Community

The evolution of Waterloo’s entrepreneurial ecosystem over the last decade is one of the University’s most celebrated achievements.

Waterloo’s School of Optometry & Vision Science has received University approval to move forward on plans to create the Waterloo Eye Institute (WEI) — Canada’s premier eye and vision care centre.

The WEI will leverage the expertise of the School’s faculty, its infrastructure and the power of Canada’s only English-speaking Optometry School to address the biggest challenges in vision science — that, along with the School’s ambitious $35 million dollar campaign making this vision a reality.

In the summer 2019 Professor Daniela O’Neill and graduate students from her developmental psychology course hosted a series of family board game events at Kitchener Public Library (KPL). Their goal was to introduce families to the many board games available to young children as a fun way to foster language, thinking and social skills.

Josh Kalpin started out just trying to protect his own friends and family from COVID-19.

A month later, the Waterloo Engineering alumnus has helped thousands of people across the country get shots in the arm as a core volunteer for a Twitter account that spreads the word on available vaccine appointments.

Vaccine Hunters Canada has grown to more than 140,000 followers and is now partnering directly with some health agencies to help people find open slots and boost vaccine uptake by matching demand with supply.

It was the COVID-19 messages and symbols Brenda Reid saw throughout her Kitchener neighbourhood a year ago that inspired her community-quilt project for people to share virus stories.

The Waterloo architecture master’s candidate, who was researching the topic of care in architecture for her thesis when the pandemic struck in March 2020, created the From Behind the Mask initiative for people living in Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge.

To Dr. Louise Schaper, Amazon’s plan to start selling health-care services is a gamechanger.

“If you can afford to pay for it great, but what happens to people who can’t pay for private health care?” she asked.

That’s because seven years ago, a double-lung transplant was his only hope of surviving the rare fibrosis that was slowly hardening his lungs.

A class of elementary students in the Ontario town of Haliburton are getting behind a Waterloo Engineering alumnus who went on to play in the Canadian Football League.

The students want to see Taly Williams (BASc ’94, civil engineering) recognized on the wall of a local arena along with other hometown athletes who made good.

Williams grew up in Haliburton and played for the Waterloo Warriors before suiting up as a defensive back with the Toronto Argonauts and Hamilton Tiger Cats in the mid-1990s.