Monday, June 27, 2022

21 Teams To Pitch in the Concept $5K Semi-Finals

21 teams have been invited to pitch at the Concept $5K Semi-Finals on June 28 and 29th from 5-7pm to a panel of experienced entrepreneurs. Each competitor will have just 3-minutes to present their idea and convince the judges it has the potential and viability to succeed. The Concept $5K pitch competition offers the opportunity for University of Waterloo student led teams with innovative solutions and high potential business ideas to showcase their hard work and compete for grant funding. 

The event runs on June 28 and 29, from 5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. at SCH Cafeteria or online (see the list of teams pitching below). Pizza and water will be available for all those attending Register to attend night one and/or night two.

Find out more and meet the teams.

Join the Games Institute for a discussion on games and health

Join the Games Institute on July 5 at 1:30 p.m. for a panel discussion with three Games Institute (GI) faculty members about their work in games and health. This event will be held both online and in-person and the GI. The panel will feature Dean of Health Dr. Lili Liu, Associate Professor Dr. Michael Barnett-Cowan and Systems Design Engineering (SYDE) Instructor Dr. John Muñoz.

You can register on Eventbrite now.

Dr. Lili Liu is a Professor in the School of Public Health Sciences, and Dean of the Faculty of Health. Her research examines ways technologies can help older adults and family caregivers. Dr. Liu's research program involves partners such as Alzheimer Societies, police services, search and rescue services, and dementia advocacy and caregiver associations, nationally and internationally. Dr. Liu will be discussing her project “Feasibility and Acceptability of a Serious Mobile-Game Intervention for Older Adults.

Dr. Michael Barnett-Cowan is an Associate Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Kinesiology, and the Director of the Multisensory Brain and Cognition Lab, which seeks to determine how the brain integrates multisensory information. The lab uses different techniques such as psychophysics, neuroimaging, brain stimulation, motion tracking, and virtual reality to assess cognitive function, time perception, object recognition, decision-making, and coordinated movements in the normal, injured, diseased, and aging brain. Dr Barnett-Cowan will be discussing his work in assessing multisensory integration in real and virtual environments and applications to health."

Dr. John Muñoz is a research scientist and game designer interested in using human body signals to create more "humanized" assistive technologies based on games and interactive systems. John’s research has been applied mainly in healthcare scenarios from physical activity promotion for the seniors to neurorehabilitation games for stroke patients. John has designed and co-developed a dozen video games interfaced with physiological sensors such as brain-computer interfaces (BCI), heart rate monitors, depth cams, and wearable electromyography armbands as well as a set of software tools that to promote the synergy between physiological computing and gaming. Dr Muñoz will be discussing “Seas the Day” a VR experience on the Oculus Quest designed to improve the health of older adults.

New study shows how having had COVID-19 may negatively impact your performance at work

This article was originally published on Waterloo News.

Individuals who contract COVID-19 often experience memory, attention, and concentration problems, even after recovering from the initial illness. A new study from the University of Waterloo shows individuals who had contracted COVID-19 reported significantly more cognitive failures at work.

“COVID-19 is going to be an ongoing part of life, at least for the foreseeable future,” said James Beck, an associate professor in Waterloo’s Psychology department. “It is now common for people to catch COVID-19, recover, and then return to work. Yet, in our study, people who had contracted COVID-19 reported more difficulties at work, relative to people who had never caught COVID.”

Beck and his graduate student, Arden Flow, collected data from a sample of 94 full-time working adults who either had or had not contracted COVID-19 at least one month prior to the study. Both groups were matched on key demographic characteristics.

“Relative to the group who had never had COVID-19, the group who had contracted COVID-19 reported more cognitive failures at work, which are defined as problems with memory, attention, and action,” Beck said.

A second finding of the work is that cognitive failures were associated with decreased self-ratings of job performance, as well as increased intentions to voluntarily leave one’s current job.

“These results may have important implications for managers and organizations more broadly,” Beck said. “Individuals returning to work after contracting COVID-19 may experience difficulties returning to their pre-COVID-19 level of performance, and accommodations may be necessary. These accommodations might include reducing workloads, extending deadlines, or providing flexible work arrangements.”

The study, The effects of contracting Covid-19 on cognitive failures at work: implications for task performance and turnover intentions, authored by Beck and Flow, was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Remembering John Peter Sprung

Left to Right: Paul Dirksen, Wes Graham, George Hill, Sandra Bruce, Jim Dodd, and Peter Sprung.  Photo: UW Archives/Don Cowan: 25 October 1973

John Peter Sprung, who played a vital role in the growth of the Computer Science department at the University of Waterloo, passed away at the age of 83 on June 7, 2022. Professor Sprung passed on his joy of Mathematics to many students in his 25 years at Waterloo.

