What's your problem?

Applying Waterloo talent *to* problems that really matter

Thirty years ago, a young couple in a tiny remote village in India moved four kilometres away to a larger village. Had Pampa Dey’s parents not made that move – mere days before she was born – you would not be reading about her in this issue of the Waterloo Magazine. She would not have gone to school past Grade 5 and she certainly would not have received her PhD in engineering.

Beth GallagherDey’s story is inspirational but the reality is most of the girls she grew up with, were married as teens and there are still more than 130 million girls out of school around the world.

Which begs the question: Why do girls in some areas of the world have to be extraordinary outliers just to get an education?

It’s the kind of complex challenge or “killer problem” that Waterloo students can analyze at Canada’s first Problem Lab. In this issue, you can read about how the new Problem Lab on campus is teaching students the five steps to identifying a killer problem.

Economics Professor Larry Smith, director of the Problem Lab, says the new program will help students create ventures that have great economic and social impact in the real world. He says too many people try to solve problems that don’t matter and are “not worthy of the talents of the students.”

And by the way, the five steps don’t replace passion. In the Problem Lab, students will learn how Smith still draws a direct line between passion and innovation.

It’s the kind of passion that brings Chris Hudson, a professor in Waterloo’s School of Optometry and Vision Science, to his laboratory every day. In this issue you’ll learn about an important health problem: the difficulty of diagnosing neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. You’ll see how Hudson is researching ways to test for Parkinson’s disease while fighting his own Parkinson’s diagnosis with boxing and physical activity.

With so much attention on the big money and magic of new technologies, it’s easy to forget that innovation has humble beginnings. It can grow in the heart of a little girl living in a one-room house in rural India, or through the cracks of a heartbreaking health diagnosis.

With the establishment of the new Problem Lab, it’s clear that Waterloo believes in dispersing the power of innovation. By teaching the steps and sharing the foundations of entrepreneurship, Waterloo is showing young people, in a very pragmatic way, that their dreams matter.


Illustration: Kellen Hatanaka

Photo: One for the wall