News

A new partnership between the University of Waterloo and the City of Iqaluit is giving students the opportunity to apply their skills to real-world challenges while making a meaningful impact in Nunavut.

The collaboration was made possible through i-Capstone — Waterloo’s first interdisciplinary undergraduate capstone program. Bringing together students from all Faculties, i-Capstone empowers them to address complex community issues like sustainable housing, infrastructure, and urban planning for academic credit.

University of Waterloo students have built one of the fastest-growing local chapters of an international maker collective called Socratica. More than 2,500 students gathered at the 2025 symposium in Waterloo to build, innovate, design, engineer and collaborate.

The local chapter was founded in 2022 by two Waterloo Engineering students now in their fourth year, Anson Yu and Jocelyne Murphy from the Department of Systems Design Engineering. Its success stems from harnessing the Waterloo entrepreneurial ethos and inviting thousands of students from multiple disciplines to make magic together.

A third-year student in the biomedical engineering program has been recognized as the co-operative education student of the year for Waterloo Engineering.

Jarett Dewbury was cited for his contributions during a co-op term with the Tadesse Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Engineering is renowned for its entrepreneurial graduates. No surprise then that the Waterloo region is home to a number of successful startups with global reach and local impact.

Alchemy, Avidbots and Miovision are just three examples of local businesses that were founded by Waterloo Engineering alumni— namely, Chong Shen (BASc ’13) and Khanjan Desai (BASc ’13); Pablo Molina (BASc ’11) and Faizan Sheikh (BASc ’11); and Kurtis McBride (BASc ’04, MASc ’07), respectively. All three have contributed to putting the Waterloo region on the map as Canada’s tech capital.

Waterloo Engineering students achieved impressive results at Canada’s most prestigious engineering student competition last month.

The 2025 Canadian Engineering Competition (CEC), hosted at Dalhousie University, provided a platform for students to demonstrate their innovative thinking and technical expertise across several categories. Every Waterloo competitor secured a top-three finish in their respective category.

Four Waterloo Engineering researchers have been awarded close to $5 million through the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) Program to support transformative research.

Among the recipients are Waterloo Engineering professors Dr. Duane Cronin, Dr. David Fortin, Dr. Evelyn Yim and Dr. Mahla Poudineh. 

An interdisciplinary research project led by the University of Waterloo uses virtual reality (VR) and haptics — a sense of touch — to create an immersive educational experience rooted in restorative justice. 

The Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation (DOHR) project engages students in bearing witness to historical harm by "bringing to life" the stories of former residents of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children, which closed in 1978. Waterloo Engineering professor Dr. Oliver Schneider was part of the research team led by Dr. Kristina Llewellyn, a professor of history.

The University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Engineering Outreach team is on a mission to ignite young people’s interest in the world of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and encourage them to explore further studies and careers in these fields.

With the support of Actua — a leading Canadian STEM youth outreach organization, individual and industry donors and community partners, Waterloo Engineering Outreach (WEO) delivered 915 programs and engaged over 32,000 youth in 2024. That’s a 110 per cent increase in engagement since 2018.

Faculty members at Waterloo Engineering are helping scale up the electric vehicle (EV) industry in Canada through their work at the Ontario Battery and Electrochemistry Research Centre.

Dr. Michael Pope, a professor of chemical engineering, and Dr. Linda Nazar, a professor of chemistry who is also cross-appointed to two engineering departments at Waterloo, co-lead the centre as it focuses on key challenges in battery technologies.

A small radar device created by researchers at Waterloo Engineering has the potential to provide silent, unseen and unobtrusive heart monitoring almost anywhere people sit down.

"Imagine a future where your car, your couch and even your office chair don't just support your body – they also actively protect your health by serving as early warning systems," said Dr. George Shaker, an adjunct associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. "If widely adopted, this technology has enormous potential to save lives."