Perspectives Newsletter Spring 2020
Vol. 42, no.3 / Posted on June 15, 2020

Greetings CSBE/SCGAB members from your President Joy Agnew. 

This year our Annual General Meeting will be held in virtual mode on Tuesday July 21, 2020 Time: Noon Alberta Time. 
 
We have included all the documents in the 2020 Annual Report and have added a 2020 Bylaws file indicating our proposed Bylaw changes.  Both files are available at the following link. We will announce our Students Awards and the recipients of our Society Awards.

Members, look at your inbox for the Webex meeting link.

We look forward to seeing you at the AGM !

John Feddes
Society Manager

joy agnew

At the beginning of my tenure as CSBE-SCGAB president, I made a rough plan for the content I intended to share with each of these messages. Then the calendar turned to 2020 and all bets were off. All learning shifted to online, employees worked from home, and nearly everyone became an overnight expert with Teams, Meets, WebEx, and Zoom. Events were cancelled and postponed, safety measures were deployed (and enforced!) at grocery stores, and protocols and contingency plans were established for all essential services. If I’ve learned one thing from the pandemic, it’s that when everyone turns themselves toward a common goal, we can achieve almost anything.

We are pleased to announce that CIGR 2020 event is postponed to May 10 to 14 2021 and it will be possible to submit new abstracts until February 1, 2021. The program already in place will be maintain and abstracts already submitted (over 600 accepted) will remain in the system so authors don't need to re-submit.

Registration will re-open on September 1st 2020. To withdraw your contribution or to cancel your registration, please refer to our Continuity plan.

For more information, visit the website: https://cigr2020.ca/

Congratulations to one of our members Yves Choinière. Yves was one of 52 new Fellows elected into the Canadian Academy of Engineering.

Well deserved Yves.

Press release of the Canadian Academy of Engineering:

Ottawa – (15 June 2020) – President Yves Beauchamp welcomed 50 new elected Fellows and two new International Fellows to the Canadian Academy of Engineering on 15 June 2020. Due to the complications with the COVID-19 pandemic, new Fellows were welcomed virtually, in conjunction with the Academy’s 2020 Annual General Meeting.

The official Induction Dinner for 2020 Fellows has been postponed and will take place at the 2021 Annual General Meeting and Symposium in Halifax, NS.

To view the official press release, click here.

choiniereYves Choinière is Project Leader, Research & Development with Consultants Lemay & Choinière Inc. Yves Choinière, engineer and agronomist, B.Sc. (1983), M.Sc. (1991).   As a member of CSBE/SCGAB, he has  received the Grade of Fellow in 2015, Young Engineer of the Year Award in 1991, the John Turnbull Award in 2003, the Industrial Achievement Award in 2010. Yves served as our President 2004-2005.  Yves Choinière led the design of several research centres in animal production (McGill, Guelph, Saskatchewan, Agriculture Canada and others). Its notoriety has been established thanks to the multiple innovations and developments for modern agricultural buildings. Consultants Lemay & Choinière Inc., founded in 1995, now employs 45 people; including 25 project managers, making it the largest agricultural engineering firm in Canada.

Biomass and Bioenergy Research Group (BBRG) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) aims to produce durable and homogeneous pellets from under-utilized and low-quality biomass resources in Canada. The project has received $2.4 million in funding for four years (2019-2023) from federal government under the Canadian Agricultural Partnership. BBRG is collaborating with the Wood Pellet Association of Canada (WPAC) and BFN in this project. Shahab Sokhansanj, Ph.D., the principal investigator (PI), will direct this research project. This project has four research tasks including:

  • Preprocess and pelletize low-quality biomass and generate pellet production data using the newly purchased pilot-scale pellet machine, led by Hamid Rezaei
  • Develop and compare supply chain scenarios and identify the most cost-efficient supply chain scenario considering the possibility of integration with existing grain and wood pellet supply chains, led by Mahmood Ebadian
  • Develop best practices on safe handling and storage of pellets, led by Fahimeh Yazdan Panah
  • Identify a clear commercial pathway to make marketable pellets from low-quality biomass resources a success, including developing quality certification, led by Shahab Sokhansanj (PI of the project) in collaboration with Wood Pellet Association of Canada (WPAC)and BiofuelNet

You can read more here on the project  or if you would like to get in contact with the research team, they can be reached here.