Entrepreneurship

It’s that moment that every entrepreneur dreams of the realization that you’ve not only created a product that would help solve a genuine problem but that it’s unique in the marketplace. For nanotechnology engineering alums Khanjan Desai (BASc '13) and Chong Shen (BASc '13), that inkling happened in their fourth-year capstone course, as they were tackling the challenge of keeping windshields frost-free.

Kelly Zheng has a lot on her plate. She’s an engineering doctoral student at the University of Waterloo who is building a startup while also working towards a graduate business degree. It can be a balancing act, but she’s tackling it all.

Her PhD research in quantum machine learning for spatial temporal modeling can be difficult for many to wrap their heads around. This emerging, quantum-based branch of AI and machine learning allows large data sets to be analyzed in a fraction of the time that a regular computer can manage.

Nicholas Cheng (MSc in Pharmacy in progress) won the Winter 2023 Social Impact Fund Grand Prize for his project Entomatia, which uses food waste as feed for mealworms to extract a serum to replace fetal bovine serum (FBS).

The $10,000 prize from the GreenHouse Social Impact Fund will be used for infrastructure costs and to generate a prototype serum for further scale-up.

The new Diploma in Indigenous Entrepreneurshipwill be delivered in partnership with post-secondary institutions across Canada and will focus on the unique needs and priorities of Indigenous entrepreneurs. 

“The climate crisis is our biggest existential threat,” said the University of Waterloo’s President, Vivek Goel, in his opening address at the Waterloo Innovation Summit on Friday, April 21. 

It’s no coincidence that the Summit, centred on sustainable transportation, took place on the eve of Earth Day.

The calls and commitments to reduce our carbon emissions have never been louder, but our global energy related CO2 emissions continued to climb in 2022.

Twenty years ago, a cross-campus collaboration in quantum science and technology was just a newly unfolding idea. Today, the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) has grown from this idea into a fully formed campus research community, and recently celebrated its 20^th anniversary. 

Today, on World Quantum Day, we proudly reflect on IQC’s impressive achievements made over the past 20 years, look forward to the future of quantum discoveries, and celebrate the new connections and collaborations that they have brought to the University of Waterloo community.

Students at Velocity Digital are bullish about artificial intelligence.

More than 35 per cent of the cross-disciplinary teams engaged in Velocity Digital, the South Campus Hall creator space, are using artificial intelligence in multiple ways, recognizing its power as a tool to solve problems at a capacity beyond the capabilities of human analysis of data.

The University of Waterloo and Velocity are officially expanding their presence in downtown Kitchener today with a groundbreaking event at the new Innovation Arena building on Waterloo's Health Sciences campus. 

Within a year since launching, Adaptis has raised $2 million from investors in Canada and the U.S. who specialize in cleantech, deeptech and renewable energy.

The company’s proprietary, artificial intelligence-driven software, born out of University of Waterloo research, enables circularity in construction, decarbonizing and material recycling for existing and new multi-family housing, commercial and institutional buildings.

Ten senior student teams from the Faculty of Engineering competed in this year’s Norman Esch Entrepreneurship Awards for Capstone Design, pitching their startup ideas to a panel of judges tasked with awarding $60,000.   

All 10 pitches showcased innovative thinking and entrepreneurial skills. The teams presented creative solutions to challenges ranging from an affordable at-home robot that helps non-verbal autistic children learn how to communicate, to a smart intervention that prevents tennis elbow.