Monday, November 14, 2022

Have your say about the future of Research Data Management on campus

A message from the Office of Research.

The Research Data Management (RDM) Institutional Strategy town hall will take place on Monday, November 21 at 10 a.m. Your participation will allow your voice to be heard and incorporated in the development of the University’s RDM strategy.

In response to the Tri-Agency Research Data Management Policy, which mandates that all institutions must have an institutional RDM strategy by March 2023, the University of Waterloo’s draft RDM institutional strategy will be presented, followed by a question-and-answer period. A light lunch will follow for those attending in person.

All Waterloo faculty, staff, and students are welcome to register. Please register for either the in-person or virtual option (space for the in-person option is limited). The in-person town hall will be held in the Enterprise Theatre in East Campus 5.

As winter approaches, stay a step ahead of slips, trips and falls

A message from the Safety Office.

As temperatures drop and snow and ice move in, the risk of serious injury due to slips, trips and falls increases. Each year the Safety Office receives a large number of incident reports for outdoor slips, trips and falls that occur at the same elevation and involve snow or ice. Inappropriate winter footwear, inattention to ground conditions and not using maintained pathways are factors within your control to reduce your risk.

Please plan ahead and ensure you have proper winter footwear and enough time to reach your destination safely based on the weather and surface conditions. Always use maintained roads and pathways and if you encounter unsafe walking conditions, immediately report them to Plant Operations by calling ext. 43793 (24 hours a day).

The green/yellow salt or sand bins that are placed throughout campus during the winter months should be used to improve traction on slippery areas.

See the Slips Trips and Falls program for more information and please ensure the Get a Grip Don't Slip and Fall Poster is posted on your unit or department’s health and safety bulletin board.

Q and A with the experts: More Homes Built Faster Act, or Bill 23

The Ontario government has introduced sweeping new legislation aimed at building 1.5 million new homes by 2031. Dr. Dawn Parker, a professor in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo, answers questions about the new legislation, called More Homes Built Faster Act, or Bill 23.

What is Bill 23?

Bill 23, the proposed Provincial More Homes Built Faster act, aims to increase housing supply and, as a consequence, housing affordability through major changes to planning and conservation legislation. 

What is your assessment of Bill 23?

On the positive side, it addresses exclusionary zoning by requiring municipalities to allow more units on residential parcels and increases some incentives for rental and attainable housing supply. Bill 23, however, has many issues, only some of which I will address.

Overall, the Bill may fail to meet its primary objectives in these key areas:

1. Affordability – Its provisions to require high-rise zoning and increase development profitability will contribute to rising land prices, which makes affordable and/or missing middle housing impossible due to high land costs. In addition, high-rise builds are expensive housing—two-and-a-half times as costly per square foot as low-rise builds. This is just one example of how the Bill will exacerbate unaffordability in housing.
    
2. It may not increase housing supply. With a cascade of current construction project cancellations due to rising construction costs and interest rates, increasing financing costs, and decreased demand for units from investors, small increases to development profitability may have minimal impact on housing supply.
    
3. The Bill will not create new, livable communities - it creates a race to the bottom for developers, disadvantaging those who prioritize environmental quality and affordability, and for municipalities within Regions, as Regional authorities no longer review and approve development applications. Finally, through limits on public hearings and resident appeals of developments, the Act’s premise is that residents’ desire for green, aesthetically pleasing, and livable cities are barriers to successful cities.

What’s a better approach to making housing more affordable in Ontario?

1. Affordability – Allow, or even require, municipalities to implement inclusionary zoning across the municipality, creating a level playing field. Provide or facilitate additional non-profit finance for affordable and missing middle housing provisions. Allow municipalities to create height-limited missing housing zones 500-800 metres from transit, to limit land-value uplift and incentivize affordable housing near transit. Empower provincial, regional, and municipal governments to directly build affordable housing—on municipal or regional land, on their own or in partnership with non-profit financiers and builders. 
    
2. Supply – Allow at least four units on residential parcels. Incentivize re-purposing of parking lots for housing through subsidizing multi-level parking, reducing or eliminating parking requirements, and regulating on-street parking. Implement non-principal-residence vacant-unit taxes, identified through utility usage, via additional property or land transfer taxes.   
    
3. Livability – Ensure that new higher-density builds have sufficient open space and parks to be attractive alternatives to single-family residences. Maintain regional approval authority—potentially consolidating approvals to the regional level to streamline the approvals process.

