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.

Teams from Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering had great success at this year's 2024 Norman Esch Competition for Entrepreneurship Award for Capstone Design, presented by the Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business. Twelve of this year's Capstone Design teams pitched their innovative ideas to a team of industry leaders for their share of investment funding.   

After much deliberation and encouragement from the audience, keep reading to find out how MME teams fared in the pitch competition. 

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.

Two professors in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering have received funding from the the Canada Foundation for Innovation to support transformative research projects.

On Thursday, March 7th, the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering held a special event to honour the academic excellence of its students who were named to the prestigious Term Dean’s Honours List for spring and fall 2023.

Stefanie Burinsma, a Mechanical Engineering alumna (BASc' 15), has introduced a platform designed to empower women when it comes to car maintenance. The platform connects women needing vehicle repairs or advice with a network of trusted experts and educators to help reduce instances of fraud and discrimination.

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.

On behalf of all members of the Multi-Scale Additive Manufacturing Laboratory, our heartfelt congratulations to Dr. Katayoon Taherkhani for receiving the “2023 ASTM International Additive Manufacturing Young Professional Award”, in recognition of "her continuous and outstanding contributions to research pertaining and in support of additive manufacturing". The award was given during #iCAM2023 in Washington, DC, USA.

Special thanks to ASTM International and ASTM Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence for recognizing Katayoon's exceptional work and organizing an incredible iCAM 2023 conference that brought together over 1100 distinguished attendees.