Thursday, May 23, 2019

Vote Waterloo's Haya Almutairi for 3MT champion

The 3MT challenges competitors to use 1 static slide and 3 minutes to explain the breadth and significance of their graduate research to a non-specialist audience.

Haya Almutairi, a PhD Candidate in Civil & Environmental Engineering, was chosen to represent Waterloo at the Ontario Provincial 3MT finals. Haya advanced from the provincial finals to become one of twelve Canadian National 3MT finalists.

The winner of Canada’s 3MT competition will be selected by a team of judges drawn from academic, media, and industry backgrounds. The winner of the People's Choice Award is up to you. 

Cast a vote in support of our University of Waterloo champion, Haya Almutairi – it’s easy. The video with the most votes by May 26 will receive Canada’s 3MT People’s Choice Award. The winners will be announced the first week of June.

President's Accolades: going above and beyond

Each month, the Office of the President recognizes students, faculty, staff and alumni who go above and beyond. The President’s Accolades celebrate stories of dedication, passion and contribution from our University community.

Congratulations to the University of Waterloo community members currently being recognized from April 2019:

• Professor James "Skid" Skidmore, whose term on the University's Senate recently ended, is heralded for his informative and entertaining "Senate Digest" that he wrote after every meeting;
• The members of the International Peer Community (IPC), who dedicate their time to building meaningful connections with first-year international students;
• Waterloo student Prashant Bagga, who won a Microsoft hackathon and a coveted internship;
• PhD candidate Vanessa Lam, who has made a difference to her students as a business ethics instructor;
• The Safety Office's Andrew Scheifele, who, along with his family, have fostered puppies being trained as career service dogs; and
• Pharmacy student Ryan Pelletier, who volunteers with Sanguen Health, an organization that works with and supports those at risk for or living with Hepatitis C.

Do you know of a member of the University of Waterloo community who stands out? Submit their story and it could be featured in a future edition of the President’s Accolades.

Nominations for next month’s edition are due by May 30.

Global Impact: Is a robot a social being?

This is the seventh in a seven-week series looking at the stories in Waterloo's Global Impact Report.

What makes a machine more than just a piece of hardware? Do we form relationships with our technology? How should we be teaching robots to act? And what are they teaching us?

These are just some of the questions that Kerstin Dautenhahn is exploring as the Canada 150 Research Chair in Intelligent Robotics. Dautenhahn joined the University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Engineering in 2018 to establish the new Social and Intelligent Robotics Research Laboratory.

Read more about the new robotics lab exploring big questions.

City honours student for giving back

This article was originally published on the Engineering news site.

Michelle Liu carefully plans each hour of each day three weeks in advance to figure out where she needs to be and when.

Between volunteering up to 40 hours a month in several different roles on and off campus and keeping on top of her graduate studies, she constantly checks her changing calendar.

“I call it 80 productive hours a week, divided between volunteering and my studies,” Liu says with a laugh.

The civil engineering master’s student was recently recognized for her volunteer and leadership contributions by the City of Waterloo with a certificate signed by Mayor Dave Jaworsky.

Much of Liu’s volunteer work takes place at Grand River Hospital in Kitchener.

Each week, she spends a shift at the front desk of the hospital’s cancer centre greeting and helping direct patients as well as circulating charts, lab samples, and lab results. When the oncology unit was looking for a researcher to work with its dietitians, Liu volunteered for that role as well.

Through her involvement at the cancer centre, she was recruited to become a member of the Waterloo-Wellington Patient Family Advisory Council, which guides the delivery of cancer care across seven regional hospitals and within Cancer Care Ontario.

Liu also volunteers with Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO), the licensing and regulatory body for professional engineering in the province. Liu is the secretary of the local PEO chapter and has been involved in affiliated awareness programs and women-in-engineering task forces.

Developed time management skills as a student

Her extensive list of on-campus volunteer activities started when she was a first-year civil engineering student in 2013.

During her undergraduate program, she held 18 different leadership positions, 14 of which she held for two or more consecutive terms. Her roles ranged from food director and media guru for engineering orientation to department lead for the Ontario University Fair and the University’s Fall and March Break Open Houses. She was also the director of the Engineering Student Ambassadors team for three terms.

She served as vice-president and president of the undergraduate Civil and Environmental Engineering Society and is now president of the department’s graduate society.

While she sometimes finds it challenging to make time to meet a friend for coffee, Liu says she thrives on being busy and giving back to Waterloo Engineering and the surrounding community.    

 “I feel more alive and happy when I volunteer and the time management skills I developed in during my undergrad years helped me get here,” she says.

Save time with single sign-on and other nifty notes

"Single sign-on (SSO) provides a secure method of accessing multiple web-based systems and applications without being required to log into each one," says a note from Information Systems & Technology (IST). "Enter your credentials once and move seamlessly and securely between supported applications."  

Visit the Single Sign-on website to learn more about this service, discover which applications are supporting SSO, and explore help resources.  

Graduate students are invited to attend the upcoming Professional Skills Foundations introductory workshop on May 28 to learn about the credential, assess their skills and start creating an individual development plan. Register for the workshop.