Friday, September 16, 2016

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• Waterloo set to host Canada’s largest Hackathon
• Broadening the innovation pipeline: WIS16 in review
• eCampusOntario announces new funding for online initiatives
• AC JumpStart applications due October 14
• Researchers receive $5.7M in SSHRC grants

Waterloo set to host Canada’s largest Hackathon

More than 1,000 students from around the world will gather at the University of Waterloo this week for Hack the North, Canada’s biggest hackathon.

About 5,100 students from almost 60 countries apply to attend the event. Competitors come from more than 170 schools around the world including top universities in Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia.

In addition to 36 hours of hacking, Hack the North will feature talks and workshops from leaders in the tech industry. Vinod Khosla, partner in Khosla Ventures, will deliver the keynote address. Y Combinator partners such as Luke Iseman will host office hours on Saturday. The top 12 teams will present their projects at the closing ceremonies.

The hackathon begins at 9:00 p.m. on Friday, with closing ceremonies taking place at 1:45 p.m. on Sunday, September 18.

The event will take place in Hagey Hall and Engineering 5.

Both opening and closing ceremonies will be available via live stream.

Broadening the innovation pipeline: WIS16 in review

Participants in the "Women in Innovation: At the Leading Edge" panel discussion included Arlene Dickinson, CEO of Venture Communications, the Honourable Bardish Chagger, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism, the Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science, Dr. Shohini Ghose, Director of the Centre for Women in Science at Wilfrid Laurier University and quantum physicist, and Dr. Barbara Fennessy, Vice President, Applied Research and International Education, and executive director, Conestoga College Centre for Entrepreneurship. The panel was part of the Waterloo Innovation Summit's Inclusive Innovation Agenda workshop series.

by Bill Bean

A national partnership of citizens and governments is needed to see Canada’s innovation entrepreneurs outperform the world.

That was the vision offered by Navdeep Bains, Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, to more than 600 entrepreneurs, policymakers, academics and invited guests at the opening of the Waterloo Innovation Summit 2016, co-hosted by the University of Waterloo and Communitech.

The University’s Humanities Theatre was the venue for presentations on Thursday, September 15, that included greetings by Summit chair David Fransen, University president Feridun Hamdullahpur, and host Bloomberg North journalist Amanda Lang, with keynote speeches from Walter Isaacson, CEO of the Washington-based policy group the Aspen Institute, and U.K. serial entrepreneur Emma Sinclair.

Visit the Waterloo Innovation Summit website to read more. 

eCampusOntario announces new funding for online initiatives

eCampusOntario has released their 2016-18 Call for Proposals, open to all of Ontario’s publicly-assisted colleges and universities. Applicants can submit proposals for funding in three distinct project areas:

Open Content Initiative:  to fund the creation of high-quality digital course content including etexts and course modules that can be used by all Ontario institutions to support online and technology-enabled teaching and learning.

New Program Development: tofund the development of new online programs, especially collaborative and interdisciplinary ventures.

Online Course Development:  to fund the development of high impact, high demand courses in an online format, specifically those with high repeat rates and low retention. 

Waterloo has secured almost $700,000 thus far through three previous calls, and Mario Coniglio, Associate Vice President, Academic, encourages all to "consider these opportunities and discuss them with your colleagues as they are worthwhile and support our quest for Outstanding Academic Programming as articulated in our Strategic Plan.” 

Applications will be submitted through the Centre for Extended Learning. If you are interested, please contact Aldo Caputo acaputo@uwaterloo, or Dina Meunier d2meunier@uwaterloo.ca. The internal deadline for submissions is Friday, September 23.

AC JumpStart applications due October 14

At one time, commercializing an innovation and starting a business was nothing more than a dream for Pablo Eder. Now he’s the CEO of Lani Inc. with some help from a $60,000 AC JumpStart award.

Eder developed a device that makes it easier for people to use 3D printers. With the Lanibox, multiple users can connect to a printer, place a job in a queue, pay for it, and receive detailed reports on the printer’s use.

Eder is one of 20 AC JumpStart – University of Waterloo recipients who received funding to launch a business with their innovation. Alumni who earned their last Waterloo degree within five years and are passionate about commercializing an innovation and starting a business can apply for AC JumpStart by October 14.

Funded by FedDev Ontario and the University of Waterloo, AC JumpStart is delivered through the Accelerator Centre and provides early stage technology startups with the seed capital, mentorship, and market-readiness tools needed to build a business in today’s knowledge economy.

Researchers receive $5.7M in SSHRC grants

Twenty-nine researchers at the University of Waterloo will receive $5.7 million from the federal government to advance research and encourage partnerships that will lead to innovative approaches to improve the well-being of Canadians.

