Research

Waterloo researchers are at the forefront of responding to the climate crisis with purpose-driven research and technology, including an interdisciplinary team who are in the field measuring methane emissions to support Canada’s net-zero gas emissions goals. 

When University of Waterloo professor Dr. Carolyn Ren was a child, her father came home one day with a tape cassette recorder. This was China in the early 1980s and such devices were hard to come by, particularly in their rural village. Everyone was curious to see it, no one more so than Ren who was transfixed by its ability to play music as if by magic. She had to understand how it worked so took the device apart. Unfortunately, she couldn’t put it back together again. Determined to never get stuck in such a situation again, the young Ren set her sights on becoming an engineer.  

New research from the University of Waterloo suggests increasing the ratio of dietary potassium to sodium intake may be more effective for lowering blood pressure than simply reducing sodium intake.

Researchers at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at the University of Waterloo are doing more than tackling trailblazing theoretical and applied research that expands our understanding of quantum mechanics.

Faculty, postdoctoral researchers and students — from undergraduates to PhD candidates — are showing the powerful possibilities of applied quantum technologies and research commercialization, making a deep and lasting impact on society.

A University of Waterloo professor is part of an international coalition revolutionizing vaccine production with new health-care technology. The tech aims to support local vaccine production, cutting  the vaccine production time from nine days to just one day, and save millions of lives and dollars as a result.   

The rapid evolution of digital health holds immense potential to transform patient care and improve global health outcomes. Building disruptive technologies is at the core of what we do, and since our inception, the University of Waterloo has been harnessing our expertise in health, technology and entrepreneurship and collaborating with partners to commercialize health-care solutions for real-world impact.

Researchers led by the University of Waterloo have discovered how to turn common bacteria into high-efficiency factories capable of producing tiny, powerful particles for drug delivery, cancer therapy, vaccine development and other biomedical uses.

Led by Dr. Yilan Liu, a Waterloo chemical engineering professor, the international research team altered bacteria found in the human gut, or gastrointestinal tract, to dramatically increase the number of bubble-shaped nanoparticles they secrete.

Canada and the U.S. share the Great Lakes except Lake Michigan. Half of the trade between the two countries takes place in and around the Great Lakes. Recent rhetoric from the U.S. government raises concerns about Canada’s sovereignty and resources.

The increasing integration of cars with advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) means fully autonomous vehicles (AVs) will likely be a reality by 2050, if not sooner. These self-driving vehicles will not just operate with minimal human intervention, they will make “decisions” to adapt and react to changing situations on the road. Human drivers will literally take a back seat.