Host Intro:
This is a Canada Foundation for Innovation podcast.
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Hello and welcome to 10,000 ways. This is a podcast about curious researchers, leading edge science and the joy of discovery.
Our podcast gets its name from Thomas Edison who said, “I have not failed. I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.”
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Host:
In the winter of 1943, Canadian pilot Marion Orr
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… boarded a freighter that sailed for the United Kingdom.
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She was off to join the Air Transport Auxiliary.
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The Auxiliary’s job was to ferry aircraft from factory to frontlines during the Second World War.
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For the duration of the conflict, Orr ferried over 40 different types of aircraft including the iconic Hurricane and Spitfire.
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Marion Orr is part of Canada’s proud legacy in aviation and the University of Waterloo’s Suzanne Kearns is extending that history.
Suzanne Kearns:
My name is Dr. Suzanne Kearns. I’m an associate professor at the University of Waterloo, and I’m specifically there to support our undergraduate aviation program. I, myself, was sort of enamoured by aviation my entire life. I grew up in a small town …
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… called Wiarton, Ontario, right under the flight path of the local airport. And I used to always point up at the airplanes and tell my parents, okay, I’m going to do that one day.
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And eventually they said, well, if you want to do it, you better get started. They signed me up for flight lessons when I was fifteen and so I soloed on my sixteenth birthday and I had my private airplane and helicopter pilot licences on my seventeenth birthday. I earned my commercial helicopter pilot licence as part of the diploma program with Canadore College.
Host:
Suzanne became a pilot while many of her young peers were (SFX – Car start and drive off) still learning how to drive the family car.
Trying to find work as a female helicopter pilot, however, would turn out to be far more challenging than learning how to parallel park.
Kearns:
I didn’t know at the time that entry level jobs for helicopter pilots in Canada then… are in bush camp facilities and they don’t have separate, you know, men’s and women’s quarters. So, it’s quite challenging for a woman to get that first job in the industry. So, I was looking to continue my education and because there weren’t university-level piloting programs in Canada, I went to the States and to a university called Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
Host:
Since she was very young, Suzanne had dreams of becoming a professional pilot. But less than stellar experiences as both a rookie in helicopters and then in commercial aviation forced her to re-examine her preconceptions about careers in aviation. We’ll talk more about that a little later.
Kearns:
So, I went back to Embry-Riddle and I did my master’s in human factors and systems engineering. After I completed that, I came back to Canada and I was looking for a job and I ended up realizing that Canada’s first university level piloting program had just been started at the University of Western Ontario in London and they were looking for a faculty member.
So, they hired me as a full-time lecturer — I was 24 — to support the aviation program there and then I earned my PhD and eventually got tenure at Western. I was there for 12 years and then moved to the University of Waterloo to support their aviation program.
Host:
Supporting Waterloo’s aviation program meant Suzanne would become the founding director of the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Aeronautics or WISA. WISA had its genesis during COVID. Something good out of something bad. COVID had a devasting effect on the aviation industry and Suzanne was especially distressed over the challenges in the job market being faced by her alumni and students.
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Kearns:
A lot of the genesis for WISA was from our students. So I teach a big lecture and there was a situation where a grouping of those students came down to me after the lecture and they looked sad and they were sort of saying, like, you know, the other students on campus are giving us a hard time and they’re criticizing us. They’re saying, “Why would you want to be a part of an industry that’s part of the problem?
Why would you want to be part of an industry that’s contributing to climate change?” and I remember how, you know, it took me a bit of time to think of a response and the response I gave to them was said, you know, you should be proud to be passionate about aviation. It also brings the world together and has tremendous economic and social benefits to society.
But to realize those benefits we can’t shy away from or deny the negative environmental impacts. So, so, when the pandemic hit, all of these young people, many of them my former students, were really, really struggling because of these challenges and I classified those as a shortage of people, growing environmental emissions and the third thing, rapid evolution of new technologies. [inaudible]
And so, during the pandemic, I started reaching out to a variety of colleagues, and I had a few collaborators already and started having discussions one at a time where I would ask researchers, you tell me about the research that you do that you’re passionate about and let me show you how that directly relates to one of these sustainability challenges.
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Host:
The concept of sustainability dates back to 1972 and a UN conference on the environment. Environmental sustainability is one of three pillars of sustainability. The two additional pillars are economic and social.
