Ning Jiang has an early memory of visiting the hospital where his parents worked in China and seeing someone walking with the aid of a prosthetic. This experience and others he had as the son of two physicians led Jiang to begin thinking how technology could be used for good.
A systems design engineering professor at the University of Waterloo, Jiang is fascinated with devices and technology that can enhance human health and the way people experience the world around them.
In recent years, factories have been steadily modernizing their facilities with more automation and manufacturing capabilities. With faster and better additive manufacturing solutions that can custom-make durable parts in one piece without the expense of the tooling, a new and exciting chapter in digital manufacturing has begun. This shift has attracted a new generation of engineers back to the shop floor.
Seven professors at Waterloo Engineering were awarded a total of almost $1.1 million in federal funding this week through a program designed to help attract and retain top researchers.
The backing from the John R. Evans Leaders Fund, a program of the Canada Foundation for Innovation, is earmarked for infrastructure to ensure labs are equipped for world-class research and technology development.
It has been a long but rewarding journey since Sebastian Fischmeister first hit on the concept of using involuntary emissions such as power consumption as a window into the workings of computer systems.
Early work on the idea as a means of debugging programs without shutting them down earned the electrical and computer engineering professor a best paper award soon after he came to the University of Waterloo.
