It doesn’t happen often, but every once in a while someone actually does build a better mousetrap. For James Coleman, a first-year student in Waterloo’s School of Planning, it wasn’t mice that his invention aimed to catch, but sunlight.
Many salespeople can’t find energy efficient televisions and they don’t have information when buyers probe for eco-options, a University of Waterloo study has found.
The maker revolution has resulted from the wide availability of low-cost digital media tools, with more and more people producing content for broad exposure. Glenn Stillar, associate professor and director of Waterloo’s digital arts communication program, examines the theory and practice of how we create new meaning with tools that produce highly visual and immediate communication. He suggests ‘visualacy’ is becoming equally important in society as literacy.
Research, entrepreneurialism and venture capital all have a vital role to play in fuelling economic growth and prosperity for Ontario, Canada and the world.
To spark high-level discussion about the steps and policy levers needed to advance global economies, the University of Waterloo is hosting the Leadership Innovation Conference (LINC) on April 22 and 23, at its Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre.
Education really does change the world.
John Baker discovered that when he founded the next-generation learning provider, Desire2Learn, as a University of Waterloo student in 1999.
Today, D2L's 750 employees in Waterloo Region and around the world provide access to world-class education to learners on almost every continent.
Communication is fundamental to a child's wellbeing and development, but if language skills are delayed, it can impact a child for life.
The idea hit a few weeks before graduation in April 2012: University of Waterloo students Matthew Bailey and Stephen Lake were sitting at a bar talking about the new frontier of wearable computer controllers.
Lake mentioned work he'd done studying muscle activity in his biomechanics courses. Perhaps, the pair mused, the electronics could be shrunk to a wearable size.
Thus, Thalmic Labs was born.
"We prototyped the idea, proved that it was viable one week after graduation, and have been working on it ever since," Bailey says.
In the four years since Aeryon Labs launched its first unmanned surveillance unit, its snap-together Scout has aided freedom fighters, helped guide emergency deliveries to an ice-bound town, monitored oil spills and shaped fire-fighting plans.
