News

It is deeply heartbreaking to learn that the remains of hundreds of people, including children, were found in unmarked graves near the former Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan.

Waterloo Engineering stands with the Cowessess First Nation, and with the communities, families and individuals affected by this trauma. We are saddened knowing of the pain felt for the hundreds of children at Marieval and other Canadian residential schools who never went home, saddened for the families and communities whose children were taken and could not begin to heal.

An autonomous shuttle bus developed by a research team led by a Waterloo Engineering professor is now being showcased at the University of Waterloo.

The demonstration of the WATonoBus is the first of its kind at a Canadian academic institution and marks a significant milestone in a multi-year initiative to demonstrate and integrate autonomous transportation onto the campus.

A startup founded by second-year Waterloo Engineering students just five years ago would have a market capitalization of US $5.16 billion under a proposed merger to make it a publicly traded company.

Embark Trucks, which is based in San Francisco, was launched by former mechatronics engineering students Alex Rodrigues and Brandon Moak to bring autonomous technology to the trucking industry.

Sheha Akbari graduates from Waterloo with a management engineering degree, an Apple patent in the works, experience as a refugee interpreter and translator, and a passion for helping improve the lives of disadvantaged women and youth living in Afghanistan.

Growing up hearing about the financial, emotional and other struggles her parents, especially her mother, had while in Afghanistan, Akbari has committed herself to supporting Afghan citizens, particularly women and youth. 

The hard work, perseverance and accomplishments of Waterloo Engineering's 2021 graduates will be honoured in two convocation events on June 19.

An online reception will begin at 5 p.m. to recognize the Faculty's newest alumni. It will include a slide show of photos submitted by students highlighting nostalgic moments throughout their various programs, a group opening of a special gift sent to all graduates and fun games with “awesome prizes.”

Mary Wells, the dean of Waterloo Engineering, urges universities to do more to encourage diversity among students in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) in an opinion piece in a national publication.

Tejinder Singh has come a long way since he was a boy who loved taking his electronic toys apart and seeing if he could put them back together again.

Now a postdoctoral fellow at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and a research associate at Waterloo Engineering, Singh added to a growing list of accomplishments when he was chosen to receive the Spring 2021 Governor General’s Gold Medal for the highest standing in a doctoral program at the University of Waterloo.

One professor at Waterloo Engineering was announced this week as a new Canada Research Chair, while a second had his funding through the federal program renewed for seven more years.

Ning Jiang, a professor of systems design engineering, is the new Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence for Human-centered and Human-machine Interfaces, with $500,000 in funding over five years.

Civil engineering student Jonathan Miguel Logarta-Chin has been chosen by his peers as valedictorian for the Waterloo Engineering graduating class at convocation ceremonies this Saturday.

Logarta-Chin says the selection validates his struggles and hardships, and that he is proud of a personal achievement – coming out as gay – as well as his academic success.

“It was when I fully got to appreciate who I was as a person and felt comfortable in my own skin,” he says of his decision.

Two faculty members at Waterloo Engineering – Dean Mary Wells and Nadine Ibrahim, a civil and environmental engineering lecturer – added their voices this year to an annual publication given to graduating engineering students.