Kearns:
We organize our research under the three pillars of sustainability. So, under social sustainability, any research that is touching the people in the system. So, we’re looking at aspects of human factors and performance. So, we have researchers using eye trackers and looking to see how people move their eyes around a cockpit could be an indication of when they move from a novice to a competent professional.
We also look at things like mental health. Mental health is a tremendous challenge in aviation because pilots, their ability to fly and use their licence are dependent on their ability to maintain their medical certificate.
Under environmental sustainability. It’s research that touches any aspect of how do we reduce and work towards eliminating the negative environmental impacts of air transportation and then under economic sustainability is where we capture all of our technology-focused applications. So, everything around the integration of cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Host:
There are 140 professors and researchers associated with WISA. A number of these individuals are studying something that Suzanne referenced a little earlier called human factors. Human factors factor — significantly — in the safe operation of aircraft in flight.
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Kearns:
Human factors is sort of … the science of human limitations. So, it’s looking at aspects of how human beings think, process information, take in information, and then some of the limitations of being a human being like, meaning you can’t pay attention to an unlimited number of things. You can’t process information as fast as a computer, and you’re naturally going to get tired.
So, in the early days of aviation, what we saw is that the majority of accidents were caused by the systems, they were caused by the airplanes themselves or the powerplants, for example. But what we saw through the 50s and 60s and 70s was this dramatic decline in the number of system-caused accidents. But the rate of accidents that are linked to the people in the system has been much harder to reduce. If you think about why car accidents happen, it’s not because you forget how to drive or, you know, you’re like, I don’t care about safety. I’m like, it’s not a deliberate action.
It’s because you get overwhelmed or the conditions get so complicated you can’t keep up or something that’s outside of the box happens and it happens very quickly. And those are the same sorts of things that happen in the aviation world that they’re outside-of-the-norm kind of activities. Ultimately, the big challenge we have from a research perspective is that most of the cause for this happens inside people’s heads and so when you look at things like biometrics or eye tracking or, you know, other applications, a lot of that is trying to make the invisible visible.
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Host:
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Competitive downhill skiers, on many occasions will visualize their way down the twists and turns of a challenging course.
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While the course may be invisible, the brain is fooled into thinking that the experience is quite real.
WISA can offer a similar experience to students and researchers with its advanced flight simulator.
Kearns:
The CFI funding that we received was the critical sort of proof-of-concept that predated WISA and the first proposal was to CFI. And what the proposal was, was to request funding to bring a flight simulator to campus as a piece of research equipment and we were thrilled that CFI supported this proposal and we have a flight simulator on campus.
This equipment is completely dedicated to research and we have a lot of interest in using artificial intelligence and machine learning to build up databases. So, when a student is flying the simulator, there’s thousands of these different variables where the data is collected and some of the big questions are in the future: Would it be possible for a simulator to automatically assess a pilot’s performance relative to a database and to give them objective feedback?
Host:
While the simulator has proven to be an excellent tool for WISA’s 300 pilots-in-training, it still never leaves the ground. At some point in time every aviation student wants to break free of their earthly bonds …
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… and feel the wind in their hair. Additional CFI funding helped WISA purchase a unique training aircraft called the Pipistrel. For many excited students, this aircraft is literally … plug-and-play.
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Kearns:
After we had the simulator and we had just launched WISA, one of the associate directors in WISA is a professor named Dr. Paul Parker and he led another CFI proposal with a professor named Dr. Mehrdad Pirnia and myself to bring in the first fully electric, so it’s a plug-in electric aircraft. There’s a lot of questions that we need to have the answer to with an electric aircraft before we could see it used across the country to support flight training.
And you know, when we look to a net-zero future for aviation, it’s not all going to be electric. We’re going to, we expect to see a combination of different kinds of technologies and efforts. So, we expect some hybrid aircraft, some electric hydrogen further off and sustainable aviation fuels, all working together, to achieve net zero .
Host:
Research tools and infrastructure and facilities will all be essential in the pursuit of net zero, but the real heavy lifting will come from those individuals who wield these tools. It’s these committed individuals who will drive discovery and innovation.
People like Paul Parker and Elizabeth Irving, two of Suzanne’s colleagues, who provide this self-described “odd duck” with ongoing motivation and inspiration.
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Kearns:
I always consider myself a bit of an odd duck professor because I’m kind of an aviation person and I love aviation and I’m just sort of pretty happy just to be around some really inspiring minds and leaders that I get to work with at the university.
