Monday, July 11, 2022

Toronto-Waterloo Region Corridor highlighted in 2022 Startup Genome rankings

By Jon Parsons. This article was originally featured on Waterloo News.

The Toronto-Waterloo Region Corridor has been recognized as one of the world’s premier locations to start a company.

A recently released report ranks the region top in Canada for startups and among the fastest growing in North America.

The ranking lists the University of Waterloo as a key player in the corridor because of its unique entrepreneurial culture and as host to the largest post-secondary co-op program in Canada.

OpenText and eSentire, both University of Waterloo spinoffs, are listed among the main companies contributing to the overall Toronto-Waterloo ecosystem valuation at $46 billion USD.

“Innovation and entrepreneurship have long been drivers for our region, and we are proud of the role our institution has played in preparing and empowering talent and technology,” says Vivek Goel, president and vice-chancellor of the University of Waterloo. “This latest recognition is a reflection of the important work being done by community, private sector and government and industry partners to foster Canada’s high-tech sector.”

The ranking notes that while well-established startup locales in Silicon Valley and New York continue to lead the pack, “North American founders are increasingly choosing to set up outside of established leading ecosystems and are creating new thriving hubs of innovation.”

Startup Genome’s founder and CEO, J.F. Gauthier, offered a glowing review of the Toronto-Waterloo startup ecosystem, specifically highlighting some of the major entrepreneurial incubators in the region. 

“Toronto-Waterloo is Canada’s leading startup ecosystem, ranking as number 17 globally due to an impressive growth of 128 per cent,” Gauthier says. In 2021, a record $7.7 billion went to startups in Toronto and Waterloo.

One key to the region’s ongoing success as a hub for innovation is its multiculturalism, which the report notes is driven by Canada’s social-democratic values, in turn attracting talent from around the world.

As a hotbed for talent, the region has seen a flourishing of new companies working in AI, cybersecurity, fintech, healthtech and sustainability.

Startup Genome’s 2022 Global Startup Ecosystem Report compares some of the world’s major innovation regions, including Silicon Valley, New York, London and other major entrepreneurial ecosystems.

The report is the world’s most comprehensive and widely-read research on startups, with nearly 300 innovation ecosystems and more than three million companies included in the analysis.

The top 20 in the rankings are:

#1 - Silicon Valley

#2 (tie) - New York City

#2 (tie) - London

#4 - Boston

#5 - Beijing

#6 - Los Angeles

#7 - Tel Aviv

#8 - Shanghai

#9 - Seattle

#10 - Seoul

#11 - Washington DC

#12 - Tokyo

#13 - San Diego

#14 - Amsterdam-Delta

#15 - Paris

#16 - Berlin

#17 - Toronto-Waterloo

#18 - Singapore

#19 - Chicago

#20 - Sydney

Environment's first eLearning course developed by grad students for grad students

This article was originally published on the Faculty of Environment's news site.

In the Winter 2022 term, the Faculty of Environment offered an e-Learning Graduate-level Course on Decolonizing Methodologies for Sustainability Research. The course was designed and delivered by School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability (SERS) PhD students Lowine Hill and Madu Galappaththi, and former School of Planning PhD student Sarah Ghorpade.

The eLearning course was part of an initiative the three have led since Spring 2021, beginning with a Workshop Series offered to Grad students, followed by a speakers series co-organized with the Faculty in the Fall term.

The result of these two activities culminated in the eLearning course, which they saw as a way to embed the materials and continue the conversation, while addressing a pertinent gap in graduate training in relation to research methodologies.

Remarkably, the inaugural offering of the eLearning Course (non-credit) was designed to help students at any stage of their research to examine the meaning of decolonization with respect to themselves and their research. Participants were guided through a three-step approach, beginning with reflections on each student’s own power and positionality as researchers; then exploring decolonization of the research process more broadly. Finally, they applied this knowledge to their own research, including through bringing other voices and epistemologies into the centre of the research process. Action planning was also a central element of this course.

The course was intended in part to help students develop an understanding of decolonization in the context of sustainability research. "We hear the term "decolonization" a lot - but its meaning can be fuzzy,” said Ghorpade. “One of our aims was to help participants develop an understanding of what it means to them, what it means with respect to sustainability as a discipline, and then to start thinking about ways to take action on it within their graduate research and beyond."

"The need to embed learning about decolonisation and sustainability research through a course was a suggestion that came out strongly during the Speakers Series,” said Hill. “The material resonated with graduate students and faculty alike and addressed a gap.”

The five-week course included five learning modules, two synchronous sessions, and interactive discussion board activities. Each module included a blend of presentations, readings, and video recordings from leading scholars in this space from within Canada and beyond. This included Waterloo’s own professor Janice Barry (School of Planning), professor Deborah McGregor from York University, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith, professor from Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi, New Zealand.

