Monday, March 29, 2021

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• Concept $5K winners announced
• New study advances scientific understanding of Solar Geoengineering
• Earth Month Challenge begins; other notes

Concept $5K winners announced

This piece was adapted from an article published on the Concept website.

The spring sun is melting the winter snow away, but UWaterloo students were the ones shining brightest at the Concept $5K Finals. This term marked our return to a live Finals event, virtually of course, and the student teams stepped up to put on an impressive and entertaining show. Our finalists faced the toughest path to victory yet as we saw over 120 different ideas submitted for consideration.

Even as labs across campus are closed or severely limited, teams are dispersed across the world, and a pandemic looming over everything, these entrepreneurial students focused on their innovations and continued to develop new ideas. A huge kudos to everyone who applied this semester and pitched at the Semi-Finals or the Finals. Your dedication is highly admirable and stands as a testament to both your character and commitment to creating solutions.

The bar is continually rising for what it takes to win our staple pitch competition, and this semester was no exception. The Finalists for the Winter 2021 Concept $5K Finals were covering a wide range of industries and solving important problems that thoroughly impressed our judges.

We would like to extend a massive thank you to everyone on our judging panel for taking the time to come out and help support student entrepreneurship. Their questions and feedback were invaluable for the teams and will enable them to look deeper into their ideas and better refine them for future success. Thank you to John Cappuccitti, Keyma Prince, and Julia Fung for providing their expertise and helping to split hairs between Finalists and Winners. Although each team made their decision difficult, a few pitches and ideas stood out above the rest.

This term's winners are:

• AquaSensing, which designs battery-free water leak detection systems that reduce environmental footprint, upfront costs, and recurring maintenance requirements.

• Arbitrium, a digital end-to-end decision making platform that allows organizations to easily make unbiased group decisions involving multiple stakeholders.

• Scribenote, which eliminates hours of costly, taxing work for doctors, nurses and veterinarians by automating medical documentation.

• UWTensil, which has developed a novel material to be manufactured into cheap, biodegradable cutlery (and other food distribution applications), serving as a viable replacement for disposable cutlery when the Canadian ban on single-use plastics is implemented.

The Winning Continues

A huge congratulations to all these impressive as they join an illustrious group of previous Concept $5K Winners who continue to develop their ideas and make UWaterloo proud. Although the $5K grants have been named, the competition isn’t over yet: voting is open until April 1 to help decide the People’s Champ who will receive $500 and the knowledge that their idea is loved by the community. To vote, check out the Finals pitches on YouTube and like the video of your favourite team. We will announce the winner over social media on April 1 so be sure to follow us and stay tuned.

As another term draws to a close, the University of Waterloo community has once again displayed a passion for innovation and a dedication to creating solutions. We commend everyone involved and look forward to seeing all these teams (Finalists, Semi-Finalists, and applicants) continue to develop their ideas and build awesome startups at UWaterloo. To stay in the know about other exciting opportunities and to see how these teams progress follow us on social media and sign up for our newsletter for your weekly dose of Concept news.

Read the full blog post and see videos from the winning teams

New study advances scientific understanding of Solar Geoengineering

This article originally appeared on the Interdisciplinary Centre on Climate Change website.

A University of Waterloo researcher is part of an interdisciplinary committee that released a new report entitled “Reflecting Sunlight: Recommendations for Solar Geoengineering Research and Research Governance.”

Waterloo’s Juan Moreno-Cruz is a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) committee who developed the report on Solar Geoengineering (SG). Juan is a Professor in the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development and a member of Waterloo’s Interdisciplinary Centre on Climate Change (IC3).

The report examines the current understanding of the potential risks and benefits of three proposed SG strategies and makes recommendations for how to establish a research program, a research agenda, and mechanisms for governing this research.

The NASEM committee was asked to develop a research agenda to advance the scientific understanding of SG and recommend how SG research should be governed. The committee focused on three particular SG strategies--Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI), Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB), Cirrus Cloud Thinning (CCT). The committee was comprised of interdisciplinary experts, as is evident in the resulting research agenda.

