Research

Engineering projects that could be the next big thing will be on display at the annual Capstone Design Symposia taking place in March.

Formerly known as fourth-year design projects, Capstone Design is the culmination of the Waterloo Engineering student experience. During their senior year, students, generally working in teams of four, conceptualize and design a project related to their chosen discipline.

School's not quite out for Wayne Brodland who retired from Waterloo Engineering last year.

After more than three decades of teaching and conducting research, he launched the Brodland Commons website, which provides students and others with access to resources he and his teams developed over the years.

Accomplished alumni, outstanding current students and generous supporters were all celebrated when more than 400 people got together last November for the 2017 Waterloo Engineering Awards Dinner.

The annual event honoured graduates in three categories and a foundation dedicated to helping produce engineers, plus hundreds of top students for their academic and extracurricular achievements.

Pearl Sullivan, dean of Waterloo Engineering, wrapped up the evening at the University’s Federation Hall by urging everyone to wear their connections to the Faculty on their sleeves.

A fear of dying plays a role in people buying bottled water, even though they know it may not be good for them or the planet, a study from the University of Waterloo has found.

The study suggests that most bottled-water advertising campaigns target a deep psychological vulnerability in humans, compelling them to buy and consume particular products. Bottled water ads specifically trigger our most subconscious fear — driving Canadians to buy billions of litres of water annually.

The new technique will have direct applications for quantum cryptography and communication protocols, including the possibility for establishing highly secure communication channels over long distances.

 Jean-Phillipe MacLean works in his lab.

Janusz Pawliszyn – Chemistry

Janusz Pawliszyn's research focuses on the development and application of state-of-the-art, integrated and automated analytical methods and instrumentation, for on-site analysis and monitoring. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, University Professor and holds the Canada Research Chair and NSERC Industrial Research Chair in New Analytical Methods and Technologies.

Russell Giles jokes that after this past weekend’s Great Northern Concrete Toboggan Race he doesn’t know what he’ll do with his spare time.

Leading up to the race hosted by Waterloo’s Faculty of Engineering, Russell, the captain of Waterloo’s Concrete Toboggan team, spent an average of 50-hours a week during the past couple of months working on the group’s toboggan. 

The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) is opening a cyber security lab and investing $1.78 million into research at the University of Waterloo to develop advanced cybersecurity and privacy tools.

University of Waterloo has recently announced additional financial incentives totaling $1.5 million to encourage the continued development of Canadian graduate research. The funds are available for both PhD and research Master’s students.

A study released in Nature Geoscience describes how climate change played a major role in the massive catastrophic collapse of two glaciers in the Tibetan Plateau in July and September 2016.

The spectacular collapse, featured by The Atlantic magazine last year, was captured in more-or-less real time using remote sensing data by an international team of researchers, which included Dr. Stephen Evans, a professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Waterloo and Director of Waterloo’s Geological Engineering Program.