A total of 14 students participated in the course, comprising Masters and PhD students from across the Faculty of Environment. The course was well received, with many students noting that the course provoked reflections on aspects of their education and research approach that they had not explicitly examined before.

"The course helped me recognize and address some of my own biases and assumptions with respect to how I approach and reference research. It also encouraged me to broaden my perspectives, and integrate different knowledge traditions into my research,” said Alexandra Ho, Master of Climate Change student.

The instructors hope the participants left the course with a better understanding of what decolonization means to them and feel equipped to take tangible steps to addressing it in their own research.

 “We do acknowledge that there are realities of graduate student programs, like milestones and timelines, which can limit the extent to which certain strategies can be implemented. But we are hopeful that the learnings of the course will contribute to a shift in mindset about research that will stay with participants throughout their career,” said Galappaththi.

Hill, Galappaththi, and Ghorpade are grateful for the enthusiasm and contributions of the grad community as well as the support they received from the faculty’s staff, faculty members and leadership, particularly Faculty of Environment Dean, Jean Andrey. The trio said, “Dean Jean has been the wind in our sails throughout!”

The trio is encouraged by the impact they have had so far and are looking forward to continuing this conversation with the incoming Faculty leadership. 

Read the full story to view the speaker series videos

Virtue helps people rise above despair and resentment, says research

New research reveals that devotion to selfless values can help people feel more confident and less hostile in stressful circumstances. 

In two experiments, participants focused on their own selfless values, with most related to benefiting others. This action caused brain activity and feelings linked to personal power, which made the participants less hostile toward disliked people and worldviews.

“Selfless values can be like life vests that buoy a kind of higher power and resilience, freeing us from worry and defensiveness,” said Ian McGregor, professor of personality and social psychology at the University of Waterloo and the study’s lead author. “Focusing on a greater good beyond themselves had the paradoxical effect of making participants’ psychologically stronger and more reasonable.”

In both experiments the authors first reminded all participants about stressful topics—such as relationship problems and moral violations—that have typically made participants upset and defensively hostile in past research. They then gave the participants a few minutes to describe how their life goals reflected their highest values. In one of the experiments, 197 participants wore electroencephalographic (EEG) headsets that measured patterns of brain activity related to power and enthusiasm. In the second experiment, 490 participants rated how determined and enthusiastic they felt.  

Focusing on selfless values in their lives heightened the EEG and feeling measures of personal power, which in turn reduced harsh judgments. Importantly, these effects occurred only among participants who also reported being persistently engaged in the pursuit of purpose and meaning in their lives.  

“These results help makes sense of why and for whom devotion to selfless values can sustain tenacious resolve, even in seemingly hopeless circumstances,” McGregor said.

These results build on previous research by McGregor and collaborators showing that devotion to virtue predicts wise reasoning and respect for others’ perspectives in conflicts. They also complement another line of their researchshowing that hate between groups can activate the same motivational system to bolster feelings of personal power and meaning in life.

“Together, the present and previous research suggests that devotion to virtue may be an under-appreciated antidote to hostility and hate in the real world. Virtue and hate are alternative levers for activating personal power and meaning in life. If you have one, you feel less need for the other,” McGregor said.  

The new study appears in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 

Students reflect on lessons learned at UAV competition

Members of student team WARG (Waterloo Aerial Robotics Team) confer while competing at an event in Manitoba.

This article was originally published on the Faculty of Engineering's news site.

Members of a University of Waterloo student team with a strong engineering contingent didn’t snag any hardware, but they still came home with valuable lessons from a recent competition for unmanned aerial vehicles.

The Waterloo Aerial Robotics Group (WARG) was one of seven university teams from across Canada to put their entries to the test at the 13^th Unmanned Systems Canada Student UAS Competition in Southport, Manitoba in May.

In only their second year of participation, members of the 90-student team were pleased to successfully complete both competition tasks – one involving the disposal of a hazardous package and the other detecting intruders within a designated perimeter.

“We came here to learn and to collect data, and we did just that,” said Sahil Kale, the team’s technical director and pilot. “I’m proud of us for getting in the air both days.”

Lessons learned ranged from the importance of having clear areas of responsibility to reduce confusing communication among team members, to having more spare parts on hand to handle inevitable repairs.

WARG, which draws more than three-quarters of its members from engineering programs, had the only unmanned vehicle system in the competition that was developed entirely in-house. Over half of members are in their first or second years of study.

“Whether we succeed or fail in competition, the goal is to ensure that students leave the team with technical skills and memorable experiences that they take with them after graduation,” said Jenny Luo, the team’s business lead.

Members on the contest team, dubbed Project Vanguard, were Sahil Kale, Jenny Luo, Ryan Dullaert, Aidan Bowers, Matt Visser, Brielle Chenier, Anthony Luo and Daniel Puratich.

The competition is meant to promote and develop Canadian expertise and experience in unmanned aerial systems technologies.