A story in the July 6 Globe and Mail outlines a funding challenge faced by software engineering alumnus Kunal Gupta and his company Polar Mobile. They need bridge funding to meet their growth needs while they wait for government research and development grants to come in. Advice comes from three business specialists, including Rod McNaughton, director of the Conrad Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology Centre at the University of Waterloo. READ more about Polar Mobile’s challenge and McNaughton’s recommendations.
Accolades continue to come in for the new Engineering 5 building. It was recently reviewed by Gabriel Fain in the June issue of Canadian Architect Magazine. Fain notes that the six-storey E5 successfully combines student project space on the lower levels with labs, offices and classrooms on the upper levels. He concludes that, “… there is no question that a new sense of identity will be formed that builds upon the rich academic culture and reputation of Waterloo’s Faculty of Engineering” with the construction of E5 and the other planned engineering buildings on this part of campus.
Derek Satnik, an electrical engineering alumnus, and his family have built the first LEED Platinum certified building in the Waterloo Region. Making the investment to build an energy efficient home was a natural one for Satnik who works as an energy-efficiency consultant with Mindscape Innovations, a “green home” consulting firm located in Kitchener.
Devon Rizzo, a first-year management engineering student, will be a member of Team Canada’s golf team at the 2011 Summer Universiade games in Shenzhen, China, August 17-20. Rizzo is the record holder for the lowest OUA women’s golf score. [news release]
Saied Yousefi, who recently completed his PhD in systems design engineering, Tarek Hegazy, a civil engineering professor, and Keith Hipel, a systems design engineering professor, have been honoured with this year’s best peer-reviewed paper award from the Journal of Management in Engineering. Their award-winning paper, Yousefi’s doctoral thesis, is entitled Attitude-Based Negotiation Methodology for the Management of Construction Disputes.
As a teenager Amanda LeDuc wasn’t sure what her future held, but she knew one thing: she wanted to help people. Now a fourth-year Waterloo management engineering student LeDuc is involved in the engineering society and has held a wide variety of engineering roles, including three terms as a student director on the Women in Engineering Committee. Her current focus is on Go ENG Girl, a WIE event to be held October 1, 2011, at 11 universities across Ontario. Registration for Go ENG Girl begins August 5.
The official launch of the newly established University of Waterloo Centre for Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (CPAMI) took place July 13. Attendees included George Dixon, vice-president university research; Adel Sedra, dean of engineering; Manoj Sachdev, chair of electrical and computer engineering; and industrial partner representatives. The first director of the centre is Mohamed Kamel, an electrical and computer engineering professor. [DB article]
The design of Team Inove, made up of Amer Abu-Khajil and Jacqueline Doucet, both third-year civil engineering students, and Nader Alkadri and Josh Layton, both fourth-year urban planning students, will be redesigning the main entrance to the Waterloo campus. Team Inove beat out two other teams in the i3 Challenge, the student competition to design an element of the campus. The deciding factor for Team Inove was the elegance and simplicity of its design, said i3 Challenge committee chair Jeff Casello, a professor in the faculties of engineering and environment.
Waterloo’s Autonoumous Robot Racing Team took all four top awards in the International Autonomous Robot Racing Competition held July 23 and 24 at the University of British Columbia. The team received the overall grand award and won first place in the design competition, the drag race competition and the circuit competition. The team’s winning entry was a redesigned version of the vehicle that crashed just before last year’s competition. [race website]