Friday, April 10, 2015

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• Canada Excellence Research Chairs to meet
• Esch award winners named
• Remembering Jim Stone and other notes

Canada Excellence Research Chairs to meet

by Victoria Van Cappellen.

The Fifth Annual Canada Excellence Research Chairs Meeting brings together the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) holders from across Canada to the University of Waterloo to share key developments and the latest discoveries in their respective research programs next week from Monday April 13 to Tuesday, April 14.

The public are invited to attend the two-day conference and meet these world-renowned researchers to get an overview of Canada's latest scientific achievements.

Day one features plenary lectures by the most recently appointed chairholders and ends with a poster session and reception in the afternoon.

Day two begins with three parallel sessions in Environment, Health and Quantum Information. These short research talks will highlight global issues such as the impact of dams, cars of the future and Arctic ecosystems.

The program ends in the afternoon with two outreach events lead by the University of Waterloo CERCs. Local elementary and high school students will learn about the importance of wetlands from CERC Philippe van Cappellen and quantum information research with CERC David Cory. This session is closed to the general public.

Launched in 2008, the CERC Program awards world-renowned researchers and their teams up to $10 million over seven years to establish ambitious research programs at Canadian universities. These awards are among the most prestigious and generous available globally.

For more information and a detailed program, please visit the CERC event page. 

Space is limited, so please register for the CERC events in advance.

Esch award winners named

Solder Otter, a safe, easy-to-use soldering iron with built-in fume extraction, was one of six major winners at the second annual Norman Esch Capstone Design Awards competition for engineering students held on Thursday, April 2.

The company’s five founders are mechanical engineering and systems design engineering students. Their impressive pitch won them $10,000 to help cover startup and other costs.

“We specifically designed the Solder Otter for the maker market,” said Vanessa Guido, a systems design engineering student and chief executive officer of Solder Otter. “We’ve had a lot of great feedback on our product that includes a HEPA filter and validation on it as well. We’ll use the money we won today to help patent our design.”  

The other $10,000 winners include:

• Grasp: a bike lock that can be used with a single hand
• Vitameter: a hand-held device that measures your vitamin levels within minutes
• Suncayr: Ultraviolet (UV)-responsive marker that indicates when to reapply sunscreen
• Pegasus: low-cost survey drone for widespread industrial use
• Boogaloo Bunks: modular privacy pods for shared sleeping spaces such as hostels

People’s Choice winner of $3,000:

• Autowalk: a motorized kneebrace that helps straighten the leg 

Suncayr and Vitameter were also grand prize winners at last week’s pitch competition for Velocity, a University of Waterloo entrepreneurship program.

During the event, 15 teams had 90 seconds to pitch their businesses to a panel of judges who included engineering professors and faculty members of the Conrad Entrepreneurship, Business and Technology Centre. Judges weighed the overall pitch, and product innovation, market potential and viability. The emcee for the event was Matt Stevens, chief executive officer of Waterloo-based CrossChasm Technologies Inc., a company that develops next generation vehicles.

“The presentations were all extremely solid and well done,” said Stevens, a Waterloo chemical engineering graduate. “I was especially impressed by the way each team focused on the end user of its project and how it would be of benefit to the individual.”  

Judges selected the finalists for the competition from 60 applicants who all participated in March’s annual Capstone Design symposia. The five-day event showcased over 150 projects senior engineering students spent months designing and building.

Funded by the Esch Foundation, the Norman Esch Capstone Design Awards support creative and entrepreneurial students in the pursuit of research and development and its commercialization for the benefit of Canada. Previous Capstone projects have given rise to groundbreaking ideas leading to the creation of companies such as Athos, BufferBox, Thalmic Labs and Pebble.

Remembering Jim Stone and other notes

Human Resources has reported that retired professor Jim Stone died on March 15.

James Stuart Stone was employed by Waterloo College as a lecturer in English from September 1958 to September 1960, when he joined the University of Waterloo as the Faculty of Arts was being established.

Before his academic career, he served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War as an instrument technician.

Stone became an assistant professor in 1961 and an associate professor in 1967. He served on a number of University committees and was president of the faculty association in 1975 and 1976. He also served on the executive council of the Canadian Association of University Teachers and was a member of the Humanities Association of Canada. In 1983 he joined the second cohort of the University of Waterloo's 25-Year club. An expert in Victorian literature and fantasy literature, Stone retired from the University in September 1986. In his later years he published a book entitled My Dad, the Rum Runner that chronicled the exploits of his seafaring father during Prohibition off the coasts of British Columbia and the western United States. He was predeceased by his wife Joan. Stone was 95.

The Masters Program in Experimental Digital Media (XDM) in the Department of English Language and Literature is hosting its inaugural XDM exhibition and symposium today, entitled "Feedback Fedback Feedforward", which showcases student work that explores relations between Information Communications Technologies (ICT) and art.

The symposium takes place from 2:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the Critical Media Lab at 44 Gaukel Street in Kitchener and is free and open to the public. The keynote speaker is Professor Jentery Sayers, director of the Maker Lab in the Humanities at the University of Victoria. The keynote address will take place at 2:00 p.m., followed by artist talks at 3:00 p.m., and the exhibition will open at 6:00 p.m.

The inaugural XDM exhibition and symposium has been made possible by support from English Language and Literature, The Critical Media Lab, and the Faculty of Arts.