Alumnus Dan Dicaire uses his smarts and strategy, to battle it out on Canada’s Know-It-Alls
January 26, 2012
They’ve got an opinion about everything and can get out of a tight spot better than MacGyver with a paperclip! CANADA’S GREATEST KNOW-IT-ALL – is the ultimate brain-busting competition, featuring 10 of Canada’s biggest self-proclaimed smarties, competing head-to-head in a supersized arena of grit and wit to prove just who is Canada’s greatest know it all.
One of the competitors is Dan Dicaire, who is a 26 year old alumnus from the Faculty who did an undergraduate and a master degree in Chemical engineering under the supervision of Dr. F. Handan Tezel on “Long Term Thermal Energy Storage in Adsorbent Beds for Solar Heating Applications”. Dr. Tezel talks very highly of Dan and she mentions that “He can easily win this competition since he actually is a KNOW-IT-ALL person who is very smart and competent.”
Dan Dicaire is an engineer who tackles any problem with youthful intensity and enthusiasm. His mind is a machine with no “off” switch. As the youngest Know-It-All, Dicaire is set to prove that age has nothing to do with what you know.
Dan has always very passionate about sustainability, energy and efficiency which is why he studied engineering. His research focused on long term thermal energy storage for solar heat and has been presented at conferences around the world; from Sweden to Japan. Dan recently became engaged to a fellow alumni from the Arts Faculty, Danielle Lyrette, whom he met while doing social programming for the faculty of engineering.
Dan was active in the university community; he was Vice President of Social Affairs and President of the Engineering Student Society as well as a director on the SFUO’s Board of Administration. He participated in several engineering and design competitions representing uOttawa at the Canadian Engineering Competition 2008 in Saskatoon taking home second place and taking home first place at the Technology venture Challenge and the Prize for Entrepreneurship and Innovation competition in 2009.
Dan also held several prestigious scholarships during his university career including the Recteurs Scholarship (now called the President’s Scholarship), the Millenium Scholarship and the NSERC Graduate Scholarship. Dan cites Dr. Claude Lague and Dr. Jules Thibault as defining figures in his university career for always challenging him to be better, believing in him and trusting him with important responsibilities.
Since graduating in 2010, Dan Dicaire has been working as the Energy Efficiency and Sustainability Officer for Ottawa Community Housing. He has been working on everything from solar installations (31 photovoltaic installations, 3 thermal installations) to water retrofit program through out the 15,000 units housing units owned by the corporation. He absolutely loves working there and gets great satisfaction from bringing more sustainability to social housing.
He volunteers his time with the Canadian Green Building Council and as a speaker on sustainability in high school and at conferences. Dan hopes to expand these activities in the future as he believes that educating future leaders and actively discussing sustainable solutions is crucial for our society
In his spare time, Dan plays improv at the local Yuk Yuk’s on Sunday nights as part of Insensitivity Training.
This TV competition tests the competitors’ superior knowledge, problem-solving skills, leadership, cooperation and game-playing strategy, They love to be right, despise being wrong, and are usually the loudest voice in the room – and they don’t always play well with others!
But the race to the top won’t be easy. The tests demand multi-layered problem-solving, independent thought and – grudgingly – teamwork. Under the eye of host Daniel Fathers (THE TRANSPORTER, HEARTLAND), they compete in challenges designed to prove which one of them knows the most about a lot of different stuff – how things are engineered, driven, built, powered, floated and even blown up! Every episode contains several complex and highly entertaining group and individual tasks – and each challenge has a built-in secret twist. Which Know-It-All will figure it out first? The individual with the fewest points after each episode’s final surprise elimination challenge must leave the series.
CANADA’S GREATEST KNOW-IT-ALL: Episode 1
Mon., Jan. 30 at 10 p.m. ET/PT
With a huff and a puff, two teams compete to build the strongest four-walled structure possible, with predetermined materials. The building must withstand the wind power of a tropical storm in the “Storm of the Century” challenge and protect its’ inhabitant – a stuffed pig – but in a surprise last-minute twist, the opposing team gets to determine the wind direction. In the “Boom” challenge, two teams have to determine the “kill zone” – the area in which a human being would not survive – around the explosive destruction of a nine-meter-long trailer. And in “Smarter than a Scout,” two individual competitors go head-to-head to prove they know as much as a typical boy/girl scout by completing five merit badge tasks in five categories before one of them leaves the competition.
Visit discoverychannel.ca to see if you’ve got what it takes to be CANADA’S GREATEST KNOW-IT-ALL with a multiple-choice quiz
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