, or made a discovery in engineering or the natural sciences.”
A Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Joshua Marshall joined Queen’s University in 2010 where he started the multidisciplinary Offroad Robotics research group and, most recently, lead the collaborative robotics and artificial intelligence-focused Ingenuity Labs Research Institute as its founding Director (2018-24).
A Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Heidi Ploeg is Queen’s inaugural Chair for Women in Engineering. A member of the Centre for Health Innovation at Queen’s, her research at the Bone and Joint Biomechanics Lab involves applying experimental and computational methods to investigate the human subject over a wide range of scales, from musculoskeletal biomechanics to bone microstructures. In 2024 she was named one of WXN’s 100 Most Powerful Women.