News

An engineering professor at the University of Waterloo with a lifelong interest in environmental protection has won a prestigious national award for scholars.

Keith Hipel, a professor of systems design engineering who earned his own three degrees as a student at Waterloo, was named today as one of five winners of 2019 Killam Prizes through the Canada Council for the Arts.

Dr. Alexander Wong, a professor in the Department of Systems Design Engineering, was featured in an article discussing tools for voice AI [Read more].

Systems Design Engineering Professor John McPhee has been awarded the 2019 Ontario Professional Engineers Engineering Medal for Engineering Excellence.

The Engineering Medal honours those association members who have contributed substantially to advancing the engineering profession, and recognizes excellence in the practice of engineering, where the innovative application of engineering knowledge and principles has solved a unique problem, led to advanced products, or produced above-average results.

As technology advances, there is often an expectation of using it to make life easier. There is a strong push towards automating everyday activities for the purposes of saving time, improving efficiency or added safety. This is especially evident in the automotive industry, where the journey towards autonomous vehicles has seen companies create self-driving vehicles and consider the reality of driverless roadways.

A Systems Design team is one of two teams to have been awarded $50k from the Palihapitiya Venture Creation Fund.  The team is Beacon Health, supervised by Professor Igor Ivkovic.  Their project seeks to improve mental health literacy in post-secondary educational institutions, including a knowledge-based recommender system that connects university students with corresponding mental health resources.

 

Katherine Carras is a recent University of Waterloo grad in Systems Design Engineering. She works in Silicon Valley as a product designer at Palantir Technologies.

And she’s got a message for would-be tech employers in Waterloo Region: Get in the game.

The Distinguished Teacher Awards for 2019 will be presented to four faculty members at Convocation, Associate Vice-President, Academic Mario Coniglio announced at yesterday’s meeting of the University's Senate.

Dr. Alexander Wong, the Canada Research Chair in the field of Artificial Intelligence and a professor in the Department of Systems Design Engineering, and MASc student  Zhong Qiu Lin, was featured in a front-page article in Synced Magazine, one of the largest media outlets for AI globally, on their work on human-machine collaborative design for building better deep neural networks for operational, practical environments [read more].

Dr. Parsin Haji Reza a professor at the SYDE and the director of PhotoMedicine lab (www.photomedicinelab.com) received $420,000 from Mitacs Accelerate Program in collaboration with illumiSonics Inc. This funding will go toward his cutting-edge translational research in medical imaging for critical applications in oncology, gastroenterology, and ophthalmology.

Every year, six exceptional co-op students, one from each faculty, are recognized by the University of Waterloo for their contribution to their employer, their community and the further development of experiential education.