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Submission guidelines
Applications open for the AMTD Waterloo Global Talent Postdoctoral Fellowship
A message from Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs (GSPA).
Applications are open for the prestigious AMTD Waterloo Global Talent Postdoctoral Fellowship. Setting the gold standard for postdocs in Canada, this top-tier opportunity for recent PhD graduates was made possible through a multi-million dollar grant from alumnus Calvin Choi with the aim of developing global talent.
The program supports top scholars from around the world who have a disruptive research agenda. Applicants should propel revolutionary talent in research and scholarship for the betterment of society that resonates with the public both locally and globally. Applicants to this opportunity should be proposing novel research that boldly challenges and advances disciplines, is transformative and has global impact. Additionally, scholars should be “eager to be visible” and be able to demonstrate leadership by engaging with experts and non-experts both within and outside the academic environment.
Successful candidates will receive annual support that includes a $75,000 annual salary plus a benefits package. Scholars will also receive a one-time engagement fund of $7,500 at the time of their appointment plus access to additional funds to create disruptive research dissemination opportunities. The maximum term of the appointment is 2 years and up to six positions will be granted in 2023, including specific funding for Black or Indigenous scholars.
Applicants must have support/endorsement from a University of Waterloo researcher prior to applying; the application deadline is December 1, 2022. For more details, including eligibility criteria, the endorsement process, please visit the AMTD web page.
Waterloo will remember Pearl Sullivan
The Faculty of Engineering invites the University community to join it in celebration of the legacy of the late Pearl Sullivan at an event on Thursday, November 10 in Engineering 7.
Dr. Sullivan was the first woman to lead the Faculty of Engineering and served as the faculty's eighth dean.
"Pearl was a tenacious and dynamic force for Waterloo Engineering as she championed the Faculty’s work to advance education, entrepreneurship and research with global impact," wrote Dean of Engineering Mary Wells in an invitation circulated to the Faculty of Engineering. "Her many significant contributions have grown and enhanced our position and reputation as a top engineering school worldwide."
"Throughout her distinguished career, Pearl worked tirelessly to ensure that every Waterloo Engineering student had access to the world’s best experiential education. Her leadership was instrumental in building the Engineering IDEAs Clinic – a first-of-its-kind facility where students use a hands-on, problem-based approach to explore engineering. The IDEAs Clinic has proven to be a vital component in educating the engineers who will shape our future."
"As part of this celebration, and in honour of Pearl Sullivan’s legacy, we invite you to support the Clinic and help us designate this inspirational space The Pearl Sullivan Engineering IDEAs Clinic," Dean Wells writes. "We hope you will join our Waterloo Engineering community and the Sullivan family as we reflect on and celebrate the life of Pearl Sullivan."
The event takes place on Thursday, November 10, with a formal program beginning at 5:00 p.m. and a reception at 6:00 p.m. The event will be held in the Engineering IDEAS Clinic in Engineering 7.
Wicked problems require collaborative solutions
By Jon Parsons. This article was originally published on Waterloo News.
A new pilot course on climate change is bringing together unique perspectives from across Waterloo’s faculties and inviting senior undergraduate students to register.
The course, called The Wicked Problem of Climate Change, is being taught by six PhD students, one from each of the University’s six faculties, to understand the multifaceted issues that make up the climate emergency.
“We know that interdisciplinary learning and teaching are key to helping us understand complex problems,” says Dr. Anna Esselment, associate dean of graduate studies for the Faculty of Arts and an associate professor in the Department of Political Science. “This is a truly unique upper-year course that will bring together a community of undergraduate students from across the University to understand the impact and outcomes of climate change through different lenses.”
The pilot course is being offered in Winter 2023 with an enrolment of up to 60 students — 10 from each faculty. The six PhD researchers who are teaching the course have been developing it through the Beta Teaching Innovation Incubator, an initiative stemming from the University’s strategic plan and partnered with Waterloo’s Centre for Teaching Excellence.
PhD students, one from each of the University's six faculties, in an ideation and course design session. The unique interdisciplinary course, titled The Wicked Problem of Climate Change, is being co-taught by six students: Donovan Allum of the Faculty of Mathematics; Débora Andrade-Pereira of the Faculty of Science; Shehryar Khan of the Faculty of Engineering; Shahan Salim of the Faculty of Health; Jerika Sanderson of the Faculty of Arts; and Kayleigh Swanson of the Faculty of Environment.
“The challenging part about teaching a complete course about addressing climate change is that it requires people who normally don’t communicate with each other to do just that,” says Donovan Allum, a PhD student in the Department of Applied Mathematics and one of the six developing the course. “We expect students to come to class with a diverse set of perspectives based on a combination of their academic and personal backgrounds.”
For example, an arts perspective on climate change may explore responses to climate change in literature and popular culture, as well as strategies for identifying and addressing climate change misinformation, whereas an engineering perspective on climate change may bring up issues related to any technical capacities to minimize CO2 emissions or build resilient infrastructure.
Similarly, perspectives from health and biology may focus on the ramifications of an already-changing climate on the proliferation of infectious diseases and pest invasions, whereas a mathematical perspective may focus on issues related to global climate models and what can be learned from computer simulations of possible future scenarios.
The new course is open to senior undergraduate students and is an initiative of Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs. It was developed with the support of the Beta Teaching Innovation Incubator through Waterloo's Centre for Teaching Excellence.
“Our goal through this interdisciplinary course is to give students opportunities for conversations and collaborations across disciplines so that they will gain insight from new perspectives,” says Jerika Sanderson, a PhD student in the Department of English Language and Literature.
Debora Andrade-Pereira, a PhD student in the Department of Biology, adds that “by challenging students to reflect on the roles and limitations of science for understanding the fundamentals of climate change, predicting impacts, proposing solutions and dialoguing with traditional knowledge, we will encourage students to develop their own stance on the Wicked Problem of Climate Change.”
Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs (GSPA) is looking to develop further Wicked Problems courses that take up other key issues facing Canada and the world. For now, the pilot course on climate change is inviting undergraduate students to register. More details about the course are available on the Wicked Problem of Climate Change webpage.
Simply Voting replaces WatVote web voting tool
A message from Information Systems and Technology (IST).
Simply Voting, which launched November 1, 2022, has replaced WatVote as the campus web-based online voting system supporting the official online voting needs on campus. The previous voting tool, WatVote, was a Drupal-based electronic voting system that will not be supported in the new Waterloo Content Management System (WCMS) 3 environment.
There will be a small overlap where active elections in WatVote will be allowed to complete before decommissioning the system, but WatVote requests will no longer be available as campus transitions to Simply Voting.
More information is available on the IST Service Catalogue on how to set up an account or get support with your election.
Questions can be submitted via the IST Jira Help portal. Use the drop-down options to choose what you need support with:
- “Simply Voting – account" to receive access to hold an election, or
- “Simply Voting – help” to receive help with an election.
Review the IST Knowledge base article on alternatives for other types of votes or surveying, Qualtrics Online Surveys, Microsoft Forms, and WCMS Web forms.