So, I mentioned Dr. Paul Parker. He’s a really interesting character because he both in his personal life was an award-winning glider pilot, and then he’s an environmental researcher and he’d never brought his passion for, you know, his hobby and their research together. Dr. Elizabeth Irving, she is a really accomplished optometrist and visual science researcher and so she looks at all aspects of, again, how people use their eyes to collect information and you wouldn’t think of optometry necessarily applying to aviation but try to fly a plane with your eyes closed and see it’s — pretty essential.
So there’s a lot of passionate, exciting people and more than anything, I think my heart is with my students and I think that’s what drives me to do this, is because if we can’t figure out how to achieve a sustainable future for aviation, it’s their futures that are on the line. They won’t have a career to move into, there won’t be pilots in the future. You know, if we can’t figure out how to function more effectively.
Host:
Suzanne feels very strongly about where her students land. Once they find their wings, she wants them to have opportunities, to pursue their passions, in a sustainable world.
Kearns:
So, the students are pivotal to what we do. So, our students created an aviation student society and as that sort of group that represents all the students, we work with them really directly. So, WISA and the student society work together because the way we can have the most impact on the world is by leveraging those different strengths and working together.
I think it’s a picture of what the future of the aviation industry looks like because it’s their future — they’re the ones who will be reshaping and becoming leaders in the field and the young people care about the planet, they care about sustainability, they care about, you know, responsible practices, they care about equity, diversity and inclusion and mental health.
All of these things in this next generation are key priorities that will guide what industry they choose to join. And so, it’s important, I think, that we work with them hand-in-hand and it’s a community. And I think that’s how we have the most impact is together.
Host:
WISA isn’t very old but its young alumni are already a source of pride for Suzanne. The region of Waterloo is recognized as a hub of creativity and business innovation. For example, do you remember Blackberries, which were the mobile device of choice from 15 years ago or so. They were invented in Waterloo. This innovative spirit can still be found there and Jeremy Wang is a perfect example.
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Kearns:
Waterloo is really proud of an alumni named Jeremy Wang. Jeremy Wang went on to co-found Ribbit, which is a company. They have their own aircraft and they’re flown autonomously. They can be flown autonomously so self-flying airplanes with a mission to deliver essential goods and services to Northern and remote communities. Many places in Canada can only be accessed by air for certain parts of the year in the winter and such.
It’s a really important sustainability enabler to support those sectors. And Jeremy is actually on our advisory committee for WISA right now so, he’s very engaged and supportive of what we’re doing but through our CAP, through our Collaborative Aeronautics Program, even though we’ve only had two cohorts, we’ve only had our first graduate , but we’re already seeing them moving into exciting roles in industry as well.
An essential part of the CAP is basically it’s the existing master’s or doctoral program that the students enrolled in. They take one course that I teach on how aviation works. They take a second course, which is a consulting course, where they work directly with an industry partner to solve a practical problem, and they get experience translating those advanced skill sets to a real industry issue.
We’ve already seen some of those graduates be scooped up and hired by those companies. So, that’s a really exciting piece as well, and the students seem to love it.
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Host:
Jeremy is only one of many who are successfully making their way into the field of aviation, especially with the numerous Kitchener-based aviation companies. Companies like SkyWatch, that was founded by three Waterloo alumni in 2014. While all of these individuals and organizations are a great source of pride for Suzanne, her personal accomplishments are equally impressive.
Kearns:
The thing I’m most proud of is that I wrote a textbook. It’s called Fundamentals of International Aviation and that was my sort of my baby before WISA, you know, spending a lot of time in my basement every day just writing this textbook and the mission of the book was that I had seen over and over and again young people passionate about aviation and something happens. They don’t have enough money. They lose their medical certificate and other circumstances happen and they leave the industry and that’s at a time when our industry has a shortage of people in every professional category and I thought, well, what if we turned the traditional approach to aviation education upside down and we started their education with this broad overview of how the entire industry works on an international basis.
And that was the mission behind my textbook. And now it’s used in multiple translations all over the world and that’s probably the thing I’m most proud of. My family teases me a bit because they say like, if you want to be her friend, just tell her that you like her book. And then I will be like, yes, thank you.
