Erica Lemieux’s passion for geomatics grew from her entrepreneurial spirit after establishing an urban farming business in Toronto and seeing the potential of technology for the future. Erica was born and raised in Toronto but came to Calgary as a student in the Department of Geomatics Engineering at the University of Calgary.

She specializes in Energy and the Environment where she is able to use geomatics to deliver more efficient power. “It’s really cool because it looks at engineering through the lens of how the world gets its power and electricity and how you can take what you’re learning and apply it to those types of applications,” said Lemieux, who has graduated from the program.

During her time at the U of C, Erica was an engaged leader who actively worked to promote science, engineering, and technology to female youth and to foster a nationwide geomatics engineering community.

One of her exciting projects involved working with a larger group in creating a completely novel piece of equipment. The idea is to use ground penetrating radar to map pipelines, underground, to understand where they are and even one day the end goal is to be able to monitor the health of an underground pipeline from a drone.

“This is technology that doesn’t exist yet. I was working on the positioning part of this antenna that would ultimately give a client coordinates of their pipelines. It made for an exciting summer and a good example of another kind of application you never think of with geomatics. It’s remote sensing that’s mapping beneath the earth, but from a drone,” said Lemieux.

Erica is TECTERRA’s 2020 Student Leadership in Geospatial. She continues to push the boundaries with new and exciting innovations. Congratulations Erica!