Thursday, October 18, 2018

An evening with Canada's top talent

Standing: Jen Boger, Associate Professor Engineering; Joseph Puopolo, Co-Founder Print Chomp and Preemptive Inc., Banuja Sivarasah, Co-Founder Your Sarista ; Brian Traquair, Chairman and former President Asset Control and SunGard Data Systems, Cindy Wei, Madeleine Shred, Amanda Rampertab, Robin Wen, Feridun Hamdullahpur, President and Vice-Chancellor;  Atif Mahmud, Alina Arvisais, Emma Lozhkin, Mackenzie Collins, David Kroetsch, Co-Founder Aeyron Labs; Alex Wong, Associate Professor, Engineering and Co-Founder, Elucid Labs AI; Desh Sharma, Vice President Operations Oculys Health Informative Inc. Kneeling: Kyne Santos, Advait Maybhate, Mickey Dang, Cameron Bardell.

by Dipali Batabyal.

The brightest young minds in Canada came together with top business leaders and were honoured on October 10 at the inaugural Schulich Leaders Scholarship recipient networking event, hosted by the Schulich Foundation and the University of Waterloo. Schulich Leader Scholars are awarded up to $100,000 for their undergraduate degrees in STEM programs.

These top Waterloo student award recipients met with business leaders and participated in a panel discussion and networking opportunity. President Hamdullahpur kicked off the event commenting, “The intellectual capacity is resonating at peak frequency in the room. He thanked the Foundation for recognizing Waterloo as a leader in STEM programs, acknowledging Waterloo has the most qualifying students competing for this award among all Canadian universities.

“We are thankful to Mr. Schulich for being a visionary philanthropist and investing in people to go places where they would be challenged and become leaders in those disciplines," said Hamdullahpur.

Ryan Gariepy, co-founder of Clearpath Robotics, leading a panel discussion at the networking event.

The Foundation’s support is helping to propel promising students as Canada’s future leaders. Since 2012 Waterloo has welcomed 22 Schulich Leaders.

Read about a 2018/19 Schulich leader scholar who recently wrote about his experience with the program.   

Provide feedback on the Tri-agency financial guidelines

If you weren’t able to attend the Tri-agency financial administration engagement consultations, you can still provide feedback until Friday, October 19.

The Tri-agency is seeking input from researchers to change its financial guidelines with the goal of reducing administrative burden for researchers and institutions. Focus areas include:

• overview of the renewal initiative and progress to date
• roles and responsibilities of grant recipients and administering institutions for the administration of grants
• feedback on issues that grant recipients encounter when using and managing grant funds, understanding the source of the issues and discussing how to potentially resolve them
• next steps and pilot project at Waterloo

Your feedback is valuable in helping the Tri-agency ensure all key pain points and challenges are identified to enable mitigation of these problems.

Visit the Tri-agency consultation webpage to watch a video of the consultation and send in your feedback.

Hack4Health 4.0 awards prizes for innovation in the kitchen

This article was originally published on the St. Paul's news website.

St. Paul's GreenHouse, in partnership with the Murray Alzheimer Research and Education Program and the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences, hosted Hack4Health 4.0, alongside the MS Society and the Alzheimer Society.  Hack4Health is a hackathon focused on creating positive social impact by improving the quality of life for those living with multiple sclerosis and dementia. Twelve teams spent two days learning from and engaging with 30 mentors. What makes Hack4Health unique is the utilization of mentors not only with technology, business and healthcare backgrounds, but mentors with invaluable perspective of lived experience, i.e. people living with dementia or MS and their care partners.

With the generous support of Sanofi Genzyme, two teams were awarded the opportunity to move their solutions forward by participating in the GreenHouse incubation program. In addition, all participants will have the opportunity to apply and be supported through the Workplace Innovation Program where students will work within partner organizations to co-create and test solutions aimed at improving the quality of life for those living with dementia or multiple sclerosis.

Winners for the Best Potential for Impact category were HotStop, a team focused on empowering and supporting individuals living with mild to moderate dementia to cook both independently and safely in their homes. Using a mat sensor that detects when a stove is left unattended and an automatic shut-off mechanism for stove burners, their stove retrofit looks to decrease in-home injuries by automatically shutting off a stove and/or reminding the individuals cooking when the stove is left in unsafe conditions.

HotStop team from left to right: Kira Wadden, Maya Pavlova, Simona Rocco, Elena Damus, Trevor Yu.

Winners for the Best Problem-Solution Fit category were BakeDem, a team who focused on using a baking social media app to tackle social isolation and withdrawal from social activities for those living with mild to moderate dementia. Their app will contain simple recipes designed for the individual living with dementia’s ability level and pairs the tablets of individuals living with dementia to that of their loved-ones or caregivers so they can be actively included in the baking experience.

BakeDem team from left to right: Jeriann Hsiao, Rachel DiMaio, Cathleen Leone, Erin Roulston, Marissa Barbosa and Catherine Lee.

Feds Annual General Meeting coming up in October

A message from the Federation of Students.

Let an undergrad know: Federation of Students October General Meeting is just around the corner and they’re invited!

All undergraduate students are welcome and encouraged to participate in the General Meeting on October 24 at 12:00 p.m. in the Student Life Centre Great Hall. Feds hosts two General Meetings each year where students can vote on important updates that will affect their campus life.

Agenda items include Health & Dental Plan and UPass eligibility for undergrads with a permanent disability and a 40 percent course load; bylaw recommendations from the Task Force for General Meeting Engagement, including the transfer of some of the function of the winter GM to Students’ Council; changing the number of voting seats on Board of Directors; and a number of others.

Please encourage the undergraduate students that you interact with to exercise their right to guide the direction of their student union by participating in the General Meeting. Students can drop in and out if they have class or other on-campus obligations, or vote by proxy if they’re off campus (a peer who is attending will vote on their behalf). Proxies are due to pres@feds.ca by 12:00 p.m. on October 22.

Students can also watch through Livestream or Facebook, or follow along on Twitter as we live tweet.

For more information, head to feds.ca.

Thursday's notes

There will be an NSTP (Northern Scientific Training Program) information meeting on Friday, October 19 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. in EV2-2022. "We’ll cover requirements for new applications and reporting on funded projects (as well as recent changes to NSTP policies and practices)," writes Professor Andrew Trant, chair of the University's Committee for Northern Research."NSTP funding is for senior undergraduate and graduate students to help offset travel and living costs when doing research in the north."

For more information, please contact Professor Andrew Trant at atrant@uwaterloo.ca.

The University of Waterloo's Open Scholarship Committee is hosting Open Access Day on Thursday, October 25. This annual conference is a day filled with speakers and workshops discussing the methods, benefits and challenges of Open Access, and the services and resources available to scholars within the Library and across the University. This year’s keynote speaker is Bianca Wylie, an open government advocate, Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in the Global Economy program and co-founder of Tech Reset Canada.

This free event is open to all students, staff and faculty, and participants may attend all or some of the sessions. Lunch is provided. Registration is required.