THE READY LAB TEAM

Peiying is a Ph.D. candidate at the Ready Lab. Her research interest is in creativity and assistive tools for design. She completed her undergraduate study in psychology and cognitive science at the University of Toronto and her master’s degree in cognitive neuroscience at Queen’s University. Peiying wishes to bridge psychology and engineering to understand what facilitates important and creative human inventions.

Kathy is a PhD candidate at Ready Lab, co-advised by Dr. Shurui Zhou from FORCOLAB. She holds a BASc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Toronto. She spent an award-winning Professional Experience Year at Scotiabank as a technology consultant, which sparked her interest in human-centred design. Kathy’s doctoral research aims to understand and address collaboration challenges with CAD (computer-aided design) tools using software development best practices and insight.

Liz is a PhD candidate at Ready Lab. She holds a Bachelor of Mechatronics Engineering & Society from McMaster University, where she also completed an Interdisciplinary Minor in Sustainability. Her research focuses on team dynamics and gender considerations in computer-aided design group settings, with applications for educators and industry alike. Outside the lab, she loves grabbing a canoe and heading into the Algonquin backcountry or exploring the city and seeing what the latest vegetarian restaurant has in store.

Chuma is a PhD Student at Ready Lab. His research explores the development of aesthetics in people and how customer data can be used to inform engineering design. Outside of the lab, he can be found watching old TV shows and rom-coms.

Marjan is a MASc student at Ready Lab. Funded by NSERC’s Canada Graduate Scholarship, her research looks at leveraging social science methods and digital trace data to support remote and hybrid product development teams’ innovation processes and collaboration. Marjan works closely with Dr. Sharon Ferguson at the University of Waterloo on this work. Before her Master’s, she graduated from the University of Toronto’s Industrial Engineering program with certificates in AI and business, and held a Program Manager position at Intel Corporation. She also completed her undergraduate thesis with Ready Lab, on the topic of underrepresented students’ persistence in Computer Science. 

Felix is a MASc student at Ready Lab, co-supervised by Prof. Shurui Zhou from FORCOLAB. He holds a BASc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Toronto. He completed his undergraduate thesis at the Microrobotics Lab, working on magnetically actuated surgical robotics, and previously conducted research at Ready Lab on the efficiency of engineering collaboration in multi-user CAD. Felix’s current research focuses on studying version control in CAD and enhancing its capabilities using artificial intelligence. 

Kevin is a MASc student at Ready Lab, studying CAD and engineering collaboration. He holds a BASc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Toronto. His undergraduate thesis was completed with Ready Lab, studying CAD user archetypes based on user data, and has presented his work at the 2024 CAD and IDETC conferences. He has previously completed internships at Pratt and Whitney, Bombardier, and Zebra Technologies, and his current research at Ready Lab focuses on studying CAD interoperability and interdisciplinary collaboration in the engineering design process. 

Genevieve is a third year mechanical engineering student at the University of Toronto. She was a summer research student in 2024 and is now continuing with the lab as a research assistant focusing on how students learn to use CAD and apply it in an engineering design group project.

Lucas is a second-year mechanical engineering student at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the application of machine learning and natural language processing to understand part design and design intent through building a mechanical part classification model. Outside the lab, you can probably find him designing or building something cool.

Janice Zhou was a 4th year Mechanical Engineering student who completed her undergraduate thesis with Prof. Olechowski. Janice worked during her Professional Experience Year at a toy company called Spin Master as a Product Development Engineer. She was the Co-President of Spark Design Club, an engineering student club that creates electro-mechanical interactive displays. Janice next pursued a Master’s Degree at MIT.