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Waterloo Engineering students competed against each other this past weekend to choose the remainder of the teams for the 2012 Ontario Engineering Competition. The first-place winners of the junior design team include: Rahul Patel, Tarjote Chaggar, Matthew Vandenberg and William Cullen, all of mechatronics engineering. The top winners of the senior design team are: Nevin McCallum of electrical engineering, and Cody Prodaniuk, Jeff McClure and Maple Leung, all of mechanical engineering.

About 2,900 potential Waterloo Engineering students, family members and others checked out our Waterloo and Cambridge campuses on November 5 as part of the campus-wide annual fall open house. The day offered tours of engineering buildings and the School of Architecture, residence viewing, demonstrations, including a dissection of a car engine, and even a “Parents’ Lounge” to answer questions.

Peter Carr, a Waterloo management sciences professor, was asked by a Globe and Mail reporter whether something like Facebook or Twitter can contribute to the academic side university. “Absolutely,” he responded. “The new modern philosophies of education would say it’s important to have students working in groups, interacting with each other and the professor and learning the content together.” Carr recently taught a group of students who connected with Red Cross workers at offices in Uganda, Colombia and India using Skype.

Lawrence Wong, of systems design engineering and the University of Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, was awarded the MEMSCAP Microsystems Design Award for his presentation entitled Ultrasound Imaging System using Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers. The competition, sponsored by CMC Microsystems, is targeted at microsystems applications including telecommunication, health care, automobile, aerospace and the environment.

Engineering graduate students and alumni are invited to attend Engineering Connections on November 8, 2011 from 5:30-7:00 p.m. at the Best Western hotel in Orangeville. The free networking event for engineers of all disciplines, experience levels, and graduate students exploring employment opportunities is sponored by the Workforce Planning Board of Waterloo Wellington Dufferin.

Kui Jiao, who graduated last week with his PhD in mechanical engineering, has been chosen as the grand prize winner of the 2011 Dr. Bernard S. Baker Student Award for Fuel Cell Research. The award will be presented to Jiao November 1 at the 2011 Fuel Cell Seminar Exposition in Orlando, Florida. This is the first time a Canadian student has won the award. Jiao’s doctoral supervisor was Xianguo Li of mechanical engineering. At the October 22 convocation Jiao was one of five doctoral students campus-wide recognized with the rubric “outstanding achievement in graduate studies”.

Prithula Prosun, a recent graduate of Waterloo’s School of Architecture, was recently honoured by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada for applying leading-edge research to real-world situations. Prosun, one of 12 recipients of the NSERC 2011 Innovation Challenge Awards, was recognized for her work on low income flood-proof technology (LIFT) housing for the Bangladeshi poor. For her architecture master’s thesis Prosun developed a house that rises with flood waters and then lowers once flooding recedes.

Although many Waterloo Engineering students are still writing midterms, they now will be able to plan for their fall term final exams that take place this year from December 8 to 22. The Registrar’s office has posted dates for in-class and on-line exams, as well as details on timetable conflicts, religious accommodation exam scheduling and more. [final exam schedule]