Awards, Honours and Rankings

William Wong, associate professor in electrical and computer engineering, is working with MW Canada to create electronic fabric, where UV lights are integrated directly into fabric, to be used in water filtration systems. Drawing on the unique strength of MW Canada to develop custom fabrics, Wong is enhancing two unique technologies by combining electronic devices with textiles for new applications in order to use Canada’s resources more efficiently and keep water safe.

Two entrepreneurs who got their start while students at the University of Waterloo have been named to the 2015 Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

Danny Yaroslavski, 23, founder of LightBot and William Zhou, 22, founder of Chalk.com, were named by Forbes in the education category for “rethinking learning with the three C’s: code, college readiness and community impact.”

A startup working to bring eye exams to impoverished and remote communities globally was the big winner at the fall Velocity Fund Finals (VFF).

EyeCheck is one of four Waterloo-based startups that each won a $25,000 grant from Velocity, an entrepreneurship program at the University of Waterloo. EyeCheck also won an additional $10,000 as the top hardware startup in the competition.

Social innovation student startups from an app that aggregates news stories and uses analytics to distill fact from opinion, to a program that will strengthen early childhood education in urban slums around the world are competing for $5,000 in funding from a new fund at St. Paul’s GreenHouse.

The live-in social innovation community at St. Paul's University College at the University of Waterloo will award $5,000 in funding to student innovators at the GreenHouse Social Innovation Showcase, taking place on Wednesday, December 3.

Waterloo students have designed a synthetic organism that may one day help doctors treat MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant superbug.

The synthetic bacterium, Staphylocide, “turns off” the antibiotic-resistance gene in MRSA, making it sensitive again to antibiotics and easier for doctors to treat. MRSA - methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus - is a superbug at the core of many skin infections that spread easily and can cause serious, untreatable infections for hospital patients.

Two researchers from the University of Waterloo working on potential ways to target and kill cancer cells and a new understanding of gravity won prestigious Polanyi Prizes today.

For most of his life, Bill Tutte was forced to keep a secret.

It was one Tutte, who died in 2002, thought would be kept forever but now the acclaimed former University of Waterloo professor is being honoured posthumously for his Second World War efforts.

The University of Waterloo is Canada’s top university for innovation for the 23rd consecutive year and Best Overall for 2015, according to Maclean's magazine.

The Maclean’s annual ranking of Canadian universities, released today, also saw Waterloo move up to the top spot in the Leaders of Tomorrow category.