Thursday, April 11, 2019

The Black Hole: Pics or it didn't happen

This is an excerpt of an article originally published on Waterloo Stories.

A historic global collaboration, with contributions by a Waterloo physicist, has lifted the veil on a cosmic mystery by proving the existence of black holes.

Avery Broderick, a professor at the University of Waterloo and an associate faculty member at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and his group played a key role in helping the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration interpret the historic images. Broderick also previously developed theoretical models that accurately predicted what the images would look like.

 “The EHT is a culmination of almost two decades of effort by a global team,” said Broderick, who also holds the Delaney Family John Archibald Wheeler Chair at Perimeter. “Once you’ve invested that sort of time, it’s a deep feeling of satisfaction that, finally, we have in hand this quarry we’ve been chasing for so long.

“This first image is beautiful and a profound moment in science – it’s the first time we’ve seen the unseeable.”

Read the rest of the article on Waterloo Stories.

Student leadership awards now a presidential affair

President Feridun Hamdullahpur, along with Federation of Students (Feds) and Graduate Student Association (GSA), recognized undergraduate and graduate student leaders Monday night at the inaugural Presidents’ Student Leadership Awards Banquet.

The Feds and GSA each recognized undergraduate and graduate students at the award ceremony who each have shown leadership that have benefited the undergraduate and graduate community and improved student life, while the University of Waterloo's President honoured one undergraduate and one graduate student from those who were nominated for the Feds and GSA awards. The winners of the Presidents' Student Leadership Awards were recognized because of their distinguished leadership and dedication to the improvement of the entire University community.

Feds winners:

• Alex Lee
• Fiqir Worku
• Munaza Saleem
• Michael Li
• Kelsey-Ann Prior
• Akshay Jogoo
• Jimmy Quach
• Mikaela Ney
• Christopher Marcotte
• Mohammad Moussa

GSA winners:

• Linda Iheme
• Takin Tadayou
• Michael Makahnouk
• Beth Timmers
• Julia Goyal

Presidents' Student Leadership Winners:

• Munaza Saleem (undergraduate)
• Takin Tadayou (graduate)

This was the first time that the University's President, as well as Feds and GSA executives, joined together to honour the University’s student leaders and distinguish their efforts to improve the lives of fellow students and the University community.

All students recognized on Monday were first nominated by the community and selected by a committee representing each category.

MFA thesis exhibitions and other notes

The Fine Arts department is showcasing the MFA thesis work of two graduate students in an exhibition that runs from April 11 to 27 in East Campus Hall. 

In Gallery One is JunkDrawerPhantomDressUpSoirée by Lauren Prousky. JunkDrawerPhantomDressUpSoirée analyzes the archive as a malleable tool for art making through the creation of a personal archive comprised of concepts for images that were then used to construct various projects over a two-year period. Combining sculptures, paintings, drawings and text, the archival form becomes the groundwork for storytelling and poetry, subverting the idea that the archive is something statically formal, bureaucratic or paramount to its anarchival byproducts.

Prousky is an MFA candidate at Waterloo and holds a BFA in studio art and English literature from Concordia University. She has shown her work in Montreal and Toronto, and has participated in residencies in Iceland, British Columbia and Brooklyn.

In Gallery Two is Patrick Allaby's Customer Service. Customer Service is a 30-minute autofictional hand-drawn slideshow consisting of around three hundred and fifty drawings that explore that most ubiquitous twenty-first century labour experience: the call centre. Call centre employees are both dehumanized by callers fed up with waiting for hours on hold, and by their employers, who are eager to process calls at ever increasing rates. Customer Service weaves personal and political criticisms together against late capitalism, and focuses on the difficulty of reducing one’s self to the flesh appendage of a computer, a creature whose only function is to deliver algorithmic logic with an empathetic tone.

Allaby is an MFA candidate at the University of Waterloo. He was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick and holds a BFA from Mount Allison University in Sackville. In 2016, he curated an exhibition of contemporary comic art, The Sensual World, at the Owens Art Gallery, and has performed at various music and art festivals, including Flourish, Ok Quoi?! and Third Shift.

The opening reception takes place tonight from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. an includes a performance of "Customer Service" by Patrick Allaby at 6:00 p.m. The event is free and all are welcome.

On Tuesday, April 30, all W Store, W Store Essentials and W Print locations will be closed for business due to year-end inventory. "We will be unable to process transactions during this time," says a note from Print + Retail Solutions. "All locations will re-open for business on May 1 at 9:00 a.m."

For a complete list of locations and hours of operation, please visit the Print + Retail Solutions website. Please note:

• The last day to make purchases before fiscal year-end is 5:00 p.m. on April 29.
• The final day to drop off your computer for repairs and receive it prior to the inventory closure is April 25.
• All online orders placed on April 30 will be processed on May 1.
• Our Shipping and Receiving team will not be able to accept or ship any orders on April 30.

For questions regarding this closure contact wstore@lists.uwaterloo.ca.

Micheal Pereira, business development manager at the David Johnston Research + Technology Park has uncovered a canine campus conspiracy that might shake the very foundations of this institution, according to a tweet he sent out yesterday:

Read individual Tweet on Twitter

Was this the brainchild of Mike Brookes, the University's original director of campus planning, or a secret plot hidden within the campus master plan? We're through the looking glass here, people.