Alum launches scholarship for social innovation

Monday, March 25, 2024

Barbara Paldus (BASc ’93 electrical engineering, BMATH ’93) has established the Professor Josef Paldus Engineering Scholarship to advance innovation in biomedical engineering. 

The scholarship's inaugural recipient is Hana Karim, a first-year biomedical engineering student.   

Karim said the  award has given her the financial freedom to look further afield for her co-op placements and “take the leap and go.”  

She hopes to follow the interdisciplinary example set by Paldus in her graduate studies to complete a double major in medicine and law. She also shares a love of music with Paldus and is able to continue practicing piano more seriously while studying thanks to the financial flexibility the scholarship has afforded her. 

Paldus established the scholarship in memory of her late father, a Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Applied Mathematics, and a dedicated teacher and researcher who died of congestive heart failure last January. 

“Modern medicine probably gave him an extra five to six years of good life,” said Paldus. “And so, having gone through the loss of my father, I want this scholarship to help people develop technologies that will improve the lives of those living with terminal illnesses and chronic diseases, and help manage that end-of-life stage in the most comfortable way possible. I wanted to create an award so that Waterloo could attract the best and brightest to Biomedical Engineering.” 

Go to Alum sets up scholarship to help students develop technologies for the social good for the full story.