Dr. Dawn Parker is a Professor in the School of Planning whose research focuses include residential land markets, modelling land-use/transportation/environment interactions, planning sustainable cities, agent-based modeling , and complexity theory. 

Trio of Waterloo programmers are the top Canadian team at the 45th ICPC

L to R: Wesley Leung, Jason Yuen, Professor Troy Vasiga, and Ildar Gainullin at the 45th ICPC, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Photo credit: ICPC

This article was originally published on the Cheriton School of Computer Science website.

A team of three Waterloo students have placed 17^th at the 45^th International Collegiate Programming Contest, the most prestigious and well-known algorithmic programming competition for university students, held this year in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Waterloo’s trio of programmers, composed of Wesley Leung (BSE 2022), Jason Yuen (BMath CS 2022) and Ildar Gainullin (third-year BMATH student, with a double major in Pure Math and Combinatorics and Optimization), competed in the gruelling five-hour contest, solving seven of the 12 real-world algorithmic programming problems.

“We are extremely proud that Wesley, Jason and Ildar were the top competitors from a Canadian university,” said Professor Troy Vasiga, who coached Waterloo’s team with his colleague Professor Ondřej Lhoták. “The competition involves solving the problems while huddled around a single computer, so not only are strong analytic and programming skills necessary, but the programmers also have to have strong teamwork and communication skills.”

“It was challenging for the students to train as a team over the past year because of COVID restrictions and because Jason and Wesley were working in San Francisco and Seattle respectively for the past seven months,” adds Professor Lhoták. “Despite these challenges, they performed exceptionally well — they are the top team from Canada, the third team in North America, and 17^th internationally — amongst the 137 teams of university students from 69 countries competing at the 45^th ICPC.”

The 45^th International Collegiate Programming Contest was scheduled to take place in May 2021, but was delayed until this year because of the pandemic.

Before competing at the 45^th ICPC World finals, the team of Waterloo programmers crushed the competition at the 2021 ICPC North America Division Championship, a contest that was held virtually on August 14, 2021, finishing solidly in first place.

About the International Collegiate Programming Contest

The International Collegiate Programming Contest is the oldest, largest and most esteemed university-level algorithmic programming contest in the world. Each year, more than 50,000 students from more than 3,000 universities across 100+ countries square off in contests around the globe to earn a spot at the ICPC World Finals. Volunteer coaches prepare their teams with intense training and instruction in algorithms, programming and teamwork strategy.

Huddled around a single computer, teams of three attempt to solve complex real-world problems within a gruelling five-hour deadline. Teammates collaborate to rank the difficulty of the problems, deduce the requirements, design test beds and build software systems to solve them.

In ICPC competitions, teams of three students represent their university in multiple levels of regional competition. Success at one level leads to an invitation to the next. Each region progresses differently, but the result is the same — the best teams advance. The final regional contest determines the teams advancing to the World Finals.

Waterloo at the International Collegiate Programming Contests

The University of Waterloo is the only Canadian university to win the International Collegiate Programming Competition World Finals, taking the prized title in 1994 and again in 1999.

Rock Your Mocs comes to Waterloo and other notes

"November 13 to 19 is “Rock Your Mocs” week across Turtle Island (North America)," says a note from Robin Stadelbauer, Associate Director, Indigenous Initiatives. "This initiative has been going strong since 2011. According to rockyourmocs.org it is the best worldwide virtual annual unity event. The virtual initiative was started in the United States and is held during the US National Native American Heritage Month with the goal of celebrating unity, Indigenous cultures, and one of the many ways of honouring Indigenous ancestors and Indigenous peoples worldwide."   
 
"People participate in Rock Your Mocs by taking a photo, creating a video or story and adding the hashtag #ROCKYOURMOCS2022 to social media posts. During the week of November 13 to 19 we invite members of the Waterloo campus community to participate in Rock Your Mocs. In addition to hashtagging #ROCKYOURMOCS2022 to your post, we invite you to tag the Office of Indigenous Relations and the Waterloo Indigenous Student Centre to show your support and unity with Indigenous peoples and the Indigenous campus community. Alternatively, you may also send your photo to the Office of Indigenous Relations and they will share on social media. There is a chance to win prizes! Winners will be drawn at random and announced the following week."  

"Many international students at Waterloo will be experiencing their first winter away from family, comfort and connections," says an announcement from the Student Success Office (SSO). "The UWinterloo Pen Pal program is intended to support them in feeling connected to Canada and other Waterloo Warriors during the holiday break. You can sign up today to be matched as a pen pal with an international student.”