Spotlight on Prof. Ya-Jun Pan, Vice President for Membership Activities, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dalhousie University, Canada

“Being Vice President for Membership Activities and Chair of Women in Engineering within IEEE IES has given me an extraordinary platform to drive membership engagement and promote excellence within our field.”

Recent Wins & Recognition

  • CSME Mechatronics Medal Award (2025): Recognized for exceptional research and innovation in mechatronics at the CSME International Congress, Montreal.
  • FulBright Canada Research Chair Award (2025-2026)
  • Fellowships & Honors include being a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (FCAE, 2023), Engineering Institute of Canada (FEIC, 2021), Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering (FCSME, 2023), and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (FASME, 2017). She was also awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship (Germany, 2016) and the Research Excellence Award from Dalhousie University (2008-2009).

Research & Impact

  • Fields: Robust nonlinear control, cyber–physical systems, tele-robotics, autonomous systems, intelligent systems, collaborative robots.
  • Lab Leadership: Director, Advanced Control and Mechatronics Lab, Dalhousie University.
  • Scholarly Contributions: Over 220+ publications; supervised 100+ graduate students and researchers.
  • Real-world Impact: Innovations applied in industrial robotic platforms, enhancing business growth.

 

Q&A with Prof. Ya-Jun Pan

What inspired you to pursue a career in control, robotics, and mechatronics, and how has that journey evolved?

Pan: My decision to study Engineering started from my favorite courses of Mathematics and Physics in high school. I later chose Mechanical Engineering for my undergraduate and master’s programs to follow my interests in automatic control, mechatronics, and robotics. My passion in automation and robotics led me to pursue my Ph.D. degree in the Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS) from 1999, where I was supported by the President’s Fellowship Award. I then had a one-year post-doctoral position of CNRS in the Laboratoire d’Automatique de Grenoble (Current Name: GIPSA-Lab) in France in 2003 and conducted research in networked control systems. After that, I moved to Canada. Before joining Dalhousie University, I worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Alberta (UofA).

What advice would you give to young professionals and women engineers looking to build leadership roles within IEEE IES?

Pan: The IES has an open and friendly environment for its members. Our IES provides many opportunities for volunteering and leadership positions for members to give back to the society. Young professionals including women engineers shall start to build their profiles through active involvement such as serving as reviewers for IES conferences and journals, participating and organizing activities in their local IES Chapters, IES sponsored conferences and workshops, SYP Congress, IES  standing and Ad Hoc committees, and working with local industry etc. Through these involvements, volunteers get to know the importance of connecting and networking with peers in IES and leadership roles within the society. It is important that volunteers may be able to find their own mentors during the interactions with other IES members and leaders.

How has your involvement in IEEE IES influenced your research, professional growth, and leadership journey?

Pan: Being involved in IES as an active volunteer offered me many excellent opportunities such as leading a dynamic membership volunteer team, organizing WIE events at IES flagship conferences as well as virtual webinars, managing distinguished lecturer programs, and providing professional and committed editorial services to the research community. In return, through exchanging ideas with peers such as IES AdCom members and leaders, it helped me establish a different mindset in contributing various services and volunteer work with passions and rewarding experiences. Through my new network in IES, I got chances to build more international research collaborations through research funding, exchanging scholars, and achieving more research outcomes in my research fields. Furthermore, I got more opportunities to share my professional experiences and research progress in major IES sponsored flagship conferences. Overall, the volunteering experiences in IEEE and IES enriched my professional journey and career development. More importantly, I enjoyed giving back to our IEEE including the IES community.

As Vice President for Membership Activities, what is your vision for the future of IEEE IES and its global community?

Pan: For the IES Membership Activities, the goal is to keep current members engaged, provide our members with a community where they can network, interact and collaborate with others who share their technical or professional interests. Our vision is that students, young professionals, senior employees or entrepreneurs, academics, and all other members can find what they need in IES. IES becomes a more member-focused society with the new membership initiatives and activities as currently carried out and planned. With these efforts, IES will be able to grow steadily with a healthy volunteer pipeline with more and more people involved including students and young professions (SYPs).

Prof. Ya-Jun Pan has held several key leadership, editorial, and technical roles within IEEE IES, including serving as Vice President for Membership Activities; Chair of the IES Distinguished Lecturers Program and Women in IES; Senior Editor of the IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics; Associate Editor for the IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, and IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics; and Program Chair for major IEEE conferences such as ISIE, IECON, ICIT, AIM, and ICPS.

By Chathurika S Wickramasinghe Brahmana M, Chair of the IEEE IES Young Professionals Activity Committee (YPS-AC)

Stay tuned, more Young Professionals Spotlights coming soon…

To learn more about the IEEE IES Young Professionals Activities: https://www.ieee-ies.org/membership/syp