Thursday, April 6, 2023

Retiring Board Chair, governors honoured at luncheon

Achim Kempf, Carol Cressman, Susan Grant, Cindy Forbes, Catherine Dong, Matthew Schwarze, and Stephanie Ye-Mowe.

Cindy Forbes, outgoing Chair of the University of Waterloo’s Board of Governors, was recognized for her service to the University at a luncheon held Tuesday, April 4 in the Black and Gold Room  in the Student Life Centre. Also celebrated at the luncheon were a number of governors whose terms of office expire this year.

“It’s my pleasure to thank Cindy Forbes, our chair, for her service to the Board of Governors,” said President Vivek Goel. “She’s been a member of the Board since 2012 and served as Chair since 2017. She has sat on almost every committee on the Board and served as Chair of several of those committees over the past ten years.”

“Cindy has been a longstanding supporter of the University, as an alumna of the Faculty of Math, and has provided support in many ways, including the Cindy Forbes Entrance Scholarship in Mathematics, awarded annually to an outstanding international student from Asia, which comes from her own experience working in Asia with Manulife, where she had a distinguished career. She has been recognized in many ways, and she was named one of Canada’s most powerful women by the Women’s Executive Network.”

“I’m also really pleased that Cindy will continue to be involved in the work of our sector as she provides service on the province’s Blue Ribbon Panel on Financial Sustainability in the Post-Secondary Education sector,” Goel said.

President Goel invited Associate Vice-President, Indigenous Relations Jean Becker to present Forbes with an original piece of artwork sculpted by Indigenous artist Todd Longboat.

Associate Vice-President, Indigenous Relations Jean Becker presents Board Chair Cindy Forbes with a carving representing collaboration and interdependence.

“For Indigenous people, gift-giving is a way of life,” Becker said, “a way of building and maintaining good relationships, alliances, and business ties. It also creates a culture of generosity. Gift-giving is all about reciprocity and kinship.”

The carving presented to Forbes represents the “Three Sisters” recognized by many Indigenous communities: corn, bean and squash.

“The Three Sisters illustrate interdependency, and we believe this particular gift was suited for you because of the role you played here,” Becker said to Forbes. “You have been a leader who knows how to work in collaboration in building good relationships, you’ve provided us with fabulous guidance and leadership and you’ve created an environment where we’ve been successful.”

President Vivek Goel, Board Chair Cindy Forbes and Associate Vice-President, Indigenous Relations Jean Becker.

Retiring governors at the luncheon included Carol Cressman, Catherine Dong, Matthew Schwarze, Achim Kempf, Stephanie Ye-Mowe and Susan Grant. Retiring governors not able to attend the luncheon included Peter Barr, Sheryl Kennedy, Nyla Ahmad, Naima Samuel, Mary Robinson and Lori Curtis.

“It’s my pleasure to thank all of the governors, retiring and continuing for your service to the University of Waterloo,” said President Vivek Goel. “Our governance works because we bring so many people together into our process.”

Pitching to win

From left to right: Esch Foundation trustees Ross McGovern, Jim Sharples and David Esch; Waterloo Engineering dean Dr. Mary Wells; Bexter team Heidi (Daeun) Han, Osose Itua, Ihn Hwan Kim, Stephen Del Grosso Milek and Dylan Policelli. Photo credit@ Brett Nelson, P.Eng, PEO Grand River Chapter. 

By Charlotte Danby.

Ten senior student teams from the Faculty of Engineering competed in this year’s Norman Esch Entrepreneurship Awards for Capstone Design, pitching their startup ideas to a panel of judges tasked with awarding $60,000.   

All 10 pitches showcased innovative thinking and entrepreneurial skills. The teams presented creative solutions to challenges ranging from an affordable at-home robot that helps non-verbal autistic children learn how to communicate, to a smart intervention that prevents tennis elbow.

“When it comes to innovation, engineers have a tendency to put the solution first which can result in a very cool project, but might not solve a real-world problem,” says Osose Itua, the fourth-year mechatronics engineering student who delivered a winning pitch for the Bexter team. “My entrepreneurial pursuits so far have taught me that it’s critical to put the end-user's needs first so that regardless of how cool the solution seems, it gets to the heart of a problem that actually exists.

“Supporting entrepreneurial engineers with funding is so important because it helps us deliver much-needed innovation faster. Thanks to this grant we plan to move forward with R&D and apply for a patent!”

Back live and in-person after two years of COVID-19 restrictions, the pitch contest was packed to the brim and buzzing with excitement as emcee and alumnus Dr. Matthew Stevens (BASc ’04 and PhD ’08, chemical engineering) timed each team’s three-minute pitch down to the second.

Six teams delivered winning pitches and walked away with $10,000 each to invest in their projects’ commercialization.

A seventh team claimed $6,000 for the Sedra People’s Choice Award as voted on by the event’s lively audience in Engineering 7.

An impressed Stevens summed it up well, “Waterloo grows great engineers.”

