Research

Imagine worrying that you’re showing possible symptoms of diabetes, cancer, cardiac disease or Alzheimer’s.

Now imagine that instead of spending a restless night poring over medical websites and waiting anxiously for a doctor’s visit, you could simply pull out a device that took a miniscule droplet of blood and analyzed it in minutes.

If the results came back negative, it would be instant peace of mind.

The ability to charge cellphones in seconds is one step closer after researchers at the University of Waterloo used nanotechnology to significantly improve energy-storage devices known as supercapacitors.

Their novel design roughly doubles the amount of electrical energy the rapid-charging devices can hold, helping pave the way for eventual use in everything from smartphones and laptop computers, to electric vehicles and high-powered lasers.

Jason Thistlethwaite — School of Environment, Enterprise and Development

Jason Thistlethwaite works directly with government and business leaders in the insurance, banking, real estate, building, and investment industries to research innovative strategies designed to reduce the economic impacts of extreme weather and climate change. He is an assistant professor and member of the Interdisciplinary Centre on Climate Change explores the role of insurance and government risk-transfer in promoting climate change adaptation and reducing economic vulnerability.

Jean-Paul Lam — Economics

Jean-Paul Lam is a professor of economics at the University of Waterloo and he specializes in macroeconomics. He can conduct interviews in English or French.

“Canada has experienced solid economic growth since the beginning of the year while unemployment has been steadily falling and is almost at its pre-financial crisis level. With this positive backdrop, the government is expected to announce that the budget deficit will be smaller than previously forecasted.”
- Jean-Paul Lam

Xu Chu came to the University of Waterloo in 2010 as a fourth-year exchange student from China. Now, seven years later, he is about to embark on an inspiring career as a tenure-track assistant professor in the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

Novice gamblers who watched a short video about how slot machines disguise losses as wins have a better chance of avoiding gambling problems, according to new research.

Slot machines present losses disguised as wins (LDWs) with celebratory music and flashing lights, even though players actually won less money than they bet. People can mistakenly believe that they are winning and continue paying to play.

Few people outside government and the military paid any attention to cryptography when Gord Agnew began pioneering work in the field in the early 1980s.

Other highlights of Waterloo's fall convocation will include:

Friday, October 20, 10 a.m. 

Applied Health Sciences and Science

Seniors need twice as long as young adults to realize they are falling, a delay that puts them at increased risk for serious injury, according to a new study from the University of Waterloo.

The findings will help shape the development of wearable fall prevention technology and allow clinicians to more accurately identify at-risk individuals. Falls are the leading cause of death and hospitalization in Canada.

Michel Fich – Physics and Astronomy

Professor Michel Fich is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo, and an expert in the formation of stars and the impact on the formation of solar systems. Fich has also been involved in many space missions, including two recent missions developed with the Canadian Space Agency, and is currently the lead in building a large telescope in Chile.