News

The recently launched Indigenous and Black Engineering Technology (IBET) PhD Project will provide funding to support Indigenous and Black students pursuing doctoral degrees in engineering at six Ontario universities.

Led by Waterloo Engineering, the initiative aims to change the academic landscape by increasing the number of Indigenous and Black engineering professors teaching and researching in universities across Canada.

Two civil and environmental doctoral candidates received outstanding student presentation awards in the hydrology section of the annual American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.

Danyka Byrnes and Robert Chlumsky spoke about their research at the event held online in December. Considered to be one of the premier international geophysical conferences, it normally draws over 25,000 participants.

A new robot named MyJay that lights up when it scores a basket is just part of Kerstin Dautenhahn’s vision to build robots that give all children the ability to play games regardless of their abilities.

“I really believe social robots can make a positive contribution to society,” says Dautenhahn, a Waterloo Engineering professor and Canada 150 Chair in Intelligent Robotics.

It is with great sadness that I share the news of the passing of Sina Ghanbarzadeh, an ECE doctoral student and co-founder of KA Imaging, on Monday, February 15. Just over a year ago, Sina began his battle with cancer while working towards completing his PhD degree.

A professor at Waterloo Engineering and one of her graduate students make a case in a column published today that big technology companies must help bridge a “deep digital divide” in Canada.

The province is investing $2.5 million to accelerate the development of wearable contact tracing technology Waterloo Engineering researchers helped design.

The government’s Ontario Together Fund will provide Facedrive Inc., a Toronto-based technology company, with the funding for its TraceSCAN system that alerts users to possible exposure to COVID-19 in the workplace.

A company with strong ties to Waterloo Engineering is involved in the creation of a state-of-the-art facility to farm crickets as a source of protein.

DarwinAI, which was co-founded by Alexander Wong, a systems design engineering professor, and Mohammad Javad Shafiee, an engineering research professor, is one of several industry partners in a project led by the Aspire Food Group.

Playing with his band at University of Waterloo’s on-campus pub helped launch the musical career of an engineering alumnus and provided an introduction to his future spouse.

Zubin Thakkar, the musical director and lead guitarist for Canadian rock musician Shawn Mendes, entertained students at The Bombshelter, better known as The Bomber, while he was a systems design engineering student.

Hamid Tizhoosh was looking for a new idea, a fresh start, when he began talking to doctors about how they do their jobs and how they might do them better. 

Six months into his consultations, with his engineering lab at the University of Waterloo reduced to a one-man show by a failed artificial intelligence (AI) startup, he heard something that almost floored him. 

After working for more than a decade as a chemical engineer, Waterloo Engineering alumnus Ajoa Mintah (BASc ’01) reached a crossroads in her career.

"I got to a point with my work where I hit a ceiling,” she recalls. “I knew I wouldn’t be able to break through as a Black woman. So, I had a choice to make. Am I going to work for someone else and keep trying to break through or build my own house?”

It was a turning point that led Mintah to found an ice cream business in 2016 that now boasts a factory in Kitchener and a retail shop in Waterloo.