Wednesday, August 13, 2025

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• New O’Donovan Chairs to lead AI research in trust and safety

• Research Impact Canada webinar coming up

• Improving the bottom-line (and the impact on the environment) one robot at a time

New O’Donovan Chairs to lead AI research in trust and safety

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

Two Waterloo Engineering faculty members have been appointed to updated Val O’Donovan Chair positions that reflect the Faculty’s strategic focus on advancing artificial intelligence through ethical research, interdisciplinary collaboration and student engagement.

Starting September 1, Dr. Amir-Hossein Karimi will hold the O’Donovan Chair in Trustworthy AI, while Dr. Sirisha Rambhatla will hold the O’Donovan Chair in Efficient, Safe and Adaptive AI. Both five-year appointments come with $100,000 in annual research support.

“AI is profoundly transforming every aspect of engineering,” said Dr. Hassan Baaj, the Faculty of Engineering’s associate dean of research and external partnerships. “We saw an opportunity to evolve the O’Donovan Chair into two distinct leadership roles — one focused on trust and human-AI collaboration, and one on critical real-world decision-making — reflecting both the urgency and complexity of this moment in history.”

Karimi, an assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering and faculty affiliate at the Vector Institute, leads the CHARM Lab, developing AI systems that support safe, reliable, human-aligned decision-making. With industry experience from Meta, Google Brain, and DeepMind, he focuses on causal inference, explainable AI, and neuro-symbolic methods. CHARM’s work aims to improve human-AI collaboration in fields like healthcare and finance by detecting issues, correcting errors and drawing from social sciences and behavioural economics.

Rambhatla, assistant professor in management science and engineering with cross-appointments in systems design engineering and computer science, leads Waterloo’s Critical Machine Learning (ML) Lab. With over 50 publications and wide media coverage, her work builds next-generation AI models that enhance decision-making and resilience across healthcare, manufacturing, and aviation. Her award-winning research develops efficient and adaptive models that prioritize safety and reliability -- addressing the real-world demands of critical, data-scarce, and evolving environments.

Research Impact Canada webinar coming up

The next Research Impact Canada “Dr. RIC” session is coming up on August 21 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.

“On the agenda, we have a presentation by Derek Thompson and Oliver Mann from the University of British Columbia (UBC)on Challenges to Reciprocal Storytelling in Indigenous Engagement and a second presentation by Shahad AI-saqqar from McMaster University on Challenges and Opportunities: Community Compensation & Recognition in Community-Based Research (CBR),” says a note from organizer Nadine Quehl. “We invite you to hold this date for August’s Dr. RIC call.”

Each presentation will be followed by a Q&A session.

Challenges to Reciprocal Storytelling in Indigenous Engagement

Storytelling is powerful—but in research involving Indigenous and other historically, persistently, and systemically marginalized communities, it carries profound ethical responsibilities. At a recent panel at the 2025 UBC Partnering in Research Conference, Derek Thompson and Oliver Mann explored how institutions can move beyond transactional storytelling to foster meaningful relationships with Indigenous and community partners. What are the risks and responsibilities when sharing stories from communities with histories of trauma and misrepresentation? How can storytelling support truth and reconciliation efforts and address intergenerational impacts? This conversation was recorded and is available now as a podcast.  

In this presentation for Research Impact Canada, Derek and Oliver will continue the conversation, focusing on the institutional challenges that hinder reciprocal, respectful, and restorative storytelling about Indigenous engagement. 

Challenges and Opportunities: Community Compensation & Recognition in Community-Based Research (CBR)  

Community-engaged research (CER) faces significant challenges when it comes to compensating community members, especially when on social assistance. This is also highlighted by the Canada Revenue Agency's limit to just $500 per year in research compensation. These restrictions, along with requirements to share personal financial information, create barriers and reinforce inequities in CER. To tackle this, a group of practitioners from British Columbia (SFU CERi), Ontario (McMaster's OCE), and Nova Scotia (CLARI), are hoping to mobilize national change by learning how different researchers and institutions navigate these issues and creating space to learn from one another’s experiences. 

Dr. RIC is a monthly membership call for the Research Impact Canada community. Members are invited to discuss whatever is on their minds as it relates to knowledge mobilization. If you have a discussion question, presentation, or topic that you would like to suggest for a future session, please get in touch with Sandy Chan (sdychan@yorku.ca).   

If you are interested in attending the online session, please contact Nadine Quehl for the Zoom link.

Improving the bottom-line (and the impact on the environment) one robot at a time

This article was originally published on Waterloo News.

An orange, four-wheeled robot navigates a busy sidewalk in Markham, bringing a restaurant-ordered meal to a customer, as part of a pilot program led by Real Life Robotics in partnership with Skip. Real Life Robotics is the first and only in Canada approved for a municipal sidewalk delivery operation, but its aspirations are much larger.

Real Life Robotics is a Velocity company and continues to leverage its connections to the University of Waterloo as it establishes itself within the Canadian robotics market.

Waterloo has the largest and most active group of robotics and automation researchers in Canada. More than 45 faculty members conduct research across more than a dozen advanced robotics topics from factory automation to cognitive robotics.

Describing itself as a provider of last-mile delivery and automation through its AI-driven platform, Real Life Robotics hopes to bring robotics to the masses. Whether supporting small businesses or larger organizations, the aim is to create a seamless integration of robots. Their solutions address labour market shortages, lower costs for businesses and are a more environmentally sustainable delivery option with lower carbon emissions than traditional vehicles.

“We make autonomy accessible for non-technical organizations,” says Cameron Waite, CEO of Real Life Robotics. “We focus on integrating robotics into industries such as restaurants, retail, hospital, pharmacy as well as warehouses, and even zoos.”

Waite says the company has benefited from its close ties to the University beyond Velocity including recruiting engineers and programmers and hiring a steady stream of co-op students.

“Waterloo is a robotics’ hub from the University to local industry,” says Sharif Virani, head of growth at Real Life Robotics. “It really empowers a company like ours to be in the middle of such an innovative landscape.”

Working alongside clients, Real Life Robotics helps identify what might be the most ideal robotic solution for an operation then navigates the complexities of bringing together the hardware and software within one unified source.

“We build our orchestration layers to help client take that complex journey and make it really straightforward, simple and scalable,” Virani says. “We partner with organizations like Skip, who are being highly innovative as the first Canadian entity, large Canadian enterprise organization, who's bringing this technology to the real-world streets to help their clients grow and benefit from lower cost delivery.”

The pilot in Markham also includes global robotics platform Robot.com (formerly Kiwibot), Rogers and the Remington Group, which supports smart city integration.

According to Virano, the next step is taking their data and results to other municipalities and clients across the country who are interesting in this sort of technology.

“We are essentially building the playbook for the deployment of these technologies across the country,” Waite says. “We’re proud to bring a Waterloo solution to Canadian businesses and support them in being more competitive and sustainable.”