News

A suggestion by a Waterloo School of Architecture professor to build a synagogue at the site of the largest single massacre of Jews during the Holocaust has developed into a unique liturgical and reflection space visited by people of all faiths.

Seven months after Robert Jan van Pelt mentioned the idea, an outdoor synagogue opened in Babyn Yar, a ravine in the Ukrainian capital city of Kiev where more than 33,000 Jewish men, women and children were murdered on a single day in 1941.

An engineering master’s student and a staff member have received provincial awards of excellence for exceptional contributions on campus, across the community and beyond.

Waterloo mechanical engineering master’s student Lucas Wen Tang (BASc ’21, mechanical engineering) was recognized in the Minister’s Awards of Excellence Rising Star category.

Tang co-founded Lumos, a company that looks to improve human well-being through sleep technology and neuroscience. 

A company that was co-founded by two Waterloo Engineering professors has been recognized by an agency of the United Nations (UN) for its contributions to a state-of-the-art facility to farm crickets as a source of protein.

DarwinAI and the Aspire Food Group, which is leading the initiative, were named to a list of the top 10 projects using artificial intelligence (AI) to advance the UN’s sustainability goals.

Professor Kankar Bhattacharya has been selected as the new chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo.

Bhattacharya, who will take over from interim chair Manoj Sachdev, is scheduled to begin a four-year term May 1.

A professor at Waterloo Engineering collaborated with researchers in New Zealand on the development of a method to disinfect personal protective equipment (PPE) for reuse or recycling.

Bill Anderson, a professor of chemical engineering, lent his expertise on disinfection using ultraviolet light to a multidisciplinary effort triggered by a shortage of PPE early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

A civil and environmental engineering professor at Waterloo Engineering has had his research chair renewed for another five years by the federal government.

James Craig, the Canada Research Chair in Hydrological Modelling and Analysis, will receive $500,000 over five years to continue his work.

A multi-university team featuring two graduate students from the University of Waterloo failed to qualify for the finals Friday of an autonomous racing event in Las Vegas.

But six weeks of preparation by Brian Mao and Ben Zhang still paid off when their million-dollar car recorded a top speed of 137 miles per hour (mph) during a run before the main competition at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

A startup company that was co-founded by an alumnus of Waterloo Engineering achieved unicorn status this week with the announcement of US $350 million in new funding.

The deal gives Assent Compliance, a software-as-a-service company based in Ottawa, a market valuation of more than $1 billion as it aims to grow to over 1,000 employees by the end of 2022.

Assent was co-founded by Andrew Waitman (BASc ’87, electrical engineering), who has served as chief executive officer since 2014.

A pair of University of Waterloo graduate students - one from engineering and the other from mathematics - have put a disappointing crash behind them as they prepare for the next historic step in autonomous racing this week.

With the start of 2022 it is very sad to share the news of the passing of devoted physics professor Firas Kamal Mansour on Wednesday, December 29th.  A lecturer in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Professor Mansour taught many first-year engineering students and was a recipient of the Excellence in Science Teaching Award in 2012.