2024 Interdisciplinary Capstone Designs

Welcome to the Interdisciplinary Capstone Design Symposium!  A pilot from the Faculties of Engineering, Environment, and Mathematics --- expanding to other faculties in years to come.  In line with Waterloo@100, this symposium brings together a selection of projects primarily related to the Global Future theme of sustainability, from across multiple faculties.

Participating students are from Environment and Business, Computer Science, and a variety of Engineering disciplines including: Chemical, Civil, Computer, Electrical, Management, Mechanical, Mechatronics, Software, and Systems Design Engineering.  All students, instructors, and TAs, were co-located in the Ideas Clinic, creating opportunities for multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary interaction and collaboration at all levels.

Capstone is the culmination of the undergraduate student experience, providing a critical opportunity for students to showcase their ingenuity and design skills --- in the classroom and beyond.  Capstone encourages teams to engage with real-world problems outside the classroom, as a transitional educational experience to the larger scopes and longer timelines (even longer than co-op!) that they can expect to see in their careers.

Opportunity/problem identification, background research, ideation, empirical work, and evaluation are universal elements of capstone.  These elements can have varied realizations in different disciplines, with some common threads. For example, some teams from all three faculties took TCPS2 training and engaged with some form of human subject interaction.  Engineering learned PESTLE analysis from Environment. CS students got help building physical devices from Engineering.  Environment/Business students connected Engineering projects to broader scopes and real deployment contexts. CS students were inspired by Environment students to choose sustainability-oriented projects.  All teams benefited from presenting to and hearing from more diverse audiences.

Thank you to capstone clients, project sponsors, expert advisors, TAs, support staff, W Print, and the Ideas Clinic. Capstone is truly a team effort at every level. Your contributions are essential to and have enriched the educational experience of the students.  Your leading examples of caring and commitment have helped to launch the students into their careers as compassionate and knowledgeable professionals.  Thank you.

Students: Congratulations on your hard work and accomplishments!  We are proud of you and your inspiring projects. We are confident that you will do great things after graduation. Best wishes on your next adventures!

Jason Grove, Engineering
Johanna Wandel, Environment
Cecilia Cotton, Mathematics

Accessiloo, a mobile app designed and developed for the University of Waterloo campus navigation, addresses mobility challenges for individuals with accessibility needs. User studies revealed issues with inaccessible pathways and a need for real-time accessibility information. Accessiloo meets AODA standards, locates diverse washrooms, offers accessible navigation across elevations, and adheres to WCAG guidelines, ensuring inclusivity. Accessiloo transforms campus accessibility, embodies the university's commitment to equity and innovation, empowering all users to navigate with dignity and ease.

Aeroponics is a soilless modern agricultural practice that utilizes a misted nutrient solution to achieve plant growth. A typical aeroponic system can get quite technically complicated, even before complete automation. Our team, Aeroculture, presents a compact autonomous in-home aeroponic system intended to grow leafy greens and similar produce. We aim to provide a user friendly “do it yourself” (DIY) solution to people without the technical background to construct their own aeroponic system. Our base system is presented with alternative components to accommodate different user situations. 

Bike theft is a widespread issue in developed societies, especially in busy areas like cities and campuses. Most stolen bikes are never found, and many thefts aren't reported. We aim to combat this by detecting theft in progress. Two phases of theft are deterrence (before) and recovery (after). Common deterrence options like steel U-locks are easily defeated. For recovery, GPS trackers have limitations. Our solution focuses on deterrence, with a vibration-sensing attachment for U-locks. It alerts the owner of angle grinder attacks. We ensured accurate detection and fast notifications.

Continuous fibre reinforced polymeric composite materials are increasingly utilized in manufacturing due to their high stiffness and lightweight properties, especially in aerospace and automotive industries. Stress analysts must accurately predict their behaviour under fatigue loading, requiring an understanding of composite crack propagation theory. Unlike metallic alloys, composites are brittle and fail without deformation, necessitating early micro crack detection. This project focuses on developing a thermographic technique, specifically Infrared Thermography (IRT), to monitor fatigue-induced damage in composites. Detecting heat release upon crack initiation will enable proactive damage detection, aiding in understanding material failure under fatigue loading.

Elm Search aims to streamline internal search tool development by providing a versatile information retrieval system. It eliminates the need for companies to build their own solutions, offering seamless integration into existing infrastructure. With adaptable features for structured and unstructured data, Elm Search consolidates information from various sources into a single, efficient search platform. By prioritizing accuracy and productivity, it enhances access to critical information, reducing manual search efforts and fostering streamlined operations.

In early 2022, Wordle gained popularity with over 45 million visits in January alone. Recognized for its simplicity and educational value, it inspired the creation of BeatBounty. BeatBounty challenges players to identify songs by title, artist, or genre from short clips in a playlist. With plans for a 'Song of the Day' mode, it aims to introduce new music to players. Using a round-based system, players guess as more of the song is revealed, earning points based on accuracy. Currently in limited testing, BeatBounty aims to address feedback for wider use.

