Professors Safieddin Safavi-Naeini and Hamid Tizhoosh win backing for "Transformative Research"

Thursday, June 14, 2018

Two researchers at Waterloo Engineering have been awarded more than $7 million in provincial funding to support their work.

Safieddin (Ali) Safavi-Naeini, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and a director of the Centre for Intelligent Antenna and Radio Systems (CIARS), is receiving $4 million through the Ontario Research Fund: Research Excellence program to help develop commercially viable millimeter-wave, intelligent radio technology.

That work is considered key to the development of radio communication and satellite communication infrastructure required for the shift into a “truly digital society,” including disruptive technologies such as autonomous vehicles.

Safieddin Safavi-Naeini

Hamid Tizhoosh, a systems design engineering professor who heads the Kimia Lab at Waterloo, has been awarded $3.14 million for a five-year project to build an image search engine enabling pathologists to find similar cases when examining the biopsy samples of new patients.

The innovative artificial intelligence tool is expected to act as “peer review” for pathologists to help them make faster and more accurate diagnoses. The project involves four Waterloo professors and collaboration with two other universities and three hospitals.

Tizhoosh