“Solar Geoengineering technologies are viewed by some as a potential strategy to reduce surface temperatures and potentially ameliorate some risks posed by climate change” explains Juan.  “But these strategies are controversial within and beyond the climate science community. There is a lot we don’t know about it yet. This report is a step towards a US research program for solar geoengineering to help us understand its potential for cooling earth and reducing some of the risks of climate change—and to understand any potential harmful impacts of these technologies on society and the environment.”

This study will support the development of a research agenda and research governance approaches for climate intervention strategies that reflect sunlight to cool Earth. This work will also help to inform research governance mechanisms at international, national, and sub-national scales.

“A research program for solar geoengineering that’s designed well is just as likely to lead us to abandoning this option as a climate change strategy as it is to lead to us considering deploying it” says Juan. “As research moves forward, nations should work together to set international norms and governance for these technologies. Canada can lead on this international effort, but research is a precondition for Canada to be an active participant in determining these international governance structures. We have the talent and the expertise and the responsibility to guide this research.”

For more information on the report and project please visit the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine website. 

Earth Month Challenge begins; other notes

The Sustainability Office has launched the Earth Month 2021 challenge, happening from Monday, March 29 to Friday, April 23. "This four-week challenge will encourage you to take action on four different weekly themes: sustainable food, waste reduction, connecting with nature, and promoting wellness," says a note from the Sustainability Office. Here’s how you can participate:

1. Register for the challenge to stay in the loop
2. Take action each week from a list of five themed actions
3. Track your impact through the weekly reporting form
4. Get rewarded by contributing to collective impact and being entered into the grand prize draw

For more information and to register, please visit the Earth Month 2021 challenge webpage and keep tabs on social media using the hashtag #EarthMonthUW.

Members of the University community are invited to find out more about key updates to Policy 42: the Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Policy and Procedures, the process for making a complaint, as well as your roles and responsibilities as a university employee when someone has been impacted by sexual violence, in a workshop entitled Policy 42 and You. The workshop will be held Tuesday, March 30, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.

Today is the last day to register for Employee Wellness Session: Decoding Nutrition Claims and Nutrition Labels. The wellness session, offered by Registered Dietitian Nicole Pin takes place on Tuesday, March 30, from 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Registration is also open for the following Employee Wellness Sessions, offered by Homewood Health and the Employee and Family Assistance Plan:

• COVID-19 – Calming Your Mind During these Challenging Times, Wednesday, April 7, 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.
• Beyond Stigma – Increasing Our Understanding of Mental Health in the Workplace, Friday, April 9, 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.

Registration dates for both of the sessions are Monday, March 29 to end of day Monday, April 5.

Here's the latest Nutrition Month Myth vs. Fact supplied by Health Services Dietitian Sandra Ace:

Myth:  The Internet is a good place to find reliable nutrition advice.

Fact:  Much of the nutrition information online is not based on scientific evidence.

Consumers seeking health-information have a good reason to be skeptical. Anyone can have a website, write a blog, sell a product or author a book. Someone who doesn’t have the proper credentials has the potential to waste your time, money or, even worse, may give recommendations that are detrimental to your health. Some individuals may even appear to be qualified, however just because they have initials after their name doesn’t mean they have training that qualifies them to provide accurate, evidence-supported nutrition recommendations.

Familiarize yourself with guidelines that can help you accurately evaluate web-based health information. Don’t turn to the Internet when you are making important health decisions. Instead, speak with a trusted and qualified healthcare professional. If you are searching for information on a particular health topic, look for websites from sources such as government and public health websites, educational institutions, and disease-specific, non-profit advocacy, research and education organizations like the Canadian Cancer Society. For starters, you can find some reliable nutrition-related websites here.

Online info is not a substitute for personalized, expert nutrition guidance. Many extended health insurance programs, including the plan which covers eligible University of Waterloo employees, provide benefits for paramedical services including Registered Dietitians. A dietitian must fulfill rigourous educational and other requirements which make them uniquely qualified professionals. Registered Dietitians practicing in Ontario are licensed and regulated by the College of Dietitians of Ontario, use the initials “RD” after their name and can be found on this public registry. Telehealth Ontario also provides free access to a Registered Dietitian for Ontario residents who call with a food or nutrition question.