Monday, December 9, 2019

Capstone project wins first prize in international contest

This article was originally published on the Faculty of Engineering website.

A management engineering Capstone Design project that explored the need for pay-and-display parking machines in Toronto took top prize in an international competition.    

Milan Preet Kaur, a recent management engineering graduate, presented her team’s Capstone project at the 2019 Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS) Undergraduate Operations Research Prize Competition, which took place at the organization’s annual meeting this month in Seattle.  

Team members used optimization models to re-evaluate the need for pay-and-display machines throughout Toronto after a drastic increase in mobile payments since the city’s parking authority introduced a mobile-pay app in 2016.

The team’s solution involved developing a data analysis tool that consolidates multiple large-scale datasets on historical parking transactions and a mathematical optimization methodology that finds the optimal number and locations of parking payment options while minimizing operational and maintenance costs.

“These tools are expected to help the city save millions of dollars annually,” says Houra Mahmoudzadeh, a management engineering professor and the team’s faculty adviser.

Only Canadian finalist

Waterloo’s project was one six to be presented at the INFORMS annual meeting. The other five were from the U.S. (University of Michigan, Northwestern University and University of California at Berkeley), Germany (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) and Turkey (TOBB University of Economics and Technology).

With over 12,500 members from around the globe, INFORMS is the leading international association for professionals in operations research and analytics.

Earlier this year, the management engineering Capstone Design project captured first place in the undergraduate category of the Canadian Operational Research Society Student Paper Competition.

Reminder: copyright services and resources for teaching

A message from Copyright at Waterloo.

As we head into the Winter term, we’re reaching out to all instructors to remind you of the services and resources available for assisting with copyright questions that relate to your teaching.

Services

• Course Reserves, Print & Retail Solutions, or the Centre for Extended Learning staff will assess copyright concerns on your behalf, and apply fair dealing, a Library license, or purchase transactional licensing for you.
• copyright@uwaterloo.ca – A team of four copyright helpers can assist you with your question.
• Copyright workshops are offered each term. These sessions provide a simple overview of copyright as it applies to your teaching.
  • Sign up today! There is a Copyright for Teaching Webinar on December 11.
  • All workshops are listed on the copyright website events page.

Resources:

• The Copyright at Waterloo website provides information to assist you, including a frequently asked questions page, and the Fair Dealing Advisory. These pages are available to guide the use of resources in your teaching.
• E-Journals and e-Books are almost always covered by license agreements. License agreements set out specific rules to follow when using electronic resources.
  • To find out if you can use licensed content in LEARN, use the Finding Usage Rights page for step-by-step instructions on how to find license terms.

If you have any questions about copyright or licensing, please send them to copyright@uwaterloo.ca.

For more help using Library resources in your teaching, reach out to your Liaison Librarian. To find the Librarian for your subject area, use the Librarians by subject page.

Students in a lather over soap at design event

“The President’s Hamdul-lather’s Natural Handcrafted Soap for the United Way Campaign helped inspire our first year Chemical Engineering students (approximately 160 students), who took on designing, formulating and making handcrafted soaps as part of their 1A course Chemical Engineering Design Studio 1 (ChE180)," says a note from Professor Marc Aucoin of the Department of Chemical Engineering.

"The course culminated with a Design Studio held in the Engineering 7 Event Space and attracted faculty, staff, students (and even some children) that came from far and wide. This was the first offering of this course, and by all accounts it was a success. Congratulations to the 1A Chemical Engineering Students that did a fantastic job!”

Monday's notes

Sticky notes of support: as students study for and write exams, a number of supportive messages have appeared in building windows around campus to raise morale and encourage students as they head for the academic finish line.

Workday support is available in December and January. For more details, please visit the Workday Support web page. No registration is required for these support sessions in EC1 1021.

Staff/Faculty Yoga Sessions start up again in January 2020, and there are still a few spaces available. For more information, please contact Sandra Gibson.