Waterloo Engineering scored well in the 2013 QS rankings moving to second place in Canada, up from fourth last year. The ranking of 46, up from 57 in 2012, marks the first time the Faculty has moved ahead of the University of British Columbia and McGill University in these rankings.
Shell Canada is helping boost important Waterloo Engineering initiatives by providing $200,000 in funding over the next three years to support a broad range of student activities, including student team sponsorship, Capstone Design project awards and WiE (Women in Engineering) mentorship.
Two out of three Canadian women named recipients of the BlackBerry Scholars Program are beginning Waterloo Engineering programs this term. The Canadian recipients include Anastasia Santasheva of Maple, ON, a new Waterloo Engineering systems design engineering student, and Tian Qi (Dinah) Shi of Mississauga who is pursing her degree in software engineering. The third Canadian woman is Xiao Yan (Cheyenne) Guo of Toronto who is a University of Waterloo math student.
For the second consecutive year, the University of Waterloo has been ranked among the top 50 universities for academic achievement in the category of engineering/ technology and computer science according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU).
Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter and one of the youngest tech executives in Silicon Valley, will address students and local entrepreneurs at the University of Waterloo this fall.
A paper by electrical and computer engineering graduate students Frank Imeson and Ariq Emtenan, and professors Siddharth Garg and Mahesh Tripunitara won the Best Student Paper award at the 2013 Usenix Security Symposium held August 14-16 in Washington, D.C. Their winning paper is entitled "Securing Computer Hardware Using 3D Integrated Circuit (IC) Technology and Split Manufacturing for Obfuscation." [symposium website]
The University of Waterloo is the only Canadian university to make the top 25 schools that are "churning out successful entrepreneurs", according to CrunchBase, a free online database of technology companies, people and investors. CrunchBase's data shows Stanford as the top institution for producing entrepreneurs. Waterloo ranks in 20th place, followed by Princeton University.
A Waterloo Engineering startup was featured at DreamIt NYC Demo Day held in New York City on August 6 for the media, venture capital firms, law firms, advisors, and other investors. As reported by Mashable.com., GamePress was one of 15 companies launched by DreamIt Ventures' accelerator program. The startups represented a wide range of topics, from video games to data aggregation platforms.
Vijay Ganesh, an assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering, is the recipient of funding from the Google Research Awards program for his proposal entitled From Functional Regressions to Security Testing.
The Google "unrestricted gift" awards support the work of faculty members at top universities around the world. Ganesh is planning to use the funds that come with the award to hire master's and doctoral candidates to assist him with his research into computer security testing.
Collaboration between an architecture professor and an avant-garde fashion designer could influence how cities of the future might look. Phillip Beesley of the School of Architecture is working with Iris van Herpen, a fashion designer based in Amsterdam who has created work worn by Lady Gaga. Two exhibits are on display in France through the summer. The unconventional collaboration sees the introduction of architectural elements to Van Herpen's clothes. [home page story]