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
PhD Comprehensive Proposal Examination Notice: Learning-Guided Automated Reasoning
Candidate: John Lu
Date: September 18, 2026
Time: 12:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Location: EIT 3141
Supervisors: Vijay Ganesh and Arie Gurfinkel
MASc Thesis Examination: Network Performance Evaluation of Wi-Fi 6 and 5G in Mobile Deployments, and of 5G SA under Controlled Conditions
Candidate: Kirolos Sedra
Date: September 25, 2026
Time: 10:30 AM
Location: PSE Building, room not confirmed
Supervisors: George Shaker and Oliver Schneider
News
Performance-testing research earns ACM Distinguished Paper Award
A paper co-authored by electrical and computer engineering professor Weiyi (Ian) Shang has received an ACM Distinguished Paper Award at the 2026 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), a flagship conference in software engineering.
Titled “Stop When It Matters: Detectability-Guided Microbenchmarking for Performance Regression Testing,” the paper resulted from a collaboration among institutions in Canada, Europe and China.
The research tackles a practical challenge in performance testing. Developers run microbenchmarks to catch software slowdowns, but they often do not know how long those benchmarks need to run. Existing approaches usually stop when results appear stable or after reaching a fixed time limit. The paper demonstrates that stability alone is not enough: a benchmark can appear stable while still being unable to reliably detect a real performance regression.
Electrical and computer engineering research team receives Best Paper Award at FPL 2026
A University of Waterloo Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) research team has received the Stamatis Vassiliadis Award for Best Paper at the 36th International Conference on Field-Programmable Logic and Applications (FPL 2026), held in Ghent, Belgium.
The team includes Emir Guevara, an Electrical Engineering alumnus and current ECE PhD student; Gavin Lusby, a current Computer Engineering undergraduate student; Chaitanya Sharma, who graduated from Computer Engineering in 2026; and ECE professor, Dr. Nachiket Kapre.
Their award-winning paper, “Cocotb-PYNQ-PR: From Co-Simulation to Deployment: A Unified DFX Framework for PYNQ,” presents an open-source framework that allows FPGA partial-reconfiguration designs to be tested in simulation and then deployed on PYNQ hardware through a unified workflow.
New monitoring technology could help identify more donor lungs for transplantation
More than three-quarters of donated lungs offered for transplantation are not used, according to the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, contributing to a chronic shortage of organs for patients with end-stage lung disease.
Researchers hope a new medical device incorporating monitoring technology they recently developed could ultimately help change that by continuously measuring key indicators of lung function while donor organs are being maintained outside the body.
Continuous monitoring of important health indicators, or biomarkers, could provide transplant teams with far more timely and detailed information than the hourly laboratory tests they now rely on in clinical practice.
The new device, called MetaboSense, was developed in collaboration by researchers at the University of Waterloo and clinicians at University Health Network (UHN) in Toronto, home to one of the world’s leading lung transplant programs.
Two incoming ECE students named 2026 Schulich Leaders
Two incoming students in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering are among the University of Waterloo’s 2026 Schulich Leaders, recipients of one of Canada’s most prestigious undergraduate STEM scholarships.
The Schulich Leader Scholarships recognize exceptional students entering science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs who demonstrate an entrepreneurial mindset, outstanding leadership and a commitment to making a meaningful impact.
This year, 10 exceptional students are joining the University of Waterloo as Schulich Leaders. The incoming cohort is already demonstrating an impressive drive to tackle complex global challenges, with interests spanning climate change and accessibility to space exploration and robotics.
Among Waterloo’s 2026 recipients are two students beginning their studies in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering, bringing their own accomplishments, ideas and ambitions to the ECE community.