Thursday, March 30, 2023

Remembering Professor William Coleman

This tribute was jointly prepared by colleagues in the Department of Political Science and the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition at McMaster University and the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo. A memorial event will be organized and announced soon.

On Friday March 24, 2023, Will Coleman passed away at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Hamilton. He will be remembered by friends, colleagues, and students as deeply ethical, academically innovative and fearless, a supportive and collaborative researcher, an exceptional teacher, and a very kind and generous friend.

Will joined the Department of Political Science at McMaster University in 1977. He founded the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition (IGHC) and became its first director in1998. In 2003, Will’s extraordinary contributions to teaching, scholarship, and service were recognized by McMaster University when it awarded him the title of Distinguished University Professor. In 2009 he left McMaster to join the Department of Political Science at University of Waterloo and the Balsillie School of International Affairs as the CIGI Chair in Globalization and Public Policy. That same year, his stature as one of the top scholars in Canada would be recognized with his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Among the numerous honours and distinctions that marked his career, Will cherished his appointment as Shakorihonnién:ni (Associate Professor), Deyohaná:ge (Indigenous Knowledge Centre) at Six Nations Polytechnic, in recognition of his collaborative work with Indigenous Peoples. In 2015, he became University Professor, which is awarded only to the most distinguished and influential scholars working at the University of Waterloo.

Will was a prolific writer and institution builder with a ground-breaking and strongly collaborative approach to research. His published work covered a range of topics, including the independence movement in Quebec, Canadian public policy, business-government relations, global health, agricultural policy, Indigenous governance, and financial regulation. His scholarship is not just remarkable for its depth but also for its breadth. One of his most outstanding contributions has been in the arena of globalization, where his work significantly increased existing scholarly capacity to explore and to better understand the institutions of global governance and their effects. As the recipient of one of the most prestigious grants offered by Canada’s leading research funding agency — a Major Collaborative Research Initiative — for his project Globalization and Autonomy, Will was able to mobilize and motivate a dynamic international and multidisciplinary team of over 60 scholars leading to an extraordinary collection of published work, culminating in the integrative 9-volume Globalization and Autonomy Series. Colleagues and students who were involved in these initiatives have been deeply appreciative of the intellectual community that they constituted.

At the undergraduate level, Will was the founder and Director of the Theme School on Globalization, Social Change and the Human Experience at McMaster from 1998 to 2002. He was instrumental in the launch of IGHC’s MA in Globalization in 2004. Beginning in 2011, Will served as the Director of the MA in Global Governance as well as the Director of the Joint PhD Program in Global Governance at the University of Waterloo and the Balsillie School of International Affairs. These innovative undergraduate and graduate programs were among the first in North America to focus exclusively on globalization and global governance and his leadership helped to attract top students to each of them.

Will was also an extraordinarily passionate and committed teacher. During his time at McMaster, he regularly volunteered to teach large introductory Political Science classes and it was a common sight to see him spending significant amounts of time giving one-on-one advice to undergraduate students. In his last years at the University of Waterloo, he chose to teach large undergraduate classes in Canadian Politics and consistently received the highest evaluations from his students. He was also a magnet for masters and doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows who always appreciated his wise counsel, patience, and unwavering support. Many went on to co-author with him articles in leading journals and chapters in important books. His numerous teaching awards attest to his deep and abiding commitment to education, including the 2002 President’s Award for Educational Leadership at McMaster University, the Ontario Council of University Faculty Associations teaching award in 1997, the 3M Teaching Fellow awarded by the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in 1994, and MSU Teaching Awards in 1980/81, 1985, and 1986.

Will Coleman’s colleagues, students, and staff at McMaster University, the University of Waterloo, and the Balsillie School of International Affairs will be forever grateful to him for his tremendous leadership, intellectual generosity, and kindness of spirit.

Get onboard with this guide to engaging new talent

A message from Co-operative and Experiential Education (CEE).

Successfully onboarding new employees begins before they even walk through the door and can result in better work performance and organizational commitment.

In Co-operative and Experiential Education’s research-backed Guide to refreshing your onboarding program: The most effective tactics to engage new talent, you will learn how to develop an onboarding program that sets up new employees for success and fosters a culture that prepares your organization for the future of work.

Download the onboarding guide now. 

Please note: The primary audience for this onboarding guide developed by CEE is co-op employers and the research subjects studied in this report were co-op students. This report is not intended to represent the University of Waterloo's overall approach for onboarding new talent. Human Resources is currently reviewing onboarding procedures for new University of Waterloo employees.

Spring clean your health with employee wellness sessions

A message from Organizational and Human Development (OHD).

Spring brings milder temperatures, more sun, and wildlife sprouting everywhere. This alone can put an extra spring in your step. It's a time to look at your habits and make new ones that help you become a better version of yourself. The Healthy Workplace Committee, in partnership with Organizational and Human Development and Homewood Health has organized various wellness sessions for you to attend virtually over the winter and spring 2023 terms. These online learning events will be one-hour in length and will be facilitated through Microsoft Teams by Homewood Health, the provider of our Employee and Family Assistance Program (EFAP), for employees at the University.  

There’s something for everyone, from positive parenting to stress busters to the emotional effects of retirement.  Explore the descriptions and amazing timetable of wellness sessions being offered to see which dates and times fit with your schedule. 

Space is limited to 40 participants per event, so register early to avoid disappointment. Registration for all sessions is open now in Portal. 

Math invites you to go from AlphaGO to ChatGPT on April 12

Please Join University of Waterloo expert in artificial intelligence, Professor Pascal Poupart, for a public talk in which he will describe the key technological advances in recent years which were behind, and ultimately facilitated, these breakthroughs.

