Thursday, April 9, 2015

Waterloo hosts Badge Day for Girl Guides

On Saturday March 28, 113 Girl Guides ages 9 to 11 years earned their physics badge. Hailing from Waterloo Region and beyond, a total of 10 girl guides units spent the day at Waterloo Engineering.

The girls explored topics such as the forces of flight, Newton’s Laws of Motion, properties of light, colour theory, and levers. They made fun and interactive projects like catapults, rockets, colour-changing UV-activated keychains, kaleidoscopes, and even navigated a laser maze.

 The University of Waterloo was one of 9 universities to host Badge Day this year, as part of a collaborative effort with other Ontario Network of Women in Engineering (ONWiE) members, reaching a total of over 800 girls across Ontario. Other badges included engineering, astronomy, and computer skills.

While the number of women enrolling in engineering is going up, events like Badge Day are crucial in retaining girls’ interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields. It is hoped that these events will encourage enrollment in high school physics courses, which are a prerequisite to studying engineering at the postsecondary level.

The event was hosted by Women in Engineering (WiE) at the University of Waterloo, which exists to support current female engineers and students, and encourages the next generation of women to pursue careers in engineering. To hear about future Women in Engineering events, sign up for their mailing list.

Three Minute Thesis winner named

The Three Minute Thesis (3MT) University Finals event took place on Thursday, April 2 in the Humanities Theatre, with ten finallists competing for the grand prize and a chance to compete in the provincial finals later this month.

Julie DeWolf from Environment and Resource Studies was named the winner for her presentation "Linking Human Right and the Environment in the Canadian Legal System". Julie has won the $1,000 prize and moves on to the 3MT provincial final at Western University that will be held on April 23.  

The runner-up was Elahe Jabari from Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, in the Faculty of Engineering for her  presentation on "Micro-scale 3D Printing of Graphene". Elahe has won a $500 prize.  

The People's Choice award winner was Joseph Buscemi from the History department his presentation on "Protect and Survive?: The Recently Declassified History of Britain's Cold War Nuclear Survival Plans". Joseph was selected as the audience choice winner and received a prize.

Congratulations all!

Big winners at Big Ideas Challenge

A company that uses smartphone technology to improve vision care in India was among the big winners at a pitch competition designed to elicit big ideas in health and wellbeing.

Rachel Friesen, a third-year international development and business student, made the pitch for EyeCheck, a for-profit vision-care company, winning four hours of mentorship through the Accelerator Centre and a market validation canvas from the Accelerator Centre at the inaugural Big Ideas Challenge for Health and Wellbeing at the University of Waterloo on March 30. EyeCheck uses smartphone technology and proprietary hardware to provide much-needed vision assessment in India with just two pictures.

The other winning pitches consisted of ways to address mental health issues among students, heart-friendly meal delivery and meaningful leisure for older adults, and support for breast cancer survivors. Four startups – PASS Kit, Heart Helpers, Marlena, and Node – received the grand prize of a term’s stay in St. Paul’s GreenHouse, the first and only live-in campus-linked accelerator in Canada focused on social innovation and entrepreneurship.

The winners were chosen from among the nine finalists who expressed interest after the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences and St. Paul’s GreenHouse launched the Big Ideas Challenge for Health and Wellbeing last October.

“The Big Ideas Challenge for Health and Wellbeing was intended to encourage undergraduate students to develop innovative interventions, for which the primary purpose is to improve the quality of life of individuals or communities,” said Tania Del Matto, Director of GreenHouse.

The Spring term’s stay in St. Paul’s GreenHouse was valued at $2,990 per student and was donated by event sponsor RBC. The Market Validation Canvas had a $500.

“We were really happy to provide a platform for these entrepreneurs and were really pleased with the quality of submissions,” said Karla Boluk, assistant professor of Applied Health Sciences, who, along with Del Matto, chose the finalists and coordinated the challenge. “We were delighted to see that 4 of the 5 awards honored the ideas of young women!”

About the winners:

• Marlena (@marlenabooks) – Fourth-year Health Studies student Rachel Thompson, who named the organization after her grandmothers Marilyn and Helena, is committed to meaningful leisure for older adults of all abilities by creating books to meet the needs of older adults with Alzheimer’s, dementia, and other conditions.
• Panic, Anxiety, & Stress, Support (PASS) Kit – Third-year AHS student Tina Chan and her business partner are developing what they call “a first aid kit for mental health and wellbeing” to address the increasing incidence of mental health issues among students.
• Heart Helpers – Fourth-year Kinesiology student Tara McNicholl conceived of Heart Helpers as a non-profit, heart-healthy meal delivery program that offers older adults at risk or living with cardiovascular disease a simple, inexpensive way to reduce their risk factors by modifying their diet.
• Node – Node is a company offering smart, beautifully designed, custom-fit compression sleeves for breast cancer survivors suffering from lymphedema, founded by fourth-year Kinesiology student Benny Hua.
• Eyecheck – EyeCheck, a vision care company, uses smartphone technology and proprietary hardware to provide vision assessment in India.

The panel of judges included Howard Armitage, special advisor to the President on entrepreneurship, Tracey Robertson, strategic lead in innovation, Ontario Trillium Foundation, Andrew Jackson, vice-president of client services at the Accelerator Centre, Christina Marchand, founder of Full Soul Canada and alumna of both Applied Health Sciences and St. Paul's GreenHouse, and David Paul Borcsok of the RBC Corporate Sustainability Group.