Electrical and computer engineers shape the future through innovation. They develop and improve systems that serve everyday needs of society spanning from high-voltage engineering and sustainable energy, to breakthroughs in wireless technology. Our faculty and students do everything from creating low-cost digital x-ray imagers to combat tuberculosis in developing countries, to building real-time embedded systems to advance the design and reliability of commercial products. ECE - the future is what we do.
Research
The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is a dynamic and innovative hub of cutting-edge advancements in technology and engineering. Faculty members lead pioneering research in areas such as robotics, artificial intelligence, communications, embedded systems, and renewable energy, addressing real-world challenges and driving technological breakthroughs.
Resources
Events
IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society K-W Section and UWaterloo Student Branch Chapter Distinguished Lectures
Lecture 1: Rethinking Chip Design in the Age of AI
Speaker: Professor Mehdi Saligane, ECE Department, Brown University, Rhode Island
Date: April 30, 2026
Time: 1:00pm to 2:00pm
Location: EIT 3142
Lecture 2: Research and Open-Source EDA Tools
Speaker: Tim Edwards, Open Circuit Design
Date: April 30, 2026
Time: 2:00pm to 3:00pm
Location: EIT 3142
Latch-Up 2026: Conference on Free and Open Source Silicon
Latch-Up 2026 invites the free and open-source silicon community to Canada. The FOSSi Foundation is hosting Latch-Up, a conference dedicated to free and open-source microelectronic chip design, taking place over the weekend of May 1–3, 2026.
Latch-Up is a weekend of presentations and networking for the open-source digital design community, bringing together students, researchers, and industry professionals interested in open hardware and semiconductor innovation.
PhD Defence Notice: Advanced Circuit and System Techniques for High-Performance Beamforming Front-end
Candidate: Mehran Hazer Sahlabadi
Date: May 1, 2026
Time: 11:00 AM
Location: EIT 3142
Supervisors: Boumaiza, Slim
News
Electrical and computer engineering professor, Dr. Weihua Zhuang, nominated for two Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest Women of the Year Awards
The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Waterloo is celebrating an exciting milestone as Dr. Weihua Zhuang has been named a double nominee for the 2026 Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest Women of the Year Awards.
Recognized for both her lasting influence and continued innovation, Zhuang is nominated for the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Science, Technology, Engineering & Math (STEM) Award—a rare distinction that reflects the breadth of her impact, from mentoring generations of engineers to shaping the future of communication technologies.
New Waterloo quantum startup gains fast momentum with $10.7 million in funding
A new startup spun out of research at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at the University of Waterloo is accelerating its push toward commercialization with $10.7 million in dilutive and non-dilutive funding and a public listing after launching just more than six months ago.
QuantumCorewas co-founded by Dr. Christopher Wilson, IQC faculty and Chief Technology Officer, and Eugene Profis, CEO. The company is developing an amplifier that boosts read-out signals produced by a superconducting quantum chip at near absolute zero temperatures and gets the signal into room temperature. This could solve one of the many hard engineering challenges in quantum computing.
“It’s a necessary product for quantum computing companies that are just a few years away from launching computers with thousands of qubits,” says Wilson, who is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
When Wi-Fi becomes a sensor: Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) researchers named Top 10 Finalist in IEEE Industry Paper Competition
A team of researchers from the Wireless Sensors and Devices Lab (WSDL) in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo has been named a Top 10 Finalist in the 2026 IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Industry Paper Competition for their paper, “A Digital Twin Baseline for Hybrid Quantum Machine Learning (QML) in WiFi Sensing.”
Led by Dr. George Shaker, adjunct professor in ECE, and Director of the Wireless Sensors and Devices Lab (WSDL), the research team includes lead author and PhD student Sebastian Ratto Valderrama, postdoctoral researcher Ahmed Sayed, and ECE alum Abdelrahman Elbadrawy, working in collaboration with industry partners Synopsys and EigenQ. Sebastian is co-supervised by ECE professor, Dr. Omar Ramahi, who is also a co-author on the paper.