When student becomes teacher: How this FEAS alumna became a faculty member
Completing her undergraduate and master’s degrees in electrical engineering at TMU, Dr. April Khademi’s engineering career has come full circle as she returned to the Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science (FEAS) community as an assistant professor.
Reflecting on her time as a student and educator at FEAS, Khademi describes how the opportunity to work with Dr. Krishnan during her fourth-year undergraduate studies fueled her passion for the biomedical field.
“I was always in love with biology and medicine,” said Khademi. “So, when I had the chance to do my final capstone with Dr. Krishnan, it was such a great surprise to me that you could join technology and signal processing to possibly help patients.”
During a time when the subject was still considered novel, Khademi was eager to explore biomedical engineering. While it’s future seemed uncertain, as doctors were not particularly keen on embracing the new technology, Khademi describes how she nevertheless found herself drawn to the field’s innovation and uniqueness.
“It was challenging, it was novel, and I fell in love with it. At the time, the field wasn’t known like it is today. Now artificial intelligence is in every product we have,” said Khademi. “For me, finding that bridge between medicine, machine learning and image analysis was a way for me to combine my passions and my skill sets. It was difficult, but it was rewarding as well.”
After working in the industry for several years following her studies, the biomedical engineer jumped on the chance to fulfill her dreams of returning to academia as a professor. For Khademi, helping improve society and make it a better place was the rewarding feeling that drove her passion for educating.
“I was brought up to become a contributing member of society, and I can’t really think about a better way to do that than by passing down my knowledge and collaborating to make something great,” said Khademi. “I feel like it’s a noble cause to train students and educate them on how to build technology that could positively impact patients.”
Throughout her engineering career, Khademi received the Governor General’s Gold Medal during her graduate studies, won the NSERC grant, and ran her own consulting firm for biomedical imaging and signal processing algorithm development. With all of those accomplishments, Khademi says having the opportunity to train the next generation of engineers is her proudest achievement.
“Seeing students work on their research projects and going out into the real world, doing what they were trained to do in my lab, couldn’t make me more proud,” said Khademi. “I got into this to train the next generation of engineers, and being able to see my students become successful is probably one of the biggest achievements for me.”
