Professor Kamran Behdinan, of the University of Toronto, is a highly respected leader and innovator in engineering design and design education. He was the founding Chair of the Ryerson Department of Aerospace Engineering, and the founding Director of both the Ryerson Institute for Aerospace Design and Innovation and the University of Toronto Institute for Multidisciplinary Design and Innovation. He has consecutively held the NSERC Engineering Design Chair at Ryerson University and the NSERC Chair in Multidisciplinary Engineering Design at U of T. Professor Behdinan is a Fellow of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering and served as President of CSME from 2010-2012.