Mohammad Bozchalui, an electrical and computer engineering doctoral student, was recently honoured as the winner of MPrime’s award for Best Novel Use of Mathematics in Technology Transfer. MPrime, Canada’s only Network of Centres of Excellence for the mathematical sciences, brings together academia, industry and the public sector to develop mathematical tools vital to the knowledge-based economy. Bozchalui received his award at the seventh International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics, which was held in Vancouver.
Collaboration between University of Waterloo researchers and Ontario businesses was officially celebrated August 9 in Engineering 3. Under FedDev Ontario’s Applied Research and Commercialization Initiative the University of Waterloo has received $750,000 to partner with businesses on a total of 16 research projects. Duane Cronin of mechanical and mechatronics engineering spoke about his research at the event attended by government and university officials. Cronin is working with Polefab Inc. to make traffic and lighting poles safer and more stable in accidents.
University of Waterloo is among the best in the world in engineering and computer sciences. That is according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities, which released its 2011 findings on August 15.
The influential ranking placed Waterloo in the top 52 to 75 universities worldwide for engineering and computer sciences, ranked with 24 other well-regarded institutions from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Europe, and Asia.
Newtonville, a tabletop eco-friendly city, along with its enthusiastic Engineering and Science Quest camper architects provided the backdrop for the federal government’s $1.25 million Actua funding announcement made August 17 in E5. Actua is a national science, engineering and technology youth outreach network of which Waterloo’s ESQ and nine other Ontario university organizations are members.
William Tatham, a systems design engineering graduate (BASc 1983) from the University of Waterloo, is profiled in a Globe & Mail story on August 26 discussing start-up success by a more experienced generation, those over 40 years of age. Tatham is founder, director and CEO of NexJ Systems Inc., Toronto, his third start-up company. NexJ is an enterprise customer relationship management (CRM) software solutions company focussed on the finance, insurance and healthcare industries. It has more than 300 employees.
Dr. Donald Grierson, distinguished professor emeritus in civil and environmental engineering, passed away on August 25. Professor Grierson held a faculty post in the department for 37 years. He had earned his BASc in civil engineering in 1964, master’s in 1966 and PhD in 1968.
The 2011 World University Rankings released by QS in Britain on September 5 lists Waterloo Engineering at 56th in the world among engineering and technology faculties. QS ranks the top 300 universities in the world based on six factors: academic reputation; employer reputation; student/faculty ratio; citations per faculty; international faculty; international students.
A story in The Globe and Mail on September 7 describes a flurry of investment in Canadian start-ups by U.S. technology companies. The story notes that there have been at least 20 major acquisitions since January, injecting capital that will help transform centres such as Waterloo into global mobile hubs.
Robert Varin of mechanical and mechatronics engineering has received a Science Technology Transfer Award from the World Association for Innovative Technologies for his Keynote Opening presentation entitled: “Nanomaterials for Solid State Hydrogen Storage-Synthesis and Properties” (co-authors Les Zbroniec and Minchul Jang). The keynote was given at the International Conference for Innovative Technologies IN-TECH 2011, which was held September 1-3 in Bratislava, Slovakia.
First-year students weren’t the only ones attending orientation sessions last week — new engineering faculty members were also officially welcomed to Waterloo Engineering. On September 8 new professors were greeted by Adel Sedra, dean of engineering, and listened to presentations made by four associate deans of engineering.