News

We are deeply saddened to share the news of the passing of Dr. Robert (Bob) H. MacPhie, an internationally recognized researcher in antennas and propagation, and a cherished former member of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Dr. MacPhie earned his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1963 and joined the University of Waterloo shortly thereafter as an Assistant Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department (now the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering). He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1966 and to Professor in 1971. After a distinguished career spanning more than three decades, he retired in 1996 and was later named a Distinguished Professor Emeritus.

A research team led by Waterloo Engineering professors received $2 million in new federal funding to safeguard Canada’s critical cybersecurity infrastructure by identifying and countering threats that could emerge through the supply chain.

Led by Dr. Sebastian Fischmeister, an electrical and computer engineering professor, and Dr. Michael Mayer, a professor in mechanical and mechatronics engineering, the Materials-based Cybersecurity in Electronics (MATSEC) project brings together a collaborative team of Waterloo Engineering researchers.

A research team from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) has earned international recognition at the IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV 2025) — the premier global event in computer vision research.

Under the supervision of Dr. Fakhri Karray, MASc student Md Rezwanul Haque, ECE alumnus S. M. Taslim Uddin Raju, and Dr. Md. Milon Islam received the Best Poster Award and secured 2nd Place in the Continuous Sign Language Recognition Challenge (Unseen Sentences Task) at ICCV 2025.

Electrical and computer engineering PhD student, Laith Alkhawaldeh, was awarded Best Student Paper at the IEEE PES ISGT-Asia 2025 conference, held in Guangzhou, China from October 31 to November 2, 2025.

Alkhawaldeh’s paper titled “Adaptive ADMM for Distributed Peer-to-Peer Energy Trading,” presents a distributed optimization framework for peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading among residential prosumers.

This year, the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program is investing more than 198 million to support new and renewed Chairholders, with up to 311 million invested annually to attract and retain some of the world’s top research talent. Electrical and computer engineering (ECE) professors Dr. Lan Wei and Dr. Kerstin Dautenhahn have been named new Canada Research Chairs, bringing their cutting-edge work in nanoscale electronics and socially intelligent robotics to the forefront.

Dr. Raafat Mansour, a professor and University Research Chair in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo, has been selected to receive the 2026 Distinguished Educator Award from the IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society (MTT-S).

This prestigious international honour recognizes educators who have made exceptional and lasting contributions to the field of microwave engineering and science, while exemplifying the spirit of the late Fred J. Rosenbaum — a visionary who viewed teaching as a calling and dedicated his career to advancing the MTT-S community through mentorship and service.

Dr. Mansour’s award citation reads:

“For Outstanding Achievements as an Educator, Mentor, and Role Model of Microwave Engineers and Engineering Students.”

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) is deeply saddened by the loss of Professor Kostadinka Bizheva, fondly known as Dida, whose pioneering work in biomedical optics advanced both science and clinical practice.

Electrical and computer engineering PhD student, Trevor Blaikie, has been selected as the winner of the NAMBE 2024 Best Journal Paper Award. Trevor’s research, supervised by Dr. Zbig Wasilewski, earned top recognition for the paper titled “Optimizing GaAs/AlGaAs growth on GaAs (111)B for enhanced nonlinear efficiency in quantum optical metasurfaces.”

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) is proud to celebrate the outstanding achievement of Dr. Ahmed Sayed, a former PhD student in our department, who has been awarded the Best PhD Thesis Award from Drones. Drones is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access journal published by MDPI—a pioneer in scholarly, open-access publishing, supporting academic communities since 1996.

Dr. Ladan Tahvildari, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo, has been named a Golden Core Member of the IEEE Computer Society,—an honour that celebrates her long-standing dedication and impactful contributions to the advancement of the computing field worldwide.