Awards, Honours and Rankings
Join us in Needles Hall on Monday, December 10 to celebrate Donna Strickland’s remarkable accomplishment and watch her accept the Nobel Prize in Physics 2018. The award ceremony will be livestreamed from Sweden.
Viewing party details
When: Monday, December 10 | 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Where: Needles Hall | Board and Senate Chambers, room 3407 | University of Waterloo
Please RSVP
We anticipate the ceremony to begin promptly at 10:30 a.m.
This year’s J.D. Leslie Prize winner is not your typical university graduate.
After more than 20 years of working towards her degree, Jennifer Roy, 70, finally saw her efforts pay off at Waterloo’s fall convocation ceremonies where she received her degree amongst 2,000 other graduates.
“I started my degree in 1996 when I had a hectic full-time job working 10 hours per day. I also had two teenagers and a home to run,” said Roy. “My children were my motivation. I wanted to instill in them the importance of education. Today they have five degrees between them.”
More than 2,400 students received degrees as part of the University of Waterloo’s 117th convocation, including 1,308 undergraduate and 1,164 graduate degrees. Waterloo also installed Dominic Barton, senior partner and former global managing partner of McKinsey & Company, as its 11th chancellor.
Dominic Barton, Waterloo's 11th chancellor, congratulates a graduate on Saturday.
The University of Waterloo has been designated Research University of the Year among Canadian comprehensive universities by Research Infosource Inc. for the eleventh consecutive year.
The announcement follows recognition as the most innovative university in Canada for the 27th year in a row by Maclean’s magazine in its recent 2019 reputational survey. Waterloo was also named second in Canada for best overall and leaders of tomorrow.
The University of Waterloo will be welcoming back more than 2,000 students on October 26 and 27 to receive their degrees at Waterloo’s 117th convocation. In front of friends, family and special guests, graduating students will receive their academic hoods and be presented with their official diplomas.
The ceremonies will take place at the University in the main gymnasium of the Physical Activities Complex. There will be two ceremonies each day beginning at 10 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.
Over the last 10 years, anti-smoking measures such as taxing tobacco products and graphic warnings saved an estimated 22 million lives worldwide, says Geoff Fong, the Waterloo professor who leads the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (ITC).
The ITC, based in the University of Waterloo’s Department of Psychology, both contributes to the success of efforts in countries associated with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and generates a sizable share of the data.
Waterloo will install Dominic Barton, managing partner emeritus of McKinsey & Company, as its 11th chancellor on October 27 at 10 a.m. Barton stepped down as the firm’s global managing partner after nine years and completing the maximum of three terms. Barton is the chair of the Advisory Council on Economic Growth. He holds degrees in economics from the University of British Columbia and the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.
Donna Strickland joined the ranks of Marie Curie this week, becoming the third woman in history to win the Nobel Prize in Physics. But the Waterloo professor admits she’s not one for deep reflections on her long career.
She quite simply loves fundamental science.
“I have always just done what I’ve wanted to do,” says Strickland, an associate professor in Waterloo’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. “People ask about being a woman and I don’t even think I noticed it throughout my career.”
Millions of people undergo what has become routine laser eye surgery. Tools such as laser-based cameras that can create super slow-motion movies of chemical and physical reactions are standard technology in laboratories around the world.
Laser technology is now so ubiquitous, we tend to take it for granted.
But in 1985, when Donna Strickland, an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy who leads the ultrafast laser research team at the University of Waterloo, was working on her PhD, that wasn’t the case.
