A Lifetime Achievement award was established by the CFD Society of Canada in 2005 to recoginize individuals who have made outstanding time-enduring contributions to computational fluid dynamics in Canada. The contribution can be in the form of important advancements in the state-of-the-art of computational fluid dynamics, and/or significant impact on the use of CFD in Canada through research, teaching or innovative industrial practice. Since the intent of this award is to recognize lifetime achievements, it is anticipated that this will not be an annual award. Recipients of the award are selected through a nomination procedure and the award is presented at the Society's annual conference.

Past recipients 2006: Prof. Wagdi Habashi

Prof. Fred Habashi was duly honored with the Life Time Achievement Award of the CFD Society of Canada in July 2006.

Wagdi Habashi was born in Egypt and came to Canada at the age of 18, in 1964. Fred, as they called him since birth even in Egypt, had entered Cairo University at the age of 16 and completed 2 years of mechanical engineering before arriving here. At McGill, where he got admitted somewhat reluctantly, Egyptian education standards being still unknown, he excelled and graduated Summa Cum Laude in 1967, as first on the Engineering Faculty and meriting the British Association Medal of Lord Rankine. He obtained a Masters at McGill and was almost finished with his PhD in combustion when he decided that it would be best to try something else and departed to Cornell where he obtained a PhD in Aerospace for work on the Finite Element Method, with which he has been closely associated since. One of the tales Fred likes to tell is being admitted for graduate studies at MIT, Caltech, Princeton, Berkeley, Stanford and Cornell, but having his application rejected by the University of Toronto! He still has the letters, showing how unbelievable sometimes the rivalry can be.

After two years at Cornell, he accepted an Assistant Professorship position at the Stevens Institute of Technology, the birthplace of the ASME, and commuted between New Jersey and Ithaca to complete his Thesis. It was in 1975 that due to parental pressures he called Concordia during a visit to Montreal to enquire if they had positions, not knowing that on the same day CU had announced a vacancy in Thermofluids in the now defunct Montreal Star. Fred then spent 25 years at Concordia where the University's dynamism and flexibility allowed him to create a unique connection with industry, most notably Pratt & Whitney Canada where he maintained an office from 1977 to 2001 and with whose staff he has published over 90 technical papers, spanning, 2D, quasi-3D, and fully 3D potential, then Euler, then Navier-Stokes multistage turbomachinery.

In 2000 he moved to McGill which offered him the needed infrastructure to enlarge his CFD Laboratory activities by applying for and then establishing a CFI-sponsored supercomputer center (CLUMEQ, now in its second funding phase and the possible recipient of $30M within the National Platform Fund), as well as being the ideal environment to put in place an NSERC-Bombardier Industrial Research Chair in Multidisciplinary CFD long in the making.

Professor Habashi is the author of some 240 scientific papers; he is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Computational Fluid Dynamics and co-Editor of other book series. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). Dr. Habashi is a co-founder of the Canadian Society of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CSCFD) and a co-founder of CERCA, and was its Director Industry from 1992-95. Professor Habashi is also Honorary Professor of TongJi University in Shanghai.

He has received numerous scientific and technology transfer awards, among them the E.W.R. Steacie Fellowship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), the Technology Achievement Award of Pratt & Whitney Canada, the University Research Award of Concordia University, the Cray Gigaflop Award for the fastest computer code in the world. He was selected by the Quebec Science Magazine as one of the 10 discoveries of 1998 for his OptiMesh work, by the Montreal Gazette as one of the 10 top scientists in Montreal in its series, Montreal the Year 2000, and by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation as one of Canada's top 25 scientists in 2002. In 2006, Fred held the top Discovery Grant from the NSERC Mechanical Engineering Committee.

Dr. Habashi is the founder of a public spin-off company, Numerical Technologies International, developing software and providing services for multi-disciplinary applications of Computational Fluid Dynamics. NTI's innovative in-flight icing simulation software is currently used at most major aircraft, helicopter and jet engine companies around the world. He is also co-founder with Captain Gary Wagner, and Chairman, of Scientific Aircraft Accident Analysis (SA3), retained by major law firms and aviation insurance companies to use science as a forensic tool in aircraft accident investigation such for the Embraer crash over Monroe, MI, a number of Cessna 208B crashes, and the famous crash of the Concorde in Paris, whose investigation is still ongoing.

Fred takes particular pride in Canadian strengths in CFD and does not hesitate in reminding people that WE are indeed prominent. Computational Dynamics' StarCD was established by David Gosman from UBC, ANSYS' CFX by George Raithby; Analytical Methods Inc.'s VSAERO came from Frank Dvorak from RMC; MAYA technologies codes came from Adam Harris from McGill, and finally, Newmerical Technologies' FENSAP-ICE from McGill.

Finally, Fred is also known for the Habashi CFD Rules, a series of hilarious discipline-self-deprecating quotations and observations that he has presented at conferences and banquets and that are meant to slow us down whenever we take ourselves too seriously.

Past recipients 2005: Prof George Raithby

The inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award of the CFD Society of Canada was presented to Dr. G. D. Raithby at CFD2005 in St. John's, Newfoundland. Dr. Raithby obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1967 and subsequently held a post-doctoral position in Germany. He joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Waterloo in the 1969. In addition to his outstanding academic research, Dr. Raithby was renowned for his exemplary teaching and was awarded a Distinguished Teacher Award by the university. His teaching style ensured that students would obtain a deep and profound understanding of the subject being taught. As a researcher he pioneered and advanced the technology and understanding of CFD in several key areas. This resulted in the development of software of sufficient robustness, accuracy and efficiency to tackle problems of substantial engineering interest. In the mid-1980's Dr. Raithby founded the company Advanced Scientific Computing (ASC) Ltd. to allow for commercialization of the software, thus bringing CFD into Canadian industry. This business is currently owned by ANSYS Inc., but is still run as a separate business entity with head office in Waterloo. Dr. Raithby retired from the University of Waterloo in 1996 and is currently a Distinguished Professor Emeritus.