Friday, May 2, 2025

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• Katherine Sellen to lead design innovation as inaugural George Soulis Chair

• Transitioning to Workday as Waterloo’s new platform for talent recruitment

• Professor Emeritus Warren Ober celebrates his 100th birthday

• Friday's notes

 Katherine Sellen to lead design innovation as inaugural George Soulis Chair

This article was originally published on the Faculty of Engineering website.

Dr. Katherine (Kate) Sellen, a leading design researcher working at the intersection of health innovation and human-centred systems, has been appointed the Faculty of Engineering’s inaugural George Soulis Chair in the Department of Systems Design Engineering (SYDE).

Beginning May 1, 2025, Sellen will bring her practice-based research and strong commitment to community impact into a role that builds on the department’s legacy of interdisciplinary, human-centred design education. She will lead the renewal of core design courses in both the Systems Design Engineering and Biomedical Engineering programs and mentor faculty through this transition.

“Her work reflects the department’s founding vision — bridging systems thinking with design practice to create integrated, participatory, and human-focused solutions,” said Dr. Lisa Aultman-Hall, chair of Systems Design Engineering. “Her focus on health innovation exemplifies the kind of collaborative, forward-thinking leadership this role was designed to champion.”

Recognized leader in health design and innovation

Sellen comes to Waterloo from OCAD University, where she held a Canada Research Chair in Health Design and recently served as Full Professor in the Faculty of Design. With a background in digital design and advanced degrees from the University of Toronto, Georgia Tech, and University College London, her work spans health, design, and community engagement. Her research explores temporal and dynamic aspects of healthcare design — work that has led to new information tools and participatory methods adopted by hospitals, public health agencies and not-for-profits.

Since 2017, she has secured more than $25 million in research funding through collaborations with healthcare partners at both national and provincial levels. Her work includes co-designed overdose first aid kits, award winning multilingual COVID-19 communication tools, and interactive installations on end-of-life care. These projects exemplify her ability to create tools with tangible, real-world impact — especially in urgent and dynamic environments like emergency rooms and community health settings — while advancing participatory design approaches.

"Design is about creativity and new ideas, but it’s also about innovation that works in real-world settings. It calls for flexible thinking, balancing the technical with the human and bringing together expert and community perspectives,” said Sellen. “In my new role as the inaugural George Soulis Chair, I’m eager to build students’ capacity to tackle the complex challenges of today and tomorrow — and to help shape a healthier, more resilient future."

Honouring a legacy of innovation in Systems Design

The Chair honours the legacy of the late Professor George Soulis, whose visionary work helped shape SYDE into one of the Faculty’s most innovative and interdisciplinary departments. The Chair was established through a generous gift from David J. Cornfield (BASc ’85, systems design engineering, LLD ’24) and Linda Archer Cornfield (LLD ‘24). Cornfield credits Soulis’s influence with shaping his own career and sees the Chair as a lasting tribute to the department’s founding values.

“When the department was founded more than 50 years ago, it was ahead of its time in recognizing that engineers would need to address interconnected, complex challenges — ones that demand collaboration, creativity and design thinking. This new role continues that tradition,” said Dean Mary Wells. “We are thrilled to welcome her to the Faculty of Engineering.”

Transitioning to Workday as Waterloo’s new platform for talent recruitment

A message from Human Resources and Information Systems & Technology.

We are excited to announce that the University of Waterloo will transition to Workday for talent recruitment on June 20, 2025, replacing our current platform iCIMS as part of our ongoing commitment to streamline our processes, improve efficiencies, and enhance our recruitment capabilities. 

The transition to Workday will provide a better candidate experience through the use of tailored resumes and cover letters to permit application for multiple positions. Workday offers a familiar user interface for candidates, hiring managers, and the HR team, providing smooth experience from application to onboarding. Having one seamless system will provide enhanced efficiency by reducing manual work and automating many recruitments tasks. 

This project is jointly managed by HR and IST, with an advisory committee and community consultations. Support materials and assistance will be provided to hiring managers and the University community before the go-live date.  We are confident this transition will improve our recruitment process and help us build strong teams at Waterloo.  Learn more about this project at the Staff Talent and Performance Framework website.

Professor Emeritus Warren Ober celebrates his 100th birthday

With files from Cathy Wessels, Office of Advancement.

