Engineering researchers awarded NSERC funding for projects that include enhancing wireless security

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Eight research partnerships between Waterloo Engineering professors and industries have been awarded Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Strategic Project Grant funding. Announced March 16, the financial support across campus includes $5.3 million for strategic project grants and $9.6 million through the federal Research Support Fund for 2014-2015.

Electrical and computer engineering professor Amir Khandani, pictured below, is the recipient of over 

Amir Khandani
$520,000 towards the project he's leading to support 5G networks. With 50 billion smart devices estimated to be online by 2020, Khandani is working on new techniques to double the rate of information exchanged over the same bandwidth, in addition to enhancing wireless security.

The other Waterloo Engineering researchers who were awarded NSERC's Strategic Project Grant funding include:

  • William Wong (electrical and computer engineering) partnering with MW Canada to create electronic fabric, in which UV lights are integrated directly into fabric. The electronic fabric is to be used in water filtration systems.
     
  • Dayan Ban (electrical and computer engineering) partnering with TeTechS, Norcada, and COM DEV International to develop novel THz devices for high-speed optical wireless communication systems.
     
  • Slim Boumaiza (electrical and computer Engineering)  partnering with Keysight Technologies and Focus Microwaves to create efficient bridges between flexible 5G radio frequency devices and circuit levels, as well as circuit and system levels.
     
  • Zhongwei Chen (chemical engineering) working with Ballard Power Systems Inc. and Grafoid to aid the effort to make proton exchange membrane fuel cells a commercially viable technology.
     
  • Krzysztof Czarnecki (electrical and computer engineering) who is creating a safety extensible automotive systems and software architecture (SEASAR) to enable post-manufacturing vehicle upgrades through smart apps and devices.
     
  • Guang Gong (electrical and computer engineering) partnering with DBJay Ltd., IBM Canada, and IBM United States to increase the security and efficiency of mobile cloud computing with new mechanisms for securely combining compression and encryption.
     
  • Bruce MacVicar (civil and environmental engineering) partnering with Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, Parish Geomorphic Ltd., and City of Toronto to assess the response of channel bed sediment and benthic invertebrates to floods in urban creeks under different management scenarios. 

NSERC Strategic Project Grants aim to increase research and training in four target areas that could strongly influence Canada's economy, society or environment in the next 10 years: environmental science and technologies, manufacturing, and natural resources and energy, and information and communications technologies (ICT).

As world leaders in ICT research, Waterloo Engineering is uniquely prepared to advance the next wave of global technology: the Internet of Things. With the largest engineering school in Canada, along with the highest concentrations of electrical and computer engineering and computer science researchers in North America, Waterloo has multiple elite research institutes with unique ICT facilities along with significant industry partnerships that optimize the economic impact of research.