Rate My Professor Joshua Pearce

Joshua M. Pearce is the John M. Thompson Chair in Information Technology and Innovation at the Thompson Centre for Engineering Leadership & Innovation. He holds cross-appointments as Professor at the Ivey Business School and in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Western University. Pearce received his Ph.D. in Materials Engineering and his B.Sc. in Physics and Chemistry from The Pennsylvania State University. His career includes prior appointments at Michigan Technological University, where he served as the first Richard Witte Professor of Materials Science and Engineering with a cross-appointment in Electrical & Computer Engineering, and at Queen’s University, where he contributed to the development of the Collaborative Applied Sustainability graduate engineering program. He was also a Fulbright-Aalto University Distinguished Chair and visiting professor at Aalto University and Université de Lorraine.

Pearce’s research focuses on the application of open source appropriate technology to address sustainability challenges and reduce poverty, with emphasis on solar photovoltaic technology, open hardware, distributed recycling and additive manufacturing using RepRap 3-D printing, as well as related policy and economics. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. Pearce serves as editor-in-chief of HardwareX, the first journal dedicated to open source scientific hardware. He is the author of the books Open-Source Lab: How to Build Your Own Hardware and Reduce Research Costs, Create, Share, and Save Money Using Open-Source Projects, and To Catch the Sun. His work has demonstrated the economic competitiveness of solar photovoltaic electricity in North America, the potential for open hardware to reduce research costs by 90-99 percent, and the feasibility of household-level distributed recycling and manufacturing.