News

The Department of Chemical Engineering's undergraduate teaching labs have been awarded the Green Lab Gold Certificate for the second consecutive year.

Led by John Zhang, lab director, the department’s technical support team has embedded sustainability into how students learn, experiment and work, improving the education experience and reducing waste.

Six Faculty of Engineering graduate students were named finalists in the 2026 GRADflix competition, with two taking top honours for creative videos explaining their research to a general audience.

Chemical engineering student Chen and electrical and computer engineering student Pan earned first- and second-place recognition in the University of Waterloo contest, hosted by Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs. 

A Waterloo Engineering professor challenged graduating students to think beyond technical success during this year’s …And One More Thing lecture, sharing her perspective on how prioritizing students’ development as good human beings empowers them to become good engineers.

Dr. Pendar Mahmoudi, an associate professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, is the recipient of the Faculty of Engineering’s 2025 Boyce Family Teaching Award.  The award was established in 2023 and made possible by generous donation from the Boyce family.

Biotech company HeadFirst is improving how concussions are screened in contact sports with a simple spit test.

The company was co-founded in 2022 by University of Waterloo alum Andrew Cordssen-David (BSc ’22, MBET ’23) and Dr. Shazia Tanvir, a professor in Waterloo’s chemical engineering department. The HeadFirst device analyzes biomarkers in saliva that indicate brain injury and delivers results in real-time.

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.

Five professors from Waterloo Engineering were named among the most influential researchers worldwide for their citation impact, according to the 2025 Highly Cited Researchers list from Clarivate.

The recognition highlights global research leaders whose work continues to advance knowledge and drive innovation across disciplines.

Waterloo Engineering researchers have designed smart technology to help industries navigate geopolitical uncertainty, inflation and supply chain issues.

Led by Dr. Luis Ricardez-Sandoval, a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, the team has harnessed machine learning (ML) to improve industrial production scheduling. This ability to improve planning helps manufacturers withstand unpredictable market conditions more effectively.

A Waterloo Engineering researcher is part of an international coalition revolutionizing health-care delivery by developing technology for fast, on-site vaccine production.

Dr. Valerie Ward, a chemical engineering professor, plays a critical role in the coalition —her research focuses on ensuring vaccine purity during the autonomous manufacturing process.  

Researchers at Waterloo Engineering led the discovery of an efficient new way to turn common bacteria into tiny factories pumping out powerful nanoparticles for a variety of biomedical uses.

Dr. Yilan Liu and her team engineered bacteria found in the human gut, or gastrointestinal tract, to dramatically increase the number of bubble-shaped nanoparticles they secrete.