Current students

If you’ve walked through a shopping mall or watched a big game on TV lately, you’re sure to have seen an ad touting the benefits of 5G cellular networks. While the ads make claims about having the fastest network or making our lives better, most of us still have a lingering question — what, exactly, is 5G anyway?

It was only a year ago that Raphael Anammasiya Ayambire celebrated his own graduation from the University of Waterloo. He first received his PhD in Planning before accepting a post-doctoral fellowship directly afterwards. Now a professor at the University of Manitoba, he returned to the University of Waterloo as a Faculty of Environment alumni speaker to congratulate the newest cohort on their achievements and recognize their success.

Waterloo student-founded company Safi – from the Swahili word for “pure” or “safe” – is a startup with an ambitious mission. They want to empower East African farmers to pasteurize milk cheaply and easily, with the ultimate goal of ending milk-transmitted disease. Today, Safi’s founders are working with governments, presenting at international conferences and preparing for a 300-unit test rollout in Rwanda. Two years ago, however, Safi was just an idea.

Waterloo Engineering alum Amy Charette (BASc ’94) was going to be an astrophysicist. Her ambition shifted gears on the day she met her first ever mechanical engineer through her high-school’s astronomy co-op program.

“I can’t remember her name — yes, the first mechanical engineer I happened to meet was a woman,” says Charette. “But I hung onto her every word and just knew that mechanical engineering was what I wanted to do.”

The following was written for the Business Reporter by Dr. Norah McRae, Associate Provost, Co-operative and Experiential Education.

A recent survey of global CEOs found that forty per cent fear that their organizations will not be economically viable in ten years.

Why?

52 per cent said that the global labour shortage is their biggest challenge, 49 per cent said it was the need to adapt to technological change.

On May 16, Velocity kicked-off a partnership with the Grand River Hospital Foundation (GRHF) as part of their Care Never Stops campaign by presenting the Health Innovation Challenge.  The student hack-a-thon with a twist provides an opportunity for University of Waterloo students to take part in designing solutions to health care challenges being experienced within our local c

When COVID-19 restrictions started rolling out in March 2020, workplaces were forced to quickly adapt from in-person operations to virtual.  

This meant big changes for Velocity and the companies operating out of the downtown Kitchener and University of Waterloo locations. 

Ribbit and 1Mentor are among the 88 companies that have joined Velocity since the start of the pandemic.  

Despite ramping up operations amidst pandemic restrictions, their drive to innovate and scale their business remained limitless. 

As automobile manufacturers continue their pivot to electric vehicles (EVs), the days of the internal combustible engine are ending — and sooner than you think. In Canada, the sale of new gas-powered vehicles will end in 2035. South of the border, the U.S. is set to end the sale of new gas-powered light vehicles as early as 2025.  

For many car owners, their next purchase will be an EV. But as many current EV owners know, the environmental benefits of battery-powered cars come with a tradeoff.  

Universities are currently in the national security spotlight, but recent coverage has forgotten the unique position that institutions are in when it comes to protecting Canada’s national interests.  

It’s that moment that every entrepreneur dreams of the realization that you’ve not only created a product that would help solve a genuine problem but that it’s unique in the marketplace. For nanotechnology engineering alums Khanjan Desai (BASc '13) and Chong Shen (BASc '13), that inkling happened in their fourth-year capstone course, as they were tackling the challenge of keeping windshields frost-free.