News

There’s a myth that if you want to build something great, you have to leave Canada.  

University of Waterloo alum Jeff Shiner (BMath ’92), executive chairman of the board at 1Password, and Chris Albinson, co-founder and managing director of True North Fund, make the case for why Waterloo students will do better to build their companies in Canada than in the United States (U.S.). 

Two interdisciplinary capstone teams — each including Waterloo Engineering students — are partnering with Princess Margaret Cancer Centre to solve real clinical and research challenges.

Team CT Optimizers built a machine learning model and dashboard prototype to automate how the cancer centre fills last-minute CT scan slots, reducing the manual, time-sensitive work currently handled by patient flow coordinators. A second team, We Dream in Voxels, extended an existing two-dimensional tumour drug-mapping model into three dimensions and rebuilt it in Python, achieving speeds more than 100 times faster than the original.

Waterloo Engineering students claimed podium finishes across all four categories at Canada's most prestigious engineering student competition.

The 2026 Canadian Engineering Competition (CEC), hosted at the Université de Sherbrooke, saw every qualifying Waterloo team finish on the podium. Yaxin Wang and Matthew Ko (biomedical engineering) took first place in the Consulting category, while Alanna Rudolph (mechatronics engineering) and Eva Siao (computer engineering) secured second place in the Debate category.

Twelve fourth-year Waterloo Engineering teams competed in the 2026 Norman Esch Entrepreneurship Awards for Capstone Design. A panel of industry judges awarded more than $100,000 across all 12 teams. 

The teams pitched a wide array of solutions — from a wearable cooling device for menopausal hot flashes to an AI tool that automates body camera redaction for law enforcement.

Waterloo Engineering students will present more than 300 projects during the 2026 Capstone Design symposia, a series of events that mark the culmination of their undergraduate studies.

Running from March 11 to April 2 in the Pearl Sullivan Engineering (PSE) building, students from 12 programs will present more than 300 projects spanning disciplines from nanotechnology to civil and architectural engineering.