News

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.  

New Fellows for the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE) have recently been elected, and among them is Dr. Ehsan Toyserkani, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering and Canada Research Chair in Additive Manufacturing (AM). His election to the CAE extends beyond our borders. His pioneering contributions to the modeling simulation, in-situ monitoring, and quality assurance of metal AM have earned him national and global acclaim. 

An inCiTe™ 3D X-ray microscope at the University of Waterloo will support one in eight Canadians who experience bone and joint dysfunction with the disease, and this research is being led by Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering professors Dr. Stewart McLachlin and Dr. Naveen Chandrashekar in the Orthopaedic Mechatronics Laboratory to improve surgical treatment of musculoskeletal conditions.    

Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering grads Nima Zamani (BASc '14, MASc' 16) and Dr. Tim Lasswell (BASc '14, MASc '17) introduced Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the Honourable Marci Ien and the Honourable Dan Vandal to Codi™️, an AI-powered robotics system can perform ultrasounds. The team met the officials at Saskatoon's Virtual Health Hub, and the hub will receive $21 million to develop, adopt, and deliver health care services to remote communities, of which the startup that invented the robot, Cobionix, will have its share.  

The startup builds autonomous medical robots that can make health care more accessible, and is based out of Velocity in downtown Kitchener.  

The company aims to offer fully autonomous ultrasounds, where the robot will undertake all parts of the ultrasound procedure without the need for technician supervision across the prairies and eventually across North America.  

Get the full story in Velocity News.  

We're pleased to announce that one of our very own PhD candidates, Shadab Sarmast has been awarded the prestigious CWB Welding Foundation Graduate Scholarship for Women. This scholarship is awarded to women who have demonstrated interest and research in pursuing a career in materials joining and the applied technology services industry. She is supervised by Dr. Norman Zhou and Dr. Michael Benoit in the Centre for Advanced Materials Joining (CAMJ). We caught up with Shadab to learn more about her journey, research interests, and what this award means to her.

On March 25th, we held our annual Mechatronics Engineering Fourth-Year Design Symposium Capstone event, and wow, there was a lot to see! Keep reading to check out some of this year’s projects. 

From cookie dough to accessibility innovations, there was certainly a lot to see at this year’s Mechanical Engineering Capstone Design Symposium. On March 20th, students showed off their fourth-year design projects, and there was no shortage of the “wow factor.”

We had the chance to chat with some of the students to learn more about their inspiration for their projects and how certain classes in their Mechanical Engineering degrees helped them devise innovative solutions to problems around the world.

In a dazzling display of innovation at this year's Norman Esch Entrepreneurship Awards for Capstone Design, senior engineering teams from the Faculty of Engineering brought forth groundbreaking projects to compete for substantial funding to fuel their entrepreneurial dreams. Out of the ten formidable teams, two remarkable groups from the Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering (MME) stream notably clinched victory.

Shanaya Barretto, an incoming MTE student has won a Shulich Leader Scholarship for 2021, valued at $100,000.  Barretto graduated from St. Joseph Secondary School.