“I enjoy doing research people care about,” he says. “I talk to my
partner at Syncrude about technical issues that need to be resolved.
Then we try to come up with solutions that can benefit the industry,
and can create an immediate impact in the province of Alberta. That’s
gratifying to me.”
Dr. Zhang credits much of his success to his students. “I bring them
problems and resources and they generate the solutions.” He adds that
he takes particular pleasure seeing his students grow and enjoy success
after graduation, often taking positions in industry in Alberta.
The advance image processing technology Dr. Zhang and his students
developed has injected new science into conventional engineering
methods in the oil sands industry. Now Dr. Zhang’s goal is to provide
support to Syncrude to help with the technology transfer. And he wants
to see how his advanced image processing research can be extended to
other areas in the oil sands mining.