UBC Okanagan School of Engineering Student Noah Kaiser is helping redefine what reconciliation looks like in research—through mentorship, representation and design rooted in both land and community
When Noah Kaiser talks about engineering, he starts with people.
This fall, the fourth-year UBC Okanagan student will join classmates and researchers travelling to the Upper Nicola Band to help create a community database of local building knowledge—an effort that combines technical design with lived experience.
For Kaiser, who is Dakelh from the Stellat’en First Nation near Fraser Lake, the project reflects how engineering can expand beyond calculations and concrete to include cultural understanding.
“We’re learning from knowledge keepers about traditional building practices and the values behind them,” he says. “It’s about listening first and seeing how that knowledge can shape the way we build today.”
Although Kaiser’s roots are in northern BC, his own story begins much further south. Born in Mississauga, Ontario, he moved to Kelowna before his first birthday and grew up attending local schools.
His father, Kevin Kaiser, serves as the Indigenous district vice-principal for Central Okanagan Public Schools and helped launch one of the province’s first Indigenous leadership courses for middle and high school students.
That connection gave Noah an early sense of belonging and purpose.
“My dad has always been involved in education and community,” he says. “Because of him, I’ve always felt proud of my Indigenous heritage and understood the importance of sharing it.”
In high school, Kaiser joined a student team that designed an outdoor classroom built in a circle—a shape symbolizing equality and connection to the land. The project, still in progress, was the spark that led him toward civil engineering.
“I’ve always been interested in math and science,” he says, “but I wanted to do something practical—something you could see take shape in the world.”
That hands-on mindset led him to the School of Engineering’s Seed2STEM program, where he spent summers working in university labs before entering UBC Okanagan.
He later earned two Undergraduate Student Research Awards and joined the Disaster-Resilient Buildings Lab led by Dr. Lisa Tobber, studying precast concrete systems and sustainable construction practices.
Dr. Tobber, a Principal’s Research Chair in Disaster-Resilient Buildings, describes him as a standout.
“It’s too rare to see Indigenous students in engineering,” she says. “Noah is exceptional—he’s bright, consistently among the top students in his courses and a genuine role model. He’s deeply committed to learning from Indigenous knowledge and encouraging other students to pursue engineering.”
Kaiser’s own message to future students is equally direct.
“It’s OK to be intimidated at first,” he says. “You have to take that first step. Once you’re in, you realize everyone around you wants you to succeed.”
That drive has earned him multiple scholarships and awards, including the Presidential Scholars Award, the S.D. Harold Pope Award in Civil Engineering and the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Scholarship for Continuing Indigenous Students. But Kaiser views each achievement as a step on a much longer path.
His next goal is graduate school—and eventually, a PhD with Dr. Tobber’s group.
Through students like Noah Kaiser, that future looks broader and stronger: an engineering discipline that measures success not only in structures that stand, but in communities that stand together.
“Engineering is about solving problems you can see and touch,” he says. “But it’s also about people—their homes, their history and the future they want to build.”