WATERLOO, Ont. (Monday, April 25, 2011) - More than 60 high school students will have the opportunity to see top innovative projects completed by senior engineering students at the inaugural Designing The Future event to be held at the University of Waterloo this week.
On Wednesday, April 27, the high school students will meet upper-year Waterloo engineering undergraduate students who will showcase the projects they have been working on over the past year. Nine projects were selected from more than 150 presented at five engineering design symposiums held last month at the University of Waterloo.
The projects will include:
• a wheelchair that can be controlled by the user’s brain wave activity,
• an innovative autopilot system for a helicopter, and
• a high-speed hockey shooting robot that imitates capable of imitating the human slap shot.
The high school students will learn about the process of engineering design and participate in a series of case studies with Waterloo's engineering faculty. The event begins at 10 a.m. with registration in the Engineering 5 building, located on the east side of campus.
"Designing the Future provides an exceptional opportunity to view first-hand the work of our outstanding engineering students," said Mary Wells, associate dean of the faculty of engineering's outreach program. "This event will also help bring awareness to the exciting opportunities a career in engineering offers."
The event is part of an engineering outreach initiative to showcase the creative ideas Waterloo’s engineering students have developed to solve problems many face and demonstrate how the work engineers do is relevant to society.
On Wednesday evening, a special event will be held for Waterloo’s engineering alumni, friends of the faculty and industry partners to see the unique student design projects and meet their creators. John Baker, president and chief executive officer of Desire2Learn and a Waterloo systems design engineering graduate, will be the keynote speaker.
More information on the event can be found at: weconnect.uwaterloo.ca.
About Waterloo Engineering
The faculty of engineering at the University of Waterloo is a multi-faceted engineering school with eight academic units, home to about 270 faculty members, more than 1,840 graduate students and 6,340 undergraduate students. More than 33,000 alumni have made their mark in industry, academe and the public sector, in Canada and around the world. For further information, go to www.engineering.uwaterloo.ca.
