Joshua Pearce is a cross-appointed Professor at the Ivey and the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. He is the John M. Thompson Chair in Information Technology and Innovation at the Thompson Centre for Engineering Leadership & Innovation.  His research concentrates on the use of open source appropriate technology (OSAT) to find collaborative solutions to problems in sustainability and to reduce poverty. 

Joshua Pearce received his Ph.D. in Materials Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University. He then developed the first Sustainability program in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education and helped develop the Collaborative Applied Sustainability graduate engineering program while at Queen's University, Canada. Then he was the first Richard Witte Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and a Professor cross-appointed in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the Michigan Technological University where he inaugurated and was the faculty advisor for the Michigan Tech Open Source Hardware Enterprise and ran the Open Sustainability Technology Research Group. He was a Fulbright-Aalto University Distinguished Chair and a visiting professor of Photovoltaics and Nanoengineering at Aalto University as well as a visiting Professor Équipe de Recherche sur les Processus Innovatifs (ERPI), Université de Lorraine, France.