Thursday, October 1, 2020

Are you RED-y? The United Way campaign starts today

A message from the United Way campaign.

Every year, our campus community comes together for the month of October to have some fun and help us support the United Way Waterloo Region Communities. Normally we’d be announcing GO RED day with our usual decorated campus, but this year it’s a bit different.

On Tuesday, President and Vice-Chancellor Feridun Hamdullahpur kicked off our campaign, with many of our volunteer ambassadors, donors, and committee members, in our first virtual event. It was an amazing success, with speakers from the House of Friendship, the United Way, and the President himself talking about the vital importance of this campaign. It was inspirational to hear about how your support helps to bring healing, counselling, and hope to many vulnerable citizens within our community. It was an incredible reminder that we can bring about real change with this campaign.

Go Red Day is here, and in this more virtual world, we’re challenging everyone who wants to participate in the campaign to decorate their office, their pet, their spouse….anyone and anything you can turn into a red-wrapped inspiration of fun and philanthropy (and send those pictures to united.way@uwaterloo.ca for a chance to be featured in our next Daily Bulletin).

Also, we’re offering an amazing United Way Bundle Box that’ll keep you safe while you motivate others to make a donation. The Bundle Box, available at the W Store, contains one United Way tote bag, one United Way mask, one United Way water bottle, and two United Way hand sanitizers.

And, while we can’t gather in person for another successful United Way Souper Day, we’re bringing the soup to you. In partnership with UW Food Services, we’ll be selling Butternut Squash Soup Meal Kits, with all necessary ingredients, for you to make and enjoy our famous soup at home. It’s a great way to warm up this October while supporting the United Way Campaign. With your purchase, you’ll not only receive a meal kit, but you’ll also be able to join a live virtual cooking class led by Chef Mark Meinzinger. You’ll learn about the ingredients being used, variations on the soup, and about some of the great food security initiatives supported by the United Way.

Make sure you check out campus-wide events as they are posted throughout October, or connect with your area’s ambassador to find out what they have planned. We’re expecting some pretty creative ways to get involved this year, as we’re challenged with not all being on campus. The United Way committee is certain that our campus will rise to the challenge, donate and participate to help our community, and make this the best campaign year yet.

Alumni worldwide connect for a virtual celebration

On September 25 and 26, more than 550 alumni, students and Waterloo community members attended Alumni Black and Gold Day at home. It’s the first time our alumni network joined in a large-scale virtual event.

The Virtual Fun Run was a great success, with participants connecting from all over the world to walk and run “together.” Attendees also tuned in for virtual lectures, panels, trivia challenges and social conversations with former classmates. Friday evening participants enjoyed a concert and a beverage from the Alumni Happy Hour Box, which featured alumni-owned businesses Craft Brand Co. and Lighthouse Lemonade.

“The Waterloo spirit was strong and vibrant with stories of innovation, out of the box thinking, problem-solving, networking and tremendous community engagement,” says Joanne Shoveller, vice-president advancement. “Thank you to all who organized, participated and joined!”

Thank you to all the alumni, staff and faculty who coordinated and spoke at these events. While we weren’t able to celebrate in person, we’re proud to be part of this passionate and talented community.

To see highlights from the event, check out #UWaterlooForever on Instagram and Twitter.

Lost and phoned

By Joe Petrik. This article was originally published on Waterloo Stories.

Every month, some 23,000 Android devices are stolen or lost, with more than two-thirds never being recovered.

Even with Google’s Find my Device or Apple’s Find my iPhone, users are subjected to gaps in retrieval solutions, whether it’s from a dead battery or a thief has put the device on airplane mode.

But not anymore.

For Jiayi Chen, a PhD candidate in the Cheriton School of Computer Science, combining both device and data loss–prevention solutions into one app bridges these gaps.

“I was in a restaurant and after I finished my meal, I left without taking my phone,” Chen recounts. “I was out the door and heading toward the bus stop when a waiter ran out and said, ‘Hey, you forgot your phone.’ I was lucky, but it got me thinking. What if a smartphone could detect whether it’s about to become unattended and then could alert the owner while the device was still within reach?”

