News

Waterloo Engineering recognized 132 recipients of the Engineering Excellence Fellowship at a special reception this month.

Dr. Mary Wells, dean of engineering, and Dr. Siva Sivoththaman, associate dean of graduate studies and postdoctoral affairs, attended the event in E7 to celebrate the Faculty’s highest achieving graduate students.

Two professors at Waterloo Engineering were announced this week as new Canada Research Chairs. A third has had their funding through the federal program renewed for a further five years.

Dr. Nandita Basu and Dr. Carolyn Ren are tier one chairs and Dr. Stephen Smith is a tier two chair. All three chairs are supported through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

Communitech adds Clearpath Robotics, a Waterloo Engineering alumni company, to its list of Canadian tech firms expected to generate a billion dollars in annual revenue.

The Kitchener-based company is expanding its industrial division, OTTO Motors, to meet increased demand for its autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) that move equipment and parts around factory floors and production lines.

Costas Tzoganakis, a professor of chemical engineering, is a winner of the 2022 En-Hui Yang Engineering Research Innovation Award. The award is bestowed by Waterloo Engineering to outstanding faculty members each year.

Professor Tzoganakis’ research has significantly advanced sustainability within the global tire industry. He developed a unique chemical-free process for rubber devulcanization which can break down end-of-life tires turning them into Tire Derived Polymer (TDP), a value-added rubber compound.

Pearl Sullivan, a beloved former dean of Waterloo Engineering, left a lasting legacy on the Faculty and its students. Her dynamic leadership was recognized at an event yesterday in Engineering 7 with the designation of the building’s IDEAs Clinic in her honour.

The space is now named the Pearl Sullivan Engineering IDEAs Clinic to commemorate the accomplishments of the eighth dean of Waterloo Engineering and the first woman to hold the post. 

Professor Philip Beesley from the School of Architecture has been shortlisted for a prestigious award recognizing his work in building more harmonious relationships between people, buildings and environments.

Beesley has been named one of three finalists for the 2022 Partnership Award, one of 12 impact awards granted by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). He is one of three finalists selected for this award by a national jury.

The Canada-based developer of a wearable lower-limb exoskeleton called XoMotion is supplying the Canadian government with two units for clinical testing at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.

Human in Motion Robotics (HMR) was co-founded by Waterloo Engineering alumnus Dr. Siamak Arzanpour (PhD ’07, mechanical engineering) in 2016. In just six years, Arzanpour and his team have successfully built a wearable robot that is designed to get people out of wheelchairs and walking again with full mobility and independence.

Dr. Kevin Musselman has been announced as a new endowed chair at the University of Waterloo.

Musselman, a mechanical and mechatronics engineering professor and a member of the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, began a five-year term as a University of Waterloo Endowed Chair in Nanotechnology on Nov. 1. He is one of three chairholders.

A networking company co-founded by a Waterloo Engineering alumnus is expanding a series of product offerings after securing $75 million in its first institutional funding round.

10KC, also known as Ten Thousand Coffees, was launched in 2014 by Elliott Garcea (BASc '11, computer engineering) and Dave Wilkin, a University of Waterloo science graduate, as an online networking platform to bring together students and alumni from post-secondary educational institutions (including Waterloo Engineering) and employees at companies worldwide.

A research team led by a Waterloo Engineering professor has set its sights on solving the worldwide problem of micro plastics (MPs) pollution.

“It’s a bold move, as currently there’s no real approach to treat the problem of MPs in the environment," said Dr. Boxin Zhao, a chemical engineering professor. "The road to solving this emerging global issue will be filled with uncertainties. We wanted to take leadership to solve it.”