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Shawn Wettig and the Wettig lab are building new types of surfactants with the aim of improving how drugs are delivered into human bodies. By exploring the different ways that molecular structures can be altered to improve effectiveness of gemini surfactants, the researchers are developing and refining methods that have many applications. Surfactants are relied on by industry for thousands of products, but the Wettig lab is particularly interested in surfactants as a mode of delivering gene therapy.

New technology being developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo and the Sunnybrook Research Institute is using artificial intelligence (AI) to help detect melanoma skin cancer earlier.

“This could be a very powerful tool for skin cancer clinical decision support,” said Alexander Wong, a professor of systems design engineering at Waterloo. “The more interpretable information there is, the better the decisions are.”

CBB researchers were awarded funding through the John R. Evans Leaders Fund (JELF) by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI).  Funding provides researchers with the foundational research infrastructure necessary to lead in their field.

Computer scientists at the University of Waterloo are creating a prototype of a virtual assistant to help people living with Alzheimer’s disease. It will prompt them to complete day-to-day tasks by taking the person’s personality and current state of mind into consideration. The technology could also one day help people with Down Syndrome, various types of dementia and traumatic brain injury.

Known as ACT@Home, the emotionally intelligent assistant is a research project to develop a home-based technology that combines artificial intelligence with social psychological models.

With sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic Ocean already climbing, scientists are predicting Atlantic Canada’s $400 million salmon aquaculture industry could be wiped out within the next 25 years.

But a $4.4M collaboration between biologists at University of Waterloo, Memorial University and the Universities of Guelph and Prince Edward Island could be the key to helping the industry adapt with a superior salmon stock that can survive in higher water temperatures.

Researchers Helen Chen and Plinio Morita receive $1 million in joint funding to develop Clinical Analytics for Real-World Evidence through MITACS Accelerate, SOSCIP and Roche Canada.

Obstacles and opportunities in the promising field of additive manufacturing (AM), or industrial 3D printing, are outlined in a lengthy feature story by Waterloo Engineering professor Ehsan Toyserkani in the latest issue of Industry Today.

A group of researchers from Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Waterloo have uncovered a surprising genetic link between height, arthritis, and the Out of Africa migration between 50,000 and 130,000 years ago.