Five recent nanotechnology engineering graduates from the University of Waterloo have come a long way since they came together over a shared interest in optics and frustration with the poor quality of their smartphone photographs.
Aiping Yu, a professor of chemical engineering, is one of six nation-wide recipients of 2020 E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowships for highly promising researchers. Her selection was announced today by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. A virtual awards ceremony is scheduled for this afternoon.
The prestigious fellowships include $250,000 in research grants, and up to $90,000 a year to universities to free winners from teaching and administrative duties so they can concentrate on research full-time.
A researcher at Waterloo Engineering has been awarded $800,000 in federal funding to develop compostable personal protective equipment (PPE) and antimicrobial coatings to help fight COVID-19.
Researchers have created a portable version of a tiny, powerfullaser device with potential applications in fields ranging from medical imaging to detecting hidden explosives.
In a project involving the University of Waterloo and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), scientists developed a quantum cascade laser capable of operating at temperatures much higher than previously possible.
The Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN) has partnered with Japanese accelerator Landing Pad Tokyo (LPT) to bring University of Waterloo developed technologies to the Japanese market.
“The goal of this partnership is to help Waterloo companies enter the Asian market, and to accelerate the research and development of new technologies through partnerships with Japanese businesses,” said Sushanta Mitra, Executive Director of WIN.
The common belief is that electron microscopy (EM) can only be used on dry samples because of the vacuum inside the microscope’s column. This is no longer the case, as researchers can now visualize fully solvated nanoscale objects in liquids such as water from cryogenic to room temperature conditions. Room temperature in-liquid observations are achieved by squeezing the sample into a nanofluidic chip with a very narrow with a very narrow gap (down to 50nm) between two ultrathin membranes, so that the electron beam can get through the “sandwich” and reach the image detector.