Distinguished Professor Emeritus Warren Ober turns 100 years old today.

Born in Smackover, Arkansas in 1925, Warren Ober was drafted into the US Navy in 1943 after high school and was on active duty from 1943 to 1946, including 10 months at sea in the Pacific. While training to become a naval officer he earned the equivalent of two years of college education, and finished his undergraduate degree in English at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, graduating in 1948. He taught at Kentucky Military Institute, Southern Arkansas State College, and Northern Illinois University and earned a PhD in English Literature from Indiana University in 1958. After nearly a decade at Northern Illinois University, Dr. Ober joined the University of Waterloo in September 1965 as professor and Chair of the Department of English.

His areas of research focus included English Romantic poets, reading improvement, English language and linguistics, and the background to World War II in the Pacific theatre.

Dr. Ober served as Chair of the English department from 1965 to 1969, and was Acting Dean of the Faculty of Arts from 1969 to 1970. In 1970 he was appointed the Director of the Inter-Faculty Programme Board, which was created to coordinate interdisciplinary, non-specialist academic. courses and programs that centered on contemporary problems and broad themes rather than on discipline-specific subject matter. He served a second term as department chair from 1973 to 1979.

He chaired the Hagey Hall Building Committee and served on the University's senate as a faculty-at-large member.

A 1992 recipient of the University of Waterloo's Distinguished Teacher Awards, Dr. Ober established the Warren Ober Awards for Outstanding Teaching by a Graduate Student using the stipend he received from his DTA.

After a four-decade career as teacher, researcher, and author, Dr. Ober retired in 1995. In May of that year, he was named Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Convocation. In retirement, Dr. Ober continued with his research projects, including a facsimile reproduction of the nineteenth-century Irish antiquarian Thomas Crofton Croker’s Legends of the Lakes: or, Sayings and Doings at Killarney co-edited with fellow Waterloo retiree Neil Hultin, and research on the events surrounding the Pearl Harbour attack in 1941 with colleague Paul Burtness.

He and his wife Mary were regular donors to the Keystone Campaign, the University's long-running faculty, staff and retiree giving program. Their philanthropic contributions on campus were recognized with the naming of the Warren and Mary Ober Group Study Rooms in the Dana Porter Library and the Mary and Warren Ober Urgent Care Room at Health Services, which opened in 2012.

Dr. Ober's research papers on WWII’s Pacific theatre are housed in the Library’s Special Collections & Archives, including letters written to him in 1962 by General Douglas MacArthur, and he contributed pulp magazines and novels to SCA's 2018 exhibition of paperback genre fiction.

"Both he and Mary are now Canadian citizens and are very happy that they made the choice to come to Canada to join a very young University of Waterloo," writes Cathy Wessels. "He is a long-time supporter of the University both with his time and through philanthropy. Happy 100^th birthday to Warren!"

Friday's notes

MobilizeU, offered by Research Impact Canada, is an 8-week online course for beginner mobilizers interested in learning knowledge mobilization theory and skills. 

MobilizeU will run from June 2 – July 25 and more details can be found on the website. University of Waterloo staff, faculty members and students are eligible to take the course for $400 (half off the regular price of $800). Registration is open and ends on May 16. If you are interested, please contact Nadine Quehl as soon as possible for the promo code.  

The VR for Workplace Wellness program will meet on Tuesday, May 6 from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in LIB 407.

"If you are a UWaterloo staff member (part-time, full time, contract or student staff), come join us to try out a VR headset and explore Nature Treks or Ovation VR," writes Lynn Long of the Conflict Management Office.

• Nature Treks: Relax on a sandy beach, in outer space, under the ocean or in a green meadow!
• Ovation: Practice challenging conversations, such as performance reviews, job interviews, or conflict resolution, using AI-driven avatars.

Contact Lynn Long (l3long@uwaterloo.ca) to register. The room capacity is limited to 10 people.

With a new term just around the corner, Athletics and Recreation is gearing up for spring with Free Try-It Sessions running from May 5 to 11.

In addition, Warrior Rec registration opens on Tuesday, May 6 at 9:00 a.m. Warrior Rec Aquatics registration opens Tuesday, May 6 at 12 noon.

Warrior Rec Intramural registration closes on May 13 at 11:00 a.m. Warrior Rec Aquatics and other programming registration closes on May 19 at 12 noon.