News

Alan Plumtree, an inventor of a pump that provides clean drinking water to developing countries, died on November 5.

Plumtree, a Waterloo mechanical engineering professor, and Alfred Rudin, a Waterloo chemistry professor, created the hand-operated pump in the late 1970s after being approached by the International Development Research Centre.

Three projects involving researchers at Waterloo Engineering received a combined total of almost $3 million in federal funding this week.

The largest amount, just over $2.6 million, went to professors Ehsan Toyserkani and Mihaela Vlasea of the Multi-Scale Additive Manufacturing (MSAM) Lab.

A research team at Waterloo Engineering has been awarded $800,000 in federal funding to develop compostable personal protective equipment (PPE) and antimicrobial coatings to help fight COVID-19.

A faculty member at Waterloo Engineering is one of 40 experts from around the world featured in a new book on the future of infrastructure.

Nadine Ibrahim, a civil and environmental engineering lecturer, shares her insights in Urban Infrastructure: Reflections for 2100, a collection of science fiction short stories, essays and poems.

Climate change, sustainability, resilience and technology are recurring themes as contributors explore how infrastructure, described as the pillar of civilization, might change in the next 80 years.

Researchers at Waterloo Engineering helped create a portable version of a tiny, powerful laser device with potential applications in fields ranging from medical imaging to detecting hidden explosives.

In a project involving the University of Waterloo and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), scientists developed a quantum cascade laser capable of operating at temperatures much higher than previously possible.

Linda Wang quickly pivoted her work last spring to develop technology to detect COVID-19.

Wang, who will receive her master’s degree in systems design engineering this week, helped create COVID-Net, now an open-source tool designed to screen coronavirus cases from chest X-ray images. 

Linda Wang, middle, celebrated receiving her BASc with her parents in 2018.  

Technology developed by engineering researchers at the University of Waterloo has been adopted by a major pathology facility in the United States.

The Joint Pathology Center (JPC), which has the world’s largest collection of preserved human tissue samples, will use an artificial intelligence (AI) search engine to index and search its digital archive as part of a modernization effort.

Waterloo Engineering placed two subjects in the top 50 and two more in the top 100 in worldwide university rankings for 2021.

In an evaluation of more than 1,500 global universities by media company U.S. News and World Report, electrical engineering ranked 25th and mechanical engineering was 49th.

Civil engineering was ranked 73rd and chemical engineering held the 87th spot.

Researchers at Waterloo Engineering have taken an important step in the development of a microscope to precisely guide doctors during surgery to remove brain tumors.

For the first time, they used laser imaging technology to almost instantly identify cancerous tissue with accuracy comparable to laboratory tests that take up to two weeks.

As part of this week's fall convocation, Waterloo Engineering will award a posthumous doctoral degree to Mansour Esnaashary Esfahani who died in the crash of Ukrainian International Airlines Flight PS752 in January 2020.

Esfahani was conducting his civil engineering PhD research in the field of construction automation and management, focusing on adaptive reuse projects in the circular economy.