Thursday, March 14, 2024

You're invited to join the launch of the Future Cities Institute

A message from University Relations, the Office of Advancement and the Faculty of Environment.

Cities drive the global economy and are home to vibrant and diverse communities, but they’re also facing complex challenges that impact urban life. Addressing these challenges is the objective of an exciting new initiative launching in the Faculty of Environment.

Through a transformational donation, the Future Cities Institute founded by Caivan, is leading a bold mission to create healthier, more prosperous cities.

Join Frank Cairo (BES ’05), Co-founder and CEO of Caivan, and Vivek Goel, UWaterloo President and Vice-chancellor, for an armchair chat to introduce this new initiative and open critical dialogue on the future of cities in Canada and around the world.

Event details

Date: Wednesday, April 3
Time: 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Location: Federation Hall

Please register online by Wednesday, March 27.  

Aviation course allows multidisciplinary, work-integrated learning to take flight

By Matthew King.

Students in the University of Waterloo’s Collaborative Aeronautics Program (CAP) are coming together to tackle real-world problems in the field of aeronautics. Industry partners identify the problems and students work in multidisciplinary teams to present viable solutions. Through the process, students gain a quality WIL experience and industry partners gain access to innovative and sustainable ideas.

The interdisciplinary aeronautics project allows master’s and doctoral students to complete two courses and apply their research, that reflects the faculty discipline, to aviation or aerospace. Students earn an enhanced aeronautics extension to their degree when they graduate.

“The dream was always to give grad students, who are passionate about aviation and aerospace, a way to take their discipline and have that skill set translate to work in that field,” says Dr. Suzanne Kearns, associate professor, Aviation, Faculty of Environment and director, Waterloo Institute of Sustainable Aeronautics (WISA). "I think with WISA and the CAP that's reality and I think we're achieving that.”

The first CAP course provides a foundation for how aviation works. Throughout the course, students gain an understanding of how different disciplines can apply to aviation or aerospace. In the second CAP course, students collaborate with industry partners in the sector for a WIL opportunity. As part of the curriculum, students consult on aviation or aerospace real-world problems.

“The goal is to take this interdisciplinary group of graduate students from across campus and have them work together as a team, hand in hand with an industry partner,” says Kearns. “We want to show students that the expertise and skills they're building as a grad student can directly relate to real world problems in ways they might not have anticipated.”

Three cohorts of students have now gone through the program, each tackling a different sustainable aeronautics problem.

• The first cohort focused on biometric sensors that could be used as an indication of pilot performance.
• The second cohort worked with virtual reality (VR) with an emphasis on implementing it in pilot training.
• This term’s cohort is working on how to fly aircraft more efficiently and more directly, specifically thinking about how much fuel a flight needs to carry on board.

“All of the industry partners are excited to engage with students; there's a sense of mentorship and support for the students, and a sense of willingness to work with the students where they are,” says Kearns. “The industry partner has a vested interest and a stake in the outcome, but they just maybe don't have the resources to tackle it entirely on their own.”

Read more about the projects students are tackling and the CAP on the WISA website.

Join the Healthy Brekkies cooking class for Keeping Well at Work on March 21

A message from Organizational and Human Development (OHD).

Waterloo staff members Mari-Beth Davis and Donna Shin are back for round two of nutrition month to virtually share how to make three nutritious and delicious breakfast recipes. These three versatile and easy-to-make recipes are not only tasty but also customizable to suit various dietary preferences and needs: 

• Maple Granola – learn how to achieve the perfect crunchy texture and taste.
• Overnight Oats – follow our recipe or add your twist of favourite flavour variations!
• Chia pudding – make your version of this trendy and convenient breakfast for busy mornings.

This 1-hour online cooking class is complimentary. A recipe e-booklet, shopping list and instructions will be provided before the event to those who have registered by March 18 at 1:00 p.m.

Event details

Date: Thursday, March 21  

Time: 12 noon to 1:00 p.m.  

Location: Virtual

Hosts: Mari-Beth Davis (Alumni Relations) and Donna Shin (Co-operative and Experiential Education) 

To register for this event and others like it, visit the Keeping Well at Work website.

Lectures in Catholic Experience will feature Dr. Tricia Bruce

A message from St. Jerome's University.