The Esch pitch winners

Bexter (Ihn Hwan Kim, Daeun Han, Dylan Policelli, Stephen Del Grosso Milek and Osose Itua – interdisciplinary team) for an at-home robot that teaches non-verbal autistic children how to communicate using an Augmentative Alternative Communication (AAC) board.

extensiLE (Cedric Attias, Milena Galaszewicz, Rebecca Wyllie and Teresa Marotta – biomedical engineering) for a preventative solution for tennis elbow that includes tensile inserts and an app to analyze wrist flexion, improve form and prevent injury based on data feedback.

PoweRFul Meter (Tom Paraschuk, Francis Chambers, Richard Joung, David Hardy, Jonathan Singh and Erik Kuhne – electrical and computer engineering) for a cheap, portable device that can help companies and business owners without specialized RF knowledge measure the effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) at the rated industrial-scientific-medical (ISM) band and get their wireless/IoT products off the ground with the necessary FCC government regulatory approval.

Siliboat Coat (Alice Tong, Jazmin Catly, Angeline Nguyen-Dang and Danielle Joy Vinzon – chemical engineering) for an eco-friendly antifouling boat coating to protect fibreglass-bottom boats with a safer and more effective alternative to antifouling boat coatings with biocidal properties.

SWEATsens (Alyssa Leon, Kate Pearson, Paul Shen, Teresa Tang and Xinmei Yan – nanotechnology engineering) for a wearable sweat-based biosensing health monitoring patch with integrated sweat stimulation to allow for continuous measurement of blood analyte levels.

VIZZ (Simon Yan, Max Zhu, Sebastian Ouslis and Jason Liu – electrical and computer engineering) for a tool that allows developers to understand how different components in their code call other files and microservices without having to read any code, thus improving their understanding of complicated and interconnected systems.

The Sedra People’s Choice Award went to SmartWalker (Andrea Chakma, Kamila Neliba, Lania Philia Terisno, Joanna Diao, Longchen (Mason) Niu – mechatronics engineering) for an assistive device that uses smart grip and obstacle detection technologies to make rollaters safer for users.

The pitch competition’s 10 qualifying teams were drawn from more than 300 projects developed by over 1,500 fourth-year engineering students and showcased at the University’s annual Capstone Symposia.

The pitch competition, funded by the Esch Foundation, launched in 2014 to support creative and entrepreneurial senior engineering students who are pursuing research and development and its commercialization for the benefit of Canada.

Call for expressions of interest in biomedical and bioscences research funds

A message from the Office of Research.

University of Waterloo researchers are invited to apply for the Canada Biomedical Research Fund and Biosciences Research Infrastructure Fund (CBRF-BRIF). The purpose of these funds is to build on existing assets and infrastructure, forge partnerships across multiple sectors, including industry and government research facilities, and ensure Canada is prepared for future pandemics by increasing domestic capacity through investments and partnerships to produce life-saving vaccines and therapeutics.

Funding Information

• CBRF: up to $215M over four years, with $500K to $5M per project per year
• BRIF: up to $360M (maximum of $277M for infrastructure and $83M for associated operating costs)

Important Deadlines

• Expression of interest (EOI) - April 27, 2023
• Notice of intent (NOI) - June 8, 2023
• Full application - September 7, 2023
• Results announced - March 2024

For the program overview and available support and resources, please visit Waterloo’s CBRF-BRIF webpage. Please contact Grace Gomashie at ggomashie@uwaterloo.ca to express your interest and be added to the Teams site for updates.

What's open and closed on the long weekend; other notes

It is Easter weekend, with the Good Friday statutory holiday set for tomorrow. On Easter (also known as Pascha outside the English-speaking world), Christians around the world mark the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Other celebratory traditions have become part of the broader cultural landscape such as the Easter Bunny, egg-painting, and chocolate, chocolate, chocolate.

There will be a number of closings and service modifications to note for the long weekend, including:

• All W Store, W Store Essentials and W Print locations will be closed on Friday, April 7 for Good Friday. All locations will re-open for regular business hours starting Monday, April 10.
• The Dana Porter Library and Davis Centre libraries will both be open from 12 noon to 6:00 p.m. Check the Library's operating hours page for more details.
• Most Food Services operations will be closed on Good Friday, with the exceptions of The Market at UWP (open from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.), Mudie's in Village One 1 (open 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.) and REVelation in Ron Eydt Village (open 8:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.) Visit the Food Services locations and hours page for more details.
• The Student Life Centre (SLC) and the Turnkey Desk will be open throughout the long weekend.

The Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN) and the Department Of Chemical Engineering are presenting a Sustainable Futures Perspectives Event entitled Recycling battery materials: Aiming for net zero.

"The Department of Chemical Engineering and the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology are partnering to organize a series of discourses on technology-based solutions to global challenges linked to UN Sustainable Development Goals," says a note from event organizers. "We are pleased to present the second discourse in our series: Recycling Battery materials: Aiming for Net Zero."

In this event, Khalil Amine, an Argonne Distinguished Fellow and the leader of the Advanced Battery Technology team at Argonne National Laboratory, will be joined by Professors Zhongwei Chen, Jeff Gostik and Michael Fowler.

The event will take place on Wednesday, April 12 in the Engineering Faculty Hall (E7-7303/7363) from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Registration is required. Refreshments will be provided.

Register now.

And finally, have a great long weekend, everybody. The Daily Bulletin will return on Monday, April 10.