Dan Grozea, Teaching Laboratory Technologist & Safety Coordinator (MSE) was the recipient of the Agnes Kaneko Citizenship Award. This award is one of the four administrative staff awards presented to staff across the U of T Engineering faculty and recognizes a staff member who has served with distinction and made contributions to the Faculty’s mission above and beyond their job description over a long period of time.
Dan Grozea joined MSE in 2000 as a Research Associate and took on the role of Teaching Laboratory (Engineering) Technologist in 2008. Since that time, he has grown that position into one far beyond that outlined in his job description and has become an invaluable resource to the entire department in many areas.
Grozea has completely revitalized the MSE teaching labs and has been instrumental in the realization of several funding initiatives for both teaching and research that have transformed the MSE undergraduate lab experience. He has also fundamentally restructured the laboratory exercises for several courses, a task previously only undertaken by faculty.
Grozea currently serves as co-chair of the MSE Joint Health and Safety Committee, in which role he helped steer the department through many challenges related to the pandemic. He also created new health and safety training specifically for the department, which previously had relied on the ChemE training program due to their small size. In addition, Grozea has served as an unofficial mentor and counsellor to the students he interacts with, who come to him for advice with challenges within and beyond the lab.