News

A wide-ranging conversation with celebrated Waterloo Engineering alumnus Chamath Palihapitiya and one of his early role models, technology entrepreneur Vinod Khosla, was a highlight at the recent Hack the North event.

Sponsored by Waterloo Engineering, the University of Waterloo and a long list of industry partners, the largest hackathon in Canada doubled to 3,000 participants after moving to a virtual format because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A senior environmental official with York Region is the 2021 Douglas Wright Engineer-in-Residence for the civil and environmental engineering department at the University of Waterloo.

Erin Mahoney is commissioner of environmental services for York, overseeing water and wastewater, waste management, forestry and other services for 1.2 million residents in the regional municipality north of Toronto.

An engineering grad's online story-sharing company is to be acquired by South Korean internet business Naver Corp. in an estimated $754-million CAD cash and stock deal later this year.  

Each year, Waterloo Engineering recognizes Faculty members for their outstanding contributions and unwavering dedication to education and research.

The recipients of the Faculty's four faculty and staff awards were recently announced by Mary Wells, dean of engineering, and celebrated virtually.   

Chamath Palihapitiya, the outspoken venture capitalist, former social media executive and Waterloo Engineering alumnus, has made an annual list of the 50 most influential Canadians published by Maclean’s magazine.

Palihapitiya, who graduated from the electrical engineering program in 1999 before making his fortune at Facebook and as a founder of Social Capital, holds down the 33^rd spot on the 2021 Maclean’s Power List.

The University of Waterloo has joined forces with five other Ontario universities to increase academic and industry diversity by creating new fellowships for Indigenous and Black students pursuing doctoral degrees in engineering.

An online education company co-founded by two Waterloo Engineering alumni announced this week that it has secured $159 million in backing to fuel its expansion.

Prodigy Education, one of the fastest-growing education technology companies in North America, was launched by Rohan Mahimker and Alex Peters, who both graduated in 2011 from the mechatronics engineering program at Waterloo.

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Household appliances and other devices could be operated with simple voice commands using highly efficient new artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

Developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo and explainable AI company DarwinAI, the technology enables the creation of low-cost, low-power, self-contained speech recognition software that is tailored to specific tasks.

I know this is difficult news to hear the first week back from our holiday break and days after hearing about the loss of one of our second-year chemical engineering students. It is with deep sadness that I share that Aidan Walker, a second-year mechatronics engineering student, passed away on Saturday, January 2^nd due to a brain aneurysm.

A Waterloo mechanical and mechatronics engineering (MME) professor started as chair of the department at the beginning of 2021.