New initiatives for industrial and international partnerships are enabling Waterloo engineers to develop strategic research collaborations in areas such as wireless communications, the mobile internet, additive manufacturing, advanced robotics, biomedical engineering and sustainable energy.
The Engineering Research Office (ERO) proactively builds relationships with funding agencies, potential sponsors and other stakeholders, pairing the university’s leading engineering researchers with government and industry, to advance new technologies to improve the human condition.
Waterloo Engineering maintains research partnerships with close to 800 Canadian companies and 300 companies internationally, targeting strategic research partnerships with leading global universities.
Several Senate-approved research centres, including the Centre for Advanced Trenchless Technology, the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Energy, the Waterloo Centre for Automotive Research and the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology form part of Waterloo Engineering’s commitment to research excellence.
Areas of Concentration
Controls and precision tooling, lightweight materials, structural crashworthiness, advanced materials.
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Digital design and fabrication technologies, environmental issues and new material economies, globalization, urbanization.
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Bio-compatibility and in-vitro modelling, human movement, ergonomics, wearable technology.
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Advancing IoT research to connect and exchange data.
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Nano-biosystems, nano-electronics, nano-instrumentation, nano-materials.
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Robotics and machine intelligence, machine learning.
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Human machine interaction, autonomous robotics, rahabilitation and assistive robotics, micro and nano robitics, and sensing and control.
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Transporation networks, smart buildings, smart communities, and sensors and devices.
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News
Students bring solutions to Canada’s North through i-Capstone
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.
Student collective brings thousands of makers together
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.
Biomedical engineering student recognized for co-op work
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.