The SAE Supermileage event is an annual student competition to achieve the best fuel mileage with a single person, gasoline powered vehicle. In 2006, we won the event, the team’s 4th in a row, with a 3,145mpg score, beating out second place’s 1600mpg, out of a field of 27 teams. The vehicle’s success was due to a combination of low weight, high aerodynamics, low rolling resistance and engine shut-offs - technologies later integrated further into mass market vehicles. I’m proud to have contributed to the design, construction and sponsorships towards the team’s success.

Photonic crystals are the optical analog to electrical semi-conductors. Instead of using electrons to carry signals and logic, photons are proposed instead. There are many challenges with this approach as photons are weakly interacting compared to electrons, thus need significant amplification to rely on non-linear responses. A photonic crystal, through constructive and destructive interference, permits one to manipulate band-structures, similar to how semi-conductors permit changes to band-structures for electron transmission. Both involve introducing defects into the crystal structure to manipulate the band-gaps.

Shown here are 2D planar photonic crystals, which rely upon in-plane photonic crystal confinement, and out-of-plane confinement through total-internal-reflection. A defect is introduced in the center of the hexagonal crystal, where light will be amplified for the non-linear behaviour.

I was involved in specific experiments, creating these planar photonic crystals using UV-lithography and plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition and sublimation. Further techniques involved FDTD simulations; conventional chemistry in clean rooms; mechanical transfer and substrate removal; and, characterization with laser spectrometers and scanning electron microscopes.

What I took away most from this experience was how quickly it was possible to go from a bright-eyed and naive highschool student, to contributing in a world-class, applied physics research team, using state-of-the-art apparatus and poweful (life-threatening) chemistry, only a year and a half removed from high school.

Interior Heart and Surgical Centre is a new, 150,000sqft hospital building, expanding the Kelowna General Hospital campus. The four-storey building includes space for sixteen operating rooms, over thirty in-patient beds, medical-device-reprocessing, a cardiac revascularization program, intensive care suite, perinatal care, NICU, and support spaces. At a budget of $200M*, the project was delivered under the private-public partnership model, with considerations to ongoing hospital operations, and significant schedule risks and cost. Additional requirements included LEED Gold certification, and incorporating significant wood elements to meet BC’s Wood First Act.

The project was an intense and complicated partnership amongst all stakeholders from physicians to hospital administration; financiers to construction teams; and design to operations. Agile principles were adopted to iterate quick solutions for consideration by the users and Lean principles were used while parallelizing construction and design.

I feel immense pride for contributing to a substantial expansion to healthcare within the community, acting as Project Manager for MMM’s multidisciplinary design team of Civil, Electrical, Energy Modelling, Integration Management, Information Technology, Landscape, Mechanical and Sustainability Design and Engineering services.

Awards and Recognition:

• 2017 CDBI Award of Excellence - Canadian Design-Build Institute
• LEED Gold Certified - Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC)

*Cited costs vary considerably depending on what’s included in the budget, anywhere from $100M to $400M.

The Wood Innovation and Design Centre serves as a multi-use building, housing both the University of Northern British Columbia’s Master’s program in Integrated Wood Design, as well as general office space. At the time of completion, it was the tallest, all-wood building in North America, though at a modest 30m height across six storeys plus mezzanine and penthouse. It was a pioneer for demonstrating sustainable construction for high-rise building classification, historically relying on concrete and steel above a certain height or number of floors. The innovative structure relied exclusively on engineered wood product composites, including glulam beams, cross-laminated timber and laminated veneer lumber.

I had the fortune of contributing to the electrical design including power distribution, lighting design, ICT distribution, life-safety and security systems. Special attention was required to route electrical raceways through unique wood structural components, largely exposed, to minimize visual noise.

Awards and Recognition:

• 2016 Governor General’s Medal in Architecture
• 2015 RAIC Award of Excellence for Innovation in Architecture
• 2015 Lieutenant-Governor of BC Award in Architecture (Merit)
• 2015 AIBC Innovation Award
• LEED Gold Certification - Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC)

UBC’s Quantum Matter Institute is a state-of-the-art research facility, extending the existing Brimacombe (Advanced Materials and Process Engineering Laboratory) building with complementary research space and facilities. At approximately 50ksqft, and a budget of $30M, it added sufficient space for dozens of research teams, focusing on everything from ultra-fast lasers, to bio-engineering, and ultra-low vibration condensed matter physics.

QMI holds a special place in my heart as AMPEL was the very building where I had the privilege of working with Dr. Jeff Young’s team, creating the very photonic crystals noted amongst my projects. Further, it provided me an opportunity to also help design expansions to Dr. David Jones’ lab (per my professional experience) and another former professor of mine, Dr. Andrea Damascelli, working with condensed matter.

The electrical design was of particular interest and challenge due to the requirement to meet ultra-low noise on both vibrations and electrical noise. This involved special considerations to harmonic mitigating transformers, robust grounding systems, electrical shielding, special mechanical coupling, investigations into double-conversion UPS’s and more. Further challenges were added for warning, alarm and emergency stand-by systems. I led the design from schematic to the beginning of construction documents.

