News

Bertha Bridget Kankam (MBET ’22) recently completed her master’s degree in business, entrepreneurship and technology (MBET) at Waterloo Engineering’s Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business. 

That is a worthy success in and of itself, but Kankam is not your typical MBET student. Better known to many as Yaa Yaa, she is an award-winning singer-songwriter from Ghana. 

Two Waterloo Engineering research teams have received the first two $5,000 Jain Family Award for Entrepreneurship instalments, a defined term award designated to University of Waterloo students working with Velocity.  

The 2022 recipients are Mechano-metamaterial spinal implants for its innovative work to improve the lives of spinal patients and Blackbird for its important advancements in flood risk mapping.  

For their Capstone Design project, Michael Phillips and his roommate Phillip Cooper (both BASc ’17, mechanical engineering, entrepreneurship option), created a camera that could help surgeons remove blood clots from the brains of stroke patients. That meant making the world’s smallest camera — and making it flexible enough to travel through a maze of veins and arteries. 

The result is Vena Medical. A startup fuelled by hard work, funding support and a team of advisors. 

New research by a Waterloo Engineering professor shows small, isolated wetlands, often the first to be removed for development and agriculture, play an outsized role in the protection of downstream lake and river ecosystems.

Researchers used a new method involving satellite imagery and computer modelling – the first of its kind – to show how small wetlands trap pollutants such as nitrogen and phosphorous because they are disconnected.

Four projects led by Waterloo Engineering researchers have been selected as inaugural funding recipients in an initiative to develop creative and collaborative health-care solutions. 

The projects will receive up to $25,000 for one year from the Graham Seed Fund (GSF). Developed by the University of Waterloo’s Health Initiatives team, the GSF aims to strengthen health system partnerships by providing resources to collaborate directly with health providers, clinicians, industry partners and universities.

The entrepreneurship ecosystem at Waterloo Engineering nurtures promising ideas into thriving enterprises. In our weekly Founder Fuel series, we look at new ventures and how they have benefited from that crucial early support.

After a stint in Silicon Valley, Spurrya Jaggi (BASc ’18, mechatronics engineering) created a social connection app called Lichi that makes it easy to build friendships through low-key meetups in bars, restaurants and cafés.

The University of Waterloo’s all-weather, self-driving bus, the WATonoBus, has hit the road with official go-ahead from Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation.

Students, staff, faculty and visitors can enjoy the ride with a complimentary WATonobus shuttle service operating every Monday to Friday, from 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.

Students at the University of Waterloo continue to push the limits of autonomous vehicles as members of a multi-school racing team.

Eight engineering, computer science and mathematics students from Waterloo teamed up with peers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pittsburgh and the Rochester Institute of Technology for a high-profile event earlier this month at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Waterloo Engineering students performed well at this year’s recent Ontario Engineering Competition (OEC) at Western University, with three first-place teams moving on to next month's national contest.

Thirteen undergraduate engineering students placed within the top three in nine competitive categories. The first and second-place teams in each category will compete in the Canadian Engineering Competition, to be held at the University of Waterloo in February.

Artificial intelligence (AI) med-tech startup Signal 1 deployed its predictive software at Grand River Hospital in Kitchener this month to improve operational efficiencies.

Co-founded by Waterloo Engineering alumnus Tomi Poutanen (BASc ’96, computer engineering), Signal 1’s ‘Patient Discharge Solution’ aims to help nurses, doctors and other clinicians make more efficient use of beds by predicting which patients will be ready for discharge within 48 hours.