Group Members
Principal Investigator
Kevin Oldknow, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Associate Professor, School of Sustainable Energy Engineering
Dr. Kevin Oldknow is an Associate Professor at Simon Fraser University, and was the inaugural Director of the School of Sustainable Energy Engineering. Oldknow has researched and published in the areas of dynamics and controls, wheel-rail and vehicle-track interaction, tribology and friction control, and engineering education. Oldknow also has more than 20 years of industrial experience, primarily in railway systems. This has included an array of domestic and international projects on passenger and freight rail systems, including vehicle-track studies and simulation work, and the deployment and verification of technologies for asset life extension and improved system performance. He has held technical, strategic and senior management roles at Procter & Gamble, Cameleon Controls, Kelsan Technologies, Portec Rail Products and LB Foster Rail Technologies.
Graduate Students
Beatrice Agyapong
MASc Candidate
Beatrice earned her BSc in Renewable Energy Engineering from the University of Energy and Natural Resources (UENR) in Sunyani, Ghana. During her time at UENR, she was President of the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGs), Welfare Vice-Chairperson, Redcross Society Chairperson, and a Peer Educator. She also has more than 5 years of experience as a as a solar energy consultant for both residential and commercial facilities.
Reza Hassani
PhD Candidate
Reza received his master's degree in transport systems engineering from the Sapienza University of Rome. Working in collaboration with Italferr, his thesis focused on the implications of active lateral suspensions on rail vehicle performance. His research included investigations in Wheel-Rail contact and Vehicle-Track interaction using Multi-body Simulation software.
Lisa Li
PhD Candidate
Zhen (Lisa) Li received her bachelor's degree in Mechatronic Systems Engineering from Simon Fraser University, and has strong interests in sustainable energy and transportation systems. During her undergraduate studies, Lisa has developed a solid foundation of the fundamental concepts in Applied Science, and gained advanced technical and research skills in Mechatronic Systems Engineering. As a research assistant in the Vehicle-Track Interaction research group for eight months in 2021, Lisa's co-op work focused on projects to further develop test, measurement and training system capabilities as well as global research on Vehicle-track Research Facilities and Infrastructure.
Gustavo Silva
MASc Candidate
Gustavo received his BSc in Civil Engineering from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil. As an undergraduate, he was a summer intern at the railroad maintenance equipment and services provider Loram and an intern at the railway consultancy company CH. Vidon. Most recently, Gustavo has worked at the freight railway company MRS Logística.
Yi Wang
PhD Candidate (co-supervised by Dr. Gary Wang, in the School of Mechatronic Systems Engineering)
Yi has worked in the railway industry in various capacities for six years after completing his undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Engineering at Queen’s University. In 2015, he started pursuing a master’s degree in Computational Engineering at the Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany. He returned to the industry as a mechanical system engineer in 2017 for two more years before starting to work on an industry-supported Ph.D. in the School of Mechatronic Systems Engineering at SFU in areas relating to railway train marshalling. Yi’s areas of focus include train and vehicle dynamics, wheel-rail contact, and optimization.
Research Assistants
Kaylee Meschke
Undergraduate Research Assistant
Kaylee Meschke is a 3rd year Sustainable Energy Engineering undergraduate student at Simon Fraser University. Kaylee has completed a Co-op at Greenlight Innovation, focusing on the mechanical design of fuel cell and electrolyser test stations. She has also been a member of various design teams related the vertical farm design and the development of sustainable buildings, was the VP Finance for her program’s student society and has competed in various student engineering competitions up to the national level. Since attending the Wheel Rail Interaction conference in 2021, Kaylee has taken an interest in vehicle track interaction and hopes to learn more about various fields throughout the remainder of her studies.