Meet our Graduate Students

MEET ECE'S GRADUATE STUDENTS


Discover their research, achievements, and impact.

A team of researchers from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) has earned third place at the 2026 IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) Industry Application Pitch Competition, an international competition recognizing research with strong real-world commercialization potential.

The team—PhD student Yu Cao, post-doctoral fellow Omid Bagheri, and MASc student Veronica Leong, supervised by Dr. George Shaker, Adjunct Professor in ECE—received the award after presenting their research to a panel of industry leaders during the 2026 IEEE AP-S/URSI Symposium.

Four PhD students in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) have earned the NSERC Canada Graduate Research Scholarship – Doctoral (CGRS D), one of Canada's most prestigious and competitive awards for doctoral researchers.

The 2026 recipients are:

  • Ahmed Metwally Hegazy
  • Angeline Lafleur
  • Andy (Andres) Schang
  • Michael Ross Spinazze

Awarded through a national competition, the CGRS D recognizes exceptional PhD students whose academic excellence, research achievements and leadership potential position them among Canada's most promising emerging scholars.

ECE PhD student Soomin Shin has been awarded a $15,000 scholarship from the Waterloo Data and AI Institute, recognizing her innovative research at the intersection of artificial intelligence and real-world physical systems.

Supervised by Kerstin Dautenhahn, Shin is a member of the Social and Intelligent Robotics Research Lab (SIRRL), where researchers explore how robots can interact with people in meaningful, socially aware ways. Her work focuses on building scalable social robot systems that can operate sustainably in real-world environments by integrating advanced AI capabilities.

Sarah Odinotski

Meet Sarah Odinotski

Sarah received her BASc. in Nanotechnology Engineering at the University of Waterloo in 2022 and is currently pursuing her PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing.

“I chose the Nanotechnology Engineering program because of its interdisciplinary nature; Each field has its own ‘language’ and it is an invaluable skill to be able to translate and connect these languages to tell a bigger story.”

“Staying at Waterloo to pursue my PhD at the Institute for Quantum Computing was an easy decision because I knew I would have the resources and support to not only succeed but carry out impactful research.”

Sarah’s research is focused at the intersection between semiconductor physics, microfabrication, medicine, and quantum sensing. Her group’s goal is to make a “perfect” detector, capable of capturing even the smallest quantifiable form of light - a single photon. Sarah works on designing and fabricating these devices, using UWaterloo’s state-of-the-art cleanrooms in the quantum nano fabrication and characterization facility.

“Though this detector has applications spanning defense, quantum computing, and communication, I’m interested in integrating it with medical imaging systems for diagnostic purposes.”

Sarah is a Vanier Scholar, having not only received one of the most prestigious Canadian PhD scholarships but was ranked 4th across Canada. She was also named the Faculty of Engineering’s 2022 Co-op Student of the Year and the Kitchener-Waterloo’s 2022 Woman of the Year Award for the Young Adult Category.