News

Researchers at Waterloo Engineering are developing a system to cool power-hungry artificial intelligence (AI) data centres more economically by targeting sudden hotspots on computer chips with a single drop of boiling coolant.

The concept builds on the team’s previous work to wrap drops of one liquid in a thin skin of another and combines general immersion cooling with inexpensive deionized water with limited use of much more costly coolant.

Waterloo Engineering is mourning the loss of a retired civil engineering professor and early graduate whose landfill research earned him an international reputation and whose students repeatedly ranked him among the best professors in his department.

Dr. Grahame Farquhar (BASc ’64, MASc ’66) died November 1, 2026, at the age of 87. A longtime professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, he received the University of Waterloo’s Distinguished Teacher Award in 1982, a recognition his family says he counted among his proudest professional moments.

A professor at Waterloo Engineering is the new director of the Water Institute, which brings together expert researchers from all six faculties at the University of Waterloo for a common cause.

Dr. Nandita Basu, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, as well as earth and environmental sciences, who holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Global Water Sustainability and Ecohydrology, started her three-year term as director this month.

A professor who is cross-appointed to the Faculty of Engineering has won the top award in science and engineering in Canada for more than three decades of groundbreaking research on batteries.

Dr. Linda Nazar, a chemistry professor who also has cross-appointments in electrical and chemical engineering, was awarded the 2026 Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

A Waterloo Engineering researcher is expanding a long-running partnership with the province to help Ontario improve predictions of floods and droughts and further inform water management in lakes and rivers across the province.

Dr. Bryan Tolson, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has received $540,000 over three years from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources for the Ontario Hydrologic Modelling Assessment project. 

A researcher who turns the body’s own cells into better medical treatments is joining the University of Waterloo as one of its inaugural Eddie Goldenberg Research Chairs.

Dr. Ruibing Wang, currently a professor of supramolecular pharmaceutics and biomaterials at the University of Macau, will join the Faculty of Engineering in April 2027 as Eddie Goldenberg Research Chair in Supramolecular Biomaterials. He is one of three chairs appointed to Waterloo through the Government of Canada program.

When she was a Systems Design Engineering student, Yollanda Zhang (BASc ’04) kept her bipolar disorder diagnosis a secret, even from her closest friends.

More than 20 years later, she’s sharing her story for the students who might be struggling today. Her message: struggling doesn’t mean you’re failing, and you don’t have to do it alone.

Researchers at Waterloo Engineering have discovered how tiny bumps inside the eye contribute to a leading cause of blindness, a finding that could eventually reduce the need for corneal transplants.

Scientists have long known that bumps develop in the corneas - the clear, dome-shaped outer layer at the front of the eye - of people with Fuchs endothelial corneal dystrophy.

Waterloo Engineering alum Albert (Feng) Yang (PhD ‘95) has donated $1 million to establish the Yang Family Professorship, a new fund supporting artificial intelligence (AI) research focused on responsible innovation and real-world impact.

Yang established the professorship in honour of his former PhD supervisor, Dr. Andrew Wong, Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Systems Design Engineering, who will serve as the inaugural holder.

More than 460 engineering and architecture students celebrated the end of their academic journey on Saturday, October 24, as they received their degrees from the University of Waterloo at Fall 2026 Convocation.

With family, friends and the Faculty of Engineering and School of Architecture community in attendance, 123 undergraduate, 290 master’s and 50 PhD graduates crossed the stage during the afternoon ceremony on campus.