News

Sheha Akbari graduates from Waterloo with a management engineering degree, an Apple patent in the works, experience as a refugee interpreter and translator, and a passion for helping improve the lives of disadvantaged women and youth living in Afghanistan.

Growing up hearing about the financial, emotional and other struggles her parents, especially her mother, had while in Afghanistan, Akbari has committed herself to supporting Afghan citizens, particularly women and youth. 

The hard work, perseverance and accomplishments of Waterloo Engineering's 2021 graduates will be honoured in two convocation events on June 19.

An online reception will begin at 5 p.m. to recognize the Faculty's newest alumni. It will include a slide show of photos submitted by students highlighting nostalgic moments throughout their various programs, a group opening of a special gift sent to all graduates and fun games with “awesome prizes.”

Mary Wells, the dean of Waterloo Engineering, urges universities to do more to encourage diversity among students in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) in an opinion piece in a national publication.

Tejinder Singh has come a long way since he was a boy who loved taking his electronic toys apart and seeing if he could put them back together again.

Now a postdoctoral fellow at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and a research associate at Waterloo Engineering, Singh added to a growing list of accomplishments when he was chosen to receive the Spring 2021 Governor General’s Gold Medal for the highest standing in a doctoral program at the University of Waterloo.

One professor at Waterloo Engineering was announced this week as a new Canada Research Chair, while a second had his funding through the federal program renewed for seven more years.

Ning Jiang, a professor of systems design engineering, is the new Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence for Human-centered and Human-machine Interfaces, with $500,000 in funding over five years.

Civil engineering student Jonathan Miguel Logarta-Chin has been chosen by his peers as valedictorian for the Waterloo Engineering graduating class at convocation ceremonies this Saturday.

Logarta-Chin says the selection validates his struggles and hardships, and that he is proud of a personal achievement – coming out as gay – as well as his academic success.

“It was when I fully got to appreciate who I was as a person and felt comfortable in my own skin,” he says of his decision.

Two faculty members at Waterloo Engineering – Dean Mary Wells and Nadine Ibrahim, a civil and environmental engineering lecturer – added their voices this year to an annual publication given to graduating engineering students.

A graduate of Waterloo Engineering who went on to make a global mark in business will receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Waterloo during virtual convocation ceremonies on Saturday.

Chuck Magro (BASc ’93, chemical engineering) climbed the corporate ladder to lead Nutrien Ltd., the largest fertilizer provider in the world with more than 27,000 employees and over $20 billion in annual sales.

The recruitment team at Waterloo Engineering has been recognized by a global association for its quick pivot to an online March open house for prospective students when the COVID-19 pandemic scuttled the in-person event last year.

The last-minute effort, led by Daniella Cross, Ryan Pyear and Erica Clement-Goudy, with key support from digital media partner Angle Media (an alumni-founded company), took home a gold medal in the special event category of the annual Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) awards.

A non-contact laser imaging system developed by Waterloo Engineering researchers could help doctors diagnose and treat eye diseases that cause blindness much earlier than is now possible.

The new technology is designed to detect telltale signs of major blinding diseases in retinal blood and tissue that typically go unseen until it is too late.

With current testing methods, diseases such as age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma — which have no symptoms in their early stages — are usually diagnosed only after vision is irreversibly affected.