News

A leading robotics company, developed in partnership with the RoboHub at Waterloo Engineering by two alumni, has raised US $70 million to fuel its growth.

Avidbots, a manufacturer of autonomous floor-cleaning robots for commercial use, was founded in 2014 by Pablo Molina (BASc ’11, mechatronics engineering) and Faizan Sheikh (BASc ’11, mechatronics engineering). Their idea to outsource the dirty work to robots has proved enormously successful; with this latest financing, the startup has raised over US $107 million to date.

Dr. Edris Madadian was an environmentalist before he became an engineer, a passion he now wears on his sleeve as a postdoctoral researcher.

His research focuses on contamination from pharmaceutical and personal care products that go down our drains or are flushed down toilets and become sewage sludge, a by-product of wastewater treatment. The disposal of COVID-19 personal protective equipment adds to the issue on a global scale.

The University of Waterloo celebrated the life and legacy of Douglas Tyndall Wright, the founding dean of Waterloo Engineering, with a special event on Sept. 23.

Wright, who served as the first dean of the Faculty of Engineering from 1958 to 1966 and as Waterloo’s third president and vice-chancellor from 1981 to 1993, passed away on May 21, 2020.

Douglas Wright was the founding dean of Waterloo Engineering.

A video technology company that was born at Waterloo Engineering has reason to celebrate after its acquisition this week by an entertainment industry giant.

SSIMWAVE Inc., an award-winning, Waterloo-based company, has joined forces with IMAX to lead the charge in video image quality in a deal worth $18.5 million in cash and $2.5 million in stock, plus additional earnout potential of $4 million.

Researchers at Waterloo Engineering are involved in a dozen projects that were announced today as recipients of more than $1.6 million in federal funding for state-of-the-art facilities and equipment.

The support from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation through its John R. Evans Leaders Fund is part of $64 million awarded country-wide to 251 research projects at 40 universities.

An event is planned for next month to celebrate the retirement of the founding director of the Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business at Waterloo Engineering.

Howard Armitage retired this summer after 41 years with the University of Waterloo, starting with his appointment as a professor at the School of Accounting and Finance.

Pira Ravikumaran admits that when he arrived at Hack the North on Friday night, he felt a little nervous.

New to coding, the fourth-year Waterloo Engineering student wasn’t sure if his lack of experience would be a problem at the 36-hour event, which brings together over a thousand students, experts and sponsors from around the world to code, compete, learn and network every year.

Orianna Min is an enthusiastic advocate of a unique program at the University of Waterloo that allows students to build businesses during their co-op work terms.

Now in the final year of the mechanical engineering program, Min took advantage of the Enterprise Co-op Program (E Co-op) to launch a medical technology startup with fellow engineering student Daniel Hu.

Hack the North, Canada’s largest hackathon and one of the largest collegiate hackathons in the world, is back live and in-person at the University of Waterloo this weekend.

Friday through Sunday, over 1,000 students from around the world will converge on campus for 36 intense hours of building innovative software applications and hardware projects.

A research team from Waterloo Engineering is working with doctors at a local hospital to improve the diagnosis of back problems using artificial intelligence (AI).

Led by John McPhee, a professor of systems design engineering, the researchers developed a deep-learning AI method to locate anatomical landmarks in X-rays in a novel approach to virtual triaging.