Continuing this year’s lecture series theme, “Legacies and Lessons,” Dr. Tricia Bruce will address the university community with her talk, “Her Place in the Church: Gender, Power, and Authority in Contemporary Catholicism.” Gender has always contributed to the roles of men and women in the Catholic Church, either formally through the rituals of ordination or implied via social norms. Dr. Bruce seeks to explore, compare, and contrast women’s leadership at two specific moments in the Church’s history – following Vatican II (over six decades ago) and today.

Dr. Bruce is a sociologist currently serving as Executive Director of the Springtide Research Institute, a faculty affiliate of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California. She has written extensively on contemporary American Catholicism. 

The Catholic Church has reached an inflection point, and Dr. Bruce’s research couldn’t be timelier. Under the guidance of Pope Francis during the first Synod on Synodality of Bishops this past November, the Pope stated, “The Church is woman and if we cannot understand what a woman is, what is the theology of women, we will never understand the Church. One of the great sins we have witnessed is ‘masculinizing’ the Church. This is the job I ask of you, please: Demasculinize the Church.” Dr. Bruce has recently been named a consultor to the General Secretariat of the Synod and will be serving as an expert in Rome.

"Since 1982, St. Jerome’s University has offered Lectures in Catholic Experience to our local community, providing opportunities for us to engage with the critical issues of our time," says Peter Meehan, president and vice-chancellor at St. Jerome’s University. "Dr. Tricia Bruce's scholarship on women and the church is a perfect fit for this year's focus on legacies of the past, where women have always been major contributors to the Catholic tradition, and lessons for the future, as active conversations about the role of women in the church continue. We are honoured to host Dr. Bruce before she shares her expertise on this, and other topics, with the Synod on Synodality in Rome.” 

This lecture is on Thursday, March 21 at 7:30 p.m. in the Notre Dame Chapel at St. Jerome’s University. The event will be live-streamed for people who cannot attend in person. Please register for the event, as space is limited.

A slice of notes on Pi Day

Today is Pi Day, which marks one of life's little constants: the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. The University of Waterloo has a long history of joining in the fun, and this year is no exception. The Faculty of Math's Instagram account has a musical message for the occasion if you'd like to check it out.

Mathsoc will be serving up free slices of pie to all math students today at 1:59 p.m. on the third floor of the MC building (WatCard required in case any non-math people had any ideas), and at 3:14 p.m. the classic Pi Recitation contest will take place.

Mathematics alumni in Waterloo, Toronto, Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco or Hong Kong who were on the ball and signed up ahead of time will receive a free pie from a number of participating bakeries in each city. Of course, they're all sold out by now - pies don't sit out on window sills to cool for just anyone to grab them anymore.

While we're on the subject of mathematics, Waterloo's Math Innovation team is hosting a fireside chat event on Tuesday, March 19 featuring guest speaker Scott Stevenson, CEO and co-founder of Spellbook.

"Spellbook is the leading generative AI copilot for corporate and commercial lawyers, relied on by more than 1,700 law firms and in-house legal teams," says a note from the Math Research and Innovation office. "Spellbook is the only GPT-4 powered tool that has been tuned for contracting and integrated with Word."

Scott’s fireside chat-style talk will begin at 4:30 pm in MC 1085. There will be refreshments provided during the event.

You can register on Ticketfi. You'll no doubt be left spellbound!

We move from fireside to rinkside as the Warriors Women's hockey team continues their quest for U SPORTS Championship gold today in Saskatchewan. The Warriors will take on the X-Women from St. Francis Xavier in the first quarter-final game at 3:00 p.m. this afternoon, and Athletics  and WUSA have organized a watch party in the Black and Gold Room in the Student Life Centre so you can cheer them on from afar. The tournament is being streamed on CBC platforms. There will be free pizza and popcorn compliments of WUSA. Follow along on social media with the hashtag #GoldRush.

Looking ahead to next week, the Knowledge Integration Museum eXhibition (KIX) 2024 promises to be "a convergence of disciplines, teaching methods and creative minds in an object-centric exhibition on topics related to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals." The exhibition runs from Monday, March 18 to Saturday March 23 in the Siegfried Hall Residence Wellness Centre Gym at St. Jerome’s University.