A North Bay mining supplier is being recognized by Nipissing University with an honorary doctor of letters.
Tom Palangio, the president and owner of WipWare, will receive the distinction on June 16 during a Nipissing convocation ceremony.
Honorary degrees are bestowed on recipients for their significant contributions to the university, their profession and society at large.
Palangio is an explosives specialist, innovation expert and internationally recognized entrepreneur. He is currently the president and owner of WipWare Incorporated, a software development company that introduced the field of fragmentation imaging & analysis to the global mining industry.
Born and raised in North Bay, Palangio attended the civil architecture technology program at Eastern Ontario Institute of Technology (1965-1969) in Ottawa. He is a certified engineering technologist and a member of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (CIM) and the International Society of Explosives Engineers (ISEE).
Palangio has amassed 50 years of experience in explosives manufacturing, application testing and performance evaluation. He has published several books and more than 100 technical papers presented through conferences and participation on expert panels covering such diverse topics as high-speed photography, mechanical loading techniques, seismic vibration analysis, wall control methods and fragmentation assessment. His published works continue to be cited by authors worldwide.
As a champion of industrial innovation, Palangio has served on the NORCAT (2002-17) and SAMSSA (2004-2018) boards of directors, the Canadore College Board of Governors (2006-12), and as president of SAMSSA (2016-18). He first came to Nipissing University as chair of the Audit and Finance Committee. He led the members through a successful cost reduction process before serving as chair of the board of governors (2018-20). Palangio presently serves on Canadore College’s iCAMP Advisory Committee and the boards of directors for MineConnect and Nipissing University Scholarship Fund.
Palangio is a multi-award-winning recipient for his business, leadership, and innovation talents. His most recent credits include the Outstanding Technical Achievement Award (2009) from the Ontario Association of Technologists, the Bell Canada Evening of Excellence Award for Best Small Business (2013), and the Innovation Award (2015) from Northern Ontario Business. Palangio was inducted into the SAMSSA (MineConnect) Mining Hall of Fame in 2017.
