News

Less than a year after spinning off from Waterloo Engineering, Innovative Processing Technologies (IPT) has been recognized by the Ontario government for its breakthrough Multiple Memory Material (MMM) technology, known for making smart materials smarter. IPT and a Waterloo Engineering team led by mechanical and mechatronics professor Norman Zhou have been awarded market readiness funding by the Ontario Centres of Excellence. Valued at $130,000, this fund will support development and qualification of prototypes specifically for automotive applications.

The WAVELab Robotics team supervised Dr. S. Waslander won the grand award at the International Autonomous Robot Racing Competition at UBC. The team ranked first overall in the design, drag race, and circuit competitions.  

Waterloo Engineering teams received three of nine awards presented at the Ontario Centres of Excellence Discovery 2011 competition held recently in Toronto. Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering students Yaser Shanjani and Mihaela Vlasea, both PhD students supervised by Dr. E. Toyserkani, won second prize in the student oral presentation competition. 

Hamed Shateri from Mechanical & Mechatronics Engineering is among four graduate students who are this year’s winners of the Amit and Meena Chakma Award for Exceptional Teaching by a Student. Their names were announced at Monday night’s senate meeting by Sue Horton, the associate provost (graduate studies). [more]

Gordon Stubley, a mechanical and mechatronics professor, has been appointed Waterloo Engineering’s first associate dean, teaching, for a three-year term beginning May 1, 2012. [More] 

Fathy Ismail of mechanical and mechatronics engineering will serve as interim chair of the department from February 1 to December 31 2012. He will replace Pearl Sullivan who is succeeding Adel Sedra as dean of Waterloo Engineering on July 1, 2012. Sullivan is resigning as chair of MME on January 31 to allow time for the transition of the dean’s position. A full search will take place for Sullivan’s permanent successor.

Pearl Sullivan, chair of Waterloo’s mechanical and mechatronics engineering department, will become Waterloo’s eighth dean of engineering on July 1, 2012. Sullivan, an award-winning professor and accomplished researcher, joined the university as a professor of mechanical engineering in 2004. She will succeed Adel Sedra whose second term as dean ends June 30, 2012. 

Waterloo Engineering start-up BufferBox will launch what is believed to be the first parcel delivery kiosk service in Canada on January 12 in the Student Life Centre at the University of Waterloo. BufferBox was created by three recent Waterloo mechatronics engineering graduates as their fourth year design project to provide a reliable and secure parcel delivery alternative. [Bufferbox demo] 

A team of undergraduate and graduate students from the University of Waterloo Robotics Team and the Waterloo Autonomous Vehicles Lab are back from the recent Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition with the best showing of any Canadian entry [more].

The Globe and Mail featured an article on collaboration between Microbonds Inc. of Markham, Ontario, and MME professors Norman Zhou and Michael Mayer. This collaboration focused on developing innovative ways to lower the production costs of the company’s semiconductor packaging business without having to overhaul operations or lose ground in its sector.