Group of students who participated in i-Capstone

GENE403/404 Interdisciplinary Capstone

Section 1: Enrol with a team

To enrol: email the instructor

  • from your UWaterloo account,

  • CC all team members,

  • CC all appropriate academic advisors,

  • include all student ID numbers,

  • indicate which program each student is enrolled in,

  • confirm that all students are in Waterloo this term,

  • describe the topic area(s) of interest and,

  • indicate whether you are potentially looking for an additional member.

If you already have a team, you can all enrol together. Your team probably has a project area or topic of interest -- or you might be interested in this year’s theme of Future Cities.

We will spend the first week or two on team formation and project ideation and definition.

Section 2: Enrol as an individual looking for a team - Future Cities!

Future Cities is the theme for this year. This is a broad area with many opportunities for interdisciplinary projects about sustainability of where and how most of humanity lives. If you are interested in Future Cities and open to working with new people in different disciplines, then this is for you!

Register now to be considered for taking part in the Interdisciplinary Capstone: Future Cities. You will be asked to enter your details and provide a short description of the types of projects or topics are you interested in being involved in during the course.

Examples of 2025 i-Capstone teams

  • Team WaterHive: Iqaluit water delivery optimization (looking for new students to extend this project in 2026!)
  • Team Asphalt Avengers: computer vision for pothole detection
  • Team ODDBOX: overdose detection and response notification device
  • Team Stemmy: algorithmic analysis of stem cell images, in collaboration with Princess Margaret Cancer Centre
  • Team UW Access: campus mapping for accessability (looking for new students to extend this project in 2026!)
  • Team RAID: data anomaly detection in collaboration with UW Finance & HR

Example projects looking for students in 2026

This list has 15 potential projects looking for interdisciplinary teams of engineers (or possibly computer scientists), organized in three themes:

  • Human-Computer Interaction for virtual construction/deconstruction
  • Physics simulation for virtual construction/deconstruction, including:
    • Demolition
    • Weather
    • Earthquakes/Landslides
    • HVAC (Heating, Ventillation, Air Conditioning)
  • LiDAR scans (point clouds) of buildings
    • LiDAR sensors are often used in autonomous vehicles

Looking for more ideas?

These YouTube channels explore important aspects of Future Cities, around themes of transportation, construction, urban planning, building codes, and more: