PEY, BASc+MBA, Careers

Professional Experience Year (PEY)

The University of Toronto's Professional Experience Year (PEY) is your opportunity to turn classroom knowledge into valuable work experience. By taking part in the PEY program, you can gain meaningful work experience, clarify your career path, build industry contacts and make money. Lasting between 12- to 16-months, a PEY internship gives you more time and opportunity to gain all the advantages a work placement can offer, including an average salary of $37,500. To find out more, visit the PEY website.

Mechanical Engineering PEY Profiles

Name: Anthony
PEY Placement: Combustor, Gas Turbine Department, Alstom Power, Switzerland
Living: At school, I live with my family in Toronto. As for my PEY placement in Baden, Switzerland, I am renting a small apartment and live on my own.

Activities: Beside spending most of my time with my friends, I usually read a lot of latest news about automobile, especially auto-racing, like Formula 1.

Daily Grind: I am in the Combustor Group of the Gas Turbine Department. My main task is to preform CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations for the burner and the combustor section of our various Gas Turbine Engine. CFD is like numerical calculation for fluid flow.

Comments: "The greatest benefit is the opportunity to gain actual work experience. But for me personally, it is great to be able to work in the field that I like the most, which is fluid dynamics and aerodynamics. Also, I guess the biggest plus for my PEY placement is to be able to work in Switzerland. It is a completely new experience for me. I think PEY did a great job to have many contacts throughout the world."

Jeffrey Skoll Combined BASc/MBA Program

The Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering and the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto have recently established a program, unequalled in Canada, to provide a fast track for gifted students to earn their Bachelor's degree in engineering, a professional experience year, a management internship, and an MBA in six years and eight months. All engineering students at the University of Toronto are eligible to apply for this program. Find out more about Skoll, the combined Engineering and MBA program at U of T.

Mechanical Engineering Skoll Profiles

Name: Neeraj
Year & Program: MECH 0T4 + PEY
PEY placement: Canadian Space Agency (CSA) in Montreal (St. Hubert)

Neeraj recently graduated from the Jeffrey Skoll BASc/MBA Program. During his time at the University of Toronto he gained valuable work experience through two work placements at the dynamic environment of the commercialization department for the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). Neeraj felt his internship position was both rewarding and relevant, providing him with direct exposure to both technology and its management. Neeraj is now working in the financial industry.

Mechanical Engineering Careers

University of Toronto mechanical engineering graduates are in demand. Our graduates work in industry, consulting practices, universities and government research. Many continue research and design through a masters or doctorate of engineering focusing on biomaterials, biomechanics, aerospace, robotics, manufacturing and other fields. Typical employers include aerospace companies, utilities, material processing plants, transportation companies and petroleum companies such as Visteon Automotive System, Bell Canada, Pratt & Whitney Canada, IBM Canada Ltd., Bombardier and Celestica. Graduates also find employment outside of the conventional engineering industries, for example in Accenture, where their technical understanding, management skills and problem solving abilities are highly valued. From high tech to blue chip, virtually all industries require mechanical engineers as employees or consultants.

Mechanical Engineering Alumni Profiles

Name: Vinh
Job Placement: Engineering Analyst, Toyota/Lexus Canada Inc
Year & Program: MECH 0T4
Living: Lived at home, commuted via TTC 40 mins each way, living at home still! But now I have a Lexus!

Activities: Formula SAE gives you hands on experience and a chance to be an engineer to see your own ideas designed, built, tested, and competed against the world's top automotive engineering students. You can really learn the entire life-cycle of a race car and live the glamourous life of a race engineer! SAE provides a massive resource pool in which you can tap into to develop your engineering skills, knowledge and network.

Daily Grind: I do a million things at once! Dealer reports are sent to head office, or the Customer Service phone answering people will contact me regarding a technical issue to which I will decide whether it is a continuing trend based on warranty claims made, part sales and volume of cases. If the issue escalates, you "go and see" the problem at a dealer or request the part be sent here where we will do an analysis. Once enough failed parts are recovered, a report is written and sent to Japan. You can monitor 10-20 issues in any given time period for a specific Toyota or Lexus model. There are also many meetings to attend in order to "Kaizen" our processes, which basically means to continuously improve everything that we do and our products.

Comments: "Mech Eng provides OPPORTUNITIES for you to grasp with your eager minds!”

Name: Whitney
Hometown: Kingston, ON
Job Placement: Operations Technical Trainee at Labatt Breweries
PEY placement: Engineering Services at Labatt Breweries, Ontario
Year & Program: MECH 0T2 + PEY

Activities: American Society of Mechanical Engineers & two part-time jobs (not recommended for just anyone!!)

Daily Grind: Fluid dynamics and thermodynamics, especially dealing with environmental concerns, were Whitney's specific areas of interest in school. Landing a PEY placement as part of Engineering Services at Labatt Breweries Ontario allowed her to work more specifically in these fields. In fact, she's was the project manager for several of her own designs, including effluent treatment, stack scrubbers and heat exchangers. Whitney was rehired by Labatt upon graduating and embarked on even more schooling.

