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THE READY LAB TEAM

Professor Alison Olechowski, PhD, P.Eng.

Associate Professor
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Institute for Studies in Transdisciplinary Engineering Education & Practice (ISTEP)

Alison Olechowski is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering and the Institute for Studies in Transdisciplinary Engineering Education & Practice (ISTEP) at the University of Toronto. Dr. Olechowski and her team study the processes and tools that teams of engineers use in industry as they design innovative new products. She has studied engineering products and projects in the automotive, electronics, aerospace, medical device and oil & gas industries.

Dr. Olechowski completed her PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her doctoral research involved the study of technology development in complex product and systems engineering with her advisor Prof. Steven Eppinger (MIT Sloan School of Management) and collaborator Prof. Nitin Joglekar (BU School of Management).

Dr. Olechowski received her master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, advised by Prof. Warren Seering. Her master’s research focused on product development processes, particularly investigating uncertainty and risk in engineering design. She received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

Dr. Olechowski is the proud faculty advisor for the Spark Design Club.

Elisa Kwon

Elisa is a Postdoc at Ready Lab. She is returning to UofT where she also holds a BASc in Engineering Science and an MASc in Mechanical Engineering (advised by Prof. Li Shu), after completing her PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley (advised by Prof. Kosa Goucher-Lambert). Her research currently focuses on human-AI collaboration in engineering design and investigates methods to use generative-AI systems to support human design ability.  

Peiying (Freda) Jian

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.

Meagan Flus

Meagan Flus is a PhD candidate and the Lab Manager at Ready Lab. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Knowledge Integration and a master’s degree in Management Sciences, both from the University of Waterloo. Her past research explores topics including project management, engineering education, and design cognition. Inspired by the interdisciplinary nature of her background, Meagan’s PhD research sits at the intersection of psychology and engineering. She studies design cognition at hackathons by applying dual-process theory at these heightened design events.

Kathy Cheng

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 DaMaren

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 Asuzu

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 Naghshbandi

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. 

Yuanzhe (Felix) Deng

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 Zhang

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 Beirne

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 Crupi

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.

Lab Alumni

Sharon Ferguson
PhD (2024)

Pranav Khanolkar
PhD (2024)

Jordan Epp
MASc (2024)

Avelyn Wong
Undergraduate

Victoria Velikonja
Undergraduate

Ademir Vrolijk
Postdoctoral Fellow

Alexander Lyakishev
Undergraduate

Ainsley Ross-Howe
Undergraduate

Kimberly Lai
MASc (2023)

James Chen
MASc (2021)

Phil Cuvin
Undergraduate

Jiacheng (Jason) Chen
Undergraduate

Evelyn Sham
MEng (2022)

Safa Faidi
MASc (2021)

Eric van Velzen
Undergraduate

Kevin Leonardo
MASc (2021)

Cacia Ploeg
Undergraduate

Lauren Adolphe
Undergraduate

Vrushank Phadnis
PhD (2020)

Meaghan Vella
Undergraduate

Arash Nourimand
Undergraduate

Hamza Arshad
Undergraduate

Kimberly Ren
Undergraduate

Zeping Sun
Undergraduate

In Memoriam

Janice Zhou

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.