In recent years, AlphaGo beat the best human players in the challenging game of Go, large language models such as ChatGPT and GPT-4 converse in a human way while displaying an unprecedented depth of knowledge, DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion create realistic images and art from natural language descriptions, the auto industry is rolling out AI-based autonomous driving systems, Alpha Fold 2 predicts the structure of over 200 million proteins to accelerate scientific research, and other large foundational models can predict the physical and chemical properties of compounds to accelerate the design of new materials.

While the industry often highlights the increasing size of their models (e.g., billions to trillions of parameters), this gives a false impression that simply throwing a lot of data to large computer clusters in order to train ever larger models is the key.  However, important algorithmic advances were necessary to achieve those breakthroughs.  Professor Poupart will explain the role that residual optimization and stochastic optimization played to enable deep learning.  He will also discuss important advances in reinforcement learning, self-supervised learning and few-shot learning that significantly improved the quality of foundational models.

The success of AI has also led to new challenges in terms of explainability.  While most models in advanced AI systems are difficult to interpret, Professor Poupart will also discuss recent advances in probing and conversational agents that can provide some degree of explainability.

This event is sponsored by the Faculty of Math Data Science Graduate Programs.

Register today for the event on April 12.

Using quantum technologies to make precise early-stage diagnoses

By Angelica Marie Sanchez. This is an excerpt of an article originally published on Waterloo News.

Quantum science is transforming the ways technology can lead to innovation in health by improving how doctors use tools to measure and determine a health diagnosis at an early stage before symptoms progress into long-term medical issues among patients.

“Quantum computing has a lot of real-world value in health, I am specifically interested in trying to use quantum devices such as sensors to measure these microscopic and nanoscopic properties in individual atoms and molecules,” says Connor Kapahi, a PhD student in Physics and Astronomy, who participated in this year’s Quantum for Health (Q4Health) Design Challenge led by Transformative Quantum Technologies (TQT).

“Applying quantum sensors to health care and giving practitioners better tools will dramatically improve a doctor’s ability to make a diagnosis and treat different health disorders.”

Kapahi and his team submitted their design idea of a new quantum technological device that may one day help prevent vision loss in older adults. Kapahi explains how macular degeneration is a retinal disorder and the leading cause of blindness among people over the age of 55-years-old. But while there are lot of treatments that are effective at slowing vision loss, there are currently no treatments that can reverse the effects once vision loss occurs.

The team’s cutting-edge design received the Gold Award along with $10K in funding to help further develop their research in a diagnostic tool which uses a structured state of light to create a pattern in a person's vision, a pattern that is only visible when the patient has a healthy macula. By developing a diagnostic tool that clinicians can add to their standard eye exam, doctors will then be able to detect macular degeneration in patients earlier on during routine visits and provide the specific treatment for patients with early-stage vision loss.

“It is great that our idea is getting recognition because research in general has a lot of ups and downs… really high-highs and really low-lows,” Kapahi says. “So, it is great to feel validated that the idea we have makes sense and that other people agree that this research is valuable and can work outside the lab.”

Kapahi and his team aim to use the $10K funding towards applying for a patent, while continuing to develop their research project into a startup to commercialize their diagnostic tool in the future. The team has already created a device that can only be used in a research environment and is currently being tested at the University of Waterloo.

“We spent the last few months testing the device on both healthy participants and participants with retinal disorders, and those early results are promising,” Kapahi says. “In the future, we hope to build a prototype of the diagnostic tool that can be used in clinical trials. In the meantime, we will continue testing patients with different retinal disorders. Hopefully, we can reach a point where this technology can be valuable to clinicians as part of their day-to-day practice.”

TQT held the Q4Health Design Challenge to search for new ways that quantum technologies can advance health. A total of eight teams of 29 Waterloo students, post-doctorates, faculty and staff submitted their design ideas proving how quantum technologies can improve healthcare by monitoring in both the near and long term.

“The Q4Health design challenge uncovered a broad array of applications where quantum technology can impact health, from improved detection of male infertility and diabetes to advancements in diagnostic tools used in pathology and eye health,” says Tracey Forrest, program director of TQT. “UWaterloo is an innovation leader, and this design challenge saw its multi-disciplinary strengths take centre stage with dozens of teams registering their interest from across campus leading to the formation of new collaborations and promising new research directions at the intersection of quantum and health. We are excited to see these teams push their ideas forward.”

Michael Reimer, a professor from the Faculty of Engineering, and his team received the Silver Award ($2.5K) for their design pitch in optical metamaterial single photon detectors to improve Raman spectroscopy for use in clinical pathology.

Read the rest of the article to find out the teams that were awarded to help further develop their ideas

There's Something Rotten on the stage at Grebel

“It’s a Musical!”

Grebel's production of “Something Rotten” will take the stage this weekend at Theatre of the Arts in Modern Languages. Tickets are still available for purchase, so bring yourself, your friends, and family to enjoy this farcical show. Grebel’s all-student cast, crew, and music ensemble have been working tirelessly all semester to bring this Broadway show to life, right here at UWaterloo. You won’t want to miss it! 

In this musical comedy, brothers Nick and Nigel Bottom are playwrights stuck in the shadow of William Shakespeare. To save their floundering theatre troupe, they hire an eccentric soothsayer who predicts that the future of theatre is… the Musical! This show is jam-packed with Shakespearean and 20^th-Century musical references. 

The performances run from March 31 to April 2. 

Tickets are available on the Theatres at Waterloo website.