This project tackles utilizing curtailed renewable power in Ontario. Curtailment occurs when renewable sources produce more than the current transmission capacity or demand and must be turned off until demand increases. A solution: using power to gas technology and existing natural gas infrastructure to create grid level energy storage and transmission, salvaging this curtailed power. This project's technological and economic analysis will focus on the region surrounding Sault Ste. Marie and aims at injecting Hydrogen produced from curtailed energy through the Great Lakes Pipeline. 

As climate change and international conflicts threaten energy infrastructure across the globe, companies like Tesla are ramping up their production of energy solutions. These solutions require industrial instruments to service them but tracking and maintaining these instruments is expensive and complex. Project Mercury simplifies logistics by attaching a wireless microcontroller to each instrument, relaying its status to a remote database, and displaying the state of all instruments on an online dashboard.

During World War II, turbopumps were invented for rocket engines, crucial for overcoming Earth's atmosphere. They enable efficient combustion by pressurizing propellants. Traditionally, heavy tanks were required for high-pressure storage. Turbopumps allow low-pressure storage, reducing weight significantly. Consisting of a pump driven by a high-speed gas turbine, they're integral but complex in rocket engine design. Not yet utilized in student rockets, their development could revolutionize Canadian rocket engineering. This project aims to equip student teams with turbopump technology, enabling future advancements. The prototype aims to demonstrate feasibility, not flight readiness, aiming for specific performance metrics in water tests.

We've created a smart mattress topper to combat pressure ulcers, affecting more than 3 million adults in the US. Traditional prevention involves manual turning every two hours, but our prototype utilizes pressure sensors and patient data to identify vulnerable areas. Pneumatically controlled air pockets adjust pressure, enhancing blood flow and comfort. A mobile app allows real-time monitoring and control, reducing the labor-intensive nature of care.

Inspired by image reconstruction progress, All Joined explored EEG-to-image reconstruction. Despite recent achievements, like DreamDiffusion's limited-class reconstructions resembling classifiers, our goal was broader: real-time EEG-to-image modeling for diverse stimuli, promising innovation in medical diagnosis, brain-computer interfaces, AR/VR, and neuroeducation. Our methodology involved stimulus/data collection, preprocessing, and model training, yielding 16,000+ EEG-image pairs across 8 participants. We innovated by enabling cross-dataset learning, yet model performance was limited by representation challenges and preprocessing complexities. Future work targets dataset expansion and streamlined preprocessing for enhanced real-time inference.

At Safi we have patented the world's first, small-scale pasteurization control unit targeted towards dairy farmers and vendors in East Africa. The off-the-grid device kills milk-borne diseases while retaining the key nutrients of milk. Our hardware solution is combined with a software solution which addresses inadequate traceability in East African dairy supply chains. It remotely records milk pasteurization data and centralizes production information, empowering regulatory bodies to ensure the safety of the milk, and providing valuable insights to vendors to improve their efficiency and profits. 

The project titled "Developing a business case for naturalization" analyzes the potential values of the University of Waterloo campus naturalization. It aims to address social barriers to sustainable landscaping, this initiative involves reviewing landscaping standards, examining naturalized spaces, and conducting stakeholder analysis. The project aligns with UN Sustainable Development Goals, focusing on enhancing biodiversity, improving student well-being, and promoting sustainable urban development. Recommendations will be based on the economic, environmental, and societal benefits of naturalized landscaping.

Our team aimed to develop a carbon calculator and collaborated with the marketing team to create and promote a food label on carbon footprints, using EV3 Cafe as an example.The scope of our calculator focuses on the transportation of food products, and the final calculator is intended to be presented in Excel format. 

The sustainable food service at the University of Waterloo lacks sustainable labelling. The key issue is that the cafe's food labelling lacks sufficient sustainability information to help customers make more sustainable food choices. Therefore, we are attempting to solve the issue of growing and designing sustainable information on food labels in ev3rcafe. Overall, we expect that our research can assist the University of Waterloo in developing a sustainable campus and reducing food-related emissions.

The Walker Zero-Waste Team is developing a circular economy framework across Walker Industries' operating divisions. The focus is on identifying and optimizing waste streams through the principles of reduce, reuse, and recycle, with the ultimate objective of establishing a robust Zero Waste Strategy. The Walker Zero Waste initiative aims to elevate sustainability through promoting industrial symbiosis within the company's operations.

HydroBud envisions utilizing advanced hydroponics technology and evolving automation to implement vertical hydroponics units within Toronto food banks and community organizations. This initiative aims to alleviate the food insecurity crisis low-income communities face by addressing the current food supply challenge.

Impact Investing refers to investments made with the intention to generate positive, measurable social and environmental impact alongside a financial return. The problem area we are working within encompasses the identified gap in funding and support for social entrepreneurs in KW, as well as strategic plan fulfilment by educational institutions. By examining the Impact Investing space at UW, we hope to answer the question of if a Propel Impact Investing Fellowship program could be implemented as an experiential learning opportunity for students.

We are hoping that our research will provide valuable insights and analysis toward the goal of enhancing the engagement of undergraduate students in sustainability conversations and activities, particularly the significance of leveraging social media to encourage young people to create, communicate, and share about sustainability issues. More specifically, we will continue to understand the preferences of students in use of social media and explore how to optimize the output of social media content by analyzing the effectiveness and outcomes of existing channels.

