Researchers awarded $874,000 for tools, equipment

Wednesday, August 11, 2021

Five professors at Waterloo Engineering will receive a total of almost $874,000 under a federal program designed to give exceptional researchers the tools and equipment needed to become leaders in their fields.

The recipients are among 21 researchers campus-wide at the University of Waterloo announced today for almost $2.66 million in backing through the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund.

Across the country, $77 million will go to support 332 research infrastructure projects at 50 universities.

“Our researchers have always thought big,” Francois-Philippe Champagne, the minister of innovation, science and industry, said in a media release. “Now, more than ever, they need state-of-the-art labs and equipment to turn their visions into reality.”

The engineering researchers are:

Zhao Pan (mechanical and mechatronics engineering) - Mild-impact-induced Cavitation in Soft Matter and Traumatic Brain Injury: From Fluid Physics to Applied Health - $80,000

Valerie Ward (chemical engineering) – Advancing the Next Generation of Biomanufacturing Systems - $472,000

XiaoYu Wu (mechanical and mechatronics engineering) – Understanding the Transport Phenomena and Reaction Kinetics in Mixed Ionic-electronic Conducting (MIEC) Membranes - $79,900

Yimin Wu (mechanical and mechatronics engineering) – Understanding the Role of Defects in Artificial Leaves using In-Situ Multimodal Characterizations and Calculation - $105,000

Chul Min Yeum (civil and environmental engineering) - Infrastructure for Advancing Vision-Based Structural Assessment Technologies - $137,000