Events - February 2022

Research seminar 

Research seminar 

Join us for a special edition of Research talks, "Black History is World History: From Moment to Global Movement," featuring Michaëlle Jean, University of Waterloo Chancellor, St. Paul’s University College and former Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of Canada.

Please register to receive a link to this virtual event.

In her most recent book, Discriminating Data (2021), Wendy Chun reveals how polarization is a goal—not an error—within big data and machine learning. These methods, she argues, encode segregation, eugenics, and identity politics through their default assumptions and conditions. Correlation, which grounds big data's predictive potential, stems from twentieth-century eugenic attempts to “breed” a better future. Recommender systems foster angry clusters of sameness through homophily. Users are “trained” to become authentically predictable via a politics and technology of recognition.

Research seminar 

Surgical robots and exoskeletons save lives and enable independence. However, their access, acceptance and use are limited by usability barriers and cost-benefit comparisons with conventional practice. My talk will demonstrate soft robotics techniques and transdisciplinary design strategies that address these challenges and stimulate the discovery of new application areas in engineering and medicine.

Research seminar

Join Peter Carr, continuing lecturer at the University of Waterloo, to learn more about this eight–week program developed in partnership with the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers (OSPE) and the Faculty of Engineering.

Research seminar