Comments: "I get to spend two years learning about brewing operations and management. The program is a lot of fun - it's almost like a mini-masters in brewing. I have to take a bunch of technical courses all over the world and have to submit bi-weekly assignments via conference all. At the end of the program I have to write brewing exams in London, England. For now, I'm based out of Montreal…and I travel over most of Canada.”

Name: Frances
Job Placement: Biomedical Engineering Assistant, Baylis Medical Company Inc.
Year & Program: MECH 0T4

PEY Placement: An overseas internship in Kyoto, Japan at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute (ATR) conducting research in the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience on human motor control and learning. In order to better understand how humans adapt to perturbations and physical disturbances in their environment while executing skillful arm movements, Frances studied the modulation of arm muscle impedance using the single joint robotic floating magnet manipulandum developed by leading Japanese neuroscientists. Findings from the research can be well suited to developing rehabilitation techniques and improving limb movements of humanoid robots.

Daily Grind: Work and commuting dominates at least 12 hours of the day, however I make sure that I incorporate exercise into my schedule. I am a long distance runner and running is staple to my lifestyle. I’ve recently turned this recreational sport into a competitive one by joining The Running Room. I’m currently training five days a week for a ½ marathon race in fall and as I progressively increase my mileage, I will enter a full marathon race next year in summer. Running not only keeps me fit, it also makes me a very disciplined individual. Not only is long distance running physically challenging, it also trains my mind. During intensive training sessions, it is my mind that tells me to quit, not my body.

Comments:“Mechanical engineering is the most diverse engineering discipline and provides a solid foundation in design and manufacturing, thermodynamics, solid mechanics, mechatronics and engineering instrumentation that is critical in preparing me for designing engineering systems for the real world.”

Name: Mary
Job Placement: Process Engineer, Woodbridge Foam Corporation (automotive)
Year & Program: MECH 0T3
Living: Living in Toronto, and having commuted my entire life to school, commuting to university was a nice change,
since it was half the distance I was used to. During PEY and my last year of school, I moved downtown, about 10
minutes off of campus. It totally changed my university experience, and I often wish I had done that earlier to be able to participate in more extracurricular activities.

Activities: S!OS mentor, Skule(tm) Nite, Mec club, a faculty council student representative, co-editor of the Cannon, co-organized the first of the annual Charity Date Auctions, and volunteered at the Out of the Cold program near the university.

Fourth Year Design Project: I worked with a lab at Sunnybrook Hospital testing the pressures inside the unbroken femur, the large bone at your thigh, when a metal nail was inserted along the bone in the canal. Problems caused by elevated pressures in the bone is a very real-life medical issue with serious consequences, so it was very rewarding to see that my research, in the long run, may help develop safer surgical methods.

Daily Grind: Woodbridge Foam Corporation is a Tier 2 automotive supplier for foam car seats. I hope to use my experience in a manufacturing environment, and familiarity with process engineering, to move on to a managerial position in a manufacturing company.

Comments: “[Mechanical engineering] introduced me to the world of medicine, and how important it can be for engineers to work alongside the medical profession to obtain results and develop new treatments.”

Name: Anil
Job Placement: Biomedical researcher, teacher
Year & Program: MECH 0T1 (mechatronics)

Studying biology using the tools of mathematics and physics made biology seem fascinating to Anil when he joined a fourth year class called Biomechanical Engineering. It looked at biological systems from a mechanical engineering viewpoint. After taking this course, he decided to apply his mechanical engineering skills to medical research. That’s what lead him to his Master of Applied Science in Mechanical Engineering (collaborative program in Biomedical Engineering). Anil’s area of research was computational modeling of blood flow in arteries, done to better understand the relationship between blood flow patterns and the development of arterial disease. While pursuing his graduate work, Anil taught a few DEEP courses and discovered a love of teaching. As a result, Anil has joined teachers college and is coming to a classroom near you – if you’re lucky!

Name: Stephanie
Job Placement: Biomedical Engineering, Baylis Medical Company
Year & Program: MECH 0T3

Job Description: I'm involved in the design, manufacture, testing, marketing, clinical support, and regulatory affairs of our line of radio frequency cardiac catheters. These catheters are used to create localized perforations in the heart. Applications include creating punctures in blocked valves and creating punctures to cross the atrial septum. I was also responsible for bringing sterile packaging of our entire product line in-house."

Daily Grind: Everyday is something different! Some days I'm in the R&D lab performing mechanical and electrical tests on our products. Other days I'm in the production lab figuring out ways to optimize manufacturing processes. I also travel to hospitals across North America training doctors and nurses on our products, and providing clinical support during procedures. Some days I'm even at my desk, composing technical documents, sourcing equipment vendors, and corresponding with suppliers.

Comments: “Mechanical Engineering is challenging, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel!”