Thursday, March 10, 2022

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• Alumnus leads pharmacy team at Waterloo Region vaccine clinics
• Orbital student team going above and beyond
• Pension and Benefits Committee releases 2021 report to the community
• RAISE to hold XChanges conference later this month
• Nutrition Month weekly tip and other note

Alumnus leads pharmacy team at Waterloo Region vaccine clinics

March is Pharmacy Appreciation Month. This month, in our #PAM2022 series, the School of Pharmacy is looking back on the many ways that our pharmacy community has supported Canadians through the pandemic.

The Grand River Hospital (GRH) clinic was Waterloo Region’s first vaccine clinic. Alumnus Daniel Pereira (BScPhm 2015) worked there since day one, overseeing the pharmacy team and their processes to ensure the clinic runs smoothly.

“This clinic was pivotal for our region because it allowed us to support the development of other clinics – both permanent and mobile – by sharing our procedures and experiences,” says Daniel, a pharmacist and Clinical Practice Coordinator with Grand River Hospital.

Daniel provided clinic tours and answered questions for teams responsible for other Waterloo region vaccine clinics. He also developed and refined processes for receiving, tracking, transporting, handling and preparing Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

When the decision was made to open the University of Waterloo Health Sciences Campus (HSC), housed at the School of Pharmacy, team members for that vaccine clinic visited Daniel and learned how to work with the Pfizer vaccine.

“Pfizer is a tricky vaccine to work with,” says Nancy Waite, a pharmacy professor who coordinated the training of the HSC Clinic’s pharmacy team. “We’re grateful to Daniel and his team for the opportunity to learn how to work with this vaccine prior to the HSC clinic’s opening. Seeing an alum of our program so involved providing leadership for our region’s vaccine campaign filled us with pride.”

As the vaccine supply for Waterloo Region grew, the GRH clinic was closed to make way for the larger clinic on Pinebush Road in Cambridge. The Pinebush site was also run by GRH staff, and Daniel Pereira was the Pharmacy Lead.   

Read Daniel’s full story on the School of Pharmacy website.

Orbital student team going above and beyond

By Carol Truemner. This article was originally featured on Waterloo News.

Fueled by passion for the final frontier, UW Orbital is building a satellite members hope will someday blast off into space.

The year-old student team is working on CubeSat, a fully functioning satellite, for research in earth-centred orbit, called Eternium-III, and to compete in 2023’s Canadian Satellite Design Challenge.

The approximately 70 members, who are mainly engineering students, are developing a single three-unit Cubesat, which is about the size of three Rubik's Cubes stacked together or a milk container.

A low-cost alternative to traditional multimillion-dollar satellite projects, a CubeSat allows smaller organizations like student teams to become involved in space initiatives.

About a dozen post-secondary institutions from across the country will take part in next year’s Canadian Satellite Design Challenge to be held in Ottawa. First prize is funding to launch the winning school’s CubeSat. 

Supervised by George Shaker, a Waterloo professor crossed-appointed to electrical and computer engineering, and mechanical and mechatronics engineering, UW Orbital is a rebranded version of the University of Waterloo Satellite Team (WatSat), which operated from 2010-2018.

Many members of WatSat and other CubeSat teams are providing mentorship to UW Orbital as it builds its entry for the design challenge as well as a space community within the University of Waterloo.

While the pandemic had many members working remotely for months, the team’s seven subteams – command and data handling (firmware), electrical, altitude control, mechanical, communications, payload, and business – have begun meeting in person at Engineering 5’s Sedra Student Design Centre or elsewhere on campus.

Innovating outside of the rules

Roman Semin, UW Orbital’s operation lead, says he’s excited about the research the team is undertaking.

“I’m a very curious person who is interested in exploration and taking a different road,” explains the third-year systems design engineering student.

Semin says the team is not just following the challenge requirements but innovating outside of them.

Members are currently creating what Semin describes as a “very cool” payload system, which includes a selfie-satellite camera and a laser-based orientation and communication system.

“We are helping facilitate quantum research,” he says. “There are a lot of technical components I can’t discuss at this point, but this is something that is very unique.”

UW Orbital members work on the team's CubeSat.

The team is looking to recruit graduate students who can provide guidance with some of the technical aspects of CubeSat’s payload system.

To help fund its work, UW Orbital has secured several sponsors and launched a Kickstarter campaign last month. 

Being part of UW Orbital is not only a great fit for Semin’s interests, it’s also providing hands-on experience for what he’d like to pursue after he completes his Waterloo Engineering degree.    

“When I graduate, I see myself becoming a management consultant and doing similar work – overseeing the whole project and making sure that both the team and the systems work,” he says. “It fits right into what I’m doing now.”

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Pension and Benefits Committee releases 2021 report to the community

"The Pension & Benefits Committee is pleased to present its 2021 report to the community," says a memo from the Pension & Benefits Committee circulated to pension plan members yesterday. "In this report we provide an overview of the issues that the Pension & Benefits Committee addressed during the past calendar year."

