University of St. Thomas

Education:
B.S. and M.S. in materials engineering from the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal in Quebec, Canada.
Ph.D.  from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland.

Career:

Originally from Montreal, Canada, Dr. Gagnon joined the University of St. Thomas in 2010. She currently teaches “Mechanics of Materials” (ENGR221) and instructs in  “Energy and the Environment” (ENGR123).

The main subject of her research was the thermal fatigue of ceramic-reinforced aluminum composites. She focused on the analysis and characterization of materials, particularly the fracture mechanism, using mechanical testing. Furthermore, she specialized in surface analysis through fine microscopy such as both scanning and transmission electron microscopy. Her main achievement in science was to develop an in-situ thermal cycling device that allowed thermal cycling of materials under observation in a transmission microscope in order to film the deformation and fracture mechanics as they occurred.
 
As a Swiss federal employee, she also worked with industries such as Alusuisse to cast new composite materials.  Dr. Gagnon has presented at numerous international conferences and published a dozen research papers. She also tutored at the University of Kyoto in Japan for a year.

Her mission now at St. Thomas is to develop “excellence in engineering education” which includes building more bridges between academia and the industry both nationally and internationally and developing new teaching methods.
Dr. Gagnon has been developing her current class to improve the use of technologies such as Blackboard, online homework, full lecture video capture and remote capture of problem solving sections. Furthermore, these technologies allow the students to access course information anytime (24/7).  She believes the use of new teaching methods and technology will allow the University of St. Thomas to reach excellence in engineering education.

Dr. Gagnon is also passionate about bringing more diversity to St. Thomas and finding new ways to help the developing countries with their struggles with access to energy and technology.