News

Students from Waterloo’s Nanotechnology Engineering program will soon have a new student society to unify its cohorts and graduating classes and represent their concerns within the University’s larger engineering community. The Nanotechnology Engineering Student Society (NESS) aims to foster an alumni network, create an official forum for program-specific concerns, and organize and host outreach events for the program’s students and faculty.

Congratulations to VivaSpire, DropLab and Avro Life Science – and especially the Nanotechnology Engineering students who are key parts of these emerging companies – for their wins at the Fall 2016 Velocity Fund Finals.

VivaSpire, made up of four Nanotechnology Engineering (NE) students, Chris Hajduk, John Grousopoulos, Mostafa Saquib and Pablo Enrique, won a Velocity Fund $5K prize intended to help early-stage companies grow their venture. VivaSpire develops superior portable oxygen delivery systems for patients in need of oxygen therapy. 

Congratulations Medella Health for its 2016 James Dyson Award success! The Waterloo start-up won one of two international runners-up awards for its smart contact lens, which monitors its wearer’s glucose levels. Its noninvasive blood testing capability has the potential to revolutionize blood monitoring – to the benefit of millions of diabetics.

Nanotechnology Engineering graduate Huayi Gao, co-founded Medella Health along with Waterloo Science graduate Maarij Baig and former Science and Business student Harry Gandhi.

The James Dyson Foundation has, for the third year in a row, recognized the problem-solving skills of Waterloo Nanotechnology Engineering (NE) graduates. This year, three Waterloo companies were selected in the first stage of the James Dyson Award competition judging process. Two of them, Medella Health and Arylla, were founded by NE graduates.

Nanotechnology Engineering graduate (2013) Duncan Strathearn is helping to bring nanotechnology to the masses with an affordable and easy-to-use atomic force microscope (AFM) that can fit in the palm of your hand.

Because AFMs are normally very large, extremely expensive and complex, they are typically part of exclusive academic and industry laboratories, which limits access to these high resolution microscopes – and the wonders they reveal.

At the recent Velocity Fund Finals, Nanotechnology Engineering student Ryan Brown and his colleagues at Salient Energy won a grand prize of $25,000, the top hardware prize of $10,000, and admission to the Velocity Garage where they can continue development of their technology.

Recent graduates of the University of Waterloo’s Nanotechnology Engineering program demonstrated their pitching talent, which is a key to entrepreneurial success, by winning the Digifest 2016 IT’S A START Pitch Competition.

Congratulations to Nanotechnology Engineering students Ciara Azam, Manasa Kaniselvan, Natalie Pinchin and Software Engineering student Tammy Liu for their achievements at the annual International Conference for Robotics and Automation (ICRA), hosted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in Sweden.

Dr. John Saad, lab instructor for the Nanotechnology Engineering program, has been recognized by the Engineering Society for his ongoing efforts to make fourth-year nano labs interesting, useful and challenging for students.

Attendees of the third annual Norman Esch Pitch Competition witnessed Nanotechnology Engineering students at their persuasive best. Three Nanotechnology Engineering teams, Amilent, Arylla and GraFET, were among a competitive group that pitched the business plan they developed as part of the Capstone Design Project. Congratulations to the Amilent and GraFET teams for their successful pitches, which won each team a $10,000 prize.