Profiles

Jennifer Bauman believes that fuel-cell vehicles could be the cars of the future – but only if they can be made affordable.

Jennifer has a long history of work with fuel cells at Waterloo, first as a member of the Alternative Fuels Team and then as a doctoral candidate in electrical engineering. But she can sum up her years of work in one sentence: “I’m trying to make fuel-cell cars cheaper.”

Mojgan Daneshmand wants to make switches smaller. A lot smaller.

“For a multifunctional system, you need so many switches,” she explains. “Size becomes an issue.” It’s a particular problem in portable devices, like cell phones, or in ones where weight is critical, like orbiting satellites, which are Mojgan’s particular interest.

Prem Gururajan wants to put his company’s cameras above every blackjack table in the world.

Prem Gururajan wants to put his company’s cameras above every blackjack table in the world.Of course, there are cameras there already: casinos have been using “eye in the sky” systems to record table play for decades. But Prem’s company, Tangam Gaming, goes a crucial step further: its software analyzes data in real time. Tangam’s system sends out instant alerts on errors and cheats, issues reports on dealer activity, and calculates player skill levels and strategies.

With gas prices spiking and the eco-movement hitting the pavement faster than you can say, “hybrid SUV,” it’s no wonder auto manufacturers are looking for new ways to lighten the weight of their vehicles.

It’s also little wonder that researchers around the world, including José Imbert, a Waterloo mechanical and mechatronics engineering lecturer and doctoral candidate, are dreaming up new ways to make it happen.

For Plinio Morita, a doctoral candidate in systems design engineering, being awarded a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship is an honour that will help support his research in how technology can be used to improve trust in group situations.

“A multi-year award like this will allow me to accomplish even more than I had planned,” he says. “It is a privilege to receive such a prestigious award.”

The scholarship, valued at $50,000 annually for up to three years, was awarded to Morita through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Erika Murray wants to find a cure for diabetes. She is working on a stem cell research project that looks at the cellular effects of a new diabetes drug INGAP on mesenchymal stem cells isolated from human pancreases. Her goal? To coax those cells to produce insulin to finally beat the disease.

“In the future, the field of regenerative medicine combined with tissue engineering has the potential to revolutionize current medical treatments,” says the chemical engineering doctoral student.

Bangladesh is known for many things, but for architecture graduate student Prithula Prosun two in particular leave an impression: poverty and floods.

Many students dream of hopping a plane to backpack across Europe or relax on an exotic beach. Not Matt Rendall, a Waterloo mechanical and mechatronics engineering grad now an MBET student who packed his bags this summer and traveled to Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia.

Grand River Hospital has a problem with pumps. Mahsa Tavassoli is trying to help the hospital solve it.

At $5,000 a piece, IV diffusion pumps are too expensive for each ward to have a few sitting in a storeroom. But a floating inventory system has drawbacks, too: when a patient needs a pump, it is sometimes a scramble to find one. Staff try to avoid this by tucking pumps away – a solution that actually makes the problem worse.

As the adage goes "a picture is worth a thousand words." And no one knows that better than Alexander Wong, the university's Alumni Gold Medal winner for the year's top PhD graduate.