Engineering

Since its founding in 2015, KA Imaging, a Waterloo spinoff, has been revolutionizing X-ray technology in Canada and around the world. 

The company was founded by three visionary Waterloo alumni: Amol Karnick (BASc ’95), Sina Ghanbarzadeh (MASc ’14, in memoriam) and Dr. Karim Karim (BASc ’99, PhD ’03) who all had a goal to create significant social impact by advancing X-ray imaging technology. 

Today, KA Imaging has grown to more than 50 employees, with its innovative products being utilized in 10 countries across three continents. 

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have received $2.5 million in funding to reimagine how waste materials — such as plastics, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and agricultural residues — can be converted into marketable products.

The funding was awarded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) as part of the National Science Foundation Global Centers initiative. Waterloo researchers are part of the Center for Innovative Recycling and Circular Economy (CIRCLE).    

Over the past eleven years, Hack the North has grown to become a major force in the world of hackathons. This year’s event saw more than 1,000 young inventors come together at the University of Waterloo to work together over 36 hours and create a dizzying array of software applications, hardware projects and gadgets. The competition was as fierce as ever, but there were also lots of opportunities to make connections and get inspired.

Waterloo researchers are known globally for tackling complex problems and Dr. Robert Jan van Pelt, of Waterloo’s School of Architecture in Cambridge, is one of them. He is a highly regarded expert and truth-seeker on all things related to the Holocaust. 

A quarter of a decade ago, van Pelt acquired fame as an expert witness in a notorious British libel trial that pitted British Holocaust denier David Irving against American historian Deborah Lipstadt. 

When Raven Sim receives her degree this June, it will mean the fulfilment of a long-held ambition. "I’ve known I wanted to be at Waterloo for computer engineering since Grade 4" Sim says. Her interest in the subject was ignited during an engineering summer camp and was later cemented when she learned about Waterloo’s co-op program.  

The mission of FIRST Robotics Canada is to promote robotics alongside science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects to Canadian youth. To do this FIRST organizes robotics competitions for students from elementary to high school. Students design, build and program robots to compete in a variety of fun challenges, from shooting balls into hoops to stacking boxes. FIRST provides resources, mentorship and support to participating teams, giving them the foundation to work together and use their ingenuity to solve problems.

Twelve senior student teams from the Faculty of Engineering competed in this year’s Norman Esch Entrepreneurship Awards for Capstone Design, pitching their startup ideas to a panel of judges who distributed more than $110,000 in investment funding for the projects.

Dr. Nadine Ibrahim, a professor in the University of Waterloo’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Turkstra Chair in Urban Engineering, never misses a chance to inspire her students to think about how the application of their knowledge could create solutions that improve and sustain our humanity and prosperity.  

As the planet faces the pressing challenge of reducing plastic waste in the environment, new strategies for managing plastic waste are urgently needed. One of the biggest roadblocks to addressing the plastic waste crisis is the use of thermosets and rubbers — a class of non-recyclable plastics widely used in infrastructure, automobiles, planes, adhesives, 3D printing and chemical industries.

On January 18, two teams of Waterloo students participated in the final round of competitions at the inaugural AI EarthHack competition at Microsoft’s headquarters in Toronto. Team Cyclic Geese — comprised of three third-year software engineering students — emerged as winners of one of the two grand prizes and will receive an internship at Manulife.