It was the late 1950s when Douglas Wright was approached by recruiters representing several of the newer Canadian universities at the time.
Although some of the offers were tempting, the young civil engineering professor decided to join the fledging University of Waterloo because of the freedom it offered.
Nasser Abukhdeir will probably never get accused of going too easy on students who have hopes of turning their fourth-year design projects into commercial ventures.
By his own admission, the University of Waterloo chemical engineering professor is “brutally honest” when it comes to assessing the potential of ideas and the ability of Capstone Design student teams to develop them into viable businesses.
There is software everywhere you turn these days: from computers and smartphones, to pacemakers, vending machines and anti-lock brakes.
And if you’ve ever had an app freeze or lost a document when Microsoft Word suddenly crashed, you know those programs are often prone to glitches.
A long round of applause followed the formal announcement in mid-January of a $32.6-million contribution from the federal government towards construction of the state-of-the-art Engineering 7 building at the University of Waterloo.
Cabinet minister Bardish Chagger shared the good news after touring a Waterloo Engineering laboratory doing work in the areas of cybersecurity and autonomous vehicles, the kind of innovative research that will be expanded in the new, seven-storey, 240,000-square-foot building on the east campus.
Corina Moore (BASc 1997, Systems Design) remembers exactly how she picked Waterloo Engineering, the first step on a career path that would take her around the world and back home again to Northern Ontario.
It was on a weekend about 25 years ago that the shy teenager from the hamlet of Commanda - population 50, give or take a few - looked around campus with her mother as she tried to decide where to go and what to take after high school.
It’s a typical day. You pay for your morning coffee with a tap of your debit card, e-transfer money to your son at university, settle all your household bills and even negotiate a new mortgage online. Sure, you’ve been known to gripe about banking service fees, but who hasn’t? And so it goes for much of the developed world - daily life involves interactions with some global financial system - and it’s something we take for granted.
When John and Anita Rossall first heard of the newly launched Engineering Ideas Clinic, the program resonated with them because they believe it is urgently needed in the engineering profession.
Defending against memory buffer overflow attacks is a daunting proposition for computer software developers.
Failing to carefully specify appropriate inputs opens the door for hackers to insert malicious code by overwhelming a system’s memory space with unanticipated inputs.
But how do you plan for every possible type of input a hacker could use? You turn to Vijay Ganesh.
Pixel Tours has big ambitions for the creation of what it calls “mind-blowing digital experiences,” although you wouldn’t know it standing outside the company’s headquarters: an unremarkable three-storey building in an industrial park in north Toronto.
Descend into its basement digs, however, and you’ll discover an Aladdin’s cave of technology, including a $10,000 gaming machine, a virtual reality rig and massive 4K screens, not to mention a collection of high-end Lego.
The University of Waterloo will host 150 girls with their parents on Saturday to explore what a future in engineering can hold for them.