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.
Ten Waterloo students presented their projects at the symposium. An additional 60 student organizations showcased their creations throughout the venue which spanned art, engineering, business, design, poetry and everything in-between.
“Socratica is unlike anything I've seen in my years working with students. They've created something remarkable — a community where everyone from artists to tech entrepreneurs work side by side as builders,” says John Dick, senior director of Founder Development at Velocity, the University’s incubator hub and one of Socratica’s local partners.
Socratica’s symposiums have tripled in size with each edition. The collective now has a presence on every continent and wants a chapter in every major city around the world.
“People want to feel that there are people excited and doing something about making the future better,” Yu said in a news article. Socratica provides the “social permissioning” to try something new.
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