Championing alumni connections

Twenty-five years after circumstance bumped him onto a different path, Yuri Quintana (BASc '88, electrical, PhD '95, systems design) is still roaring down it as a professor at Harvard Medical School and chief of clinical informatics at one of its teaching hospitals.

With a freshly minted doctorate from Waterloo in hand, Quintana landed his first faculty job at Western University to develop internet search engines.

But when his boss was diagnosed with breast cancer and asked him to investigate how technology could help her manage the disease, it led to a string of increasingly responsible positions in the healthcare field.

“Each time I think I’m only going to do this for a few years,” Quintana says, “but the ability to have social and human impacts has been so rewarding I keep expanding my work.”

Yuri Quintana started a Boston-area group to bring engineering alumni together and mentor co-op students

The son of Waterloo Engineering professor emeritus Victor Quintana and father of computer engineering student Nicolas, he is also an enthusiastic champion of his alma mater.

Quintana is a global ambassador for the University, and launched a Boston-area group to bring engineering alumni together and mentor co-op students.

“I’m so proud of the evolution of Waterloo and I hope more alumni connect with each other because it’s such a great community of innovators,” Quintana says.