Quick links:
- Research
- Academic Programming and Teaching Excellence
- Experiential Education
- Entrepreneurial opportunities
Strategic Initiatives: Research
- For the third year in a row, Waterloo was listed among the Top 50 global engineering and technology schools in the 2014 Shanghai Ranking (ARWU).
- Waterloo was ranked #40 in the world in US News & World Report's inaugural Best Global Universities ranking for engineering.
- Major awards and chairs earned in 2014/15:
- Professor John McPhee was named a Tier I Canada Research Chair in Biomechatronic System Dynamics;
- Tier II Canada Research Chairs were awarded to Professors Zhongwei Chen (Advanced Materials for Clean Energy, pictured below) Lukasz Golab (Data Analytics for Sustainability) and Sriram Narasimhan (Smart Infrastructure);
- Six professors received Ontario's Early Researcher Awards in 2015;
- Professors Amir Khajepour, Manoj Sachdev and John Yeow were inducted as Fellows of the Engineering Institute of Canada;
- Professor Chris Eliasmith, jointly appointed in the Faculties of Arts and Engineering, won the prestigious Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) John C. Polanyi Award for his work developing a computer model of the human brain;
- Professor Raafat Mansour was awarded the 2014 Professional Engineers of Ontario Research and Development Award;
- Professor Mohammed Kamel was inducted to the Royal Society of Canada; and
- Professors Susan Tighe and Chris Eliasmith were named inaugural members of the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.
- Major funding achievements and milestones in 2014/15:
- Sponsored research funding totaled over $64M in 2014/15, a 23% increase over the previous year and a 129% increase in the past decade;
- Tri-Council and industry funding both reached their highest level yet in 2014/15 at $18.7M and $10.9M respectively; and
- Two infrastructure projects in the areas of RF circuits and robotics have been awarded more than $4M by Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and Ontario Research Fund (ORF).
- Major industry partnership funding in 2014/15:
- Professors Hamid Jahed and Nasser Lashgarian Azad were awarded $4M in the 2014/15 Automotive Partnership Canada competition for research on fatigue-critical components and intelligent control systems;
- A state-of-the-art $10M research facility for Green and Intelligent Automotive (GAIA) was launched with $1M from Toyota and $2.1M each from CFI and ORF;
- Professor Krzysztof Czarnecki received a $1.65M NSERC Collaborative Research and Training Experience (CREATE ) award, the first for the Faculty, for Product-line Engineering for Cyber-physical Systems; and
- Eight engineering professors were awarded highly competitive NSERC Strategic Grants totalling $4M in 2014/15, marking the Faculty's best ever performance in a strategic grant funding round.
Strategic Initiatives: Academic Programming and Teaching Excellence
- In fall 2014, the new biomedical engineering undergraduate program launched very successfully (with over 700 applications) and a multi-year expansion of the undergraduate mechatronics engineering program began.
- A comprehensive curricular review resulted in new curricula for the civil, environmental and geological engineering programs.
- The Faculty introduced an incentive program to attract top domestic PhD students in 2015.
- In 2014, Waterloo Engineering awarded the most engineering undergraduate and PhD degrees in Canada.
- New admissions to engineering research graduate programs increased in 2014 by 22% over the previous year.
- Fall 2014 marked both the highest undergraduate enrolment (7,186) and most women undergraduate students (1,634) ever in the Faculty. The first-year undergraduate class also had the most women ever: a full 29% of the first-year class was female.
- Over 75% of new students joining Waterloo Engineering in fall 2014 had an entering average over 90%. Among these students was Amanda Rampertab, who received a prestigious $80,000 Schulich Leader Scholarship.
- In 2014/15, $1.65M was invested through the Vision 2015 Undergraduate Lab Enhancement Initiative. To date, total investments to improve undergraduate learning facilities during this period total over $7M.
- Teaching awards in 2014/15:
- The Waterloo Engineering Society (EngSoc) established a Teaching Excellence Award for outstanding contributions to undergraduate learning. The inaugural recipient was Lecturer David Brush;
- Professor Jeff West, pictured below, received a 2015 University of Waterloo Distinguished Teacher Award; and
- Doctoral candidate Mostafa Farrokhabadi received a 2015 Amit and Meena Chakma Award for Exceptional Teaching by a Student.
Strategic Initiatives: Experiential Education
- A record 8,062 work terms were required to support Waterloo Engineering's hallmark mandatory co-op program in 2014, an increase of 2,371 over the past decade. Even with this increase, the employment rate remained very high (over 97%).
- 16% of co-op work terms in 2014 were outside of Canada, the highest international proportion of co-op work terms ever for the Faculty.
- Third-year mechatronics engineering student Andrew Andrade, co-founder of successful startup PetroPredict, was named Canada's top co-op student of the year.
- The number of experiential projects and activities developed by Waterloo's Engineering Ideas ClinicTMTask Force has grown to 40 over the past year.
Strategic Initiatives: Entrepreneurial opportunities
- The Conrad Business, Entrepreneurship & Technology Centre launched the Option in Entrepreneurship for engineering students in fall 2014. Conrad also launched the online BET100 course, an introduction to entrepreneurial thinking, for students across the university.
- Waterloo Engineering awarded $53K in micro-seed funding to engineering student entrepreneurs through the Engineer of the Future Trust in 2014/15.
- $60K was awarded at the second annual Norman Esch Entrepreneurship Awards for Capstone Design competition for engineering students.
- Waterloo Engineering startups dominated all three terms of Velocity Fund Finals, capturing the majority of awards and the top prize each time.
- Three entrepreneurs from Waterloo Engineering are members of the new class of The Next 36 — Canada's Entrepreneurial Leadership Initiative.
- As of May 2015, over 600 companies have been identified as having Waterloo Engineering students, faculty, staff or alumni as founders.