That’s exactly the kind of system the Cryptography, Security and Privacy (CrySP) group student helped developed.

The app, Chaperone, uses a sonar-type method known as “active acoustic sensing” to detect a smartphone owner’s movements and locks the phone while alerting the owner when detecting a situation could lead to loss.

“When Chaperone is installed on an Android phone, it uses the device’s speakers to emit an inaudible high-frequency acoustic signal. It then detects the echo of that signal — its reflection from the phone’s owner as well as other people and nearby objects — using its microphone. Based on the changes in the reflected signals, Chaperone can distinguish nearby moving people from static objects. Then, Chaperone extracts the owner’s moving pattern and determines if the owner is about to leave the device unattended.”

While many loss-prevention solutions require additional hardware such as Bluetooth devices or wearable radio frequency ID tags, Chaperone is a stand-alone solution. All smartphones have a microphone and speaker, so they can perform active acoustic sensing.

To increase accuracy in detection, Chaperone uses four modules before alerting its user: trigger module (sensing user’s movement), acoustic-sensing module (detecting the echo using the device’s microphone to calculate distance and speed of movement), user-tracking module (locating the smartphone’s user in the immediate environment through echo filtration), and decision-making module (alerting the user if necessary).

You don’t have to worry about the alert being a blaring horn either.

“Because the alert is selected based on information collected by the trigger module, it’s tailored to the context,” Chen says. “That means if environmental noise is low as in a library, a gentle ringtone would be sufficient to get the user’s attention.”

So far, more than 1,300 experiments across different real-world scenarios have been evaluated. In 93 per cent of cases, Chaperone positively detected a user leaving their phone.

“Our current solution is designed based on a smartphone running Android 6.0 or newer,” Chen says. “The code is freely available so anyone can download it or improve it. Our experimental data and source code for our prototype is available on GitHub. This will help other researchers as well as let them contribute to the project.”

Virtual Fair takes place this weekend

A message from Marketing and Undergraduate Recruitment (MUR).

The first Waterloo Virtual Fair will be held this Saturday, October 3, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Through the effort of hundreds of staff, students, and faculty members, prospective students from across Canada will have the opportunity to learn more about everything Waterloo has to offer. Representatives from our six faculties, four University Colleges, and many areas of student support services will be on hand to answer questions and share their experiences with the next generation of Warriors. 

 This event was created as a virtual alternative to the Ontario Universities’ Fair (OUF). In this new online environment, we’ve been able to offer even more access than we would at the OUF, including live chats, presentations, videos, PDF downloads, and more. Registration for the event can be accessed here.

If you have any questions about this event, please contact Laura Gordon (lgordon@uwaterloo.ca).

October's first round of notes

"We can’t come to you like we used to, but you can donate blood at your local donor centre," says a note from Canadian Blood Services. "We know things are different, but one thing hasn’t changed — the need for blood remains constant and we need your support. Blood donation events have been cancelled for the year at the University of Waterloo. However, you can donate blood at the Waterloo Donor Centre, 94 Bridgeport Rd E., open 6 days a week." 

"Join UWaterloo Athletics, Warriors Helping Warriors, and have your blood donation count towards their pledge of 100 donations this year. Simply add their Partners For Life ID, UNIV960995, to your donor profile, and all donations will count towards Warriors Helping Warriors. Book now at blood.ca or call 1-888-236-6283. Appointments must be made to ensure physical distancing."

"Most patients with dry eye disease use a lubricating eye drop to relieve symptoms of dryness. The relief gained from using drops can be short as the drops spill out of the eyes or drain away quickly from the eye surface. The Centre for Ocular Research and Education (CORE) is currently recruiting participants who suffer from discomfort due to dry eye. This study will investigate the comfort of an ocular insert for treatment of dry eye disease. The study will take place at the University of Waterloo. Participants will receive $180 upon study completion. Total time commitment of eight hours over nine study visits. Eligible participants must be willing to attend CORE every morning for five consecutive days. For more information regarding this study visit corestudies.ca/date."

"All studies conducted at CORE have been reviewed and received clearance through a University of Waterloo Ethics Committee. To register to be part of CORE’s participant database and be the first to know about new studies, profiles can be created at corestudies.ca."