News

While finishing up their undergraduate degrees, two Waterloo Engineering students, Michael Phillips and Phillip Cooper (BASc ’17, mechanical engineering), developed a tiny camera – just one-third of a millimetre in diameter, to diagnose stroke patients as part of their fourth-year design project. This invention also marked the founding of Vena Medical.

Mary Wells, Dean of Waterloo Engineering and professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering has been named one of Canada’s most powerful women by The Women’s Executive Network (WXN) as a recipient under the Canadian Tire Impact category for her commitment to making the Faculty of Engineering a welcoming community for all by eliminating barriers.

Since becoming dean in 2020, Wells has become a founding partner of the Indigenous & Black Engineering Technology PhD Project, has taken meaningful action towards reconciliation with the creation of a new Elder-in-Residence role, and continues to be a fierce advocate for greater outreach initiatives to encourage equity-deserving groups to pursue their passion for STEM.

The Women’s Executive Network (WXN) is an organization that aims to propel and celebrate the advancement of professional women. The Canadian Tire Community Impact Award celebrates women from many sectors, including education, who bring people together, embrace community outreach, and amplify underrepresented voices.

Learn even more about the prestigious award win by reading the full story.

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.

Congratulations to PhD student Ahmed Saieed for winning the 2021 Graduate Scholarship Award from the CFD Society of Canada. The award is a national-level recognition and was created in 2005 to encourage graduate students to pursue the topic of computational fluid dynamics in their thesis. Each year, up to two students are awarded $4,000 scholarships and applicants must be a full-time Master or PhD student and an active member of the CFDSC.

On March 30th and 31st, MME's 4th-year Capstone Design Symposium events were held virtually 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, inovation, presention quality etc. Below are the results and conclusions of this year's award winners. 

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

This past Wednesday April 7th, at the Norman Esch pitch competition, a pitch competition amongst the entire UWaterloo Engineering faculty, 4 of the 6 ten-thousand dollar prizes were awarded to teams from the MME department (2 Mechanical, 2 Mechatronics). Mechanical engineering team, Bless Your Sole, earned an additional $3,000 as the winner of the Sedra People’s Choice Award.

Take a brief look at each of our winning teams below:

On March 17, 2021, the Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering community gathered together to celebrate and learn about the innovative research taking place in the department at the 4th annual MME Graduate Research Symposium.

With the largest attendance to date, this event had many other “firsts”. It was the first time the event was held online, the first collaboration and sponsorship from the Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business and featured the first ever entrepreneurship award.

AquaSensing, a tech startup started by MME professor Norman Zhou and ECE professor George Shaker, have earned a spot in the finals of an international pitch competition for water innovation.

The duo booked its spot in the global Water Dragons pitch competition after winning second place in the preliminal round against eight other companies.

Team AquaSensing, a MME student-run start-up project, have won a $5000 grant, among four winning teams, from the 2021 Winter Concept pitch competition.

Founded by MME master's students, Nathan Johnson, Connor Al-Joundi, Kushant Patel and Jarren Teo, AquaSensing focusses on the design of battery-free water-leak detection devices.

Waterloo Autonomous Racing (WATORACE), including two Mechatronics students, Ben Kurrek and Elijah O’Leary, won 4th place in the Indy Autonomous Challenge (IAC) virtual race #3, also capturing the Rising Star Award.

Ben and Elijah have contributed to determining the best racing line for the car to follow, as well as the throttle controller and test scenarios.