Awards, Honours and Rankings

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Professor Mark Servos has been working tirelessly to contribute towards our understanding of COVID-19, leading wastewater testing efforts locally and across Canada. His research has recently been highlighted in the media as wastewater surveillance becomes a significant tool in our community’s efforts to track the spread of COVID-19, and his efforts are being recognized with a Minister of Colleges and Universities' Awards of Excellence.

A company that was co-founded by two Waterloo Engineering professors has been recognized by an agency of the United Nations (UN) for its contributions to a state-of-the-art facility to farm crickets as a source of protein.

DarwinAI and the Aspire Food Group, which is leading the initiative, were named to a list of the top 10 projects using artificial intelligence (AI) to advance the UN’s sustainability goals.

Deciding at a young age to become an architect, Rick Haldenby was just seven years old when he designed and built a house in the backyard of his Toronto childhood home. 

The tobacco industry pulls in hundreds of billions of dollars in profits every quarter, at the cost of more than 8.3 million lives annually. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates the economic cost of tobacco is US$1.4 trillion a year —1.8 per cent of global GDP. 

In response to these sobering statistics, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) was created to turn the tide against the number one preventable cause of death in the world: smoking.  

An acclaimed psychologist and an accomplished architect at the University of Waterloo have been appointed to the Order of Canada.

An online celebration this week honoured the achievements of outstanding alumni with awards in four categories and a supporter of engineering research and education.

Hosted by Mary Wells, dean of engineering, the event recognized an emergency room physician, the CEO of a company advancing the field of spectroscopy, the developer of a unique radiation therapy system, the inventors of technology that helps disabled children take their first steps, the creator of software to support disaster relief, and a valued friend of the Faculty.

Three former students at the University of Waterloo are in impressive company on a who’s who of young luminaries from the worlds of business, sports and everything in between.

Grocery billionaire Apoorva Mehta, trucking disruptor Alex Rodrigues and cryptocurrency inventor Vitalik Buterin all appear on a Hall of Fame list of 30 Under 30 achievers released this week by influential business magazine Forbes.

While she excelled in econometrics during her undergraduate studies at Waterloo, Susan Shu Chang soon established her expertise in applied machine learning and game development – the two main strands of her astonishing range of expertise in the tech space. Today, just four years since she graduated with her BA Hons, she is a Principal Data Scientist at Clearco, a finance-tech company that provides growth capital for online businesses.

Kathy Hay earned her BA with a major in Psychology in 1998 — but it wasn’t a straight line from start to finish. Beginning her undergrad studies in 1979, she paused university to pursue a career in banking. Nearly 20 years later she completed her degree through Waterloo’s distance learning option. Now as a former banker, Kathy has brought a strategic and business lens to her roles in the not-for-profit charitable sector.

The University of Waterloo is ranked 22nd in the world for universities that produce the most successful entrepreneurs, according to the 2021 PitchBook rankings of top 50 colleges for founders.