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A medical device that four graduates of Waterloo Engineering helped develop made the spotlight when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that hundreds of units were on order to help in the fight against COVID-19.

“That was certainly a proud moment,” said Michael Vermeer, a member of the first mechatronics engineering class to graduate in 2008. “It was great to know all the hard work that went into that device was getting its time to shine helping Canadians.”

A professor at Waterloo Engineering is a member of a team that is advancing technology to turn organic waste into green fuels and fertilizer.

Research by Janusz Kozinski and several collaborators at the University of Saskatchewan includes a project with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to convert waste and wastewater into energy for possible use on the International Space Station and during long-term space missions.

A technician at Waterloo Engineering is earning high praise for quickly designing and building a booth to allow front-line health workers to test for COVID-19 without wearing scarce protective gear.

Robert Wagner, who has been at the University of Waterloo for 23 years and nows works in the RoboHub robotics research, testing and training facility, created the see-through enclosure at his home shop in New Hamburg.

“It was an exercise in Canadian innovation and can-do,” he said.

A professor at Waterloo Engineering is a member of a multidisciplinary team working to develop a DNA-based vaccine for COVID-19.

Marc Aucoin, a professor of chemical engineering, is working on the complex project with Roderick Slavcev and Emmanuel Ho, both professors at the School of Pharmacy at the University of Waterloo.

The vaccine would be delivered using a nasal spray and serve as a therapeutic as well as stimulating the body to build immunity to COVID-19.

Students at Waterloo Engineering claimed the majority of prizes in a pair of recent competitions organized by the Concept entrepreneurship and pre-incubator program.

Jeremy Wang, a PhD candidate in mechanical and mechatronics engineering, won the $10,000 second-place prize in the Graduate Student Startup Fund for grad students and postdoctoral fellows looking to turn their research into companies.

A professor at Waterloo Engineering has teamed up with researchers in New Zealand on a proposed system to disinfect all kinds of personal protective equipment (PPE) so it can be reused in the COVID-19 pandemic.

The two-step process developed by Bill Anderson and three collaborators involves storage of used PPE for at least four days, followed by treatment with either ultraviolet light, dry heat or chemicals.

Innovative solutions to serious medical problems took four of six $10,000 prizes up for grabs when student teams competed via video this month in an annual pitch competition for startup companies.

The new format, which replaced in-person presentations at the Norman Esch Entrepreneurship Awards for Capstone Design due to the coronavirus crisis, gave graduating students five minutes to explain their projects instead of the usual three minutes, followed by questions.

Several software engineering students at the University of Waterloo are volunteering with a student-run, data-gathering platform to track and monitor COVID-19 outbreaks in Canada.

Flatten.ca, which has drawn national media coverage, involves students from Waterloo, the University of Toronto, McMaster University and the University of New Brunswick.

Four graduating students at Waterloo Engineering had no way of knowing how timely their Capstone Design project would eventually become when they started brainstorming last fall.

Little more than six months later, they hope the portable, low-cost ventilator they designed and built could be pressed into emergency service in the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.

With the world in the grip of a deadly pandemic, friends of Waterloo Engineering from China stepped up this week to donate 5,000 masks to a Kitchener hospital.

The gift came courtesy of Diane Wang and her husband, Jack Zhang, who owns a company in Shanghai that distributes medical supplies.

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