The Pension & Benefits Committee is a standing committee of the Board of Governors responsible for overseeing the University’s employee pension plans, health care and dental plans, sick leave benefits, long-term disability benefit, and life insurance benefit. Its membership is made up of representatives from the University’s employee groups, administration, the Board, retirees, and the affiliated and federated institutions of Waterloo. The committee meets on a monthly basis (except April, July and August).

Highlights of the 2021 report include:

• Benefit plan changes implemented as part of the Holistic Benefits Working Group Recommendations;
• An overview of the committee’s work plan items for 2021;
• Information about the January 2021 Actuarial Valuation and Filing for the University’s pension plan; and
• An update on pension plan investments.

If you have difficulty accessing the link, please contact Melissa Holst. If you have any questions, please contact the committee secretary Mike Grivicic.

RAISE to hold XChanges conference later this month

The Waterloo Undergraduate Students Association student-led racial advocacy service, RAISE (the Racial Advocacy for Inclusion, Solidarity and Equity), will be hosting their annual XChanges conference this Saturday March 26, 2022, from 9:00 p.m to 4:00 p.m., virtually through Zoom. This year’s theme is Cultivating Community.

“Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, the past two years have been filled with unprecedented levels of isolation and disconnection, so this conference aims to provide our community with the opportunity to cultivate new connections, reignite old ones that may have been lost through this pandemic, and highlight the amazing work that is being done in our community," says a statement from RAISE. "In doing so, we aspire to equip our students with the skills to build relationships, heal, and be prepared to build a future that leads with love and human connection. Humans are not supposed to exist in isolation, but rather in entangled networks, and through these networks, cultivate spaces to form bonds, relationships, connections, and more importantly, solidarity. Our hope is that through this conference, we are able to replenish love, unity, and hope. In the words of the late bell hooks, “[O]ne of the most vital ways we sustain ourselves is by building communities of resistance, places where we know we are not alone”.”

Through four interactive sessions: Cultivating Community: Nourishing One Another, Cultivating Community: Reclaiming Culture, Space and Land, Cultivating Community: Healing Hand in Hand, and Cultivating Community: Bringing Words to Life - RAISE strives to highlight how these elements are crucial in cultivating community and fostering love, kindness, and unity.

Join RAISE and fellow community members as they gather and learn about the importance of community from their amazing lineup of speakers - keep an eye out on their Instagram @uwraise for the release of the lineup. XChanges will be hosted through Zoom on Saturday, March 26, 2022, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Ticket details will be announced soon. If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to reach out to the RAISE team.

Nutrition Month weekly tip and other notes

This Week’s Nutrition Month Tip: There are a lot of ways to make our food choices more sustainable. Choosing reusable storage options, looking for less packaging at the store, buying local, and choosing more plant-based foods are a few that come to mind for me. Ask yourself what is one new sustainable action you can take when it comes to food and meals? Maybe its as simple as buying one new local vegetable or fruit each week (yes there’s local and seasonal choices even in the winter.). What about swapping your plastic snack bags for a few silicone ones or small reusable containers? One small change at a time can make a big difference in the long term.

Learn more at NutritionMonth2022.ca and follow @UWSustainable for more great tips on living sustainably.

The next IT Professional Development Advisory Group (PDAG) seminar will take place on Friday, March 11 at 9:00 a.m. to 9:45 a.m. via Microsoft Teams. "WATonoBus" will feature presenter Neel Bhatt, who will cover a high level overview of the University of Waterloo's autonomous shuttle bus project - WATonoBus. An overview of the sensors installed on the WATonoBus and iterations of the computing architecture made, as well as high-level software structure of the modules involved in making the bus run autonomously will be presented. In addition, some of the primary challenges solved to date and those that remain along with next steps and expansion to North Campus will be discussed. There will be ample time dedicated for questions from the audience.

Lawrence Folland will moderate the Q&A portion of the event.

Neel Bhatt conducts research in perception, prediction, and safe autonomous decision making for autonomous vehicles at MVS Lab. He is currently investigating methods to improve performance of real-time object trajectory prediction algorithms and interaction aware motion forecasting models for various non sign controlled urban driving settings. During his time at University of Waterloo, Neel has also been leading efforts on the WATonoBus project working on software and algorithmic development of the perception and prediction modules required for the autonomous shuttle bus.

During his PhD program, Neel worked at General Motors R&D as a Software Engineering Intern and developed deep learning models for enhancing vehicle state estimation. Prior to this, he worked at Clearpath Robotics as an Applications Engineering Intern working with ROS and OpenCV for various vision based projects. Prior to joining the direct PhD program at University of Waterloo, Neel received his BASc. in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Robotics from University of Toronto. Neel worked as a research intern for two terms during his undergraduate studies.

This session will be recorded and shared on MS Stream via the PDAG Channel.

Join the event on Microsoft Teams.