28th ANNUAL WHEEL RAIL INTERACTION CONFERENCE

Biography: Dr. Elton Toma is a senior engineer at the National Research Council (NRC) Canada, where he is a lead researcher for projects related to rail vehicle engineering and testing. At NRC he has worked on projects related to the marshalling of trains to understand in-train forces, the analysis of emergency stopping distances of freight trains, and on route risk analysis. His most recent research is related to the study of air brake effectiveness in cold weather using NRC’s newly developed Cold Weather Airbrake Research Lab. Previously, he was a vehicle dynamics analyst at TTCI in Pueblo, Colorado, where he was involved in on-track testing and computer modeling of freight and passenger rail vehicles. He has a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Queen’s University at Kingston, where his research focused on the analysis of the mechanics of train derailments. He is a licensed Professional Engineer in the province of Ontario.