News

This year’s Waterloo Region Record “Forty Under 40” honours included six with direct links to Waterloo Engineering -- four alumni, a professor and a staff member. On the list were engineering graduates David Kroetsch, president of spinoff company Aeryon Labs; Michael Peasgood, vice-president for engineering at Aeryon; Craig Haney, director of marketing for Emergent and a community volunteer; and Andrea Clegg, an engineer at McCormick Rankin Corp.

Pearl Sullivan, chair of Waterloo’s mechanical and mechatronics engineering department, will become Waterloo’s eighth dean of engineering on July 1, 2012. Sullivan, an award-winning professor and accomplished researcher, joined the university as a professor of mechanical engineering in 2004. She will succeed Adel Sedra whose second term as dean ends June 30, 2012. “The exemplary reputation of Waterloo Engineering fueled a lot of international interest in this position,” said Feridun Hamdullahpur, president of the University of Waterloo.

Waterloo School of Architecture professor John McMinn and graduate Melana Janzen of McMinn + Janzen Studio located in Toronto have won a 2011 North American Wood Design Citation for their CP Harbour House project. CP Harbour House is a vacation home shared by two families on the shores of Georgian Bay. McMinn and Janzen’s project was one of 16 honoured by the North American Wood Design Awards Program out of over 100 entries.

Andrew Clinton (BASc ’05, Comp) is among the 28 recipients of scientific and technical achievements for the Academy Awards 2012 Scientific and Technical Awards Presentation to be held February 11 in Beverly Hills, California.

Waterloo Engineering start-up BufferBox will launch what is believed to be the first parcel delivery kiosk service in Canada on January 12 in the Student Life Centre at the University of Waterloo. BufferBox was created by three recent Waterloo mechatronics engineering graduates as their fourth year design project to provide a reliable and secure parcel delivery alternative.

Prithula Prosun, a recent graduate of Waterloo’s School of Architecture, has won a Canadian Architect Student Award of Merit for her master’s thesis project Lift House that provides flood-proof housing for the Bangladeshi poor. Prosun developed a house that rises with flood waters and then lowers once flooding recedes. In October, Prosun’s project was honoured by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada for applying leading-edge research to real-world situations. 

Jackie Rehkopf, who graduated from civil engineering with both her BASc and PhD, has had her book “Automotive Carbon Fiber Composites: From Evolution to Implementation” published by SAE International. Rehkopf is a senior researcher at Plasan Carbon Composites, a Tier 1 producer of carbon fiber composites for the U.S. automotive industry. She is also a principal investigator of a three-year project on predictive modeling of carbon fiber composites in automotive crash applications.

Geoff Christou (BArch ’10) has teamed up with a childhood friend to create Our Paper Life, a company that sells an environmentally-friendly shelf and a desk made from paper. The adult-size desk and shelf, each costing $19.99, are ideal for university students because they can be easily assembled and recycled when they’re no longer needed.