At the 11th annual Capstone Design Symposium on March 26th, the Nanotechnology Engineering program’s class of 2021 presented their fourth-year design projects to an enthusiastic audience. Students, faculty, friends and family members joined online to learn about the exciting innovations created by our fourth-year students.
Zhongwei Chen, Canada Research Chair in Advanced Materials for Clean Energy and Chemical Engineering Professor and Linda Nazar, Canada Research Chair in Solid State Energy Materials and Chemistry Professor, received more than $2 million in infrastructure funding from the federal government’s Canada Foundation for Innovation for the proposed Ontario Centre for Battery and Electrochemical Research.
NE alumna Kiara Bruggeman (NE BASc and CHEM BSc ’12, double degree) is engineering groundbreaking treatments that could help stroke victims essentially regrow parts of their brains. Her research team at Australian National University (ANU) is creating materials that can be used to tell stem cells to start behaving like brain cells in order to replace stroke-damaged tissue.
Just last spring, Alisha Bhanji (BASc 2020) was working with her Capstone Design team to finalize the liquid crystal technology behind their fourth-year design project. Now, as Co-Founder & Chief Engineering Officer of Scope Photonics, Alisha and her colleagues are taking it to market via their startup company.
Their camera lenses can instantly, and without digital cropping or physical movement, adjust their optical behaviour to take the perfect photo in any condition. With a potential market that stretches far beyond smartphones, their technology shows great promise. They’ve accomplished a rapid series of exciting achievements, including several big-name awards and unique opportunities, that have them poised for success.
NE alumni startup Scope won the International Runner-up prize in the 2020 James Dyson Award, a global competition for student inventors.
The University of Waterloo cracked the top 100 in worldwide rankings in a subject area that heavily involves nanotechnology engineering.
Although media company US News and World Report didn't include a specific category for nanotechnology engineering in its Best Global Universities rankings for 2021, Waterloo took the 82nd spot in a subject area covering nanoscience and nanotechnology, making us one of the best ranked Canadian universities in this subject.
A team of former Nanotechology Engineering students has made a shortlist of finalists in a high-profile international invention competition.
Scope, which is developing a better zoom function for smartphones and other applications, is one of 20 teams from countries around the world still in the running for the 2020 James Dyson Award.
Nanotechnology Engineering alumni Derek Jouppi, Andrew Martinko and Chad Sweeting (BASc ’14) have taken their 2014 Capstone Design project worldwide, with SPOTTM, a smart UV indicating sticker that helps people remember that sunscreen wears away. Suncayr’s easy-to-apply body sticker changes colour when sunscreen reapplication is necessary, providing a simple and effective reminder.
Congratulations to recent NE grads, Alisha Bhanji, Holden Beggs, Fernando Pena Cantu, Zhenle Cao and Ishan Mishra, for their runner-up prize in the Canadian leg of the James Dyson Award competition for student inventors.
With this win, the team moves on to the International level of competition for the prestigious award.
Robert Ho (BASc 2014) is proof positive of the old adage to follow our interests and the details will take care of themselves.
His enjoyment of math, science and building things inspired him to study nanotechnology engineering. Now, as Chemical Process Development Engineer for Siemens Healthineers, the broadness of the nano program helps him "contribute to virtually any technical conversation, whether it’s mechanical, electrical, or chemical in nature."
In this profile, he shares why he chose UWaterloo, some of his undergrad experiences and his top three tips for students.