News

The Government of Canada has announced significant funding awards for University of Waterloo researchers, with Faculty of Engineering scholars receiving grants for impactful projects in technology, sustainability, and health. This funding, awarded through the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), aims to advance critical areas of research and infrastructure. Charmaine Dean, vice-president of Research and International at Waterloo, congratulated these researchers, noting the importance of this support in fostering innovation across vital research domains.

As part of a recent Government of Canada announcement, six University of Waterloo doctoral students were named recipients of the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship (Vanier CGS). 

The Vanier CGS is one Canada’s highest academic honours, awarded to doctoral students who demonstrate academic excellence, research potential and leadership. These scholars join a community of researchers at Waterloo who are tackling today’s most pressing challenges through both fundamental discovery and applied innovation.  

Irfhana Zakir Hussain, an interdisciplinary PhD candidate in Public Health Sciences and Systems Design Engineering, uses AI, data science and community collaboration to predict and prevent heat-related health crises. Her work aims to identify vulnerable Waterloo neighbourhoods and help cities prepare for extreme climate events before they happen. 

“Heat is one of the most immediate and severe consequences of climate change,” Zakir Hussain says. “Some homes, especially in lower-income neighbourhoods, don’t have access to cooling resources and people may live in structures with poor insulation or infrastructure issues. We’re currently trying to incorporate indoor smart thermostats in these neighbourhoods to collect information we can then use as an indicator.” 

Congratulations Irfhana, we are looking forward to all the great work that will come from this research!

For more information about the other recipients please refer to this article: Celebrating 2025 Vanier Scholars. 

CTV Kitchener has featured new research on people's preferences towards robots that are similar to themselves led by professors Moojan Ghafurian and Kersten Dautenhahn. They asked 95 people to rate pictures of 11 different robots on some key characteristics like how good, active, and powerful they appeared.

A Waterloo Engineering research team has released new work that shows humans prefer interacting with social robots they perceive to have personalities that match their own.  

This finding was made by Dr. Moojan Ghafurian, a systems design engineering professor, and Dr. Kerstin Dautenhahn, a professor of electrical and computer engineering.  

The research included 95 participants between the ages of 20 and 67 who were asked to evaluate social robots based on the Affect Control Theory (ACT), which emphasizes qualities like goodness, activity, and power to determine the social identities that humans most like to interact with.