News

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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Waterloo Engineering professor Bill Anderson is using two decades of research experience to help solve the shortage of N95 masks for healthcare workers in the coronavirus crisis.

Anderson is consulting with hospital officials and collaborating with a Cambridge company hurriedly building an automated device to disinfect masks with ultraviolet (UV) light so they can be reused.

Waterloo Engineering researchers have received feedback and offers of help from around the world since launching an open-source project last week to improve COVID-19 screening.

“My goal was to engage people worldwide to push this initiative along and I’m getting my wish,” said Alexander Wong, a systems design engineering professor and director of the Vision and Image Processing (VIP) Lab.

Wong launched the COVID-Net project in conjunction with DarwinAI, an artificial intelligence (AI) startup in Waterloo that he co-founded.

3D printers in the Multi-Scale Additive Manufacturing (MSAM) Laboratory are producing parts for face shields in demand by health-care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Waterloo Engineering researchers teamed up with an artificial intelligence (AI) startup company this week on an ambitious project to improve COVID-19 screening.

The research team publicly released AI software that can better detect infections from chest x-rays and is now inviting experts from around the world to help make it better.

Mary Wells will rejoin Waterloo Engineering as the Faculty's next dean.

Wells, an accomplished materials engineer, is known for her strategic leadership in building collaborative and strong relationships within a university setting and for her work in attracting, engaging and retaining women in the engineering industry.

Wells currently serves as University of Guelph’s Dean of the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, a position she has held since 2017.