Future students

Five Waterloo Engineering teams placed either first or second in this year’s Ontario Engineering Competition and will advance to the Canadian Engineering Competition to be held March 8 to 11. Dhananja Jayalath, Neil Olij, Chris Wiebe and Ryan Mann, all fourth-year electrical engineering students, took top spot in OEC’s Innovative Design contest with their Muscle Activation Detection Suit entry. In addition, team members also took home the Technical Excellence award presented to the team displaying the greatest consideration and attention to technical aspects of design.

Fathy Ismail of mechanical and mechatronics engineering will serve as interim chair of the department from February 1 to December 31 2012. He will replace Pearl Sullivan who is succeeding Adel Sedra as dean of Waterloo Engineering on July 1, 2012. Sullivan is resigning as chair of MME on January 31 to allow time for the transition of the dean’s position. A full search will take place for Sullivan’s permanent successor.

Waterloo management engineering students won a number of awards, including the overall conference grand prize trophy, at the Institute of Industrial Engineers National Student Conference held January 19-21 in Halifax. The Golden I trophy was awarded based on the points the students earned for winning individual and team competitions, contributing a school video and cheer, and for participating in various conference events.

Mark Cremasco, a mechanical engineering MASc candidate, and his supervisor Carolyn Hansson won the best poster award at the 23rd annual Canadian Materials Science Conference held recently at UBC Okanagan. Their poster was entitled Analysis of the Effects of Anti-Icing Agents on the Durability of Concrete. 

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. 

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]

2G Robotics, founded by mechanical and mechatronics master’s student Jason Gillham, is helping document the HMS Investigator, a British ship sent out 150 years ago to search for John Franklin’s lost Arctic expedition. This summer, divers are recording and assessing the wreck resting near the shore of Aulavik National Park in Northwest Territoires. Equipment to be used includes a robotic underwater laser scanner developed by 2G Robotics, a University of Waterloo spinoff company.

More than 160 competitors and volunteers took part in the recent spring Waterloo Engineering Competition. This term’s senior team design winners are Shahid Haider, Benjamin Tan, Yiling Wang, and Martin Lui, all of systems design engineering. The winners of the junior team design are Kumar Singh, electrical engineering; Ayush Kapur, mechatronics engineering; and Drupandh Manjunath, chemical engineering. The first place consulting engineering team include Amir Taleghani, Caitlin Speicher, Matthew Casswell, and Stuart Pearson, all of civil engineering.

Peter Douglas, director of the university’s UAE campus, was recently interviewed by Gulfnews.com about Waterloo Engineering’s unique co-op program which is manadatory for all engineering students in Canada, as well as the UAE. “The idea behind our cooperative education program is a work and study experience offering students much more than an internship,” said Douglas, a chemical engineering professor. The first 15 chemical and civil UAE-campus engineering students will join the 3A classes in Waterloo starting January 2012 and will complete their degrees in Canada.

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]