Department history

1960

• At the invitation of Dean of Engineering Douglas Wright, George Soulis, a prolific mechanical engineer with over 50 patents, joins the University of Waterloo.

1963

• Peter Roe, under the supervision of Dr. Hiremaglur K. Kesavan in Electrical Engineering, is awarded the first doctoral degree in engineering from the University of Waterloo.  

1964

• Professors Soulis and Roe, with Professor Vir Handa from Civil Engineering, begin teaching engineering design (GE 11) to all first-year undergraduate engineering students.
• Professor Soulis founds the Institute of Design at Waterloo, a collaboration between the Faculty of Engineering and the Doon School of Fine Arts.
• Professors Soulis, Roe and H.K. Kesavan, establish the Department of Design within the Faculty of Engineering.

1965

• With Professor Soulis as Chair, the Department of Design offers a master’s degree program in engineering design.

• The 1967 International and Universal Exposition (Expo 67) is held in Montreal, Quebec.
• Soulis joins the University’s design team for Expo ’67, which worked on three pavilions at the event, including Kaleidoscope, one of the most popular exhibits.
• The Department of Design offers a doctoral degree program in engineering design and an undergraduate program in architecture.
• Professors Soulis, Roe and Handa publish The Discipline of Design to serve as the foundation of teaching undergraduate engineering design.

1968

• The Department of Design becomes the Department of Systems Design Engineering (SYDE), with Dr. Kesavan as Chair. The SYDE undergraduate program is approved by the Engineering Faculty Council.
• Why ‘SYDE’? The name combines the research interest areas of Soulis in design and Kesavan in the graph theoretic approach to systems modelling.

1969

• The first cohort of Systems Design Engineering undergraduate students is admitted. SYDE faculty cold-called applicants to build awareness of the program!

1970

• SYDE’s location is Engineering 2.
• Leonardo da Vinci’s The Vitruvian Man is SYDE’s unofficial symbol of the program, which blends art, science, and philosophy.

1972

• Professor T. Morris Fraser, a medical doctor who introduced the human systems aspect to the department, becomes Chair.

• The first SYDE undergraduate class graduates

• Professor Koncay Huseyin, an expert in chaos theory and non-linear dynamical systems, becomes Chair

• Professor Ed Jernigan forms the Vision and Image Processing (VIP) Research Group. VIP grew to become one of Waterloo’s largest graduate research groups, led by SYDE faculty Professors David Clausi, Paul Fieguth, Alexander Wong, and John Zelek.

1981

• Professor Soulis joins the Shad Valley summer program to attract outstanding high school students to the University of Waterloo.

1984

• Professor Ed Jernigan becomes Director of the Waterloo Shad Valley program and will hold the position until 2015.  

• Professor Muthu Chandrashekar becomes Department Chair. Dr. Chandrashekar (MASc ’70, PhD ’73, systems design engineering) was a researcher in solar energy and developed computer models for the analysis and design of energy systems.

• John Vellinga (BASc ’91, systems design engineering) founds the Waterloo Engineering Endowment Foundation (WEEF), with Avi Belinsky (BASc ’90, electrical engineering). The interest from the fund is used to purchase equipment for undergraduate engineering education. The endowment reached $20 million in 2021.

• Professor Keith W. Hipel (BASc, ‘70, civil engineering, MASc, ’72 systems design engineering, PhD ’75 civil engineering) becomes Department Chair. His research interest is in conflict resolution and decision-making methodologies applied to societal and environmental systems.
• Dr. Hipel hosts the first International Conference on Water Resources and Environment Research (ICWRER) at the University of Waterloo in honour of SYDE Professor T.E. Unny

• SYDE hires its first female tenure-track faculty member, Professor Carolyn MacGregor (BA ’83, psychology). Dr. MacGregor’s research interest is human factors engineering.

• Professor Ed Jernigan, an expert in vision and image processing, becomes Department Chair
• Professor Hipel elected to the Royal Society of Canada (RSC). In 2011, he receives the Society’s Sir John William Dawson Medal in recognition of his contributions of knowledge in multiple domains.

• Professor John McPhee, with Professors Rob Gorbet, Jan Huissoon and Farid Golnaraghi from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering found the Mechatronics Department

• Professor Glenn Heppler, an expert in the dynamics of structures and multilink and single link systems, becomes Chair
• SYDE completes the first major proposal for a Biomedical Engineering undergraduate program

• Professor Jernigan founds the Knowledge Integration program in the Faculty of Environment, a program for problem-solvers who transcend disciplines

• Dr. Paul Fieguth, an expert in multiscale statistical modelling and machine learning, becomes Department Chair
• SYDE moves into the new building, Engineering 5

2014

• The first cohort of Biomedical Engineering undergraduate students is admitted.

2015

• Dr. Thomas Willett and Dr. Ning Jiang join the department as recruitment of biomedical engineering-focused faculty expands to support the undergraduate program and future graduate program. 

• Dr. Paul Calamai, an expert in resource management and allocation, serves as acting Chair

• SYDE celebrates its 50^th anniversary

• Engineering 7 (E7) opens, and is renamed Pearl Sullivan Engineering (PSE) in 2025 in honour of the former Waterloo Engineering dean, the late Dr. Pearl Sullivan. 

• Teaching and research labs in Douglas Wright Engineering (DWE) become dedicated Biomedical Engineering spaces.

• Dr. Maud Gorbet, an expert in biocompatibility in ocular and cardiovascular environments, serves as interim Chair
• The first cohort of Biomedical Engineering undergraduate students graduates 

• Professor Lisa Aultman-Hall, an expert in transportation systems and associated emissions, becomes Chair
• Professor Alexander Wong elected to the Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists
• The Autonomous Vehicle Research and Intelligence Lab (AVRIL) opens

• Professor John McPhee elected to the Royal Society of Canada
• The Biomedical Engineering Graduate program admits its first cohort of students

• The first master’s student graduates from the Biomedical Engineering graduate program.