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The 2011 World University Rankings released by QS in Britain on September 5 lists Waterloo Engineering at 56th in the world among engineering and technology faculties. QS ranks the top 300 universities in the world based on six factors: academic reputation; employer reputation; student/faculty ratio; citations per faculty; international faculty; international students. 

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Remembering Donald Grierson

Dr. Donald Grierson, distinguished professor emeritus in civil and environmental engineering, passed away on August 25. Professor Grierson held a faculty post in the department for 37 years. He had earned his BASc in civil engineering in 1964, master’s in 1966 and PhD in 1968.

William Tatham, a systems design engineering graduate (BASc 1983) from the University of Waterloo, is profiled in a Globe & Mail story on August 26 discussing start-up success by a more experienced generation, those over 40 years of age. Tatham is founder, director and CEO of NexJ Systems Inc., Toronto, his third start-up company. NexJ is an enterprise customer relationship management (CRM) software solutions company focussed on the finance, insurance and healthcare industries. It has more than 300 employees.

Newtonville, a tabletop eco-friendly city, along with its enthusiastic Engineering and Science Quest camper architects provided the backdrop for the federal government’s $1.25 million Actua funding announcement made August 17 in E5. Actua is a national science, engineering and technology youth outreach network of which Waterloo’s ESQ and nine other Ontario university organizations are members.

University of Waterloo is among the best in the world in engineering and computer sciences. That is according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities, which released its 2011 findings on August 15.

The influential ranking placed Waterloo in the top 52 to 75 universities worldwide for engineering and computer sciences, ranked with 24 other well-regarded institutions from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Europe, and Asia.

Collaboration between University of Waterloo researchers and Ontario businesses was officially celebrated August 9 in Engineering 3. Under FedDev Ontario’s Applied Research and Commercialization Initiative the University of Waterloo has received $750,000 to partner with businesses on a total of 16 research projects. Duane Cronin of mechanical and mechatronics engineering spoke about his research at the event attended by government and university officials. Cronin is working with Polefab Inc. to make traffic and lighting poles safer and more stable in accidents.

Vanessa Bohns, who joined Waterloo’s management sciences department last month, has been attracting media attention with work she did at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. Bohns and a colleague showed that posture has a lot to do with the amount of pain a person can tolerate. Adopting a dominant posture can make you feel stronger while adopting a more submissive posture can make pain feel worse. Bohns was interviewed on the CBC and her research has been included in the Toronto Star and the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

The nominating committee established to identify a successor to Adel Sedra has begun its work. Sedra, who is also a professor in the electrical and computer engineering department, joined the University of Waterloo in 2003 and will finish his second term as dean next year. A memo written by Provost Geoff McBoyle says input and feedback are welcomed by members of the search committee or others until this Sunday, July 31. Sedra says he still has a lot to accomplish between now and July 1, 2012 when the new dean officially takes office.

Waterloo’s Autonoumous Robot Racing Team took all four top awards in the International Autonomous Robot Racing Competition held July 23 and 24 at the University of British Columbia. The team received the overall grand award and won first place in the design competition, the drag race competition and the circuit competition. The team’s winning entry was a redesigned version of the vehicle that crashed just before last year’s competition. [race website]