Peter Flynn

Biography

Peter Flynn is a professor belongs to the department of Mechanical Engineering from the university of Alberta.

Research Interest

After spending 25 years in industry in engineering, management and executive roles, I returned to the University of Alberta in 1999 to hold the Poole Chair in Management for Engineers, until June 2009. A prime responsibility was to rebuild the Engineering Management program in the Faculty of Engineering. At the undergraduate level we upgraded the teaching of financial information to engineers, developing a course that included financial statement analysis with traditional investment analysis (engineering economics). At the graduate level we developed M. Eng., M. Sc. and Ph. D. programs in Engineering Management with over 20 graduate level courses. My own teaching contribution has been courses in financial management and the psychology of management. The program has grown to over 80 graduate students. I am approaching retirement and emeritus professorship in 2011, and I no longer directly supervise graduate students, although I co-supervise several with other professors. My research in the past ten years focused on: 1. Greenhouse gas mitigation, including technical and economic analyses of biomass energy processes and the use of the ocean to mitigate climate change. We have systematically explored the optimum scale for biomass processes and their relative economics. 2. Power price patterns in deregulated markets, and the implications for the economics of pumped storage. 3. The organizational effectiveness of alliances between engineering and operating companies for project work in operating plants. 4. The effectiveness, or more realistically the ineffectiveness, or performance appraisals. 5. Barriers to the implementation of an alternate transportation fuel, based on my experience in compressed natural gas. More recently my personal interest in entomology has led me to work with Dr. Reuben Kaufman in the Department of Biological Sciences on analyzing the mechanical properties of tick cuticle, and with others in the Department of Mechanical Engineering on what benefit is conveyed by the common pattern of dimples in beetle forewings.