Talent

Growing up, Rico Mariani saw the struggles women face in the workplace. He remembers how his mother had to fight to receive the same compensation as her male co-workers.

Today, Rico remains painfully aware of the everyday challenges — and sometimes, outright dangers — faced by women, people of colour and members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community.

For Jocelyn Bonti-Ankomah, seeing women in pharmacy who looked like her inspired her to pursue a career in the industry. Now, after receiving a student award honouring her community service, she’s encouraging other women of colour to achieve their goals.

Whether you’re old or young, memory can be a challenge for all kinds of reasons, and most of us would welcome strategies to help improve our memory. Waterloo’s researchers in psychology have been helping with this area of cognition for years — and the impact of their research on what we know about memory continues with graduate students.

One of Waterloo’s newest Schulich Leaders Scholarship winners is already making a splash in science communications.

Jonathan Zhou, a first-year enrolled in the mechatronics engineering program, was recently selected as one of 30 semi-finalists for the 2022 Breakthrough Junior Challenge, sponsored by Khan Academy. The 30 semi-finalists were selected out of a pool of more than a thousand applicants

As the fall term begins for universities, a special group of first-year students is set to make a big impression on campus.

Winners of the Schulich Leaders Scholarship are among the best and brightest recent high school graduates, with both stellar grades and a dedication to community service that sets them apart.

You’re probably familiar with the University of Waterloo’s world-renowned incubator, Velocity, but did you know that Velocity also leads student programming and resources on campus? Students exploring entrepreneurship can get support from Velocity at every step of their journey in turning an idea into an early-stage business.

Canadians think they know a lot about snow. It is practically a national pastime to discuss winter weather.

But a PhD student in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo is taking the Canadian obsession with weather to a whole new level.

Fraser King is studying the ways machine learning can be applied to predicting patterns of precipitation, and especially annual snowfall and snowmelt in the context of climate change.

We caught up with Iris Redinger (BAS ’21), a recent Waterloo grad from the Waterloo School of Architecture. This summer, she was competitively selected as one of five winners of the Mitacs Entrepreneur Award for her startup Material Futures that uses biotechnology to reduce the environmental impact of the fashion industry.

Daniel Henstra
> Professor, Department of Political Science
> Co-lead, Climate Risk Research Group
> Member, Waterloo Climate Institute

Climate change is such a huge issue that it can be difficult to even know where to start.

This summer’s fires, floods and heat waves have reinforced what we already know — the effects of climate change are happening now and the need for action is urgent. But what steps should be taken to mitigate and adapt are often not well understood. This is where the interactive game Illuminate can fill this knowledge gap.