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Two of Western University’s most outstanding faculty members have been named Distinguished University Professors. Gregory Kopp, a renowned wind engineer whose seminal contributions led to the formation of the Canadian Severe Storms Laboratory, and Susan Scollie, an audiology pioneer whose research has reshaped how hearing aids are fitted for infants and children worldwide, have been recognized.
Professors Kopp and Scollie earned the title – the highest Western bestows on faculty – for sustained excellence in teaching, research and service over their substantial careers at Western with impact as international research leaders.
“This is a great honour I never would have expected when I started at Western 29 years ago,” Kopp said. “I feel immensely privileged because of all the amazing people I’ve worked with over this time.”
Scollie said she hopes the recognition will also bring attention to other people at Western doing remarkable work in hearing health.
“We have the wonderful onsite H.A. Leeper Speech and Hearing Clinic that provides across-the-lifespan services to the public, plus a strong track record of developing skilled trainees on interdisciplinary research and development teams,” she said.
Western is also celebrating 18 professors with the Faculty Scholar Award, recognizing mid-career professionals for their significant achievements in teaching or research. Faculty Scholars and Distinguished University Professors will be added to the President’s Honour Roll of faculty, students, staff and alumni who exemplify excellence.
Gregory Kopp
Faculty of Engineering
Director of the Canadian Severe Storms Laboratory
One of the world’s leading wind engineering researchers, Kopp has also built a reputation for his teaching, graduate training and university service. The breadth of his work spans disciplines from wind loading to the flight of birds to forensic analyses of disasters.
Kopp’s research has kept Western at the global forefront of wind engineering. He played a central role in six successful CFI infrastructure grants, including the creation of four new labs, such as “3 Little Pigs”, which studies how to build more resilient homes. The lab produced the first consensus design standard in the world for tornado-resistant housing. The tools he co-created to study wind loading in tornadoes at the WindEEE Dome were incorporated into United States building code provisions for tornadoes. At the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory, Kopp and colleagues completely revised wind load provisions, affecting how every building in the U.S. is designed.
Girma Bitsuamlak (left), director of Western’s WindEEE Research Institute meets with the research director Greg Kopp in the WindEEE Dome, a 3D wind tunnel that simulates complex wind systems. (Western Communications)
Kopp’s total career research funding exceeds $90 million. In 2017, he transformed an early conversation with a donor into a program at the Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP) to provide the official tornado ratings used by Environment and Climate Change Canada. Building on his success as lead researcher at NTP, he co-leads the Northern Hail Project (NHP). Working with Western’s partner ImpactWX, he helped secure one of the largest research donations in Western’s history to establish the Canadian Severe Storms Laboratory in 2024.
“Though my work focuses on making infrastructure and homes more resilient to extreme weather, it’s really about people. Disasters change people’s lives forever, so anything we can do to mitigate them is important.”
Kopp’s citation metrics reflect the depth of his scholarship. He ranks 393rd among more than 60,000 civil engineering researchers, authoring over 600 publications. He’s given more than 200 media interviews and his team now generates between 100 and 200 interviews annually, keeping Western expertise at the forefront when major storm events occur.
As a teacher and mentor, Kopp has supervised nearly 100 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, winning the Peter Rosati Teaching Award in 2015. He credits his students for the insights they bring to shared projects.
“Several of my students had significant effects on the directions of our work. They came up with ideas I never would have imagined on my own, which influenced what we were able to accomplish,” Kopp said.
He is noted for running his research group with deliberate attention to culture, peer-to-peer learning and individual career development. His innovation in teaching data science concepts and skill at incorporating research into the classroom have strengthened Western’s wind engineering graduate program, keeping its students in high demand after graduation.
Susan Scollie
Faculty of Health Sciences
Director of the National Centre for Audiology
A professor in the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Scollie has earned global recognition for her expertise in hearing health research and skill for translating evidence-based science into clinical use. She is known for her central role in advancing the Desired Sensation Level (DSL) method, a personalized approach to fitting hearing aids for infants and young children originally developed by her mentor, Dr. Richard Seewald. Scollie said Seewald’s influence on her career and hearing health is profound.
“He formed expert teams at Western and valued industry partners in making solutions more widely available. I’ve been proud to carry on this work,” she said.
Scollie’s doctoral dissertation informed key changes in the development of DSL 5.0, a software platform that transformed pediatric hearing care by computing more than 250 parameters to optimize hearing aid fittings. The DSL prescription is the primary fitting strategy used in up to 95 per cent of pediatric audiology clinics across North America. Recognized globally as best practice, it’s now embedded in nearly all major hearing aid products. The software and its widespread adoption earned the DSL team the 2022 Governor General’s Innovation Award.
As a teacher and mentor, Scollie has supervised 26 graduate students and four postdoctoral scholars, earning multiple teaching excellence awards including Western’s 2020 Award for Innovations in Technology-Enhanced Teaching.
Susan Scollie, director of the National Centre for Audiology, and Rob Koch, president of AHead Simulations, display CARL patient simulators used for research and training.
She was a member of the team that developed CARL and CARL Pro, Canadian products that use manikins and software to demonstrate audiological procedures. The realistic patient simulator has transformed simulation-based audiology training around the world. Scollie subsequently restructured two graduate courses around it.
With students and collaborators, Scollie led clinical field trials of advanced signal processing in hearing aids that improve speech clarity and comfort for children. She also co-developed a system to verify infant sound access using brain-based electrical activity measures. Her current collaborations examine the effectiveness of hearing aid signal processing for patients of all ages, along with verification strategies and AI-based strategies for fabricating custom earmolds for children.
Through collaborations with industry partners and key staff at Western, Scollie has a long track record of providing arm’s length product testing to establish the benefits of new technologies, often before they are released.
Her lifetime research funding exceeds $23.5 million. Her publication record includes 117 peer-reviewed articles and more than 5,400 citations, placing her among the world’s top two per cent of scientists on the Stanford-Elsevier ranking.
Scollie directs the National Centre for Audiology (NCA) and in 2025 led the establishment of Western’s first Hearing Health Research Core Facility. She said she considers herself fortunate to benefit from supportive colleagues and skilled research professionals, trainees and administrative staff at the NCA, along with dedicated external partners.
“The work that I do is only possible because of the people around me. Our impact in hearing health around the world has taken a village and many years of work.”
Learn more about how Western is turning curiosity into solutions.
The following 18 professors were named Faculty Scholars for 2026 – 2028
Anne Schuurman, Arts and Humanities/English and Writing Studies Department
Jackie Sullivan, Arts and Humanities/Philosophy Department
Katina Pollock, Education
Katarina Grolinger, Engineering/Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Reza Najafi, Engineering/Civil and Environmental Engineering Department
Ayan Sadhu, Engineering/Civil and Environmental Engineering department
Lindsay Nagamatsu, Health Sciences/School of Kinesiology
Angela Roberts, Health Sciences/School of Communication Sciences and Disorders
Lauren Cipriano, Ivey Business School
Wren Montgomery, Ivey Business School
adam bell, Music
Arlene MacDougall, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry/Psychiatry Department
Chris Kapulkin, Science/Mathematics Department
Catherine Neish, Science/Earth Sciences Department
Doug Woolford, Science/Statistical and Actuarial Sciences Department
Laura Batterink, Social Science/Psychology Department
Lindsay Bodell, Social Science/Psychology Department
Natasha MacBean, Social Science/Geography and Environment Department/Biology Department
