News

An engineering undergraduate student claimed the $50,000 grand prize at HARD MODE, an invite-only hardware and artificial intelligence hackathon hosted by MIT Media Lab.

Cristiano Da Silva, a mechanical engineering student, competed as part of Dreaming Objects, the winning team at the March 2026 event. The competition drew 200 participants — roughly 40 teams — from engineering, computer science and design programs across North America. 

A pandemic-era Netflix binge launched a Waterloo Engineering alum's career in Formula 1.

Christina Sullivan (BASc '23, mechatronics engineering) discovered an unexpected passion for the technical and engineering dimensions of motorsport from watching Drive to Survive during COVID-19. She secured an internship with Williams Racing in the U.K. and has been on the F1 team full-time since graduation.

Two local health-tech companies have received a combined $1.9 million from the Government of Ontario to expand manufacturing, accelerate commercialization and bring advanced medical technologies to global markets.

Intellijoint Surgical Inc. and Vena Medical were both founded by Waterloo Engineering alumni and grew out of their fourth-year Capstone Design projects.

Tech startup Rotostitch, an automated textile manufacturing company, raised USD $1 million in a pre-seed funding round to accelerate development of its next-generation textile production platform.

Co-founded in 2025 by Waterloo Engineering alum Leah McClure (BASc ’24, mechanical engineering) and Anson Tsang, Rotostitch is on a mission to reinvent garment construction with greater efficiency, starting with the stitch.

Waterloo-based AgTech company Upside Robotics has secured USD $7.5 million in seed funding to accelerate the growth of its AI-powered agricultural robotics platform.

Co-founded in 2024 by Waterloo Engineering alum Sam Dugan (BASc ’22, mechatronics engineering) and Jana Tian, Upside Robotics is transforming agriculture through sustainable automation. The company’s lightweight, autonomous robots apply fertilizer precisely where crops need it, enabling farmers to remotely monitor fields, track crop health and deliver nutrients efficiently — without stepping foot on the soil.

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 research team led by Waterloo Engineering professors received $2 million in new federal funding to safeguard Canada’s critical cybersecurity infrastructure by identifying and countering threats that could emerge through the supply chain.

Led by Dr. Sebastian Fischmeister, an electrical and computer engineering professor, and Dr. Michael Mayer, a professor in mechanical and mechatronics engineering, the Materials-based Cybersecurity in Electronics (MATSEC) project brings together a collaborative team of Waterloo Engineering researchers.
 

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.

The University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Engineering proudly unveiled its new welding lab in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering (MME).  

The state-of-the-art facility expands the Faculty’s capacity to deliver industry-relevant, experiential learning. The department’s leadership established the lab with internal investment and funds from the CWB Welding Foundation, a national charity established in 2013 by the Canadian Welding Bureau (CWB) and a longstanding supporter of Waterloo Engineering.