Wednesday, June 9, 2021

President's Town Hall set for June 15

President Feridun Hamdullahpur will be hosting a virtual President's Town Hall Meeting on Tuesday, June 15.

President Hamdullahpur and senior leaders will provide an update on key issues and about how the University plans to expand in-person experiences for our students and staff in the fall and beyond, from operational changes and safety concerns to progress on vaccinations and beyond.

Sandra Banks, vice-president, university relations, will host and moderate the town hall event.

Attendees can take part in a live Q&A following the president’s presentation.

The event will be held from 11:00 a.m. to 12 noon on Microsoft Teams on Tuesday, June 15.

Register for the event today.

Waterloo amongst top 150 universities in world

This article was originally published on Waterloo News.

The University of Waterloo is amongst the top 150 universities in the world, according to QS World University Rankings, an annual publication of comparative data about university performance.

One of 1,300 institutions ranked, Waterloo placed 149^th in the 2022 ranking, 17 spots higher than its 2021 mark of 166^th. Waterloo’s ranking amongst Canadian institutions remained stable at 7^th out of 28, but saw the largest overall improvement for Canadian universities in the top 150 over one year.

“This great leap over a one-year period is a testament of the hard work and dedication of our University community in the areas of teaching and academic excellence,” says Feridun Hamdullahpur, president and vice-chancellor of Waterloo. “To be recognized on the global scale as one of the world’s top 150 universities demonstrates the incredible impact we have on society every day.”

The University’s strongest indicators include:

1. Employer reputation (improving from 85^th to 76^th, 4^th in Canada) where 75,000 employers were asked to rank university graduates in terms of hireability, and;
2. Citations per faculty (improving from 95^th to 80^th, 3^rd in Canada) measures the average number of citations obtained per faculty member and is a measure of the impact and quality of the scientific work produced by universities.

Waterloo’s academic reputation rank dropped slightly from 210^th last year to 213^th this year, however ranks improved in the international student indicator from 145^th last year to 141^st this year (fifth in Canada) and international faculty indicator from 234^th to 214^th. Both measures are based on the proportion of faculty members or students that are international and measure how internationally attractive the University is to these groups.

How to enlist nature itself in the fight against climate change

This article was originally published on the Interdisciplinary Centre on Climate Change's website.

By protecting, better managing, and restoring nature, Canada can reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, concludes Nature United’s ground-breaking Natural Climate Solutions for Canada. The new study published in Science Advancesshows that Natural Climate Solutions can help Canada mitigate up to 78 Mt CO₂e annually in 2030—an amount equal to the current greenhouse gas emissions from powering every single home in Canada for about three years.

Building on global and American studies, Nature United collaborated with 16 institutions and 38 leading experts from academia, governments, and non-governmental organizations in Canada and the United States to analyze Canada-specific pathways to implement Natural Climate Solutions.

“Natural Climate Solutions draw on the power of nature to help reduce emissions, remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and store it in natural systems” (The Nature Conservancy, 2017).

IC3 spoke with Waterloo experts, Professor Maria Strack and Postdoctoral Fellow Scott J. Davidson, about the study and how they contributed with their work on peatlands.

An integral part of this work is determining how resilient peatland ecosystems are to land-use and climatic changes. As part of the Natural Climate Solutions for Canada study, Strack and Davidson synthesized the current data available on peatland carbon cycling across Canada and used available datasets on anthropogenic disturbances to identify the role these ecosystems can play as a Natural Climate Solution. 

“There are many co-benefits to managing ecosystems as natural climate solutions,” says Maria Strack, professor in the department of Geography and Environmental Management. “Protecting an ecosystem to enhance carbon storage also results in the protection of biodiversity, provision of recreation opportunities, improved water quality and many other valuable ecosystem services.”

Strack and Davidson conduct research that look at both improving our understanding of how disturbances such as resource extraction can impact ecosystem functioning in peatlands and methods to mitigate that impact. This work highlights the scale of these disturbances and helps us better understand the need for effective restoration practices. By contributing to the Natural Climate Solutions for Canada study, Strack and Davidson had the opportunity to build on their existing peatland restoration work and translate those research results into policy-relevant information.

