News

More and more robots are definitely coming to the commercial world and a Waterloo Engineering researcher hopes to speed their arrival by developing cheaper, general-purpose control systems.

At the moment, the high cost of customized robotics applications in workplaces such as warehouses and manufacturing plants largely limits them to huge companies with plenty of money to invest.

Twenty-one researchers at the University of Waterloo, including ECE Professors Vijay Ganesh and Stephen Smith, will receive $2.3 million from the provincial government to build Ontario’s knowledge-based economy in Waterloo Region,

Kathryn McGarry, MPP for Cambridge, and Daiene Vernile, MPP for Kitchener Centre, made the announcement of 11 Early Researcher Awards (ERA) and 10 Ontario Research Fund-Research Infrastructure (ORF-RI) awards today as part of an investment in Waterloo region worth $3.6 million.

A Waterloo company has created the world's first microscopic atomic force microscope (AFM) and has big plans for the device.

"These instruments are normally really big, like, they would fill up a tabletop," said Duncan Strathearn, co-founder of nGauge. "They cost upwards of $500,000, you pretty much need a PhD to operate them because they're kind of complex."

A University of Waterloo team received the third Best Design Award in the 2016 IEEE AP-S/URSI design competition (IEEE Antennas and Propagation Symposium AP-S has been held annually since 1949). Fifty international teams competed with designs on electromagnetic energy harvesters.  The work will be featured in a special issue of the IEEE Antenna and Propagation Magazine.

ECE Professors Manoj Sachdev and Zhou Wang were inducted as new Fellows into the Canadian Academy of Engineering on June 27, 2016. The Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE) is the national institution through which Canada's most distinguished and experienced engineers provide strategic advice on matters of critical importance to Canada. See the full news release here.

Developed in Waterloo, now orbiting in space

A one-of-a-kind communications device developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo is now orbiting the Earth as a central component of a microsatellite launched in Sriharikota, India on Tuesday to test new technologies in space.

The product of several years of work and refinement, the compact, sophisticated antenna for identifying and managing marine traffic is built into a Canadian Space Agency (CSA) satellite that is about the size of a household dishwasher.

The leap from engineer to entrepreneur was a logical one for Karen Tsoi (BASc 2009, Electrical; MMSc 2014, Management of Technology), owner of Pasteldress.com, an online custom bridal party outfitting business. “Entrepreneurs, like engineers, are all about solving problems,” says Tsoi. “Every day I wake up and think about each business problem with an analytical mind, just like the engineer I am. It’s the same approach.”

X-ray technology is at the beginning of a digital revolution that will transform the Canadian health-care system by detecting diseases such as cancer and heart disease faster and more accurately than traditional X-ray machines, allowing patients to begin treatment sooner.

Some Nunavut communities could cut their fossil fuel use by up to half with renewable energy that wouldn't cost any more than the aging diesel generators they now use, a new study has concluded.

"The technical challenges have been for the most part addressed," said Claudio Canizares, one of the authors of the report that was conducted by six Inuit, academic and environmental groups and funded by the World Wildlife Fund Canada.

Read the full story here.

Vice-President, Academic & Provost Ian Orchard has announced the winners of the 2015 Outstanding Performance Award.

Effective May 1, 2005, in accordance with the 2003 Faculty Salary Settlement, the University established an Outstanding Performance Fund to reward faculty members for outstanding contribution in teaching and scholarship.

The 2015 winners from Electrical and Computer Engineering are: