News

Researchers with the Department of Chemical Engineering are demonstrating the power of collaborating across disciplines by teaming up to tackle the problem of plastics pollution from several different angles.

“When we talk about grand challenges in the world, each of us could say our work is a small piece of the solution,” said Dr. Christin Euler, who leads the Center for Innovative Recycling and Circular Economy (Circle).

University of Waterloo alumni David J. Cornfield (BASc ’85, LLD ’24) and Linda Archer Cornfield (LLD ’24) visited campus to announce their transformational investment of $10.5 million to the Faculty of Engineering’s Department of Systems Design Engineering. 

The gift advances the department's educational impact, equipping engineers to bridge systems thinking with design practice to create integrated, participatory and human-focused solutions to pressing global challenges.

University of Waterloo professor Larry Smith marks 45 years of teaching this year, celebrating a career defined by empowering students to think critically and pursue bold, entrepreneurial paths.

Smith, a professor in the Faculty of Engineering’s Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business, specializes in forecasting and the economics of innovation. His wildly popular lectures are packed to the brim with generations of students and alumni from across campus.

Ten subjects at Waterloo Engineering made the top 50 worldwide in annual rankings recently released for 2025 by an influential organization based in China.

The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), published by the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, included an evaluation of 57 subject areas at almost 2,000 universities in 100 countries based on research output, research influence, international collaboration, research quality and academic awards.

Waterloo Engineering celebrated three outstanding alumni at its annual Engineering Awards Dinner for their innovative and impactful contributions to improving how humanity engages with the built and natural environments.

Hosted by Dean Mary Wells, the event honoured Vikramaditya (Vikram) Yadav (BASc ’07, chemical engineering), Elisia Neves (BArch ’08, MArch ’12) and James Dean (BASc ’90, civil engineering) for their entrepreneurial and research-driven approach to developing sustainable technologies and building stronger communities. 

A University of Waterloo professor has received $100,000 from the Scotiabank Climate Action Research Fund to advance bacteria-powered technology that turns mixed waste streams into low-carbon products. 

Dr. Christian Euler from the Department of Chemical Engineering is investigating how landfill gas by-products and other waste materials can be transformed into valuable bioplastics at industrial scale.

Graduate students swept the top three spots in this year’s Waterloo Engineering contest to recognize striking photographs taken during academic research.

The first-place prize of $1,000 went to chemical engineering student Estatira Amirieh for a forest-like image that emerged from a laboratory bench, not nature. Its delicate structures were created through electrospinning, a process in which a liquid polymer solution is pulled by electric fields into ultra-thin threads that solidify as they travel through the air.

A student design team shared new insights on microgravity soldering at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC), presenting one of the first student-led investigations into improving electronic repair and manufacturing in space.

Building on a Waterloo-developed experiment that flew in Canada’s national microgravity research competition, the Waterloo Space Soldering Team (WSST) reported new findings on how rotational acceleration can strengthen solder joints formed in reduced gravity.

A Waterloo Engineering research team earned major international recognition for advancing multimodal approaches to continuous sign language understanding.

Electrical and Computer Engineering master’s student Md Rezwanul Haque and alumnus S. M. Taslim Uddin Raju (MASc ’25, Electrical and Computer Engineering) earned recognition at the IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision 2025 for a paper supervised by Dr. Fakhri Karray. 

A startup company founded by two Waterloo Engineering graduates has secured US $1.5 million in funding to help speed the development and adoption of its self-cleaning technology to make solar panels more efficient.

Swish Solar is based in Kitchener and has acquired customers in multiple countries in North America and the Middle East since it was launched last year by Miswar Syed and Amirhossein Boreiri (both MASc ’24, electrical and computer engineering).