News

Two graduates of Waterloo Engineering are developing an at-home testing kit for COVID-19 after answering a design challenge by the federal government.

Kamyar Ghofrani and James MacLean, who graduated two years apart from the nanotechnology engineering program, teamed up with Monica Hoang, a doctoral pharmacy student at Waterloo, at startup company Serapsis Labs.

“We brainstormed, came up with a few different ideas - some better than others - and within a week we had a design," Ghofrani said.

The senseless killing of George Floyd on a Minneapolis street has shaken society and forced people the world over to take a hard, honest look at anti-Black racism. Rest assured the impact has been keenly felt in the Faculty of Engineering, and we have heard our students as they ask what we are prepared to do to address this issue. As an educational community we have a responsibility to identify and report racism and then work to dismantle it and not remain comfortable with the status quo.

Anne Allen, a civil and environmental engineering lab technician, is the recipient of the Engineering Society’s Teaching Excellence award for the winter 2020 term.

Troy Stevenson (BASc ’15, Chemical) has become the eighth full-time head coach of the University of Waterloo’s men’s basketball program.

He was the interim head coach last season after spending the previous four seasons as an assistant coach.

An incoming student at Waterloo Engineering will start his studies this fall with $70,000 in backing from a national, four-year scholarship.

Chinemerem Chigbo of Winnipeg is one of 20 cross-country recipients of 2020 TD Scholarships for Community Leadership in recognition of outstanding contributions to change in their communities.

A professor at Waterloo Engineering has been named the executive director of a campus-wide centre dedicated to advancing bioengineering and biotechnology research and innovation through industry collaborations and partnerships.

Karim S. Karim, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, was appointed to head the Centre for Bioengineering and Biotechnology (CBB) for a five-year term.

A robotics company founded by four Waterloo Engineering graduates announced this week that it has secured US $29 million in funding to accelerate its worldwide growth.

Otto Motors, the industrial division of Clearpath Robotics, has now raised US $83 million in backing since its launch in 2015.

A professor at Waterloo Engineering has released a book to help international students improve their formal academic writing in English.

Zhongchao Tan, a professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering, took advantage of time at home during the coronavirus pandemic and drew on his personal experiences as a Chinese-Canadian to write the guide for international engineering students, as well as university faculty members who supervise them.

As economies begin to reopen, Waterloo Engineering researchers are developing technology that will notify users and public health when individuals come in close contact with someone confirmed or suspected to have COVID-19.

Patricia Nieva and William Melek, both Waterloo mechanical and mechatronics engineering professors, and their students are developing contact tracing software for an app called TraceSCAN.

A group of Waterloo Engineering students have contributed to the COVID-19 cause by helping to develop an online dashboard to track and synthesize the results of antibody studies from around the world.

The five students - Nathan Duarte, Jordan Van Wyk, Austin Atmaja, Simona Rocco and Abel Joseph - teamed up with Canadians at universities in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, plus a federal task force of experts, to pull off the ambitious project.