Our project is focused on exploring why the enrollment numbers for domestic students have declined in SEED programs at the University of Waterloo. As well we are going to conduct research to help find a successful strategy to bring enrollment numbers back to where they were and hopefully bring a consistent improvement in domestic enrollment.

Food insecurity is a widespread problem where individuals or communities lack consistent access to enough affordable and nutritious food to support a healthy and active life. We aim to provide a solution to this issue through the use of aeroponics. Our research will explore different aeroponic systems to create a framework that gives recommendations and information to users on which system to get/build and which product should be grown. We aim to support the development of food sovereignty and resilience in community-led food systems in Canada.

The project is to create a framework that the City of Waterloo can adopt to measure the cost of climate change impacts within the city.

Our project aimed to proposed recommendations for reporting Category 1: Purchased Goods and Services under the Scope 3 emissions for the University of Waterloo. We addressed key gaps, including defining collection boundaries, identified data requirements, and assessed resource viability. By researching case studies and best practices, we not only aimed to create a framework that provided the university with a guide for quantifying Category 1 emissions, but also to identify opportunities for emission reduction.

Facing the issue of low waste diversion rates on Waterloo's campus, Waste Warriors is here to identify the gaps and barriers students face in addressing this problem. To close these gaps, we are collecting information to better understand student behaviours, beliefs, and values around sustainability, as well as accessibility barriers to waste sorting. In doing so, we are able to use student feedback in an effort to better sustainability efforts on campus and improve waste diversion rates in residence. 

Working with Walker Industries, our team is assessing the feasibility of using biochar as a sustainable alternative to sphagnum/peat in soil amendment products. The team is exploring deriving biochar from textile waste and forestry byproducts. While biochar not new in the soil amendment space - the team believes that incorporating textile waste into the feedstock can promote closed-loop-supply-chains at the industry level while avoiding GHG emissions associated with stripping surficial peat in Canada's north.

Our group is working with Walker Industries to help make their current supply chain more carbon-neutral. Focusing on their supply chain and procurement, our group is analyzing their emulsion and landscaping divisions to optimize their supply chain and enable sustainable practices to make it more carbon-friendly. Based on their current sustainability goals and operating procedures, our team is committed to finding the most cost-effective and optimal solution. We aim to create a customized vendor selection framework that aligns with their company values and enables them to reach their sustainability goals. 

The City of Waterloo has several sustainable transportation options including buses, trains, and an electric bike scooter rental program. Yet, emissions from transportation account for about 50% of greenhouse gas emissions in the city. Despite the infrastructural improvements to the public transit system, there is still significant private vehicle use. Our capstone project aims to identify barriers that prevent residents from using public transit and develop solutions that could encourage them to use public transit more frequently based on the results of local surveys. 

Our team compared the environmental impacts of a range of products by creating a green purchasing framework applicable to the City of Waterloo. This project will contribute to the promotion of sustainable development in the City of Waterloo.

Our capstone project focuses on encouraging public transit use in London, Ontario. We're assessing ridership demand and evaluating the benefits of a new Transit Loop System for major employers in the area. Through various means of primary research, we've analyzed prominent business hours and have identified strategic points between London and St. Thomas for transit development. By understanding demand and points of interest, we're confident in our ability to improve transit accessibility and efficiency in the area.

The purpose of our capstone project is to explore the current state of EV battery recycling and disposal practices. Through quantitate and qualitative research methods such as interviews and data analysis, we aim to demonstrate the economic and ecological importance of recycling EV batteries. In doing so, we hope to promote both environmental responsibility and opportunities for sustainable resource management.  

Society's insatiable consumption of single-use plastics and their waste mismanagement have devastating impacts on our environment, marine life, air quality, and more (UNEP, 2018). One promising, long-term, systemic solution that will have even broader cultural impacts, is transitioning all possible industries to a circular economy model (USEPA, 2023). The purpose of this study is to examine and analyze current perceptions, barriers, & opportunities that event spaces in Vancouver have in regards to the prospect of switching from single-use to reusable cups and containers.

Canadian regions rich in feedstock are poised to benefit from the increasing demand for low-carbon hydrogen. The industry is anticipated to reach a value of $11 trillion by 2050 and achieve cost competitiveness by 2030, supporting net-zero goals. This study for the City of Sault Ste. Marie (SSM) focuses on overcoming barriers for SSM's entry into the hydrogen market, identifying funding opportunities and necessary capital infrastructure investments, including those for natural gas blending and hydrogen exportation via the local port. 

Our capstone project delves into Scope 3 emissions reporting and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) in the environmental consulting industry. Addressing challenges like government mandates and reporting standardization, our project aims to identify roadblocks and tailor service offerings to incentivize reporting and EPR compliance. It seeks to enhance RevLogic's ability to encourage reporting among clients by incorporating end-of-life emissions and assessing EPR regulations' impact on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting. Our project also explores diverse industry personas to craft compelling a business case to varying businesses.