Peter attended high school in Kitchener and received a degree in Electrical Engineering (University of Toronto) in 1961. He later completed his master’s degree in mathematics (University of Waterloo) in 1964.

Peter’s early career took him across Canada. After some time spent in the navy serving on HMCS Terra Nova in Nova Scotia, he moved to Winnipeg to work for Air Canada as a Manager of Computer Operations in their computing department. In 1971, Peter accepted a position as Computer Operations Manager with the Computer Science department at University of Waterloo, where he spent the rest of his career.

From 1971 to 1999, Professor Sprung ran Waterloo's early computing centre. As the University’s Licensing Officer, he assisted in implementing the University's IP policy and in drafting the early agreements that shaped its way of operating in these areas. Most notably, Professor Sprung was instrumental in working with Oxford University Press to computerize the prestigious Oxford English Dictionary (OED). His expertise proved especially useful in developing the database and its attendant software, which allowed for future editing, revisions, additions, enhancements, and provided facilities for processing complex queries.

Another major contribution was his “software primer,” which helped define who was the author of a piece of software. Peter was recognized for his expertise in software copyright law, which he used to contribute to the success of a software company after retirement.  

Professor Sprung is survived by his beloved wife, Dorothea, and his loving children Jennifer, Ronald, Laura, and Gordon.

A memorial service will be held at Erb & Good Family Funeral Home on July 4at 11:00 a.m. For those unable to attend in person, the service will be livestreamed.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony and can be arranged through the funeral home at www.erbgood.com or 519-745-8445.

We extend our deepest sympathies to Professor Sprung’s family.

Shane McIntosh receives Early Researcher Award to develop self-sustaining software build systems

This article was originally published on the Cheriton School of Computer Science website.

Professor Shane McIntosh was awarded $140,000 by the Ministry of Colleges and Universities Early Researcher Awards program for his proposal titled “Self-sustaining software build systems.” This amount is matched by an additional $50,000 from the University of Waterloo, bringing the total funding to $190,000.

Professor McIntosh, whose research encompasses empirical software engineering, with a specific focus on release engineering and software quality, was one of eight researchers at the University of Waterloo to receive an Early Researcher Award in this round of funding.

Shane McIntosh leads the Software Repository Excavation and Build Engineering Labs — the Software REBELs for short — the mission of which is to enable the development, maintenance, and operation of intelligent release pipelines. He and his students perform empirical studies that mine the historical data that is generated during the development of large-scale software systems. 

“Modern software development is multifaceted,” Professor McIntosh explains. “Source code describes how software systems should behave, but a collection of other software artifacts and tools are needed to create software that’s ready to be released. Each of these artifacts and tools manage part of the software release process, but it is the build system — the system that specifies how the source code is translated into deliverables — that weaves them together into a cohesive whole.”

Build systems are centrally important to modern software development. Developers run build system tools regularly to assess the impact their code changes have on software products. Modern software development simply would not be possible without a robust and reliable build system. But despite their importance, build systems also introduce complexity and overhead into the development process. Furthermore, they can be maintained haphazardly, leading to unreliable continuous integration and delivery services as well as defective software releases.

To mitigate this risk and lessen the burden of build maintenance, Professor McIntosh and his students will explore the extent to which build systems can sustain themselves by mining build logs from broken and clean builds to detect and derive maintenance changes to build system specifications when they are required. The goal of creating self-sustaining build systems comprises two research objectives — detecting when and classifying the build maintenance actions that might be needed, and formulating and implementing repair strategies when build maintenance is required.

“Self-sustaining build systems have the potential to change the way software is developed,” Professor McIntosh said. “By relieving software teams of the burden of maintaining build system specifications, more time and effort can be invested in developing new features of the software product, fixing defects that may affect users, and improving automated tests to assess usage patterns and deployment scenarios.”

This ERA funding will support four software engineering students in total — one PhD student and one undergraduate research assistant to detect and classify types of neglected build maintenance, and another PhD student and undergraduate research assistant to formulate and implement repair strategies.

“My ambition is not only to reduce the risk and effort associated with build maintenance, but also train the next generation of software engineering professionals who will contribute substantially to Ontario’s vibrant tech sector.”

W Store's Spend More Save More Event

A message from Print + Retail Solutions

Come shop the Spend More Save More Event from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on June 28 and 29 in the Student Life Centre, MPR room. The more you spend, the more you save!

• Spend $50, Save 15%
• Spend $100, Save 20%
• Spend $150+, Save 25%

For two days only, check out some crazy markdowns on select apparel, technology, accessories and stationery, while supplies last. The first 50 people who make a purchase on either day will get a FREE gift.

Clearance event is in-person only in the SLC, multi-purpose room. Discounts are already applied. Any additional questions can be directed to the W Store team at wstore@uwaterloo.ca