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The Great Northern Concrete Toboggan Race (GNCTR) is the largest and longest running engineering student competition in Canada.  400 engineering students from 20 institutions are required to design and construct a toboggan with concrete running surface(s), a roll cage, and mechanical steering and braking systems that combine to safely glide the toboggans down a steep snow-covered hill.

This year, the competition was hosted in St. John’s, NL from Feb 7th to 11th, which marks the 50th anniversary of the competition and Waterloo’s 40th year competing! 17 Waterloo engineers travelled to race down the hill in their golf-themed “Tee-Bog” and took home the Sustainability Award, as well as scoring highly in multiple Civil-focused categories!
 

AE 200 & 208 project facade taught by Professor Amy Li and Professor Basheer Algohi!

For this project, students were tasked with a small-scale field experiment that explored the connection between thermal dynamics and building enclosure design. They had to keep in mind window-to-wall ratio (WWR), cladding systems, shading devices, and building energy performance.

These students designed and created a south-facing facade for an 'apartment' that minimizes the heating demand and has a comfortable temperature inside.

Shoutout to the wonderful tech team who helped students create these amazing facades!! CEE is wishing these students the best of luck keeping their apartments nice and cozy!

Congratulations to Matthew, Nathan, and Alan on winning 1st place AND Best Design in the 2024 Expand Your Empire (EYE) competition!!!

On Wednesday December 6th, MTE & Faculty judges evaluated the top 6 presentations from ENVE and GEOE student design teams.

A few weeks ago, MASc student, Thiruni Thirimanne presented at the Latornell Convservation Symposium. Take a look at how amazing this is!!!

Title: Assessing Erosion Risk in Urban Watersheds: A Stream Power-Based Approach with SPINpy 1

Abstract: Managing the increasing erosion risk in urban watersheds and mitigating its adverse effects on infrastructure and river systems necessitates a watershed-scale approach. Stream power, or the rate of energy expenditure of flowing water per unit length, is related to river erosion, channel instability and morphologic change.
 

Wayne Parker was pleased to encounter Bruce Hutchinson, long time faculty member in the Department and former Department Chair at Convocation 2023! Bruce was there to hood the third generation of PhD's in the family.
 

Last weekend, from September 22nd to 24th, a group of University of Waterloo Architectural Engineering students participated in the Timberfever Design Build Competition at Toronto Metropolitan University. Celebrating its 9th anniversary, Timberfever is an annual competition funded by Moses Structural Engineering and sponsored by 30 leading architecture, engineering, and construction firms.

There were days Robert wondered why he had left a full-time job as a water resources consulting engineer, particularly when he wasn’t successful in applying for a couple of entrepreneurial awards related to his hydrologic modelling research.

But now as a recent recipient of the Jain Family Award for Entrepreneurship, he is no longer questioning coming back to the University of Waterloo for his third environmental engineering degree.

For Robert, the award made possible by a gift from the Vijay Anand Foundation to encourage student entrepreneurship at Waterloo is providing financial assistance and, perhaps more important, confirmation that his research has significant potential.

“Before I received the award, I definitely had some moments of self-doubt,” he said. “Part of receiving the award was validation that I had made the right decision to pursue a PhD.”

Continue reading here. 

Dr. Chul Min Yeum, an assistant professor in the civil and engineering department at the University of Waterloo, leads a team of researchers using technologies like 5G and augmented reality to identify structural issues in bridges, buildings and other infrastructure before disaster strikes.

Thanks to the University’s Rogers 5G Partnership, Yeum's team can use data-hungry technologies like computer vision and deep learning to improve disaster mitigation tools for civil engineers. 

5G cellular networks provide more bandwidth and higher speeds to send more data across the network faster. But the real value is the technology’s ability to significantly reduce the power requirements for 5G-enabled mobile and wearable devices used for field inspection.

“The major issue of using AI technologies like deep learning and computer vision in remote civil engineering is the level of trust in their accuracy. AI can be up to 99% accurate, but engineers want it to be 100%, so they end up visiting a site in person,” said Yuem.

“5G is helping us create a platform where humans and AI work together to improve structural safety through an enhanced visual inspection process."

Go to Detecting infrastructural issues in time for the full story

Waterloo Engineering’s Sustainability and Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship program gets students from different countries and disciplines to tackle real-world issues together.