Community

Venture capitalist and former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya returned to Ontario from Silicon Valley earlier in May to announce a new Social+Capital Partnership Engineering Fellows program that will pair top Waterloo engineering students with innovative startups in Silicon Valley.

Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian astronaut to command the International Space Station (ISS) and a professor at the University of Waterloo, will receive an honorary doctorate at Waterloo’s spring convocation ceremonies.

The now retired astronaut, who joins the University as an adjunct professor in the fall, will address convocation and receive an honorary doctor of science from the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences on Tuesday June 10 at 10 a.m.

Media are invited to attend as researchers from Waterloo and Bordeaux gather to create a bio-chemistry program that will support research into sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels.

The University of Waterloo and Université de Bordeaux also begin a longer conversation about combining strengths with a joint conference, taking place May 19 to 21 in Waterloo.

For the first time, hardware startups outnumber software companies joining the University of Waterloo’s Velocity Garage startup incubation space this spring. Seven of the 10 startups entering the Velocity Garage are companies building physical products.

Velocity is experiencing increased demand to support startups focused on new technology hardware, not just those building next-generation apps and software. The shift will see the University expand Velocity with the opening of the Velocity Foundry later this year to support hardware, materials and life sciences startups.

The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) announced today that all frontline officers will use a screening tool developed at the University of Waterloo to assess and describe mental health issues, allowing for improved transitions for persons with mental health issues from police custody to hospital care. 

The Brief Mental Health Screener (BMHS) is a standardized, science-based assessment tool that will help officers respond to people experiencing a mental health crisis and increase their ability to interact effectively with mental health professionals at the hospital.

Tomorrow the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) will announce the roll-out of a science-based, standardized mental health screening form which will be used by frontline OPP officers across Ontario.

Developed and tested by researchers at the University of Waterloo, the Brief Mental Health Screener is based on the interRAI Mental Health Assessment System, a comprehensive standardized instrument used with all patients admitted to an Ontario hospital for inpatient psychiatric care.

An innovative play based on dementia research at the University of Waterloo will open at the SpringWorks Theatre Festival in Stratford on Friday.

Cracked: New Light on Dementia follows one woman’s journey from diagnosis to long-term care. The production casts a critical light on society’s view of dementia as an unmitigated tragedy.

Abnormal binocular vision, which involves the way eyes work together as a team, increases dramatically as we age, according to research from the University of Waterloo. The study also found a correlation between this condition, general health and antidepressant use.

A team of University of Waterloo student researchers has been selected as one of 16 North American teams in the EcoCAR3 Advanced Vehicle Technologies Competition (AVTC) launched by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors.