Jaho Seo was with the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering of the University of Waterloo as a Postdoctoral Fellow in 2011, the Department of System Reliability of the Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials (KIMM) as a senior researcher for 2012-2016, and the Department of Biosystems Machinery Engineering of Chungnam National University, Korea as an Assistant Professor for 2016-2017.
Since 2017, he has been an Assistant Professor at the Department of Automotive and Mechatronics Engineering, Ontario Tech University where he has been involved in research on the development of autonomous control systems for intelligent mobile machines, and electro-hydraulic systems.

Research Assoicate
- KIMM and KITECH
Projects
Tyler Parsons has graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Ontario Tech University in 2021, and has completed his MASc under the supervision of Dr. Jaho Seo in Apr of 2023. Currently, he is working as a Research Associate.
Within the span of his undergraduate degree, he successfully completed a 16 month internship with a robotics vision solutions company, Bluewrist Inc. During this internship, he worked as a mechanical designer on many different automated systems, including an automated 3-layer surgical mask making machine. In addition to this, he also worked as an Application Engineer working with company software at numerous off-site locations to properly integrate inspection systems. He has been involved in optimizing routes of waste collection and street sweeping.

STUDENT
PhD
- KIMM and KEIT Projects
Fattah Hanafi obtained his M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad in 2013. From 2011 to 2019, he was a member of FUM Robotics Lab, working on different aspects of industrial robots such as Kinematics, Dynamics, Simulation, Trajectory Generation, etc. In the last four years, he played a leading role in developing and producing a family of industrial-grade robots like FUM-6R-20, FUM-SCARA-II, FUM-Delta, and FUM-Stewart-M450 Robot.
He has started his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Ontario Tech University under the supervision of Dr. Jaho Seo from May 2021. His research topic is the development of advanced control and adaptive safety algorithms for autonomous construction equipment.

STUDENT
MASc
- Hyundai Motor Project
Kin Ching Lee completed his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the City University of Hong Kong in 2020. He was in a robotic team from 2017 to 2020 during his undergraduate education. Within the team, he had been the key designer to develop methodologies and build robots to fulfill multi-designed tasks for competition.
After his undegraded study, he worked in a magnetic sensing semi-conductor company. His job is to enhance the performance of product testing machines with computer vision and robotic arm implementation.
He has started his MASc in Mechanical Engineering under Prof. Jaho Seo’s supervision from Sep 2022. His research is about simulating the redundant braking system in electrical vehicles.

STUDENT
MASc
- KITECH Project
Farhad Baghyari completed his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad in 2017. From early 2015 to late 2019, he was a member of FUM Robotics Lab. He has been involved in mechanical design and calculation, part selection, construction, assembly, testing, and leading several industrial-level projects. Before that, from 2013 to 2015, he was a member of FUM Formula student race car team.
He started his M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering at Ontario Tech University under the supervision of Dr. Jaho Seo in Sep 2022. He is involved in optimizing routes of snowplowing.

Visiting Scholar
Cho Young-gu graduated from Korea University in 2003 and has been working at the Hyundai Motor Technology Research Institute since 2004. He developed simulation techniques and system level test methods for brake performance and noise. The latest developments include the VILS (Vehicle In the Loop Simulation) and machine learning methods for brake squeal noise.
He is currently developing the brake reduduncy simulation technique at Ontario Tech University in Canada as a Grobal R&D Expert for Hyundai Motor.
- Hyundai Motors
Company

Visiting Scholar
Dr. Youngjun Park obtained his Ph.D. in Agricultural Machinery Engineering from Seoul National University, Republic of Korea in 2006. From 2006 to 2017, he worked at the Department of System Reliability of the Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials (KIMM) as a senior/principal researcher. Since 2017, he has been an Assistant/Associate Professor (http://oredlab.snu.ac.kr) at the Department of Biosystems Engineering, Seoul National University. His research topics are the development of gearbox design/analysis software (GDP, gear design program), driving control algorithm of electrical tractors noise reduction technology of tractor cabin, and soil-machine (tire & crawler) interaction technique.
- Seoul National
University
Fergal Tirandazi

STUDENT
Fergal graduated with a Bachelors of Engineering from OntarioTech University in the field of Mechatronics Engineering. During his undergraduate studies, Fergal completed a 16 month internship with Honda of Canada Mfg. working on supplier process maturation for the introduction of the 2023 CRV Petrol and Hybrid models. Aside from this he was also a member of the HV department of the university's FSAE team. For his capstone Fergal worked under the guidance of Dr.Seo on a project focusing on the teleoperation of an excavator using the motions of a human arm as an input. In his masters, Fergal aims to continue working under Dr.Seo's supervision on an autonomous drone platform with an excavator arm attachment with hopes of achieving autonomous airborne excavation.
MASc
- NSERC Project
Abdullah Rasul holds a Master's degree in Mechanical (Mechatronics) Engineering. During his masters, he worked on developing algorithms for perception of autonomous construction vehicles to address the safety and excavation progress aspects. He also worked as a Robotics Test Engineer at AIS where he tested navigation and perception algorithms for Autonomous Mobile Robots, and this helped him gaining valuable experience in developing new algorithms for robotic simulation. He is currently a Research Associate working under the supervision of Dr. Jaho Seo, where he focuses on developing path planning algorithms for Autonomous Vehicles in urban applications. His research interest lies in the introduction of robotics for construction and agriculture to address safety, labor shortage, and increase efficiency with human-robot collaboration.
Abdullah Rasul

Research Associate
- KITECH project
Nicholas Varas

Student
MASc
- NSERC Project
ANicholas Varas completed his bachelor’s degree in Mechatronics Engineering from Ontario Tech University in 2023, where he also worked for Engineering Outreach as a Senior Program Instructor throughout the course of his studies. In addition, he also co-founded and currently leads the two Ontario Tech Robotics teams, Robot in 3 Days (Ri3D) and RoboMaster, as well as his own company Moduleaf, which was co-founded through Brillant Catalyst with fellow graduates Mitchell Vella and Andrew Champ. Having completed a 16-month internship at Honda of Canada Mfg. in their CRV paint department, he is very experienced in robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence. For his research, Nicholas will be working on autonomous indoor farming technologies under the supervision of Dr. Seo.
Mitchell Vella

TBA
Student
MASc
- KEIT Project