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) is awarding the funding through Partnership Grants, Partnership Development Grants, Insight Grants, and Insight Development Grants.

“Social sciences and humanities research is the foundation for advancing social, cultural, economic, and intellectual change across Canada and around the world,” said D. George Dixon, vice-president, university research. “As a comprehensive university, funding for research in this area is an important and valuable balance to generating new knowledge that is broad and diverse.”

The federal government awarded funds to the following Waterloo researchers and projects:

Partnership Grant

Engineering

• Philip Beesley (School of Architecture): Living architecture systems ($2,476,738)

Partnership Development Grants

Arts

• Jasmin Habib (Political Science): A socio-cultural mapping of Arab-Canadian migration, settlement, and integration: collaboration, community, co-authorship ($199,062)
• Kristina Llewellyn (Social Development Studies, Renison University College): Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation: The Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children History Education Initiative ($199,027)

Insight Development Grants

Applied Health Sciences

• Luke Potwarka (Recreation and Leisure Studies): Leveraging Youth Sport Participation Impacts of International Sport Events: The Case of Track Cycling in Milton's Velodrome ($64,297)

Arts

• Joel Blit (Economics): The potential for a selective immigration policy to increase innovation; evidence from Canada ($60,731)
• Tao Chen (Economics): Functional dynamic factor models ($31,422)
• Elise Lepage (French Studies): Du pays au paysage. La poésie québécoise en perspective depuis 1950 ($42,297)
• Thomas Parker (Economics): Uniform Inference Using Simple Gaussian Field Asymptotics ($36,418)

Environment

• Andrea Collins (School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability): A New Alliance with Old Problems: A Gendered Analysis of the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition ($36,355)
• John McLevey (Knowledge Integration): Remaking the Boundaries of Open and Proprietary Science: A Longitudinal Study of Biomedical Research and Development Networks in Canada ($67,790)
• Prateep Nayak (School of Environment, Enterprise and Development): Social-Ecological Regime Shifts (SERS) and Governance in Coastal-Marine Systems ($74,990)
• Kathryn Plaisance (Knowledge Integration): Increasing the Impact of Philosophy of Science in Scientific Domains ($59,302)

Mathematics

• Yeying Zhu (Statistics and Actuarial Science): Understanding the Causal Mechanism of Reputation Using Big Data in e-Commerce ($51,145)

Insight Grants

Arts

• Jefim Efrim Boritz (School of Accounting and Finance): The role of external valuation specialists in determining fair values in corporate reports ($103,865)
• Alan Huang (School of Accounting and Finance): The information content of debt IPO prospectuses: a text-based study ($67,223
• Patricia O’Brien (School of Accounting and Finance): Credible financial reporting ($115,648)
• Peter J. Carrington (Sociology and Legal Studies): The structure of the national Canadian criminal network ($198,032)
• Heather Henderson (Psychology): Mechanisms linking childhood shyness and self-regulation ($166,862)
• Daniel Henstra (Political Science): Multilevel governance and climate change adaptation policy in Canada ($81,532)
• Kathryn Hochstetler (Political Science): Wind and solar power in South America ($80,489)
• Marcel O’Gorman (English Language and Literature): Digital abstinence: the art, politics, and philosophy of unplugging ($159,511)
• Jennifer L. Schulenberg (Sociology and Legal Studies): Policing innovation: an investigation of specialized responses to youth crime ($200,436)
• Winny Shen (Psychology): Adaptability or inconsistency/understanding antecedents and consequences of change in leadership behaviours ($107,346)
• Mikal Skuterud (Economics): The impact of the temporary foreign worker program on the Canadian economy  ($87,440)

Engineering

• Robert-Jan van Pelt (School of Architecture): The Barrack-Hut in history ($75,503)

Environment

• Derek Armitage (School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability): Integration of social wellbeing and ecosystem service bundles for adaptive governance of coastal systems experiencing rapid change ($327,160)
• Luna Khirfan (School of Planning): The potential of daylighting - deculverting - urban streams for climate change adaptation and mitigation and for place-making: Amman's Seil and Seoul's Cheonggyecheon ($243,814)
• Steffanie Scott (Geography and Environmental Management): Cultivating pathways to ecological agriculture: rural-urban interfaces and regional dynamics in the agri-food sector in Nanjing, China ($238,841)
• Olaf Weber (School of Environment, Enterprise and Development): The impact of voluntary codes of conduct and financial sector sustainability regulations on banking project financing and investing ($110,980)

The Waterloo awards are part of a larger announcement where the Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science, announced $163 million for nearly 1,150 social sciences and humanities research projects.