Thursday, January 12, 2017

Anniversary video covers 60 years in 60 seconds

Each week in 2017, the Daily Bulletin will be featuring content highlighting the University of Waterloo's 60^th Anniversary.

Jo Atlee to speak on detecting and resolving software errors

A software error in your phone or computer can be annoying and possibly expensive. Errors in a safety-critical system like a medical device, transportation system, or autonomous vehicle could lead to a malfunction that causes failure, accidents, and potentially loss of property or life. The key to preventing a malfunctioning system is finding these errors and resolving them before issues arise.

Find out how Cheriton School of Computer Science Professor Joanne Atlee uses software modelling and automated analysis techniques to detect hard-to-find errors in software, and how problems can be resolved on the fly at run time. This Research Talks session will take place at noon on Friday, January 27.

The series, hosted by the Office of Research, celebrates research and provides an opportunity for staff, faculty, and students to learn more about some of the life-changing research underway at Waterloo.

Please register as seating is limited and registration will close when room capacity is reached. Feel free to bring your lunch – light refreshments will be provided.

Student Service Transformation project update

From the Student Services Transition Needles Hall (SSTNH) Project Team

Chris Read is back with a January update on the Student Service Transformation project and an outline of how the organizational structure of the new centre will function. Watch the video below to learn what the project team will be working on this month and then cast your vote for a centre name on the updated shortlist.

2017 Grimm lecture is a history lesson, warning

by Lori Straus

“Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.”

These words are point #8 on Yale Historian Timothy Snyder’s list of 20 lessons we can learn from the 20^th century. The context for his list is the November 2016 US elections, but the basis of his points is his extensive research on European history. He will be giving a talk on February 6^th at the Theatre of the Arts based on his 2015 book, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning.

Snyder reads 10 European languages and speaks five. He is the Housum Professor of History at Yale University and a member of the Committee on Conscience of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He is the author of five award-winning works of history, including Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, which received the Literature Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

“The Holocaust as History and Warning” is the Waterloo Centre for German Studies’ 2017 Grimm Lecture and is co-sponsored by the Joseph & Wolf Lebovic Chair of Jewish Studies, the Department of Germanic & Slavic Studies, the Faculty of Arts, and the Department of History. The UW Bookstore will be on hand with several of Snyder's books, including Black Earth. A book signing will follow the lecture. Tickets (free) are strongly recommended; about a third of them have already been snapped up. For full details, visit the Waterloo Centre for German Studies website.

Remembering Patricia Bow

Retiree Patricia Bow died on January 7.

Bow joined the University of Waterloo in 1998 as a communications officer, doing writing, editing, proofreading and publications work in Communications and Public Affairs (a predecessor to today's University Communications unit).

She is remembered by her former CPA colleagues as a kind, gentle person who was always ready to tackle a new writing project with quiet gusto.

“She was such a rock for our communications office, such a quietly competent and professional writer who you could count on for any type of writing assignment,” writes Martin Van Nierop, who led the University’s communications team from 1986 to 2010. “But more than that, she was friendly, kind and nice, someone who you couldn’t help but hold in the highest regard as a person.”

Bow was the assistant editor of Waterloo magazine and contributed to the Gazette, the Daily Bulletin, and the University's website. She had an uncanny ability to make sense of the most complicated research and could write in a way that made it understandable and interesting. She was also the main backup editor of the Daily Bulletin, filling in as needed for editor Chris Redmond, and was the content lead for UW Mobile, a push news app for BlackBerry and iPhone developed by Waterloo student startup Polar.

“Pat is…a true ‘editor’s editor,’ meticulously organized, careful in all things,” wrote colleague Kelley Teahen on the occasion of Pat’s retirement in 2011.

"Pat is one of the best proofreaders I've ever worked with," says Teahen. "Her gifts were widely known and people from other areas of the University would request that Pat go over their material as a kind of gold-standard safety check."

Indeed, she was the office’s go-to grammar expert and senior wordsmith, the keeper of the CPA Style Guide, and always willing, with a red pen in hand, to review documents and mark them up with gentle, but firm, corrections. She was known to use a magnifying glass during the proofreading process, in order to catch errant double spaces and mix-ups of "en" and "em" dashes. 

Chris Redmond remembers her as "a source of the perfect word and the dryest comment."

Bow's writing efforts were by no means confined to her day job: she was a published author with more than 20 works to her name, including science fiction and fantasy aimed at young adult and middle-grade audiences.

“I started out trying to write romance fiction," she was once quoted as saying, "but the body count kept getting too high.”

Bow won a Waterloo Regional Arts Council award in 1997 and a CCAE gold medal in 1999. Her 2004 novel The Bone Flute was nominated for an Ontario Library Association Silver Birch Award.

Pat is survived by her husband Eric, son James and daughter-in-law Erin (both published authors) and two grandchildren. She was 70.

Her memorial is on Saturday, January 14, with a visitation from 10:00 a.m. to 10:45 a.m., and service at 11:00 a.m. at the Church of the Holy Saviour on 35 Allen Road East in Waterloo.