Director General
Automotive and Surface Transportation Research Centre
Dr. Éric Baril is Director General of the Automotive and Surface Transportation Research Centre at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC). Between October 2021 and June 2022, he was acting as Vice-President of the Transportation and Manufacturing division, where he was overseeing the Aerospace and Automotive and Surface Transportation Research Centres.
In October 2017, he was appointed the Director General of the Automotive and Surface Transportation Research Centre where he leads the direction of the manufacturing and surface transportation R&D activities across its 5 sites: Saguenay, Boucherville, Ottawa, London and Winnipeg.
He earned a B.Ing in material sciences and a PhD in Metallurgy from Polytechnique Montréal, specializing in microstructural characterization of materials and steel processing. Dr. Baril is a graduate of the Institute on Governance Executive Leadership Program.
As a research associate at the Centre for Characterization and Microscopy of Materials at Polytechnique Montréal, Dr. Baril acquired an extensive experience in advanced material characterization techniques. He then concentrated his work on zinc powders, zinc coatings on steel and magnesium alloys, as a senior scientist with the Zinc Product and Application Development Program and also with the engineering team of the Magnesium Products Development Division at Noranda Technology Centre in Pointe-Claire (Quebec, Canada).
He joined the NRC's Industrial Materials Institute in 2004 as a research scientist. He later held the positions of Team Leader and eventually Program Leader of Vehicle Propulsion Technologies Program, leading R&D activities in powder forming for titanium, steel, composites, as well as advanced materials for electric motors, lithium batteries and hydrogen fuel cells for transport electrification.
He has co-authored over 70 scientific publications, 2 patents and given more than 100 presentations at conferences. Dr. Baril has played a key role in the development of new magnesium alloy for automotive industry, material and processes for electric motors manufacturing and titanium foam for medical device applications. These R&D outcomes are enabling the NRC to offer leading edge technologies to numerous clients and partners. In the past year, Dr. Baril acted as co-chair of Electric Mobility Canada Technical Program Committee and is an active member of InnovÉÉ Consortium in Quebec. He has chaired and played instrumental roles in several leading conferences and symposia such as the Metfoam 2007 Conference, PowderMet 2011 and Electric Mobility Canada Conferences from 2013 to 2015 and 2017.