Waterloo and NRC celebrate opening of innovation hub

Tuesday, December 6, 2022

A new collaboration centre on campus is the next stage in a long-term research partnership between the University of Waterloo and National Research Council of Canada (NRC).

The NRC-Waterloo Collaboration Centre brings together more than 20 researchers from both organizations to collaborate on research projects related to Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things and Cybersecurity.

“We are very pleased to celebrate the opening of this collaboration centre with the National Research Council of Canada today,” said Charmaine Dean, Vice-President, Research and International. “Partnership and collaboration are an essential part of research and this innovation hub is an excellent resource to support research excellence for both Waterloo and NRC researchers, and an important part of supporting student training as well as innovations that arise from diversity in research perspectives.”

The collaboration centre, which was launched in summer of 2019, is an innovative hub of researchers working together to discover and advance intelligent logistics and other applications, and the new space will help keep Canadian researchers at the forefront of digital innovation. As the potential for artificial intelligence spans all areas of research and development, the centre will support collaborative research between the two institutions while providing students and early career researchers with a place to develop their skills.

The celebration also included an announcement of 14 projects which have received funding and are advancing research innovations through the connections these projects make within both organizations.

Projects funded in 2019

  • Automated Material Synthesis using Deep Reinforcement Learning (Mark Crowley, Isaac Tamblyn, Colin Bellinger)
  • Battery-free Touch Sensors for Internet of Things (IoT) (Omid Abari, Dan Vogel, Keiko Katsuragawa, Peng Hu)
  • Reliable Gesture Recognition in Virtual Reality Environment (Ed Lank, Dan Vogel, Keiko Katsuragawa)
  • Neuromorphics for Vision-based Movement Planning and Control (Chris Eliasmith, Terry Stewart)
  • A Secure Scalable Quantum-Safe Blockchain for Critical Infrastructure (Srinivasan Keshav, Michele Mosca, Koray Karabina, Eric Paquet)
  • The Triangular Approach to Generative Models in Machine Learning (Yaoliang Yu, Sun Sun)
  • AI-Assisted Solutions to Network Operations Automation for Remote Communities (Yeying Zhu, Peng Hu)
  • Predict and improve IRAP's performance based on portfolio (Alex Wong, Shimon Schwartz)
  • Covid-net (Alex Wong, Ashkan Ebadi, Pengcheng Xi)

Projects funded in 2022

  • Artificial Intelligence-enabled, printed, sound driven sensors for Internet of Things applications (Dayan Ban, George Xiao, Pengcheng Xi)
  • Towards privacy-preserving anomaly-based detection (Florian Kerschbaum, Koray Karabina)
  • Quantum Secure Cryptographic Primitives with Applications to vehicle-to-vehicle networks (Michele Mosca, Koray Karabina, Philippe Lamontagne, Taufiq Rahman)
  • AI-enabled security and resilience for IoT in 5G integrated satellite networks (Raouf Boutaba, Peng Hu)
  • Breakthrough the Arctic routes: AI-empowered multi-physics multi-scale perception for connected (autonomous) ships operating in ice-covered oceans (Zhao Pan, Andrea Scott, Matthew Garvin)