Current undergraduate students

Team VitalRest, consisting of Sonja Bakowsky, Olivia Paauw and Anika Mankotia, placed first in the Health Tech Innovation Challenge hosted by the Pearl Sullivan Engineering IDEAs Clinic. The challenge’s purpose was to test their design skills within a realistic scenario, and the team of first-year MME students displayed their exceptional ability in problem-solving and creative thinking, resulting in their success. 

Congratulations to Shanaya Barretto for being selected to participate in the prestigious program – the Brooke Owens Fellowship! This achievement highlights Barretto’s accomplishments throughout her undergrad career, being named one of the recipients out of 400 promising candidates who applied globally. 

The International Network of Sustainable Nanotechnology (N4SNano) is a global force for industry, government agencies, and not-for-profit organizations to champion nanotechnology solutions for sustainable futures, and Dr. Sushanta Mitra is a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering and the Executive Director of the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN), which also happens to be a founding partner of this network. Together, Mitra and the team in N2SNano are working together to bring the brightest minds in environmental preservation for a conference on sustainability that benefits communities all over the world.  

Dr. Mihaela Vlasea’s exemplary work in the manufacturing landscape highlights success earned from determination and an open mind. This mentality also proved to be fruitful during her transition from her academic to professional career.   

In cognizance for their contributions, Dr. Clovis Raimundo Maliska is awarded the Alumni Achievement Medal for Professional Achievement and Dr. Gamal Refai-Ahmed the Alumni Achievement Medal for Academic Excellence. Their work introduces improved technological advancements and revolutionary research, fostering innovation and transformative action that will continue to benefit their respective industries.  

Connor Pryce, a 4A MME student, led the research that won the Student Poster Competition at the 2024 American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics (APS-DFD) conference, the largest international event in Fluid Mechanics—held in Salt Lake City, Utah.  

Four professors in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering have been awarded $4.4 million total from the Ontario Research Fund (ORF) to support research that will help drive innovation towards the province’s future.  

On March 20th and 25th, MME's 4th-year Capstone Design Symposium events were held in-person and showcased our latest and greatest in terms of talent and innovation. This year, there were over 100+ senior teams showcasing their projects and competing for a selection of awards from best product design, web design, prototype, innovation, presentation quality, among others. Below are the results of this year's award winners. 

Congratulations to the winners and to everyone that participated in the event!

Back in 2004, the Multi-Scale Additive Manufacturing (MSAM) Lab was established in a tiny but valuable 150-square-foot space in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering. Twenty years later, it is the largest metal additive manufacturing academic research lab in Canada, housing over $25 million in infrastructure and is one of the best university-based research facilities in the world.   

Mechanical and mechatronics engineering professor Dr. Yue Hu is co-leading a project with Dr. Sebastian Fischmeister from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering that will address critical education gaps in the rapidly evolving domain of robotics cybersecurity and have been awarded $1 million in funding from the National Cybersecurity Consortium. Because robot technology moves so fast, many times, it outpaces the development of necessary cybersecurity measures.