Awards and Recognition:

• 2018 AIBC Innovation Award
• LEED Gold Certification - Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC)

UniverCity Childcare Centre is a daycare serving the nearby community of Simon Fraser University. It was built targeting the ambitious, Living Building Challenge (LBC) standard, whose philosophy extends beyond even net-zero energy and water standards, and demands a building which positively adds to its environment. Its metrics use a flower as a metaphor for success, each petal representing a different criteria to meet, from water to energy and social equity to beauty, to a total of twenty petals.

The project was a highly collaborative effort to ensure the various building systems worked in harmony to achieve the goal. Strong considerations were made for efficient devices, minimizing distance for sourcing of materials, and restricting toxic material components. Additionally, systems were designed to complement the use of the facility, which included aesthetics to inspire and increase occupant health and productivity.

The project was largely successful; however, due to regulatory challenges on potable water, combined with using non-chemical means for water treatment, it was unable to meet this single challenge. The project was successful in all other aspects and was greatly welcomed by the stakeholders for being under budget, and praised by the local community and sustainability community at large.

I was proud to contribute significantly, being the sole designer from design development through construction. Unsurprisingly, the largest challenges were the uniqueness and high requirements of the LBC standard, which involved significant research into systems which would meet restrictions such as the inability to use PVC conduit or insulation for major components.

Awards and Recognition:

• CaGBC National Leadership Awards - Green Building Champion Award 2013
• SAB Canadian Green Building Award 2012
• Urban Development Institute Award - Best Sustainable 2012

Bowinn Ma is a Member of the Legislative Assembly, representing the riding of North Vancouver/Lonsdale; a former project manager for the Vancouver International Airport; former President of the Engineering Undergraduate Society; but above all, a close friend of mine. I list this project as a far more personal one as I was happy to modestly contribute to her election bid in 2017, providing photography for her portrait, her events, and volunteering in her campaign. While I take very little credit for my contribution, I am proud to have a small part in her historic win, changing an opposition stronghold of over twenty-five years.

Bowinn recently won re-election in 2020 with an outstanding 60% of the vote, and has been included into the cabinet as Minister of State for Infrastructure - a rare distinction for such a newcommer to politics.

The University of Northern British Coulmbia’s Bio-Energy Plant was a facility which was strategically located to take advantage of the significant local forestry industry, by using wood by-products as fuel. The facility used an advanced wood-gasification system, which aids greatly in combustion efficiency. An operations and research component was also designed to monitor and study the system and its impacts.

The project was constructed to complement UNBC’s campus-scale district energy system, providing the campus with 71% of its heating energy needs, and allowed the university to reduce fossil fuel consumption by 85%. The project was a significant factor in UNBC’s shared win for AASHE’s award for Most Sustainable University in 2010, tying Harvard University in the honour.

Additionally, while the project targeted LEED Gold, the team was so successful in meeting its objectives, that we were able to achieve the prestigious LEED Platinum Certification - a first for a university building in BC, and the second industrial building in Canada.

This was a project I was proud to contribute to early in my career. Despite my inexperience, I was relied upon significantly to design the majority of the project, as well as a significant contributor to the construction administration responsibilities.

Awards and Recognition:

• Newsmaker of the Year 2011 - Northern BC Technology and Innovation Awards
• Excellence in Architectural Design – City of Prince George
• LEED Platinum Certification - Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC)
• 2014 - Canadian Green Building Award - First in Northern BC
• Top North American campus sustainability project (tied with Harvard University) - Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE)
• Northern BC Business and Technology Innovator of the Year

A fairly simple demonstration but we all have to start somewhere, right? Over the course of a weekend, the bulk majority of the core gameplay loop was coded. Over the next few days, various bugs were worked out, style was updated and website-integration was included.

The excercise was guided by various tutorials; however, there was additional added functionality, bug fixes and refactorization. Of particular note were improved collision detection; fixed rotation bugs; additional code to reduce repetition; and, additional general functionality/features.

The excercise primarily was to acquire more Javascript specific experience, building off the modest amounts used in the creation of this website, to better understand inbuilt JS methods. As the goal was to understand such methods better, this path was taken vs. alternate methods of using matricies to represent tetraminos and the game board, and applying some simple linear algebra to rotate pieces.

While there is still additional functionality to be added, with the former in mind, I believe I've largely acheived my goal. Regardless, here are the additional features to be added (which, conveniently, serves as a disclaimer of the incomplete game):

• Levels, i.e. increasing speed/gravity
• Wall kicks
• Minor position start bug fixes
• Minor rotation bug fixes
• Leaderboard
• Block clear and possibly freeze animations
• Revised scoring system which better aligns with World Tetris scoring system
• General research into World Tetris systems to align game mechanics more closely
• Improved accessibility with start-button limited to mouse interaction
• Mobile functionality (and responsiveness), ideally with gesture controls. Swipe left/right to move; tap to rotate; tap+hold to drop?
• General clean up, refactorization and commenting

They say a picture is worth a thousand words - there must be an analog for an interactive experience so I invite you to interact.