Friday, February 6, 2026

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• Global Futures launch highlights Innovation Update 2026

• Safeguarding winter sports against climate change

• From iron rings to paper airplanes, the weekend awaits

Global Futures launch highlights Innovation Update 2026

A message from the Global Futures Office.

On Wednesday, January 21, the University of Waterloo community came together online for the Global Futures launch event, a live virtual gathering that brought together researchers, educators, staff, students, and partners to explore how Waterloo is advancing Waterloo at 100 and driving impact across research, learning, and innovation.

The event opened with remarks from President and Vice-Chancellor Vivek Goel, who announced the publication of the 2026 Global Futures 2026 Innovation Update—a collection of long-form stories highlighting how the Waterloo community is responding to some of the world’s most complex and urgent challenges, and how that work continues to evolve. President Goel also reflected on Waterloo at 100’s five interconnected futures—societal, health, sustainable, technological, and economic—and underscored the role of Global Futures–supported initiatives in helping the university focus efforts, work across boundaries, and build partnerships that amplify impact.

Building on the announcement of the first cohort of Global Futures Initiatives(GFIs)in September 2025, the launch highlighted how $2.3 million in repurposed research funding is supporting interdisciplinary, cross-functional teams of faculty and staff to advance integrated activities across research, education, and service.

The live program brought together initiative leads, partners, and entrepreneurs featured in the Innovation Update, who shared the virtual stage to discuss their work and its real-world impact. This included a pre-recorded presentation from Nain Abdi, founder of Colare, on student-led innovation in engineering hiring; Dr. Brianna Weins’ work on SIGNAL (Strategies for Intersectional Gender Justice, Networked Action and Liberation); perspectives on sustainability and climate leadership from Dr. Sarah Burch and Mat Thijssen (Director of Sustainability at Waterloo); and Dr. Derek Rayside’s vision to strengthen and scale Waterloo’s interdisciplinary capstone ecosystem.

The event concluded with a moderated panel discussion that brought these voices together to reflect on what’s next for the initiatives—and how members of the Waterloo community can continue to champion Global Futures in their own work.

Watch the Global Futures Launch Video. 

Safeguarding winter sports against climate change

This article was originally published on Waterloo News.

New research into the impact of climate change on snow sports provides recommendations to increase the climate-resilience of the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

The University of Waterloo led the study, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Innsbruck and the University of Toronto, and it builds on their influential work to determine reliable locations for the Winter Games as global warming accelerates. The team analyzed the 93 potential host locations where the International Olympic Committee (IOC) indicated the necessary winter sports infrastructure was already in place. They found that if countries continue with current climate policies, only 52 would remain climate-reliable for the Olympics and 22 for the Paralympics.

“Climate change is altering the geography of where the Winter Olympics and Paralympics can be held. We have to prioritize solutions to the much greater risk facing the Paralympics and explore ways that the One Bid, One City partnership can survive in an era of climate change,” said Dr. Daniel Scott, professor in the Faculty of Environment at Waterloo and the lead author on the paper.

The researchers examined a range of climate change adaptation strategies. Merging the Olympics and Paralympics in February would be very difficult because of the sheer size of the combined Games and the complexity of holding nearly double the number of competitions. The team found that by shifting both the Olympic and Paralympic Games to earlier dates, the number of climate-reliable locations for the Paralympics would increase to 38.

“Our models show a big difference when both games are shifted forward by a few weeks so that the Paralympics begin in the last week of February,” said Dr. Robert Steiger, professor in the Department of Public Finance, University of Innsbruck. “This move is a very promising option to protect the fairness and safety for Paralympic athletes.”

The researchers also emphasized the importance of snowmaking as a climate-adaptation strategy and found that without it, the number of potential hosts declines to only four by the 2050s.

“There have been criticisms of the reliance on snowmaking in Beijing and other recent Games, but not employing it is no more an option than is moving hockey, figure skating, and curling back outside,” Scott said. “Abandoning snowmaking would result in a major increase in unfair and unsafe conditions for athletes, cancelled competitions, and eventually a Winter Games without any snow sports.”

The IOC’s Sustainability Agenda 2020+5 seeks to inspire and assist the development of sustainable sport worldwide and drive climate action that supports the Paris Climate Agreement. The accord’s goal is to limit global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.

“No sport can escape the impacts of climate change,” said Dr. Maleleine Orr, a professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto. “The world’s best athletes, who have dedicated their lives to sport, deserve nothing less than the best conditions that can be provided sustainably. The winter sport community must work together to find solutions to adapt to climate change and achieve the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.”

The study, Advancing Climate Change Resilience of the Winter Olympic-Paralympic Games, appears in the journal Current Issues in Tourism. The IOC adopted recommendations from the team’s previous study, entitled Climate change and the climate reliability of hosts in the second century of the Winter Olympic Games, which appears in the same journal.

From iron rings to paper airplanes, the weekend awaits

Engineers will take their obligation this weekend: Engineering students in their final year of study are set to take an important step in their professional pursuits as they attend "The Calling of an Engineer", also known as the Obligation Ceremony, on Saturday, February 7 at Federation Hall. The ceremony is steeped in more than a century of tradition and is overseen by the Corporation of the Seven Wardens with 28 camps across Canada, the local regional body being Camp 15. At the ceremony, students will put on the iron ring, the symbol of an engineer's professional commitment, for the first time.

The small steel band, given during the Calling of the Engineer, is a symbol of humility, ethical responsibility, and pride. The iron ring is meant to be worn on the little finger of the engineer’s working hand and serves as a reminder of the obligations and ethics associated with the engineering profession.

In addition to the ceremonies, Engineering students have a tradition of celebrating on campus the Friday before. From approximately 9:00 a.m. to 12 noon today, groups of roving 4^th year students will parade through the engineering buildings, which will have been decorated overnight for the occasion.

In the evening following the obligation ceremony, the Engineering Society traditionally organizes an iron ring shindig, which features the Tool, the eponymous mascot of Waterloo engineers, and the newly-ringed students will be permitted to touch its metal surface for the first time. One ring to rule them all, you might say.

Fantastic Alumni, Faculty, Staff and Retiree Day returns on Saturday, February 7. It promises to be a full court press of fun, including two basketball games, the annual Airplane Toss and family-friendly competitions.