Awards, Honours and Rankings

Waterloo alumnus Michael Litt (BASc ’11) has been named to Canada’s Top 40 Under 40. Created by Caldwell executive search firm, the annual awards recognize business leaders who transform their industries while giving back to their communities and the country.

Meet the alumnus who’s changing the landscape of business in Canada.

Michael Litt (BASc ’11)

Age: 32

Education: Faculty of Engineering — Systems Design Engineering

The University of Waterloo is proud to announce that two of its students will receive one of Canada’s highest honours in academia — the Governor General’s Gold Medal.

For highest standing in a doctoral program, Physics PhD student Robie Hennigar is recognized for his explorations in black hole chemistry and higher curvature gravity. Master’s student Samuel Jaques is being celebrated for his accomplishments in quantum cost models for cryptanalysis of isogenies.

For graduating students, convocation is a significant milestone, a time to celebrate their accomplishments in front of family and friends. Each year, students are nominated by peers to represent their class during convocation. The position of valedictorian is an honoured one, reflecting an individual who has led an active post-secondary career, both academically and socially.

Meet our 2019 valedictorians:

The University of Waterloo is honoured to announce the academic achievements of approximately 6,300 graduates who will receive degrees next week at convocation ceremonies.

These graduating students will receive their academic hoods and official diplomas in twelve ceremonies that take place from June 11 to 15.

When University of Waterloo physicist Anna Golubeva got an email saying she’d won the NSERC Gilles Brassard Doctoral Prize for Interdisciplinary Research she thought it was an elaborate phishing scam.

Michelle Liu carefully plans each hour of every day three weeks in advance to figure out where she needs to be and when.

Between volunteering up to 40 hours a month in several different roles on and off-campus and keeping on top of her graduate studies, she constantly checks her changing calendar.

“I call it 80 productive hours a week, divided between volunteering and my studies,” Liu says with a laugh.

A Waterloo alumnus with a distinguished career as a civil servant, banking executive, venture capitalist, policy advisor and philanthropist will be among the recipients of honorary doctorates at the University of Waterloo’s upcoming spring convocation ceremonies.

Toby Jenkins, a champion of the knowledge-based economy in the Waterloo region, has served on a number of advisory and governance boards of organizations in higher education, health care, government and media.

An engineering professor at the University of Waterloo with a lifelong interest in environmental protection has won a prestigious national award for scholars.

Keith Hipel, a professor of systems design engineering who earned his three degrees as a student at Waterloo, was named today as one of five winners of 2019 Killam Prizes through the Canada Council for the Arts.

Keith Hipel learned to love nature and care deeply about the environment during glorious boyhood summers spent playing outside at his family cottage on Belwood Lake.

Six decades later, that passion was still fueling his life’s work as a systems design engineering professor at the University of Waterloo today as he won a coveted $100,000 national award for scholars.

Three Waterloo Engineering students have come up with a unique solution they feel may solve the housing crisis in Atlantic Canada’s Indigenous communities and possibly take a top award in Australia at the Hult Prize challenge, the world’s largest student social entrepreneurship competition.