News

Since 2018, the Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs (GSPA) hosts a "GRADflix" competition, challenging students from across campus to communicate their research to a general audience. With only 60 seconds at their disposal, competetors create videos, moving slideshows or animation, in order to tell us why their research is important!

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Professor Mark Servos has been working tirelessly to contribute towards our understanding of COVID-19, leading wastewater testing efforts locally and across Canada. His research has recently been highlighted in the media as wastewater surveillance becomes a significant tool in our community’s efforts to track the spread of COVID-19, and his efforts are being recognized with a Minister of Colleges and Universities' Awards of Excellence.

Fish have a lot to stress about right now. This could mean serious problems for the future of aquaculture and the fish on your plate.

The new Waterloo Aquatic Threats in Environmental Research (WATER) facility at the University of Waterloo aims to simulate and research aquatic stressors and threats so that we are better prepared to prevent current and future problems.

Omicron is the latest COVID-19 variant of concern, and it is expected to change the course of the pandemic. But how are variants formed, and what’s the threat level for people who are fully vaccinated? Kelly Grindrod, a pharmacist and professor, and Trevor Charles, a professor in the University of Waterloo’s Department of Biology, provide answers to these questions.

Congratulations to Professor Richard Epp for being awarded the 2021 CAP Medal for Excellence in Teaching Undergraduate Physics, and to Professor Roger Melko for being awarded the 2021 CAP/DCMMP Brockhouse Medal.

That morning coffee might be even more helpful than you think.

In the first study of its kind to explore caffeine’s effects on dynamic visual skills, researchers concluded that caffeine increases alertness and detection accuracy for moving targets. Caffeine also improved participants’ reaction times.

For Michael Houston, PhD ’93, BSc ’87, the University of Waterloo is more than his alma mater. For a good chunk of his youth, the campus is where he called home.  

When it comes to hibernation, conserving resources is key for an animal’s survival. For bats of Western North America, water may be the key to assessing a bat species’ ability to thrive during hibernation.

New research that comes as part of a larger project to understand the potential impact of white-nose syndrome in the West found that bats are adept at finding similar hibernation conditions across their large geographic ranges, despite a variety of climates in these areas.

The University of Waterloo’s School of Optometry & Vision Science (UWOVS) is announcing that The Right Honourable David Johnston, the 28^th Governor General of Canada and former UWaterloo president, will serve as Honorary Chair for the School’s $35-million campaign.

In the field of chemistry, one challenge that students commonly encounter is difficulty visualizing molecules, their arrangements and relationship between atoms in space. While there are some tools already being used to address this difficulty, they each have some disadvantages as well. Molecular model kits are bulky, expensive, require students to spend valuable time building each molecule, and are also limited by the number of pieces in the set.