News

Two graduate students in MME are celebrating the win of a scholarship for students who have exemplified their skills and leadership abilities in the Materials Science and Manufacturing labs in the department. The award is named in memory of distinguished mechanical and mechatronics engineering professor Paul Niessen, along with Cominco Ltd, an organization Niessen had a long association with.

Keep reading to learn more about this year’s award winners and the research they are working on:

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.   

A research collaboration between a recent MME PhD graduate and the Director of the School of Architecture has investigated the use of microalgae and machine learning to create an energy source from the walls of regular office buildings.

A student design team made up of mostly mechanical engineering students achieved a major feat in Canadian aerospace with the launch of Borealis—Canada’s first-ever Canadian liquid bi-propellant rocket just outside of Timmins, Ontario at the third annual Launch Canada event.

A group of undergraduate students studying mechanical and mechatronics engineering with the help of students in Systems Design Engineering and Arts recently participated in the Canadian Reduced Gravity Experiment Design Challenge (CAN-RGX). They presented their research at the Canadian Space Agency headquarters in Longueuil, Quebec, and won the Overall Excellence Award.

Find out how a close-knit group of mechanical engineering alumni is helping first-year students lighten the financial load.

On June 26th, it was announced that four groups of students and two teams were winners of the Society for Manufacturing Engineers (SME) Digital Manufacturing Challenge. Dr. Mihaela Vlasea, a professor of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, supervised the students in collaboration with PhD student Daniel Juhasz, who specifically advised the undergraduate team.

If you could live on the moon, would you? A group of Waterloo researchers in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering has set out to help make that a reality by processing raw materials on the moon to power the area as a hub for manufacturing, construction, and human life.

Kitchener-Waterloo software startup IntelliCulture has certainly been putting the pedal to the metal over the last few years. They’ve been pushing their expansion to the United States after seeing much success in Canada.

Artemis Data, co-founded by William Shi (BASc ’23, mechatronics engineering), has raised 2 million in pre-seed funding to make data cleaning 50 times faster than traditional methods.