Priti Wanjara

Dr. Priti Wanjara is the scientific head in metal manufacturing at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC)’s Aerospace Research Centre, where she has built a globally unique physical metallurgy laboratory and is world renowned for her pioneering solutions in advanced welding manufacturing. Her exceptional achievements have yielded breakthroughs in 3D printing with metals. At the NRC, she has been the scientific lead and project manager on thirty-five major multi-year research collaborations involving ten universities, more than two dozen world-leading industry partners (including Siemens, IHI Japan, and Pratt & Whitney), and more than $35M in external funding.

Indicative of her international stature, Dr. Wanjara is presently a Canadian representative to two NATO Science and Technology Organization (STO) working groups and three panels of the Technical Cooperation Program, a collaborative five-nation defence forum between the UK, US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. She is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM), ASM International, the Canadian Welding Bureau, the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute, and has received numerous awards recognizing her many contributions, including a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. Dr. Wanjara is widely respected as a trailblazing woman of colour in science who has overcome significant challenges. She was only the second female President of the Metallurgical and Materials Society in its sixty-year history, and was honoured by the CIM as one of just eighteen Women of Impact. Dr. Wanjara is a champion of both one-on-one mentoring and organization-level structural change. She shared an NRC President’s Outstanding Achievement Award in 2021 for her role in an innovative STEM mentorship program for women that increased workplace equity, diversity, and inclusion.