Moyra McDill
Jennifer Moyra Jeane McDill is a Canadian mechanical engineer and a professor emerita in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Carleton University. Her research has involved thermomechanical analysis using the finite element method, with applications including welding and robotics.[1]
Education and career
McDill is originally from South Ottawa,[2] one of four children[3] of a science teacher and a military mechanical engineer.[3][4] Her favorite childhood toy was a construction excavator. She was a student at Merivale High School in Ottawa,[2] and has a bachelor's degree, master's degree, and Ph.D. from Carleton University.[1] Between the master's degree and the doctorate, she worked in eastern and central Canada as an engineering analyst; after the doctorate, she continued at Carleton as a faculty member.[3] At Carleton, she was the first woman to earn a doctorate in mechanical engineering, the first woman on the mechanical engineering faculty, and the first woman to become a full professor of mechanical engineering.[5]
She served as a commissioner of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission from 2002 to 2015,[1] and as Doktorandombud (ombudsperson for the doctoral students) at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden from 2015 to 2022.[1][3]
Recognition
McDill is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering.[5]
She was a 2009 recipient of the Engineering Medal of the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers.[2][6]
Personal life
McDill was married to Alan Sinclair Oddy, a mechanical engineer and one of McDill's research collaborators,[7] whom she met as a laboratory partner in her first year at Carleton;[2] they had three children. He died in 2001, at age 44,[7] of brain cancer.[7][8] McDill published a memoir of her experiences with her husband's cancer, When Cancer Entered Our Family: How We Lived, Laughed, Cried and Survived (Novalis Publishing, 2007).[8]
In 2011 she remarried a widowed Swedish professor and moved to Sweden.[3]
References
- 1 2 3 4 "Moyra McDill", Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering people, Carleton University, retrieved 2025-08-31
- 1 2 3 4 Taylor, Louisa (20 November 2009), "Carleton professor credits family support for her success", Ottawa Citizen, retrieved 2025-08-31 – via Carleton University
- 1 2 3 4 5 Lárusson, Ragnar (20 April 2016), Interview with Moyra McDill, Chalmers new Doktorandsombud (DOMB), Chalmers Doctoral Students Guild, retrieved 2025-08-31
- ↑ "Moyra J. McDill", Engineer Girl, National Academy of Engineering, retrieved 2025-08-31
- 1 2 "McDill, Moyra", Directory of Fellows, Canadian Academy of Engineering, retrieved 2025-08-31
- ↑ "Awardees", Ontario Professional Engineer Awards, retrieved 2025-08-31
- 1 2 3 "Alan Sinclair Oddy", Winnipeg Free Press, 7 March 2001, retrieved 2025-08-31
- 1 2 Gillespie, Mike (2 September 2007), "When cancer came calling", Ottawa Citizen, retrieved 2025-08-31 – via Pressreader