Current students

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Student Aerospace Summit Sept. 16-17

Tour Bombardier Aerospace and Pratt and Whitney operations. Stand nose-to-nose with the Q400 Series aircraft. Rev up with the PW300 family of engines. Network with Canadian aerospace industry executives. These are a few of the activities planned for the Canadian Student Summit on Aerospace from September 16 to 17 hosted this year by the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute student branch at Ryerson University. For more information or to register visit: casi.ca

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Hipel to be honoured with RSC medal

Keith Hipel, a professor of systems design engineering, is the recipient of this year’s Royal Society of Canada’s Sir John William Dawson Medal. Hipel, who was named an RSC fellow in 1998, will be awarded the medal November 26 at the Ottawa Convention Centre.

David Weckman of mechanical and mechatronics engineering has been honoured with the American Welding Society’s 2011 Charles H. Jennings Memorial Award for most valuable paper written by a college student or faculty representative published in the Welding Journal during 2010. It is the second time Weckman has won the award. The paper entitled Double-Sided Arc Welding of AA5182-O Aluminum Sheet for Tailor Welded Blank Applications was co-written by Jeff Moulton, Weckman’s graduate student. The award will be presented in November at the AWS annual awards lunch in Chicago.

University of Waterloo research project looking to expand the concept of a “smart grid” beyond electricity is receiving a $10,000 grant from Union Gas to create a fully integrated “smart energy network.” The project being run by the Waterloo Institute of Sustainable Energy is building on work ongoing in Ontario to develop a smart grid for the province’s electricity system, using digital two-way communication to allow utilities to respond instantly to changes in demand and automatically fix power outages, as well as giving consumers more control over how and when they use power.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

EcoCAR team gears up with financial boost

Members of Waterloo’s EcoCAR team received $25,000 from corporate sponsor GM Canada on September 21 to help fuel their drive towards the greening of a Chevy Malibu.Fifteen universities across North America are competing in the EcoCAR 2 challenge that spans three years and is intended to produce an environmentally-friendly vehicle people will want to buy and drive. “Cars are around to stay whether we like it or not,’ said Josh Lo, a chemical engineering student. “Reducing pollution and making cleaner cars is always going to be a goal.” 

Congratulations to Maclean’s on publishing an article highlighting the need to encourage more top Canadian engineering students to pursue graduate studies in Canada. (“Engineering: The home advantage),” Maclean’s magazine, September 19, 2011)

It should be noted, however, that many Ontario engineering schools have already begun to make significant progress in this regard under the Government of Ontario’s “Reaching Higher” program.

Tech-savvy students will put their coding skills to the test during the Great Canadian Appathon taking place September 30 to October 2 at the Conrad Business and Entrepreneurship and Technology Centre and other university and college ‘hubs’ across the country. Student teams will have 48 hours to create a mobile game they think could become the next top selling smartphone app. CBET already has over 30 teams registered, more than three times the number that particpated last year.

Waterloo management engineering students came second and third in the IIE Ryerson-Siemens Competition hosted by the Ryerson University student chapter of the Institute of Industrial Engineers on September 30. The competition, in which over 100 engineering students representing Waterloo, Ryerson and the University of Toronto took part, was sponsored by Siemens and Canadian Tire.

A team comprised of members of Waterloo’s advanced micro-nano-devices lab placed second in the Global Nano Innovation Contest which took place October 4 in Taiwan as part of the Taiwan National Exhibition. First prize was awarded to a team from IBM and third place was taken by a team from NASA. Waterloo was the only Canadian team to participate in the international competition.