It’s like telling someone their child is beautiful or something (laughing). It’s like, I love that too. But it’s important to me because I feel like it’s, you know, you put your heart and soul into something, and you hope that it’s useful. You know, you hope that somebody out in the world will be able to use it and think, hey, you know, my dream was to be a pilot.
I couldn’t achieve that goal. But because of this, I’ve been exposed to air traffic controller, airport management or all of these other factors that the industry needs for its future.
Host:
In spite of her apparent success, Suzanne will tell you that life is not without its challenges. Learning how to pivot brought her opportunities, which would never have been realized, if not for those previous challenges and obstacles.
Kearns:
So when I was a teenager in air cadets, I wanted to be a military pilot. I thought that was the coolest thing in the world. But the recruiters wouldn’t accept people with glasses.
So I looked at other options and I was sort of laser focused on I wanted to be an airline pilot at that point and when I had an internship with an airline in the States and so for a four-month period, I was a pilot intern, and I had never prior experienced some of the challenges in the aviation sector and again, this is, you know, 25 years ago, but there was quite a lot of uncomfortable situations that I experienced being in the cockpit and kind of closed off different things being said and suggested that were quite shocking to me .
And that was quite, you know, a slap across the face at that point in my career. So I had to go through this process of questioning like, I love the aviation industry. You know, this is, this is where my heart is. This is what I’m driven to do. But I don’t know that I’m fit or best suited to be an airline pilot.
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And that’s when I went back to school to study human factors. But, you know, in between those two things was probably three months of, you know, a lot of stress and questioning and trying to figure out what comes next.
So the advice I often give to my students is when you encounter those obstacles, which you will encounter those obstacles, because anybody who’s achieved anything in life has failed more than they've succeeded.
I think that’s true of everyone is don’t take a step back but pivot your direction and take another step forward and that was really essential because I could have given up on everything, but instead it’s a goal. I’m not going to be a pilot. Maybe I can pivot slightly and it can take me in a different direction and I truly feel today I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.
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Host:
How many of us feel that we’re doing what we’re meant to do? Daniel Pink is author of the book, “Drive” and he proposes that passion generates motivation.
He believes that we’ll love what we do if we’re given the opportunity to control what we do along with an opportunity to learn and grow and then combine these two with big-picture purpose. Suzanne’s passion for her work, in her own words, “Lights her up!”
Kearns:
I think that we all spend too much time at work to do something that we hate doing or that doesn’t light us up. So I guess the question to ask young people is, what lights you up? Like, what?
What do you, when you talk about it, you know, you feel that inside of yourself. It’s exciting. You feel that spark. You feel like there is this alignment between what you love and what your skill sets are and try to find that sort of sweet spot in the middle.
If you can find something you’re passionate about, you can move forward and do so on a path that allows for lots of other opportunities, lots of other doors to be open for that next step.
Host:
Suzanne has pivoted around obstacles and stepped through multiple doors to find herself where she is today, at the leading edge of sustainable aeronautics. While aviation may have its many critics and the daily environmental news can be disheartening, what she sees happening behind the scenes in Canadian research institutions ultimately gives her cause for optimism.
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Kearns:
There’s a lot of challenges in life. And I think, you know, if you’re, you know, just paying attention to the media, there’s a lot of things to be concerned about.
Climate change can be really scary for a lot of people and have people concerned for their futures and I think that that’s the reality. But there are a lot of people, really inspiring, passionate people who are dedicating everything they have to try to support a sustainable future. And what comes next. I think that’s what gives me a source of inspiration for the future that maybe the general public doesn’t see is how many exciting things are happening in the universities and how many young people, so undergraduate and graduate students, are sort of motivated and driven to apply their passions to try to solve some of these problems and it’s only when they all come together that we can have that big picture.
WISA is only two and a half years old. We’re still relatively new and we have seen such changes in society in the industry. Sustainability has become a top line priority for aviation… there’s such a shift that’s happened.
I feel like my personal driving force is to support the next generation of aviation professionals in building and reshaping the next generation of the aviation industry. That’s why I do what I do.
Host:
10,000 ways is produced in the studios of the Canada Foundation for Innovation.
The CFI is a non-profit corporation that invests in research infrastructure at Canadian universities, colleges, research hospitals and non-profit research institutions. If you’re curious to learn more about the CFI, then please visit Innovation.ca. That’s innovation dot ca.
My name is Greg Pilsworth and thank you very much for listening. Bye bye.
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