Read the rest of the article

GEDI Exchange event to make a splash with water and AI

A message from GEDI.

Summer is nearly here, which means trips to the beach, hanging out at the cottage on the lake or a boat, catching fish at a river’s edge, and drinking lots of water to stay healthy.

With so much of what we love doing at any time of year dependent on water, it only makes sense to take care of it. Yet we dump so much into our waterways like fertilizers, chemicals, sewage, and garbage, that it affects the health of fish, birds, and us. It promotes (sometimes toxic) algae blooms, encourages the growth of nasty organisms, and robs it of oxygen, thereby suffocating nearly everything that lives in it. We are also becoming more dependent on aquaculture to put fresh fish on our tables - but there are significant challenges to doing so sustainably. Fixing these problems later will cost millions or even billions. So, how do we monitor and manage the water better? Our ability to enjoy all those wonderful summer activities and quality of life depend on it.

Please join us for 30 minutes at the next GEDI Exchange webinar with Blue Lion Labs and the University of Waterloo’s Water Institute. They will discuss using AI to help monitor, understand, and better manage our water. Last month’s webinar was about instrumenting and sensing the environment. This month is about what to do with the resulting large amounts of data to make intelligent, objective decisions to enable more effective and cost-efficient solutions.
 
If you have a few extra minutes, there will also be 10 minutes of audience Q&A after the discussion. Something to think about before sailing off into the lazy, hazy days of summer.

Register for the event on Tuesday, June 15.

Alumni podcast returns for second season with a tale of the unlikely co-founders

A message from Alumni Relations.

Waterloo's alumni podcast is back with a second season of conversations about unique career journeys. You can listen to a new episode of Uncharted: Warriors in the World in Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Soundcloud.

In true Waterloo fashion, our first episode features an entrepreneurial story. But, we promise, you've never heard one quite like this before. Sefunmi Osnaike (BASc '17) knew he wanted to start a company, and that he wanted his friend Helen Huang (BSc '17) to be a co-founder. But entrepreneurship wasn't even on Helen's radar. Listen to the episode now to hear how they eventually founded Co.Lab, an educational company that helps people launch their careers in tech.

New episodes of Uncharted: Warriors in the World are coming every month. Follow or subscribe in your favourite podcast player to get notified as soon as they’re live.

Learn more about this episode and see the show notes

Wednesday's notes

A San Francisco-based education technology—"edtech" if you prefer—company is planning to establish a foothold in Waterloo Region, according to a recent BetaKit article. MasterClass, famous for its, well, master class-style online learning video series featuring some of the biggest names in entertainment sharing their expertise (you've probably seen their ads on YouTube), is setting up an engineering hub in the region, hiring local veterans from Sandvine and Desire2Learn to lead the development project. "We chose the Kitchener-Waterloo area because of its proximity to the University of Waterloo and to sit alongside the thriving, cooperative community of technology companies at all stages of growth,” said a MasterClass spokesperson in a statement to BetaKit.

St. Jerome's University is reporting that its Principal, Peter Meehan, has joined other Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities in Canada (ACCUC) partners in signing a statement about the recent discovery of 215 children’s bodies at the former Kamloops Residential School that urges "the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops to request Pope Francis formally apologize to the survivors, their families, and to all of the Indigenous communities of Canada." 

"As the leaders of Canada’s Catholic universities and colleges, we feel it is imperative that the suffering and loss of life experienced at the residential schools are never forgotten," the ACCUC statement says. "As centres of learning, we re-commit our institutions to the importance of Indigenous education, and to listening and working with our Indigenous communities towards the goals of conscientization, reconciliation and healing. To these ends, we also request that the complete records of the residential schools be preserved and made available to all those who seek to learn from this horrific chapter in history."

The ACCUC is an organization of over twenty postsecondary academic institutions located across Canada. It acts as the official voice for Catholic higher learning in Canada.

You can read more on the St. Jerome's University website.