Lassonde School of Engineering welcomes four new faculty members

“Welcoming our newest faculty members marks an exciting beginning to the academic year at Lassonde,” said Jane Goodyer, dean of the Lassonde School of Engineering. “Their unique backgrounds and fresh perspectives will play a crucial role in enriching our School community as we strive to address local and global challenges through impactful teaching and research.” 

Sunila Akbar 

Sunila Akbar joined the Electrical Engineering & Computer Science department as a sessional assistant professor in the teaching stream (CLA). Previously, she had been a Postdoctoral Fellow and an instructor at the University of Toronto since October 2021. She completed her PhD from King’s College London, UK, in 2018, under the prestigious Commonwealth Scholarship. With 20 years of experience in academia and industry, Akbar has acquired and applied diverse skills and knowledge in electrical and computer engineering. Her current research interests include machine learning driven optimization for cognitive radar resource management and statistical modeling, analysis, and design of spectral and energy-efficient wireless networks.

She has published multiple papers in reputed Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) journals and conferences. She has also been serving as an associate editor of IEEE Canadian Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She is a senior member of IEEE and a Fellow of Advance Higher Education, UK. Akbar is passionate about teaching. She believes in example-based learning, helping students relate theoretical concepts to real-world applications. She is committed to fostering inclusive learning and ensuring all students feel valued and supported. 

Mona Nassery

Mona Nasery is a sessional Assistant professor in the teaching stream (CLA), in the Electrical Engineering & Computer Science department. She completed her PhD in Information Systems at McMaster University. She was also a sessional instructor and teaching assistant for several courses at McMaster University. Her research interests broadly include social media analysis, artificial intelligence (biases, explainability, recommender systems) and user behavior analysis. Before her PhD, she lived in Milan, Italy where she studied and worked for seven years. She received both her BSc and MSc in Computer Engineering. After her master’s, she worked in the Recommender Systems group at Politecnico di Milano. In 2015, she spent six months in Helsinki, Finland and six months in Trento, Italy to work on an EU-funded project “Developing Applications for Smart Spaces.”

Nasery is also a certified Group Fitness Instructor. She loves sports and enjoys running and walking in her free time. 

Sukhwant Sagar 

Sukhwant Sagar is a sessional assistant professor in the teaching stream (CLA) in the Electrical Engineering & Computer Science department. She holds a PhD in Information Technology from the University of Salford (UK), a Master of Science in Software Systems from BITS Pilani, India and a B.Tech in Computer Science & Engineering from Punjab Technical University, India. Prior to her current position, she taught at Durham College where she also served as the Program Coordinator for the Cybersecurity Graduate Certificate program. In this role, she was instrumental in designing and implementing comprehensive educational programs and fostering academic collaborations with various industry partners.

Additionally, Sagar is a sessional professor at the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at Ontario Tech University.  Outside the classroom, Sagar is dedicated to continuous professional development. She recently became an AWS Cloud Certified Developer – Associate and is also a Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), Microsoft Azure Cloud Practitioner, AWS Cloud Practitioner and Accredited Educator.

Dr. Sagar stays current with emerging trends and best practices in her field through memberships in prestigious professional organizations such as IEEE, ISTE and CSI. 

Kevin Zhang 

Kevin Zhang has joined the Civil Engineering department as an assistant professor. His primary teaching and research focus is on building science, which includes embodied and operational carbon in buildings, sustainable building materials and high-performance building envelopes. As climate change begins to affect the resilience of buildings from extreme weather events, it is ever more important to reduce our carbon emissions through better buildings. Part of the challenges lie in the market incentives, and others lie in the behaviour of construction materials in highly airtight and complicated envelopes. Zhang received his PhD from Toronto Metropolitan University in 2020 and his MEng and BASc from the University of Toronto in 2012 and 2011.

Between his graduate degrees and after his PhD, Zhang worked in building envelope consulting, gaining valuable hands-on experience with design and carbon analysis – sometimes while hanging off the side of buildings. He hopes to leverage his industry network for live data collection and to build partnerships. 

The addition of these four distinguished faculty members underscores Lassonde’s commitment to leading in creating solutions for a just and sustainable world. Professors Akbar, Nassery, Sagar and Zhang will contribute to the School’s vibrant academic community, inspiring the next generation of engineers and advancing innovative solutions to global challenges.