Executive

Marc Sider, eng. (1959 – 2010)

With great sadness, we must inform you of the death of our friend Marc Sider on December 29, 2010.

We will remember Marc as a pillar of our organization who supported ISA for a number of years, including five years as Montreal Section President from 2004 to 2009. He has greatly contributed to the development of ISA in Montreal and was extremely active recently in the areas of professional development and liaison with other professional organizations and the automation community. He was a member of the board of directors of ISA Montreal at the time of his death.

Marc graduated in 1981 from École Polytechnique in chemical engineering and worked in electrochemistry, especially in the areas of mining, extractive metallurgy, and metal coating.

He will be remembered as a man of high integrity who was extremely committed to his work but who always found the time to help the community as a volunteer. We will always miss his ideas, enthusiasm, and dedication.

The condolences of all ISA leaders and members go out to his family and friends.

Antonio Alves, President

Antonio Alves is a multinational project manager with 20 years of experience in control and automation systems, including coordination of equipment design, monitoring project costs and schedules, integration, on-site startup, and customer relations for customers in Canada, USA, and Latin America.

He holds a bachelors degree in electrical engineering and a bachelors degree in business administration and is presently concluding a master's degree in Automated Production Engineering at ETS (École de technologie supérieure) where he has also lectured in the Electrical Engineering and Automated Production Engineering programs.

He has worked for leading Canadian companies including CAE and SIDEL and is presently a member of the displays group of CMC Electronics (formerly Marconi).

James Bouchard, Treasurer

James recently retired from the Johnson & Johnson plant in Montreal where he has been engaged in project engineering, machine control and facilities management for almost 40 years. He was actively involved in corporate projects to economize on water and energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He has an MBA from McGill University and a B.Sc. in physics from Sir George Williams (now Concordia).

James has been an ISA member since 1978 and served as Montreal Section Treasurer for several years in the late 1980's and early 1990's. He served as Section President in 1995-96, then became active in the ISA Publications Department and eventually became the first Vice President of the new Web Activities Department in 2003. He was Director of the Food and Pharmaceutical Division in 2008-2009. He wrote the chapter on Programmable Controllers for the ISA textbook, Fundamentals of Industrial Control.

Patrick Bouwman, Director

Patrick graduated from Concordia University with a Bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering in 1976. He is Coordinator of the Department of Industrial Electronics at Vanier College, Montreal. As a member of the Department he has written numerous instructional manuals including ones in Electronics, Signal Processing, Automation, Process Control, PLC Programming, and Robotics. He has over 22 years of industrial experience in the design of military electronics and biomedical instrumentation; including more than ten years of operating his own company specializing in research, design and development of data acquisition and signal processing systems for medical applications. In addition he has provided design and consulting services to the process control and automation industry and participated in research conducted at McGill University by custom-designing equipment for medical applications.

Sébastien Day, Director

Sebastien has a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Quebec in Montreal UQAM. He now manages the Custom Solutions department at Swagelok Quebec Group. He also works closely with engineering firms on projects that vary in size and scope. He joined this company in 2000 and played different roles in business development throughout the years. Swagelok Quebec Group specialises in the distribution of industrial valves and fittings as well as the fabrication of customized equipment for various markets such as energy, pulp and paper, pharmaceutical, semiconductor and mining.

Trung Nguyen, Director

Trung Nguyen is an electrical engineer with 25 years’ experience in applied industrial automation. He has worked on projects in many industries such as pharmaceutical, biotech, chemical, metallurgy, petro-chemical and pulp and paper. These projects have allowed him to gain concrete experience in project life cycle implementation for

industrial control systems such as DCS, PLC/HMI, SCADA, Batch, Data Historian, MES, ERP Integration and networking for industrial applications. He is continually updating his technical abilities that are complemented by his organizational skills, both of which are assets in his roles as automation technical lead at Shell Canada.

Guy Gauthier, Director

Guy holds two bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering (energy transport – Université Laval) and in automated production (ETS), as well as a master's in electrical engineering, with a concentration in automation, from École Polytechnique. He has taught since 1993 in the Department of Automated Production Engineering at ETS and has been a professor there since 2000. In 2008, he completed a doctoral degree, with a thesis on Iterative Learning Control Applied to Thermal Forming, at McGill University. His fields of expertise include various aspects of automation (programmable controllers, GRAFCET, sensors, actuators) as well as process control. In 1988, he received the silver medal of the Governor General of Canada in recognition of the academic standing he attained during his bachelor's studies at ETS.

Mathieu Billette, Director

Mathieu Billette has been CEO of Robotx Solutions Inc. since 2002. Before that, he was an industrial electrician in the construction industry and a project manager for Conception Mecamath. He holds a diploma in mechanical engineering technology from Collège Valleyfield and has pursued further studies at École de technologie supérieure (ETS) – Université du Québec à Montréal. He holds numerous certificates in the electromechanical and construction fields and collaborated on an IRSST report, « Sécurisation des presses plieuses hydrauliques » (Securing hydraulic folding presses).

André Michel, Director

André Michel graduated from Laval University in Electrical Engineering in 1984. He was an ISA Member in the eighties but was inactive because he was working overseas. He reconnected with ISA in 2001 and started to become more involved in the organization in 2007 when he got involved in the organization of ISA Expo in Houston. Once again, this year he is involved in the Process Automation Track. After several years in the United States, he recently returned to Montreal and founded the Canadian branch of Brillig Systems. His record of accomplishment includes several multi-million-dollar automation projects for Fortune 500 companies around the world. He is also a member of several other organizations such as OIQ, ISPE, AACE, and PMI. For PMI, he is Communication Director for the Pharma SIG (Special Interest Group). He is also very active in LinkedIn, where he hosts the Automation Project Management Group.